by Rich Baker
The truck edges forward until the rope pulls tight, and Mani uses it to pull himself out of the current. He raises his hand, index finger extended and waves it in a circle. The man in the van hits the gas, the tow rope trembling under the strain. The moving truck moves, just a little at first, then a few inches, then the wheels catch, the passenger side wheels emerge from the hole in the roadway, and the moving van gets clear of the water. Jesse lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
The van keeps driving away from the bridge, and the roadway just this side of the water collapses into a hole. The rushing water has eroded the substrate under the road. As the hole grows larger, the bridge itself begins to collapse.
“That was fun. Can we go home now?” Paco asks from the cab of the moving van.
“As soon as Mani gets his fat ass back in the truck. He’s always loafing,” Jesse says.
He watches Mani pull the driver’s door shut. “Fuck you guys,” he says into the walkie. “Let’s go. This water park sucks.”
He pulls ahead of the moving van and leads the way, using the plow to mow down the occasional zombie.
“Is everyone okay back there?” he asks the group in the back.
They respond in the affirmative, then one of them says “Your girl back here is awake.”
“Help her up here,” he says. “Moses, let her sit there.”
Moses Ramirez gets up and moves out of the passenger seat, pausing to help the groggy blonde woman to the front.
Jesse steals a sideways glance at her. She’s pretty, even if she’s dirty and has blood smeared on her face, he can tell she’s attractive.
“My name’s Jesse,” he says. “You were hurt in a battle, and your friends were killed. We’re taking you to a safe place, so don’t do anything stupid. You have nine or ten guns pointing at you from the rear of this van, so you won’t make it far if you try anything. You got it?”
“I got it,” she said. “And those weren’t my friends.”
“What do you mean?”
“I met them just a few hours ago. In fact, they thought I was working with you when you came knocking. They were going to kill me before you came in and killed them. So, I guess that makes you my new best friends.”
“What’s your name?” he asks her.
“Danielle Heneghan, and you will not believe the day I’ve had.”
Five
D-Day pulls the Victory on the sidewalk to avoid snarl of cars and zombies. He slows as he passes by the entrances for Check Mate and Pawn King.
“Those have to be related,” he shouts over his shoulder. If Carmen heard him, she doesn’t reply. He rolls past the businesses and pulls back on the street. The steel shutters are intact, so there’s no getting in from the front. There must be a back entrance.
He makes a left at the intersection and spots the alley behind the buildings lining Main Street. He makes another left into the alley, and about halfway down he spots the damaged garage door with the white car inside the bay. Dead bodies, all zombies from the look of them, lie clustered around the opening.
He parks the bike just past the garage opening, draws his pistol, and fires two suppressed shots, taking out a couple of zombies that had taken an interest in them. Carmen climbs off the bike and with five shots takes out three more behind them. They scan around, and the others in the parking lot and the street beyond are all spinning in random ellipses, following the sound and stimulus of the rain. Seeing no other threats, they step into the garage.
D-Day takes his glasses and puts them on top of his head. There are more dead zombies in the garage, some of which have been dragged to the side, clearing a path into the building. He takes a quick look at the white car, then turns to Carmen.
“We need to be careful in here,” he says, “He’s not alone. If you’re nervous, this is the time to go. Once we’re in, we’re in.”
“How do you know he’s not alone?” she asks.
He gestures to the drag marks on the floor. “This is a lot of dead zeds for a guy who was wounded to have taken out. And given the amount of blood in this car, I don’t know if he would have had the strength to drag these bodies out of his way before going inside. But the real giveaway is I see four different calibers of shells on the ground.”
He points to different places.
“7.62mm, .22, .223, .40…or 9mm,” he says, leaning down. “Yeah, 9mm. Some are in the goop, others are on the dead zeds, so they were all fired after the dead got in. So, several people were in here killing these things. All we know from that DJ guy is there were two people here from that Montero crew. We have no idea how many total people are inside, or if they’re all a threat. This could get dicey.”
“Well, we’ve come this far,” she says. “Let’s do it.”
“Ok, same as we’ve done before, I’ll go right, you go left. If someone points a gun in your direction, shoot them. I’m talking live people, not zeds. Are you sure you’re up to this?”
Carmen smiles a little at D-Days use of the Puckett’s term for the undead.
“No, but until I do it, I’ll never be sure. Let’s go.”
D-Day nods and climbs the four steps to the door. He readies his rifle, and clicks on the high intensity LED flashlight he has mounted to the rail. Carmen does the same with her rifle. She gives D-Day a thumbs-up, and he turns the knob and moves the door a half inch to get the latch disengaged, then kicks the door, so it opens all the way to the stop on the wall and bounces off it. He goes in, covering the right side, Carmen covers the left. There’s no one in the hallway, so he closes the door. The building is dark inside, but they can see that there are several rooms along the hallway, the ones with open doors letting in a bit of gray light from their bar-covered, wire meshed security windows. They check them one by one and find them full of merchandise but empty of people.
