by Dave Lund
“What the shit?” Bexar said softly.
“We’ve seen this before, on our previous drive here. A big pack of undead came through, pushing through cars and anything else in their way, like a bulldozer. There were more than we could count on I-10; fucking huge herd of them, destroying everything in their path like an Old Testament plague.” Chivo shook his head and signed the cross across his chest.
He slowed the Defender as they entered town. Except for the damage left in their wake, there was no sign of the dead now, discounting the truly dead, whose bodies rotted in the sun. Bexar stared at the damage as they passed. He noted that the vehicles were all pushed away at the same angle from the middle of the road, same with the light poles, which were broken off at the base.
“We’re driving in the same direction the herd of dead went.”
“How do you know that?”
“Look at the path of destruction. Everything is pushed forward and out from us. We’re driving towards the ass end of this mess.”
Apollo, listening to the conversation in the front seat, keyed his radio. “Clint ... have you figured out what direction that large pack of undead is traveling?”
“Not yet. But the last pass showed them congregating at a larger city to your northwest.”
Bexar flipped pages in his binder of map sections. “That’s probably Waxahachie; we pretty much have to go through the city before taking a route around.”
“Fucking awesome,” Chivo mumbled as he eased the Defender back to forty-five mph, exiting the town. The small Texas highway only had a couple of vehicles that had previously been on the road; they were all pushed off into the side ditches.
“Say what you will about the dead, but at least they were nice enough to clear a path for us.”
Everyone turned to look at Lindsey. “Hey ... just saying.”
Big Bend National Park, Chisos Basin
Sweat dripped from her face as Jessie finished loading the FJ. This is why Bexar was always the family Sherpa; this is no task for a pregnant woman. The job complete, she sat on the ground, surveying the scene around her. The park had always been a happy place full of fond memories, but now all she could see around her was death and pain. Even if the world righted itself once again, Jessie knew she was never coming back here. There was no way she could handle the pain of the memories.
Standing slowly, nausea washed over her body in waves. Jessie steadied herself on the side of the SUV, taking deep breaths, trying to keep her breakfast down. With Keeley, she had never been one of those “I’m so happy being pregnant—everything is awesome!” kinds of women. She was sick for most of her first pregnancy and secretly Jessie hated those women, the Internet Supermoms of Creativity and Joy. She didn’t know how they did it; right now it was all she could do to simply keep food in her stomach.
Jessie climbed into the driver’s seat, started the motor, and drove down the hill towards the exit of The Basin. Twenty minutes later she stopped at the gas station near Panther Junction, took the empty gas cans and the hand-cranked pump and got to work. Fifteen minutes and minus one stomach-full of breakfast later, the fuel tank of the FJ was full along with her three, five-gallon gas cans. She suspected that this would be her last easy fuel stop. Jessie lifted the gas cans onto the roof rack, next to the jugs of water. My problem isn’t fuel, it’s water. No fuel and I can walk; no clean water, I get sick and die.
Turning west, Jessie drove towards Study Butte, passing the turnoff for The Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive for the very last time. The desert drifted by outside her windows and before she knew it she was pulling into Study Butte-Terlingua. About a dozen undead milled about near the gas station. In the road for the turnoff towards the Terlingua Ghost Town lay part of a burned corpse and its motorcycle.
Jessie drove into the gas station’s parking lot, shifted the truck into neutral, set the brake and climbed out, leaving the motor running. After their scare in Marathon with one of the trucks not wanting to start, she would take no chances. Surprisingly, the glass doors of the gas station were still intact. She banged on the doors a few times then leaned against them to hold them closed. Facing away from the store and towards the fuel pumps, she watched the undead shamble closer to the FJ and to her. With her rifle up, she started picking off the undead closest to her and her vehicle. She felt a hard thump against the doors behind her. Putting down the last of the parking lot undead, Jessie turned to see half of a dead woman’s rotting face snarling at her, gnashing its teeth and clawing at the glass door. Jessie stepped back and pulled the door open quickly. The woman fell forward and Jessie fired her rifle once, putting her down for good. Propping the door open, she threw a rock from the sidewalk into the store and waited for a response. After counting to one hundred and hearing nothing, she walked into the dark interior.
