by David Rogers
“Mom and Austin knew the gas was going to go bad. They got some stuff that treats it, and stored as much as they could before it all started going bad. I put some in the trunk.”
“How much?”
“Ten gallons.” she said. “I couldn’t lift the big cans, but I brought some of the little ones.”
Happy gave the dog’s head one final rub and pushed himself to his feet. It stayed next to him, tail still wagging and looking up at Happy. The man was smiling again, but without the sort of ‘whatever’ vibe he usually had when he was in his normal drunken good mood. This seemed almost eager. “Okay Candy Candy, sounds like you’ve got a plan. Let’s go find a moving truck.”
Chapter Fifteen — I hope this works
“You ain’t got it.” Wes said, studying Ben.
“Gotta pay to play.” the old man said with a grin. “Call is two reds.”
“Uh … I think I need change.” the college student said, looking down at the collection of cloth pieces in front of him. “I’m out of reds.” He sorted through the cloth and picked up a small roughly shaped square of blue fabric. “Blues were quarters, right?”
“Come on man.” U moaned. “White, red, yellow, blue; singles, fives, twenty-fives, fifties.”
“Not all of us were math geeks.” Wes fired back, holding the blue cloth in his hand while he knocked the rest of his pile apart with a finger to see what was left.
“Which is why the damn country was going broke.” U said, shaking his head. “All you damn business majors who can’t fucking count.”
“I can count, it’s just … never mind.” Wes said, giving up. He looked at Jessica. “Can you break this blue for me?”
Jessica reached out and took the blue. “Reds I guess?”
“Whites.” U said. “So he can count them and keep track.”
“Reds.” Wes said firmly.
“Changing one blue for ten reds.” Jessica said, dropping the blue square with the others in front of her. When Austin had suggested cards as a group activity, poker had come up; but they’d needed something to serve as chips. No one carried money anymore. Certainly not coins, since none of it had any value when zombies were rampaging about. The solution had been to cut up some of the discarded clothing in the building they were all imprisoned in, and the game was on.
Jessica was serving as the dealer, just because it gave her an excuse to sit in without having to actually play. That also made her the banker too. She scooped up a handful of reds and dropped them out in a line one by one in front of her. “Nine, and ten. There you are.” She pushed them toward Wes.
“You’re supposed to say good luck.” Austin said.
“The dealer’s impartial.” Jessica said as Wes collected his red ‘chips’ and placed two in the pile of other cloth pieces in the center.
“You sure you don’t want to play?” Byron asked.
“I’m happy watching.”
“She’s good with numbers.” Austin said. “Not so much with cards.”
“I’m fine.” Jessica told Byron. “I never play poker against Austin.”
“Because—”
“Because I can read him like a book.” Jessica said, cutting off Austin’s comment. “And it’s not nice to embarrass him in front of others.”
“Ouch.” Ben chuckled as Austin shook his head sadly at her. She responded by sticking her tongue out at him. “Anyway, the kid who can’t count calls. What about you Ed?”
“Fold.” the third college student said, shaking his head and tossing his cards down next to the pot.
“Raise.” Byron said, displaying a pair each of reds and whites before dropping them in the pot.
“Fold.” Austin said.
“He didn’t have anything better than a pair.” Jessica said.
“What happened to impartial?” Austin demanded, though he winked at her.
“You I’m allowed to pick on.” she smiled back.
“Big guy, you’re screwed.” Ben said. “She’s got your number.”
“It’s alright, I’ve got hers.” Austin said. “I know how much she wei—”
“Not another word.” Jessica said.
Arcelia, Ben, and Wes called the raise, and the rest folded. Jessica picked up the deck as Wes and Ben added whites to the pot to cover their bets. “Final round. Cards?” she asked, looking around.
Ben and Arcelia stood on their hands, Byron took one, while Wes took two. As soon as Jessica dealt out the replacements, Ben immediately reached for his stack. “Bet a red.” the old man said, dropping it in.
