“Let’s go outside,” he said “Get some air.”
He led them out and toward the trucks, giving them a minute to wrap their heads around the fact that their imprisonment was over, and let it sink in that they had been killing themselves by what they’d been eating over the past week.
They stared at the piles of dead on the lawn and Gunny knew they must have known every fallen body they saw. As hard as it was on the Three Flags survivors to see the bodies everywhere those first few days at the truck stop, this was much worse on these poor people. He had more bad news to tell them about the nuclear reactors, and he hoped they wouldn’t crack completely with it. There was nowhere they could stand without seeing the dead strewn around town from their bullets and blades, so he told them all to load up, they would take them out to the grain elevator, get some hot coffee in them. Get away from the carnage. He radioed ahead to let Martha know they had a shell-shocked group coming in, and told Jellybean to make sure there weren’t any dead bodies from last night laying around. “Drag them off behind the buildings,” he said. These people had seen and lost enough.
None of them wanted any breakfast, but they relaxed a little inside the circle of trucks and the ministrations of Sara and Stacy. Martha fussed over them and insisted they drink tea as they gathered around the campfire in the center of the ring.
As it turned out, this small group had survived because they had denied themselves the meat, saving it for the kids and teenagers from the school. Parceling a little out each day, trying to make it last. Their kindness had killed. A few of the men from the American Legion had done what was necessary to all of the victims of the infection, and they had indeed stacked them up in the basement. Nearly ninety people, most of them under the age of sixteen. As their story came out over coffee and tea, there wasn’t a dry eye listening. The women in the tour bus held their children close and openly wept. It had all been so avoidable, and that made it even worse.
Gunny was in a hurry to continue, but he knew this was important, this had to come out now because it was therapeutic in its way. He could only hope Jessie and Lacy weren’t suffering the same fate, eating meat infected with the disease. These few remaining men and women had to understand it wasn’t their fault, they needed the hands on their backs, the tears of the survivors to blend with theirs, if they were ever to heal and not bite a bullet a week from now when the guilt became too much. There were many hugs, many wails of sorrow, and when he told them how the meat had been infected, many promises of revenge. Bastille was there, filming everything, but he was actually decent about it, keeping his distance and being unobtrusive.
When Wire Bender finally asked about the radio transmitter, the man who had been waving the gun at them stood and left the small group of Crow City survivors. It turned out he was a council member, and was familiar with the workings of the courthouse. “Let’s go back into town, I’ll show you what we have,” he said.
Gunny quietly got Collins’ and the boys’ attention and nodded them over to Scratch’s truck. He wanted backup in case more unwanted guests wandered in from somewhere.
It was an old civil defense emergency broadcast system that had been repurposed as the high school football, and farm report, radio station. If the locals couldn’t make it to a Cougars game, they could listen in on the 5,000 watts from the city hall. Wire Bender poked around at the equipment. It was all very old, maybe last upgraded in the 70s, but functional.
“What’s powering your generator?” he asked.
“Natural gas feed, right off a wellhead,” he said. Collins, still in her uniform and professional looking as ever, gave a slight frown. Gunny doubted if she even knew she was telegraphing her disapproval of ‘lawbreakers.’ He almost smiled to himself at Griz’s ongoing tweaking of her every chance he got, doing things that would have been blatantly illegal last week, and now she had to ignore it. Like teaching the kids how to file down the sear on their .22s, and make them full auto.
The Councilman noticed, though, and quickly started to assure her that city hall was exempt, but caught himself. It didn’t matter now. Most of the rules and laws they once abided by, that kept society civil and functioning, were irrelevant now. He supposed the Ten Commandments were still in effect, but not many of the others.
Wire Bender was looking at the cables and had the panel open at the primary transmitter, blowing the dust off of the breakers and wiping at other components with the sleeve of his shirt.
“You know this was originally a 50,000 watt CONELRAD station?” he said, as he looked into their blank stares. “From the Cold War,” he went on to explain. “Back in the 50s and 60s, when we thought the Rooskies were going to nuke us at any moment. These transmitters were all across the States and would broadcast on the AM band to let you know you were getting ready to die.”
“Will it still work?” Gunny asked. “Is there some way to get all those watts flipped on again so the signal will get out farther?”
“How big a genny you got running this place?” Wire Bender asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said “but it runs the whole building, it’s a pretty big one.”
“Only one way to find out,” he said as he opened more panels and started throwing circuit breakers and adjusting dials. The lights darkened and the generator strained under the sudden load, but they came back to normal. They all glanced up, watching them but after the initial dimming, they seemed just fine.
“It’s pumping out 50,000 watts now,” Wire Bender said, then after a minute shut it back down. “A couple of you come with me outside, I need to check the antenna. Gunny, if you want to record a message, we can set it up in a continual loop.”
The Councilman showed them to the little studio and set up a Fidelipac cartridge for Gunny to tape his message on and he sat down at the microphone. Councilman Mike hit the switch and gave him a nod to let him know it was recording. Gunny didn’t know what to say, he hadn’t thought this far in advance, just as far as getting to the town and securing the studio. He felt a little like some third world guerilla, taking over the local station and broadcasting a Marxist message that it was time for the proletariat to rise up against their bourgeoisie oppressors. His brain was drifting off into weird tangents again.
