Did I fall?
The zombie girl was probably pretty before the apocalypse, but blood poured out of her eyes and nose, so it was hard to look at her objectively.
“Last one!” Liam screamed.
A gunshot blast roared from point blank range.
The girl's face exploded with blood and brain matter as a bullet passed through her head. The body ran a few more paces before toppling over at Victoria's feet.
“Oh, God,” she said as if watching a nightmare while frozen in her bed.
Engine noise and air brakes signaled the arrival of the truck. The heat and stink of diesel machinery washed over her, but it was as sweet as Colorado mountain air at that instant.
Dave to the rescue?
She imagined it was Sabella who took out the girl, but the more she focused on the impact, and how Liam often counted his shots down to the last round, it was obvious the bullet came from the other direction.
Liam gingerly pulled her off the ground.
“You got her?” Victoria said with exhaustion dominating her words. “I thought you were out.”
“I was out of bullets for me, but I always keep one for you.”
She smiled into his blue eyes and saw the love there. “Liam, that may be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Then she fell over.
Chapter 17. All of us, together
Day 21. Late morning. Interstate 55, a few miles north of New Madrid, Missouri.
Liam's lungs smoldered with burning pain as he gasped for air. Sabella handed him a bottled water, but he couldn't drink just yet.
“Thank you for stopping that last one, Liam.” Victoria sat next to him breathing just as hard.
It took him two breaths to reply. “No. Problem.”
“I'm sorry for the delay,” Dave said from the driver's seat. “I saw you guys jump the side and didn't know where you'd come up. We thought we saw you on the bridge and slowed down to look, but Sabella caught sight of you running, so we shot over here to pick you up.”
Liam leaned toward Dave as best he could. “You definitely aren't carrying pool supplies.”
He thought it would lighten the mood, but Dave wasn't able to respond.
“You almost got us killed,” Elise deadpanned while glaring at him. “So, thanks.”
Sabella's oldest daughter was really getting on his nerves, but he tried not to take it personally. Whatever happened to her in the farmhouse and in the disco shed, it gave her the right to be angry. He just wished she'd stop picking him to express it.
Dave tapped the camera and sounded excited as hell. “I was recording. I got it all. Not the first explosion, I'm sorry to say. I wasn't expecting that. But I got the drive out and back, then when I plowed into that shitstorm on the bridge. Wow!”
Liam doubted Dave had any clue that he made it rain body parts on him and Victoria.
“I'd like to get a copy.” Victoria replied with still-hurried breathing, but hers wasn't quite as desperate-sounding as his. When he knocked that last girl over, he felt like every muscle in his body complained, but he faked being fine in front of his girlfriend. He wondered if he was more out of shape than her.
Liam gave her a sideways glance.
“What?” she said to him. “I want to see what you were doing up on the bridge while I was swimming in the water. I thought you were dead meat.” Victoria took his hand in hers.
“Me, too,” he said after he sucked in a huge breath.
“So what happened to my truck?” Dave asked in a more serious voice. “I can guess that you shot the lock, but how did the rest of the truck split open?”
“Something blew up in there,” Victoria answered. “It was like an explosion that tore the metal in long strips, wouldn't you say?” She turned to Liam expecting confirmation.
“Yeah, it was like the truck had been rigged to blow open if the lock was broken. She hit the target and it set off the chain reaction.”
“But how?” Dave asked.
He looked at Victoria and wondered if she had any guesses. Even after all the strange military hardware he'd seen over the past few weeks, he'd never seen anything like this.
“I don't know,” he finally replied. “Maybe they put something in there when they loaded you up. However they did it, the explosions didn't do much to hurt the zombies. They spilled out the second it happened.”
“Is he okay?” Dave inquired.
Liam looked quizzically at Victoria and then back to Dave. “I'm okay, yeah.”
“No, kid. The prisoner. He's got to be dead, right?”
He laughed at his stupidity. “Sorry. We didn't get a good look back there. Should we stop and check?” His breathing was close to normal again, but his heart rate continued to cruise along at 30,000 feet.
“No way!” Elise shouted from the passenger seat. “Dave, you can't stop again, because it's too dangerous. Mom, back me up.”
Dave turned to her and seemed to be torn.
“You need to take us somewhere we can get out safely, Dave,” Sabella said from the back. “My daughter is right. We can't stop again out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Dave nodded but didn't reply.
“Fair enough,” Liam responded. “What's up ahead?” He had to admit what they did was pretty dangerous, so getting the mother and daughters to safety made a lot of sense.
Dave banged his hand on the steering wheel. “Finally, something I can answer. Up ahead we have another well-defended truck stop. I wasn't going to stop for another few hours because we just topped off our fuel, but after losing our cargo I think a pit stop is a good idea. I can report the loss and hope they don't fine me.”
Liam wondered whether Dave would get in trouble for losing his cargo. If he played dumb, maybe he could blame it on bandits, or something. Dave had to know it was too dangerous to mention what they really did at the bridge.
“Is there anywhere else we can go?” he asked the ponytailed driver. “Like if we didn't want to get too close to armed guards.”