“Shit, fold.” Wes said, throwing his cards down and leaning back with a perturbed expression.
“Five huh?” Byron asked, studying Ben.
“Five plays, more makes it interesting.” Ben said, smiling.
“Hmm, five … why would you bet five?”
“Because he’s the big stack.” Ed said. “Throwing his weight around.”
“Or I’ve got the cards.” Ben said, still watching Byron watch him.
“Or you’re bluffing.” Byron said contemplatively.
“Costs you another red to find out.” Ben said cheerfully.
“Algo está pasando, algo está pasando!” called an excited voice from the doorway of the back room.
“What?” Phil said, turning his head from the exchange of gazes still ongoing between Ben and Byron.
“Something is happening.” Arcelia said before raising her voice. “Que pasa?” she called.
“Diego dice que algunos de los guardias están actuando enojados.” Jorge said. Jessica’s eyes had picked him out by now, and he was beckoning to them as he spoke.
“Diego says some of the guards are angry.” Arcelia said, pushing herself to her feet along with Austin and Byron.
“What about the game?” Ben protested.
“Later.” Phil said. “Don’t be a sore winner.”
“I ain’t won yet. I ain’t got all the chips.”
Jessica got to her feet too, following the general rush as everyone in the game headed to the back room except Ben and Phil, who continued bickering. By the time she got there, Austin had already vaulted up the shelf stack and was pulling himself into the second floor. He turned to offer Arcelia a hand, and hauled her up before disappearing in the direction of the roof hatch.
Rather than join the others in climbing up, Jessica decided to wait. It would take some moments for them all to finish and get out of the way regardless. So she stood back and trusted Austin to take a look and report back. Before Byron could reach for the open doorway after the trio of college students got out of the way, Austin returned.
“Something’s going on.” he said. “They’re all on their feet and looking to the west. A couple are checking their rifles.”
“Have any of them left?” Byron asked, standing on the top shelf.
“Or started shooting?” Donita asked from behind Jessica.
“We’d hear it if they were—” Jessica started to say, before she heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire outside the building.
“Someone take a peek out the front door.” Austin said quickly. “See how things look at street level.” He then disappeared from the second floor doorway again.
“Come on.” Jessica said to Donita. The woman was a lot easier to talk to than her friend, the irritable Tori. “Byron, you going up or coming down.”
“Right behind you.” Byron said.
Nodding, Jessica went back out into the main room of the building. “Hey Nate, give us a hand with the front door?”
“Are we breaking out?” Nate asked from where he stood next to Carlo. Both of them had pistols in their hands.
“Not yet.” Byron said. “But we need to see what’s going on out there.”
“Without letting all the zombies in.” Jessica warned quickly.
“You and Donita cover us, me and Nate will lift the shutter.”
She nodded and drew the Beretta holstered at her side. Byron jogged past her as she angled around t
o stand back and to one side of the doorway. Nate beat Byron to the door, and bent down to put a hand on the latch that held it closed when it was down.
“Where—” Donita started to ask.
“There.” Jessica said, pointing to a spot that mirrored her own position on the other side of the door. “Just be careful about what you shoot.”
“Got it.” Donita said, unlimbering her rifle. Jessica started to say something, then changed her mind. The hunting rifle was a single shot bolt action, but the rounds hit a lot harder than a pistol’s. And clearly the woman was more comfortable with it than the pistol at her side.
Plus there wasn’t time to argue about it.
Byron and Nate lifted the shutter and stood aside from the door with a hand each still holding onto the metal cover so they could shut it quickly at need. Jessica raised the Beretta, but kept her finger off the trigger. The street beyond the glass doors was full of the expected zombies, but then something unexpected happened.
Gunfire was still going off outside, louder now that the shutter was up. As the two Houseboaters got out of the way, a new sound became audible over the rifles being fired by the crazy roof guards.