He stared mutely at the microphone, not knowing where to begin. Not knowing where these crazy thoughts that ran through his head came from. He didn’t want to say too much because the enemy would hear it also. If he told them where they were going, they would know where to attack the survivors. If he didn’t tell them, the survivors might just run from one danger zone to another, maybe one even worse. They watched him and as Mike reached to flip the switch, to let him gather his thoughts, Gunny started talking.
“This is Sergeant First Class Meadows of the 1st Special Forces Operational Group, recording this message on the 22nd day of September. I don’t need to tell anyone listening what is happening, you already know. We figured out that the contamination is in the meat, so if you have any, throw it away. What you may not realize, though, is that you are all in danger of radioactive fallout from the failing nuclear power plants scattered around this country. You have less than a week to get out of the danger areas. That’s a best-case scenario. You may only have hours. There is a region the United States Government has determined as a Safe Zone in Oklahoma, and the President is relocating there. It is lightly populated, so we will be able to eradicate any of the undead easily. There is a large group of us leaving Crow City in Kansas and heading to the town of Lakota, Oklahoma. We are reestablishing our country, starting there. It is an area out of the fallout zone when the power plants melt down. Anyone within the sound of my voice, we urge you to make your way to us. Be careful when you stop, the undead will follow for a long time. Expect them to show up, even if you’ve left them behind miles ago. We hope to be there in two days, on the 25th. We are monitoring the Citizen’s Band radios on Channel 9 and if you have Ham, we are on 27.185. We’ll see you there. Good luck and God Speed.”
&nb
sp; He looked up and Mike turned off the recording switch, loaded it into the Cart player, and set it to repeat. Gunny just couldn’t bring himself to say, “This is the President speaking”, so he fudged it a little. If anybody was disappointed when they found out the truth, too bad.
“It’ll loop that same message until the generator dies or the tape breaks,” he said. “Those cartridges are ancient, so I imagine it will go before the genny.”
Wire Bender and the boys were coming back in as he finished.
“We’re good,” he said. “I’ll throw the switches back to 50,000 watts and we can get out of here.”
“What about all of our dead?” Rivers asked. “We can’t just leave them laying around. They’re our friends, our family. We need to bury them.”
They all looked at him, then to Gunny, leaving it to him to say what needed to be said. The tape was on its second loop and the part where he was saying they only had a week, maybe only hours, to get out of the fallout zone was playing. They listened and he looked at them looking at him. He lowered his head, closed his eyes and accepted a hard truth.
“You’re right,” he said. “We should leave.”
As they made their way back to the trucks, Gunny bent over the Sheriff and closed his glassy and unstaring eyes. He unpinned the shield he had worn over his heart and pocketed it. He was thinking it was time to promote Deputy Collins.
12
Back on the Road
Councilman Mike Rivers insisted on driving his own pickup truck. He thought it would be safe enough, if he traveled in the middle of the convoy. Besides, he needed to start exercising his authority, he was on the city council, after all. These men had come into his town and run roughshod over him, and even if they were right, it stuck in his craw that they hadn’t asked his permission to do anything. They just came in like they owned the place. It may have been petty, but he didn’t want to be stuck without his own means of transportation. Once they got to this Lakota town, they would need a mayor, or maybe even a governor, if there wasn’t one to be found. This General they kept talking about should know who had survived and who hadn’t. The president was going to be there, according to the truckers. Maybe he could appoint him to a governorship. He just needed to start showing these folks he wasn’t one to be pushed around so easily. He’d take his own truck, thank you very much, and scout out the town once it was safe. He needed to establish a new headquarters, after all.
By the time they got back to the rigs it was going on early afternoon. They could get another few hundred miles down the road, maybe the other side of Dodge City, if they hustled.
Sara already had her route planned out and as they pulled in, she took off to start scouting. The rest of the cars and trucks were already lined up and idling, eager to get rolling. Within a few minutes, they were leaving the town behind to quietly rot in the Kansas sun. Let the dead bury the dead.
They zigzagged through the high plains of Kansas on the secondary roads, rarely seeing anything moving. The houses were spread far apart, and the endless fields of sunflowers or wheat did little to break the monotony of the drive. It was quietly beautiful, the tens of thousands of unharvested acres they passed. The wheat was dancing like water on the breezes, and the drying sunflowers had their heads bowed, most of the yellow petals gone. The few small towns they passed through were empty, doors open and curtains flowing in the shifting of wind. Even out here in the middle of nowhere, the delivery trucks had brought their toxic load. Gunny knew there were still survivors in the various secluded farms. They picked up an occasional faint transmission on channel 9, and a few more big rigs joined the convoy when they crossed over Interstate 70. The radio loop Gunny recorded was coming in strong, even in the daytime, and they knew it would blanket the whole country at night. Anyone scanning a dial hoping for something, would be able to hear it.
