Too much speed caused fumble-fingered mistakes. Sheila screamed. The whole deck shook with the thundering of the undead footsteps, a dozen or more on the stairs. Gary dropped the magazine he was trying to slide into the well. Jessie stood frozen in place, wide-eyed in terror. Doug let the shotgun slip through his fingers for the third time as he frantically reached for it, watching a fat man with bloody jowls pounding up the stairs straight for him. Its mouth was open wide, anticipating flesh, its black eyes fixed on Doug’s. It was over. All they’d been through. All their planning. All the pain. All the horror. All the killing. It wasn’t enough. It was over. The screaming monster would be on him in two more steps.
The shotgun from behind them roared, and Sheila screamed even louder as the recoil kicked it out of her hands, and the man’s chest disappeared in a plume of hazy mist. It left a gaping hole they could see right through, and the zombie behind him flew over the rail backward, most of its head missing. She had fired both barrels of the coach gun that had been loaded with double ought buckshot. Eighteen steel balls traveling at 1295 feet per second. 3600 pounds of force slamming into him at nearly point-blank range. Like being hit by Thor’s Hammer. The impact sent the fat man flying backward, streams of blubber and intestines trailing through the air. He plowed into the masses below him, causing a domino effect of falling bodies, and one side of the staircase, the riser Jessie had been shooting at, gave way under the sudden impact of all the weight. The whole thing twisted, stair treads separating, and screws breaking free from the wood. Half of the stairs collapsed and Jessie recovered from his moment of frozen indecision. He grabbed the last loaded shotgun and started blasting away at the remaining riser. Gary seated the mag he’d been fumbling with and joined him, shredding it to sawdust in seconds and it fell on top of the heap of undead twelve feet below them. They all looked over the railing, breathing heavily from the fading adrenaline-fueled rush, their nerves still jangling.
“Boss Fight,” Gary said, a nervous laugh on his lips
Despite the terror still making his words a little unsteady, Jessie said, “It always gets harder right before you level up.”
“I think we’d better load every single gun in the house and leave them in every room,” Sheila said. “That was too close. I want guns everywhere, even in the bathrooms.”
3
970 Miles to Go
Day 7
Martha and Cookie had another buffet-style breakfast laid out by the time the sun was peeking over the horizon. Sleepy eyed kids stumbled over for milk, and the grownups stretched and worked kinks out of their backs. The sleeping accommodations were tight. All of the drivers had taken on passengers, and most of the trucks had an extra bunk, but there were still a few who had to sleep on the seats of the bus. Scratch had both Lars and Stabby riding with him, but with the guard duty rotation, they all got to sleep on a bed for a few hours. The fuel stop they picked out for the next morning was a small Mom and Pop place, with only a few other businesses at the exit.
“Same procedure,” Cobb said, and everyone shuffled around to get into the appropriate vehicles before they took off. The refuelers ready to get smelly, Gunny’s full cab of heavily armed vets ready to hop out and cover Jellybean as he ran his PTO pump. Sara zipped in and did a quick circle, then took off back toward the trucks, a small crowd of runners behind her. Gunny took them out with ease as she shot past him. The off ramp was deserted as they made the turn, but he saw a problem as soon as they swung into the little truck stop. There was a tanker truck parked in front of the fuel drops, blocking them.
“Plan B,” Gunny came over the radio. “Jellybean, run your hoses underneath it, there is still plenty of room to get the trucks in. My guys will spread out and cover both sides.”
“Roger that,” came the reply, and as Gunny swung wide and let the shooters out, Jellybean slipped in tight and began unfurling the hoses. There were a half-dozen shots from the guys as they rounded the tanker, then it was quiet.
A few minutes later, Cobb came over the radio as Gunny was getting refueled. “Heads up, we’ve got people on the roof of that building.”
Gunny leaned down low in his seat, trying to see past the top of his drop visor on the windshield. Sure enough, there were a group of people up there waving their shirts and yelling, trying to get their attention over the noise of the trucks. Gunny flashed his lights at them, letting them know he saw them, and got back on the radio.
“I see them. Sara, you copy?” he said.
“Roger. What do you need?”
“Circle the building, see if the ladder up is surrounded by infected, give us a sitrep.”
She took off, swinging wide around all the corners to ensure she wouldn’t be surprised and tackled off of her bike like she was when this all began. When she appeared again, she stopped near Gunny and activated her two-way. “I didn’t see a ladder, or any zombies. It must be on the inside.”
Scratch cut in. From his vantage point at the top of the overpass, he had a better view than anyone else. “I can see the top of the ladder, it’s in the middle of the building. Looks like there are six of them up there. Aaaaannnnd I gotta go clear the road, we’ve got some groupies coming in.” He took off to add more bodies to his kill count, and Gunny moved out of the way to let the next truck start refueling.
“Alright,” he said over the radio, “when we finish topping off, clearance team meet up at the tanker. This will be good practice for that Wal-Mart. Stay with your trucks until then. How much more room do we have on that tour bus?”
