Dead Country

by Bonnie Dee

  So I refocused on the undead strolling almost casually along until they came to the barrier. They pushed and battered and climbed until another shot boomed, blowing another head off. But their numbers were increasing, the fence wouldn’t hold indefinitely and time was running out.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  I woke up to the sound of Tanesha obsessively brushing her teeth. She’d been that way since I’d met her. I supposed it was a control thing like— as long as I can maintain some personal hygiene I’m still in charge of my life. Or maybe she’d always had a dental fetish. We all have our quirks. But did she have to wake me up with her brushing and spitting? The eight of us were sleeping together in a single room as we always did when we were traveling. It was safer to stick together with people keeping watch in shifts. The light coming through the sheer curtains told me it was early morning. Carl stood guard at the window and Tanesha was up early—obsessing.

  We hadn’t traveled as far as we’d hoped yesterday. After stopping to fix a problem with Steve’s bike, we’d had to stop several times to siphon gas from abandoned vehicles in order to fill our tanks. Durbinville wasn’t too many hours behind us. I could turn around and go back, be there by mid-afternoon if I pushed it.

  I looked around the room at the remains of our group that had at one time been nearly twenty strong. Jake was curled around Maureen, both of them sleeping peacefully and making me jealous of their closeness. The other lumps in sleeping bags were Daylon, Steve and Aaron. That was all of us since Richard had stayed behind in Durbinville. They’d let him because an electrician had value to them.

  Daylon had been in such a hurry to leave he hadn’t recruited more travelers. The whole damn exodus had been rushed. I’d been hurried into a decision I wasn’t ready to make and now I felt a growing sense that I’d made the wrong choice.

  Tanesha went over to talk to Carl, neither of them bothering to keep their voices very low. I knew I wasn’t going to get any more sleep so I crawled out of my downy cocoon and rolled up the sleeping bag. I searched in my backpack for fresh clothes, wishing I’d taken advantage of our time in Durbinville to do laundry. But I’d had a few other things on my mind. As I reached blindly into the bottom of my bag for a pair of socks, my fingers brushed against something smooth and flat. I knew what it was before I pulled it out and stared at the cover. Brian had packed the Magic Eye book for me when he’d collected my things from his house.

  I swallowed hard and the image blurred before my eyes. I blinked away tears and read the title, Magic Eye: A New Way of Looking at the World. Could the message possibly be more significant? That’s exactly how I felt now, like I was seeing things for the first time or in a different way. Being with Brian had changed me. I wasn’t sure I liked all these brand-spanking-new feelings but I knew I couldn’t go back to the person I’d been before. Once you’d seen the 3D picture within the image, it was impossible to miss it.

  “Well, fuck me sideways. This sucks,” I muttered. Homesickness blazed through me like fire on a trail of gasoline.

  “What?” Maureen shifted and opened her eyes partway.

  “Nothing. Just thinking out loud.” I flipped through the book and saw sea creatures and aliens, safari animals and skyscrapers all hidden in geometric shapes and colors. The pictures really were a marvel of ingenuity and seemed to proclaim some kind of message about seeing the truth in the things that were right in front of you. Way too much deep thought for so early in the day.

  I closed the book and buried it in the bottom of my bag then went to another room in the abandoned farmhouse to change. By the time I’d returned the others were stirring. Daylon handed out granola bars and apples. I pouted as I thought of the coffee I was missing at Brian’s house—and the early morning sex.

  We didn’t talk much as we packed and got on the road. Everybody knew the routine. We’d broken camp dozens of times in the past months. The air was quiet except for the cawing of a couple of crows swooping over a field, landing and stripping the corn. No other movement, neither zombie nor animal, interrupted the silence. But soon the roar of motorcycle engines broke the peace and sent the crows skyward.

  I put on my helmet and slung my leg over the wide seat of my Harley. The machine felt good purring like a great cat between my legs, sleek, powerful—mine. I was kinda in love with the cycle.

  We raced down the road in pattern, each rider spaced evenly apart like a flying squadron which offered wind resistance and protection. Daylon was at the front, constantly scanning the road and the land on either side for danger. Rounding a bend, we might come across an abandoned car, a crash, remains of corpses, or the walking dead. We’d encountered all of them at one time or another and had had some near misses. It was important not to zone out and daydream because things could change in an instant.

  About a half hour down the road, my stomach was rumbling and I wished I’d taken Daylon up on the offer of a granola bar. The morning sun gilded everything gold, even the dry brown field corn. Light reflected from the motorcycles’ chrome and glinted off the windshields. I squinted as something shiny in the distance nearly blinded me. Must be something big, I thought, and then suddenly I was in the middle of an unfolding accident.

  In front of me, Jake swerved to the right. He hit the soft shoulder of the road and sent gravel flying into my windshield and visor. He nearly lost control of his bike. Meanwhile, Carl skimmed to the left to avoid the obstruction. With the road in front of me open I could see what had caused them to fan out. Aaron was sprawled on the road, his motorcycle on its side, wheels still spinning. I had an instant to decide which way to veer so I went left to avoid the shoulder where Jake was struggling to get his cycle stabilized.

