Zombie Road IV: Road to Redemption

by David A. Simpson

  “Must have been some paranoid drug lords house,” Griz said in frustration. “Should have brought the .50.”

  The tired old truck wheezed through the gears, its bald tires spinning on the dirt roads. Gunny pulled out of a power slide, threw the column-mounted shifter into second, and hit the gas again, trying to coax a little more speed out of it. Chickens and cats and people ran out of the way, the dogs barked and gave chase. A new pickup truck, shiny, lifted and armored, came racing down the street straight toward them. They both saw the whip antennas on the bumper of the patrol truck. You can’t outrun a radio. Gunny and Griz had an advantage over them, even if the bandits didn’t realize it. They wanted to catch whoever had violated their town, whoever had tried to kill the Boss. They’d be rewarded and have honor. They’d do just about anything, put themselves in danger, and take crazy chances. But they wouldn’t risk everything, they wouldn’t die for it. It wasn’t worth that.

  Gunny and Griz would, they had nothing to lose. If they were captured, they would be tortured very slowly, probably eaten. Maybe parts of them cooked while they were still alive and forced to watch an arm or leg being consumed. They had no choice. Escape or die. They would risk everything.

  The truck was bearing down on them, trying to force them to turn or stop. Gunny aimed right for it, flat footed the gas pedal. The man corrected, moved a little to the left. Gunny matched his move, steered a little to the right, keeping himself centered on the fast-coming Dodge. The wheezy old truck was screaming, ready to blow, and Gunny slammed the shifter down into third. The men in the bed of the Dodge were aiming over the cab, trying to shoot pistols at a fast-moving target from a fast-moving position.

  They missed.

  Gunny saw the face of the man behind the wheel when he realized he was going to lose in this game of chicken. When he realized that the men in the clatter trap old beater weren’t going to turn, or stop, or even slow down. His eyes got big and he jerked the wheel at the last second, over the yells of the men in the bed. The jacked-up Dodge bounced over a curb and plowed down a wooden fence, sent more chickens squawking and bounced off a parked car. The men in the bed went flying, slamming into the house next door or the ground, breaking them, crippling them and killing them. The driver slid back out into the street, overcorrected, and sent the lifted truck tumbling; tires, glass and the last of the men in the back spinning off in all directions.

  Gunny bounced past the last house on the dirt road and cut the wheel, skidding onto the highway that would take them back north. He pushed the truck, wringing every last ounce of speed that he could. Griz got on his handheld, called the rest of the crew, letting them know they were coming in hot.

  “Yeah, we kind of figured,” Hollywood said. “We heard you tearing shit up.”

  “Set up some claymores on trip wires,” Griz told him. “We’ll be there in a few minutes if this old tub will make it. We’ve got company right on our six.” He hoped the Dodge had blocked the road when it wrecked, buying them a little time while the rest of the Raiders had to backtrack and go around.

  Gunny couldn’t tell how far back their pursuers were, the old road was windblown with dirt and sand, barely distinguishable from the desert in places, and he was leaving a cloud of dust behind them. He saw the line of their cars up ahead, idling and ready to go. He slammed the brakes at the last second, skidded to a stop and jumped out, running for his fifty-five. Bridget and Stabby ran across the road as soon as he zipped by them, trailing wires to the claymores, attaching them before darting for their rides. Griz tossed his gun case in the panel van and hit the gas with the rest of them, wanting to get on the open road and outdistance the Raiders. They heard the explosions a few moments later over the roar of their engines but couldn’t see through the cloud of dust how many they’d managed to take out.

  “How’d it go?” Scratch asked, when they were up to speed, eating up the miles.

  “Failure,” Griz barked, still aggravated, anger in his voice. “Absolute and utter failure.”

  They kept the hammer down, putting miles between them and their pursuers, who had lost the first four trucks in the chase.

