by Dave Lund
US-287
Apollo drove carefully; the rest of the people in the Defender slept while he drove. Homes, small businesses, farms, and ranches dotted the highway along the northwest route. Their progress slowed due to the number of abandoned vehicles on the road. Walking corpses continuously bounced off the fenders of the SUV, and twice Apollo accidentally drove straight over one, jostling the sleeping team as the tires bumped over the bodies. Luckily, the highway bypassed the small towns along the route, so there weren’t any real surprises, just more of the same song and dance—driving around the undead and the cars they’d failed to bring with them to a very active afterlife.
The odometer read seventy miles since Decatur, and his watch showed that it’d taken three hours. The Defender sat idling on the highway, the heart of Wichita Falls just ahead. “Bexar, wake up,” Apollo whispered while nudging his navigator out of a loud, snoring sleep. Waking with a start, it took a few moments for Bexar to clear his head and focus on where he was and what he saw.
“Bexar—we’re at Wichita Falls. Take a look ahead.”
Bexar flipped the NODs down on the bump helmet he wore, turned them on, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the green glow of the scope. The shattered windshield blocked some of the view, but ahead of the SUV, the abandoned vehicles rippled like waves in a pond. It took a moment to realize that the ripples were the undead filtering through the vehicles on the highway.
“Holy shit. They’re coming this way.”
“Yeah, I know. Check the map; we need a way around all of this. I think you have about five minutes before they get here.”
Bexar unfolded and refolded the large civilian road map until he found the section he needed. Squinting at the road signs, it took him a moment to find their location.
“OK, turn around. Highway 79 is behind us about a mile, mile and a half. Take it south.”
Apollo spun the wheel, made a three-point turn, and drove back the way they came, up the wrong way on a merging ramp and onto the wrong side of the highway until he reached 79. He still had to dodge cars and the undead, but there were far fewer than before.
“Keep going south until we reach FM 1954. Take that west, and we’ll eventually hit Highway 82. Take 82 southbound—it turns west and will get us to the same place eventually. We’ll have to go through Lubbock instead of Amarillo, but we’ll be able to skip Wichita Falls.”
Apollo nodded, dodging another walking corpse. The vehicle traffic and undead in the roadway became more sparse the farther away from the city they drove. Bexar looked at his watch, a new one from the SSC that thankfully still worked, and noted that it was just before midnight. Sectioning off the atlas using his thumb, he guessed it would take about fifteen hours at this speed to reach Cortez.
They approached Seymour, Texas. Although the main highway bypassed the town, they needed to stay on 82 and go straight through. Bexar’s mind drifted to the plight of these small towns. Someday, if anyone survived long enough to be so lucky, teams of people would need to go door to door to eradicate the undead and relieve the living. Thankfully, Bexar knew that this would not be their task. If they found survivors en route, great. Otherwise their mission was one of rescue, and it required as quick a response as they could give. They were already running days late; hopefully they would find Cliff alive, but as of now, that was more up to him than them.
Seymour was a ghost town. The town center, where the team turned west, was a burned-out shell; a large fire had ravaged the town. Bodies lay immobile in the road and all around the buildings. Bexar watched the macabre scene roll by through the green glow of his NODs. Everything appeared dead, actually dead. Not a single corpse could be seen, only bodies littering the ground by the dozens. Bexar didn’t see the city limit sign with the population number, but Seymour, he thought, couldn’t have had that many people before the attack.
Deftly, Apollo threaded the Defender through the horror of Seymour before he was able to break free and increase their speed on the country highway. Farmland passed by outside their windows, the occasional home or small business dotting the endlessness. A green sign said “Benjamin, Texas. Population of 258.” The courthouse sat in the middle of the silent town; it looked surprisingly like the courthouse in Grayson County. Grayson County reminded Bexar of Malachi and Amber, the first casualties in his group at the hands of the undead. Now he was the last survivor. Bexar sighed heavily, turned off his NODs, and stared into the darkness. Slowly, his eyes adjusted, and by the time the Defender was out on the open highway again, Bexar could see the stars—more stars than he had ever seen. No more light pollution, he thought. Maybe I’m seeing the world and the stars as the ancients saw them.
