The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde

by Spears, R. J.

  Nora leaned in the portal window between the cab and the bed of the truck and asked, “How much longer?”

  That was the question of the day. Sadly, no one knew the answer.

  “We’ll be finding somewhere to land soon,” Clara said, putting on a bright smile.

  “I’m hungry, and my stomach is really starting to hurt,” Nora said.

  “Well, sweetie, we all are, but it won’t be long,” Clara said.

  Gertie fished around in her jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of hard candy. She reached up and pushed it toward the young girl. “Suck on this peppermint for a while. It might calm your stomach.”

  Nora took it but didn’t look all that thrilled about it. Something was better than nothing, she must have decided, and she disappeared from the window.

  They passed by a long stretch of wooded area, and all the adults kept a vigilant eye out for any movement among the trees. The marauders were out there somewhere. Jo just hoped they had gotten a message not to mess with their caravan.

  They transitioned from forests to farmland as an expansive field of brown and withered corn appeared on the left side of the road for as far as the eye could see. It seemed to go on for miles.

  “Look at that,” Del said. “That was a lot of good corn gone to waste.”

  “Anything in those fields that we might be able to eat or use, farm boy?” Jones asked, leaning forward.

  “No way,” Del said. “It would all be either rotted or the rats and crows would have taken most of it by now.”

  “Too bad,” Jones said as he fell back against his seat.

  Jo spotted a break in the field ahead. Road signs with school bus icons stood along the side of the road. “Looks like we have a school coming up,” Del said, trying to fill the time.

  “Maybe we should check it out for supplies?” Clara asked.

  “It would be a minor miracle if that place hasn’t been picked clean already,” Del said.

  “Slow down a bit as we drive by,” Jo said.

  “It’s not like we’re zooming,” Del said.

  “You’re right there,” Jones said from the back seat.

  Del eased up on the gas as they came closer to the break in the long field of corn. The road widened to accommodate a middle lane for the buses to make their turns into the upcoming parking lot. Everyone in the cab turned and inspected the parking lot and the school as they came upon it.

  None of them knew what they’d see, but there was a unspoken desire for some sort of surprise. Maybe there’d be a broken down semi-trailer with dry goods.

  They did get a surprise, and Jo lurched forward in her seat. “Pull in. Pull in now.”

  “There’s nothing there,” Del said.

  “Yes, there is,” Jo said. “Look back there toward the back of the school.”

  “It’s just some trucks,” Del said, but he slowed down even more.

  “No, not just some trucks,” Jo said. “Those could be the trucks our people left the Manor in.”

  Jones leaned forward again and said, “Our trucks aren’t all that unique.”

  “The only way to find out is to check it out,” Jo said.

  “What will Donovan say about this?” Del asked.

  “We sacrificed our safety for his people,” Jo said. “He can give us some time to check this out to see if our people are here. Besides, there might be something here to eat.”

  “You’re right,” Del said, and there was an excitement in his tone. “Fuck him,” he added, then he said, “Sorry ladies,” directing the comment to the Benton sisters.

  “That’s okay,” Clara said. “You two are obviously anxious as to whether your family or friends are here.”

  “The place looks pretty abandoned,” Jones said.

  “Just pull the hell in,” Jo said, her voice getting more forceful with each word.

  Del cut the wheel, and the passengers inside and outside in the bed of the truck felt the tug of inertia. Clayton yelled out, “What the hell? Give us some warning next time.”

  Del yelled back, “Sorry.” They eased into the parking lot and immediately saw the bodies strewn all over the lot. Many of them looked smashed and broken, obviously the formerly undead. Some had bullet holes in their heads, while others sported terrible head wounds.

  “Somebody went to town on these deaders,” Del said in a hushed voice.

  “Get us closer to the trucks,” Jo said, and it was easy to hear a sense of anxiousness in her voice.

  The walkie-talkie on the seat beside her squawked to life, and she jumped. Donovan’s voice came out of the tiny speaker, “What’s going on? Why are we pulling off the road?”

  “I recognize those trucks,” Jo said, rushing the words out so fast that the words nearly blurred together.

  “Come again,” Donovan said. “I didn’t understand you.”

  “I think these are the trucks our people left the Manor in,” Jo said, consciously working to slow down her speech. “This is before we met you. Our people escaped in them after we rebelled against the soldiers. We took trucks like these.”

  “Do you think your people are still here?” Donovan asked.

  “I don’t know, but we have to check,” she replied.

  “Okay, but we can’t take too much time,” Donovan replied.

  Del watched in the rearview mirror as the caravan turned like a long snake into the parking lot. Several times, he had to swerve to miss the zombie corpses that littered the parking lot. He knew the tractor couldn’t make those maneuvers, but he knew they would figure it out.

  A palpable sense of tension settled inside the cab as Jo leaned forward in her seat, scanning the lot and the building for any signs of life. Nothing was evident and that bothered her, but she knew, if this was her people, they could have moved on. But then a question lingered in her mind. And that was how? If the trucks were here, how did they leave?