“Is that a—” Nate started to say, before a large truck roared by on the street in front of the thrift store. A very large truck. Its engine was at full power, and it was going at a pretty good clip despite the mass of zombies in its way. Jessica only caught a glimpse before it was past. The sound of the engine receded to the left of the door as zombies that hadn’t been crushed into the pavement beneath the wheels tumbled away from the bone shattering impacts it laid on any mere humanoid body in its path.
“Someone go tell Austin there’s a truck outside running over zombies in the street.” Jessica said loudly, keeping her eyes on the doors. Even a big truck couldn’t cover the whole street, and there were so many zombies that only some of them had been hit by it. Or knocked over or otherwise jostled by those that had been sent flying. That left a lot that were still up.
“Who?” Donita asked.
“I’ll cover the door.” Tori said from next to Jessica, who almost startled. She’d been focused entirely on the door and the threats beyond, and let the woman walk right up to her without noticing.
“Fine. Don’t let them in here.” Jessica said, catching Byron’s eye. He nodded, and she turned and ran for the back room, stopping only to grab her shotgun from where she’d left it next to her pack.
* * * * *
“Yahoo!” Happy cheered as the moving truck’s engine roared. He lifted his bottle of ‘coffee-and-Coke’ and took a long swig, and jammed it back in the cup holder on the dashboard. Candice grabbed onto the seat as the truck surged forward, unsure whether she should see if the seatbelt could tighten down further or to simply unlatch it and huddle on the floorboard. Beside her, the dog had its paws on the edge of her seat so it could stand up enough to look through the windshield. As it saw the zombies ahead, it started barking.
They were back on the Number 80 road, but this time Happy had no intention of turning away from Belle Glade. She didn’t want him to, but that didn’t mean she liked what was about to happen. They, meaning Happy, had run over zombies on the way back to the town. And she’d been impressed by how easily the truck seemed to completely ignore any zombie that got in its way.
It was a big truck, the biggest one they’d found on the lot. Happy had drained the fuel tanks, poured in what Candice had brought, and fiddled around with it until it started. All Candice had to do was carry the gas cans over and keep watch; and even that was pretty easy since the dog barked the moment any zombie came into view or got close enough to smell. She only had to shoot four while Happy worked.
But looking over the dashboard at the road into Belle Glade, as the truck accelerated and the very large number of zombies on the road got closer, Candice was suddenly unsure. She only had time to realize she was getting scared, and draw a single breath to try and start working on something — she wasn’t sure what — to say about it, before the truck slammed into the zombies.
“Hahaha!” Happy said as the bumper thudded into the pack. That wasn’t the first impact either. As far ahead as Candice could see on the road there were zombies on it. Sometimes one or two handfuls, sometimes enough to more or less fill the road from one side to the other, but always walking corpses. The wall of sound as the truck smacked into their bodies was a sort of ongoing series of thud-thud-thuds, like rain on the roof. Except rain drops didn’t react like zombies did when a big heavy vehicle ran into them. Or were as loud.
She couldn’t see on Happy’s side of the truck very well. On hers she saw zombies tumbling forward and away from the truck as the impact transferred momentum into them and sent them flying. A few arced up and away from the truck, becoming visible through the windshield as they rose above the level of the hood. Most seemed to fall beneath the wheels though, and the truck began rocking back and forth as its mass and size crunched over them.
The truck’s engine stayed at the same note, changing only a little as Happy pumped the accelerator at mostly full throttle. And the truck didn’t seem to be losing much speed either, which surprised her a little; but she wasn’t complaining. If the truck stopped in the middle of this many zombies, that would be a really big problem. Plus, a bonus she hadn’t expected, the engine noise tended to drown out most of the sickening cracks and splits and all the other sounds that a body being run over tended to make.
“Having fun?” Happy asked.
“No, but it’s working.” she shouted back over the dog’s continued barking.
