“That’s the point,” the thief replied.
“Half at Shunder; half at Oblio on the other side . . .” Buddy said. “Hey! Look at that! Gas is still four twenty-five a gallon. My whole life gas prices just go up and up and up, and now they’ve been holding steady for two years. Amazing.”
“Amazing is you think that joke is funny every damn time we pass a gas station,” Zeke said as the thief put the plastic over his head. It didn’t create a tight seal around his neck, so he used a limp belt hanging from the wall to secure it there. Then he leaned forward, trying to choke and suffocate himself at the same time.
“You do whatever the fuck you want after they let us out,” the murderer said to his gum-chewing partner. “But I’m finding a saw or something to separate us, and then I’m going to get some new clothes and run for Canada. They won’t know me from anyone in their settlements.”
“Only part of you making it to Canada is in the gut of some zombie who roams that way after munching on you. Just kill yourself. Next world can’t be this bad.”
“You find a gun in some house and die that way. I’m going to live.”
Buddy giggled about another gas station, and then a theater with movies that hadn’t changed on the marquee for two years. Zeke ignored him. There was nothing that did not amuse Buddy, who pointed out mannequins spilled on a sidewalk outside a store, and then a school with backpacks strewn all over. “Think there’s still lunches in there?”
“I’m not pulling over so you can peek in kids’ backpacks, you dumbass,” Zeke said tiredly. “Nothing’s still good in there after all this time.”
“Oh, yeah? What about candy? That doesn’t go bad. The sandwiches, the fruit, sure, but the candy has preservatives. Come on, Zeke, let’s get that candy. It’ll be like Halloween trick-or-treating.”
Selena was taut with dread beside Xan. The thief flailed with his suicide contraption, which wasn’t doing its job. Buddy pleaded with Zeke to pull over so he could grab up a handful of backpacks. “You don’t even got to let me out! Just drive through that parking lot and I’ll open the door, lean out, and scoop them up! We can even pick up some homework for the kids in Meatfarm.”
“Kids want toys, not homework.”
Buddy did another imitation, this one of an irritated, matronly teacher. “Mr. Buddy Bencher, where is your homework today? Let me guess. Dog ate it? You forgot it somewhere? Donated it to charity? See here, young man, this is the third time this week! It’s time you started showing some responsibility!” This amused Zeke far more than the gas station joke. Xan assumed that the driver hadn’t given in to the pleas about the school; they rumbled on without a door opening. Selena eyed the plastic, and then the sheet in her lap. Her fingers clenched into weak fists like she was determining her strength.
The metal grate above them began to move. Determining that this wasn’t the best means with which to kill himself, the thief scooted a foot away to be on the safe side of the gate when it came down. Xan got to his feet and headed for the back. Leap on these fools, get a gun . . . Xan had never shot anyone, but this was a fine time to start.
He nearly lost his nose when the gate dropped suddenly in front of his face. It hadn’t gone down in the same place as before. Now it dropped only halfway across the back. The old man, the young man who wouldn’t help with the gate, the thief, and the sleeping woman were on the far side. So was the nurse. All of them stared at one another through the bars.
Zeke sighed in aggravation. “I hate the drive to Meatfarm. Nothing to look at on the way.”
“There would have been something to look at if you’d let me grab a few of those backpacks,” Buddy said.
“Fuck that. I don’t want to hear you reading some kiddie picture books about Little Baby Kitten who lost her mittens and now the sky is falling unless she can chug up that mountain, or whatever that shit is.”
“That’s like four kiddie books stuck together. Uhhh . . . you just drove past Shunder.”
“It’s your fault. Stop distracting me.”
The truck came to a hard stop. Buddy looked through the open panel and said, “Good, they aren’t all crowded up against the wall.”
“See anything out there?”
Xan had a view of the cab, where their heads were swinging around. “All clear,” one said.
“Sweet Jesus,” the nurse whispered when the back of the truck rose. The thief had twisted the plastic into ties and was pulling on them hard.
