If they didn’t, they would be doing this same thing in a few days, but weak from thirst and hunger. Best to do it now, they were all fresh.
He tested the wires going into the storm head, putting as much weight as he could on them without fully committing. They seemed to be solid.
He handed his rifle up to Stabby, then turned to Scratch. “If I fall, clear me a path. If I don’t make it, don’t let me become one of them.” He looked directly into his eyes. He held his gaze until he saw the man nod, all jokes aside for the moment.
“No guts, no glory,” he thought, then triple checked his Glock, making sure it wasn’t going to slide out of his holster. He eased out onto the wires, hooking his feet over the cable just like basic training, and started to slowly move his way toward the truck.
He made careful movements, trying not to make any sudden jerks that might alert the horde to dangling meat just over their heads. The wire was starting to sag lower and lower the farther away from the house he got and the boys had all taken a knee on the porch, steadying their rifles and ready to start blasting if anything went south.
Gunny didn’t look down, just ahead, hand over hand, sliding his feet, cutting down the distance with each pull. It had been a bunch of years since he had done anything like this, and holding onto a steering wheel all day long didn’t do much for building muscles. His arms were already aching and he wasn’t even half way. The cable was dipping lower, and he was still on the easy part of the crawl. Once he started going uphill, it was going to get a whole lot harder. He started the uphill part with the mass below him still trying to get into the house. From this vantage point he could see through the broken windows and it was already nearly full. The pull was getting harder, he really had to grip the cable and his arms were starting to get tremors. He lowered his head and looked.
Getting close, another twenty feet. Another twenty feet uphill, he corrected himself. The truck looked like a lot further drop from here, than it did from the roof of the house. Maybe twelve feet from the wire to the top of the sleeper. No biggie. By the time he dropped his feet and stretched out, only about four feet. His hands were cramping. He couldn’t stop, he knew from experience. If you take a break, it’s that much harder to get started again.
He forced the pain out of his head, concentrating on his next move, his next grip, the next slide of his foot. He inched the feet away and when he looked again, he was where he needed to be. He unhooked his boots and tried to hang on with just his hands, but his fingers didn’t comply with his brain’s commands and he slipped to the roof of the sleeper with a loud thud instead of a soft bump. He heard the kids inside scream and he cursed as he rolled over the edge, grabbing the rebar webbing welded over the window of the driver door.
It wasn’t quite a controlled fall and he landed hard on top of the battery box, lost his grip on the mesh and fell off the truck backward, his foot seeking the lower step that he never had Tommy weld back on. He managed to get his head tucked so he didn’t bash his brains out on the pavement, but he landed solidly on his back, his air rushing out in a whoosh. The milling horde was no longer milling, they had seen him land and disappear from their view, and the screaming started up again as they surged toward the truck. His crew on the roof of the house were helpless, they couldn’t see what happened from their vantage point, let alone try to send lead downrange.
Gunny jumped up instantly, ignoring the pain and his narrowing vision, his lungs trying to suck in air, but unable to wheeze in more than tiny sips of it. He grabbed the door handle and it swung open with ease as he leapt back up on the battery box and into the cab, slamming it behind him before any of the undead could get their fingers in the gap. He sat on the seat, trying to say something to calm the crying kids, but it was all he could do to pull in enough air to keep from passing out. He had forgotten how much that hurt, getting the wind knocked out of you.
He hadn’t felt this since grade school and the monkey bar incident, which left him in much the same condition. Except the recess teacher had come running over. And there weren’t any flesh eating monsters trying to sink their teeth into him. It took him a minute, but when he was finally able to take a normal breath, he reassured the kids in his clumsy way and fired up the truck.
The horde outside redoubled their efforts to get to him, clamoring up the blade and climbing on the sides, hanging from the mesh protecting the windows. Gunny dropped it in third and mashed the pedal. The mass of zombies at least five or six deep in front of the truck didn’t even cause the Cat to hesitate in the slightest. Gunny grabbed another gear, blew the air horn and started playing the role of the Pied Piper.
He drove slow enough and blasted his horn a few more times, trying to draw away as many as he could. He headed back out of town, in the opposite direction of the overlook, where the rest of the trucks were parked. He followed the same game plan they had before. Lead them for a few miles then hurry up and get turned around. On the way back in, crush and destroy as many as possible, chopping off legs and tossing them aside like empty beer cans at a Nascar race.
When he got back to the house about twenty minutes later, they all came running out of the front door before he could bounce up to the porch. It seems he had led nearly all of them out of the house, too. The boys had made quick work of the stragglers, Stabby still wiping gore off of his claws. Within minutes the family was reunited, they had Firecracker’s truck and were heading back to the Overlook.
“I hope my reuniting family story goes as good as theirs,” Gunny thought, as he wound his way back up the mountain, “just a few more days and I’ll be there.”
