Books of the Dead | Book 9 | Dead of Winter

by Spears, R. J.

  I pushed past the others standing at the top of the stairs and moved out into the foyer of the building. It was a wide-open affair, reminding me of an atrium. Just like before, debris lay strewn around the floor, and also like before, the bulldozer sat outside looking just as dead as it did every time I had seen it.

  The battery felt heavy in my hand, making me question if it would actually start up the bulldozer. If it didn’t, we’d be forced to either try the tunnels or the surface streets to get back to the research building. Neither of those was appealing. But when you considered it, neither was probably as dangerous as trying a run for the river in a bulldozer. A bulldozer that would make enough noise to attract the attention of every zombie in the area.

  I eyed the bulldozer, specifically the cab. It was a big cab, and it was closed in glass, but it was going to be a tight fit for two. Getting four people in there would be a real squeeze. The only thing we had going our way was that Naveen was fairly small.

  I looked to Lori and said, “You and Naveen hold back here while Alex and I get the battery installed in the bulldozer. Okay?”

  She nodded her head but looked nowhere ready to take part in a mad dash for the bulldozer and even less mentally prepared for the run to the river.

  “We’ll be back to get you,” I said, and I turned to Alex and asked, “You ready?”

  “No, but I’ll do it anyway,” she said.

  “Let’s move toward the windows and get the lay of the land,” I said.

  With that, we moved slowly forward. As we did, I learned that the battery was, indeed, a heavy son of a bitch, just as Richard had said.

  Once we made it to the front windows, I took in a panoramic view of the area outside. It was wide open with a span of concrete and asphalt. Trees and weeds gone wild, stuck up from place to place. Complimenting the area was a handful of zombies, all ambling around seemingly without purpose. I knew if they saw us, they would find a purpose and find it fast.

  “We have to edge around the bulldozer and use it to screen us from the deaders out there,” Alex said.

  “I can see that,” I said, “but it’s going to be tricky to get that battery in, and if it does work, then every zombie in the area is going to come on the run.”

  I took a moment to contemplate our next move. “Okay, here’s how it will go. The two of us get the battery in place and then we get Lori and Naveen inside the cab. Then we start it up, and we drive our way down to the river.”

  “That and other dreams will get us to fairyland, too,” she said.

  “Has anyone ever called you Miss Morale Builder?” I asked.

  “Why, no, Joel. What are you implying?” She asked, knowing full well what I was asking.

  “My mother used to say, if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.”

  She let out a long breath. “Well, if that’s what your mother used to say....” she said.

  “If we’re done with that, are we ready to go?” I asked.

  She knew she was close to my limit, so she just nodded her head in acquiescence.

  I looked out at the bulldozer. It looked inert, making me think of a gravestone, but I truly hope that it wasn’t that dead.

  I looked back to Lori and said, “You keep Naveen and yourself out of sight.”

  She nodded and put a protective arm around Naveen.

  I picked up the battery and said, “Come along, Alex, the game is afoot.”

  “Super nerd,” she said.

  We made our way across the foyer toward the front windows. Three zombies drifted by the back of the bulldozer, and we pulled up behind a support beam to let them pass. In all the times I thanked God for those undead bastards for being slow, this was one of the few times I wished that they just might speed up. They seemed to be moving at the speed of a turtle.

  “Want to play I Spy?” Alex asked in a soft whisper.

  “Shut up,” I hissed out.

  The trio of the dead passed by and disappeared from view. In the distance, I saw two more, but they were moving away from us.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We got out from behind the support pillar and headed for the biggest open space in the windows. Jagged glass lined the gap, looking like the open mouth of a giant shark. To get through it unscathed, we had to turn sideways, which was easier said than done as I still had to carry the battery. I made it through, but a piece of broken glass grazed the arm of my coat, cutting a crease through the sleeve.

  We eased up next to the bulldozer, and I nuzzled up to Alex. I lifted the battery and asked, “Do you know anything about where this goes?”