  The last in our pack, Steve, wasn’t so lucky. He clipped the rear tire of Aaron’s bike as he shot past. He lost control and his bike cartwheeled end over end, launching him over the handlebars. I caught a glimpse of this in my side mirror as I pulled over. Within seconds, all of us had stopped. Up ahead, Daylon saw the accident and turned to ride back toward us.

  I put down the kickstand, climbed off my cycle and tore off my helmet. Aaron was groaning and writhing on the road, but it was Steve I was more concerned about. He’d taken a header right into the pavement and I couldn’t imagine his neck wasn’t snapped. I ran over, bent down and touched his leather-clad shoulder. “Steve, can you hear me?”

  I knew you weren’t supposed to move accident victims, but there weren’t any paramedics standing by to do it the right way so I carefully rolled Steve over. His visor was cracked and bloody inside. I flipped it open and his face was cracked and bloody too.

  “Jesus, Steve.” I took off my jacket and used the sleeve of my flannel shirt to wipe away the blood until I could see the gash beneath.

  Tanesha, who’d been riding with Carl, hunkered down beside me. “How bad is it?”

  “I don’t know. Really bad, I think.” Fresh blood welled from the wound and slid down Steve’s forehead into his eyes. Again I dabbed it away.

  Steve opened his eyes and blinked. He was conscious. That was a good sign.

  The roar of a motorcycle grabbed my attention. I glanced up in time to see Daylon riding directly at us as if he meant to jump over us like Evil Knievel. He held a sawed off shotgun at hip level and as he drew close, he fired. I turned to the left just as pieces of flesh showered over me. A zombie had come out of nowhere—a cornfield’s worth of nowhere—and plodded onto the road. Daylon’s shot took a good chunk out of the side of its face, but not enough to bring it down. The creature continued to walk toward us.

  I reached for my knife, but Tanesha sprang past me. She drew her handgun and began shooting into the zombie’s head from only a yard away. She screamed as she fired over and over until the head was pulp. One of the bullets must have hit the right target because the body crumpled to the ground. Tanesha stood over it, shooting until she’d emptied her clip. She clearly had a lot of pent up rage to release after two days of trekking alone through
zombie country, abandoned by her crew. We were lucky she didn’t squeeze a few rounds into one of us.

  I turned back to Steve and patted away the blood on his face again. “How are you? Can you feel your legs?”

  He blinked and made a little murmuring sound. Blood bubbled between his lips.

  “You’ll be okay. I think you’ll be fine.”

  I glanced around—at Tanesha, slumped to her knees by the zombie’s corpse, at Daylon, jumping off his bike and running toward me, at Carl, Jake and Maureen clustered around Aaron. Everything seemed very quiet and far away. Dreamlike. I looked at Steve again. His blue eyes were wide and vacant. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth and his chest was no longer moving. I put my hand on it to be sure, then pulled of his gloves and felt his wrist. No pulse.

  “Damn. Goddamn,” I whispered.

  Daylon squatted beside me. “Is he alive?”

  I shook my head. “Check and make sure.”

  Daylon placed his fingers on Steve’s neck beneath the collar of his jacket. Then he covered the dead man’s eyes with his hand and drew his lids down. There was nothing to say. I rose to go see how Aaron was doing.

  He was sitting up and cursing a steady stream. “My fault, damn it. I wasn’t paying attention. Skidded on some road kill. A possum or something. I’m sorry. This is all my fault. Is everyone all right?”

  He hadn’t seen what happened to Steve. There was no point in telling him right at the moment. “How about you?” I asked. “Do you think anything’s broken?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a cracked rib. My side hurts like hell and my shoulder.” The asphalt had chewed through the sleeve of his jacket, shredding the material rather than skin, but blood dripped from the laceration beneath. Blood that would draw more zombies if they were lurking in the cornfield.

  Bracing his legs against the big man’s weight, Jake hauled Aaron to his feet. “Come on, buddy. We’ve got to get moving. It’s not safe here.”

  Daylon bent over to examine the Yamaha. “Frame might be a little bent but it should ride.”

  Aaron looked around. “Where’s Steve?”

  “He crashed. He didn’t make it,” Daylon answered bluntly, but there wasn’t any way to sugarcoat it.

  “Oh my God!” Aaron saw Steve’s body and limped toward it. “This is my fault.”

  “Look, there’s no time to think about that,” Daylon said. “We’ve got to keep moving. Right now.”

  “But Steve…”

  “Pull his body off the road. We can’t bury him.”

  We all knew what would happen to the body later. If the undead wouldn’t eat it, animals or crows would. But this was no longer a world where we could afford to worry about our empty casings after the souls had left them.

  As the men dragged Steve away, I stood near Maureen and Tanesha, watching and thinking I should say a prayer or something. “I don’t want to be out here anymore. I want to go back. I wish I’d never left,” was what came out of my mouth instead.

  “Go back where? That town?” Tanesha said. “What the hell for? We have to get to civilization, someplace really safe, where the army’s in control and we can get vaccinated.”