The last room on the first floor is an office, based on the file cabinets along one wall and large desk on which a computer monitor and keyboard reside. Just past it is a door hanging ajar, a set of stairs going up, and a security door that leads to the sales counter for the pawn shop. D-Day looks inside the open door, and there’s another set of stairs going down. He shuts the door and pulls a wooden wedge from a pocket. He slides it under the door and kicks it to lodge it tight. He peers through the wire-meshed window into the sales floor. He shines the flashlight around but sees no movement. He takes another wedge and is about to use it to secure the door when he sees a key dangling from fishing line next to the bottom hinge. He grabs it and slides it into the deadbolt, and turns it with a click.
“So far so good,” he says. “I’m concerned now that everyone is upstairs. We could get a lot of action up here. You still good?”
“Yeah,” Carmen says. “My stomach is knotted up like crazy, but I’m ready.”
“Okay. Stay a couple of stairs behind me in case I need to step back real fast. Remember, finger off the trigger until you’re going to shoot, and please don’t point the barrel at me.”
“Got it. I’m good.”
They climb the stairs, D-Day moving in a crouch to the first landing and making the U-turn to the second half of the stairs. Before he makes the top, he can smell death. He creeps to the edge of the wall at the top and peeks around the corner. A pair of dead zombies have been pushed to the edge of the hallway, but there’s no other sign of life.
There are rooms on both sides up here. They check the first one to the left, a big room with a kitchen and a dining area. No one is inside. The first room on the right is a bedroom. It’s a man’s room, based on the clothing. They check the attached bathroom and find it empty.
Back in the hall they pass the dead zombies, both wrinkling their noses at the smell. The next door is also on the right side. D-Day pushes the door open, and the smell of decay hits him in the face. It’s a different smell than that of the re-deceased. It’s been a long time since he’s smelled a normal dead body. It’s almost refreshing. Almost.
“Dead body,” he whi
spers. “Wait out here and cover me. Stay sharp.”
He goes into the room and finds Laurie Walker’s body in the tub, blood and other fluids from decomposition running to the drain. He leaves her where she lays and does a quick search of the room. He finds a couple of notebooks and flips through them. She was a journaler, whoever she was, and he sees the name Montero, amongst others, in some of the recent entries. He stuffs the notebooks in the pouch on the rear of his vest and exits the room.
“What was it?” Carmen asks.
“Dead woman in the tub.”
“Zombie?”
“No. Stabbed several times. Pretty gruesome. Let’s keep going.”
They go to the next door, which is on the left. Inside they find the beds that Lucky and Little Nicky used, with Nicky’s stained with blood.
“Ok, so our guy made it back here, laid on the bed, bled for a while, and then left,” D-Day says. “His car is downstairs in the garage, so he didn’t leave in what he drove here. There’s dead zeds all over the place, dragged out of the way. I think he was extracted, and whoever has him has intel on our new friends. If that’s true, there’s a fight coming their way.”
“Our way,” Carmen says. “We’re going to help them, remember?”
“Well, let’s cross that bridge when we get there, okay? If it’s fight or flight, I like flight in this situation. Let’s go check the basement.”
They make their way back down the stairs where D-Day kicks the wooden wedge loose. He pulls the door open, and a second later the rancid smell of death hits him again. He turns to Carmen, but he can tell by the look on her face she knows.
“Keep two steps behind me,” he says. He descends the stairs, his light guiding the way. At the bottom of the stairs, they find the body of Frankie Four Fingers; his neck turned at an impossible angle. In the cool air of the basement, decomposition hasn’t progressed as far as it has with the woman upstairs, but he’s still ripe.
D-Day shines the light around and spots the generators and fuel cans.
“Bingo!” he says. He has Carmen shine her light on the generators for him while he puts some fuel in the tank of the closest one. He presses the ignition button, and the engine turns over and coughs to life. Across the basement, lights flicker and come to life.
“That’s more like it,” he says. “Let’s look around for a bit down here and see what he has stashed.”
The basement has dozens of shelves laden with all manner of things. Old phonographs, computers, board games, old dolls – as D-Day walks across the basement, he sees a lot of junk but nothing worthwhile.
“Hey, D-Day!” Carmen says. “Come over here, tell me if these are real.”
He heads back a few rows to where Carmen is shining her light on a wooden box with two metal latches on it. In military stencil, it reads “30 grenades.”
“Interesting,” he says. He flips it open, revealing thirty cardboard canisters. He pulls one out and removes the top half of the canister. Inside is a hand grenade.
“As advertised,” he says. “This is a box of what appears to be authentic M204A2 hand grenades. Find a backpack.”
He puts the grenade in a pocket on his vest, and when Carmen comes back with a canvas bag, they load the other twenty-nine cans into it.
They find more treasures in that row of shelves. They fill another two bags with several thousand rounds of subsonic .22, hollow point .40, and 5.56 NATO rounds.
They lug the bags up the stairs and out through the garage entrance. There are more zombies outside now, but they’re too preoccupied with the rain to form a coherent attack on the two humans. D-Day loads the hard-sided saddlebags with the ammunition and grenades while Carmen shoots the few zombies that wander their way. It’s not until D-Day fires up the motor that the dead take an interest in them, but he heads back out of the alley the way he came in, and they quickly lose interest in the downpour.
