The Zombie Road Omnibus

by David A. Simpson

Another fifty miles up the road and Sara came over the radio. “Trouble,” she said. “There’s a tanker truck up here at a little truck stop. Gotta be someone inside, it’s surrounded by those things. Must be thirty or forty of ‘em.”

  “Roger, Lead One,” Collins replied. “Can you bring them back to us?”

  Gunny didn’t know what to think of Deputy Collins’ sometimes. She was rigid, but a good person to have on your side. All of the clothes she had grabbed out of the Walmart were the same colors and style of her uniform. She had even pinned her name tag and deputy badge to the shirt. Her hair was always in a regulation bun and pulled back severely, and she spit-shined her big leather gun belt. The end of the world didn’t mean you didn’t go by the book, apparently. He had overheard her getting onto Deputy McBride about his lack of professionalism in his attitude and dress late one night. He had slipped out of the truck to relieve himself and they had been on guard duty. He’d heard her tell him they were the last law of the land. Like the army guys, they had also sworn an oath. Their’s just as important. Probably even more so, if they didn’t want to live in a military ruled society. They were the only ones duly authorized to make arrests, if need be. Most of the truck drivers were soldiers, they had been trained to kill people and break things. But they, as sworn officers, were required to keep the peace and enforce laws. To protect and serve. Just because it was the end of the world, that didn’t mean it was the end of their watch. The people needed them, looked up to them. They had a duty to perform and he needed to shape up and start acting like it.

  Some people needed the rigidity and discipline. He’d learned this years ago. It gave them something to hold onto when everything else was falling apart, and he was glad she had stepped up. He hadn’t given it much thought, for now he was just trying to keep everybody alive and keep it together long enough to get to their new home but, he was glad somebody was thinking further ahead. Hell, he never had been a very good chess player, he was more of a checkers guy. He didn’t really plan more than one or two steps ahead. More of a brawler than a thinker. People were establishing their roles in this new world and just by her very presence, her badge, and everyone knowing Cobb and Gunny and the rest would back her, it helped keep things under control. He’d noticed the cowboys liked to drink and he’d see them start getting rowdy but all she had to do was look at them and they’d tone it down a little.

  Collins got on the CB and let everyone know Sara was going to be flying by in a few minutes, a bunch of zombies in her wake. They were going to do an extraction for a trapped driver in a tanker.

  “Now would that be a “bunch” of zombies or a horde of zombies?” Scratch came back over the radio.

  Before she could answer, Griz jumped in with, “I think it ought to be a murder of zombies.”

  That’s all it took to get them started arguing back and forth about what they should call a large group of them and rattling off other oddball names of different groups of animals.

  “An Army of Frogs,” came from Lars.

  “A Blessing of Unicorns,” Buttercup chimed in.

  “A Crash of Rhinos,” yelled ZZ.

  “A Parliament of Owls,” Stabby added.

  Every time Collins tried to cut in, she got stepped on. Finally, she just held the button down and yelled into the mic, “Heads up! Sara’s coming in fast and whatever you want to call them, they are right on her tail.”

  Sara did and they were.

  Gunny picked up some speed and eliminated another small horde of undead, the big Pete hardly even feeling the sluicing of their bodies as the abused blade did its grizzly work, the trucks behind him making sure any that were still on the road and moving couldn’t crawl their way back to the station.

  “If we get another tanker, I’d like to take it if no one objects,” Preacher came over the radio. “I have a few in the bus with me who would like to learn how to drive a semi and this would be an excellent opportunity.”

  “Learning to drive a rolling bomb?” Scratch popped in. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Preacher wants to get to heaven sooner, rather than later,” Peanut Butter jumped in and the rest of the drivers all had to throw in their two cents’ worth. There was too much chatter and Collins was getting annoyed, as she kept trying to get a break in so she could tell them it was occupied, and maybe the driver would object to someone taking his truck.

