Bastille nodded and grunted as he got to his feet, flagging Hot Rod, who was beside him with his gun. “I’ll take the shotgun for you,” he said, pushing the barrel back out toward the parking lot, and away from Hot Rod. “It’s all clear in there.”
Bastille ran in and immediately started looking for the electronics section. The people on the bus had told him these stores sold a little bit of everything, and he was anxious to get his hands on a video camera. Before he had moved into producing movies, he had been a filmmaker. He wanted to document this brave new world and maybe do something useful because, Lord knows, he wasn’t much good at anything else. He needed to get over to the pharmacy, too. His Xanax supply was running a little low.
Time passed quickly. There were a few more random shots, the vets letting the unskilled try their best at taking them down, but if they started getting too close, a quick head shot would end the forward rush. Most of the people were finished with their hurried shopping, grabbing changes of clothes and a few other things, and running back out to toss their new belongings into the rigs and then take up their shooting position. The children were the last in and they had a cohort of three men with them as they ran down the aisles with glee, having been told to grab any toy they wanted. But only one pass, and they had to carry whatever they grabbed. Their moms were hesitant to let them out of their sight, but they needed clothes for them and it was a mad scramble to try to get everything in just a few short minutes.
“Contact front!” Cobb bellowed and Gunny knew it was a big crowd coming their way. “Like we practiced!” he yelled. “Every other man to the front, the rest of you stay put and watch your sectors!”
There was a flurry of movement as Cobb and Preacher opened up at the front of the line ahead of Gunny’s truck, the sharp bark of gunfire from them in rapid succession motivating everyone to hurry. That’s where they figured the mob would come, if one did. It was the street that led back to the housing developments that were spreading out and taking over the high plains. The rest of the survivors fell into place, pretty much like they’d drilled. There was a little confusion, but there was also a lot of lead flying toward the onrushing mass of undead. It was manageable. There were only about 20 of them, and already many had been cut down, still half a parking lot away. The roar of the guns was deafening and Gunny was thinking he should have gotten some ear plugs while he had been over in the sporting section. The poor undead mob never stood a chance. When silence echoed back down in the parking lot, the last one had fallen a good thirty yards away.
For the tourists, the mechanics, and the band members, this was their first time in combat. First time firing a shot in anger. There were cheers and smiles and fist bumps all around. They had done well, no one had lost their cool, no one had panicked, and they were quickly comparing notes, starting to brag on a particularly good shot they had made. Cobb gave it a minute, winked at Gunny, and then started bellowing at them in his best Marine Drill instructor’s voice.
“This ain’t a Sunday Social, ladies! Is that weapon on safe?”
He randomly pointed at one of them, and they all started scrambling to look, not wanting to be singled out.
“Is there a round in the chamber?” he yelled at them, and most did a quick check because they didn’t know.
“Get your goat smelling asses back in position, this ain’t no holiday in Cambodia!” he continued as they hustled back to where they needed to be.
Ol’ Cobb was enjoying himself.
“You think Zed is going to wait on you to reload?” he shouted at them. “Who’s your battle buddy, and why hasn’t one of you started replenishing your magazines?”
The vets tried to look stern and keep straight faces as Cobb marched behind the line, occasionally smacking someone upside the head if he thought they weren’t moving with the proper zeal. They were remembering boot camp and the fond memories they had of it, now that it was long in their past. It wasn’t so fun when they were going through it, when they had a drill screaming at them.
The driver of the tour bus caught up with Cobb as everyone was heading back to their trucks.
“We need to find an RV dump station,” he said. “With all these extra people, the holding tanks on the bus are full. The fresh water tank is getting really low, too.”
Collins pointed over to the garden center, at the hoses coiled and waiting to be used to water the plants. He nodded.
“I’ll pull over there to refill, but I still need to empty the sewer tank.”
“Just dump it in the parking lot,” Scratch said, laughing a little. “That’d be a hoot! Just make sure I’m not behind you.”
“He can’t do that,” Collins was quick to jump in.
