“Tornado,” Antonio spoke. “Only thing that could move that bus.”
“I hope we can turn it over and that it’s still drivable,” Steve commented, immediately running to it and trying to peer at the engine under the bent hood.
Tracy turned around and grimaced in disgust. The tornado had thrown several zombies, both human and animals, against the walls of the shack and they had exploded on impact. Broken bones and rotting flesh were stuck haphazardly in the thick wood. It was the grotesque green and red that only nature could have painted. Surprisingly, the shack had withstood the high winds of the tornado; even the roof was intact.
Who built this place?
Antonio decided to mark the location on the large wall map drawn in their compound. It would make an excellent outpost or emergency location. They spread out to inspect the damage and saw that even a few boulders had rolled. They spread out along the length of the bus and pushed to tip it back onto its wheels. It took several attempts but they were able to right it. It bounced on the tires as it righted and they were afraid it would tip to the other side.
“Oh gross!” Bobby Wayne exclaimed.
A zombie animal of some kind had been behind the bus when it tipped over and got flattened.
“Get out the shovels and scrape it off,” Antonio sighed. They seemed to be doing more cleaning of the bus on this mission than anything else. “Tracy, bring your shovel and come help me,” he called out as he looked for a good spot for a funeral burial.
They circled the fresh grave and bowed their heads in silence although none of them knew what to say. At least they felt they’d done the right thing. Then they drove off in the direction of home.
Something in the engine must have been damaged during the tornado because the bus wouldn’t go over 30mph. Every time Antonio tried to go faster, a horrible grinding sound emitted from the engine. The threat of being stranded this far away was enough to keep it slow.
A day from the shack they were forced to stop for a boulder in the road. There were larger ones scattered near the sides of the road but this was still large enough to block them. A couple of them could easily roll it out of the way but it begged the question, why was it there? It wasn’t there on their way out.
“Maybe the tornado moved it,” Bobby Wayne suggested.
Before getting out of the bus, they all looked around and Rick was the first one to see the footprints starting ten or twelve feet from the road. Someone had tried to brush them away between that point and the boulder. They should have swept more.
“Okay,” Antonio whispered, “we go out and play dumb but keep our wits about us. If you see someone, start talking about food. If they come at us then kill the hell out of them!”
They went down the steps, Steve pulling the keys from the ignition and pocketing them. No sense having someone sneak in and steal it right out from under them.
“Damn!” Rick said, loudly. “That tornado even hit over here.”
“Yeah, I never knew they could move boulders. This is just like those other boulders we saw,” Bobby Wayne chimed in.
“Well, right now I could go for a boulder sized steak. Haha,” Antonio laughed. “I could eat one as big as a horse.”
The others subtly glanced around and saw a boulder that was closest to the size of a horse.
“I would love a salad to go with it,” Tracy said, blinking her eyes.
Rick inspected the boulder in the road and saw out of the corner of his eye, movement behind a brushy shrub. At least two there. How many behind that horse boulder and are there others?
Antonio stepped back and scratched his head. “I think we can move it if we all get behind it. It should roll.”
They all got behind the boulder and prepared to push. They were also prepared for anything else. As soon as their hands touched the boulder, three men jumped out from behind the suspected boulder and two more came out from behind the shrub. They were definitely human and definitely Z.E.D.s.
“Keep your hands on the boulder,” the one with a gun called out.
A gun? They hadn’t seen too many patrols out with guns. Ammo was too hard to find or make. The Z.E.D.s usually had short swords and axes, standard weapons for most Z.E.D.s. As they got closer to the Raiders, they missed Antonio inching around the boulder, staying opposite them. Only when they got within melee distance was he noticed missing.
“Where’s the old guy?” the Z.E.D. with the gun asked.
He was holding it loosely and didn’t even have his finger on the trigger. Bobby Wayne became focused on this, and was convinced that the gun was empty.
“Where the hell did the old man go?” he repeated his question.
Suddenly Bobby Wayne lunged forward, grabbing for the barrel of the gun. As the gun went off, he felt like he was hit in the chest with a boulder.
Oh, fuck! Was I ever wrong! He sank to the ground, clutching his chest.
“Dammit! That was our last bullet!” one of the Z.E.D.s screamed at its owner.
As soon as the Raiders heard that, they pulled out their own weapons and went at them. Antonio came from around the boulder and swung his axe, removing the head of the Z.E.D. with the gun.
“Old guy?” he thundered, “Old man? Who’s the fucking old man now?!”
