Zombies! (Book 4): Nowhere To Hide

by Merritt, R. S.

  The driver started up the truck. Behind them the other trucks roared to life. In the distance the howls of the damned started almost immediately. They started moving down the road towards the onramp to the interstate. The Zombies were bouncing off the doors to the truck less than five minutes after they’d started them up. It wasn’t a big deal until they got to the onramp to the interstate and the drivers had to slow down to make the sharp turn. That’s when the Zombies swarmed up the side of the truck and attached themselves to the chain link fence running around the windows and the windshield.

  The driver flipped on his monitor. The monitor was a simple little LCD display that had been mounted in the control panel of the truck. The driver pulled it up in the air off the dash on a little swivel mount to look at instead of trying to see out the Zombies covered windshield. The monitor was a little all in one tablet that was hooked up to a couple of webcams mounted on different parts of the truck. He could use the monitor to drive. That let him try to ignore the Zombies crawling all over the windshield like a bunch of oversized honeybees.

  The monitor idea had been reached after several failed attempts to protect the drivers and their cargo. There were enough tractor trailers sitting around rusting in truck stops to meet the need for those machines for forever. Truck drivers were in short supply though. Especially truck drivers who had the nerve to drive through swarms of Zombies without freaking out and flipping their loads. They’d tried putting an armored gunner on the top of the trailers but that had only served to attract more Zombies. It was pretty impossible to get a good angle to shoot at the Zombies hanging off the windshield without risking shooting the driver.

  One engineering type had come up with a contraption where he hooked car batteries up to the chain link fence links running around the cab and gave the driver a switch. When the switch was thrown the fence would be electrified until the battery ran out of juice. Normal people would’ve jumped right off that window when they got the crap shocked out of them. The Zombies didn’t even seem to notice. Hooking weapons up to the windshield and all kinds of crazy ideas had been tried. Even pouring gas over the front window and setting it on fire to get rid of the Zombies. None of the ideas had worked out really well. Several of them had worked out extremely badly. Especially for the guinea pig drivers who’d been stuck trying them out.

  It’d been one of the truck drivers who came up with the monitor idea. He’d told all the others that when they got to their destination you could expect to have some Zombies along for the ride. The simplest solution was to just wait until you got there and then have someone ready to kill the ones that managed to hang on. Now there was a crew of cleaners at every warehouse destination waiting to get rid of the excess Zombies. It wasn’t the safest job in the world, but it was a step up from living in the woods and being sent into towns to try to loot with no weapons on you.

  Kyler was getting the impression the Brotherhood was a large, well-oiled machine. The supplies from all the towns were being funneled into massive warehouses. Supplies included food, weapons, medicine and gas for starters. After that it was up to the imagination of the looters as to what may be needed. Kyler assumed the people in the upper classes of this system had a much better life than those down at the bottom. As a Brotherhood soldier he was constantly in danger, but he would also be taken care of anytime he was in a camp. He’d just become Brotherhood, so he wasn’t sure on all the perks yet. He hoped they made up for the constant danger part of the job.

  He was trying not to focus too much on the Zombies staring at him from a few feet away. They were driving down the interstate now. They’d left behind the mob of Zombies that’d materialized to chase them to the overpass. The only Zombies left to deal with were the ones who’d climbed up on the truck and were now dangling off the metallic fence screaming at them through the thick layer of glass.

  Giving up on ignoring the slavering cannibals staring at him Kyler instead spent some time studying them. The ones who’d managed to get on the truck were mostly larger males. A few females were hanging on as well. Given the height of the truck and strength needed to hang on to the fence that probably explained why it’d mostly been the males who were still hanging on. The clothes the Zombies had been wearing when they’d become infected were now mostly gore soaked rags flapping in the wind around their bodies. More and more of the Zombies he saw were running around naked as their clothes rotted completely off their bodies.

  With that nudity came a new understanding of just how much damage the infection did to peoples bodies. It wasn’t just the faces that were covered in the scabbed over boils. The backs along the spines were also covered in large pus-filled boils. Elsewhere on the body nasty red flaking patches of skin were visible. The Zombies eyes were blood red. They burned with an intense demonic hatred while fixated on the two normal people in the cab of the truck. No race or sex seemed immune to the disease. The virus was equal opportunity.

  “You’ll be dropping me and the other rider off in a couple of miles. There’ll be a jeep escorting you the rest of the way.” Kyler looked again at the Zombies gnashing their teeth and clawing at the metal fencing. “How do they normally get these things off the truck?”

  “When we get to the warehouse then they normally use firehoses or something like that. A lot of times they’ll just have us pull up close to the roof and they’ll pick the Zombies off with long spears and hunting bows. I’m assuming the people we’re meeting will be doing something similar. There’s really not a great way to do it. It’s messy and dangerous work.”

  That made sense. Kyler nodded enthusiastically at the description of the work being messy and dangerous. He most certainly agreed with that sentiment. A red light shining up ahead signaled them to stop. Kyler would’ve liked to have had the opportunity to go meet these guys face to face to understand the plan. Unfortunately, he found himself sitting and waiting like the rest of them to see what was going to happen next.

