Zombie Road IV: Road to Redemption

by David A. Simpson

  Jessie followed him with the gun sights.

  The man stood on the side of the road, his hands half raised, unsure what to do next. The kid hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t told him to get ‘em up or lay on the ground, or even asked why they were chasing him. He just stood there, with an armored dog growling low by his side, his eye staring down the gun barrel. His ugly scarred up face was pressed against the stock of the rifle. If he could just get the kid to lower the gun, he could get the drop on him with the piece in the back of his waistband.

  “We didn’t mean for things to go so far,” he tried. “We was just having a little fun, you know. Car chase, like in the movies.” He tried to laugh, but it stuck in his throat and sounded forced, even to his own ears.

  He licked his lips. Why didn’t this kid say something? Why didn’t he lower the gun?

  “Hey, look, you won. You killed everybody. Don’t you think that’s enough? You don’t need to kill me, too. We was just…”

  “Open the van,” Jessie said, cutting him off.

  “Open the van?” the man questioned. “You want me to open the van?”

  Jessie said nothing. Just kept the man’s forehead in his crosshairs. Bob’s deep growl was a quiet rumble, constant and on edge, promising savage, flesh-shredding, violence any second. He showed him his teeth: long, pointy, and sharp. His golden eyes pinned the man and the hair around the spiky armor stood on end.

  The man licked his lips again and started backing toward the rear doors. Maybe he could duck behind it fast and pull his gun…

  Jessie and Bob moved with him, tracking him, keeping him in their sight. Not for the first time, Jessie was pleased with how well his Shepherd behaved. Bubba Williams had done an outstanding job training him over the winter. He could tell Bob wanted to charge, wanted to tear into the man, knew he didn’t trust him one bit. Jessie trusted his dog’s judgment. He was ready to squeeze the trigger for any reason, he didn’t care what the excuse was, you didn’t start chasing and shooting at people for no reason unless you were a grade A piece of crap and the world didn’t need people like that. Give me a reason, he thought. Any reason. He hadn’t reached a point where he could gun someone down in cold blood, but he was pretty sure things weren’t going to end well for this scumbag.

  Jessie saw it happen in slow motion. The smiling man, the reassuring words that everything was cool, one hand flinging open the rear door with the Butler County Sheriff’s Department stickers, while the other reached behind his back. He dashed behind it, thinking it would protect him.

  Jessie moved the sights a few inches. The M-4 barked once, lead punched through tin and the man’s head spilled its contents on the asphalt as he fell, spraying an arc of red across the pine needles and leaves.

  Bob still growled at the van, so Jessie swung wide in a big arc until he could see inside. Bob thought someone else was still in it, maybe waiting to ambush them. There were people inside, but they weren’t planning on an ambush. He lowered his gun when he saw the half-dozen women wearing gags, chains. Not for the first time he wondered why people had to be such dirt bags. Why were there such evil men still left alive?

  When he approached them, there was murder in their eyes. These weren’t a bunch of broken women, kowtowed by their rough treatment, and he got an earful of venom when he pulled the first gag down.

  Her blackened eyes, blood crusted nose, and tangle of wild hair made her look insane and the hatred she spat at him made him take a step back as she snapped at his hand, trying to rip it open.

  “You want some of this?” she hissed. “You think you can have us? Take off these chains, tough guy. Come on. Me and you, one on one. You men are all the same. I’ll rip your tiny little pecker off if you get it anywhere near me!”

  Her face was red with rage and she lunged at him against her chains, breathing hard. Jessie looked down at Bob, who didn’t know what to make of them either. He could smell their fear, but heard their anger. He cocked his head at Jessie, unsure what to do. They were all wearing handcuffs, with a length of chain running through them and round the metal legs of the benches bolted to the floor. He could see the chain fed into a padlock looped into the mesh window on the divider wall.