CHAPTER 22
March 7, Year 1
I-10, West TX
Keeley laughed and laughed, banging her sippy cup on the tray, watching the yellow cheese crackers break into dust, her little hands slamming the cup down on the tray with a thud, thud, thud, thud … Jessie startled awake and screamed when she saw the macabre face banging relentlessly against the driver’s side window. Thud, thud, thud. The face had no lips, no nose; one eyeball was missing, fallen from its socket, the other was milky white like maggot flesh. Thud. The teeth gnashed and snapped at the glass. Thud. Jessie, shaking, tried to start the FJ, but the truck just lurched forward a few feet and didn’t start. Thud, thud. Remembering the clutch, Jessie slammed her left foot on the pedal and turned the ignition again. The chilly engine roared to life. She pushed the gear shift into first and let the clutch out gradually. The rear tires spun in the dirt as the FJ drove forward and bounced over the curb, leaving the window-banging corpse to its own fate. Behind her, the eastern horizon glowed with the impending sunrise. The dim yellow headlights of the FJ provided just enough illumination for Jessie to drive. As she caught her breath, her heart ached with the fading dream of Keeley making a mess when she was still a baby. She will always be a baby now, my poor baby girl. Tears streamed down Jessie’s cheeks; she clung to the last shreds of the dream as she absentmindedly rubbed her belly with her right hand. Her left hand was firmly placed on top of the steering wheel, guiding her forward.
The vehicles in this area were still pushed into the ditches, so the road was clear for her to drive however she wanted. Maybe that’ll be the only one I see today. She wiped her cheeks with her shirt sleeve and knew that wasn’t true. By the time that Jessie saw another town off to the left side of the highway, the heater had finally warmed the cabin up from the cold desert air. The sun was high enough that she turned the headlights off. Jessie had no idea what town she was passing, as the road signs were all flattened into the desert floor, but it was small. She pulled the atlas off the seat next to her and held the steering wheel with her knee. She knew I-25 would get her to I-40, and that I-25 was on the other side of El Paso, across the New Mexico border, but much of I-40 was a mystery to her without a map of Arizona. Even without road signs she would know El Paso when she hit it. Hopefully, there would be signs to follow after that; otherwise she would be in a bit of a jam. Jessie was already in a part of Texas she hadn’t driven before. Bexar was the usual bus driver for the family.
Exit after exit passed by on the deserted Interstate for the small farming communities along the Rio Grande. By the time that Jessie’s tears had dried and the FJ was warm, she was at the edge of El Paso, Texas.
The Interstate was still clear, but off the Interstate to either side there were hundreds of bodies moving amongst destroyed neighborhoods and strip malls. Sections of concrete barriers on the sides of bridges had broken away; more chunks of the jagged edges of the bridges tumbled off as the FJ bounded across them at a steady fifty mph. Jessie had forgotten about trying to find fuel after the frightful wakeup call she’d had. The gauge showed that she was already down a quarter of a tank, and she hadn’t refilled the used gas cans yet. She had enough for now, but she feared running out completely in a part of the country where there wouldn’t be any vehicles that she could siphon from. The large overhea
d Interstate signs remained intact, which was a blessing, since if one of those had fallen it might have blocked the road, making Jessie have to backtrack along the surface streets where there were still hundreds and hundreds of undead teeming about in a churning sea of death.
Jessie was making good time. In El Paso, there had been no ditches for the cars to be pushed into, so she had to slow considerably and drive around the mangled remains of vehicles pressed against the barriers. She caught herself holding her breath as she drove, and had to constantly remind herself to breathe while concentrating on the road, the signs, and the hazards. That drive had been more stressful than any Houston traffic she had ever been stuck in, but as abruptly as it had begun, she was past the center of El Paso, and back on I-10 headed into New Mexico.
