“Hey, asshole,” I said under my breath, as I jammed the blade up into the back of the first rotter’s skull. He dropped, giving me a path to the next.
They were all so focused on the truck, I figured there was some nice, fresh meat in there, which gave me hope Danny was alive.
We dared not call out to him then. Not yet. I didn’t know if he was in there, strategizing, holding them off, whatever. No distractions.
Something clamped down on my boot, and I heard myself cry out. I jerked my leg away to see the face of another familiar zombie. I didn’t know his name, but he’d been alive at the beginning of the day, because I consciously did not choose him for my crew before we set out. No reason; I just didn’t know him.
The largest portion of his body was caught beneath the rear of the cab, with just his head and chest protruding. I happened to stand right where he could gnaw on my boot. I raised it and brought it down hard, crushing his rotten head into the gravelly mud.
“Hurry, CB!” whispered Lilly. She was no longer behind me; now she was beside me to my left and had her own knife out. She was like a jungle guide, slash-chopping brush with a machete. I stood back and let her go at a few of the rotters on that side. I had another four to deal with on the driver’s side, which was on my right.
I plunged my knife into the ear of a woman wearing a sheer nightgown. It was appropriately pink. I thought it might be more of a teddy, because it was short and lacy. She couldn’t have been very old, because dead as she was, her breasts were still firm and … well, kinda perky.
That disturbed me more than stabbing her in the ear.
“Danny!” I called quietly.
“CB,” came the weak reply.
“Danny!” said Lilly, hearing his voice.
“Lilly?” came Danny’s voice, now tinged with fear. “Lilly, be careful! There’s more below. No idea where they came from.”
That’s how my best friend was. If it was only his life in peril, he was Mr. Cool. Put his lady’s life in danger, and nothing else mattered.
“Just a couple more baby, and we’ll get you out of there,” said Lilly, relief in her voice.
“You’d … better … be careful when you … get in here. Bobby … he changed.”
I was done dispatching the rotters on my side. I strategically used one’s head as a stepping-stone, and stood, leaning toward the window over a twisted branch that kept me about a foot away.
“Shit, I see what you mean.”
Danny was strapped in his seatbelt, hanging upside-down. The Toyota had landed at an angle, so he was pushed against the driver’s side door, his left arm pinned beneath his own weight.
With his free right arm, he was trying to stave off a man who looked like a full-blown flesh-eater now, but who used to be Roberto Mendez, aka, Bobby.
The creature growled and snapped his jaws from the passenger side. I leaned forward, trying to push my arm through the branches, but they were too thick. I saw a smaller path that might allow me to shoot it, but not under the current conditions.
Suddenly, its shoulder slipped from the seatbelt from which it hung, allowing it a couple of inches closer to Danny.
He could do no more to fight it off. I worried the snapping jaws would close on my friend’s fingers as he tried to push it away.
Danny was visibly tiring, and I didn’t think he would be able to hold the thing off for much longer.
“Hang in there, Danny. Lil!” I called.
“Kinda busy here!” she called.
I could see frantic movement on the other side, but it was obscured by the tangle of brush and the figures inside the cab of the truck.
“You okay?” I called, and Lilly grunted her answer.
“Lilly! Move away from the door. Quick!”
There was a delay. The struggling monster inside the pickup now partially fell from the seatbelt, into Danny’s lap.
Danny screamed, and the sound sent chills into my heart. “Lilly, now!”
“Okay!” she yelled.
“Danny, lean back hard!”
He did, and I pushed my back into another tangle of leaves and branches and sighted the .22 Henry onto the creature’s head and fired.
A chunk of its skull blew into the windshield, but I must’ve missed its brain because it kept shrieking and scrambling forward. I slapped the lever down, then up, and fired again, adjusting my aim down and to the left.
Dead hit. See what I did there?
I can joke about it now. The thing shut its goddamned yap and slumped forward, motionless.
I felt my tension drain, and I scrambled back around the bed of the truck to get to Lilly’s side.