D-Day steers the bike toward Third Avenue, and as he’s about to make a left turn, Carmen slaps his shoulder and points ahead. He stops the bike and stares in amazement.
Third Avenue is at the crest of a hill, with Main Street descending to the south as it heads toward North Creek a half mile away from their position, and South Creek a half mile farther south from there.
D-Day doesn’t know the names of the creeks, or even that there are two of them. He just sees a river running high, water splashing in fountains on to the road as debris piles up on against the guard rail.
He raises his monocular and scans the area to the south, and a few seconds later he sees two trucks start moving. He had at first assumed they had been abandoned in the middle of the road. Now they turn off of Main Street and head east. He hears gunfire, some of it the staccato of automatic and the rest the irregular rhythm of semi-auto. An explosion sends a shock wave through the air. The shooting continues for a minute, maybe less, then stops. He’s interested to know what was going on, but Carmen’s pistol firing alerts him to danger. Several zombies are coming from all directions, probably riled up by the noise from whatever battle just played out. He puts the monocular away and points the bike back toward the Puckett’s, carefully weaving around zombies as he goes.
Six
Max looks out of the office window at the crews unloading the trucks. They did well, getting thousands of rounds of ammunition, dozens of guns, crates upon crates of dehydrated camping meals, hundreds of bottles of water, and even clothing and camping gear. They didn’t lose anyone and even came back heavy one female.
He turns to Jesse.
“Tell me about this woman.”
“Her name’s Danielle Heneghan. She’s pretty, seems smart. And she’s full of information about the Puckett's.”
“You believe her?”
“Yeah, I do. She knows we’re looking for them, says she was just with DJ Nelson, she knows what happened to Lucky and Little Nicky. What she told me about Nicky’s escape checks out with what we found at Pawn King. It’s consistent with his injuries.”
“Okay, so what else did she say? Did she give up any info on where they are?”
“No. She clammed up then. She’s worried about her safety. It seems she crossed the Puckett’s, DJ left her hanging, and the group we hit at Murphy’s was about to take her out when we blew the door. I can’t say that I blame her.”
“Think we can force it out of her?”
“Sure, but she could also give us bad intel and get us killed. I’d rather she trusts us and give up the intel on her own. We have some time. With this rain, it’s not like we’re going out there anytime soon.”
“Okay. Let’s get Addie to take her under her wing, show her around. Give her some work to do. Treat her like one of us, and we’ll see what she coughs up.”
“Got it. I'll make the introduction. I'll grab some soup and eat with her, let her know the rules of the camp and then I'll have Addie give the tour.”
“Perfect. Keep me posted on what she has to say.”
Jesse smiles. “Right on.”
* * *
Danielle sits on an old chair near an overhead heater. She’s freezing and terrified, but she refuses to let these people see it. She feels like she’s been bouncing from frying pan to frying pan, and is worried this might be the fire.
The man named Jesse is walking her way. Despite her situation, she likes his look. He’s older than her, but she can’t tell by how much. Ten years, maybe? He keeps his hair short and his patchy beard, she assumes, is more a product of the times in which they live than a conscious lack of grooming. He has a serious presence and seems to take in everything without looking like he’s trying to take in everything. She trusts him about as much as she trusts anyone now, which is to say she doesn’t trust him – but she has no choice other than to play nice with him, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s attractive.
He has a tray with a couple of cans on it, and a wad of cloth underneath it. She eyes him quizzically.
“Can I join you?” he asks.
“Um – yeah. Do I
have a choice?”
“I can always take this hot soup somewhere else.” He smiles as he says it. Her stomach growls at the mention of soup.
“No, please, sit down. It will give everyone another reason to stare at me.”
He looks at the people milling around what they’re calling the dining hall. They’ve set up all of the tables they have, mostly the plastic kind with the folding legs, in one of the rent-a-bay repair shops. The space has propane fueled overhead heaters and doors that roll down to keep the wind and rain at bay, but it would hardly be confused for a five-star eatery.
“Who, them?” he says, nodding his head toward the people who are trying to look like they’re NOT watching the two of them. “They're just curious. It's been a while since we had someone new in here that wasn't trying to kill us or steal from us. They want to know what’s your deal, and since WE don’t know that yet, we’re not telling THEM anything other than we rescued you during the raid.”
“Is it that bad out here? The only people you see are trying to kill you or steal from you?”
He shrugs. “People will do anything to survive. I can’t say that I blame them. We have to be on guard all the time. The best thing we have going for us is we're set back from any of the main roads, but enough people know about this place and think maybe it’s worth checking out to cause us problems. It’s nothing we can’t handle, but it's still a lot of area to cover. It will be good to have another set of eyes to help out.”
She realizes he’s referring to her. “Me? Oh, no, I can't stay. I mean, I appreciate you helping me and all, but I need to get to California.”
“With no supplies? Must be something big in Cali if you're willing to head there with just the clothes on your back.”
“My family. And I wasn't supposed to be unprepared, but…it just turned out that way. I can find supplies. I'll be alright.”