  “Oh Geez,” she said. “You’re hopeless. Give it to me. My dad was a mechanic. I can figure it out.”

  I was excessively happy to be rid of the battery.

  Once I handed it over, Alex said, “You watch for deaders.”

  “I got you covered,” I said.

  “You betcha,” she said and pulled herself up and onto the front of the bulldozer. I flipped around and scanned the area for deaders. It didn’t take long to spot one. Four, really, but they were up the street almost a block away. They moved toward us, but on a diagonal line that kept them from having a direct sightline on the bulldozer.

  A creaking noise sounded behind me, followed by a slight metallic bang.

  That caused me to jerk around, and I glared up at Alex.

  She looked down at me and whispered, “This thing has been out in the elements for over a year. It’s gotten a little rusty.”

  I twisted back around to check the deaders, and one broke away from its pack and started toward us.

  “You’d better move fast,” I whispered. “We’re going to have company soon.”

  “This is going to take some time,” she said. “You might have to handle it.” She added, “Quietly.”

  The zombie had clearly spotted us but was alone. At least for now. It was creeping at a snail’s pace, so we had some time. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and pulled my bat out.

  Alex tinkered with something and let out a quiet curse. The zombie was locked in and on a beeline right at us.

  When it hit fifty feet away, I asked, “You have a progress report?”

  “I need more time,” she said.

  I sucked in a long breath, and it cooled my lungs and calmed my nerves a bit. The zombie hit the twenty-five-foot mark, and I clutched my bat in both hands, readying myself for the zombie.

  Twenty feet. Fifteen feet. Ten. I brought my bat back and felt all my muscles tense up.

  The zombie made it to within five feet of me, and I uncoiled all my muscles and released all that tension. The head of the bat smacked into the side of the zombie’s head, and its skull collapsed in on itself. The zombie spun around in a tight circle and went down in a pile of bones and flesh.

  “Got it,” Alex said behind me.

  I turned back to her, and she said, “Climb up here and let’s see if this battery cranks this thing up.”

  I glanced back into the building and saw Lori looking out at us. I shot my index finger up in the universal gesture of, ‘wait a minute.’ I pulled myself up onto the bulldozer and walked down the treads toward the cab. As soon as I got there, I opened the door and eased inside. Alex followed me in.

  “Look at all these controls,” she said. “It’s like a simplified version of the space shuttle. You know how to start and drive this thing?”

  “Brother Ed walked us through it,” I said.

  That had been in theory, though. Staring at the actual controls intimidated the shit out of me, but I did my best not to let that show.

  “The first step to see if it even starts,” I said. “If we can’t pull that off, then we’re done, anyway.”

  “You do have a point,” she said. “Get Lori and Naveen here.”

  I leaned out of the cab’s door and motioned for Lori to bring Naveen to us. From the expression on Lori’s face, it looked like the last thing she wanted to do. Despite that, she grabbed Nave
en by the arm and tugged her forward.

  I scanned the area, and while it wasn’t zombie-free, we had as clear a moment as we probably ever would have. It took mere seconds for Lori and Naveen to make it to the bulldozer. I helped Lori up and then lifted Naveen up onto the treads. I stepped back into the cab, and Lori and Naveen quickly followed me, wanting to be behind something that might protect them from the zombies in the area. They hadn’t quite figured it out that the cab would be the place we would die of starvation if the dozer didn’t start up and the zombies swarmed in on us.

  The cab felt as cramped as a telephone booth. Remember those? They were things you made phone calls from when you were out and about before cell phones made them obsolete.

  “You got this figured out yet?” I asked.

  Alex shot me a heat sideways glance and said, “Starting it is the easy part. That is if the damn thing does start.”

  “What are you saying?” Lori asked.

  “Well, Brother Ed was our driver,” I said. “We...uh...sort of need to figure that part out on our own.”