“Not you, the dog.” Happy said, taking one hand off the steering wheel to pat the dog’s neck. “Huh boy? This is better right? Yeah, you know it is.”
Candice shrugged mentally and tried to tune out the zombies as she scanned around ahead of the truck. The point of all this was to find mom and Austin. She didn’t know what she was exactly looking for, unless it was actually a glimpse of either of them somewhere, but all she could do was keep her eyes open and just hope. So she hung onto the seat with both hands and tried to spot anything that made her think the truck was on the right track.
The zombie numbers built steadily, and the ride got rougher and rougher, as they continued plowing north along the infested street. They crossed the little river that apparently went right through town, and only that seemed to drop the zombie numbers off some. Candice finally spoke up when the impacts the truck was delivering to the corpses fell to where there was actually some amount of time between one being hit and the next in line coming up.
“We should turn around. Go back through the bad parts.” she said loudly.
“It’s your show.” Happy said. “Me and him are just along for the ride. Hang on.”
Candice tightened her grip on the seat as Happy sent the truck careening around a corner at a fast enough speed that she felt the big box in the back trying to tug the entire vehicle over to one side. Three zombies in the way went flying, and two more went down beneath the wheels and produced an alarming pair of jostling bumps that coincided with a sideways skidding sensation.
Before she could say anything, Happy completed the turn without wrecking them. Candice blew out her breath and spoke loudly. “Slow down on the turns.”
“Can’t, need the speed. We ain’t getting eaten.”
“If we wreck the truck, we’re going to be in big trouble.”
“With who?” Happy chortled as he started another turn. More zombies arced away from the truck’s front as it came around the corner, but it skidded worse this time. Candice let out a little scream as the street sign marking the intersection on the corner loomed in front of the hood before there was a resounding ‘clang’ of noise, followed by a scraping sound as the signs dragged across the bottom of the truck.
“With the zombies!” Candice said as calmly as she could while still making herself heard over the dog’s barking. Her heart was pitter-pattering in her chest, like she was running fast; and it was distracti
ng her. “If we wreck, they’ll eat us.”
“We ain’t gonna wreck.” Happy said as he straightened the truck out and the speed began building up again.
“There’s a ca—”
An abandoned car, left at an angle across one of the street’s lanes, went spinning away from the truck as the front left corner smashed into it. That produced a definite impact that jolted her, but the truck kept going.
“Happy, please!” she said.
“This was your idea Candy.” Happy said.
“Looking, not dying!”
“We are fucking looking. Or I am. See that there? Who is that?”
Candice looked where he was, and after several moments spotted several figures on the roof of a building ahead and over on the right. They were blocks away from the truck, but Florida’s eternally flat landscape didn’t offer much obstruction once someone was high enough to clear the manmade ones. Her heart leapt, and she squinted to try and make out who it was. Mom loved going up when there were zombie problems, the higher the better usually. She said zombies sucked when it came to making it upstairs, and they couldn’t climb up building walls any more than people could either.
The truck crossed back over the river, and the impacts thickened up again in unison with the zombie population in the street. Swaying back and forth, jolting up and down, Candice couldn’t get a good look at whoever was on the roof. But they weren’t alone; there were several other buildings with people on them too. And most of them were looking in the direction of the truck.
“Five gets you ten it’s more of them crazy bastards.” Happy said. “Hang on.”
“Oh—” Candice blurted before she was thrown against the seatbelt as Happy cranked the truck through another high-speed turn. This time she was sure they were about to wreck. The truck skidded, she heard and felt the tires sliding, accompanied by several bumps as zombies fell beneath the wheels. Then a bigger one as the truck jumped the curb.
“Fuck!” Happy cursed, hauling the steering wheel over harder. The truck straightened out just in time to only smack mostly sideways into the front of a bank. Candice heard glass breaking, heard and felt a crunch as wood and metal on the side of the cargo box over the truck’s back was smashed, and then a long grinding scraping sound as the engine pulled free and away from the building.
