They were wary of trying to do anything at night, and they didn’t want to try to use a car or anything else that would draw a horde in. They were going to be at the truck stop for a while and needed to stay quiet and stealthy until they were ready to go. There could be a horde a thousand-strong milling just down the road and if they drew them in with a car, they’d get trapped. You couldn’t outlast them. You needed food. They didn’t.
They left at dawn, without any equipment other than their weapons, and made their way across the bridge toward the Petro. They were running light and were ready to dash back to the river if they spotted a horde. When they crossed over the interstate, they saw gridlock in both directions as far as they could see. It was almost like a typical Atlanta day at rush hour, except for the cars stacked up along the shoulders. They didn’t see any of the undead, though. The extended firefight yesterday had drawn all of them for miles around and they’d all followed the train when it left. There might be a hundred thousand zombies chasing it across Alabama.
The Petro was deserted, but they could see the signs of the undead and trash they left behind. Discarded shoes, random bits of torn and bloodied clothing, dozens of bodies littering the parking lot with gunshots to the head. There had been a battle here, but the victors were long gone, chasing after a train.
They approached slowly, watching for crawlers, falling back into old habits of running from cover to cover. They darted between trucks, constantly looking for anything left lurking around that could alert on them and send out a keening breakfast call to any zeds still in the area. Fighting these things was a losing battle, for every one you killed, it seemed like more would show up.
They couldn’t fire up a truck just yet as an escape route, they had business they needed to get to. Like they figured, there were a few dilapidated RVs back near the mechanic’s garage that housed various people down on their luck. No signs of a CB shop, though. No towering antennas.
Jogging down a row of trucks, they were both startled to hear a quiet scream and a slap of hands against glass. Both whirled and looked up into the rotting faces of a pair of undead truckers trapped in their rig. They were both clawing at the window, snarling and snapping their teeth. Gunny and Griz kept going, leaving the muted sounds of rage behind them.
They came to the last row of trucks, where they had a clear view of the main building, and spotted what they were looking for: the tall CB and Ham antenna towering above the roof.
“So much for doing this the easy way,” Griz grumbled.
They were hoping for the CB shop to be out back in one of the RVs. It would have saved them the trouble of clearing the main building and dragging a heavy generator up to it.
Gunny said nothing as they doubled back to the RVs, just checked the path was clear and jogged out into the open, toward the mechanic's bays and campers nearby. They found what they needed almost immediately. On a cargo rack at the back of an old Winnebago, a small Honda genny was chained to the ladder that ran up to the roof. Gunny checked the fuel, while Griz used the stock of his M-4 as a pry-bar and pulled the bolts holding the aluminum ladder free from the tin. They both grabbed an end and started hustling toward the store, Gunny grimacing from the strain on his barely healed arm. It throbbed with every step, and Casey died a more violent death in his mind every time it did. After he killed a few thousand hajis, he reminded himself. And after he killed a path through all of the undead standing between him and Lakota. It never ended, the killing. Even with almost everyone on the planet dead, there were still a lot more people that needed to die. If they weren’t careful, mankind could wind up facing extinction. Gunny had considered the option of surrendering to the Muslims, briefly. Let them have the world without a fight, there were enough of them to ensure repopulation if he and Carson could convince the Russians and Chinese not to retaliate. A backward and oppressive government would rule the world for a generation or two, but the children of the victors would get tired of living under Sharia law and rebel. It was the way of the world, no government lasted for more than a few hundred years. People eventually rose up and overthrew the tyrants.
If they surrendered, allowed themselves to be enslaved or killed, it would ensure the survival of the human race, but he wouldn’t do it. He was pretty damn sure the Russians wouldn’t either. He’d rather take his chances with a few thousand survivors than submit to a billion of his enemies. It just wasn’t in him to quit.
They set the genny down near the front row of trucks and started quietly tapping fuel tanks to see how much was in them. See which ones had been shut off before all this began and which had idled for days until they ran out of diesel.
“This one is full,” Griz said on the third one he checked, indicating a well-maintained older Kenworth with a deer guard bolted to the front bumper.
Gunny nodded and tried the door.
Locked.
He tapped gently on the window and nothing came raging out at him, it was clear. He pulled out his Gerber and plunged it into the thin door metal next to the lock and sawed his way around the handle until he could pry it up enough for Griz to get his fingers around it. Once it started bending, it popped out easy enough, and he disconnected the plastic snaps that operated the door latch and the locking lever. With the door open, Griz kept watch while Gunny pried the dashboard panel loose, snapping enough of the plastic tabs until he could bend it up and get access to the back of the ignition switch. It was the same as a dozen or more he’d replaced over the years working on old cars. He cut the two hot wires, stripped them and touched them together. The power came on, and so did Black Sabbath.
