Luther hopped on right behind them. “I kept the engine primed.”
Dean bustled into the cockpit’s seat. The backup warning alarm shrieked as he backed as far as he dared. He needed a good running start. “Everyone, hug the floor!”
He revved the engine like Evel Knievel on one of the daredevil’s preposterous stunts. He punched it, ramming the bus through the section he had cut out, knowing the bulldozer scoop would take the brunt of it.
The cacophonous crash shrilled through him, most likely alerting every dead-head west of the Pecos. Unfortunately, hundreds of dead-heads would escape. Perhaps the authorities would have their hands tied with that.
Dean caught a glimpse through the door’s cracked window as the tank’s turret swiveled, sending his skin crawling. “Son of a bitch!” He throttled it. “Stay down!” He raced for Texas State Line Road, squeezing every muscle in his body in dreaded anticipation. What if the metal door rigged to the back didn’t deflect the microwave-like blast . . .
During their previous stop, he and Luther had MacGyvered a shield by securing a hood salvaged from an old Buick to the rear of the bus. It damn well better protect them from Operation RayGun. They had even covered the side mirrors with black plastic on the off chance the weapon’s energy ray might bounce off them and onto the bus.
A minute later, maybe five—the concept of time no longer relevant when presented with the notion of getting fried alive—he pushed his way into the traffic. He must have cut off a vehicle based on the angry horn activity that followed.
“Guys, guys, we made it!” Justin was the first to shout.
Cheering took over.
But, their luck was about to run out. Dean had emptied the last jerrycan of petrol into the tank. And it was a good sixty miles to Tent City.
Chapter 25
Zachary Padilla crawled and cursed his way through the grody cement culvert that went under the highway. It was the closest entry point he had found into the Y-zone quadrant near Quinton’s, sight unseen.
He had been hiking through the zones for over twenty-four hours, avoiding the heavily surveilled quadrants. Getting by on a handful of sleep, he had holed up inside a boarded-up Dairy Queen last night. To his dismay, the RedDead Alert was still in effect with roadblocks monitoring the Zone entrances. Evidently, Last State had their hands full with the unprecedented horde attacks in the inner Zones.
After making it to the Z-zone side of the culvert, he quickly doffed the filthy maintenance coveralls he wore over his city clothes. Damn, he should have made it to Quinton’s by now. He hadn’t hitched any more rides, knowing the zomb dead body in his hotel room surely had been discovered, which meant there was a BOLO out there fitting his description.
It made him think of the unlucky Russian who had turned zomb on him. Zac brushed away the incident. He couldn’t hold on to death. Thinking of all the people he hadn’t saved . . . Couldn’t save. It tore him up inside. All he could do was keep moving, staying one step ahead of death. Knowing if he slowed down, death would surely catch him. And if anyone could outwit fate—he could. He was living proof of it. So far.
Unfamiliar with the street, Zac leisurely puffed on a cigarette and strolled toward the maze of industrial streets, acting like he belonged while he thought up a cover story in the event a cit reported a vagrant.
Last State leaned hard on its citizens. It reminded him of China. The Elites had modeled their dystopian dictatorship on the Chinese Communist Party, complete with social credit scoring, rewards for snitching on fellow cits, along with blasting propaganda across the Jumbotrons found on every corner of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
When he let himself reminisce, he missed the glory days of Old America. Meeting with friends for a night on the town, catching an action movie, and midnight sushi. Man, do I miss sushi. During his stint in New York, he could have had anything, any time of the day as long as he had the dinero to pay for it.
Keeping to the sidewalk, Zac took a right on the four-lane road that continued beyond the Forbidden Zone’s border wall. He did a double-take. Is that my—
Aw shit, it is. His truck had collided into a utility pole. So, Scarlett and friends had made it this far. Finally, some good news.
He made a beeline for the truck to investigate. Until a tow truck pulled up behind it. Zac ducked into the shadow of the bakery’s awning in pretense of another smoke. While he waited, the reflection of a Frito-Lay sign in the window told him he was closer than he thought. The tow truck driver prepped to haul the truck away. So much for clues.