  “Really?” Lori asked as her eyes widened.

  “But Brother Ed gave us some pointers,” I said, trying to reassure Lori that I could pull this off.

  Naveen put an arm around Lori and said, “Don’t worry, Lori. Joel has a plan.”

  In my head, a voice said, I do?

  My mouth said something entirely different. “Sure. Sure, I do.”

  There was no denying the obvious. If the bulldozer didn’t start, we were going nowhere fast. I eased in front of Alex, grabbed the same key I had unsuccessfully turned on our last trip, and turned it.

  In that first second, nothing happened, but then there was a slight hum, low but resonant. All the lights on the dashboard lit up, and a moment after that, the bulldozer shuddered as if it were a giant dog shaking off water.

  “Whoa!” Alex said, shooting out an arm and placing it against the cab’s window to steady herself.

  The shuddering continued to grow, shaking all of us around inside the cab. We bounced off each other, and Lori looked on the verge of a scream. It all seemed to be growing to some kind of terrible crescendo.

  That crescendo hit with an explosive sound that was followed by a dark cloud of smoke blowing out of the exhaust of the bulldozer and into the air. The world went dark for a moment as the smoke cloud enveloped the cab.

  Then the shudder slowly subsided, and the big beast settled down to a rumbling purr.

  I said, “Ladies and gentleman, we are in business.”

  Chapter 40

  Wagon Ho

  The question was, Now what?

  “Alex, you got an idea of how to drive this thing?” I asked.

  “I know as much as Brother Ed told us,” Alex said. “Of course, all that was theoretical. Being told something and doing something are two very different things.”

  “Well, yeah, but you’re a better listener than me,” I said.

  She shifted my way and lifted an eyebrow. I knew she was about to say something sassy, but the task at hand must have been more important.

  She pointed at a long pedal and said, “I think that is the gas pedal.” She moved her finger to the next pedal and said, “That’s what I presume to be the brakes. All these other levers move us back and forth and lift the shovel.”

  I raised my eyes from all the levers, shifters, and dials and then took a look at the effect of all the noise the bulldozer had made when it started up. Predictably, every zombie in the area had turned their beady little eyes on us. Things were going to get very interesting, very, very soon.

  “We gotta move,” I said. “The deaders around us will be on their way to us fast.”

  “Well, shit, Joel, I hadn’t thought of that,” Alex said as she plopped into the driver’s seat. She let out a long sigh, then said, “I guess this will count as on-the-job training.”

  She reached and grabbed a lever and yanked it back. The massive shovel on the front of the dozer shot upward.

  “Oops,” Alex said. “Not that one.”

  She released the lever, and the shovel fell, hitting the ground like a giant sword, clanging loudly. Then she went to work on a new tactic. The bulldozer jerked forward, smashing through what was left of the glass on the front of the building, sending glass crashing to the ground. It shattered around us like a thousand symbols being hit all at once, causing me to cringe. So much for a quiet exit.

  Lori screamed, and I was close to following her. All the passengers reached for anything to hold. It was going to be a bumpy ride.

  Alex slammed on the brakes, and we all pitched forward. I fell toward the driver’s seat and almost toppled over Alex’s shoulder.

  When I got myself upright, I said, “Don’t do that again.”

  “Hey, mister, I’m doing the best I can!” Alex shouted.

  I said, “I know, I know. Do what you can.”

  Alex went to work, and the bulldozer made a slow right pivot, smashing more of the glass from the front windows and sending it crashing to the ground. With all the noise we were making, we might as well have brought a 150 piece marching band to play a John Phillip Sousa tribute.

  When I gazed out the windows, I saw more and more zombies flood into the area, coming in from nearly every nook and cranny. What I could tell was they all were heading right at us.

  “Alex, you have to get us out of here,” I said.

  “I’m working on it,” she grunted out. “Through the process of elimination, the next thing to do is this.”