  Casey was pissed. That asshole Gunny had gotten within shooting distance, and his patrols hadn’t stopped him. He knew it was him. No doubt in his mind. He wouldn’t put it past one of the locals to take a shot at him, but they would have known the house had bulletproof glass. They couldn’t have set off all those explosions, either. No, he knew who did this, and it was time to make them pay. He’d been sitting around too long. He had a dozen trucks in pursuit and they had radioed back that there were only four cars. The overconfident asshole thought he only needed a tiny little team to take out Casey the Cannibal. Well, he had another thing coming, didn’t he? He was going to run them to ground, keep on their tails until they broke down, wrecked, or ran out of gas. He didn’t care which, as long as he took them alive. He had plans. He wanted Lakota and it would be so much easier with their president strapped to the front of his truck. He’d just drive right in the front gate. He wanted out of this oppressive heat, he wanted unlimited electricity, and he wanted to rub their faces in it. Especially that Collins bitch. She was the one who started all of his troubles, thinking she was better than everyone else. He couldn’t wait to make her pay.

  His gang of Raiders was nearly ready to go, they’d been planning on leaving soon, anyway. He told his radioman to call in all the raiding parties, have them all head for Lakota. He had scores of small groups out feeding him intel, raiding small settlements, and letting everyone know that Casey was the new war chief. Casey the Cannibal ran this country. Casey would do whatever he wanted, and as long as they toed the line, paid their taxes like he demanded, they would be left alone. Mostly.

  He climbed into his Mustang and tore out of San Felipe for the last time. His men hurried to finish loading their equipment and fell in behind him. They were done with Mexico; nobody could tell them where to live. They had been recruiting and building their army for months, they were ready to go back home and take what was theirs.

  36

  Scarlet

  She watched from the shadows as the boy with the scar went to wash the blood from his hands. She thought he’d show up eventually, he was consistent, even if he wasn’t predictable. She’d lost track of him after he’d spotted her, and was starting to second guess herself. She’d tried to pick up his trail, but Casey’s men had oversized tires on their trucks and they’d been all over the roads in that area. She didn’t know which set of tracks to follow. She came to the reservation; pretty sure this was where he’d been headed before the battle at the farmhouse. He’d finally shown up, and he was as good as the rumors had said he was. She’d seen the aftermath of his work, had watched him from long distance through binoculars, but this was the first time she’d seen him go hand to hand with real people. They were much harder to fight than the undead, even the fastest, freshest ones. The undead didn’t have any guile. They only attacked in one way and never used weapons. Him and his dog had just killed eight heavily armed, and fully prepared men. It had only taken a handful of seconds, less than a minute from start to finish. He hadn’t wanted the fight, she’d heard him ask the man to leave him alone, but once it started, he was brutal and ruthless. The Road Angel was good, she admitted, but not all that good. If she’d been in the same situation, she never would have let herself get shot. That was dumb. Her machetes or batons had the reach and speed his knuckle dusters didn’t. But still, overall, he had done a fine job. The results of the good doctor Stevens’ injections, even the early ones she had given him, were still very remarkable.

  She was at an impasse now. She wasn’t quite sure what to do. She was starting to admire him. She’d made contact with her father, had given her report about the settlements they could easily take in North Dakota and eastern Montana. She told him they might have a tough time in the mid-western states, the new government in America wasn’t just preaching propaganda on the radio, they really did have zombie tra
ins killing the undead by the thousands and leading the rest out into the deserts to wither away. They were well armed, and they already had a network set up to help each other if they came under attack. She’d suggested maybe they should concentrate on Canada, they were taking town after town without much resistance. He said he’d continue with Canada for now, but the world was his, it was his divine right and he wouldn’t be denied.

  The conversation had disturbed her. Her father really believed that crap he was preaching. He wasn’t struggling to survive, giving people some sort of hope to hang on to, promising things would get better and using a hokey new religion to knit them together. She’d seen the wisdom in that at first, the people needed something bigger than themselves to fight for. Now, she was starting to regret it. Things were getting out of hand. The religious movement had morphed into a conquering army.