The calmest one, besides the unconscious woman, was the old man. His dementia or schizophrenia, the effects of the stroke or whatever was misfiring in his brain completely prevented him from understanding the danger that he was in. He stretched out his legs in the sunlight, no longer talking about Viet-nom or rollie-coasters or boatyards. He was just going with the flow.
Two rifles pointed into the back of the truck. “Out,” Zeke ordered. The old man released the belt and scooted over the floor obediently. The young man went after him. Stretching the plastic even more tightly, the thief stayed where he was. Buddy screamed at him to get a move on, and then got into the truck to haul him out. The nurse sidled past and climbed down, blinking in the bright light and her arms pulled in close to her chest as she got her bearings. As Buddy tangled with the thief, Zeke marched the rest away at gunpoint down the street.
“No! No!” the thief cried when Buddy ripped the plastic away. “Put me out there dead!” Refusing to move, he shrank into the wall defiantly. Zeke came back to help and got hold of the thief, dragging him out kicking and screaming. Buddy got a fistful of the unconscious woman’s hair. She was dragged out and landed on the ground with a thud.
“Put a hack in her somewhere. Let the blood flow,” Zeke said. Buddy couldn’t; the thief was trying to hit him to goad a shot. With a roar, Buddy jabbed him in the stomach with the muzzle.
The guy doubled over in pain. The bait men ganged up on him, hitting and kicking to drive him off. The old man was wandering away, pausing to read a street sign, and the nurse had fled to a building. The young man was trying car doors hurriedly.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Buddy shouted, getting out his axe. Zeke pushed the thief down the street after the others. Xan looked away as the axe came down on the sleeping woman. An arc of blood spray went past in his peripheral vision. It was followed by a slight moan.
Incredibly, the old man had gone to a bus stop and taken a seat on the bench. The nurse had found a locked door and was sprinting to another building to try her luck there. The young man was sliding inside an unlocked car. He turned the ignition. Nothing happened. Leaping out, he raced for another car. The thief stayed as close to the truck as he dared.
“Oh, shit, here they come!” Buddy yelled. Leaving the back door open, he and Zeke ran for the cab. The thief hustled for the open truck bed.
“Lock the doors!” Snap.
“We’re next. We’re next!” Selena gasped. She had gotten to her feet and come to the gate. Her fingers wound around the bars as she stared out to the road. A tremble ran through her weak body. “Why isn’t that old man running? Run!” The thief was taking fast but tiny steps, which was as much as the chains allowed.
Zombies were appearing from around the buildings. The young man saw them, quit the cars, and took off at a sprint; the nurse bashed at an office window with a trashcan to get inside. The old man just sat there idiotically as zombies closed in on him. Others went to the sleeping, bleeding woman and knelt down eagerly. The thief gave up on running and hopped like he was in a sack race. The truck picked up speed and left him behind. He jumped too hard and fell over onto his face.
Zeke whipped around the corner and Xan lost sight of them. But he heard them start screaming.
“Damn, I hate when they turn out to be pussies,” Buddy said mockingly from the cab. His voice lifted into a terrified falsetto. “Oh, shoot me. Shoot me, please! Oh, the humanity!” He laughed. “Grab your balls and run for it, itty-bitty baby bait boy.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to be out here? Sh
ould have thought about that before you stole food. Was that what he stole?” Zeke asked.
“I don’t know. Never asked. T on his shirt means he stole something. It should be S for stealing.”
The gate went up one last time as the truck trundled on.
Chapter Five
They were somewhere north of Newgreen. The distance couldn’t have been more than five miles, to Xan’s best estimate. Five miles was nothing in the world as it had been before: a quick commute in a car, a pleasant pedal on a bicycle, a hearty walk.
This was not that world anymore.
Some of the smell had faded. The bodies were gone, except for the woman that Buddy had shot. Pieces of her brain matter had been trod into the grooves of the floor. Unsecured and the back door wide open, the plastic sheets that Zeke had been so intent on saving were falling out. The angle of the road was aiding in that. They were going up a hill quickly. The wind sweeping in nibbled at the edges of the plastic and teased each sheet inch by inch to the edge. When they fell out, they tumbled over themselves in the road and settled in lumps like each still had a body inside.