  When Gunny pulled into the small cafe and gas station, he could see there was still a good dozen of those things trying to get into the cab of the rig. Then he saw a frightened boy of no more than twelve or fourteen staring back at him out of the windshield. It was a war rig. It didn’t have a blade, but the windows had been reinforced with steel mesh and the windshield had rows of bars, much like their trucks did. Then he took in the tanker. It had a reefer unit mounted to the front of it. He looked at the kid again, whom he first assumed was Hispanic. Nope. Probably Middle Eastern.

  As the rest of the trucks pulled up and spread out in the parking lot, he flipped the switch on the linear, adding 1,500 watts of transmitting power to his CB, and said, “It’s a nuke truck, everybody settle down.”

  Collins was giving him the stink eye when she realized what he’d done and hadn’t told her about the power booster, but when she understood what he said, what she was really looking at, her fury was instantaneous. The infected around the truck weren’t giving up, they could see and smell the kid inside, and they ignored the rumble of the other trucks. She stared at it, then at the boy, with intense hatred flaring to life in her eyes. Her fists clenched involuntarily in white-knuckled rage.

  The radio was quiet and Gunny flipped the linear back off, told everyone to shut ‘em down and called his extraction team to come forward.

  Within a few minutes, they were gathered by his truck, armored and geared up. In the quiet of the desolate Kansas prairie, they could hear the deaders in their mindless, ceaseless attacks, keening and clawing at the truck parked on the fuel island.

  “Let’s try to pull them a few at a time. Get them away from the truck. We can’t have any stray bullets,” Griz said.

  “You know what I ain’t hearing?” Cobb asked. “That reefer unit running.”

  He was right. How long had it been off? Was it simply out of fuel, or was it a mechanical failure?

  “Oh, shit,” Scratch said. “It could go up any second. Those rods might be melting through the bottom, like, right now!”

  “GO!” Cobb yelled. “Blades out. I’ll get fuel for it!” and they were running toward the handful of undead, rifles slung over their backs and reaching for knives. Stabby was the first one to make it to the crowd, and caught an Indian woman full in the face with his spikes when she turned, snarling, toward him. The sharpened rebar blew through the back of her skull and he twisted viciously, spinning her head, snapping her neck and slinging her to the ground. Scratch was right behind him with the wickedly sharp homemade dagger extending out of the end of his prosthetic arm running through the head of another woman, whose attention hadn’t left the boy trapped inside. He kicked her off of the spike as a man in farmer’s overalls dove at him and he backhanded him in the face with the two-inch spikes attached to the outside of his arm piece. The forward momentum of the jumping man drove them deep into his living gray matter, but the double dead thing had enough weight behind him to knock Scratch against the fuel pumps, its body crashing on top of him. He landed with a grunt, rolled out and popped back to his feet, one whole side of him covered in sickly blood and brains. Gunny, Griz, Lars and Collins all dove in with their knives and spiked knuckle dusters, slashing and stabbing, crushing skulls and breaking bones. Then there was nothing but the sounds of their heavy breathing.

  They heard doors open on the trucks and Gunny yelled for perimeter watch. “Don’t get slack now. There are more of them out there! Spread out!”

  Cobb and Tommy came running up with one of the five-gallon fuel cans they had for Sara’s bike. Tommy had grabbed one of the empties and filled it w
ith diesel from their tanker truck, spilling more on the ground than he got in the can. He shoved it into Griz’s hands and jumped up onto the catwalk behind the sleeper to look at the oversized refrigeration unit mounted on the tanker. He quickly scanned it, finding the start buttons and looking for the temperature gauge.

  “There’s no tank for fuel!” Gunny yelled, as they all urgently looked for the auxiliary tank used for reefer units, usually mounted under the trailer.

  Tommy glanced at the lines running into the refrigeration unit. “Main fuel tank!” he yelled back. “It’s plumbed directly into the truck tanks!” and Gunny scrambled to get the cap off so Griz could get some juice into the bone-dry tank.