“Crap,” he said and quickly reached for the radio dial as Griz chuckled. He checked the gauges, mostly paying attention to the battery gauge. It had been a month and if something had been draining them the whole time, they would be weak. It was hovering a little above twelve volts. They should be good. Gunny cut the main start wire and stripped it, leaving it dangling and ready to touch to the other two, already twisted together. He punched in the coordinates for Lakota on the GPS unit, using the ‘avoid interstates’ option, then unlocked the passenger door. As quietly as possible, they uncoupled the trailer and lowered the landing gear. They didn’t know if it would draw a crowd when the truck fired up, but they wanted to get away as fast as possible. Waiting for enough air to build up to release the trailer brakes would take too long. It was going to be bad enough waiting for the tractor pressure to build up enough for them to move.
They grabbed the generator and eyeballed the main entrance to the Petro. One of the front doors was shattered and spent brass littered the sidewalk. Impossible to say if a stray bullet caught it, or if the horde broke through by slamming into it. Either way, the store looked empty and dead. Any survivors that managed to hide themselves away would have fled long ago if they could.
They crossed the open area and placed the generator down just outside the broken doors, avoiding the brass and glass.
They went through the sprawling truck stop methodically, clearing the wide-open store and the kitchens of the restaurants. One of the plate glass windows out front was broken and they could see where a massive number of undead had clawed their way through it. Shelves were tumbled and bits of clothes and gore still dangled from the shards. They found old blood trails and mummified bodies, eaten down to the bone by tens of thousands of ants and flies, but they found no survivors or undead stumbling around.
As soon as they cleared the building, they carried the generator through the broken doors and to the radio shop. Griz started tinkering with the radios, checking power supplies and hooking the cords up to the generator.
“Wait a minute before you fire it up,” Gunny said and closed the door behind him as he slipped back out into the main store. He returned a few minutes later with an armful of cushions from the benches in the diner. They piled them around the genny to act as a sound deadener, then Griz went back to the radios, ready to start transmitting as soon as they had power. With a nod, Gunny yanked
on the little generator’s pull cord. It was a small Honda, just big enough to run an air conditioner in the camper, and it spun over easily, almost caught, and died. Gunny adjusted the choke and yanked again, this time it fired to life at a high idle. Griz hit the power switch and dialed in the right frequency as Gunny adjusted the throttle.
“Lima One Bravo, this is Papa niner Whiskey. I say again, Lima One Bravo, this is Papa niner Whiskey, how copy? Over,” Griz said into the mic. They had encryptors on the radio in Lakota, but he was on an open system, so he was careful how he worded things.
Wire Bender answered almost instantly and it didn’t take long to fill him in, speaking as best he could in code. The train had been hijacked, the Muslims were on a killing spree, the whole team dead, injured, or staying behind to nurse the wounded. Papa Whiskey and Papa Actual were on the way back in a big truck. If the train didn’t stop or make a detour, it would be there before them and the hajis on it probably weren’t the only ones. They were probably converging from all points of the compass. They would probably be hitting Lakota sooner, rather than later.
By the time Griz signed off, the smoke from the exhaust was thick in the room and it was getting hard to breathe. The second he released the mic button with the final “out,” Gunny killed the genny and they both darted from the room, seeking fresh air, already hearing the screams of the undead from far away.
Wire Bender had said they’d already started gearing up, that they’d be ready for them. Cobb was a good strategist, they’d get something set up, now that they had early warning. Wire Bender also said that a boy had come in, claiming Jessie had brought him, but Jessie wasn’t in Lakota. Gunny didn’t have time to ask him to clarify because that didn’t make any sense. He thought Jessie was dead, that’s what Lacy told him. If he had survived, why wouldn’t he be inside the walls if he made it all the way there? Maybe they meant he was out on patrol or something. Either way, his heart was singing and he was in a bigger hurry than ever to get back.
Unnatural sound carried for miles now that there was nothing but birdsong in the air. The generator was small, they’d shut it in a room and had piled cushions around it. It still wasn’t enough, there had been an undead crowd wandering around, lost in the cluster of houses a quarter mile away. They’d been running for the train and gun battle the day before and had been held up by the tall fences separating the suburb from the truck stop. Now they had meandered along its length and were milling aimlessly near the road. It only took one of them to hear the faint hum of something not natural and zero in on it. He let out a quiet keen and started running. Others joined and the closer they came, the louder it was. Soon they were sprinting and screaming, hands outstretched, seeking the fresh blood. By the time Gunny and Griz were headed for the shattered doors out of the store, a hundred dead, maybe more, were between them and the trucks. The generator noise had stopped and the frantic screaming of the undead still trapped inside the various semis was confusing everything. The pack hadn’t spotted them crouched in the lobby, but there were too many, and they were too spread out to fight their way through.
“Shit. Now what?” Griz whispered as they ducked behind the ATM machine.
The undead were roaring and chasing other screams and keens, all false alarms, but they were in a frenzy, running up and down the aisles of trucks and attacking the undead inside of them until they realized they were both on the same team. They were working themselves into an exaggerated level of violence, attacking each other on occasion with insane aggression.
“Man, if they spot us, there’s no way to secure this place. We need to find the roof access,” Griz said and they started slowly making their way back to the kitchen.
“I’ve been trapped before. This town is dead,” Gunny said. “There’s nothing out there to pull this horde away. We’d die on the roof.”
“You got a plan B?” Griz asked, carefully looking out toward the front of the store. Out of the smashed window. There were dozens in the parking lot, running after every sound they heard or thought they heard. They were investigating the cars at the gas pumps, smelling around the dumpsters.
