Dead Life (Book 5)

by D. Harrison Schleicher

  “Between the three of us we’ll come up with something,” Lily said.

  “This is all my fault. If I wouldn’t have insisted on going after Dr. Parks we’d probably be in Fort Leonard Wood by now. Without Simmons up our asses.”

  “I think he would have found a way up there no matter what we did or didn’t do. Seems to me he would have used the sat phones to track us down anyway,” Lily said.

  “That doesn’t help any. Those phones are my fault too.”

  “You two can hash this out later. I need to try and get a little sleep,” John said.

  For the next few hours John slept in the back of the SUV and Lily and I drove on in silence. There wasn’t really much to say. I spent the entire time watching the road, racking my brain trying to come up with a way to escape General Simmons. Lily stared out the window most of the time. It reminded me of better times, before the world ended, driving down the highway watching the sights go by. When I was a kid I loved going for rides in the car with my parents. Before Mom and Dad divorced we took lots of road trips. I would sit in the back seat with my favorite Godzilla stuffed animal. The two of us would stare out the window. Back in those days Godzilla was very much alive to me and yes he stared out the window, and played games with me. We played I Spy and watched for out of state license plates. It was uncanny the way we were always able to figure out what the other was I Spying. But when it came to spotting out of state plates I always won that game hands down. I think the problem was that Godzilla couldn’t read. He was just a dragon after all.

  I was lost in thoughts of better days when Lily brought me back to reality. “I think you just passed the Jeep we’re looking for.”

  I slammed on the brakes, throwing Lily into the dashboard, and John up against the back of the front seat. I gave the two of them a few minutes to vent their anger. John was very upset about the rude awakening, and Lily repeatedly commented on my “god-awful” driving. When they were finished I backed up to the wrecked Jeep on the side of the road. From the looks of things the driver had lost control and run the Jeep right up the guard rail. The two driver’s side wheels were still on the ground but the wheels on the passenger side dangled a good two feet over the road. From the angle the Jeep was at the driver and whatever passengers might have been inside had to have exited from the passenger side. The bottom of the driver’s door was almost resting on the pavement and would have been impossible to open.

  The three of us got out of the SUV and went over to the Jeep. The windshield was covered in dried blood and the driver’s side window was spider webbed from where the driver’s head had most likely impacted during the crash. I walked around to the back to see if I could get a better look inside but the visibility from the back and sides was just as bad if not worse. Every window on the Jeep was covered in dried blood. I couldn’t be sure but I could have sworn I saw movement from inside.

  “Do you think Parks was snacking while he was driving?” John asked.

  “That’s not funny,” Lily said.

  John tried to pull the back gate of the Jeep open. “I’m not kidding,” he said. “Try the passenger door. This one’s locked.”

  “Don’t open that door,” Lily said. “It looks like something’s in there. Simmons lost how many men trying to find the doctor? Tim we can’t just stumble blindly into this.”

  “She’s right John. There’s no telling what’s inside that thing,” I said.

  “There’s nothing in there. Hang on a second.” John went back to our SUV and opened the back hatch. He rummaged around in the back for a few minutes then closed the hatch and came back to the Jeep with a tire iron. Sargent Adams went straight to the front windshield and without a moment’s hesitation smashed it in. As soon as John had stepped away from the SUV it was obvious what his plan was so Lily and I both had our guns drawn. Fortunately the only thing that came out from the Jeep at us was the stench of something long dead and the thousands of flies that were trapped in there with it.

  John flailed his arms and staggered back from the wreckage as he was overcome by the swarm. Lily and I backed away to try and avoid the horror that was overtaking the Sargent. I’ve seen millions of flies and maggots in the past several days but this was the worst. Shameful as it was I was glad that John was the one that broke into the Jeep. Hundreds of flies swarmed around him as he fell to the ground, retching from either the stench or the flies he was desperately trying to keep off of him.

  “Help him!” Lily shouted.

  “What do you want me to do? They’re thinning out. Give it a minute.”