  Her father had scores of men like her now. More than human. Faster, stronger, and better in almost every way. They were super soldiers, like the original intent of the virus was meant to make them. It was key to their success, they would lead in hordes of the undead, walk among them and show the fortified towns their power. It almost always worked, they would assimilate whole communities without firing a shot. Only once had she heard of a community refusing to surrender and their walls were over run. That had been on one of their far southern forays deep into Lakota territory.

  Now Lakota had a super soldier. Not as strong, though, she told herself. He had an early version of the inoculation, the immunity effects had worn off, she’d seen the undead attack him. He couldn’t walk among them. He couldn’t blend like the Anubis Warriors could. He was fast though, insanely fast, and so was his dog. She wondered if it had been given the injections. They’d never tried it on animals, there was no need. They had humans to use when they’d been trying to perfect it, to strip all of the bad bits that turned you into the undead.

  As soon as he walked into the bathroom, she was up and away. She didn’t want to be recognized, didn’t want him to know she was following him. She was conflicted about him, she knew she’d saved a decent boy who had been making a difference in the world. She’d heard the stories about the Road Angel, had heard that pretentious ass Bastille broadcasting on Radio Lakota, bragging about him every chance he got. She hadn’t believed half of his so-called exploits at first, but she’d seen what he could do. With the zombies and with people. He’d jumped right in, killed them all, just like he said he would. He’d moved like lightning, even her enhanced eyes hadn’t been able to follow some of his movements.

  He concerned her.

  She knew the new government in Lakota was spending a lot of effort trying to link together every stronghold, getting everyone set up with radios to communicate and help each other. She knew Casey’s Raiders were spread out and wreaking havoc wherever they felt like it, but that wouldn’t last. They wouldn’t be able to run free and do whatever they wanted for much longer, maybe a year or two and their time would be over. People would start fighting back. With the backing of Lakota and the firepower they could bring to bear, most of the disorganized Raiders would be mopped up and eliminated. Tracked down and destroyed. If they were to survive, they would have to concentrate their forces in one area, but she doubted they could. They were too unorganized, too kill crazy, and apocalypse mad. They thought they were the toughest kids on the block but they were wrong. Lakota would mop them up or if they couldn’t, the jackal headed Warriors would.

  The Anubis Movement, on the other hand, could last and grow.

  They had done the things that needed to be done, they had the serum. In the end, only a few hundred people had been sacrificed, lost to the experiments. Now they could control the undead, they could walk among them and not be attacked. They could be massed and used against the enemies of the Movement. She could see there was a war coming because Lakota wouldn’t surrender and neither would the Raiders. Her time on the road had helped her see things more clearly. She could see that three major factions had come out of the chaos and there was going to be bloodshed. The last survivors were going to try to kill each other, each wanting their way of life for everyone.

  She cut behind the casino, slipped down an alley, and headed back to the traveler's lodge she was staying at. Her father had told her to kill him, he was a threat. She’d always done what he said, always carried out his orders, but this one she was struggling with. She’d been watching Jessie for weeks, and she knew he was one of the good guys. Was pretty sure his moral code would hate the new religion, and he’d try to end it. He was so American, so caught up in the whole freedom thing. Where she’d spent half of her life, in the Middle East, they didn’t have such a fervent belief in self-reliance, that whole macho rugged individualism mindset where you lived like you wanted and the government was supposed to serve you, not the other way around.

  “Where you going in such a hurry, you pretty little thing?”

