Booths were emptied. Chairs tipped over backward as men jumped to their feet, old habits and training springing to the front of their minds, no matter how many years it had been since they had last heard a Sergeant’s bellowed orders.
Cobb’s was the voice of command that would not be ignored, a ringing voice that filled the vast spaces of the Quonset hut, drowning out all others.
“Kim, on the roof!” he roared, grabbing the Garand and tossing it to her as she came running over. “Pick your targets, only 8 rounds.” He grabbed the M-4 and threw it to Scratch as he flew by, already out of the booth and at a full run, close on Gunny’s heels.
“Front door!” he said and Scratch grabbed it with his good hand, never breaking stride. Cobb glanced around quickly, at the men in his diner, taking in everything with a well-seasoned eye. Many had guns in their hands, pointed at the floor, facing out, searching for danger. For targets. They were unsure of exactly what to do, but ready to do it, whatever it was, now that old Cobb had established command.
“Griz, Jellybean, get down to the shop, secure the doors,” he barked out at the two men closest to him that were armed.
They took off at a sprint.
Peanut Butter had her pink Lady Smith 9mm drawn and Cobb yelled at her to go wake up Wire Bender, make sure no one in the parking lot got out of their trucks. He sent others out to rouse the sleepers in the Airbnb trucks.
Cobb had an eye on the parking lot during all this and saw the painter go down under the assault from the pajama-clad kid. He’d watched Billy Travaho put two rounds in the little girl, and Gunny boot her in the face, and all it did was piss her off. He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew there was going to be some more killing going on.
The trouble from the cities had come to the high desert. Old habits came back instantly. Stay alive first, figure it out later.
“You two, front door with Scratch,” he pointed out two more men he saw had their side arms drawn and ready. “Martha, lock the back door!” he yelled over to the counter, where she had returned after seeing her granddaughter climb the ladder in the back of the kitchen to the roof.
Most of the civilians, as Cobb thought of them, were still at their tables, staring in disbelief at what was going on. At all of these nice truckers suddenly running around with guns like it was a war zone. Wasn’t it against the law to just carry a gun around willy nilly? They had seen the attacks, the blood, and the viciousness. But the police should handle these drug addicts, not a bunch of armed truck drivers.
“Someone dial 911!”
“Has anyone dialed 911?” they asked each other.
Mothers soothed crying children, frightened by the shouting, who didn’t know what was going on, but felt the tension and fear in the air.
Cobb didn’t know what it was, what was happening, why little kids would attack like he had just seen. But like some of the other combat vets in this room, he remembered children with grenades in Vietnam, and children with suicide vests in the Middle Eastern wars. “Better safe than sorry,” he was thinking. “Better too much than not enough.”
He had known a lot of the truckers carried, had seen the printing of their various firearms over the years against their untucked shirts. Knew they were a breed apart and tended to ignore the rules, or bend the laws. Men who had seen shots fired in anger, and never wanted to be defenseless.
A balding man stood up and tried to make his voice heard over the din of the others in the dining area, over the crying children and frightened voices of women. “See here, all these guns are scaring people,” he said. “Is all this really necessary? Someone should just call the police.”
Other voices chimed in and Cobb heard things like “overreaction” and “must think they’re back in a war zone” and “PTSD.”
Cobb glanced at him briefly and dismissed him as unimportant to the mission right now. That was to make sure those kids, or whoever sent them to attack, didn’t get inside his building. That was number one priority. Nothing else mattered. He racked the bolt on the M-16 clone and stepped into the main building, hurrying for the front doors.
4
Long Dawg
Long Dawg was doing it right. The bass was pumping, his fingers were jumping. He was gassing up the Whip for the last time today. The long night’s drive would be over soon, the run up from his home turf in LA was just about finished.
Obeying all the traffic laws, cruise control set three miles an hour over the speed limit. Everything was going according to plan, and no one had screwed anything up. This was it. The big one. The score that would get him out of the mean streets and onto easy street. It had taken him long years to get this far.