  Jessie backed off and patted the pockets of the dead man, looking for the keys, ignoring the threats being hurled at him. Casey’s men had somehow managed to capture a bunch of pissed off women, and Jessie was pretty sure they hadn’t gone quietly. They were all roughed up and their clothes were torn, but if he were a betting man, he’d lay money none of them had been raped. Not yet, anyway. They fought like hellcats even when bound and gagged. He wondered how they got captured, but wasn’t going to stick around to find out. They might just shoot him when he turned his back, they were so pissed off at men in general at the moment.

  He found the key to a padlock and pulled it out. The women stared baleful eyes at him, each quietly daring him to try something. They’d make him pay if he did. They’d make him sorry.

  “I’d toss you the key and haul ass out of here, but I doubt any of you can reach the lock, the way they’ve got the chains looped through the legs.”

  They looked at each other, glances were exchanged, heads nodded imperceptibly and they all slid back as far as they could on the two facing benches. Jessie set his carbine down, leaned it against the door, and climbed in the back, stepping gingerly over the shackled feet and trying to avoid brushing up against them. His pads and leathers made him big, the sheathed knives and guns adding even more bulk as he squeezed through the mistrustful group. He made it to the front and opened the lock, letting the chain fall free. Their reaction was instant and before he could even get turned around, the leader had yanked it through their handcuffs, out of the legs, and the two closest to him were reaching for his guns. Jessie dropped his hands to his holsters so they couldn’t pull them, but they went for the knives instead. Bob was defending the M-4, snapping at the woman trying to reach for it. Jessie lowered his shoulder and ran, plowing through them like a linebacker, his metal plates tearing at skin and knocking them against their seat backs. He leaped the last few feet, diving out of the door before they could drive one of his own blades into him. He came out of the roll with his guns drawn and sending two rounds just over the heads of the struggling group.

  “What the hell is wrong with you!” he yelled, “You’re as bad as them!”

  “How do we know you’re not just another gang, even worse than those Raiders!” one of them shouted back.

  They still worked at getting themselves untangled from the cuffs and chains, but with the barrels of two guns and Bob snarling promises of torn flesh if they came out of the van, they all remained seated.

  “Do I look like a gang?” Jessie yelled, anger and hurt in his voice. He was just trying to help, had risked his life, and this was the thanks he got. He holstered one of his guns and grabbed his rifle.

  “Come on, Bob,” he said and headed for the woods, back to his car.

  “Hey,” one of them yelled after him. “Did you find the handcuff keys? We need to get these things off, too!”

  “Piss off,” Jessie said, and kept walking, angry at them, angry at himself. They had tried to kill him, had gone for his guns, his knives, and his rifle. They were on their own. Goodbye and good riddance. If one of them came after him to try to steal his car, he’d shoot her down. He was starting to regret stopping the van, he should have just let it go, the Raiders deserved them.

  He heard her long before she spoke, and with a sideways glance, he knew she wasn’t carrying a weapon. She was barefoot, still handcuffed, and trying to catch up to him.

  “Mister,” she said. “Wait up. We appreciate what you did. We thought you were just some other gang.”

  Jessie kept walking, they had tried to jack him up. He didn’t want anything to do with them.

  “Look,” she continued, wincing when she stepped on a pinecone. “We’ve run into quite a few horrible people here in the mountains the past few weeks. They know anyone
that didn’t run to the fortified settlements hid out up here. Now that the snows are gone and most of the zombies around here have been killed, they’ve been picking our places off, one by one.”

  Jessie stopped, turned to face her, and she saw him clearly for the first time. She was surprised to see he was only a boy, not much older than her son would be if he had survived. He didn’t even have hair on his face. A face that would have been handsome if it didn’t have a jagged scar running from lip to eye.

  “We lost everything,” she said. “They killed our men, they burnt our houses, they took our children. All we had left was a promise to each other we would all rather die than become rape toys. We would kill them or be killed trying. You look like one of them.”

  She didn’t look away, stared him straight in the eye. “Sorry.”