When they got back and Gunny was hooked up to his wagon, he looked at his watch. The day was nearly gone, the sun getting ready to sink over the horizon. A quick rescue run had turned into an all-day affair, with them nearly losing both trucks, being trapped in a house, getting separated…the list went on of all the mistakes they had made.
Even with all they knew, they had nearly died just taking a trip into town. They were lucky all of them made it back. These things could not be underestimated again. They needed to set up some protocols for refueling, for any stops they made. This enemy was worse than the ones they all had faced in the Middle East. They had numbers and near invincibility, superior speed and strength, and were undeterred by anything.
They had zig-zagged their way back up the mountain, taking meandering routes to try to throw the followers off the trail. Maybe it worked. He understood why the ones on the freeway had kept coming mile after mile, they just followed the straight path of the big road. Maybe with all the turns they had made, there wouldn’t be a huge horde coming at them from Salt Lake tonight. He got with Cobb and Griz when the ‘glad you made it’ and ‘welcome backs’ had been said. They had made one run with Scratch’s truck back down the freeway, but the stragglers coming in from that way were just trickling in now, all of them broken in one way or another, crawling along on severed or shattered limbs.
They had set up sniper positions and had been brushing up on rusty skills, training those who had never fired long distance about windage and bullet drop. Kim was still the best shot, reaching out and touching them in the head at over a half mile, with an off the shelf pawn shop .308 and an inexpensive scope mounted to it. There wasn’t even a discussion about leaving, they needed fuel and they didn’t want to do that in the dark. They would roll at first light.
They doubled the guard to the front of the Overlook and expected the worst, but by the time night fell, they still hadn’t seen a mass of them coming up the freeway. The twisting, turning, and backtracking had worked. After dinner, as Griz had everyone tearing down and cleaning their weapons, the boys had regaled them with their overblown tales of harrowing escapes and death defying near misses around the campfire.
Stabby was hilarious at times, setting the mood with dark tension at others. He was a natural storyteller and Scratch and Lars were natural clowns, knowing the right moments to add their bits to the stories. It was huge
ly entertaining watching them, and when they had finished, Griz asked Gunny how much of it was true.
“All of it,” he said. “Except for the part where everyone passed out from the smell of Scratch copping a squat in the attic.”
“Even the high wire act over the horde?”
“Not quite the way he told it, I didn’t try to walk over it with a pink umbrella for balance, but yeah. Even that.”
Stacy was standing near him and after the laughter and the quiet applause died away with their triumphant return to the camp she said, “What he did was good for those kids. They can see now that maybe it wasn’t as bad as they thought. Especially when he made the little boy into a hero, protecting his sister. Hell, they’ll probably even remember it like that now.”
“Yeah,” Gunny agreed. “He’s ate up, but in a good way.”
Epilogue
Daniel didn’t make eye contact as he rigidly stood at attention on one side of the oak door leading into the conference room. He’d been warned never to look her in the eye. She would interpret it as an act of defiance. There was some kind of emergency meeting, and from the looks of the people who had come in as he was standing guard, it was something serious.
He didn’t know what was happening in the world, and neither did anyone else in the barracks. He had just finished his first rotation, with two years of training in his platoon with the Force Recon Marines. They’d been rushed here a week ago with rumors of an imminent terrorist attack. He was in an expansive underground city somewhere in the Catskill Mountains, as near as any of them were able to determine.
They had no communication with the outside world and had been sequestered to a small area the whole time they were here. Even though there were plenty of enlisted men, the officers were told they would be standing guard for the meeting, even though it was demeaning to them. That is what the president wanted. Times had changed. They were some of the lucky, the chosen few, who had been handpicked to serve as defenders for the survivors of the disaster, or so they were told.
No one had said exactly what the disaster was, but it must be severe. He recognized many of the people attending the meeting from seeing them on the news. Highly placed politicians and corporate heads of business.
She started screaming at them as she stormed through the door.
“How did this happen? How did they get control of the nukes? You guaranteed me it would be impossible!”
The door slammed behind her, and the rest of her tirade was muffled and indistinct. Daniel chanced a glance over to the other Lieutenant who was standing guard. He read the same look on his face. “What the hell is going on?”
He didn’t know. He just knew this was a far cry from any kind of stories his grandpa Cobb, or his dad, had told him about the Marines.
Authors Notes
There is much more to tell in the Zombie Road saga, but this seemed like a good place to end the beginning of the story. I hope you enjoyed it and will follow their journeys in the second book. If not, then you weren’t left with a life or death cliffhanger on the last page and you can take comfort that they are all alive and well, with no imminent danger lurking over them.
Jessie and his friends have found a good place to go into hiding and as long as they stay put and don’t do anything stupid, they will easily survive the zombie outbreak. Everybody knows teenagers never do anything stupid, so they should be just fine.
