The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight

by Jon Schafer

  “Do you think they know we’re here?” Sheila asked. “They should have heard the sound of the trucks.”

  “Not if they started a fire,” Tick-Tock told her. Turning to Steve, he said, “We need to check this out. They might be like us, but you never know.”

  Steve nodded, saying, “Heather, get our people set up to cover the trucks in a three hundred sixty degree radius in case this is a setup. Get the others ready to go in case we have to take off fast.”

  She turned to do what he’d asked as Steve said to Tick-Tock, “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a second,” Denise said and motioned for them to hold on. Going to the truck, she came back and handed Tick-Tock her night vision scope saying, “The batteries are almost dead, so you can only use it for a minute or two before it starts to fade. I just use it for a few seconds at a time and then shut it off.”

  Tick-Tock thanked her, and then leaned forward to kiss her before turning and heading into the woods.

  The floor of the forest was covered in dead leaves, but the two men made very little noise as they walked over them. The rain they’d had earlier worked in their favor and dampened them. They crept along in a half crouch, stopping occasionally as Tick-Tock scouted the way with the scope. The light from the fire grew brighter as they approached, and they could now see the shadows of tents around it.

  Stopping at the edge of a campground that was overgrown with disuse, the two men lay on the ground in a clump of bushes and observed the people around the fire.

  “I count five,” Tick-Tock whispered. “All of them armed with pistols.” Raising the night vision scope to his eye and turning it on, he scanned the area around them and added, “The scope keeps whiting out when I look too close to the fire, but I don’t see anyone else. I can see a couple hunting rifles too, but no automatic weapons.”

  As they watched, one of the men grabbed a pot from a makeshift grill over the fire and started spooning its contents into cans and handing them out. They were too far away to make out what the people were saying to each other, but occasionally they could hear them laugh as they ate. Steve could see three women and two men in the group and three tents, one of them only half set up. This told him that they had arrived after his group, and this was why they hadn’t heard the sound of the diesel engines.

  “I don’t see any vehicles,” Tick-Tock pointed out.

  “It must suck to be on foot.”

  “So what do you think, should we approach them?”

  “I don’t want to risk it,” Steve replied. “Nowadays, most people are going to shoot first and try to find out who you are after. I’m sure there are groups on land just like the pirates we ran into out in the Gulf. Besides, we’ve already got enough on our hands with Sean’s people, and this group looks like they can take care of themselves.”

  With one last look, Steve started backing away. The group didn’t look like a threat, but they would have to keep an eye out in this direction for the rest of the night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Big Thicket Preserve:

  The trucks sat silent where the fire road ended at a two-lane paved road. Tick-Tock crouched with Steve and Heather as they studied a map spread out on the ground.

  Pointing to the spot on the map where they’d stopped, and then dragging his finger down to follow a road, Tick-Tock said, “If we go south, we can make it to these trails and that’ll take us all the way to the other end of the preserve. The only problem with this is we’ll run out of gas before we get there. If we go north though, we can hook up with this road and keep going east, and then we’ll end up on highway 190 heading into Jasper. I know we wanted to avoid roads and towns but we need fuel.”

  “And food,” Steve said.

  “And we can always use ammunition,” Heather added as she lifted her rifle.

  Steve looked down at the map and said, “I say we head to 190 and hit any cars and trucks we find for what we need. We can restock on supplies and then cut back south. We had good luck raiding vehicles before we ended up out here in the boondocks. Besides that, 190 runs right into Polk, so at least we’ll be heading in the right direction.”

  “Yeah,” Heather said as she looked around, “even the farms we’ve come across out here are stripped.” Pointing to the makeshift shelters of canvas and wood over the back of the trucks, she added, “At least we found enough stuff to do that.”

  “It’s weird that we haven’t seen any people since the night before last at that campsite,” Steve said. “As slow as we’re going, and as much as we’ve had to backtrack because of washed out roads, I figured we’d at least see someone.”

  Heather motioned toward a burned out building across the road that had obviously been looted, “We’re not the first people to come through here, and I’ll bet quite a few of them just took what they wanted. If anyone’s still around, I’m sure they hide every time they hear an engine.”

  “Land pirates,” Steve said, using the name they’d given to the groups that would be roaming around raping, pillaging and looting.

  Tick-Tock folded the map while he said, “And as far as I’m concerned, it’s a good thing they’re hiding.” Looking at the people from the Texas stretching their legs as they watched the woods around them in fear, he added with disgust, “We’ve already got our hands full.”

  With a sigh, Steve said, “I know that they’re worthless, Tick-Tock, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re with us.”

  “So why don’t we change that fact and dump them,” Tick-Tock responded. “We siphon the gas from the second truck into the first one and load it with all the food and water. Our people can pile in and we leave the others. The only thing they do is eat, shit and complain anyway.”

  “Because we made a deal with them,” Steve said. “If it wasn’t for the boats we got from them, we’d still be back in Houston.”

  Not having an argument for this, since he knew their sailboat had been so badly damaged it wouldn’t have stayed afloat for more than a few days, he said, “You’re right, we would be, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to risk my ass to save any of them when they won’t even step up to save themselves.”

