Jessie, on the other hand, he WAS worried about. His first text was basically a WTF is going on but the second sounded like him and a bunch of kids had a plan to get out. Gunny didn’t know if that was safer than staying in the school or not, he wasn’t there and he trusted Jessie’s judgment, to an extent. “I mean, after all,” he thought “he was a teenager and they ain’t the sharpest knives in the drawer when it comes to decision making.” But he had a lot of skills kids much older than him didn’t have. They had done some camping and woodcraft over the years. Not so much once he reached his teens and was entirely too cool to be seen hanging out with his parents. He was in good shape, could run circles around his old man on the few occasions they went jogging around the lake. He knew guns, had been shooting them since before he could walk. If they happened to run across any before he made it home, Gunny didn’t doubt that Jessie would make use of them if need be. He didn’t have a license but he could drive. Gunny hoped they didn’t try to get a car. The only way you learned that those things would follow the car noise forever was when you found out for yourself. And by then, it was usually too late. You would have scores of them dog piling you when you stopped.
The teams were getting quicker, they were starting to mesh together. They still did a few drills in the evenings with Griz and Collins and things were being done automatically without a lot of unnecessary communication. They were learning each other’s moves and habits. Bridget, the movie star warrior, as they had called her behind her back, was always there even though she wasn’t on the team. She was turning out to be a quick study and worked harder than any of them to learn and practice what they taught her. She had been riding with Packrat. Gunny figured she must have thought anything was better than riding in the bus with Bastille. She probably had to fill bags of trash just to find the passenger seat. When he asked him about having her as a passenger, thinking the old codger would make a joke about her boobs or something, he said all she does all day long is practice reloading and quick draw drills. Lars had even shown her the one-handed slide lock trick and she had mastered it. She’d tear down her gun and reassemble it a hundred times. She did it sitting down, standing up and one handed. She would even do it with her eyes closed and then pick his brain about his army days. He wasn’t so quick anymore but he remembered the things he’d learned in his youth. He taught her about knife fighting and throat punches and everything else he could think of. He was a blow hard and knew it all and had done everything you ever did but better but he did have a wealth of knowledge to go along with the annoying personality. They would talk about movies and what was actually possible and what she should never try to duplicate. She practiced incessantly, seven or eight hours a day. At first she got blisters on her hands that broke and bled. Tears danced in her eyes and blood smeared her gun but she continued with the drills. Her hands started turning hard, blisters into calluses and her speed increased.
Gunny stopped his wool-gathering when he heard Sara zoom past him. Scratch was finished and he saw Collins jogging up to climb aboard. They had plotted a new route for Crow City. It was a little over a hundred miles away, hopefully they would make it in a few hours if they didn’t run into any trouble. They rolled through the high plains as the morning wore on, the CB chatter light and almost carefree between the trucks. All of the oil pumps they passed were still and silent. They passed a few people walking near their homes, most of them armed and in pairs. The trucks blew by, waving at them and Julio would swing out from his position near the end of the convoy to briefly tell them where they were going and why, Scratch was on constant lookout for any followers running up behind them.
Another fifty miles up the road and Sara came over the radio. “Trouble.” she said. “There’s a tanker truck up here at a little truck stop. Gotta be someone inside, it’s surrounded by those things. Must be thirty or forty of ‘em.”
“Roger, Lead One.” Collins replied. “Can you bring them back to us?”
Gunny didn’t know what to think of Deputy Collins sometimes. She was rigid but a good person to have on your side. All of the clothes she had grabbed out of the Walmart were the same colors and style of her uniform. She had even pinned her name tag and deputy badge to the shirt. Her hair was always in a regulation bun and pulled back severely and she spit-shined her big leather gun belt. The end of the world didn’t mean you didn’t go by the book, apparently. He had overheard her getting onto Deputy McBride about his lack of professionalism in his attitude and dress late one night. He had slipped out of the truck to relieve himself and they had been on guard duty. He’d heard her tell him they were the last law of the land. Like the army guys, they had also sworn an oath. Theirs just as important. Probably even more so if they didn’t want to live in a military ruled society. They were the only ones duly authorized to make arrests, if need be. Most of the truck drivers were soldiers, they had been trained to kill people and break things. But they, as sworn officers, were required to keep the peace and enforce laws. To protect and serve. Just because it was the end of the world, that didn’t mean it was the end of their watch. The people needed them, looked up to them. They had a duty to perform and he needed to shape up and start acting like it.
Some people needed the rigidity and discipline. He’d learned this years ago. It gave them something to hold onto when everything else was falling apart and he was glad she had stepped up. He hadn’t given it much thought, for now he was just trying to keep everybody alive and keep it together long enough to get to their new home but he was glad somebody was thinking further ahead. Hell, he never had been a very good chess player, he was more of a checkers guy. He didn’t really plan more than one or two steps ahead. More of a brawler than a thinker. People were establishing their roles in this new world and just by her very presence, her badge and everyone knowing Cobb and Gunny and the rest would back her, it helped keep things under control. He’d noticed the cowboys liked to drink and he’d see them start getting rowdy but all she had to do was look at them and they’d tone it down a little.