“Danny?” she asked, when our eyes met.
“I’m good, baby,” he called through the now shattered window, a smile in his voice. “Just barely, but CB took care of business.”
An arm reached up from the brush beneath me and I removed my knife again and jammed it into the top of its head, thankful the blade was sharp and strong. It went limp, and I stepped on it as I reached for the passenger door of the pickup.
It was strange pulling it open when it was upside-down, but this door was clear, so I was able to open it wide after forcing it past only a few reaching branches. I reached in, sliced the lap portion of the seatbelt holding the dead Roberto Mendez in place, and he dropped to the ceiling of the truck. I grabbed him by the collar, said, “Sorry, Bobby,” and dumped him into the brush at my feet.
“You ready?” I asked, leaning inside now.
“Fuckin’ Bobby,” said Danny, devastation in his voice.
“I know,” I said. “Just a sec, and hang on. You’re gonna drop.”
Danny looked below him. “Okay. Go.”
I sliced with the sharp Bowie knife’s blade. Danny tucked his head forward so when he dropped, he landed on his shoulders and rolled to the side.
“Okay, big boy,” I said. “I’ll get your shoulders, but you’re gonna need to push with your legs.”
“Just pull, man. I’m tangled up here like a pretzel.”
His chest was practically touching his chin when I hooked him with my hands. “Lilly! Put your arms around my chest and pull when I say.”
She did, and I shifted. “You ready?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Go,” said Danny.
“Now, Lil.”
She pulled, and I dug my feet in and yanked with my arms.
All of a sudden, Danny seemed to break free, and we all tumbled backwards, landing atop dead rotters and twisted branches.
Breathing hard, we all stayed there for a few seconds. Finally, Danny started to pull himself up. Steadying himself on the truck, he leaned forward and pulled Lilly up to him and into his arms.
I rolled right and dropped my legs onto terra firma, standing up on my own.
Danny let Lilly go. “Where’s the rest of my boys?”
I couldn’t tell him they’d all been killed by the horde he’d run into. Not right then, after he saw Roberto Mendez die in front of him and become a monster.
“C’mon. They’re gone. You can tell us what happened on the way back.”
We slowly made our way back up the short embankment to the road.
The bodies of our previous team members lay still, some face-down, others staring blankly at the sky. I recognized all of those I could see from the group from which we’d chosen our teams before the road trip.
“Why do they turn when they die if they’re Indian?” asked Danny, anguish in his voice. “That don’t make any sense.”
“Maybe you lose the immunities you had in life,” said Lilly. “But are they coming back from the dead or changing at the point of death?”
I stared at her. “That’s a damned good question. Georgie and I drove by a cemetery on the way to the gun shop where we met Garland. No bodies crawlin’ out of there.”
“Man, I fucked up.” Danny shook his head.
“How’d you lose control?”
“Bobby saw smoke or somethin’, comin�
�� from somewhere over there. He pointed it out. I looked, and when I turned back, there were five of those fuckers in the road. I cranked the wheel on instinct. Damn! I shoulda just run ‘em over!”
We all tucked into the cab of my Toyota and I drove slow back to Lebanon. Danny needed some time with Lilly beside him, holding his hand. I was just glad that my best friend survived. It felt like I’d lost enough.
Ω
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lebanon, Kansas
Another two weeks passed as more people showed up in Lebanon. As comfortable as it had begun to get, falling into a routine of training and making life more livable for the survivors, the time was fast approaching to make our plans and get on the road.
Not everybody was equipped for the trip, and I guess Micky figured that would be the case. Lots of people had seen too much – way more than many soldiers. Not just strangers dying either. Children, adults. Family and friends.
And I don’t need to tell you it’s not just the dying. It’s the coming back to attack you after they died. Or changed, or whatever. It was trauma, plain and simple.
So, on Dr. Georgina Lake’s recommendation, the people of our little Kansas town formed The Lebanon Survivors Group. They met every single day for an hour, and it was all about sharing. Different people would come and go, but some of the faces were present at every meeting.