Behind the counter were plastic shopping bags; she grabbed a few and walked through the aisles. Towards the back of the store was a small selection of diapers. Those went into the bags, along with the lone package of baby wipes and the whole rack’s worth of single-dose Tylenol packets. Fucking Tylenol. I might as well take Skittles. I wish I could take Advil while I’m pregnant … hmmm … Skittles. Jessie walked through the candy isle and put an entire box of Skittles and then Sour Straws into her bag.
The undead woman she had killed in the doorway lay face down on the sidewalk, but she also politely served to hold the door open. Shopping trip complete, Jessie walked back into the sunlight to see that her running SUV had attracted a crowd.
She walked towards the edge of the store and yelled, “Hey, over here you rotting assholes. Look at me!” Every pair of milky-white dead eyes snapped to Jessie, followed by their owners’ shambling gait across the parking lot towards her and away from the FJ. Her hands full of loot, the rifle hung on the sling across her chest, she waited until the first of the walking corpses were nearly within grasping distance before she quickly moved away and back towards the FJ. Rounding the back of the SUV, a lone corpse stood between her and the driver’s door. It moaned and reached with its rotting hands to grab her, but Jessie side kicked the corpse in the pelvis, folding the undead man over at the waist. She grabbed the driver’s door handle and slammed the door open against the man’s face, knocking him to the ground. Before he could stand up again, Jessie was already in the FJ, letting the clutch out and pulling out of the parking lot, towards the Terlingua Ghost Town and the destroyed trailer.
Cortez, CO
On the roof of his house, Cliff lay with a dark blanket covering his body. He was on his belly, propped up on his arms, the blanket draped all the way to the front edge of the spotting scope. His hands held a small notepad and pen, marking distances in each direction from the house, creating a range card so he could accurately hit targets with enough hold over on his rifle sights, if everything went to hell and he was under siege. Everything always goes wrong. Fucking Murphy and his laws; if I ever meet that bastard I’m going to kick his ass.
Facing west, Cliff could see out to the highway. Three hundred and fifty yards to the edge of the pavement, he thought as he jotted down his estimate. A sketch and notes were marked on the lined paper. Cliff knew those shots would be harder, the optic on his rifle having no magnification, but with his M4, it was a very doable shot and fell within his well-honed abilities. Cliff pulled his face away from the eye piece and blinked slowly, resetting his vision before looking at the sun marching across the western sky. Looks like there’s about four hours until sunset … four hours of sleep.
Still concealed under the blanket, Cliff slowly slid down the roof, over the main portion of the house and onto the garage roof, then climbed into the open second-story window. Melting into the shadows of the room, he watched out the window to see if anyone had noticed or if there was any reaction to his movement. Fifteen minutes later, Cliff lay in the master bedroom, the alarm on his watch set. His first task was to recon the cult—start trying to figure out their movements, times, and schedule of operations. In order to do that he
had to stay in place during the daylight; he would have to move at night to avoid being seen.
Italy, TX
Idling in the middle of the highway, the Defender sat indifferent to the marked lanes of travel. Lindsey and Bexar stood on each side of the SUV, rifles at the ready, watching for any movement. Apollo stood rear security while Chivo stood on the roof rack with his binoculars to his face, slowly scanning the scene ahead of him. Lindsey’s area of responsibility included a squat two-story apartment building; Bexar scanned the front of the small “supermarket” grocery store. He wasn’t sure if it was the sunlight playing tricks on his vision or if he was really seeing movement in the shadows of the dark windows. Apollo’s rifle remained silent, the tagalong undead not close enough to make a difference yet.