  Of course, they could have left on foot, but that seemed a desperate move. But maybe they had to.

  “Look up next to the building. There are some boxes spilled on the ground,” Del said. “It looks like bottles of water.”

  Jo spoke in a chilled tone, “There’s a body up there, and it doesn’t look like a deader.”

  Del slowed the truck down considerably but headed toward the boxes and the body. Jones leaned forward and grasped the front seat to pull himself forward for a better look.

  Del eased the truck to a stop about ten feet from the body lying half on/half off the sidewalk. The rest of the caravan slowed to a stop a safe distance behind them.

  Jo started to talk, but her voice caught in her throat. She started again, but her voice was tight. “Is that one of our people?”

  Del spoke quietly, “I can’t tell for sure. Most of his face is missing.”

  Jones asked, “But do you recognize the clothes and the body?”

  “Yes,” Del said, his voice thin and lacking substance. “I think that’s Calvin.”

  A quiet as heavy as iron fell inside the truck.

  A slapping noise sounded on the top of the cab, and everyone inside the truck jumped a little. Clayton’s voice followed the slap. “What the hell are we doing here?”

  No one inside answered Clayton’s question. In fact, no one moved at all. Neither Del or Jo wanted to confirm their suspicions that this was one of their people. Who would?

  A bigger question lingered in their minds, unasked. Where were the others? And would this be the first body they found?

  Jo broke the stillness by grabbing the door handle and clicking the door open, but she didn’t get out. Del looked over to her and felt the same way. Neither of them wanted to get out of the truck.

  He opened his door and took a slow step out onto the pavement. Jo followed his move and got out too. The body was just ahead of them, still and lifeless.

  Del cleared his throat and said, “I’ll go up and check.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Jo said.

  Together, they walked around the
front of the truck. They didn’t need to get far to be certain that it was, indeed, Calvin. The sling he had been wearing before they had left the Manor hung loosely from one of his arms. The sleeve of his jacket looked ripped open on his other arm, and blood had seeped into the fabric. There wasn’t all that much of it, but it was enough.

  Neither of them spoke for several seconds. A soft breeze came at their backs from the west. The only sounds were the slight rumbling of the engine of the truck and the vehicles coming into the parking lot. If you listened hard, you might be able to hear the rustling of the corn stalks around the parking lot.

  Del spoke first. “That’s him.”

  Jo didn’t quite know what to say. She only said, “Yeah.”

  “You see the bite wound?” Del asked.

  “Yes. That answers why he was shot.”

  “It looks like overkill to me.”

  Vehicle doors opened and closed behind them. Someone shouted for the drivers to turn off their ignitions, and the rumble of engines ceased. Silence filled the air again until Del and Jo heard footsteps on the pavement coming across the parking lot toward them. Del glanced back and saw Donovan and Mason heading their way.

  A conversation happened inside the truck that Del and Jo didn’t pay all that much attention to, but the gist of it was that Jones was letting Clayton and the others know what was up. Madison let out an anguished cry and jumped out of the bed of the truck. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she started at a fast jog toward Del and Jo.

  Jo heard the sound of someone’s exit and turned to see who it was. When she saw it was Madison, she swiveled around and moved to cut the young girl off.

  “Who is it?” Madison asked with some shrillness in her voice.

  “You don’t need to see this,” Jo said.

  “Who is it?” Madison asked again.

  Jo spread her arms wide as if that could keep Madison away. She did try to get around Jo, but Jo lunged and grabbed Madison around the waist, pulling her in.

  “Who is it?!”

  Jo quietly said, “It was Calvin. It looks like he got bitten. Someone took care of him.”

  “Are the others here?” Madison asked.

  “We don’t know,” Jo said. “I don’t think they are unless they’re hiding.”

  “Can we go look?” Madison asked.

  “We sure will. As soon as everyone gets stopped and settled.”

  Donovan and Mason walked up on the scene then, looking past Jo to where Del was standing. They took the cue they should leave Madison to Jo and made their way to go. They asked the obvious questions, and Del filled them in on what he thought happened.

  “So, do you think any of your people are here?” Donovan asked.

  Del rubbed the back of his neck and said, “I sort of doubt it, with all the noise we made, but they could be hiding.”

  Donovan turned around and examined the caravan of vehicles in the parking lot. The people trudged off the trailer and stood around the parking lot, stretching and yawning, looking like war refugees.

  “I suppose you’re going to want to search the school?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, if we can have the time,” Del said.

  “Let’s not take forever,” Donovan said.

  Chapter 16

  School Days

  They broke up into teams to explore the school, inside and out.

  Del and Jo paired up and headed around the outside of the school for a perimeter check. Clayton, Ryan, and Madison took the front side of the multi-school complex, which turned out to be an elementary school. Donovan, Mason, and several of his other people took on the rest of the school, which looked to have served middle and high school students. A small contingent of people remained with the vehicles just in case.

  Del and Jo stopped when they came upon a truck slammed up against the side of a building. The crash looked violent, as the windows were broken and part of the wall tilted inwards.