  She pressed a lever forward, and her feet went to work on some of the pedals out of my sight.

  The bulldozer rolled forward and into the plaza in front of the building. We did not move at blazing speed, but we were making forward progress. Yipee!

  Whenever I had ever seen a bulldozer plod along as a kid, it looked like a giant and very gentle turtle. At least, from the outside. From the inside, it was like being in a bouncy house.

  “Look out!” Lori shouted as a small group of zombies shuffled into our path.

  “Fuck them,” Alex said, and she goosed the gas pedal, rolling the bulldozer right over the deaders. I know it was just my imagination because the bulldozer weighed fifty tons, but I could swear that I felt it jump a little as we smashed the zombies flatter than pancakes. Bloody, mushy pancakes.

  “Sorry, Naveen,” Alex said. “I’ll watch my language.”

  “No worries,” Naveen said, “I’ve heard Joel use that word.”

  As a parental figure, I felt really, really shitty at that moment, but I knew we had bigger problems.

  “Alex, we need to turn and head west,” I said.

  “Working on it,” she said as she frantically pushed on levers while her feet pressed on pedals out of view.

  Somehow, Alex put us in a long arcing turn, muscling the big beast to face westward. The only problem with that direction was the whole shit ton of zombies down that way had suddenly decided that we were the most interesting thing on the planet. That put us on their menu.

  “Oh my God,” Lori said as she peered down the street to the west.

  It was a sight to behold. There was no way to count them all, but my estimation was two or three hundred. That might have been conservative.

  A mob of at least thirty zombies filled the street directly in front of us. Each one of them had a hungry look in their eyes.

  “They are going to get us,” Naveen said as she clutched onto my arm.

  “No, they are not,” Alex said, and she pressed down the gas pedal. “This is going to be fun.”

  She lowered the big shovel on the dozer, and sparks shot off the pavement as the shovel scraped along the pavement. The wrenching screech from the shovel raking along the ground sounded like a dinosaur scream.

  The zombies didn’t seem to care. Not one shit.

  Just as the bulldozer plowed into the mass of zombies, Alex pulled back on a lever, and the next thing I saw was the shovel jerking up into the air. It was full of wr
iggling zombies. Once it hit its apex, Alex flipped another lever, and the shovel tipped violently forward, spilling what was in the shovel onto the rest left in the street. The collision of bodies was tremendous as the whole mess of them ended up in a tangle of arms and legs.

  “Yee-Haw!” Alex said as she rolled the dozer over the pile of bodies.

  “Hey, don’t let it go to your head,” I replied. “We have a helluva lot more zombies to get through.”

  “Listen up, little Joelly, I’m driving a fifty-ton killing machine.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” I said, again.

  “Shut your yap,” she said.

  We continued to rumble along, bouncing westward. All the racket we were making had caught the attention of the horde of zombies far down the street. Their numbers were a factor larger than what we just ran over in the street. I knew the bulldozer was quite heavy, but I had my doubts that we could make it through that many zombies.

  But really, what did I know? The only thing I knew was that we had to get to the river, which would take us on a path right through all those zombies.

  “Where are those canoes?” Alex asked.

  “To the west of the intersection down there,” I said, pointing past Alex’s head.

  She cut the bulldozer hard to the left, causing Lori, Naveen, and me to stumble to the right. My shoulder rammed into the side of the cab.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked with some alarm in my voice.

  “Taking evasive actions,” Alex said as she leaned forward. “There might be too many of them for us to take them head-on.”

  She piloted the bulldozer down a side street that ran by one of the smaller buildings in the complex. I wasn’t as familiar with the area as Alex and Richard, but this move wasn’t going to gain us much. We were basically running parallel with the river. This street just circled the building and dropped us back on the same street we had just left, which would only put us a quarter block further west.

  “This isn’t going to help us much,” I said.

  “Give me your walkie,” Alex said as she brought the bulldozer to a stop on the backside of the building.