The water was tantalizingly close, so close they could see startled turtles slipping back into the depths from downed trees they had been sunning themselves on. They could see the ripples of surfacing fish. They could see the ducks flap their wings in an effort to speed their flight away from the shores and into deeper water, to get away from the screaming and crashing coming from the woods.
And they could see they would never make it in time. The horde was flowing over the downed pine just a few dozen yards behind them, and the safety of the lake was a hundred yards in front of them.
“Climb!” Jessie bellowed, all his tortured lungs could get out, but they all caught the meaning and aimed for the nearest trees.
“We throw, you go,” Doug said in jagged breaths and Gary nodded. They barely slowed as they came up to an Oak with low hanging branches, just shifted their position on Gary’s arms and tossed him up as high as they could toward the lower limbs.
There wouldn’t be a second chance if he didn’t manage to grasp it and pull himself up. He would fall and be fell upon. But he didn’t miss, his outstretched arms found the branch and like the ladder bars and climbing wall in the gym that he worked out on, he swung his body this way and that, pulling, reaching every time for a branch a little higher.
Sheila was scrambling up a pine covered in old climbing vines ahead of them, and Jessie was springing for a low hanging branch on some tree he didn’t recognize. A Maple, probably. It didn’t matter. It only mattered that it was there and he was up it and pulling his feet away from the flailing and grasping arms of his former classmates.
They slammed into the tree as he climbed, screeching and keening, jumping and grabbing, but too late. Seconds too late as the winded, scraped, bruised, and thirsty quartet climbed farther out of range. The mob howled in fury, their rage-filled faces upturned, seeing their prey so close, yet so unattainable.
Jessie found a fork in the tree some thirty feet off of the ground that made for a somewhat decent place to sit, and leaned his head back. He spotted the others, they had all found similar wide spots in their trees and were catching their breath. He let his heartbeat and breathing slowly return to normal.
It didn’t take but a few minutes for the rough bark to get uncomfortable and before long, he was squirming, trying to find a position that hurt a little less than the one he was in. Where was an illegal deer stand when you needed one? He was so thirsty, his lips were chapped and starting to crack. The water in the lake only made it worse.
He could see it sparkling in the sunlight, less than a football field away. He closed his eyes and pulled some leaves from the tree and put them in his mouth, trying to suck any moisture he could out of them. How long would that mob stay down below? Could they out-wait them? He didn’t know. It was up to luck now.
If something didn’t distract them, draw them away, they could mill around down there indefinitely. The zombies sure hadn’t been in any hurry to leave the school once they had everyone infected. Just meandered around in aimless circles, bumping into things. They would wait. Stay quiet and hope.
Maybe pray.
22
The Three Flags Truck Stop
Day 2
By nine a.m., everyone that wasn’t patrolling the perimeter fence or on the roof was in the diner, settling in to eat. Martha and Cookie had whipped up another buffet style breakfast and as everyone found their seats, Cobb started talking. He filled them in on everything the General had said, that their worst fears were true and the outbreak was global, except for the Middle East.
He reiterated that they were in a safe place, they could last here for months with what they had on hand, and that there are a few trucks that were loaded with food still out in the parking lot. They may get tired of Winter Squash, but Scratch had twenty thousand pounds of it. There were a few other trucks loaded with food, but no restaurant deliveries, unfortunately. That would have given them a diverse menu, but the drivers that had volunteered their loads all had bulk items.
Anyone that still wanted to leave was welcome to do so, but the diner customers that remained were afraid to try. If a semi-truck got overwhelmed by the hordes, what chance did they have in their cars? They hadn’t heard from the rigs that left yesterday heading up into the mountains. It was anybody’s guess if they made it or not.
Gunny and a half dozen other drivers were leaving, all of them wanting Tommy to reinforce their trucks first. There was talk of a supply run, especially more ammunition, and of course more guns. Everyone needed to be armed, they all agreed to that. Even the hesitant ones who just a week ago would have said guns should be outlawed, and had no clue how to operate one.
Now they saw the need and Griz, Pack Rat, and a few others said they could set up a target and training range at the back of the junkyard to teach them. Shakey wasn’t looking too good this morning, was adamant about getting to his truck to get some medicine, but that wouldn’t be a problem. He could go with the guys heading out to the parking lot later on.
Cobb drummed up some volunteers who were planning on staying to get busy repairing the old well, see if it could be made operational again. He organized a cleaning crew to empty out a few of the stores and set up sleeping areas. It was easiest to just have separate quarters, male and female, with the kids staying with their moms for now.
They would fix up something like small apartments later, when they had time. Gunny had volunteered any of the lumber he was carrying for the task. They made plans to get Hot Rod’s truck in one of the mechanic’s bays so they could unload it of all the moving blankets to make field expedient mattresses.
They’d bring in the rest of the trucks, one at a time, to be unloaded of any food stores they had. After that, the rigs of the few drivers that were planning on staying because they either lived in a big city, or had nowhere to go. They all wanted to drop their trailers and move the tractors in behind the fence so they could sleep in them. Everyone had given the General their addresses so he could look at the latest satellite passes in those areas to let them know how it looked, but most held no illusions of hope.