The men and women on the roof of the Little Cheyenne Fuel Stop weren’t sure what to make of the band of trucks that had rumbled into the parking lot. They had huge plows welded onto the front of them, and most of them were covered in old blood and matted body parts. They looked like extras in a post apocalypse film, including the one all in leather on the motorcycle. Even it had an exoskeleton welded onto it. The truckers had acknowledged them, they knew they saw them, but they appeared to be leaving. One by one, as the trucks fueled up, they swung around and got back in line to get back on the freeway. No one was coming over to help them. They tried yelling at the men and women they saw surrounding the tanker truck with their guns, but they ignored them, keeping their attention glued to the areas they were covering. The two women expressed the most hesitation at getting rescued by this hard-looking lot. Were they jumping out of the frying-pan and into the fire? The shooters had killed the crazies that had been milling around the store, maybe they could climb down the gutter pipe now, drop down on top of the dumpster. Maybe they didn’t want this group of highwaymen to help them, after all. They had been up here for days, and the few supplies they had managed to get up the ladder as all the crazies broke down the maintenance room door, were nearly gone. The police hadn’t shown up. There had been only a handful of cars pass on the freeway. Their phones didn’t work, and they were as afraid of what they didn’t know, as much as what they did. When the last truck had filled up, and the bobtail had stowed his hoses and pulled off to join the back of the line, the last of the trucks shut off their engines. The quietness was complete. No traffic noises. No horns honking. No background noise of electrical things moving around and humming. The doors opened on some the trucks, and more men with guns ran back to meet up with the five that were already there. There was a dark-haired man sporting a bad haircut and long, sharp spikes on each arm, and a bearded man with longish dirty-blond hair. The blonde man hailed them as they got close. The rest of the team had spread out and were keeping their eyes only in the sector their guns were pointing, giving the two 360 degrees of protection. This was a military group, they could tell.
“We’ll have you down in a minute,” he yelled up to them, as they kept moving toward the front of the store.
As they approached the entrance door, they could see a few of the agitated undead milling around inside. They had heard the noises of fresh meat, but didn’t know how to get to it.
“As soon as they see us at the door, i
t’s gonna be a stampede,” Gunny said quietly. “Let’s make some noise, draw them to us. Griz and Shakey, think you can hold the door, try to only let them out one at a time?”
They both slung their ARs and got ready to put some shoulder into the metal-framed glass door. “Just remember we’re here, don’t be firing this direction,” Griz said, as Gunny pulled his Glock and prepared to make head shots as they came through the entryway. Once the first one was down, it would make a stumbling block for the rest of them.
“Ready?” he asked, and they tightened their grip on the door handle as everyone else drew knives and Stabby prepared himself for action. Gunny would be the only one shooting, and the knives were just on the off chance one got through, not quite permanently dead. He nodded and they opened the door a few inches. Gunny leaned in and whistled, wrinkling his nose at the stench of rotting meat, fruit, and bodies. Their reaction was instantaneous, and faster than anyone had anticipated. Instead of the two shambling around pawing at the windows that they expected to react, they saw a half-dozen or more heads pop up over the tops of aisles and look their way. The screaming started and the racks tumbled over as all of them took the most direct path to the living, breathing, meat that needed to be conquered. Infected. A new living host that must be used to add to their numbers, a base command they didn’t understand, but were compelled to carry out by any means necessary. They scrambled over the tops of the falling shelves, leaping from one to another, inhuman strength and speed sending boxes of candy bars and bags of chips flying. “Should have brought a 12 gauge,” was all Gunny had time to think as he started popping off rounds, and seven charging bodies slammed headlong into the door, shattering the glass and sending Griz and Shakey flying backward and onto their asses. He started firing at the ones coming through the now wide-open door, trying to sink a round into their keening faces, but they were moving so fast. The magazine was empty and only two were on the ground, tripping up the others who had plenty of holes in them, but none in their heads. As he dropped the mag and was seating the other home, Stabby came flying at two of them snarling their way over the fallen bodies jammed in the doorway. They were keening with desire, and reaching for him with dirty, outstretched fingers. Stabby’s spikes sunk deep, the full weight of his 170 pounds slamming both arms into their skulls, punching straight through eye cavities and squirming brains, then out the back of their heads. Bone fragments and red-black blood made Rorschach patterns on the front of the building. He twisted and slung them off of his blades and dropped into a crouch, as the next one scrambled over the corpses with the splattered heads from Gunny’s bullets. He thrust his arm up under its gnashing teeth, snapping them off as the spike continued up through its brain and out of the top of its skull. Griz spun his M-4 around on its single point sling, fingers finding the grip and trigger on instinct. Still sitting on his backside, he opened fire on the others trying to make their way over the fallen bodies. The barking snap of the .223 bullets joined the heavier thud of everyone else’s pistols. They shattered heads and jars of pickled pig’s feet, sent bottles of soda and cans of beer fizzing and hissing all over the store. The bullets found their marks and heads were exploded into an unrecognizable pulp.