  Lily went to John’s aid. Taking him by the arm she got him back on his feet and led him away from the Jeep. After a few seconds the flies and I would assume the smell dissipated.

  “You weren’t much help,” John snarled at me between retches.

  “You’re the dumb-ass that decided to smash the windshield in.”

  “And you’re going to go over there and see what’s inside,” Lily said.

  I started to protest but realized it was probably best that I did what she wanted. I slowly crept up on the Jeep. There was still a loud buzzing coming from inside. The occasional fly still flew out the windshield but for the most part it seemed that the flies still inside, and there were hundreds, were content just where they were.

  Blood covered every square inch of the inside of the Jeep. Most of this had to have happened after the Jeep ended up on the guardrail. There was no way whoever was driving could have seen out any of the windows otherwise. The constant buzz and movement of the flies was very distracting. If I concentrated really hard I was able to see past the blackness of the shifting flies. Hear past the constant drone of their buzzing wings. Something more than that moved in the back of the Jeep. Whatever it was beneath the seething mass of maggots moved in the back of the Jeep with a purpose of its own.

  “There’s one of them in the back,” I said.

  “Is it Dr. Parks?” Lily asked.

  “I can’t tell. The thing is covered in maggots.”

  That was all it took. John started heaving again. “Just shoot it,” he said.

  “John, you know we can’t do that,” Lily said.

  The thing in thing in the back of the Jeep reached up with one hand to grab the back of the seat in front of it using the other to steady itself by placing it on the window beside it. That was all it took. I aimed my pistol and shot it in the face, spraying maggots all over the seat behind it.

  Lily and John both jumped, aiming their hand guns at the Jeep.

  “Why did you shoot it?” Lily asked.

  “The last time I saw Parks he was running through the swamp with only one arm. That poor bastard had both of his so I put him out of his misery.”

  The three of us stood together looking over the inside of the Jeep. Blood and gore covered everything. Body parts littered the interior. One thing was obvious, Dr. Parks was long gone. On the dashboard lying amongst the shards of glass was a map. I reached in and gingerly grasped it by one of the lesser blood encrusted corners and pulled it through the shattered windshield. It fell open and I could see it was a map of my home state, Missouri. Even though it was in horrible shape I could clearly see Fort Leonard Wood had been circled.

  Chapter 5

  It took over an hour to get only three miles down the road. Cindy had to stop constantly to keep the zombies interested in us. The explosions had stopped but the constant sound of gunfire coming from the woods made it impossible to go any faster. Normally we would have just driven away and the zombies would have continued to wander mindlessly down the road after us but the gunfire distracted them. As long as we kept within their line of vision they stayed with us. At least we now knew for sure that they relied more on sight than sound.

  Cindy stopped and looked over at me. “I think we’ve gone far enough. Can we go back now?”

  “Yeah I guess so. Do you want me to drive?”

  “That would be great.”

  “They’re almost on us. Pull away
from them a little bit so we can get out and stretch our legs.”

  Cindy drove a few hundred yards down the road and we both got out. I walked around to the front of the truck to check out the damage and Cindy went around the back. I was surprised to see that both the headlights were still intact. The wooden bumper from the Hummer had worked out perfectly. I started for the driver’s door when I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle.

  “Cindy,” I called to the back of the truck. “Do you hear that?”

  “Is that a car engine?”

  “Get back in and pull over to the shoulder.”

  Cindy got in and pulled the truck off the road. There was definitely someone headed our way. I ran around to the back of the truck and nervously waited. Our luck hadn’t been too good with strangers lately and I didn’t expect this encounter to be any different. We were about fifty feet from a blind curve in the road when two trucks came flying around the bend. As soon as the driver of the lead vehicle saw us he slammed on his brakes. The speed at which he was going was obviously too fast and he flew past us. The second truck stopped even with us and the passenger popped up out of his window with a shotgun and leveled it at Cindy. I didn’t give him a chance to pull the trigger and shot him with my assault rifle in the face. His head vaporized and the rest of him fell against the driver. He pushed the body off of him then fumbled around reaching for something on the floorboard of the truck. He didn’t take his eyes off me while he tried to grab what I assumed was a gun. I moved forward, putting my rifle on fully automatic, and fired into the driver’s side window. Glass exploded in on him and his head disintegrated also.