Everyone would recount the stories of what they dealt with and went through, often crying together, in some cases laughing together, but always stitching up the psychological gashes opened by things that could never been unseen.
Some went for a while, felt better, and rejoined society. There had been four suicides, but to be fair, three of those had been before the group was formed. The other had been Laura Sweeney, a 42-year-old mother who had lost all three of her children and the husband who had killed them.
Laura was so broken by the time Micky’s caravan arrived, she never spoke a word in the counseling group. After attending only two times, she’d put an end to it all.
But now I must digress and get back to the discussion of our coming trip to find Climbing Fox Wattana.
It was agreed we would choose vehicles that could hold everyone inside the cabin rather than having riders in the truck beds. This meant SUVs with third-row seats.
Our group would consist of 60 men and women. Our best fighters.
Okay, that’s not sayin’ a lot. We have a very few – maybe twenty people – who are at the top of their games. Georgie is included in that number, and that means I’d be going along, even if I wasn’t included in that twenty – though I am.
Top of our game. What does that mean? It means all of us can zip through that obstacle house in mere minutes, determine threats from victims, kill the former and rescue the latter, all in an acceptable time.
The fringe players – the ones who didn’t quite blow everyone out of the water in the testing and training, were still good shots, even if some were overly enthusiastic and prone to shoot first and ask questions later.
We didn’t know what we’d face on our way to California, and we had no idea what would happen once we got there. All I knew was we were taking way more than the .22 Henrys. We had to be ready with grenades, rocket launchers, flamethrowers, you name it. I wanted the ability to level a town – even if no towns needed leveling.
Even more importantly, we had seven members of our team who were demolition experts. They knew explosives, how to wire them, how to set timers.
One of them, Dawn Haddad, said that would allow us to place remote charges and drive rotters to specific locations with sustained, smaller explosions, or to confuse thinking attackers who might have sinister intentions.
I liked options. Options were good.
Danny had a bit of trouble overcoming the loss of his team. A day or two after it all went down, he was finally able to talk about it.
Sitting in the house he’d commandeered for him and Lilly, just south and a bit to the east of the school, the four of us sat down to discuss their portion of the trip to Red Cloud.
“After you left, we all split up, you know, to get the stuff we were there for. We all put on the radios to channel 21 and we kept in touch, just checkin’ in every few minutes.”
“Things can happen fast these days,” I said.
Danny nodded, offering what small smile he could. “Yeah, hella fast. Anyways, Micky took off to the east, and I headed north, followin’ Lilly for a bit. She pulled over and waved me up.”
Lilly touched Danny’s arm and took over. “I saw some weird stuff. Musical instruments. Cymbals, snare drums, smaller handheld instruments bands use. There were lots of skeletons, too. Rotting bodies, shreds of clothing, and a whole bunch of those … what do you call them? Tumbleweaves?”
Danny smiled and nodded.
“Yeah. So what did you figure it was?” I asked.
“Danny figured it out,” she said.
“Least I think I did,” said Danny. “What it looked like to me was people tryin’ some Pied Piper shit. Tryin’ to lead the dead out of town.”
“Drivin’ a goddamned car and honkin’ the horn makes more sense to me,” I said.
“We found something else,” said Lilly. “Small shoes. In a couple of places. We found footprints, too. Also small. Like pre-teen kids. Maybe early teens.”
“How do you know they weren’t just women’s tracks?” Georgie asked. “As the fairer sex, we do have smaller feet, generally.”
“You still wear Keds? Shoes with flashing lights in the heels?”
Georgie smiled at that and shook her head. “I’m not exactly stylish, but I try harder than that.”
I put my arm around her. Stylish or not, she was hot, and she made me horny. Flashing Keds would just help me chase her down in the dark.