Then it was quiet.
Their eyes darted, searching for targets. They listened, the cacophony of rapid-fire weapons still ringing in their ears, but nothing else came out from the dim interior.
“I think we need to modify that entrance plan,” Shakey said, climbing back to his feet.
“Agreed,” said Gunny. “Those things are wicked fast.”
“We need to hit a good gun store,” Griz said, not for the first time. “We need some Saiga 12 gauges. I can make them full auto.”
Deputy Collins glanced over at him. “Where’d you learn that trick?” she asked, her pistol still in low ready, still scanning the interior of the store.
“After the Marines, I was a contractor,” he said. “We couldn’t always get the cool toys, had to make our own.”
Gunny stepped over the fallen bodies and made his way toward the kitchen area of the little truck stop. That’s where he figured the ladder to the roof would be. They had made enough noise, they were pretty confident that anything undead left in the store would have already come after them, if it wasn’t locked away. Still, they were careful at the swinging door to the kitchen, doing room clearing maneuvers as they entered. The ladder was tucked away in a small maintenance closet full of mop buckets and brooms. There was a body blocking the door open, its head crushed and a bloodied fire extinguisher lying near it. When Gunny looked up, dirty faces were staring down at him from the roof, concerned, but relieved looks on them.
Introductions were made as the bedraggled group went to the coolers and grabbed bottles of water and power drinks, trying to re-hydrate. They had been up there for five days, with only what they had managed to carry up in the mad rush to escape the little truck stop carnage that had started with just one customer attacking everyone else. It had been a guy on a motorcycle, touring across the country, and he had complained of being sick from something he ate a few towns back. He had gone into the restroom looking pale, and had come out screaming and ripping chunks of flesh out of everyone. The women had both worked there, and the four men were drivers who were in the cafe having breakfast when everything went crazy. One of them had a .38, but it had been useless against them. He didn’t know to aim for the head and his six rounds went fast. Gunny sent a few of his men up to the roof as sentries while they talked, telling them of their plans, the dangers of staying where they were, and offering them a ride to Oklahoma if they wanted it. The women wanted to go check their homes. Cobb said they couldn’t stop the convoy for everyone they met, they were on a very serious deadline to get out of the radiation fallout zone if the Muslims failed in their efforts. The ladies had become pretty good friends with the drivers while trapped on the roof, and the men had promised to take them to their homes if they ever made it down. With a few guns donated to them, they agreed to join the convoy after they checked out their houses. They had husbands. Kids. Gunny understood. He was doing the same thing. He had to know, he had to see for himself if his family had made it. No amount of logic, no matter how many times you said ‘your husband would have come for you if he was still alive’, would work on them. They had to see.
They offered Cobb whatever he wanted to take from the store in fair exchange for the guns and their rescue, so some of them grabbed a few snacks, but there really wasn’t much they needed. The drivers with newer trucks loaded up on boxes of DEF to add to their supply. It was a government mandated additive the new motors needed to run. It was supposed to cut down on emissions, but really all it did was clog up the injectors and filters and cause expensive repairs. That’s why a lot of the owner operators wouldn’t trade in for a new truck, they’d keep rebuilding their old ones. You could get a million miles out of a good Cat engine. Caterpillar, who had been building diesel engines since the 30s, pulled out of the North American big truck market. They just couldn’t make quality engines anymore with all the regulations put on them, so drivers kept overhauling their old motors. California didn’t like that, so they passed a law to stop trucks older than ten years old into their state. That was one reason a lot of truckers kept the Three Flags in business. They were running the backroads with their older trucks to dodge the California inspection stations on the highways.
The boys grabbed rolls of lottery tickets, though, and were happily scratching them off as they headed back to their trucks. Cobb told the small group if they decided to join up with the convoy, swing back by and empty out the kitchen of all the restaurant sized food cans to add to Cookie’s stores. As they were getting ready to leave, one of the women mentioned that the tanker that had been blocking the fuel drops was full, the driver hadn’t started to unload. He was among the dead piled up at the door. Cobb asked for a volunteer to drive it, and there was a race among the mechanics to get there first. They were tired of being cooped up on the bus
with Bastille and his never ending complaining about everything. Gunny made sure everyone from the little truck stop knew where the rally point was in Lakota, and wished them luck as they headed for the parking lot and their rigs. Julio, one of the mechanics, wanted to take the bike. It was a big touring BMW, not particularly nimble and after a quick discussion, they decided it was safer for him to ride near the back.
“He can stop and tell folks where we’re headed to, if we see any more along the way,” Griz said. “That way we don’t have to stop the convoy, and if Scratch stays with him, he’ll be safe enough.” It was a good plan and Scratch’s big Western Star wouldn’t have any trouble catching up, he always bragged it was a triple digit truck.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 35