Collins got on the CB and let everyone know Sara was going to be flying by in a few minutes, a bunch of zombies in her wake. They were going to do an extraction for a trapped driver in a tanker.
“Now would that be a “bunch” of zombies or a horde of zombies?” Scratch came back over the radio.
Before she could answer, Griz jumped in with “I think it ought to be a murder of zombies.”
That’s all it took to get them started arguing back and forth about what they should call a large group of them and rattling off other oddball names of different groups of animals.
“An Army of Frogs” came from Lars.
“A Blessing of Unicorns” Buttercup chimed in.
“A Crash of Rhino’s” yelled ZZ.
“A Parliament of Owls.” Stabby added.
Every time Collins tried to cut in, she got stepped on. Finally she just held the button down and yelled into the mic “Heads up! Sara’s coming in fast and whatever you want to call them, they are right on her tail.”
Sara did and they were.
Gunny picked up some speed and eliminated another small horde of undead, the big Pete hardly even feeling the sluicing of their bodies as the abused blade did its grizzly work, the trucks behind him making sure any that were still on the road and moving couldn’t crawl their way back to the station.
“If we get another tanker, I’d like to take it if no one objects.” Preacher came over the radio. “I have a few in the bus with me who would like to learn how to drive a semi and this would be an excellent opportunity.”
“Learning to drive a rolling bomb?” Scratch popped in “what could possibly go wrong?”
“Preacher wants to get to heaven sooner rather than later.” Peanut Butter jumped in and the rest of the drivers all had to throw in their two cents worth. There was too much chatter and Collins was getting annoyed as she kept trying to get a break in so she could tell them it was occupied and maybe the driver would object to someone
taking his truck.
When Gunny pulled into the small cafe and gas station, he could see there was still a good dozen of those things trying to get into the cab of the rig. Then he seen a frightened boy of no more than twelve or fourteen staring back at him out of the windshield. It was a war rig. It didn’t have a blade, but the windows had been reinforced with steel mesh and the windshield had rows of bars, much like their trucks did. Then he took in the tanker. It had a reefer unit mounted to the front of it. He looked at the kid again, whom he first assumed was Hispanic. Nope. Probably Middle Eastern.
As the rest of the trucks pulled up and spread out in the parking lot, he flipped the switch on the linear, adding 1,500 watts of transmitting power to his CB, and said “It’s a nuke truck, everybody settle down.”
Collins was giving him the stink eye when she realized what he’d done and hadn’t told her about the power booster but when she understood what he said, what she was really looking at, her fury was instantaneous. The infected around the truck weren’t giving up, they could see and smell the kid inside and they ignored the rumble of the other trucks. She stared at it, than at the boy, with intense hatred flaring to life in her eyes. Her fist’s clenched involuntarily in white knuckle rage.
The radio was quiet and Gunny flipped the linear back off, told everyone to shut ‘em down and called his extraction team to come forward.
Within a few minutes, they were gathered by his truck, armored and geared up. In the quiet of the desolate Kansas prairie, they could hear the deaders in their mindless, ceaseless attacks, keening and clawing at the truck parked on the fuel island.
“Let’s try to pull them a few at a time. Get them away from the truck. We can’t have any stray bullets.” Griz said
“You know what I ain’t hearing?” Cobb asked “That reefer unit running.”
He was right. How long had it been off? Was it simply out of fuel or was it a mechanical failure?
“Oh, shit.” Scratch said. “It could go up any second. Those rods might be melting through the bottom like right now!”
“GO!” Cobb yelled. “Blades out. I’ll get fuel for it!” and they were running towards the handful of the undead, rifles slung over their backs and reaching for knives. Stabby was the first one to make it to the crowd and caught an Indian woman full in the face with his spikes when she turned snarling towards him. The sharpened rebar blew through the back of her skull and he twisted viciously, spinning her head, snapping her neck and slinging her to the ground. Scratch was right behind him with the wickedly sharp homemade dagger extending out of the end of his prosthetic arm running through the head of another woman whose attention hadn’t left the boy trapped inside. He kicked her off of the spike as a man in farmer’s overalls dove at him and he backhanded him in the face with the two-inch spikes attached to the outside of the arm piece. The forward momentum of the jumping man drove them deep into his living gray matter but the double dead thing had enough weight behind him to knock Scratch against the fuel pumps, its body crashing on top of him. He landed with a grunt, rolled out and popped back to his feet, one whole side of him covered in sickly blood and brains. Gunny, Griz, Lars and Collins all dove in with their knives and spiked knuckle dusters, slashing and stabbing, crushing skulls and breaking bones. Then there was nothing but the sounds of their heavy breathing.