It suddenly dawned on him that Scarlett was minutes away. Time to get to Quinton’s safehouse. The anticipation of seeing her eased his twitching jaw. Now wasn’t the time to lose his nerve. His brazen plans to use mission assets to escape Last State had turned out to be delusional.
What was I thinking? He had tiptoed a tightrope, negotiating with Elites, Enforcers, and smugglers. It had unraveled on him in a blink of an eye. Furthermore, Last State had seemed impenetrable. Now he realized its vulnerability. Citizens could only be controlled with the assurance of safety and food. Take that away. All it would take to topple the draconian government would be as simple as a hurricane, crop failures . . . an unstoppable strain of zombs. And the government would lose control of the populace.
Zac made it to the defunct Frito-Lay distribution center without incident. He fished around for his binoculars and reconned the Forbidden Zone’s electrified border wall to study drone activity. He zeroed in on a large gap in the fence. Interesting, it looked like a large vehicle had smashed through. Over a horde. What a disgusting mess. The border wall hadn’t been repaired. Another sign Last State had hit its limit. He scrambled to Quinton’s with a sinking feeling he wasn’t finding Scarlett today.
By the time he made it to Quinton’s safehouse, it was almost dark. Not wanting to catch a bullet in the head, he tapped on the door with a common catchy-knock. No one answered. He let himself in.
“Whoa, what happened?” The place had been turned upside down. Supplies—everywhere. Someone must have come looking for Quinton. Or me. No signs of bloodshed much to his relief.
Next on his agenda, the hidden weapons room. He and Quinton kept a cache of weaponry and survival equipment that would make any hardcore SHTF prepper envious. After numerous smuggler gigs in the Lost States of America, they had pillaged what they wanted, saving it for a rainy day. And, he was in the eye of a hellacious storm.
He slid open the false wall in the back of the closet. Nothing had been touched. He kicked himself for not mentioning the supply room to Dean. M4s, Glocks, 9mms, ammo, grenades, surveillance equipment, and cases of high-caloric power bars greeted him. “Here we are.” He selected a military tactical vest. He considered them lifesavers in the field, enabling vital items at the ready.
Famished, he slashed open a case of power bars. There might be something in the fridge, he decided. He’d weapon up after he had some calories in him. He waded through the pillaged-covered floor to check the fridge. Quinton usually kept the freezer loaded with steaks.
Although Quinton’s place was tapped into the power grid, he wasn’t sure how long the grid had been down in this quadrant. On second thought, he wouldn’t chance it. The stench of rotten food would linger for hours. “What the—” Bright pink duct tape? A note stared back at him. All it said was ZHETTO MARKET with the letters, D J L S E written on the bottom. It had to be from Scarlett and friends.
“Good to know.” Zac considered the alternatives. They must be nearby. He could scout the area on the dirt bike he had seen earlier and follow the trail of dead zombs. Fresh kills would be a dead giveaway. Still, he had to remain vigilant, knowing an unfriendly had raided Quinton’s recently.
Lost in contemplation, his thoughts wandered to Quinton. Damn, he missed him, a true friend. Visions of the helo bursting into a fireball still haunted him. He hadn’t been there when Quinton had needed him most. If I had, I’d be burnt to a crisp. He exhaled heavily. Remorse was a wicked
pill to swallow.
He finally let his mind wander to Scarlett. She could be minutes away. Or, had they returned to the lodge? No. Too dicey. What about Stanwyck’s bunkhouse? He deliberated over the possibilities while he set up the ultralight tent on the flat rooftop. He’d sleep there with one eye open in case the unfriendlies returned.
Zac set his watch alarm for 5:00 a.m. and willed answers to find his dreams. As Twila had explained, “The answers are in your dreams if you would just listen to them.” It made him smile. What a precocious kid. And Scarlett. His love for her seemed to intensify with every thought of her, which admittedly had developed into an obsession. Was it too much to ask for a decent man to hook up with a decent woman? To love one another while the dwindling population duked it out—until the end of the world.