  The Zombies in front of Kyler started slumping and falling off. The ones on the window were so fixated on trying to get at them that they didn’t pay any attention to the other Zombies around them dying. Kyler hammed it up a little bit to keep the attention focused on him. It was pretty creepy having the teeth gnash at him from this close. To be face to face with the infected was to see the loathing and hatred in their eyes. You could see the demonic hunger that possessed and drove them to try and rip apart the uninfected. The virus warping it’s victims to get them to go out and spread it to every possible host.

  Kyler started to get out of the truck once the last Zombies had been knocked off, but the driver told him to wait. This was a situation where you really wanted an all clear before you opened the door and stepped into a steaming pile of trouble. A few minutes later there was a quick rapping on the door. Kyler opened it and saw a blood covered soldier standing there with a long spear in his hands. A few other men stood around with clubs and spears. Standing behind them was a single soldier with a fancy looking cross bow setup. Kyler assumed that cross bow guy was a last resort.

  “You guys don’t carry guns?” Kyler asked curiously as he stepped down out of the truck.

  “No sir. If we did then one of us may be tempted to use it and then we’d just end up swarmed. Not having them keeps us real motivated to use the long poles and make sure we do it by the numbers.”

  Kyler nodded at the guy. It made sense. The answer also told him these guys were expendable. If they were important, they wouldn’t be standing in the middle of a road whacking away at Zombies with long sticks and no guns. Must be another case of having their families locked away in some secure facility and having to buy access to them by doing what they were told. The guy with the crossbow wandered up. Like the others he was dressed in camouflage. He had a baklava and leather gloves and goggles on as well. Considering the kind of close in fighting they were doing with infected people it made sense to keep as much skin covered as possible.

  “We’re the escort sir. You’re relieved. There�
�s another jeep in the median over there you guys can take back to the camp or wherever you’re headed.” Crossbow guy said.

  Kyler nodded and him and Jeff walked over to the jeep. The keys were waiting for them. A few minutes later Jeff was driving them back to the camp.

  “Why were they calling me sir?” He asked Jeff. It’d been bugging him.

  “Because of your obvious manliness?” Jeff answered.

  “Seriously. How’d they know to be deferential like that? Also, why’d they bother? I could give a crap if they called me sir or not. I’m not an officer or anything.”

  “You’re loaded down with weapons and riding shotgun in the lead truck. That practically screams out that you’re Brotherhood. Those guys were hedging their bets. Their jobs suck big time. If they can get promoted to a different position, they can get their family better standing. Besides, pissing off a brother normally ends badly for whoever’s stupid enough to do it.”

  It was a longer answer than Kyler had expected. It also made him think of even more questions. Since Jeff seemed to be in a talkative mood Kyler decided to press his luck.

  “What else should I know? I feel like I joined a secret society, and no one bothered to teach me the handshake.”

  “Get used to it. That’s kind of the way it works. There’s not like a handbook or anything. You can’t even tell who the hell is in the Brotherhood until there’s some sort of ceremony. Unless you’re all wandering around with your shirts off for some reason. I suppose the officers know. Pretty much all of them are Brotherhood. The rest of us just do what we’re told. Which can get pretty crazy, but we get special status for doing it. Any advantage you can get in this world, right?”

  That was about all Kyler was able to pry out of Jeff before they turned off at the mile marker the camp was near. Kyler pulled out a hatchet and Jeff hefted a solid looking baseball bat as they walked towards the tree line. Time to go wander in the woods until they found the place they were supposed to sleep for the day. Kyler just hoped he didn’t need to use the hatchet on any random Zombies. All he really wanted to do was find some food and crawl into a sleeping bag to get some rest. He wondered if there were ever going to be any easy days again.

  Chapter 12: Downtown

  “We need to leave now.” Randy repeated for the tenth time. He was working hard to stay calm. It wasn’t easy when he knew men with automatic weapons could come driving into the parking lot at any second on a mission to massacre his family.

  “If you got the van moved in time then we should be good. Tony needs to rest for a little bit, and you shouldn’t be moving around either.” Kelly had already had to fix the threads Randy had popped out in his fight with the pregnant Zombie. She hadn’t been pleased to see the blood oozing out of his shirt when he’d come in talking about them all needing to leave right away.

  “If they show up, we’re dead. The kids are dead. Stitches aren’t going to matter if we all get shot!” Randy was on the verge of losing it. He didn’t know how else to explain that nothing mattered right now except leaving.

  “I vote to leave.” Tony said. Everyone looked over at him. He had a big, goofy valium grin on his face. “I’ve managed to survive this far because I’ve only been shot by your wife. I don’t want to be shot by people who are good at it.”

  Tony’s comments had the desired effect of defusing the ticking bomb of Kelly’s and Randy’s tempers. It occurred to Kelly that her husband may be right on this one. As much as she didn’t want to move right now and as much as they all knew how dangerous the world outside theses walls was, she realized they had to leave. Now that she’d made her decision, she kicked into high gear hoping her initial obstinance hadn’t doomed them. She started gathering everything together and yelling out directions to everyone else for what to bring. She reminded the kids to stick with the buddy system, so no one got left behind. Once they’d gathered their packs, they all started moving out of the cramped, dark office.