“Why not? Ain’t like the EPA is gonna give him a ticket. Besides, it would be kind of fitting,” Griz said, looking at the big box store and grumbling about its foreign made junk that had put countless little Mom and Pop stores out of business. He was kind of forgetting they had just raided it, and were damn glad it was there for one-stop shopping.
Cobb settled it by telling him to pull the caps and dump it before they left. Nobody was going to risk their lives to find an RV station just to flush the toilet.
When they got back into their trucks and took off again, Collins brought out a green Christmas tree air freshener and hung it from the chicken coop pre-pass mounted on the windshield. It dangled down in front of his Hawaiian hula girl affixed to the dash. Gunny looked at her.
“What are you trying to say?” he asked, raising his arm and smelling his pits. He grimaced a little, wrinkling his nose. Okay. Maybe she had a point.
The rest of the day flew by, only an occasional slow down near an on-ramp, but Interstate 80 was still pretty desolate in most parts of Wyoming and Nebraska. The rolling hills and prairies, and the vast pale blue sky that touched the horizon all around them, made them almost forget the disaster they were running from. Collins was playing DJ again, and when she played Sunglasses at Night, Gunny suddenly remembered.
“Hey, I got you these,” he said, pulling a pair of mirrored aviator shades out of his breast pocket. The good ones from the eye exam store at the front of the Wal-Mart, not the cheap ones from the carousel. “No cop uniform is complete without them.”
That brought a rare smile to her lips as she put them on, then flipped down the sun visor to check herself in the mirror.
Gunny pulled out his tobacco pouch, dropped the steering wheel down low and held it with his knees. He grabbed a paper and started filling it with the tobacco, sprinkling it in and breaking up any clumps.
“What are you doing?” Collins exclaimed, when she noticed what he was doing, driving down the road at sixty miles an hour, both hands off the wheel.
Gunny glanced over at her. “Rolling a smoke,” he said, as he tucked the tobacco in and started to twist it shut.
She was nearly speechless as she pointed out the windshield at the road, and at him, steering with his knees.
“You can’t… That’s… It’s illegal,” she finally finished.
Gunny licked the paper, stuck the smoke in his mouth, and rolled his poke back up.
“We’re only going sixty,” he said in his defense. “I usually do it at eighty.”
“There’s laws against that, and for a good reason. It’s dangerous,” she said, firm in her conviction.
“Can you site the code that prohibits the rolling of cigarettes while operating a commercial vehicle on the interstate?” Gunny asked innocently, flipping his zippo and lighting up.
“Distracted driving, for one,” she said.
“Yes, but that’s a catch-all when there isn’t a law against something. Scratching my ear could be considered distracted driving.”
They went back and forth good-naturedly, Collins a stickler for the rules, and Gunny an ignorer of most rules. He caught a bit of the tobacco on his lip and spit it out the window.
“Nevada Revised Statute 199.280,” she said triumphantly. “Spitting in public is a misdemeanor
punishable by a fifty-dollar fine.”
Damn. Did this girl read the manuals just for fun? Gunny conceded defeat. She had him there.
“You got me, officer. Take a check?” he asked.
“I’ll let you slide this time,” she replied, “if you keep at least one hand on the wheel.”
As they were nearing the South Platte River Bridge, Sara came over the radio. “We’re going to need one of your Plan Bs, Gunny. The bridges are completely jammed. One side there has been a fire, looks like a few semi-trucks and a bunch of cars. The other side is no better.”
“No way to move them aside with the blades?”
“Nowhere to push them to,” came her reply. “These are long bridges and they’re packed in like sardines. I’ve got the attention of some of the dead so I’m heading back. Let me know which way you want to go.”
Cobb came back on almost immediately. “Go south on 138,” he barked. “We’ll cut through the woods. The bridges to the north are in big towns, they won’t be any better.”
Gunny glanced at the GPS on the dashboard. The turn off Cobb wanted to take was coming up quick so he got on nineteen to let everyone know what was going on as he started downshifting. Deputy Collins grabbed the GPS unit off the dash mount and started zooming out, finding the path Cobb was talking about. “It looks good,” she said. “We’re finished with the interstates for a while, though. This route takes us through a couple hundred miles of farmland on two-lane roads.”