  Jessie softened his glare a little, tried not to let the hurt show in his eyes. He looked like one of them. Because he was disfigured? Because he had a scar? It wasn’t because he had filed down his teeth or wore finger-bones as a necklace. He supposed he could understand, they looked like they’d been through hell, but they’d tried to get his gun. He would have fought them for it and they would have either killed him, or he would have had to kill them to keep control. He was never going to be at the mercy of someone else, not after the beating he’d taken. He grimaced at her, still pissed.

  “Follow me,” he said gruffly. “I’ve got a pair of bolt cutters in my car.”

  “Thank you,” she said when he snipped the chain, “but we don’t have any guns. Can you spare some?”

  Jessie shook his head. “They had a bunch, search their trucks. I don’t want to be around any of you if you’re armed.”

  He opened his door and whistled for Bob to hop in, then slammed it on her protests. He fired the engine and its quiet rumble cut off whatever else she was saying.

  She watched from her position hidden in the woods. She’d almost gotten caught up in the battle, she’d been following a little too closely. She needed to be more careful. She cocked her head, her hearing attuned and trying to hear what the women were saying. She caught bits and pieces, but mostly it was garbled. She was too far away. She hadn’t seen the running battle, she’d dropped back when the gunfire erupted, but she saw the results. Jessie had outgunned, outdrove, and outsmarted them all. She went back to her bike and leaned against it, giving the women time to gather themselves and leave. She didn’t want them taking shots at her, thinking she was another raider. She’d seen the way they treated Jessie, and it was pretty plain he had been trying to help them. She’d pick up his trail again easily enough. There weren’t many roads up here in the mountains. She pulled a Snickers from her saddlebag and chewed on it as she tried to think of the best way to deal with him. Deal with Lakota, really. She was pretty sure the Movement and the new Government were pretty evenly armed and manned. It would be a tough battle if they were to go head to head, but she knew her father wanted total control. Total dominion over everything. Casey’s Raiders were the only other wild card. They were vicious and deadly, but not very well organized, the Anubis Warriors would be able to track them down and pick them off. They ran in small groups, they’d be easy to defeat. She chewed slowly on the chocolate bar, still unsure what to do about Jessie. Maybe she could get him to join them, maybe he could be used as a tool to weaken Lakota. She’d have to think on that some more. Observe him some more. Try to figure out what made him tick, what drove him to do the things he did. What made him such a goody two shoes?

  25

  Hasif

  It was shortly before dawn as Hasif followed his family out of the narrow entrance of the pyramid, some fifty feet above the ground. The undead were still aimlessly milling around, the same as they had for months. They had followed Hasif up the uneven stairs when he was running for his life, but all had fallen back down, stumbling over the edge of the stones one by one, until none remained. They seemed to be content to shuffle around on broken bones, occasionally falling and not being able to rise. His plan was simple.

  Watch the water.

  Egypt didn’t get rain, not enough to matter, but the headwaters of the Nile did. Lots of it. The dams had all been blown, the river roamed free with no flood control. When Uganda got a thundershower, a week later the Nile overflowed her banks and became the miles-wide, untamed, river of life she once was. The first months it was filthy and polluted, washing millions of tons of garbage from the hundreds of towns and cities along her shores toward the sea. Now it ran with dirt and mud, all the plastic bags, broken boards, and bloated bodies were gone. Hasif watched the water every day with the binoculars, the ring road canal was less than a mile away. When it started creeping over its banks, it was time to move. Time to escape the cloying pyramid and people who wanted something he was unwilling to give. Fariq was on his own.

  Hasif was sure they could outrun the dead if they had to, they shuffled and hobbled along, their bodies little more than mummified shells after months of the unforgiving sun beating down on them. Stealthily, they made their way around the pyramid, careful not to displace the loose rocks, until they were ready to descend to the sand. He signaled them to be quiet and they nodded silently, eyes large in the waning moon. They’d gone over the plan a hundred times, they knew what to do. They were ready and eager to go. Chione, his oldest daughter, had asked if it was time every day for weeks, ever since he told them of his idea and asked their opinions. All or none, it had to be a family choice. His wife knew it was their only chance, they had to take it, or wait until the food was gone and then be forced to leave when the conditions weren’t right. She was in. Live or die. She trusted him. Chione was the first to raise her hand, wanting to leave immediately. His youngest really didn’t have much of a say, didn’t understand the risks, but she raised her hand anyway. Her sister and mom had, so she did, too.