  “What about him?” Caitlyn pointed at the bloodied and bound guard miserably smooshed into the corner of the room.

  “Do we still need him?” Kelly asked.

  “He might have some more info for us. We haven’t really questioned him yet. He might be more talkative now that he’s spent some time tied up with hungry rats in a closet.” Randy redirected his voice and stared straight at the guard. “I can tell you if we get caught by the Brotherhood the one thing I’ll do before they capture us is put a bullet in your head. It’s in your best interest to make sure we don’t get caught. You’re never going back to them. You might as well start sucking up to us.”

  “You can be a little scary when you want to be.” Kelly whispered in his ear. Then she went back to helping everyone out of the room. Instead of carting the trussed-up guard around by making him take baby steps with the rope around his ankles Randy grabbed one of the shopping carts and pointed at it.

  Whimpering, the man allowed Randy to push him into the cart. At some point the guard had soiled himself. Randy wrinkled his nose in disgust, but he couldn’t really blame the guy. If someone had tied him up in a closet full of hungry rats, he’d probably have had an accident too. He pushed the man out into the main part of the store where everyone was waiting for him to tell them the next step in getting to the van. He was wishing now that they hadn’t driven it quite so far across the parking lot to hide it.

  “You guys stay here. I’ll go get the van and bring it over. Be ready to get in fast.” Kyler looked at them all to make sure they understood then headed for the missing window he planned to go through. He could see the body of the pregnant Zombie laying amidst the garbage. He felt ashamed for that kill. He just didn’t think there was anything he could’ve done differently. He’d killed plenty of women and children Zombies to stay alive in their frantic scramble to get to Florida from Rhode Island. Those killings haunted him too, but this was the first time he’d really felt ashamed. He wished he knew for sure if the baby in that Zombies belly had been alive or infected or whatever.

  He shook off those feelings. He shook off everything except the task at hand. He went over to the shattered window and carefully surveyed the parking lot and surroundings. He was focused on making sure he’d be able to get to the van and then get it back over here for his family to board with no issues. The only Zombie he could see from his vantage point was the pregnant woman he’d killed earlier. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a mob of them standing around the corner of the building just waiting for some idiot to walk out so they could grab a bite. It also didn’t mean there wasn’t a sniper setup on the roof across the street ready to shoot him in the head as soon as he stepped out. Before he could think of any more scenarios that made him scared to leave the relative safety of the trashed pharmacy, he stepped out into the parking lot.

  He didn’t get shot in the head. No crazy screeching belied the existence of Zombies who’d been skulking just out of sight. Realizing he’d been standing still for a second or two waiting for something bad to happen Randy set his sights on the van and started across the parking lot at a valet jog. He reflected that next time he thought there may be a sniper waiting to take his head off when he stepped out a of a building, he should probably not just step out and stand still. He should at least bounce around a little bit and give the guy a challenge. What good was scoring a headshot on some dude that was just standing there asking for it?

  Ever the pessimist he expected something bad to happen on his way to the van. When he made it to the van without being eaten or shot, he sat in the seat for a second letting the stress seep out of his pores. He hadn’t realized how keyed up he’d been until he had a hard time shoving the key in the ignition due to how hard his hands were shaking. He finally got the van started and drove over by the window to let everyone in. Kelly joined him in the front after they worked together to get the trussed-up guard hoisted into the back.

  “That guy smells pretty ripe.” Kelly said when they sat down. She was desperately searching for the little squeeze
bottle of hand sanitizer she normally carried around with her.

  “Agreed. At some point we need to find a hose and some soap so we can clean him off.” Randy answered driving them towards the road between the two tall buildings.

  He started to turn right as a pickup truck came from the left. Randy and the driver of the pickup both staring at each other in complete surprise. The driver of the pickup truck had one guy riding shotgun who looked just as surprised to come face to face with their target. One of the drone operators had thought he saw a van disappearing under cover. The operator barely caught a glimpse of what he thought was a van moving before having to return to base or risk losing the drone. It was one of a handful of reports the guys in the pickup had been driving around following up on. The driver had been more concerned about driving around this close to the Zombie infested city than he’d been about what to do if they actually found the fugitives. The soldier riding shotgun reached for the radio to call it in. He should’ve reached for his gun.

  Randy slammed on the brakes and hopped out of the van. He walked straight towards the stunned driver of the pickup with his pistol in his hand. He took aim and started squeezing shots off until the driver collapsed backwards in a spray of blood. His passenger had dropped the radio and was scrambling around trying to bring his rifle to bear in the tight confines of the small cab. The dead drivers foot weighed down on the accelerator and the pickup careened into the side of the office building. Randy ran over and pulled open the driver’s side door. The passenger looked up at him from the other side of the bench seat. The guy had big red marks on his face and arms from being struck by the air bag. His eyes and hands were moving frantically trying to find a weapon.