Careful planning, slow climbing, trust building. Learning to speak enough Nahau to communicate with the farmers when he was a translator down in El Salvador for Uncle Sugar. Knowing the right people, saying the right things, being cautious in a world where you could lose your head, or wind up in prison doing hard time for even the smallest of mistakes.
Loose lips sink ships, as they say. He wasn’t a dealer, he was a business man and he only dealt with other business men. Supply and demand. He had spent every dime he had on this run. His bank was dry.
If something went wrong and he lost the shipment, he wouldn’t even be able to afford a pack of smokes in jail, let alone hire a decent attorney. He wasn’t a mule. He wasn’t carrying for somebody else. This score was all his. All the risk, all the profit. Go big or go home, right?
Three hundred and sixty pounds of the finest and purest uncut, unmolested, cocaine money could buy. Close to three million dollars, in unmarked Benjamin’s, would be his in a few more hours.
He had started with 500 pounds, gotten at great risk and great expense from contacts he had made in Comalapa when he was stationed there. But paying the fees, and sharing the wealth with the right people, ensured it got to him unscathed. Don’t get greedy. A night time boat ride around Guatemala and into Mexico. A long drive up through the country and dozens of trips back and forth with his drones out in the middle of nowhere.
Then it was into LA, where he recruited his best friend and cousin to help him with the final phase of the plan. Now, finally, almost to where the man with the briefcases full of money was going to meet him. A man Long Dawg had been doing business with for years now, and a man he trusted. A man who wouldn’t double cross him because he was under the impression that Long Dawg would do this again next year when the new crop came in.
But this was it for him. One and Done. Three million was enough to retire on, if he was smart. He wanted out of this life. Wanted out of South Central LA. Wanted his mom to not have to struggle anymore. He wanted a good neighborhood, a place near the water, maybe get his Car Audio business started.
It was a good plan. A perfect plan. A solid plan that had contingencies for contingencies. A plan he had begun working on when the Army had sent him to a remote little drug intervention place down in El Salvador, simply because he was fluent in Spanish. When he showed up, nobody knew what to do with him because they were expecting a Hispanic guy who could blend in.
Long Dawg did not blend in.
They assigned him to a desk, told him to keep out of the way, so he did. Drew his check each month and tagged along with some of the CIA guys and Rangers when they went out on drug raids. Some of it got pretty hairy, but he learned the native farmers’ language, he’d always had a knack for picking up things like that. When he went back after his time with the Army was up, he started making deals. Started doing a little business.
He looked up from the gas pump he was bobbing at and saw a roaring little Mexican kid smash into Mario, standing in front of the van, driving him down on the concrete.
The plan! No!
“Mario!” he yelled, just standing there, pump nozzle in his hand.
The kid tore into Mario’s screaming face and ripped a great chunk of his cheek off. His fingers and thumb stabbed into Mario’s eyes and deep into the sockets for something to give h
im a firm grip to hold on with as he tore the flesh loose. Mario batted at him ineffectually, blinded and screaming incoherently. Long Dawg’s cousin was at the back of the van, pumping the gas and he yelled out also. The kid sprung at him. SPRUNG AT HIM, like Spiderman or something, and they disappeared out of sight behind the painter's van, Jimmy screaming as loud as Mario had.
Long Dawg’s seconds of hesitation were over. He pulled his Beretta and ran past Mario, who was still screaming, or trying to, with all the blood clogging his throat and half his face missing. He rounded the back of the van, maybe he could save Jimmy from that crazy little bastard. But what he saw stopped him in his tracks.
Jimmy wasn’t yelling because he had no throat. The kid was ripping at it, blood was spraying, a long white…. something…. in his teeth as he jerked around and looked straight into Laurence’s eyes.
Long Dawg was gone. Mamma’s little Laurence stood there looking at a horror he had never even imagined in his worst nightmares. Not even the ones where he was back in South America that woke him up in sweats and night terrors, images of Cartel mutilated bodies fresh in his mind again.