“Hey Chivo, you might want to wrap it up. I think the grocery story is overrun and I don’t want to hang around to see if they figure out how to work the doors.”
Chivo climbed down onto the back bumper of the Defender before taking his place behind the wheel, and each of the others returned to their previous spots as Chivo shifted into gear and continued west, into the tiny town of Italy, Texas. The highway curved and turned into Main Street, passing small, stucco-fronted homes. They entered the two-block-long downtown section. The cars were again pushed out of their parking spots and into the fronts of the businesses and buildings. The signs and light poles were knocked forward, and, as before, they followed the same path the group was driving. Speeding through the town at a respectable forty mph, they quickly exited downtown and reached the four-way intersection of Highway 34 and 77. Chivo stopped, ironically obeying traffic laws. It would have been comical, had any stop signs still been standing. While idling at the intersection, Apollo called up from the back of the SUV, “We’re cool now, but in about five minutes our ‘friends’ will arrive by the dozen.”
“Roger. OK, Bexar, which way?”
“Straight takes us to I-35, which takes us into Waxahachie; turning right puts us on Highway 77, which takes us into ... Waxahachie.”
“So we’re stuck regardless?”
“Sort of. We need to get to 287, and that goes through Waxahachie, but personally, I don’t think we should be going anywhere near that place. Compared to Italy here, Waxahachie is a mega-metropolis.”
Apollo keyed his radio. “Clint, are you still on station? Over.”
“Roger. Go ahead, over.”
“How do the overheads of Waxahachie look? Over.”
“Stand by … shit.”
“Clint?”
“The SATINT just went offline. I can’t pull anything up and I’m not sure why.”
Every head in the SUV snapped around when the first walking corpse slapped the back glass at the living occupants it wanted for lunch.
“Fuck this noise, just pick one, Bexar.”
“Straight, then. We’ll try I-35.”
Chivo drove away quickly, leaving the gathering dead grasping at the empty air for a fresh meal. Two minutes later Chivo stopped next to a large Western-themed gas station.
“Holy shit. Look at that.”
Bexar smirked, “I know, everyone in town hates that dome building, especially since it’s built up to look like the Starship Enterprise.”
“No ass hat, the cars. Look at the fucking bridge.”
Pushed over the edge of the bridge, cars had fallen to the pavement below. Their previous occupants, now undead, tried to walk on their shattered bones. The dead streamed across the bridge like a solid wall of corpses and flies; the sheer force of the number of them pushing cars, signs, and anything else in their way over the railing and onto the pile of wreckage below. Bodies, crushed by the passing horde, lay smeared along the concrete barrier of the bridge.
Apollo gaped at the scene through the windshield. “That’s fucked up. Let me guess; they’re headed towards Waxahachie, aren’t they?”
“Yup,” Bexar replied, nodding his head.
“What if we just drive straight ahead?”
“I don’t know. The map doesn’t show much; the road’s too small.”
“Fuck it, mano. Straight we go. It’s better than jumping into the critical mass march of the undead.”
Chivo let the clutch out and drove towards the overpass, weaving around the cars and leftover body parts that had been pushed off the bridge.
“You realize that all the roads in this area most likely lead back towards I-35, right?” Bexar said to no one in particular.