“Armored truck stops are most of what you get on the road in Missouri. You might find a mom-and-pop restaurant still open, if they have the manpower to defend it, but those are pretty rare because food deliveries from the big depots are impossible. Small towns might have some resources still intact, but I try to avoid them.”
“Wouldn't they give you help?” Victoria asked.
“Maybe,” Dave replied. “But me and my fans have seen some pretty dicey shit over the weeks. Some towns see my truck as a gold mine to be looted. I actually had to drive through a roadblock in Minnesota along with some other rigs. Their mayor tried to impound a bunch of us at a truck stop inside the city limits.”
“We have guns,” Leah said while pointing to the AK's piled on the floor. “No one is going to tell us what to do.”
Her mom patted her on the leg. “Now, now. We don't want to be troublemakers out here. We need to get somewhere safe and let things work themselves out.”
Leah huffed. “You can't be serious? After all that protesting you did at that doctor's place? After getting us sucked into that horrible scene? After almost getting us killed ... ” Leah's voice faded as if the word reminded her how close they'd come.
Liam tried not to be too nosy about it, but he glanced at Sabella's distraught facial features and saw the indecision. She'd been a fighter since the moment he'd met her, but now he saw something else in her.
“I made a mistake,” she said simply. “I didn't realize what was happening in the cities and that the disease was spreading here so fast.” Sabella waved her hand to indicate she spoke of the world outside the truck. “I had no idea men had become so desperate or that truck drivers only stopped and fueled up with guys with guns to watch over them. I never could have guessed kids like Liam and Victoria fought against government agencies with all their powerful weapons. None of this was in my vocabulary three weeks ago.”
The hard-nosed Egyptian woman seemed beaten in a way, but also str
onger for having survived so much. He tried to compare her journey to his own and was unable to understand her shift until he saw little Susan tucked under her mom's arm.
“I spent so much time trying to bring attention to what was happening in that farmhouse clinic that I lost sight of what was happening around my own babies.”
“Oh, mom, seriously?” Leah said with her teen girl pout.
“Seriously,” Sabella replied. “The only thing on earth that matters to me, now, is getting you girls to safety.” The woman leaned over to him and Victoria. “I appreciate what you two did for me and my kin, but we have to get away from you, you understand? No hard feelings.”
Liam nodded grimly and saw his future with Victoria in a fresh light. They'd joked about marriage as necessary in the apocalypse, and the quantum computer described them as a “pair-bond” with all the baggage that implied. It also suggested their eventual child would be crucial in replacing Grandma in their triad, but having kids out here was scary. Almost as scary as zombies, he thought with a dark sense of humor.
His heartrate went straight up toward the highest boundaries of the atmosphere when he thought of being responsible for Victoria's baby. He also wondered if he'd done the incorrect thing by taking the diamond ring he'd found on the floor up in Wilder's room. Was it stealing? Was it wrong to benefit from the loss of the true owner of the ring? Or was it just the thing he needed to get Victoria to say yes to a more formal partnership in the zombie apocalypse? He'd almost given it to her before they shot off the lock back on that bridge.
It's too soon!
“Yeah, I don't blame you,” he said while hiding his internal worry. “Let's get you guys safe, then me and Victoria will investigate the trailer and see if the guy back there is still alive.”
“Truck stop it is,” Dave declared. “It isn't far, thank God.”
2
While they rumbled down the highway another rig pulled next to them. He heard the whine of the tires on the pavement before he saw the truck out the small porthole on the side of the seating area.
“They're checking out the damage,” Dave said as if he knew Liam would ask.
“He has no clue what's in his own trailer,” Liam replied.
“A she, actually. She's spicy!” Dave said while he peered into his camera.
Liam chuckled and glanced at Victoria. “You doing better?”
“Yes. I'm fine, now. I need to do calisthenics or yoga to loosen up next time. I'm totally out of shape.”
“Cardio,” he replied in a knowing voice. “It is the prime rule.”
Victoria drank from a water bottle and then continued. “I should not have slowed down on that run. It put us both in danger.”
“How about this. When we get to somewhere safe, we'll invest in a treadmill and a weight bench. There has to be plenty of them out there, you know?” He smiled at her and wiped a trickle of water that fell to her chin.
“You always know what to say,” she replied, “but you think too small sometimes. With the world being the way it is, we can take over an entire gymnasium. I want it all. Pool. Track. Spa. Zumba studio.”
“I don't even know what that is,” he said with a laugh.
“I'll show you when we get it. Not before.”
The driver of the passing truck blew her air horn once and then sped up to get by. She merged into Dave's lane and steadily pulled away. When they reached the turn off for the truck stop ten minutes later, her tractor trailer was at least a mile ahead.
“Won't everyone stop here?” he asked Dave. “Why didn't she?”
“Most of us gassed up back at Wilson City's truck stop and we'll run the tanks dry with that. Besides fuel, the only thing that can get us out of the hammer lane is Indian food.”
Liam again looked at Victoria like he was missing a joke.
She grinned at him. “He means an upset stomach, you big dummy.”
Leah giggled but Elise scoffed like it was disgusting.