The kid sprang at him and the Beretta answered. The 9mm rounds peppered the kid as fast as he could pull the trigger, sending him sprawling backward a step with each impact, keeping him dancing and upright. The fifteen rounds were down the pipe and the slide locked back in seconds, the kid finally slumping to the ground near Jimmy’s still form.
Laurence stared through the gun smoke curling up from the end of the barrel at something that just could not be.
It couldn’t. But it was.
The kid wasn’t dead. He had just emptied a full mag into him, Laurence knew most of them hit, hell it was nearly point blank. He saw the kid's body jerking like he was being electrocuted, but he… it…. was still trying to crawl toward him. He could see chunks of his backbone sticking out where at least one of the rounds had shattered it. There wasn’t even that much blood, just the big holes in the kid’s pajamas.
Long Dawg started backing up. He had heard the cop scream for everybody to get in the building, and had seen the old white guy jump back into his minivan and smoke his tires as he sped away from the pumps. He looked around, stunned to indecision, not knowing what to do first. Mario was still moaning, but Jimmy looked dead. The little kid was still trying to crawl toward him, the cop was screaming like he was being eaten, too, and the damn little kid was still coming at him.
Mario was a mess, trying to stand. The cop said everybody get in the store. He couldn’t leave in his car, he needed to get the van out of here. The van had the coke in it, disguised in paint cans. And that damn little kid was getting closer. He turned to run to Mario, but some beardy ass trucker was there helping him up, yelling at Long Dawg.
“What?”
“Turn that shit off” he bellowed at him, a wave of his gun at Long Dawg’s Chrysler, supporting Mario on his other arm. Laurence looked at him then at his car. “Right,” he thought. “Right.”
“The music.
Turn it off. So we can hear.”
He didn’t particularly like it so loud, anyway, it was just all part of the plan to draw any attention away from the van and onto him.
He looked back at the kid still crawling toward him, with its broken back and one shattered arm and fifteen bullet holes in him.
The trucker had noticed and was staring at it with his head cocked to one side, like he was trying to figure out what the hell he was looking at. Laurence ran to his car and hit the stereo remote, silencing the thundering subwoofers instantly. The quiet was worse.
He could hear the rasping and hissing of the thing as it doggedly kept coming at him. He grabbed a spare mag out of his console and jacked it in, letting the slide go home, but before he could shoot it another 15 times, the trucker loosed one round to its forehead and it dropped.
Still and silent at last.
Mario was blubbering now, holding his hand over the missing parts of his face, his blind eyes squished and running down his one cheek. Laurence felt ill. His head was light. He leaned back against the car, afraid he was going to pass out.
“Just breathe,” the trucker told him. “I need you in the game. This ain’t over yet.”
Across the parking lot from where the big rigs were parked, a man was looking toward them. It was obvious he had come from the trucks to see if he could help, but had just stopped in place, unsure whether to continue or run back to the safety of the parking lot when the shooting had started. It had all happened so fast. A minute or two. No more.
He stood there, a big tire thumper club in his hand and yelled over, “What’s going on?”
Gunny ignored him. “Here,” he said to Long Dawg. “Come here. Help me with this guy. You know him?”
“Yeah. He’s blood, ” he paused, wincing at his choice of words. “Yeah, I know him.”
“There’s a doctor’s office in the truck stop, get him back there, somebody can try to get the bleeding stopped,” Gunny said, handing him off to the skinny black man and getting them started walking. “I’ll check on that other guy,” but he had seen the death rattle in the man’s feet as they protruded out from behind the van. He knew that shake. He’d seen it before. There wasn’t anything he could do. He looked back toward the entrance of the truck stop, where everything had just started a minute ago.
Cobb had come out and was helping the bleeding biker back into the shop, hustling him toward Doc’s little office in Driver’s Alley. The girl that had been on the big Honda had wrapped something around the deputy’s arm, and with a couple of the other truckers’ help, they were headed back inside.