  “What’s up with that?” Del asked, more to himself.

  Jo just shrugged but lifted herself to look into the cab of the truck. “No blood in here.”

  She dropped back down to the ground, and they continued along the side of the building until Del spotted a set of double doors on the side of an adjoining building. A heavy chain was wrapped around its handle with a padlock attached to it.

  “That can’t mean anything good,” Del said as he pointed to it.

  “Probably not,” Jo said. “But we should check it out.”

  “Of course, who would think anything different?”

  Jo raised an eyebrow and shot Del a sideways look.

  “Okay, I’ll cut the wisecracks,” Del said. “I’m just getting a little wired. I can’t remember the last time I slept.”

  Jo led the way, but when she got within ten feet of the door, she heard the groans coming from inside, and she instinctively pulled up her rifle.

  “What is it?” Del asked.

  “Listen,” she said.

  Del stopped to listen, and it only took two seconds for him to hear the moans of the undead coming from the other side of the locked door. His focus immediately went to the chains and the lock, hoping they were enough to hold whatever was sealed inside.

  “Who would have locked them inside?” he asked.

  “Why do you ask a question you know I can’t answer?”

  “Maybe it was rhetorical?”

  “That’s a big word.”

  “I know I’m the resident country bumpkin, but I used to read books.”

  “Good for you,” she said. “Now, can we focus on what’s inside that door?”

  Del stepped back and examined the building. It was two and a half stories high. Windows on this side of the building were positioned at the top of the wall and ran the length of the building.

  “If you asked me, I think this is a gym,” he said.

  Jo put a hand on her chin and said, “So, someone locked a mess of zombies inside. We don’t know when this happened.” She stepped as close as she felt comfortable to the door and examined the chain and the lock. “I’m guessing it’s fairly recent, since there’s no rust on the chain or the lock.”

  “So, maybe our people locked these zombies inside?” Del asked.

  Jo didn’t say anything, but when she looked to him, she could tell he was thinking the same thoughts that she was. Neither one of them wanted to admit that the inhabitants behind the door could be their friends and families.

  Del finally said, “There’s only one way to find out whose inside.”

  “Yes,” Jo said. “But how can we do that and not let them out?”

  “Very carefully.” Del paused and looked to her. “Sorry. I am punch drunk from exhaustion.”

  “How about we circle around the other side of the building and see if there’s another way to look inside.”

  “See,” Del said, “lack of sleep dulls the mind.”

  Two minutes later, they entered a set of tempered glass doors into a large foyer that presumably stood outside the gym they were trying to get a look into. Light spilled in through the doors, bouncing off the tiled floor bathing the room in a pale light. A concession stand with a rolling metal door was situated on one of the walls. The door leading into that room looked smashed open, and Del and Jo guessed it had been ransacked earlier. Still, they checked, and their suspicions were confirmed.

  Both of them knew they were just putting off looking inside the gymnasium. It would be a soul crushing revelation if their people were inside, but they knew they had to know for certain.

  They moved out of the light and toward a set of double doors. Much like the ones on the outside, a heavy metal chain with a padlock held the door shut.

  Together, they moved closer to the door. As they moved in, they heard the light moans and groans along with the shuffling of feet inside.

  Del stood outside the door, his hand caught in the air inches from the door handle. Jo could see he was frozen in fear.

  “We have to check,” Jo said
in a quiet voice.

  “If my kid’s in there, I don’t want to go on,” Del said at a near whisper.

  “He’s not. And you’d go on. You’d have to.”

  Del bit is lip for a moment then reached the final few inches to grab the door handle. He gripped it and gently gave it a tug. The chain fell from where it was hanging, each link clanging against the handle.

  The sound inside the room intensified, so Del pulled the door open as far as he could. That turned out to be about four inches.

  It was barely enough of a view to give him an idea of who and what resided inside. Jo watched over his shoulder, shifting on her feet back and forth, trying to maximize their limited view.

  Three zombies headed for the door after the chain rattled. Behind them were a couple dozen more. Some had heard the sound and were making long, slow turns toward the door. Some were oblivious, standing around or milling aimlessly.

  Those first three zombies headed for the door with one purpose -- to get at whoever was outside.

  “Do you recognize any of them?” Jo asked.

  “I can’t tell,” he said.

  Del focused on what was left of the creatures’ faces. He cataloged clothing and tried to match it with what people were wearing when he last saw them. Most of all, he looked to see if there was a twelve-year old kid inside that looked like his son.

  The trio of zombies didn’t cooperate long and quickly filled his view as they surged toward the door. Just as they were on the final approach path, Del pushed the door closed. Two seconds later, the zombies hit the door and pushed it open as far as the chains would allow, causing Jo and Del to leap backwards.

  Hands and small lengths of arms pushed through the four inches. They clawed at the air, clutching at anything that might get them closer to the tasty human morsels standing outside.

  “Dammit!” Del yelled and reared back with his foot. He slammed it forward with such force that, when it struck the door, it cracked bones and actually clipped off fingers.