He turned, and on the back swing beheaded another Z.E.D. Another step and he knelt down beside Bobby Wayne while Rick, Tracy, and Steve took the rest out. Rick’s spiked bat met with the side of the head of a tall blond man with long hair in a tail. The man dropped to the ground, his mouth opening and closing rapidly like a fish out of water. Tracy took a slice to the leg as the Z.E.D. with a short sword swung close. She didn’t jump back quite far enough. She put weight on the leg, realizing she was still in the game, and swung her machete at him before he could swing again. She stabbed it into his cheekbone and he screamed and dropped his sword. He grabbed the handle on top of her hands, attempting to free it from his face but she refused to let him. She pulled and stepped back, dragging him screaming, with her. Putting all her weight on her good leg, she swung him around like a baseball player at bat and slammed him into the very boulder they had used as a decoy. When his head smacked he let go of the machete and fell down unconscious, pulling Tracy down with him. Once she got back up, she planted her boot on his head and yanked the machete free then buried it in his neck. Steve was having the hardest time with the last Z.E.D. as the soldier was at least eight or nine inches taller than him. Steve ducked several swings, but couldn’t hit him back with his own axe swings. He saw Rick drop to his hands and knees right behind him and smiled. The last Z.E.D. looked confused at the smile but still stepped back. He tripped over Rick who rolled out of the way as soon as the Z.E.D. was off his feet. Steve jumped forward and swung his axe overhead, burying it in the Z.E.D.s chest. Suddenly all was quiet but Antonio’s quiet murmuring and they all ran over to Bobby Wayne.
He was bleeding from his chest as the blood bubbled from his torn lungs. More trailed out of the corners of his mouth. When he opened it, they could see his teeth covered in blood.
Antonio was quietly telling him, “It’s okay Bobby Wayne. Everything is okay. You won’t hurt anymore. Just close your eyes and listen to my voice.”
Bobby Wayne smiled and looked at each of them. He held out a bloody hand and Tracy grabbed it, crying. “I love you guys. You... I—,” His eyes rolled around and stopped moving. He didn’t breathe again.
They buried him a little ways from the road and rolled the boulder to sit above him. They used their blades to chip his name into the rock, a memorial for all eternity. The Z.E.D.s they dragged further down the road and away, leaving them for the carrion birds, alive and zombie alike, to feast on. They boarded the bus sober and weapons heavy as they retrieved everything the Z.E.D.s had on them. They looked around for a vehicle but couldn’t find one. Antonio assumed they were dropped off and a vehicle would be back to pick them up later. He almost wished he could be there waiting for them, but they needed to get home.
&n
bsp; “Is that smoke?” Rick asked, pointing through the front windshield.
It was still intact even after the bus had been knocked over, but it had a lot more cracks in it now. Antonio nodded without a word. He’d seen wisps of the smoke for several miles and was about to mention it.
“Is that home?” Tracy asked, coming forward to look.
“I won’t know for sure until we get closer but it looks like it is,” he replied.
“That’s a lot of smoke,” Steve said, getting worried. “That’s too much for them to just be smoking some meat. I wish this bucket of bolts could go faster.”
Antonio grunted in reply and pushed down on the accelerator. The grinding noise forced him to ease up. They were impatient to get home in a hurry but were at the mercy of the bus.
Chapter Five
As they got closer to the gates, they were all stunned into silence. The building was a smoldering ruin. Parts of it were still burning and the gate was wide open and unmanned. In fact, they didn’t see anyone at all. They got off the bus and walked closer, shocked. Part of the compound wall was completely burned away, and they stepped cautiously over embers and small piles still burning. They had trouble figuring out where they were once they were inside. The fire had destroyed the layout and they didn’t recognize anything. They called out but nothing replied.
“There are no bodies,” Rick noted. “None burned or killed, just no one here.”
“This wasn’t zombies,” Antonio said. “This was the Z.E.D.s.”
“But where are all our people?” Tracy asked.
There were over thirty people living at this compound and not one of them was here, alive or dead. Antonio picked up the remains of a chair, burning his hand a little, and smashed it into a crumbling wall.
“We got fucking careless! We hadn’t been hit in so long we thought we could have many of our best people out raiding and scavenging, instead of here protecting what we should have been protecting.”
Tracy had tears running down her face as she bent down to pick up what was left of a teddy bear. This had belonged to her best friend, Megan’s daughter, Sandy. It was brought in with a scavenge a year or so ago and the bear was in bad shape. Tracy had taken out her little sewing kit, one of the few possessions her mother had left her, and stitched up the bear, even pulling buttons off her own clothes to replace the eyes. Now, it had been trampled and the stitches had come loose again. The meager stuffing was singed and crisped on the ground. She clutched it to her chest and cried openly.
“If they were lucky, it was only the Z.E.D.s,” Rick said quietly.
Antonio slammed him up against the wall screaming, “Does this look like luck to you?”
Steve and Tracy pulled him off.
“What did you mean by that?” Steve asked him.
“I’d rather it was Z.E.D.s than a cannibal tribe.” Rick said.
Antonio shook out of their grasps. “There hasn’t been a cannibal tribe seen near here in years,” he said, tears finally coming to his eyes. “They’ve all been out further west.”
Rick shrugged, his back sore from the impact. He held nothing against Antonio for the outburst; it was the heat of the moment.
“What do we do now?” Tracy asked. “Do we track them down?”
“We’re going to need more people to do that,” Antonio said. “Even with the Raiders that were out on missions, there were at least twenty people still here. We are only four. We need to stay here and see what we can salvage. When the other groups get back, we might have enough. Rick, scout around the entire exterior of the compound. See if you can figure out where they breeched, what they came in, and where they went. They had to leave some kind of tracks. Steve, start looking at all our other vehicles; see which are running and try to fix the ones that aren’t. We’re going to need everything we have up and running. Tracy, come with me inside. We’ve got to gather anything still useable.”