Lacy and her new friends are in a predicament, trapped in the high-rise with all avenues of escape infested with the undead. They’ll probably think of something. Maybe they’ll find an ample supply of food and all live happily until the zombies wither away.
Gunny and the crew from the Three Flags are well on their way to the safe haven of Lakota. I’m sure they’ll arrive without further incident, all of the nuclear reactors will be safely deactivated, and he’ll embrace his role as a politician. He’ll send a helicopter to pick up his family. He’ll make peace with the Muslims, start shaving, and wear a suit every day.
Or not.
One last thing: Indie authors live and die by their reviews. It helps others to decide whether to pull the trigger or not to make a purchase, or even download if it’s free. (Or so I’ve been told. Since this is the first book I’ve published, I guess I’ll find out.) If you enjoyed it, please take a minute or two to leave a review. Thanks.
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David A. Simpson
Zombie Road II
Zombie Road II
Bloodbath on the Blacktop
A Two-Fisted Trucker Tale
Zombie Road 2
Bloodbath on the Blacktop
Is a work of fiction by
David A. Simpson
Edited by Tamra Crow - [email protected]
All characters contained herein are fictional and all similarities to actual persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental.
No portion of this text may be copied or duplicated without author or publisher written permission, except for use in professional reviews.
Copyright © 2017 David A. Simpson
All rights reserved.
ASIN: 1984011758
ISBN: 978-1984011756
Prologue
The old man looked out over his porch, at the mist rising from the mountain lake in the early morning. The campers and trailers in his parking lot were still there, the recording and filming crews still sleeping. The vehicles were old, of course, but well maintained. He lived in one of the cabins at the Elk Falls Ski Resort. The Lodge was still standing, but in poor repair. He patched the roof if he noticed a leak, but it was just too big for one man to maintain. It was going the way of most of the rest of the world, falling into quiet decay and being reclaimed by Mother Nature. The little cabin was cozy and more than enough for him.
He took a sip of his coffee, the pain in his arm making him wince a little. All the old hurts reminded him they were still there in the mornings. They really got chatty when the weather was damp and drizzly. He really wasn’t that old, not rickety grandpa old, but he sure felt like it some days. His body had taken a hard beating over the years, and a lot of the repairs had been made with whatever medical supplies they had on hand. No hospital visits, or the follow up doctors’ appointments, and the prescriptions of pain meds.
He’d talked long hours yesterday, telling them how all the truck drivers had banded together out at the old Three Flags Truck Stop in Nevada. He recounted the way their quick actions had saved everyone there from the virus the Muslims had unleashed. Most of the world had died in less than a day. They had been fighting the clock, too. They couldn’t just wait and ride it out, safe inside the truck stop. All the nuclear power plants were in danger of melting down and radiating everything. They had to get out, get to a safe place. The truck stop had a mechanic shop, and they had built armored trucks to take them the thousands of miles they would have to travel.
He told them the story of Lacy, trapped in a high-rise office building in Atlanta, and how hopeless her situation was. Every escape route they tried wound up getting someone killed. He told them of Jessie and his friends, who had been stuck in a high school. They may have had the toughest time of them all. They were just children. Young teenagers. They had managed to escape and made it to the house, but at what cost? The innocence of children was lost. They had been stranded and no parents, no police, no adults came to help. They had to kill their undead classmates and teachers, and face the hard truth that they were truly on their own.
It was the first time he had ever sat down to tell this tale, and even though he skipped over a lot
of things and only hinted at others, the story went on for hours. He was tempted to wrap it up with an easy “and then we won and here you are” but they were a really nice bunch. Genuinely interested in getting it all down as accurately as possible. The world had teetered on the brink of reverting back to the fifteenth century, back to feudal kingdoms, or maybe even hunter/gatherer societies. The advances that had taken thousands of years to achieve were nearly lost. Everything still wasn’t as it was before, but maybe it was better now. It was certainly a lot simpler. There hadn’t been much demand for reality TV shows or celebrity gossip magazines. Everyone was too busy living their own lives to have time to watch someone else’s.
The interview crew wanted to establish a definitive history of the heroes, as they called it. He didn’t think of himself as a hero, he was just a guy who did what needed to be done. Most of the men and women who fought to save the world weren’t very nice people, if judged through the standards of today. They did things they weren’t proud of, things unacceptable in polite society. But when they were doing them, society wasn’t polite. It was a vicious and deadly time they had lived through, with most of the world trying to exterminate or enslave them. He’d done things, but at the time it was the only option. It was kill or be killed, so he did some killing.
Some of the others, though… Some of his friends long dead and gone… Some of them were heroes, and he didn’t want them to be forgotten, so he told his tale. He would tell it all, as best as he could remember as he lived it, and as it was told to him by the people who had been there.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 32