Twentynine Palms, CA
Since it was certain that gunfire would bring Zeds streaming towards the sound, the sentry rotations were instructed to use knives or the corporal’s improvised weapon to dispatch them. Bullets were to be spent only as a last resort and would alert the entire camp to assist.
Corporal Simmons, mechanical whiz kid, had spent most of his middle school days cutting history and math to be in shop class, which the shop teacher allowed because he could see Simmons’ talent and potential. What he missed in the other required subjects he made up for with his creative ability to fabricate, repair, or build anything and everything in between. Aymond thought about his old CJ sitting in his driveway at home at Camp Lejeune. If we survive; if things go back to normal, he thought, Simmons will be on my short list to help finish the build.
Sunrise was met with more MREs and Simmons crawling around the M-ATVs doing some basic servicing. Their trucks were in good shape, but a lube job and filter cleaning never hurt anyone. Freed from riding in the M-ATVs, the MSOT spent time cleaning their personal weapons, the rest of their gear, and the crew-served weapons mounted on the M-ATVs. Once the mission was explained, the resident Corporals Simmons and Jones opted to join the ragtag group of operators. Marines are riflemen first, and whatever their day job is second, so if Aymond could scare up some more M-4s, Jones and Simmons could be combat effective. Regardless, bringing your own mechanics along is always a good idea.
Jones, still not used to the loose command structure of the MSOT, properly informed Master Gunnery Sergeant Aymond of an unimproved road south of the middle of the runway that would lead them to a series of unimproved roads and back to the highway. They would have to cut some fence, but they would be able to skip the main base and all the Zeds they accidentally baited out of the hospital. Believing the route was a winner, by 1000 hours the M-ATVs were loaded, including some more five-gallon jerry cans of fuel and a few more cases of MREs that Simmons and Jones had acquired. The convoy increased by Jones and Simmons in their Humvee bounded across the flight line, taxiway, and runway, into the desert, and onto the unimproved road heading southwest. Eventually, they intersected with other unimproved roads near the mountains to the south, and an hour later the convoy was back on 62, the Twentynine Palms Highway, headed towards San Diego. Like thousands of Marines before them, the lessons learned by coming to Twentynine Palms would help them immensely in their next battle; unlike the Marines that came before them, the lessons took less than twenty-four hours and included a security briefing by an E-4.
TX-82 Lubbock, TX
Apollo stopped at the exit for the loop. The sun glowed in the rearview mirror and it was time to swap places with Chivo. Lindsey complained that she was bored and was quickly chastised for it; as soldiers know, boredom can be quickly punctuated by intense terror. For Bexar it was like commenting how slow a shift was going in the police world—simply uttering those words out loud would bring the sort of non-stop shenanigans that are typically reserved for episodes of police reality TV shows.
Lindsey didn’t care; she was still bored. All she did was sit in the back and only got to climb out during one of the allotted rest and bathroom breaks. Chivo, behind the wheel with dawn breaking over the horizon, took the Defender off Highway 82 and onto the 289 loop around Lubbock. They only needed to travel to the very top of the loop to reach Highway 84, and as luck would have it, that section was largely undeveloped outside of light industrial complexes. There were no shopping malls or Walmarts teeming with people anywhere to be found. As quickly as they were on the loop, they were off of it and heading northwest on 84. No longer an elevated freeway, the highway was crossed by intersecting roads and private driveways. More of the undead shuffled amongst abandoned vehicles, but Chivo kept to the now standard operating procedure of weaving through the bodies and vehicles as best he could. If they had to dismount and engage in a ground fight with the walking corpses, it could be a losing battle. Everyone was better served by moving quickly through the fray and on towards their destination. In that regard, this drive reminded Chivo of working in The Stan. Move fast, blow by the threats in a soft vehicle, a civilian vehicle like a Hilux or 4Runner, and be gone before any insurgents could attack. The destination mattered, not the journey. The “journey” was for conventional troops with broad assignments, not for the special missions and tasks that the MSOT served. Swerving across the road to the shoulder, Chivo drove past a small group of undead, who turned to follow the passing vehicle. Chivo still didn’t know how long one of the walking corpses would continue in a specific direction, but he hoped they would eventually cease. Otherwise, once the convoy stopped they would have a really big problem.