  Hasif snuck back around to the far side of the pyramid, and with a silent prayer, stepped down among them, swinging a long staff. He yelled and attacked and they reached for him with flaky, wind-dried hands. Mouths that hadn’t moved in months stretched open to bite, vocal cords full of sand grated out gravely screams. More came and he ran, leading them away.

  Massika jumped down from the last stone, dropping the five feet to the sandy gravel and holding up her arms for her youngest. Her eldest daughter was standing beside her, quivering with excitement. No fear in that one. For her, nearly anything was better than being trapped inside the rocks for another minute. She would rather die doing something bold, than die of boredom. Or to be that creepy Mohammad’s wife. She didn’t like him one little bit and every chance he got, he tried to touch her.

  “Go,” her mom whispered and they darted off, keeping to the shadows thrown by the moon when they could. They were running toward the golf course, long since dried up and turned brown for lack of water. On the other side of it were where the rich people had lived. Single family houses, not stacks and stacks of apartments. Hasif hadn’t seen any movement of the undead on the golf course or in the wealthy subdivisions adjacent to it. Maybe they could sneak through in the dark, unseen and unheard until they made it to the overflowing banks of the canal. The rich people had boats and jet skis and he hoped they could find something that would take them down to the Nile. From there, to the ocean. From there, they would figure it out. First, they had to get across hundreds of yards of open desert, and a golf course that was barely recognizable for what it used to be.

  Hasif led the stumbling dead away, dashed across the sand covered road, and into the maze of short stone walls that surrounded the ruins of the Tomb of Hemiunu. He leapt to the top of one and called them to him, drawing them to the promise of fresh blood. He kept just ahead of them, running along the tops of the walls, maddeningly just out of reach from their clawing hands. When he got to the center of the warren, he dropped off the wall, crouched low and ran. He snaked his way out, leaving the keening undead lost in the maze of ruined walls, and sprinted back across the road, cutting across the shadow
of the pyramid toward the golf course.

  “Hasif! What are you doing?”

  Angry shouts from the doorway, Fariq was there with his gun. Hasif couldn’t answer, he didn’t want the undead to hear him, so he waved in farewell. They had left a letter in the King’s chambers where his family had been staying, explaining why he was leaving. Fariq would find it and hopefully understand their departure was for the best. Some things just had to be. He knew if they stayed it would have ended up with one of them dying.

  “Stop!” came the shout as he ran out of the entrance of the pyramid and the papery screams of the undead got louder.

  “Bring them back!” Fariq demanded. His son’s wives were disappearing into the trees surrounding the golf course.

  He raised the rifle in anger and fired at the fleeing figures.

  “I said stop!” he screamed, his impotent rage unleashed, but they were already past the trees, behind the greens, and out of sight.

  Hasif tried to sprint faster across the parking lot, no longer trying to run silently. When the bullets started kicking up chunks of asphalt and sand around him he ignored them. Fariq was running on the uneven stones of the pyramid, trying to get to a better location and the bullets weren’t even close. Hasif hit the tree line and kept going, putting as much distance between them as he could.

  The shots rang out and echoed through the empty city, the loudest sound that had been heard for months, and the undead followed it. The keening started again, the hunger was reawakened and their aimless shuffles became ungainly runs. Falling, bumping into each other, stumbling and running, they came. Thousands. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands heard the keens and followed them. They flowed into the pyramid complex like dirty water, filling it and the hundreds of acres surrounding it. They tore down fences, stacked against walls and tumbled over, packed in like sardines against the base of the Great Pyramid. More came, more answered the keening dinner call and they started stacking up, climbing the stones, sensing the living flesh.