“Okay,” Gunny said. “Talk her through the new route, make sure she knows which roads to take.”
While Collins updated Sara on one radio, letting her know the path they wanted to run, Gunny hailed Cobb on the other. “You finding us a new layover spot?” he asked. “I don’t know if we can make it down to 70 before nightfall. I’d hate to try to pull in somewhere in the dark only to find a bus load of nuns gone zom.”
“Keep your britches on,” came Cobb’s growl. “I’m looking.”
The sun was dipping toward the western horizon already, and it would sink fast in another couple of hours. Gunny didn’t want to try to set up a secure area at night. There could be a hundred zombies a half mile away, and they wouldn’t know about it until the camp was overrun. That and he could barely see with most of the headlight beams blocked by the blade. They needed to hit up a real gun store, one that carried night vision goggles. And good guns.
As they ran through the high plains and deserts of Colorado and Nebraska, they would rarely see any of the undead. They saw signs of life in this desolate land, occasional smoke curling up from chimneys, or evidence of people reinforcing their fences and houses. Julio, riding the BMW, was stopping and talking to anyone he saw out, the ones who came out of hiding to watch the convoy roll by. He had to talk fast so he and Scratch wouldn’t get too far behind, but he let them know about Lakota. Gunny knew this was just a drop in the bucket. He needed a way to inform everybody hiding out, to give them news and let them know that a new and safe place was being established.
They zig-zagged through the wild backcountry, Deputy Collins calling out the roads for Sara to turn on, the day’s shadows growing longer. Cobb finally called a halt when Sara radioed back with the report of a large empty oilfield parking lot. There was plenty of room for all the trucks, it was on a slight rise, and afforded a good view for a long distance in all directions. This was lonely country and the sky above was unbelievably immense and beautiful as the moon rose and the stars all shone down. A few hungry stray dogs came looking for scraps as they finished up their dinners around the campfire, and the kids all wanted to keep them.
“These are still friendly,” Griz said. “But give it a few more weeks, they’re going to be a problem. The ones that survive will revert to their wild nature.”
“Oh, man. What about all the animals in the zoos?” Scratch asked. “I wonder if anyone let them out?”
Just thinking about all the pets and caged animals starving to death was bringing everybody down. There was a light wind blowing and the children, their armloads of toys forgotten for the moment, started asking Stabby for a ‘campfire story’. The adults, cleaning their weapons again under Griz’s unforgiving eye, readily agreed. They needed a distraction from his cotton swab cleanliness inspections.
The story was about the brave men and women of The Three Flags Caravan, and the heroic Battle of Walmart. Bastille filmed the whole thing, delighted with a newfound purpose, and the handful of video cameras he’d liberated. Sara was listening beside Gunny again, laughing along with the rest of the crowd at the antics the boys got up to, reenacting the pivotal scenes. She was just glad they hadn’t heard about her near miss in the traffic jam. They probably would have been merciless in that story.
“Was there really a guy with his pants around his ankles coming out of the bathroom at you?” she asked, nearly crying with laughter, watching Lars act like a zombie tripping over his pants, and Scratch pretending to be Gunny, falling over backward, trying not to get zombie poo all over him.
Gunny was chuckling. “You don’t believe anything those guys say, do you?”
“Not everything. But he usually only elaborates on the truth,” Sara wiped at her eyes, still smiling broadly. “I don’t even know if he realizes it, but his silly stories do a world of good for everyone. He makes us all think we’re heroes. That we’re all going to be okay in the end.”
Bastille’s former starlet girlfriend joined them as the boys were finishing up their story. The brown roots of her natural hair color were already showing. Gunny almost didn’t recognize her without her mane of blonde. She had picked up a barber set and hit up the hunting section at the Wal-Mart. Her hair was cut in an unflattering pageboy and she was wearing camo.