The murderers crept along to the open door. One held onto a belt and the other looked out. Xan could only see the road, two lanes separated from another two lanes by an island of shaggy trees. The truck bounced violently and threw him to the floor; it nearly threw the two men out entirely. Only the fist wrapped around the belt kept them in. Selena had already retaken her seat in the corner.
“Hardware store!” said the man closest to the edge. He was the one chewing gum. “Out there in that shopping complex. Should we jump?”
“You see any reason not to?” asked his companion.
“Two of them.” They shared a look, engaged in a silent debate if they could handle two zombies while cuffed together. Then they remained in the truck.
“Be there soon, man-secretary!” Buddy shouted as Zeke swerved from side to side.
The truck dipped down and went beneath an overpass. Zeke had had to swerve because cars were stopped haphazardly in the lanes. The chained men had a hurried conversation about hitching a ride on the convoy when it went by, but again, they decided against that move. The truck returned to rising up a hill, giving Xan a view of the freeway. Thick greenery shielded the city they had just driven through.
“Don’t got enough bodies these days,” Buddy said, his eyes full of wistfulness as he stared through the panel to the paltry amount of bait in the truck. Xan met his gaze with a steely glare and Buddy gave him a teasing sad face. “Don’t take it personal. Just think about your boy, your sick boy. You’re keeping him safe. You’re keeping him fed. He should be proud of his old man. You’re making the ultimate sacrifice for him.”
Zeke swore about a fallen tree over the lanes. The truck slowed and bumped about as he maneuvered around it. They were in an intersection of an area neither commercial nor residential, but filled with trees.
“See anything?”
“Nothing.”
Taking advantage of the reduced speed, the chained men jumped out of the back. Buddy chortled. “I love it when they do that.”
They landed with rough thuds. One toppled over and the other hauled him back up. Then they were off at a fast hobble, inner legs moving forward together, followed by their outer ones, their shoulders almost brushing from the wrist cuffs locking them close. The truck turned and they vanished. Xan wanted Zeke to step on the gas. He hadn’t asked the circumstances of the murder those men were being punished for, but no matter its ugliness, he didn’t want to hear them scream.
Fortunately, all he heard was the rumble of the truck. “Who’s left?” Zeke asked.
“Man-secretary, the late Queen of Tears, and Cancer Kid,” Buddy said with a yawn. “Are we there yet?”
“You know we aren’t. You want to be there faster, then tell these trees to stop falling. Hey, look over there!”
“Two, four, five dead zombies!” Buddy said. “People say we’re going to be behind those moats for eighty, ninety years until the last of them die. I bet not. Like those five, they’re going to starve to death long before that.”
“Poor little zombies.”
“Yeah, poor dudes. Can’t break into Newgreen, Factory, Fueltown, the rest of the settlements, and they’re running out of free towners to nibble on. Those first bodies we dropped, every last scrap of them is already gone by now, or near enough.”
“Freebies,” Zeke said with a snort. “That’s what Calz was calling the free towners. Freebie meat specials.”
“Freebies! That’s great. I got to tell her that. Anyway, how many freebies are left out here? You can’t hide in your house forever, especially if the water goes out, your food runs dry. You got to start risking it. Remember that huge freebie family outside of Big Sugar? The one that the Collection Agency found getting eaten in some food warehouse-”
Selena was hyperventilating from fear. Xan was braced for the truck to slow. But it just drove on, turning this way and that with the two idiots in the cab yammering and running lone zombies down. Once they swerved away from a road that had a lot of zombies in it and traveled down another one, a map rustling so Buddy could find an alternate route to their destination. The dead woman stared at the hole through the roof, where a pinpoint of light was shining down.
They checked the time. They talked about the convoy. They took another side route.
“Mom,” Selena whispered brokenly. She buried her head in her arms.
Sped up as the zombies began to follow them. Slowed down for a turn. Sped up again. Rustled the map some more.