“That explained the lack of zombies in town,” said Danny. “They mighta drawn ‘em to that bridge, or whatever,” he said. “I’m thinkin’ several of ‘em made it across that bridge. Not sure where they were when we were on the way up to Red Cloud, but they sure as hell popped up on us on the way back.”
“What happened, though?” I asked. “You were gonna hit the dealership and snag a bunch of new trucks.”
I thought of how his one truck was still carrying all six of his crew.
“We hit the dealership first, but there wasn’t much that would suit our needs in that small-town lot,” he said. “Then we cleared out the sporting goods store and filled up my truck. Got a ton of bats, crossbows, everything. If we go back up to where I wrecked the truck, I’m sure it’s all underneath it.”
“Easier just to find more,” I said. “I’m fine never stopping there again. Almost lost you, and any one of us could’ve died that day.”
Danny shook his head. “I’m sorry, man. Waste of a trip for me. Didn’t help a damned thing.”
“You’ll be helping a lot. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
His eyes went wide. “Tomorrow?”
“Yep. While you were crying in your beer, me and another crew went back to Smith Center. It’s closer than Red Cloud, and the Chevy dealer had a ton of SUVs. Got some 4-Runners and Highlanders. You, me, Georgie, Lilly, Micky and Garland are ridin’ together. Jimmy and Carla are both drivin’ too, bringin’ the best of their older kids.”
Danny stared at me, smiling. “You sure you wanna put all that brainpower into one vehicle? Do we need a designated survivor?”
“You might have a concussion from that crash,” said Lilly. “Georgie, would you check him out, please?”
Georgie put a hand on his face, then patted his cheek. “He’s fine. A prime specimen.”
“Hey,” I said, pointing at my chest with my index finger. “Prime.”
“I didn’t tell y’all,” said Danny, “but I drove back up there already. Not to get any supplies, just to look.”
I stared at Danny. “When?”
“That day I told y’all I was tired. I didn’t take a nap like I said.”
“That was stupid,
” said Lilly, her eyes flashing anger. “Why would you do that?”
“I had to know. I had to see why they’d have been there, on that bridge.”
“Did you figure it out?” asked Georgina.
Danny nodded. “Church bus crashed. I could just barely see it through the trees with my binoculars, from a spot about an eighth mile north of where I went through the guardrail.”
“Recent?” Georgie asked.
Danny shrugged. “Not sure when. Might’ve been coincidence, right about when this thing started.”
“Or the driver of the bus changed,” said Lilly.
“The bus did have some black stainin’ on it. Our Lady of somethin’ or other was on the side, but it was so stained I couldn’t read it. Maybe all the passengers got caught in the rain durin’ some event. Jumped in the bus and everything went crazy.”
“But why were they still there, all this time later?” I asked.
Danny leaned forward. “You know how they kinda go dormant when there’s nothin’ around to draw ‘em?”
Lilly nodded. “So they could’ve been triggered by your motor or gunshots.”
“I guess,” said Danny. “At least I have my answer. I was worried more would be comin’ from somewhere. Don’t worry; I won’t be goin’ back.”
“You feelin’ up to visitin’ Garland at the shop? He’s doin’ a number on some of the vehicles. Deckin’ ‘em out with his new welder and some steel we nabbed from Ganahl Lumber on the south end of town.”
“Y’all been busy. Where’ve I been?”
“In recovery,” said Lilly. “And you seem fine now.”
“I am,” he said, giving her a peck on the cheek. He turned to me. “C’mon, CB. Let’s see what our ex-mulleted fabricator’s up to.”
Ω
Georgie and Lilly went to find Carla Solis and Jimmy Sanchez. They were very well organized and volunteered to collect and pack all of the non-personal supplies we’d all be taking on our trip west. They had already been collecting necessities and organizing for nearly two weeks, so just final touches were necessary.
Dr. Georgina Lake was in charge of the medical supplies we would most likely need to bring along on the trip, which included lots of suture material and needles for sewing up lacerations any one of us might sustain, and one thing she insisted on bringing along were medications that could be used for nerve blocking.
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