Dave pulled the truck off the interstate, went across the bridge that spanned the highway, and rolled on the side road a short way toward the bustle of the truck plaza. The air brakes hissed as he stopped on the side of the 10-lane entryway.
“We aren't driving up to the door?” Elise snapped.
“No,” Dave replied. “I want to keep my trailer away from the others. We still don't know what's back there.”
Liam was impressed because he didn't think of that.
Dave cleared his throat and looked at his passengers. He seemed uncomfortable. “Sabella, you and yours should get over to the restaurant before we do this.”
Elise took that as her cue to open the passenger door and climb out. Leah took off after her, but she did pause briefly to smile at him and Victoria as she went out.
Sabella got up, and Susan held onto her belt loop as if afraid to get separated, even inside the cab of the truck.
“Thank you, Susan,” Victoria said to the little girl. “I love my new ponytail.” She pulled it over her shoulder to display it. “I'm going to show all my friends.”
Susan flashed a timid smile.
“And my nails are still red, see?” She brushed them on her shirt to wipe off some of the dirt but held them up a second later.
“They are very pretty,” Susan said in barely a whisper.
Victoria held her hand for a second. “It's going to be okay, you got it?”
The pudgy girl shook her head gravely and then looked up to her mom. “Can we go now?”
Sabella looked at Liam. “Thanks again.” Then she moved up to pat Dave on the shoulder. “And thank you for picking us up in the first place. We owe you guys our lives.”
“Don't mention it,” Dave replied. “I'm 100% sure it was the right thing to do, and I know my fans would agree. Subscribe to my channel and you'll see yourself in my videos.” Dave spoke with excitement and a lack of self-awareness Liam found troubling given all they'd been through, but he still didn't think Dave truly understood the new world. He'd been driving around in his big safe rig, while he and Victoria fought off zombies at the bloody tip of the spear.
“Yeah, well, I don't think I want to remember this part of my life,” Sabella said with a cautious chuckle.
“It'll be out there if you want it, though,” Dave said. “But bye for now.”
Sabella leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. For the tiniest moment Liam felt jealous she didn't do that to him, but regained his footing when Victoria squeezed his knee.
“Be safe,” Victoria said as the woman climbed over the front seat.
A second after the mother was out of sight, Victoria called out to her. “Sabella, don't you want your stuff?”
The dark-haired woman stuck her head back in.
Victoria pointed to the pillowcases piled in the back of the rig next to her feet. “Some of this is yours.”
“No,” Sabella answered. “You guys will need them more than us. We'll be with people.”
“Uh, okay,” Victoria replied. “Thanks.”
“You want some more ammo?” Liam asked. The woman had never parted with Margaret's shotgun, and she kept it slung on her back.
“I did take some ammo for this, thanks.”
She patted her gun strap and left.
“Speaking of ammo ... ” Liam said.
Liam rifled through the bags and pulled out another big carton of cartridges for the AKs. A surprising number of shotgun shell boxes remained in the bag, and he hoped the woman had taken enough.
“We have guns and tons of ammo. Why didn't she give her two oldest daughters a gun?” he asked.
“Well, they can't take them into the truck stop if this one is like the last,” she replied.
“None of them allows guns,” Dave said sounding a million miles away.
“They'll have to pry that shotgun from her. I don't think she'll give it up.” Victoria sounded proud of the fierce mother.
“Load ‘em up,” Liam said as he gave two of the boxes of twenty to Victoria
.
When he had what he needed, he went to the passenger seat and sat down so he could watch outside. A moment later, Victoria surprised him when she used her hip to push him over.
“Make room, bub,” she said with a laugh.
It was nice to be so close to her, but her touch was also distracting. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing of him.
“You stink,” she said like it was truly dreadful.
Nope.
“So do you,” he said with realization. They'd come into the truck soaked with the water from the canal and they coated that grime with sweat from outrunning two lanes of zombies.
No matter how bad they both smelled, he wanted to be close to her and reveled in the fact she didn't get up and go somewhere with fresher air. Her presence did make it harder to load the magazine in his lap, but that was nothing new.
He collected his thoughts and peered over the big truck stop. Armed men stood near Humvees in the grass at the edge of the property, just as they had done at the last one. The guys weren't soldiers, however, but dressed in black uniforms with no visible markings.
“Why are those guys, here?” he asked with rising tension in his voice.
Victoria leaned to look at the men. “Uh, oh.”
Dave leaned over to see what they were talking about. “Contractors. Some call them mercenaries. They're cool, though. Pretty much just like the army out here. They kill zombies that threaten the pumps.”
Dave then looked at the big rearview mirror on his door. “They're more than enough to help us with the trailer.” He reverted to sounding distant again. “I saw guys just like ‘em lay down their lives so a convoy could escape a burning town somewhere in Ohio. That fire drove all the zombies out at once, and those pay-to-play boys held the bridge, so we could all escape.”
“Wow,” Liam said to fake sounding impressed.
Some of them had noticed Dave's wrecked truck, because they hopped in their Humvees or pointed in their direction. He wondered if he should leave it alone, but he worried the black-clad mercs weren't what they appeared, and he had to warn him before they arrived.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 211