  Cobb was directing the tanker truck they had taken from Cheyenne into the other fuel island and grabbing hoses as soon as it stopped. The rest of the crew jumped in to help, digging through the connecting fittings, looking for a reducer for the end of the hose so the fuel would come out in a more manageable stream. By the time the five-gallon can was emptied, Tommy was hitting the start switch and Lars was opening the valve to let the diesel flow from the tanker. The motor cranked and cranked, not catching. They all stood around nervously, watching Tommy as he ripped open the reefer cover, quickly scanning the connections and wires, trying to spot anything loose or disconnected. The temperature gauge showed 190. Everything looked solid, the zoms hadn’t been up on the catwalk to tear anything up.

  “It just needs to prime,” he said. Partially for them, partially for himself. “The temp in the tank is good, it’s not boiling yet.”

  There was a collective sigh. “It must have just run out of fuel, last hour or so,” Jellybean said.

  Collins was at the door of the truck, trying to open it. She was furious, yanking on the handle, pounding on it with her fist, trying to force it. The kid was looking as scared of them as he had been of the zombies, and he made no move to unlock it.

  Gunny grabbed her arm in mid swing and spun her to face him. She was livid, her face flushed with rage. They stared at each other for a moment. “What?!?” she demanded. “He’s one of them. He killed the whole fucking planet!”

  “Going to put a bullet in his head?” he asked quietly

  She glared at him saying nothing, storms in her eyes, and tried to pull her hand free.

  Gunny said, “Stand down. We need him.” He wanted to tell her to walk it off, but he’d gotten to know her a little over these last few days while riding and sleeping in the same confined quarters of a truck cab. She was a prideful woman, and he wasn’t sure she would simply be dismissed to go sit in time out. This wasn’t the place for a showdown. He didn’t want to undermine her, but she was barely in control.

  “We need him alive for now,” Gunny repeated. “I need you to take a crew and sweep the store. There may be some more hajji’s in there.”

  She held his eyes for a moment longer and he could see some of the fury drain away.

  “I wasn’t going to hurt him,” she said.

  Tommy hit the starter button again, and this time the engine fired. There was a cheer from the guys gathered around and she called over her shoulder for the entry crew.

  “Let’s clear that store,” she yelled, and they took off for the entrance.

  “Show me your arms,” Stacy was there, pulling him around to the front of the truck. At his puzzled look, she rolled her eyes. “You were just in hand to hand with infecteds’. Show me your arms. Everybody gets checked for bites.”

  “Right,” he said, and held them out for her. “Just wanted to check on Collins. She’s wound pretty tight. I think she would have throttled that kid if the door was unlocked.”

  Stacy glanced around him to where Collins had set the crew up and they were making their entry.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But she hates them on a personal level, not just the whole “they killed a few billion people” level.”

  At Gunny’s questioning look, she said, “Bunny likes to talk. She and Collins have a long history from opposite ends of the law. Anyway, Collins used to be married. Actually, I guess she still is. It was a Muslim guy, but he wasn’t one of those jihad radical types. Owned a business there in town, very much Americanized. Bunny said he came to the strip joint she worked at sometimes. He had disappeared a few days before all this went down. Collins doesn’t tell Bunny about her personal life, mind you, but it isn’t hard to put two and two together. He didn’t go to Mecca for the great Muslim Pilgrimage they were all supposed to go to this year. He took off for one of the Mosques. He’s likely on one of these recovery trucks.”

  “And he left her high and dry, to get infected,” Gunny finished. “His own wife. What a bastard.”

  “Their religion,” she said. “It makes people do crazy things.”

  “They’re not all like that,” Gunny said. “I had a translator in Iraq. Hasif was a good man, he would never be a part of this.”

  Griz walked up and shook his head as he glanced at the broken and lifeless bodies scattered around them. “All this comes from some goat herder who lived fifteen hundred years ago, that couldn’t even read or write.”

  Sara handed him an antibacterial wipe. “They need to rewrite their Koran. Take out a few dozen lines about killing everybody.” Gunny finished cleaning the blood off of his face and hands and tossed the alcohol wipe in the trash.

  “Yeah,” he said, “they need to join the 21st century.”

  Stacy sighed, looking at the horror laying all around her, nearly immune to it after just a few days. “Too late, now,” she said. “In another decade, we’ll all be back in the stone age,” then started toward Scratch with her wipes.