Their convoy was growing, nearly eighty people in all. The bus was at capacity and newcomers in their cars and hastily packed pickup trucks joined in on occasion. All of them fleeing the fallout they thought was coming from the reactors melting down. Gunny had intentionally left out any mention of the organized teams decommissioning them, they didn’t want the Muslims to know that they knew, it would tip their hand. It would let them know that the sleeping giant wasn’t quite ready to roll over and be dead. They would learn the lesson the Japanese had known 80 years ago.
Admiral Yamamoto had said, “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
Gunny wholeheartedly agreed. There would also be heavy machine guns, artillery, and tanks. A few Apaches with Hellfire missiles and 70mm rockets, too, if they could find a pilot. But he needed an army. It was a little deceptive of him not to mention that the nukes might not melt down, but he thought it was worth it. It was better for the people to be gathered and strong, than spread out in tiny groups all over. They were already putting together tentative plans to take out the mosques one at a time. Their own version of Jihad. Kill them all and salt the earth with their blood. Crush their enemies, see them driven before them and hear the lamentation of the women, as Conan would say. Now that he knew Lacy and Jessie were safe at home, he wasn’t feeling the pressure to rush. If they were alive now, they’d remain alive. The infected meats were all long spoiled by now. He’d get this group to Lakota, make sure they were settled in and could survive, then he’d go to Atlanta.
“This is interesting,” Sara came over the radio.
“What have you got?” Deputy Collins asked, hitting pause on the iPod, shutting down one of Gunny’s favorite songs from Floored.
“It’s a utility truck surrounded by Zeds. There are a couple of guys in it and they’re still alive.”
“Bring the dead ones back to us. We’ll take them out,” Collins replied, then keyed up the other radio that was on nineteen to let them know they would be stopping for a quick rescue.
They saw her in a few minutes, leading a small crowd behind her, going slow enough to keep their interest, far enough ahead so she wouldn’t have any more close calls. When she saw the trucks, she revved her bike, brought up the front wheel and waved as she zipped by them riding a wheelie. Collins grimaced and shook her head, Gunny laughed then dropped a gear and hammered on it. He was trying to see how far he could send the bone broken cadavers flying off into the field when they bounced off the plow. There were at least twenty of them, a surprising number for this far out in the middle of nowhere.
They came up to the electric company boom lift truck another mile down the road, and it still had a half dozen undead gathered around it, reaching for the two men in the bucket. The zombies were single-minded in their hunger, ignoring the rumbling semi as it pulled up, still dripping blood and trailing innards from its blade.
The men in the bucket were a good 20 feet off the ground and were waving at them to stop. Gunny rolled his window down and hollered up to them.
“You boys need a hand?”
They looked gaunt and sunburned and after a moment, the taller one yelled back down.
“If you don’t mind. I put an ax in Simon’s shoulder and now he’s a little pissed off. Won’t leave us alone.”
They still had a sense of humor. They’d be all right. Gunny took the scene in and it was pretty easy to figure out what happened. They’d been repairing a line when they’d been attacked by the people who lived in the nearby houses. Two of them had managed to get in the bucket and get up off the ground. The toolbox doors were open on the side of the truck, so they had managed to get an ax out and kill a few, but it was stuck in the shoulder blade of another utility worker wearing a safety vest. Other tools were laying on the ground. A crowbar, a pair of bloody long handled cable cutters, and a hammer or two. They had tried, that was obvious. The five or six dead ones laying on the ground were trampled almost unrecognizable by days of being stomped on by all the others. The truck wasn’t idling so it must have run out of diesel and they were stuck.
Gunny and Collins made s
hort work out of the remaining undead. He backed up the road a hundred yards then got out and called to them. The zeds had ignored the rumbling truck, but not fresh meat standing out in the open. They picked them off one by one from a safe distance with the rifles as they came running toward them.
The men in the bucket truck were using the very last of the battery power to lower themselves to the ground as the rest of the trucks pulled up and people got out to stretch their legs.
Collins gave them some energy bars and Gatorade, then caught them up on what had happened since they’d been stranded. They’d been up there for over a week, surviving on only the three lunches they’d managed to snag out of the cab of the truck with the telescoping wire pole, and the orange 5-gallon water cooler that had been strapped to the bed. They hadn’t known any of the details of the events that had happened, but it didn’t take a whole lot of brains to figure out it was bad. They hadn’t seen any cars driving down the road since the first day, and they figured they were the only people left alive for miles because the zombies just kept trickling in, day after day. They had tried to kill them after the first night in the bucket, and they realized no one was coming to help. They’d gotten a few, but when the truck ran out of fuel, they used the emergency batteries to just take them up out of reach, hoping someone would come along and help.
Cobb had guards out on both sides of the convoy and when he and Martha came up with a bag of food for the men, they had finished their story and Gunny was telling them where they were going. About the town they hoped to liberate from the undead and start again
Cobb listened for a minute then interrupted.
“We’re got to get rolling, we’ve got a long way to go. We’ll top off your truck, we’ve got plenty of diesel, and you’re welcome to come with us.”
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 42