  She looked up. She’d been lost in thought, deciding what to do. It was the rest of the gang that had ridden in with the Raiders Jessie had just killed in the bar. She forgot to bypass this street, her mind had been somewhere else. The Raiders had taken it over because it had a garage with tools and they were continually making changes to their vehicles. Mostly adding useless ornaments, a few more spikes, bloody scalps, or painted skulls, anything to make themselves look more fearsome. The people of Blackfoot had learned to avoid them, it was easier to walk around, than put up with their crap. Some of them had bottles in their hands, already half lit. She made a quick count, never breaking stride. There were eight of them she could see. She’d just told herself Jessie had been good, but she was better. If they wanted a fight, she’d give it to them, but she wouldn’t let herself get shot.

  “Hey, Chiquita, I’m talking to you,” a Hispanic man said. He had tats on his face and swaggered as he stepped in front of her. His baggy jeans and wife beater shirt were dirty, smeared with fresh grease and old blood. Jailhouse tattoos covered every inch of exposed skin. He grinned, his filed down teeth flashing as another man slid in behind, blocking her escape.

  “When Oscar is talking, you’d better listen,” he said.

  She smiled right back, her green eyes sparkled. He didn’t see her hand move, one second it was by her side, the next something hard and metal was spraying his teeth all over the sidewalk, his jaw broken and misshapen. She spun, both hands filled with steel, and drove the ends of her batons into the raider’s forehead. The surprised look on his face turned to slack dullness as he collapsed to the ground in a boneless heap, dead from blunt force trauma. The others, tinkering with something under the hood of an old pickup truck, stood motionless, slack-jawed and staring. The tattooed man spat out the rest of his broken teeth and tried to curse her in Spanish through bleeding lips.

  “I’ll be back for you,” she said, flicked both wrists and extended the two batons. Twenty-one inches of black stainless steel locked into place. Modern-day Tahtib. Egyptian stick fighting, reimagined with spring-loaded steel. She ran at them, giving her wrists a twist and twirling the batons in a pattern much deadlier than any cheerleader could imagine. The men at the truck started to scramble for weapons, but it was too late. They thought they were safe on their street. They thought their numbers kept the locals afraid and distant. Rifles leaned against the wall, pistols were tossed on car seats, and shotguns were still in window racks. The first man threw up his arm to protect his face and the sound of breaking bones filled the air before it was drowned out by his scream. She was aiming for necks, looking to kill. These cannibals deserved no mercy, and she would give them no quarter. Cat-quick and pitiless she waded in and cut them down. One of them swung a crescent wrench at her, spitting curses through meth-rotted teeth. She twisted her wrist, snapped a baton down along her arm, deflecting the blow on the steel. The other hand shot out and slashed at his Adam's apple, crushing it and killing him. It took him a few minutes to die, blue-faced, grasping his throat and sucking for air, but it only took him a few seconds
to realize he’d taken his last breath. Some of them were coming at her now, grabbing for her arms, and using their size and numbers to overwhelm her. She shot a foot into someone’s crotch and the air whooshed out of him before the vomit did. His testicles were crushed, broken open and running down his legs like the delicate eggs they were. Her speed was uncanny, her strength unmatched, her ferocity unrivaled. She had all the traits of a fresh-turned zombie and the grace of a feral cat. They couldn’t keep track of her. She was in their clutches one second, they were collapsing to the ground spewing blood from crushed faces and shattered bones, the next. She grimaced, putting all her strength into each blow, breaking something with every impact. Big Red came the closest to taking her down, he managed to grab her long black braid and pull her off balance. She broke his knee with a sidekick, his elbow with a flash from her baton, his nose with the blunt side of the other one. He didn’t know which hurt the worst but didn’t have time to consider it. She brutally backhanded him with the other truncheon and sent most of his brains flying against the wall from a cracked open skull. One of the men had grabbed his pistol from the front seat and was bringing it around to fill her full of lead. She leapt from across the room, spun her batons and drove them both through his head, splashing his eyes over her fists. The last raider grabbed a shotgun and squeezed the trigger as she pulled her batons out of the dead man’s face and spun away. Buckshot caught her in the side, ripped through her leathers, and she gasped in pain and annoyance. She’d made the same mistake as the Road Angel.