  Gunny glanced toward the store. There were no shots fired, so it must have been clear.

  The tanks were full, Shakey and Hot Rod were putting the hoses away. Tommy had been watching the temperature gauge and it was starting to come down. The water level inside must be fine, he surmised. It hadn’t gotten hot enough to boil off. Gunny looked up at the kid staring at them and smiled, gave him a half wave. He didn’t trust him yet. The kid might have a suicide belt on, or a hand grenade just out of sight. He’d lost friends over in the sandbox to children younger than this. But until he showed himself to be a radicalized nut job, he’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Just with his hand on his gun.

  Cobb was poking around, looking at the spent brass laying on the ground, at the cover taken off one of the fuel pumps, and the inverter laying broken on the concrete island.

  “Looks like they stopped to refuel and got taken by surprise,” he growled, an unlit Lucky in his mouth. “Pretty ingenious way of doing it, too. See that inverter? They could run electricity directly to the pump with that, bypass the switches inside the store, and fuel up like normal.”

  There was an up-armored SUV near the store, the driver door still open. He pointed to it. “That was probably the escort. And I betcha this was the first time they had to refuel. A crowd of them things probably followed them in from every farm they passed in the last twenty miles. When the runners showed up, they weren’t ready. Got taken by surprise. Bunch of amateurs.” He spat.

  Right then they heard a few shots from near the back of the convoy, and Cobb just looked at Gunny with a knowing grin.

  Gunny motioned for the kid to roll down the window. He did and Gunny asked in his half-remembered, and poorly articulated Farsi, if he was okay.

  The kid just stared at him. “Of course he’s not okay,” he thought to himself. “He had watched everybody that was with him get slaughtered, come back to life, and then try to get at him as he was trapped in a truck for the past day or so.”

  The kid looked confused. “I’m American,” he said.

  It turned out the boy didn’t know a whole lot about what was going on. Or claimed he didn’t. His father had suddenly drug them out of their home in Kansas City and took the whole family to a Mosque. They had camped out there for nearly a month, in the living quarters. The kid insisted he didn’t know anything, but he couldn’t mak
e eye contact with them when they asked specific questions. Like how long had he known about the zombie virus. Or if he was aware of how they spread it to everyone. Other families started showing up a week ago, and the place got crowded, then they barred all the doors and closed the gates to the parking lot. Two days ago his father and some other men had taken him with them to do a “Great Service for Allah”, as they put it. At first he was afraid they were going on a suicide mission, but his father had been a professor at the University teaching nuclear science. Much too important for something like that. He had ridden in the sleeper most of the time, a little afraid of the bearded men and the way his father was now acting, praying five times a day when before, he only prayed when they went to the Mosque. He knew they were going to California to get rid of the rods, but he didn’t know what they were going to do with them. He knew they were saving this country from becoming a nuclear wasteland so his people could come over here. He didn’t seem like a “radical little raghead”, as Griz quietly said to Gunny after they finished talking to him. But he sure knew enough to know what had happened, why it happened, and what the next step of the plan was. And he didn’t seem all that sorry about it.

  They were still sitting in the cafe, talking quietly. The kid was still eating junk food, beef jerky and drinking a warm Gatorade. Sara had checked him out, declared him “just a little dehydrated” and lined up some drinks on the table, told him to finish them off.

  Cobb and Griz came in with a handful of maps and papers they had gotten out of the two vehicles. Shakey had a locked briefcase and sat it on the table, then started prying the latches open with a screwdriver. Most of the people from the convoy were inside the cafe having drinks and snacks, using the restroom, or stocking up on cheap cigars. Lars cleaned out the cash register and added the bills to his growing money roll. Only the guys and gals on guard duty were still out in the midday sun. Griz, Gunny and a few of the others spoke a little Farsi, but none of them could decipher the notes. Speaking a few phrases, and reading the exotic lines and scrolls of the language were two entirely different things. But the map was marked. Their route and fuel stops were laid out, and it ended at a cove about a hundred miles south of Monterey, in California.