He saw Scratch with an M-4 at the front door, holding it open for them, waving the black kid and that poor guy with his eyes gouged out, to hurry up. Gunny gave his head a rueful half shake. Who woulda thunk it? Ol’ Cobb’s gun decorations weren’t just decorations, after all.
“Watch out!” Kim-Li yelled from the catwalk on top of the main Quonset hut and pulled the Garand up to her shoulder.
Gunny followed her line of sight and saw the man who he had just watched die bounding across the parking lot. The trucker with the tire thumper was no longer in a state of indecision.
When he saw a man with a ripped open neck, wearing a white pair of painter’s overalls splattered in blood, bounding towards him using hands and feet like an animal, he turned and ran. The safety of his truck was close, he could see it idling in the quiet September morning and he didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he knew he didn’t want any part of it. He ran.
But not fast enough.
Gunny took off after them, but knew he would be too late to do any good. There were other truckers he could see, peering out of their windshields, having been awoken by all the gunfire. A few of them took in the situation instantly and reacted just as quickly. “No!” Gunny thought as he ran. “Stay in your truck!” he yelled, but knew they wouldn’t hear him over the idling diesels. They didn’t know the situation. They hadn’t seen what he had just witnessed. They only saw some thug chasing down one of their own. And that just wouldn’t do. Their good hearts were going to get them killed.
He couldn’t take a shot at the painter, it was too far for his pistol and a fast moving target. He wished Kim would fire, but knew the angle was wrong, she might hit the fleeing trucker.
Or maybe she couldn’t force herself to shoot a man. She was just a kid. She was a great shot, had the trophies to prove it, but paper targets just weren’t the same. She hadn’t seen the man die, he had been under the fuel island canopy. She didn’t have all the facts. Nobody did but him. And he still didn’t know shit. Just what his eyes had seen and even though his logical mind was screaming in protest, his battle mind was coldly processing everything. It was coming to a conclusion that was impossible. Didn’t matter. He was acting on it until proven wrong.
Bootleg DVD sellers you thought were friendly’s, that had IEDs in their boxes, was impossible to imagine, until it happened. Little ki
ds you had just given a candy bar stabbing you in the belly with a dirty knife was impossible, until it happened.
Mothers strapping bombs to their 8-year-olds sending them laughing and smiling into the middle of your team was impossible, until it happened.
And zombies were impossible, until it happened
5
Zombies
The truck driver almost made it to his rig before he was brought down in a heap, sliding on the gravel, screaming in fear, pain and panic. He turned and tried to fight using his tire thumper and the other drivers were there almost instantly, pulling at the bloody painter.
But they didn’t know what they were dealing with. They had brought a pool noodle to battle a Nuclear Armada, in Gunny’s mind. The painter was a whirling dervish, biting, ripping, tearing, not caring who he bit, only that he bite to draw blood. To taste the sweetness of man’s flesh. By the time Gunny had crossed the parking lot to kick it square in the face, knocking it off of the man on the ground, the other four had already drawn away. They were in a state of disbelief at the ferocity of the attack, all of them with gashes and bites. Deep scratches and chunks of flesh missing from arms and legs.
The thing on the ground wasn’t finished, but it was stunned, if only a little. Gunny kicked out again, his heavy boot bouncing its head on the wheel of the rig the driver had been trying to climb into. Then he stomped down hard on its neck as the head hit the gravel and held it long enough to put a 9mm round into its snarling face. Gore splashed out of the back of its head and it went still instantly. The other drivers stared at him, all of them breathing hard, stunned looks on their faces.
“What…?” one of them started to ask, but couldn’t finish the thought.
They were all bleeding, breathing deep. A little shell shocked in the quiet rumble of the big diesel beside them and the sound of Wire Bender shouting over the CB. “Stay in your trucks!” He was yelling. “And somebody blow your horn to wake everybody else up!”
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 5