All of the people in cars had come from the cities. They were either just passing through, or had been out on a day trip to the mountains. They were trying to accept that they no longer had a home to go to, that this was the new reality of things. Peanut Butter said she’d let all the cattle she had in her bull hauler run loose in the junkyard, then volunteered it to be cut up to make the blades for the trucks that were leaving.
Aluminum was the perfect material. It was lightweight, strong, and already with plenty of holes for airflow. After some discussion, they decided to take Gunny’s truck on a supply run, after Tommy had welded everything in place. Use it as a test truck, try out the improvements in the real world. They would try to get more guns, and as much ammunition as possible, with their first stop at the police station.
They hoped some of Billy Travaho’s deputies were still safely in the cells they had locked themselves into yesterday.
Gunny had noticed the different cliques starting to form as he and Scratch ate in silence, from the corner booth. The Ferrari guy had a small group around him, the Prius couple and some of the guys from Jimmy Winchell’s band. Even though he was a lot less caustic now that reality had finally set in, he just seemed like a pain in the ass. Cobb would have to watch him, he seemed like the kind of man who would just naturally try to undermine him. A ‘glass half empty’ kind of guy.
His pretty little blond girlfriend was smarter than she looked, he mused. She hadn’t gone back to him after that little incident where he tried to sacrifice her, just to save himself. She sat by herself in one of the corners. He really needed to go apologize to her for frightening her so badly.
He tried to remember her name, he was sure he’d heard it in passing. Cassandra? Tiffany, maybe? Some starlet name. One of the drivers would be hitting on her soon, she was easily the prettiest girl in the room, even without her makeup. She wouldn’t have a problem finding a protector, and s
he might need one in this brave new world.
She seemed more of a shopping and nail salon type of girl, than one who could handle things on her own. Hot Rod had sat with the gal with the children and he actually had them giggling at some joke he was telling. That was good, Gunny thought. He was a standup guy, and he didn’t know that woman’s story, but she would need someone to watch out for her and the kids.
Lars had volunteered to help with the well, said he’d had a little experience with them in South America. He was sitting with Pack Rat and Cadillac Jack, listening intently to whatever Jack was saying. The old man had been in military intelligence in the 70s and 80s. A lot of his knowledge base was pretty outdated, but he always had a good tale to tell about the Cold War and the Russians, and the antics they got up to.
Cobb had a good setup here. About the best you could ask for, if they got the water flowing. The ground wasn’t any good for crops, but with raised-bed gardens and hydroponics, they would flourish. Too bad it was so far away.
Maybe after he got his wife and son they would come back. The path would be clear, if they wanted to. He figured it might take him a week to get there, avoiding the big cities and having to probably plow his way through the smaller towns. But the trip back would be fairly quick. A couple of days.
Hot Rod had been telling stories of the Cannonball Run. Apparently, it was a real thing, and he had been in one. Some kind of illegal underground race. He said those guys raced cross country and could get from coast to coast in about 30 hours. The fastest guy had done it in less than twenty-nine hours.
Gunny knew he wouldn’t be making those times in his mad dash across the country, but he was going to hammer on it as hard as he could.
The blonde girl started when Gunny stopped at her table and asked if he could sit. She looked a little rough up close, like she’d been awake all night.
“I just wanted to apologize for yesterday,” he said. “I kind of let that go too far. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let it get so close.” He trailed off, not knowing what else he could say.
She stared at him for a minute before she replied. “I’m not,” she said. “I’m glad you did. It showed me something. It showed me that no one will help, no one cares, and you’re on your own in this world.”
Gunny shifted uncomfortably in the booth. That wasn’t exactly why he’d done it, although it rang of truth.
“Well,” he said, feeling embarrassed and having a hard time meeting her eyes, “you weren’t really in any danger, I wouldn’t of let it get to you.”
“I know that, now,” she said. “But I didn’t yesterday, and no one else did, either. We thought you were a killer.”
Gunny grimaced.
She glanced around the room then continued, “None of them would lift a finger to help, and I was too afraid to help myself. I don’t blame you, or them. I blame me.” She pointed a slim, manicured finger at her chest.
“I want to learn how to do what you did. How not to be afraid of them. If you come back with guns today, I want one.”
Cobb came in and started barking orders and assignments, getting everyone busy doing their various tasks, threatening the last one out of the diner with trailer decoupling duty in the parking lot.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was late afternoon when Tommy flipped up his welding helmet and called it done. The Old Pete wound up looking like something out of a post-apocalypse B movie. It started the morning off as a head turner. A 359 Peterbilt, painted rosewood, with black fenders and striping, gleaming chrome Texas bumper and six inch straight stacks to roll coal. It had enough chicken lights to make it pop rolling down the highway at night, and polished aluminum steps and fuel tanks.
A real Rooster Cruiser. She had been a gleaming truck barreling through the night, with dozens of amber running lights all lit up… a beautiful sight. Now the steps had been torched off, the shining front wheels replaced with butt ugly steel rims and tires from an off-road dump truck, and the fenders cut out to make room for them. The big Texas bumper was gone.