***
Zac woke up a minute before his watch alarm went off. He lay there listening to the morning’s chirping birds and the wind whipping with the forgotten sheets on the clothesline. He stuck his head out of the tent for a deep breath—that’s when he smelled them. A horde was in the vicinity.
After splashing his face with cold water thanks to a fifty-five-gallon drum Quinton had stockpiled, he searched the perimeter with a pair of high-grade night vision binoculars. “Got cha!” The zombs weren’t as close as he feared. He had plenty of leeway. He sat down on the rooftop and took the opportunity to decipher his dreams.
Nothing came. Damn, of all nights not to remember anything. Far stranger, it was as if part of his memories had been erased, leaving a vacuum in his mind. A sudden sense of emptiness left him disoriented.
After chowing a power bar, he did a quick tai chi session to ease his frustration and stop his annoying mind-chatter. It was time to use his superpower as Justin called it, envisioning a safe pathway to a particular destination. It had worked splendidly during his wagon train cross-country trips from California to Boom Town. He had provided safe passage for many families in what had been tagged the Underground Railroad of the apocalypse.
Now, he needed it more than ever—desperate for his last chance of happiness in this decaying world. But his track record for saving loved ones was el zilcho, as if he were cursed: not a single family member had made it into Last State.
The morning sun finally greeted him. He switched out the night vision for regular binoculars to check the horde status. They ambled about aimlessly. He wasn’t ready to leave. Something seemed to be holding him back. He had no idea where he was going. Feeling more balanced, he decided to meditate on the roof.
In the past, he had merely concentrated on the safest path across rivers, deserts, and mountain ranges. He assumed it was a combination of shrewdness and luck. Now that he realized it was an acquired skill, he found it daunting.
Still, he knew he could do it. He had found Scarlett in the tunnel, but he had used crystals and Ella’s hallucinogenic tea. Ella had mentioned that since his kundalini awakening, whatever the hell that actually meant, he didn’t need crystals. They were simply tools used to awaken and amplify one’s abilities.
Sitting cross-legged on the roof, Zac inhaled deeply, letting it out slowly, and willed in tranquility. He concentrated on the lighted path to Scarlett and friends to appear under closed eyelids only to be shrouded by utter darkness.
“My kindred spirit, listen carefully to these words,” a voice streamed into his head. “You live in a quantum universe. Thought creates. Intent manifests. Choose your aspirations wisely. Will the path to safety to appear and follow with a true heart. Then, and only then, shall you traverse the entanglement of time. Thereby, evading the malevolent wrath the Ancient Ones desire. For the timeline has fractured; Humanity has two possible timelines. Nonexistence or one final opportunity for a new—untainted epoch.”
“Whoa, intense.”
The darkness gave way to a misty morning. The mist swirled and shot ahead, forming a path. To where? He focused harder. I see the path, but where’s it taking me?
A vague image of a refugee camp materialized in his mind. Tent City? That can’t be right. He concentrated on the spot in the middle of his forehead as if it were a new muscle to flex.
A pixilated scene of a busy road appeared. It vanished when a swarm of blackbirds with red-rimmed eyes pecked at his face. He snapped out of his meditational state, swatting at the invisible birds. The evil emanating the vision took his breath away for a second. Elites, he could deal with. Bad guys, he could bribe. And zombs, well, they were manageable. But how does one elude an omniscient evil?
It came to him in an instantaneous flash of insight. Scarlett and friends were on the run from this same mysterious presence, the same one that had haunted his dreams since before the Nano Com-trail flu.
With a better conception of what he was dealing with, Zac concentrated harder. He waited for the scene to play out in his mind. As the misty fog thinned, a large vehicle drove through the Forbidden Zone. An RV? No, a bus. And the hellish birds tracked them. Zac had to find Scarlett, pronto!
Chapter 26
Scarlett Lewis scurried around the bus like a harried elementary schoolteacher, making sure everyone had their packs loaded with survival essentials. According to Dean’s calculations, they’d run out of gas in ten to twenty miles. Then what? She could just see them hiking into Tent City with three kids in tow.