  “You want to go to the Emerald City and see the Wizard? I don’t think you’re going to find what you’re looking for.”

  “You like that guy, Brian,” Maureen guessed. “That’s why you want to go back.”

  “Hell yeah, I shoulda known there was a man involved,” Tanesha said. “There always is with this one.”

  “It’s not like that. He’s not just some dude I hooked up with.” I could hear how lame that sounded given that he was a dude and I had hooked up with him. But they couldn’t know how different this felt from any of my past relationships. What did Tanesha know about my track record anyway? I’d been with Denny when we met. One guy.

  I stopped trying to explain myself and went over to my motorcycle. After checking that my gear was still secure, I rested my hand on the backpack and thought of the Magic Eye book inside.

  Daylon was suddenly beside me. “Are you okay?”

  I looked up at him. “This feels wrong. I think we should go back. Aaron’s hurt and Durbinville’s closer than Topeka.”

  “There are other towns on the way where we could stop.”

  “Other towns might be overrun with zombies. We don’t know what we’re heading into.” The glinting of the sun on the shiny metal thing ahead caught my eye again. I looked down the road and there sat my answer, shining like a beacon, telling me I was right. I pointed at the silver cylinder on wheels with Arrow Petroleum printed on the side. The gas truck wasn’t overturned or jackknifed, just neatly pulled over to the side of the road about a mile away as if waiting for us. “The townies need gas for their generators and stuff. We can take it to them as a peace offering.”

  “Ashleigh, we’re not going back.” Impatience rippled through Daylon’s voice like a breeze gearing up to become a blustering wind.

  I glared at him. “You don’t have to. I will.”

  “How you gonna drive that thing, and who’ll watch your back? You can’t travel by yourself.”

  “I’ll figure out how to drive the truck and I can travel alone.”

  “No you can’t. You won’t make it.”

  “I’ll be in a frigging semi . I don’t think anything much can stand in my way. Besides, it’s only a day’s ride back to Durbinville.”

  Our escalating argument drew the others to cluster around.

  “What’s up?” Carl asked.

  “Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Daylon answered at the same time I said, “I want to take that gas truck to Durbinville.”

  Our group was filled with strong-willed people, each of whom had an opinion to express—all at the same time. I was bombarded by “You’re crazy”, “Ashleigh, you’re not thinking straight” and “Why would we do that?”

  “I’m not asking any of you to go,” I interrupted. “I understand your agenda—get vaccinated, go south for the winter. Nobody has to go with me.”

  “You can’t go alone,” Maureen said. “Think about what you’re saying.”

  “I have thought about it. This is what I want to do. You’re not going to change my mind.”

  “Those trucks aren’t easy to operate Carl reiterated Daylon’s argument. “ Just turning the rig around on a road this narrow would be hazardous and that tank’s full of combustible fuel.”

  “I can help you,” Aaron spoke up unexpectedly. “The condition I’m in I can’t ride a cycle anyway. I know how to drive a rig. I don’t have a license but my dad was a long haul trucker. I used to go on the road with him sometimes when I was a kid. I can drive for you.” He rubbed his arm which he cradled close to his body. “Or at least teach you how to do it.”

  “Good.” A surge of relief flooded through me because despite my big words I hadn’t been at all sure I could figure out the mechanics of driving a semi. “That’s it then. You guys go on. We’ll head back.”

  “Well, let’s make sure the damn thing even works,” Daylon said. “There might not be any keys or it could be out of gas or broken down. There must be some reason the driver abandoned it.”

  Everyone mounted their cycles and fired their engines, Aaron catching a ride with Daylon. We swooped down the road toward the tanker like crows descending on carrion. Close up, the truck was huge and intimidating. I patted the seat of my motorcycle, telling my sweet Harley goodbye, then climbed up into the rig, determined to show I wasn’t backing down from the choice I’d made. I stowed my bags in back then sat in the driver’s seat and stared at the daunting control panel. “Shit.”

  The passenger door opened and Aaron heaved himself onto the seat beside mine, grunting and wincing with pain. “Look, key’s in the ignition. Wonder what happened to this guy. Maybe he ran out of gas, went to get some and never made it back. Crank her up and see if she goes.”

  The irony of a gas truck running out of gas wasn’t lost on me. I prepared for another cosmic joke
as I turned the key in the ignition, but the engined roared to life with the ease of a jungle cat stretching and purring.

  “Good. Give it a minute to let the air build up and meanwhile I’ll show you the gearshift pattern. Then we’ll go forward to the next crossroads where we can turn around.”

  I paid close attention while Aaron explained the mysteries of the dashboard. Daylon rapped on the door of the truck and I opened it.

  “So, you’re really committed to this?”

  “Yeah. Aaron says there’s enough gas in the tank for us to make it back. We’ll go east until we come to a crossroads where we can turn this bad beast, then we’ll split off from you guys.”

  Daylon shook his head. “I don’t like it. I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “I’ll miss you too.” I smiled at him, understanding his scowl meant concern and his warning, that he cared about me. It would be hard to say goodbye to all of them but especially Daylon, who I’d been with since the beginning.