  I heard the shotgun blast at the same time that I felt the buckshot hit me in the left shoulder. It strung like hell but I figured I must have gotten lucky. They were far enough away that only a few pellets had hit me. I turned toward them and opened up on them with the assault rifle. Their truck had come to a stop right in front of the zombies that had been trailing us for the past hour. The passenger, who must have been the one that shot me, was now busy trying to keep from being pulled out through his window. He fired point blank into the face of the zombie that had hold of the barrel of his shogun. Blowing its head completely off. I stopped shooting and stood transfixed watching the scene playing out in front of me. Cindy was yelling at me but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. When I looked at her I saw what she was so excited about. Another truck was sitting in the road in front of us.

  “Get in the back of the truck!” she shouted.

  I scrambled as best I could into the bed of the truck. Once I was in Cindy stomped on the gas and sped in the direction of the truck that was sitting in the other lane. They opened fire on us just as we got past them but I couldn’t see anything. I was too busy bouncing around with all of our supplies in the back of the truck. I would have sworn I felt the truck go up on two wheels as we went around the curve. Once Cindy’s driving settled down a little I made my way to the back window.

  “I had to shoot him,” I said, through the window. “I thought he was going to shoot you.”

  “I recognized the driver,” Cindy said. “He was with the family that kidnapped me.”

  “I thought we killed them.”

  “Before you and Al found me a bunch of them went back to the motel to find out what all the explosions were about. I think they were trying to find out what had happened to Cletus’s dad.”

  “It would have been nice if you would have mentioned this before.”

  “I told Al. He didn’t seem too concerned.”

  What could I say? That was the way Al was. Nothing seemed to bother him. He always felt that whatever situation popped up he would handle it. Besides, what were the chances they would find us? If we wouldn’t have gotten trapped in the woods we would have been long gone by now.

  “What are we going to do?” Cindy asked. “We need to get back to Al and Gina.”

  “We’re going to kill them. That’s what we’re going to do.”

  “How are we going to do that? Should I turn around?”

  “No. I think they’ll be coming along any minute now. Slow down just a little. Give them a chance to catch up.”

  We came to a straight stretch of road and sure enough I saw them coming up behind us. In the old World War II movies grenades take about seven seconds to explode. I don’t know for sure if that was true or not but the ones Al had took only four. We would have to let them get a little closer for what I had in mind.

  I could see their muzzle flashes as they came up behind us. It seemed they only had their hunting rifles to shoot at us. I would see the muzzle flash of four or five shots then I could tell they were stopping to reload. I had a few crates of hand grenades in the back of the truck with me so I opened one and took a few out. I wasn’t sure how well my idea would work out. I knew that even if I threw one out the back it would still be traveling at the same speed as the truck minus however fast I could throw them. In all honesty I knew my arm wasn’t in all that great of shape. The last time I had really thrown anything my son Tim was still in high school. We used to play a little catch in the backyard and every time we did my arm always ended up hurting like hell. Besides which Tim always said I threw like “an old wash woman”. The truth hurts.

  If I lobbed one up in the air and hoped that they would drive under it would that work? Or would I end up blowing myself up in the process? If I tried to throw it hard would it hit the street and explode on contact? Where was Al when you needed him? He would have the answer to these question and many more. I decided to throw one at them as hard as I could and see what happened. They were getting close enough for me to reach them with a grenade. The problem with that was, they were too close. I had to duck down in the truck bed so as not to present such an easy target for them. Cindy was crouched down low behind the steering wheel. There was a lot of shit in the back seat of the truck, most of it stacked behind the driver’s seat, so I didn’t think she would get hit by a stray bullet. Still this shit needed to be over before one of us got hurt.