She kept looking through the shattered windows, expecting Enforcers with flashing lights and sirens. Meanwhile, an inordinate amount of traffic sped past the sputtering bus. The only thing going for them was that it wasn’t unusual for Zhetts to roam the upper panhandle in renovated buses. Citizens who couldn’t handle the strictly monitored Zones often opted for the nomadic lifestyle afforded by Zhetto, Last State’s ghetto.
Scarlett, Ella, and Mindy had dressed in over-sized jeans and baggy shirts, along with hats and sunglasses to disguise their gender. Ella had discovered an ingenious way to hide the babies: the Peruvian ponchos the previous owners had left in the closet. Ella and Mindy could carry the babies in the sling carriers under the ponchos. No one would notice unless Mateo or Starla started crying at an inopportune moment.
She frantically racked her brain for a way to disguise Twila while constantly battling what felt like a dark-evil force sucking away her lifeforce. It reminded her of when her third eye had witnessed the metaphysical python slowly suffocating Shari, breath by breath. Was that happening to her?
She peeked into Ella’s bunk. “I’ll be in my bunk for a few minutes. I need to clear my energy before we leave the bus.”
“Can you clear my negative energy next?” Ella asked.
“I’ll try,” Scarlett said. Of course, why had she been so self-consumed? Clearing dark and negative energies was one of her post-pandemic abilities. But, she had been running on low vibes since Zac had abandoned them for some crazy whim of escaping in a helicopter. Silver Lady, I need you. Scarlett held back the whimper from her silent plea.
She lay on her bunk, determined to recharge. While her angst played havoc with her rational brain, she struggled for that elusive blank mind state. That place where everything existed in perfect harmony, with no need to do anything but simply be.
She visualized sparkling gold and silver lights entering her crown chakra. Invoking intent, she willed cosmic prana to re-energize her physical, etheric, astral, and mental bodies.
She must have touched down for an instant. When she awoke from that hypnotic theta state, she basked in its rejuvenating energy and mentally cleared away the murkiness clinging to her. Reluctantly, she tapered down the white-light infusion before blissing-out into la-la land.
Scarlett jolted out of her meditation when the bus crossed over the road’s wake-up rumble strip. Horns blared in retaliation. The meditation had been a treat while it lasted. At least she no longer had the urge to go running down the middle of the road, screaming.
“Folks, she just conked out on us,” Dean announced, coasting to the field beyond a shallow drainage ditch.
Scarlett joined the crowd of anxio
us faces at the kitchen table.
“I’m so not ready for this.” Ella clung to Mateo. Justin darted from window to window, too preoccupied to comfort her.
Scarlett sent Ella a wave of calmness. She turned to find Twila doing the same thing. Twila’s healing abilities had grown significantly. If only she learned to accept the wrongs of this world instead of spending most her energies combatting them. Healing was the perfect distraction for the child. Especially for Dean’s chronic arthritis, she mused.
Dean strolled toward them, wearing a fearless face. The unwavering determination furrowing his brows implied they weren’t going down without a hell of a fight.
“Justin, you used to live in Zhetto,” Dean said. “How far you reckon we are from Tent City?”
Justin continued his window-to-window search. “Like twenty to thirty miles.”
“Just buy more gas.” Twila gave her silly cross-eyed face.
“Do you see any gas stations?” Justin chastised.
“Hey, what about that pop-up market we passed?” Luther asked.
“It was ’bout a mile back,” Dean informed. “Didn’t see any petrol signs.” He looked to Scarlett for the answer. “You think it’s worth a shot?”
Pop-up shops had been common across the U.S. during the great migration to Texas. Scarlett delved into her inner sanctum. A misty image of the pop-up stand formed in her mind. She scanned it for gas cans. All she saw were baskets of produce, clothing, camping equipment, and shopping carts. “That’s it!” Scarlett exclaimed. “No gas from what I saw. But—they sell shopping carts.”
Luther side-eyed her warily.
“Awesomeness,” Justin elated. “The homeless use carts to carry their stuff.”
“Yay, I can hide in the cart,” Twila said, tuning into her idea.
“I’ll go.” Justin grabbed a baseball bat.
Only The Dead Don't Die | Book 4 | Finding Home Page 23