  Looking to where Sean was waving at him and asking when they were going to eat, Steve said, “That makes two of us.”

  “Three,” Heather chimed in.

  ***

  They only had to backtrack once, and that was because they came across a washed out bridge. After finding an alternate route, they continued north until they rounded a curve and reached a roadblock. The trees were thick and close in on both sides of the road, so several times they’d come across a few that had fallen and blocked their path. Those had been easily dragged off to the side. But this time was different. Huge logs had been dragged across the road that would have stopped anything short of a tank.

  Halting a hundred feet away, Tick-Tock said to Denise, “Tell Steve what’s going on.”

  Before she could lift the radio to her mouth, Steve’s voice came over the speaker asking why they’d stopped.

  She handed the radio over to Tick-Tock and he said, “We’ve got a roadblock ahead, over.”

  Not being able to see around the lead truck, Steve asked, “How bad, over?”

  “Bad enough where we can’t drive around it,” he replied. “It looks like it’s been here for a while so it’s probably from someone trying to isolate themselves from the spread of the virus, over.”

  About to pull out the map to find another route, Tick-Tock heard Cindy ask, “Is that a car over there?”

  He turned to look and could see her leaning across Denise and staring out the window. Squinting, he could just make out the shape of a vehicle with brush piled on top of it in the woods. As he looked closer, he saw that it wasn’t just one car but two. Beyond them, he could see dozens of unnatural lumps in what looked to be a field. As he focused on other humped shapes that were overgrown with weeds, he heard Pep start to bark at something from the bed of the truck. Something seemed odd about t
he trees on that side of the road and it took him a second to realize that most of them were dead.

  They hadn’t grown there, Tick-Tock realized with a start. They had been cut down and stuck in the ground to create a screen.

  He pushed the transmit button on the radio then said in a low voice, “I think we just drove into an ambush. I need you to back up.”

  Hearing the diesel engine of the second truck rev, Tick-Tock was about to switch into reverse when he noticed movement to his front. A glint of light from behind the roadblock caught his eye, which gave him just enough time to reach behind Denise and push her and Cindy down before the first bullet crashed through the windshield. It was instantly followed by a fusillade of high-powered slugs and buckshot that slammed into the front and sides of the truck.

  Tick-Tock knew there was only one way to break up an ambush, so he twisted around and opened the door. A bullet slammed through it, sending slivers of metal into his left hand. Ignoring this, he jumped out and ran forward, zigzagging as he fired bursts from his M4 at anything that moved. He could hear the snap of bullets as they flew past him, and the crack of rifle fire coming from behind, but his focus was on the roadblock.

  A man in a baseball cap popped up from behind it with a hunting rifle, Tick-Tock aimed from the hip and quickly squeezed the trigger. A fine spray of red went into the air as his target was hit in the right side. Baseball cap let out a cry of pain and spun around disappearing behind the logs. Tick-Tock saw movement at the right side of the roadblock, so he sent a couple rounds in that direction as he increased speed.

  A shotgun boomed and a blossom of dirt flew up from the road in front of him. From the sound, he knew that it had come from his left, so he was able to change direction in time to avoid the second shot. He saw a figure step out from the trees to get a better aim, but someone behind Tick-Tock let loose a burst of rifle fire, and the figure crumpled to the ground. Emboldened by the knowledge that his people were now in the fight, he dodged around the end of the roadblock.

  A woman dressed in overalls was trying to bring an SKS rifle around at him when he fired a three round burst into her chest. She dropped like a rag doll, revealing a man further down the barricade. He was so intent on firing over the top of the roadblock that he was oblivious to everything else.

  Without hesitation, Tick-Tock shot him in the side of the head.

  Spinning around to find another target, he saw a man running down the road away from him. His rifle already raised, Tick-Tock paused for a second at the thought of shooting someone in the back. When the figure turned and lifted a pistol to fire two rounds at him, all bets were off, and he opened up until the bolt on his rifle locked open.

  The man rolled back and forth on the ground, holding his legs and screaming in pain. Tick-Tock’s only thought at seeing he’d hit the man in the legs was that he needed to adjust the sights on his rifle.

  Quickly switching out magazines in one smooth motion, he scanned the area for more ambushers but saw none. All he could hear were the moans of the first man he’d shot in the side and the screams from the second he’d shot in the legs. After shooting them both in the head, he cautiously moved back around the roadblock. Once on the road, he could see Steve and Heather emerging from the woods on either side of the second truck. He felt a moment of fear when he didn’t see Denise, but then noticed her rifle poking out of the shattered windshield. She waved to him and he waved back.

  Brain and Sheila were running toward him, asking if he was okay.

  With a nod, he called out, “I’m good. What about the others?”

  Stopping in front of him, Brain said, “I think our people are okay but a couple of the others got hit. One lady got it in the side of the head. About five or six guys opened up on us from both sides of the road, so we did like you always told us to and went right at them.” With a laugh, he added, “I think even Mary got one. She was standing in the back of the truck looking like Audie Murphy while she was screaming and shooting into the trees.”