  I sat up and fired my assault rifle at them on full automatic. I laughed as the drivers of both trucks ducked down and the one on the left swerved into the side of the other. While they struggled to get their vehicles under control I threw three grenades at them as fast as I could. The first hit the front of one of the trucks, ricocheted off away from the other truck, and blew up after they were past. The second and third went under them and blew up well behind them. I had their attention.

  Both trucks slowed to a stop. I grabbed my rifle and opened fire on them as Cindy sped away. I saw the windshield shatter on the truck to my left but wasn’t sure if I had hit any of them. I turned around and got Cindy’s attention.

  “They stopped.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  We were well out of the range of their guns by now but I could still see them. “Go ahead and stop.”

  Cindy stopped in the middle of the road. She snapped her head around and started in on me. “You know, you’re just as bad as Al with those fucking grenades.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I nearly shit myself when those things started going off.”

  She looked like she was about to cry. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to look as repentant as possible.

  “It’s bad enough these son of a bitches chasing us down the road shooting at us with you shooting back at them. Then I hear a bunch of explosions. I just need to know what’s going on, that’s all.”

  The two trucks were in the process of turning around. “Well right now it looks like they’re turning around and running away.”

  Cindy glanced in her mirror. “Good, let them go.”

  “We can’t. You have to go after them.”

  She started to say something then stopped herself. Throwing the truck in drive Cindy did a U-turn. I wasn’t exactly ready for this sudden move and nearly fell out the side of the truck. I knew she was mad but wasn’t sure if it was me she was mad at or them. Eith
er way I was pretty sure she was about to take her anger out on them. I almost felt sorry for them.

  I held on as tight as possible and watched through the window as the speedometer went from fifty to a hundred miles an hour. We were still on a straight stretch of road but coming up fast on a sharp curve that we had gone around just a few minutes earlier. Now was my best chance. Laying my rifle across the cab of the truck I opened fire on them. Instead of trying to hit the trucks this time I aimed low and worked my way up trying for the tires. The results were immediate and spectacular. The rear tires blew out on one of the trucks and they lost control, fish tailing back and forth they finally lost control and went off the road. The truck went into a stand of trees crashing headlong into a huge oak. I watched both the driver and the passenger go through the front windshield as we passed. There was no way either of them could have survived the crash.

  I bent down to the window and shouted into the truck, “Slow down. We’re coming up on the horde.”

  She slowed the truck and we went around the curve. In front of us was the other truck. They were surrounded by the now sizable horde. The front of the truck was totaled and it wasn’t going anywhere. I watched as the windows were smashed in and the driver and passenger were pulled from the truck and torn to pieces. This all happened in a matter of minutes and after the undead were finished with the two men from the truck their attention turned to us. As usual the runners led the pack followed by the main body of the shambling zombies. One of our attackers, the driver hadn’t been ripped to shreds, got up from the ground and joined the horde. I still don’t know why I did it but I leaned out my window and shot him in the head, ending his pitiful existence.

  “Why did you do that?” Cindy asked. “You should have just left him.”

  “I don’t know. You’re probably right. It just felt good, killing him.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Drive through them. Take it slow. Just like before.”

  The truck sat high enough and the horde was small enough that pushing through wasn’t that hard. The only reason the idiots that had been chasing us had a problem was that they had hit the front of the horde too hard. It was like hitting a deer in the middle of the road late at night. They aren’t that big but one deer can total your vehicle in a second. And these guys hadn’t hit one little deer. They had hit dozens of zombies. We passed the crashed truck. Radiator fluid dripped from its ruined front-end. Trapped bodies struggled to free themselves from under its wheels. When we were far enough past the wreckage that I felt we would be clear of the blast I threw a few grenades at the truck. The explosions were enough that they ruptured the gas tank and set the truck on fire. I hoped the fire would keep the horde occupied long enough that we could make it back to the road that would lead us to where Al and Gina awaited our return. If it didn’t keep them from following us everything we had just been through would have been for nothing.