“Maybe,” Gunny said and signaled Griz to follow him. They ran in a low crouch down the aisles in the store to the gift area. If this truck stop were the same as 90% of the others, they would have die-cast cars and trucks, stuffed animals, t-shirts, hats, pecan logs, cheap jewelry, and everything else a trucker might need for a last-minute birthday or anniversary gift. Most of them also had a small selection of remote controlled cars and drones. This one was no different and Gunny pulled the biggest Baja truck off the shelf and started opening it.
“Grab a couple of alarm clocks,” Gunny whispered. “A Screaming Meanie if they have one. Some tape, too.”
Griz understood instantly and a grin lit up his bearded face as he shuffled off to the next aisle. He was back within minutes and together, they quietly installed the batteries and duct taped a pair of the extra loud trucker alarm clocks to the top of the toy with the oversized tires.
“I’m going to send it toward the back of the parking lot,” Gunny said. “As soon as the path is clear, we’ll make a dash for the truck.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice, brother,” Griz said and turned the Screamers’ alarms to go off in three minutes. He grabbed a handful of candy bars and stuffed them into his cargo pocket and Gunny did the same. They had a long drive ahead of them.
The zombies were still running around chasing noises when they set the truck down in the lobby and hid. Gunny ran it slowly, quietly down the sidewalk and out to the parking lot before he gave it the juice. The little truck made the whirring noise that cheap remote-controlled cars do, and the undead started to turn toward it, not exactly sure what it was or if they should give pursuit. When the alarms went off within seconds of each other, with their ear-piercing shrieks and the little truck took off, they couldn’t resist. It was screaming and running, it must be conquered. They didn’t smell the blood, but that didn’t matter. Gunny jagged around a few of them and that was all it took. Horde mentality took over and the keening roars were answered all over the parking lot as they converged on the shrieking little thing running away from them.
When the last stumbling woman ran past the door, Gunny and Griz sprang to their feet and sprinted for the Kenworth. Gunny jumped in the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind him as he tapped the starter wire to the already spliced hot wires. The Kenny fired right up and Gunny didn’t spare the motor. He floored it and let it roar, hurrying the air pump to build up pressure so he could release the brakes.
Half of the horde were still chasing the little pickup truck toward the back of the parking lot, and the other half turned at the sound of the diesel revving. It only took a minute for the air to build up enough and by the time the undead were slamming themselves into the doors, Gunny was grabbing gears and charging for the exit. He plowed down dozens that managed to catch them, the deer guard protecting the radiator, splashing bone fragments, teeth and gore from snarling faces across the windshield. The truck rocked violently as it bounced over scrabbling corpses, sending rotting guts squishing out like a fist slammed on a ketchup packet.
Gunny made a left on the road and took off in the opposite direction of the rest of his team, wincing a little as he fought the steering wheel, the pain still stabbing through the hole in his arm. They didn’t want any broken, undead things crawling past the warehouse hours from now, maybe alerting on it and the survivors inside, somehow.
On their way out of town, they only ran into one giant horde near a Walmart: ten thousand milling undead packed into the parking lot and spilling out into the surrounding roads. By the time most of them got turned and started the chase, Gunny had plowed through the few on the outskirts and was upshifting through the maze of cars. They kept ahead of the horde that was screaming and keening behind them, until they finally knocked the last of the cars out of the way and found some open road.
The man on the roof ran for the access do
or. He had good news to tell the others. They finally had a chance to escape, some truckers had led the horde off.
Gunny aimed the long nose of the Kenworth onto the secondary streets and kept the speed up. By the time they were barreling down a county road out in the suburbs, the horde was long gone from their mirrors. They were going to cross the Mississippi near Helena, one of only four bridges that crossed the mighty river between Memphis and Baton Rouge.
Griz hopped up out of his seat once the excitement was over and started going through the cupboards, looking for anything to eat, the gore smeared on the windows not bothering him in the least. All they had was a few candy bars, neither one of them had thought to grab any real food from the truck stop. Too busy trying to stay alive.
“Hey, now!” he said with a smile. “Look what I found!”
Gunny glanced over his shoulder at the open cabinet, knowing it was either guns or food, the only two things that would get Griz excited. It was food. He’d discovered a trucker’s stove, a little hotbox that plugged into the cigarette lighter, and cans of beef stew. Gunny was steering with his knees and they were eating hot Dinty Moore and crackers by the time they crossed over into Alabama.
29
Lakota
“You can’t send anyone out after him?” Lacy was nearly ready to explode in relief, anger, and desperation.
“He didn’t want to come in, he left of his own free will, and we have no idea where he is,” Cobb said again. “He went north. Do you know how much north there is north of here?”
“But he’s just a baby,” Lacy said, her eyes filling again. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Martha came into the war room where the men were gathered, putting together last-minute plans. They were preparing for the worst, hoping for the best. Worst case scenario, they had less than a day, the earliest the train could make it. Realistically, they expected it would take them a week or more to gather forces and launch an attack, but they would be ready if one came earlier.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 82