At their surprised looks, she just smiled grimly. “I never want to feel like I did back at that diner,” she said, running her hand through her hair a little self-consciously. She had a pistol on her hip and a long knife strapped to her leg. “I never want to be so helpless again. By the way, my real name is Bridget, not Cassandra. I think the days of making a living off of the way you look are over. I think now it’s what you know, not who you blow.”
Gunny raised an eyebrow at that, but Sara just stuck out her hand. “Welcome to the real world,” she said.
Wire Bender came over. “Got something you oughta hear,” he said, motioning for Gunny to follow him back to the truck that he and Hot Rod were riding in. The interior was a mess of radios hastily mounted and velcroed in place, wires running everywhere, and external speakers of four or five different units quietly hissing. On the truck’s stereo, there was music playing. It was an old country western song.
“Whatcha got?” Gunny asked.
Wire Bender smiled and pointed a thumb at the radio. “That ain’t a CD. It’s live.”
They listened to George Jones sing about a girl who was as smooth as Tennessee Whiskey and sweet as Strawberry Wine.
“Know where they’re broadcasting from?” Gunny asked.
“Hasn’t said yet. But they only came on about 10 minutes ago. I keep it on scan all the time. This is the first time it’s picked anything up.”
“Makes sense,” Gunny said, looking at the LED display on Hot Rod’s radio. It was on the AM band, low on the dial. “Gotta be local. If they’re trying to reach people, night time is the best.”
“Yep,” Wire Bender said. “I’d bet it’s a farm station from one of these towns nearby. Maybe even high school radio. They’re usually only five thousand watts, maybe ten max, so it’s probably within a hundred miles.”
They listened and another song came on, no DJ chatter between them.
“That’s the problem with these new digital radios,” Wire Bender groused. “On an old tube radio, you could go through the dial real slow-like, get bits and pieces of stations for hundreds of miles. These new ones don’t pick up anything unless it’s a strong signal.”
“Wonder if it’s a playlist on repeat?” Gunny mused. “And how they’re powering in. Could
be running on a natural gas generator. I think you can run a line right off the wellhead. I’ll have to ask Jellybean about that, he used to work the oilfields. He oughta know.”
“Plenty of natural gas out here, it could be,” said Wire Bender. “I know they do field processing right at the wells before they even move it to the plants. Wouldn’t be hard to plumb a line off it. Especially if it’s on somebody’s back forty.”
Gunny was waiting for a song about drinking and cheating to end before he gave up. He hoped it was still live, not just an automated playlist, and he was rewarded with the sound of an older man who came on after Loretta Lynn finished.
“It seems like we play this one too much,” he said. “But we lost three more of Crow City’s finest to the scourge today.” The man sounded weary and sad.
An old Carter Family song came on. “Will the Circle be Unbroken”. A lament about death and dying.
“Their defenses must not be very good,” Wire Bender said. “If they keep losing people.”
“Maybe they had to go out for food or water,” Jack supposed. “It’s gotta be a pretty desperate situation.”
“Keep a listen on him,” Gunny said. “I’m going to get with Cobb, see if we can swing by there. Let me know if he says anything that’s newsworthy. I’ve got an idea.”
5
Jessie
Day 7
The Lake House
Jessie walked out onto the deck and looked over the edge. The pain in his torn cheek had awoken him instantly and completely when he rolled over. The sun was up over the horizon and the air was clear and sharp, just a little bit nippy in the early September morning. There was a slight breeze blowing the smell of the undead away from them. Maybe fifteen or twenty of them were milling around the broken stairs, stumbling over the piles of lumber and the trampled bodies they had cut down yesterday. The zombies knew they were there, but like when they were trapped in the trees, they just kind of bumbled around. They were waiting for them to come out and play, or until something more interesting, and edible, caught their attention. Sheila joined him a few minutes later with cups of juice. She was wearing one of Lacy’s colorful jackets, her blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. She handed him one and he thanked her, taking it gingerly. His hands were still scabbed over and painful when he flexed them. They drank in silence, enjoying the simple pleasure of watching a sunrise, and being alive.
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