  His opinion of her rising from minus ten to minus five, Tick-Tock saw Steve waving him over from the side of the first truck.

  “Got to go,” he said.

  “Your hand’s bleeding,” Sheila said. “Let me take a look at it.”

  “Later,” he told her as he took off at a jog.

  His adrenalin rush from the fight dissipating, Tick-Tock could feel his hand throbbing by the time he reached Steve. The bleeding had almost stopped, but it hurt like hell with each beat of his heart.

  Steve caught sight of his bloody hand and asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I caught a couple frags, but it’s nothing.”

  “Get Sheila to look at it,” he said. “She’s got some antibiotics. You don’t need that getting infected.”

  Tick-Tock promised he would get it tended to and then asked what happened at the second truck.

  “We heard the first shot and knew what was up,” Steve told him. “They opened up on us, so Heather and I unassed from the back while Connie and Brain put down some fire from the cab and then followed us. There were five of them in the woods on either side and we got them all. I don’t think there’s any more since the trees get so thick further in that we would have heard them trying to bust through.” Looking around, he asked, “How did you know it was an ambush?”

  Tick-Tock told him about Cindy seeing the car. Together they walked over to the spot and saw that tall, thin trees had been cut down and stuck in holes to make a screen. Beyond that, they could see a small clearing filled with vehicles covered in brush. The further they were parked toward the back, the more they were covered with natural growth.

  “These guys were highwaymen,” Steve said. “It looks like they’ve been doing this since the beginning. They wait for someone to come along and ambush them, then take everything they’ve got and dump the cars here. They put the trees up as a screen so no one else who comes along sees them and gets suspicious.”

  “Think we got them all?” Tick-Tock asked.

  “I don’t know, but we need to find out,” Steve said. “I don’t want these assholes sniping at us.”

  Moving back to Tick-Tock’s truck, Steve noticed all the bullet holes in the front grill and said, “That doesn’t look good.”

  The engine was still running, but thin wisps of steam were coming from under the hood.

  Tick-Tock said “Shit,” at the top of his voice and ran for the truck. As he reached it, the engine gave a rattle and died. He asked Denise to switch it off, then climbed onto the bumper and opened the hood. As he looked into the engine compartment, he heard a high whistling noise and jumped back just as the radiator blew. Landing on his back in the dirt, he was enveloped in a cloud of steam, the smell of antifreeze thick in his nose as he crab walked backwards.

  As he stood up, he heard an urgent call from the second truck, which caused him to start and then stop. It was Heather calling for someone to help her with one of the others who had been wounded. Steve moved forward but Tick-Tock stayed where he was.

  Steve stopped and asked, “Don’t you have first aid training?”

  Looking at the steaming engine, he answered, “If it’s not one of our people, then I have more important things to deal with.”

  Steve’s voice softened as he said, “There are wounded people back there. You can’t ignore them.”

  After thinking about it for a few seconds, Tick-Tock said, “Alright, but I’m still not putting my ass on the line for them.”

  Two of the people from the Battleship Texas had been killed outright when one of the highwaymen had sprayed the bed of the truck with an AK47 before being shot by Brain. Four more had been wounded, but only one of them was in serious condition.

  Tick-Tock climbed into the back of the truck and found Heather leaning over a man lying prostrate on the floor. The man had blood all over his chest and was wheezing in and out as he tried to get air into his lungs. A medical kit was open next to Heather and she was reaching into it when she saw him.


  Without preamble, she said, “It hit him in the lung and he’s got a sucking chest.”

  Tick-Tock assessed the wound and saw that it was hopeless. Shot through the upper chest, without a medevac chopper and a team of surgeons waiting at a hospital ready to receive him, the man was history. Nonetheless, he asked, “All the way through?”

  “In and out,” Heather told him. “Looks like it shattered his scapula on the way out.”

  Bone fragments on top of everything else, Tick-Tock thought. This guy is a goner.

  “You sealed the entrance and the exit wound?” Tick-Tock asked.

  “I got the exit wound but not the entrance because I ran out of dressings,” she told him as she waved her hand at three people leaning against the side of the truck.

  Tick-Tock saw they had dressings tied over their arms and legs. He wondered what they would do now for dressings if one of their own group was injured. Pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, he slid the cellophane cover off it and handed it over to Heather, saying, “Improvise, adapt and overcome.”

  She smeared it with Vaseline and held it against the bullet hole while Tick-Tock retrieved a roll of duct tape and secured it against the wound. The man’s breathing eased almost immediately.

  “Help me push him over onto the side of the wound,” Tick-Tock told her. “It will keep the blood from pooling in both lungs.”

  The man was unconscious so it was easy to roll him onto his left side. When they were done, Heather asked, “What now?”

  He wanted to reply, ‘wait for him to die’, instead he said, “Treat him for shock when he comes to.”

  “That’s it?” Heather asked.

  “Without a hospital, it’s only a matter of time,” he replied.

  The man gave a final gasp and died ten minutes later.

  ***

  They found the highwaymen’s camp an hour later. It consisted of a dozen tents clustered around two fire pits near a creek. After circling the area to make sure none of the land pirates were still around, they moved in to search for things they needed.