A rude angled blade made from the cattle trailer was now attached to the front of the truck, acting as radiator guard and zombie shovel. A mesh of rebar had been welded over the windows and windshield, and Gunny had used every strap and chain he had to secure the remaining lumber, after they had unloaded enough for a dozen partitions to be built as small apartments.
He was going to drop the trailer in the junkyard and bobtail into town on the supply run, but when he left in the morning, he wanted his wagon. He might need the weight because big rigs were notoriously easy to get stuck if they were running empty. He’d seen guys get hung up and spinning in a gravel parking lot before.
Cobb was there with nearly everyone else, after he dropped the trailer and pulled up to the gate. Gunny hopped out to see who was going with him. Griz had volunteered, but Cobb said he wanted a full squad. At least five guys had to go so they would have a fighting chance if things got dicey outside the truck.
“Who’s the ranking man?” Cobb barked as he walked up, eyeballing them both.
“He is,” Gunny and Griz said at the same time, each pointing at the other.
“Figure it out quick, Cupcakes. We don’t need two different people giving orders out there and getting everybody killed in the confusion,” Cobb said, crossing his arms and staring at them, refusing to take sides.
“I was a private,” Gunny said.
“Bullshit,” Griz replied. “Look, I’ve got a lot of trigger time under my belt, but I was never the boss. I didn’t make the plans, I just carried them out. I followed orders, I didn’t give them. Hell, Gunny, I was never even a platoon sergeant. I’m good at killing, not so much anything else. You take it.”
Gunny hid a sigh and nodded, held his free hand up for a fist bump and it was settled. They didn’t have much ammo between them, and when Stabby came through the crowd with a new set of claws strapped to his arms, Gunny was glad. He’d seen the kid in action and he was definitely a good man to have on your side. Lars was right behind him, his Beretta and extra magazine with him. Scratch rounded out the quintet with an odd attachment in place of the usual hooks he had at the end of his prosthetic arm. It looked like a slim dagger, but when Gunny reached out to help boost him into the truck, the missing steps making it difficult to climb in, he noticed it was sharpened rebar.
“Nice one,” he said. “Just be careful picking your nose with that thing.”
Scratch tried to take the passenger seat, but Griz gave him a shove toward the sleeper, as he climbed in with the M-4. “Piss off ya skinny bastard,” he said. “I make two of you, I’m riding shotgun.”
So he squeezed in between the others who were already sitting on the bunk, grumbling about old beardy ass fat guys picking on the handicapped. Scratch never played the handicap card around normal people. In his mind, that’s how he saw everyone who wasn’t his friend.
People who would go out of their way to try to help, or give him sympathetic looks, or just look away, unable to even acknowledge him. With them, he would die before he admitted any weakness of any kind. Among his brothers though, he would do his best to get over on them. Of course, it never worked. They didn’t see him as a man with a missing arm. They just saw him as a man.
They got an all clear from Hot Rod on the roof and the guys on the gate opened it quickly, shutting it almost before they were clear.
“Might as well take out the ones in front first,” Gunny said and swung wide to meet the crowd that had been milling around the entrance of the building. As soon as they saw the Pete coming around the corner of the diner, they all turned and started running toward it, arms outstretched, the strange keening scream forming on their lips.
They didn’t stand a chance. The sharpened blade was about 8 inches off the ground, and when he hit them, most of them left their feet bouncing around under the truck as the rest of their bodies skittered off of the plow and flew into broken piles on the side of the road. They weren’t dead. Again. But
missing your feet sure could slow a body down. They went from a “Danger, Will Robinson!”, to a “Watch where you step”, type of threat.
Gunny downshifted and turned the Pete toward town, following the directions on the GPS. He didn’t know how long they would remain functional, none of the cell phone apps worked. Because it ran directly off of satellites, he supposed it would work until they quit orbiting.
He had no clue if they were self-sufficient, or if they needed occasional nudges from computers on earth. If that were the case, they wouldn’t be up there for long. He’d have to remember to ask the General about that.
The sheriff’s substation was south of them, near Silver Lake. Well before the gridlock and massive hordes of Reno. Since they couldn’t Google “gun stores near me”, they only had some vague directions from Cobb and Tommy. The “there’s a pawn shop on the main drag, near the drug store” type of directions.
The roads weren’t too bad pulling into the small town. There were cars stopped haphazardly, many with doors open. They could envision what happened, see it all too clearly in the dried blood, the crunched fenders, and the few bodies on the ground that had been savaged too badly to reanimate. It only took one infected to run out into the morning traffic.
Brakes would slam on, traffic would come to a complete stop, and people would open their doors and get out to see what the trouble was. They would see rampaging mobs attacking everyone. Biting and ripping, then leaping to the next fresh victim, leaving a mass of bleeding, frightened, and angry people in their wake.
Some who panicked and tried to crash their way through, some with arterial wounds which bled out and changed within minutes, many times with someone trying to help them. A whole town dying within hours of the first fried bacon sandwich being eaten.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 19