Terlingua, TX
The Wagoneer still sat in the middle of the highway and Jessie stopped the FJ next to it. The body that Bexar had stuffed into the driver’s seat still lay half-out of the open door. Rifle in hand, Jessie walked out into the desert where the destroyed RV trailer lay torn open. A month hadn’t passed, yet it seemed like a lifetime ago that her family, still intact, set out for Groom Lake together. Most of the outer shell of the RV was solid, but Jessie couldn’t fit into the crushed interior space with her rifle. So, she laid it on the desert floor and climbed onto the top of the RV. She lowered herself through the open side door, which was now pointed up towards the sky. Digging through the jumbled mess and broken cabinets she found the hand-cranked shortwave radio—and it appeared to be undamaged. She lifted the radio out the door and onto the top of the RV before pulling herself up and out. From the top, she saw that the FJ, which she had left running, had attracted some uglier members of her fan club. She climbed down and gathered her rifle, took a kneeling position, and began slowly putting down the undead for good. One by one they fell, seven in all. Jessie walked back to the FJ, set the radio on the dash, and looked at her road atlas. She wasn’t exactly sure where Groom Lake was, but she knew it was near Las Vegas because Bexar had tried telling her about Janet Airlines, a semi-secret commuter airline run by the government to ferry workers from Las Vegas to Groom Lake every day. A few minutes later, she found what she thought might be her destination on the map, tracing back from Las Vegas to I-40. She opened the New Mexico map page then continued to trace the Interstate east across the state. Looking at the different routes, she decided that since I-25 was large enough to show on her atlas and it bridged I-10 to I-40, it would be a good path to follow for now.
Jessie held the Texas map open in her lap and retraced highways from I-10. She realized that she would need to go back to the gas station and stay on Highway 118 instead of heading straight into Terlingua. Dammit Bexar! You were going the wrong way. We might be together; maybe Keeley would be alive ... if you knew what the fuck you were doing for once and where we were going. Tears fell onto the paper; she shook uncontrollably, mad at Bexar, mad at herself, and her heart aching for her little girl.
Near Bridgeport, CA
Aymond and the remaining members of his MSOT kept rolling at a steady forty-five mph after exiting the small town. He watched out the tiny side window; the thick bullet-resistant glass made the terrain look a bit odd, but there wasn’t much to see anyway. This part of California was rugged and also quite under-developed, which meant there never were many people in the area to begin with. This is why the U.S. Government had used this area for training; there wasn’t much land available for commercial development. It was a give and take that left the three M-ATVs driving through a landscape that could have been Mars.
The cars abandoned on the highway were sparse, and Hammer maneuvered the heavy truck around them with ease. About every third vehicle there would be one or two walking corpses, or Zeds. Per the ROE that Aymond had placed on his team, they ignored the threats and drove past in an effort to save time and ammo. The dead might have come from the vehicles on the road or from the small clusters of homes and businesses placed every few miles. Aymond didn’t know, and quite frankly, he didn’t care. The Chief wasn’t completely sure, but after the battle to win control of the MWTC from the dead, he was certain that their trip to Twentynine Palms would be bad. If they had to go through San Diego, it would be even worse than anything they had ever experienced in their three tours in Afg
hanistan. The drive produced the same feeling of impending battle that riding a convoy to a new Forward Operating Base in The Stan had. The men seemed to have the same thought, each of them passing the time in their own way. Some played cards, others slept. Sleep is a luxury in wartime, so like warriors throughout all of history, they slept before the battle. The stress, mixed with anticipation, was palpable in the heavily armored truck.
Terlingua, TX
Her eyes puffy and red from tears, Jessie strained to see ahead through her windshield. The wind gusted against the side of the vehicle, nearly pushing her out of the traffic lane, not that staying between the painted lane markings on the road actually mattered anymore, but some things are so ingrained that they are hard habits to break.
Dust, thick dust, also blocked her view; slowly she turned left at the intersection where the half-eaten biker and his wrecked motorcycle lay, to travel northbound on 118. She had nothing but unending miles of desert ahead of her until she reached the town of Alpine. There was no real way around the town; she would have to drive through it and hope for the best. It would be the first real town that she would drive through since arriving in Big Bend National Park months ago. She could shelter in the desert that spread out before the town if conditions didn’t improve, but she thought it might be best for her to drive through while the storm continued to blow sand across the desert landscape. She didn’t know if there would be any paint left on the FJ by the time the sand storm was over. Slowly, nearly blinded by the storm, Jessie drove onward into the dust, her destiny unknown.
Near Italy, TX