They heard doors open on the trucks and Gunny yelled for perimeter watch. “Don’t get slack now. There are more of them out there! Spread out!”
Cobb and Tommy came running up, with one of the five-gallon fuel cans they had for Sara’s bike. Tommy had grabbed one of the empties and filled it with diesel from their tanker truck, spilling more on the ground than he got in the can. He shoved it into Griz’s hands and jumped up onto the catwalk behind the sleeper to look at the oversized refrigeration unit mounted on the tanker. He quickly scanned it, finding the start buttons and looking for the temperature gauge.
“There’s no tank for fuel!” Gunny yelled, as they all urgently looked for the auxiliary tank used for reefer units, usually mounted under the trailer.
Tommy glanced at the lines running into the refrigeration unit. “Main fuel tank!” he yelled back. “It’s plumbed directly into the truck tanks!” and Gunny scrambled to get the cap off so Griz could get some juice into the bone dry tank.
Cobb was directing the tanker truck they had taken from Cheyenne into the other fuel island and grabbing hoses as soon as it stopped. The rest of the crew jumped in to help, digging through the connecting fittings, looking for a reducer for the end of the hose so the fuel would come out in a more manageable stream. By the time the five-gallon can was emptied, Tommy was hitting the start switch and Lars was opening the valve to let the diesel flow from the tanker. The motor cranked and cranked, not catching. They all stood around nervously, watching Tommy as he ripped open the reefer cover, quickly scanning the connections and wires, trying to spot anything loose or disconnected. The temperature gauge showed 190. Everything looked solid, the zom’s hadn’t been up on the catwalk to tear anything up.
“It just needs to prime.” He said. Partially for them, partially for himself. “The temp in the tank is good, it’s not boiling yet.”
There was a collective sigh. “It must have just run out of fuel, last hour or so.” Jellybean said.
Collins was at the door of the truck, trying to open it. She was furious, yanking on the handle, pounding on it with her fist, trying to force it. The kid was looking as scared of them as he had been of the zombies and he made no move to unlock it.
Gunny grabbed her arm in mid swing and spun her to face him. She was livid, her face flushed with rage. They stared at each other for a moment. “What?!?” she demanded. “He’s one of them. He killed the whole fucking planet!”
“Going to put a bullet in his head?” he asked quietly
She glared at him saying nothing, storms in her eyes, and tried to pull her hand free.
Gunny said. “Stand down. We need him.” He wanted to tell her to walk it off but he’d gotten to know her a little over these last few days while riding and sleeping in the same confined quarters of a truck cab. She was a prideful woman and he wasn’t sure she would simply be dismissed to go sit in time out. This wasn’t the place for a showdown. He didn’t want to undermine her but she was barely in control.
“We need him alive for now.” Gunny repeated. “I need you to take a crew and sweep the store. There may be some more hajji’s in there.”
She held his eyes for a moment longer and he could see some of the fury drain away.
“I wasn’t going to hurt him.” She said.
Tommy hit the starter button again and this time the engine fired. There was a cheer from the guys gathered around and she called over her shoulder for the entry crew.
“Let’s clear that store.” She yelled and they took off for the entrance.
“Show me your arms.” Stacy was there, pulling him around to the front of the truck. At his puzzled look, she rolled her eyes. “You were just in hand to hand with infecteds’. Show me your arms. Everybody gets checked for bites.”
“Right.” He said and held them out for her. “Just wanted to check on Collins. She’s wound pretty tight. I think she would have throttled that kid if the door was unlocked.”
Stacy glanced around him to where Collins had set the crew up and they were making their entry.
“Maybe.” She said. “But she hates them on a personal level, not just the whole “they killed a few billion people” level.”
At Gunny’s questioning look, she said “Bunny likes to talk. She and Collins have a long history from opposite ends of the law. Anyway, Collins used to be married. Actually, I guess she still is. It was a Muslim guy but he wasn’t one of those jihad radical types. Owned a business there in town, very much Americanized. Bunny said he came to the strip joint she worked at sometimes. He had disappeared a few days before all this went down. Collins doesn’t tell Bunny about her personal life, mind you, but it isn’t hard to
put two and two together. He didn’t go to Mecca for the great Muslim Pilgrimage they were all supposed to go to this year. He took off for one of the Mosques. He’s likely on one of these recovery trucks.”
“And he left her high and dry, to get infected.” Gunny finished. “His own wife. What a bastard.”
“Their religion.” She said. “It makes people do crazy things.”
“They’re not all like that.” Gunny said. “I had a translator in Iraq. Hasif was a good man, he would never be a part of this.”
Griz walked up and shook his head as he glanced at the broken and lifeless bodies scattered around them. “All this comes from some goat herder who lived fifteen hundred years ago that couldn’t even read or write.”
Zombie Road II: Bloodbath on the Blacktop Page 7