Tracy was in the kitchen and she was getting more frightened by the second. Someone had opened the knife drawer, and all of them were gone. There were puddles of blood scattered all around the kitchen and dining area but still no bodies. All the water was gone but no one had taken the food.
Who invades a compound and doesn’t take the food?
“Cannibals,” she shakily whispered, seeing the face of little Sandy in her mind. “Oh shit. Oh shit!”
Antonio was searching what was left of the living quarters one by one. The ones on the west side were still burning so he couldn’t get to them. His throat was burning from the smoke so he grabbed the nearest piece of cloth and wrapped it around his nose and mouth. There was the occasional blood puddle or smear on the wall but still not a single body. When he got to another room, he stared at the broken wall in amazement. There was a blood smear that was the height and size of a human head with a slash in the wall that had to come from a machete or similar. The blood running down from the slash pooled on the floor. There was no way that person was alive. He broke down and screamed in frustration and anger, smashing his fists through what was left of the cheap walls. He only knew of one type of people that didn’t waste even the dead bodies. Rick was right.
“The fire is re-igniting!” Rick called out. He inspected the exterior of the compound and was sure he figured out what happened. From the debris scattered around, it looked like the storm that hit them at the shack had also hit here as well. One of the trucks had been thrown through the fence, and tore down at least a twenty feet section. They had only managed to drag the truck out of the fence line completely and get two of the posts up to make the repairs. That’s obviously when they were invaded. They’d been dealt a rotten helping hand from that bitch, Mother Nature. Rick could see many muddy footprints that were churned up close to the doors and windows on the side that had been breached. There was a lot of blood smeared in the mud and signs of struggles. The rain had washed away the tracks further away from the fence, masking the direction they took. As he kept going around the building, he saw the fire was getting stronger. Since the rain had stopped, the materials were drying and the smoldering piles were re-igniting.
“Get out now!” he yelled, continuing to run the rest of the way around to meet up with the others. He stepped in through the burnt opening and yelled, coughing against the increasing smoke, “Fire, fire! Get out! Sound off!”
“My ass is already out of there!” Antonio was yelling through his cloth-covered face.
He barreled past Rick and outside where he cleared his face to cough violently.
“Tracy!” Rick could hear her coughing but she didn’t answer so he ran inside, putting his sleeve over his mouth and nose.
He tracked her down in the kitchen. She was loading all the food in one of the carts.
“We have to get out now!” he told her.
She coughed again and pointed at the cart.
“I’m only worried about you,” he yelled.
Violently she shook her head, punched him in the chest, then pointed at the cart again, doubling over from coughing.
“Okay, you go and I’ll get this,” he said.
She nodded and slung a heavy bag over her shoulder before staggering out. Rick managed to remove the rest of the food from the pantry and as he wheeled the cart out, the back wall caved in. Flames shot out and he felt an immense heat on the back of his head. He ran, and bumping the cart, losing a few cans and boxes in the process. Once he got outside, he started coughing.
“Your back is on fire!” Steve yelled.
Antonio picked Rick up and slammed him to the ground, rolling him around until he was sure the flames were gone. When he sat up, they inspected him and saw that his skin wasn’t burned but he would need a new jacket and head covering. He looked at the burning building. There were more clothes in there but now they were ash, or soon would be.
“I got these three trucks running,” Steve said, while the others went through the supplies that Tracy and Rick pulled out.
“One of them probably won’t make it far s
o I would recommend we pull off all the usable parts and save them for the vehicles we do take. I fixed the bus so it’s back up to par but there’s a lot of broken glass and the windshield is still cracked bad. I don’t have anything to seal them. The rest of the vehicles are all completely dead. My advice would be to yank off everything that we could use later and take them with us. Even if we can’t use it, we can trade it later.”
“When the other teams get back here we’ll have those vehicles too,” Antonio added, with no doubt the other teams would come back.
“Between all those we should have enough vehicles to take all the supplies and extra auto parts and tires. We’re taking all the tires that aren’t flat,” Steve insisted.
Antonio just nodded. Steve was now their only mechanic.
The heat from the flames was so intense they actually had to move all the running vehicles further away. Steve sweated out under the hoods of the ones that wouldn’t run, pointing with his tools, telling everyone what to take off and giving instructions if necessary. Antonio let them do that while he went to remove all the usable tires. He even took them off the vehicle that the tornado had thrown through the fence. When he was done, there were several stacks of rubber sitting next to the bus.
“Did you get all the spares?” Steve asked him, counting the tires.
“Spares?” Antonio asked, “I checked the trunk in the one car but where would a spare be on a truck?”
Steve shook his head in exasperation, “Look at the underside of the beds of the trucks. I know they don’t all have spares but we put them there whenever we could afford to. Wait a minute! How is it you can save everyone’s ass and survive the apocalypse but you don’t know where the spare in a truck is?”
Antonio grinned, “I wasn’t always a badass. Before the world went to shit, I was a tree hugger with a hybrid electric car. I’d never owned a truck before.”
Survive (Book 1): Salvation Page 4