“Hey there, man-secretary!” Buddy called. “Any message you want us to pass along the next time we go through Newgreen? Combination to the supplies cabinet? Where you keep your special scheduling pencil?” Zeke howled.
Xan wanted Colette to know that he loved her. He had loved her like he’d loved no other woman in his life. But he’d be damned to hell before he sent these two goons to seek her out in Tomato, or at their apartment. She was a very attractive woman; these men were beasts. The only way to keep her safe was to say nothing at all. “No.”
“You sure?” Buddy asked. “You’re awfully important, you were telling me. You must have all sorts of things in that bloody noggin of yours that they need to have in theirs. Newgreen is going to fall apart without you. Come on. Power and Water matter to everyone!”
They were as sociopathic as Olyvyr Gravine, but sporting less than a third of his kingly IQ. Xan was silent. He turned away to look out the back.
Right turn. Left turn.
Slowing down.
“All right then, do it,” Zeke said.
Metal grated overhead. It was moving the opposite direction from the other times, sliding along to the front of the truck and then peeling away from the ceiling to travel down to the floor. Selena scooted away so it wouldn’t land on her head. Xan went to the edge of the truck, waiting for the bait men to round it with their guns.
He’d leap on whoever was closest and take control of this situation. Get Selena into the cab and peel out. The convoy could dump her body out here when she was dead, but not a moment before. He’d visit her every day in the hospital when he went for Lucca . . . oh God, Lucca . . . since she had no one else.
The metal hit the floor. Then it began to slide forward. The two men were still in the cab, Buddy watching in delight through the panel. Selena scooted away, a pained gesture. Then she was forced to scoot away again. The gate pressed on the dead woman’s feet. Her knees buckled and turned to the side.
The bait men weren’t going to get out of the cab. Xan looked up to the track the gate was traveling upon. It would push them right out of the back, and then the truck could drive away.
The dead woman’s legs bent and bent further until the gate struck her ass. Then it pushed her along, her body rolling over through her own blood. Selena tried to get to her feet, but it was an arduous process that the moving gate didn’t give her the time to accomplish.
If Xan
leaped out of the truck and ran around to the cab . . . but the doors were locked. He heard the command to lock them and the following snap every time they entered it, like it was part of a safety procedure they engaged in religiously. Outside was a leafy world short of anything he could use for a weapon to break a window.
The dead woman rolled over again. Selena braced herself on the bars and let the gate push her along, without the strength to keep moving away. “Please don’t,” she begged Buddy. “I don’t want to go out there.”
“Sorry, kid, them’s the breaks. It’ll be quick, I promise,” Buddy said. Even now, about to shove a kid into hell, he did an imitation. His voice lowered and became official. “Newgreen thanks you for your support.”
You sick son-of-a-bitch, Xan thought. And even now, Zeke laughed.
The gate made a squealing sound and stopped its advance. The dead woman had been in the middle of another roll. She collapsed onto her stomach and her arm hit the floor with a bang. Buddy sighed. “Goddammit.”
“What?” Zeke asked.
“It got caught again. Those lousy fuckers promised me that they fixed it.”
The motor propelling the gate growled somewhere in the vehicle. It was straining to keep pushing, but the gate wouldn’t budge. Buddy pointed his rifle through the bars at Xan. “Off with you, man-secretary. Climb on out. The zombies need someone to keep their schedule. You’re qualified for that. Put in an application.”
“Eight o’clock, roam around and look for food,” Zeke joked. “Nine o’clock, roam around and look for food. Ten o’clock, roam around and look for . . .”
Xan didn’t move. Buddy tapped the muzzle against the bars. “You want me to shoot you?”
“Buddy! We need some fucking runners!” Zeke protested.
“Go ahead,” Xan said, risking his life on Zeke overruling impulsive Buddy. “Better dead than alive out here. Blast away, asshole.”
“We need runners,” Zeke said firmly. “If they’re running after meat, they won’t be swarming over the freeway to block the convoy. Get him out alive.”
Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 30