The small towns along the way, Littlefield, Muleshoe, and Clovis, all told the same story. No signs of survivors, burned-out buildings, and the undead roaming the streets. .It seemed that every town had burned. Chivo’s best guess was that in the beginning, right after the attack, survivors had sheltered in place in their homes and tried to cook indoors due to the undead threat. Since the electricity was off, they probably used gas grills. Carbon monoxide would quickly fill the air and kill a family in a home that way; certainly, if the grill flamed up or tipped over it would take the house with it. With first responders nonexistent, the fires would go unchecked and burn house to house, building to building, before extinguishing by themselves from lack of fuel, or maybe a rain storm. Chivo seriously doubted a rain storm, though. The flat desert of West Texas didn’t look like it had much rain ever, much less a miraculous downpour that would douse a raging fire.
With each passing mile, more and more vehicles sat along or on the highway; countless corpses walked through the roadside parking lots, and bodies littered the ground. By now, the carnage and gore rolling by the windows of the Defender was nothing new; it had actually become routine. It is amazing how quickly people can adapt to horrible conditions and destroyed lives. Chivo had a long Special Forces career both in and out of the military which cushioned him against this nightmare, but he wondered how Bexar and Lindsey were holding up. Lindsey at least had Apollo, but Bexar had no one. All alone in the new world order where the dead rule the earth.
The gas gauge fell just past the halfway mark and Chivo decided now was as good a time as any to stop and fuel up. At the last fuel stop, Bexar had showed the group a trick on how to syphon gas easily. The sign said “Fort Sumner.” Whatever. It appeared to be yet another small town in the desert.
“Look alive back there. Stopping for fuel. Bexar, care to take care of the jerry cans again? I’ll use the first cans to fill the truck. Apollo and Lindsey—take security?”
Everyone answered positively. Apollo was just waking up from a good half day’s worth of sleep after his night shift driving. With any luck, they would reach Cortez by the evening.
Chivo left the Defender running, setting the brake as he climbed out. Apollo and Lindsey rolled out of the back of the SUV, rifles in their hands. Bexar got out and walked to the first car in his path. He noticed absently that it was a rental car; there was a small barcode sticker on the back window. At the front and rear of the Defender, rifle fire filled the air as Lindsey and Apollo began picking off the curious dead as they approached the team. Bex
ar used the butt of his big CM Forge blade to break the window of the rear driver’s side door so he could reach in and unlock the rental car. The bottom of the rear seat came out next, thrown onto the roof of the car so it would be out of the way. A few hits with the butt of his knife and the fuel pump unlocked from the top of the gas tank. Bexar pulled the pump assembly out of the way, and was looking to see how much gas was in the tank before inserting a section of garden hose to syphon with when he started laughing.
Chivo walked over to Bexar with two of the jerry cans. “What’s so funny?”
In his bad Cop-Spanish, Bexar answered, “su tiene cocaina” as he pulled out a tightly wrapped brick of cocaine from the gas tank. “These things had a street value of about $20k apiece. You guys want to party? Or maybe make some side cash? Maybe we can talk the undead into trying a few lines; they’d get all paranoid we might be narcs and leave us the hell alone.”
Bexar threw one of the bricks of cocaine across the road yelling, “Fuck! Fucking world sucks!” before stomping off to the next car, a red Ford F450. This one was not a rental. Repeating the process, Bexar found the gas tank full of gasoline instead of drugs. A few minutes later, three of the jerry cans were full, the Defender was full, and Bexar slid under a pickup to cut the fuel filler hose to finish the task. The superduty truck’s big tank refilled the used jerry cans, which were then lashed back on the roof rack. Apollo and Lindsey spent two magazines each keeping the undead at bay for the half hour it took Bexar to fill the gas cans and the Defender.
