Dead Country

by Bonnie Dee

  I closed the door and watched him walk over and talk to the others, then all of the motorcycles moved into formation in front of us.

  Aaron leaned over to check the gauges and pointed to two big buttons on the dash. “Push them in to release the brakes.” A hiss of air filled the truck. “You’re set to go.”

  I eased off the clutch and fed the engine a little and it slowly moved forward. My shifting was accomplished with some grinding and screeching of gears. But as the rig gathered speed, I started to catch the rhythm of when to shift and how much to accelerate. I glanced into the side mirror and saw the long, silver tube of the tanker dragging like a big fat butt behind us. Damn, the thing was huge and heavy.

  “Keep her slow and steady. And remember you can’t brake like you would in a car. Plan ahead when you can, but if something comes out in front of you, for God’s sake, don’t slam on the brakes.”

  Under the circumstances, I knew it was the good advice. It wasn’t as if a toddler or a kid on a bike was likely to be the obstruction I’d be flattening on the pavement.

  We sailed down the road with the cycles escorting us, pilot fish to our Great White. This countryside was generally flat but with occasional rises and dips. From the top of a slope, I could see the land stretching out before us, more cornfields, naturally, and the crossroads we’d been waiting for.

  “Slow down on this slope,” Aaron warned. “You have to remember the load behind you is liquid so it’s can get off balance.”

  I’d already taken my foot off the gas and was easing on the brake pedal. As we coasted down the incline I noticed a ripple of movement throughout the fields to the northeast. I cut my gaze from the road to the corn as I braked and downshifted. “Oh shit.”

  “You’ll be all right. We’re going to make a left at the crossroad, back up and then make another left. If we tried to circle around the truck might get stuck in the shoulder or lose balance.”

  “No. Not that. Look!” I took my hand from the wheel long enough to point at the dark shapes stirring the corn and turning it into waves. There were dozens of them. The largest group of undead I’d seen since we left Vegas swarming like army ants. They were in the field and the road ahead.

  “How do you honk this horn?” I asked, anxious to warn the others in case they hadn’t seen what was coming.

  “Pull the cord there.”

  I followed his direction, letting out a loud blat to get their attention. But Daylon had already seen the zombies on the road ahead. He held up his arm and made a fist, telling the others to pull over. They reached the crossroads. Daylon led the other two cycles in a U-turn that headed them in the opposite direction. As he passed me in the left lane, he pointed up the road, letting me know they’d wait somewhere along the way for me to turn the truck and catch up with them.

  As we reached the crossroads, I slowed the semi nearly to a crawl and turned the wheel to the left. I felt the gas sloshing in the tank, the center of gravity shifting as the truck made a slow, lazy turn. My heart was in my mouth. I feared losing balance and tipping over. In my peripheral vision I saw shapes moving down the road toward us, but I concentrated on Aaron’s directions.

  “Now give it a little more gas. Listen to your engine.”

  In the side mirror I glimpsed the trailer behind us like big assed parade float. When I looked forward again, a white-haired woman had come out of the field several yards in front of us. She wore high heels and pearls and a Sunday dress and I didn’t see a spot of blood on her. For a moment I thought maybe she was a survivor seeking help. But then a younger woman with a bloody mouth and stained nightgown came out of the corn alongside her. The old lady ignored her so she was either senile or a zombie.

  I automatically started to cramp the wheel to avoid them, but Aaron reached out and straightened it. “Slowly put on your brakes. Make sure the cab and tanker are lined up straight then we’ll back up.” I don’t know how he maintained the calm tone of a seasoned driving instructor. The brakes hissed as we came to a stop. Aaron covered my hand on the gearshift, guiding us into reverse.

  Hands slapped against the truck and even though we were safely enclosed in the cab, I shivered. When one of the creatures climbed onto the running board and peered into the side window, I ignored its dead face and concentrated on keeping the truck and trailer aligned as we rolled backward. If the zombies didn’t scatter from behind us, we’d simply roll over them.

  “Okay. That’s far enough. Stop.”

  I put on the brake until the truck halted and shifted into first again. One more turn and we’d be on our way back west. The route between here and Durbinville had been pretty empty. This new crowd must be coming from Topeka or maybe even beyond, from Kansas City.

  Just as I was making the turn, a huge-bellied man in overalls lunged in front of us. I shrieked before the truck hit him, toppling him over. The cab bounced and rocked as it went over the body. My pulse skyrocketed and my palms slipped on the wheel they were so sweaty.

  And then, as if zombies weren’t enough, something big and brown burst from the field into our path. A deer. Two of them. I instinctively slammed on the brakes, forgetting Aaron’s warning and felt a hard slap from behind as the gas in the tank surged towards the front and the truck lunged forward.

  “Hit the gas!” Aaron yelled.

  I did. The truck clipped the hindquarters of the first deer as it shot past and would have hit the second one broadside but the deer made an amazing leap. A streak of brown sailed past the windshield. Hooves dented the metal hood of the cab and then the animal was gone. I lost control for a few moments as the rig swerved and the tanker fishtailed. Cursing, I pulled on the wheel with a white-knuckle grip, trying to correct our course.

  “Don’t cramp it! Take it easy.” Aaron’s cool was blown as our load whiplashed back and forth. Then by some miracle the trailer shifted back into place and we were heading straight west.

  My chest ached from holding my breath and I let it go with a big whoosh and drew another. In the side mirror I saw the undead filling in the road behind us, surrounding the injured deer and pulling it down. The animal would distract them for a while. The second deer had disappeared into the corn.

  A mile down the road, Daylon and the others waited for us. I stopped the truck, left the motor running and climbed down from the cab. “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’ve had enough of fucking cornfields. I can tell you that,” Tanesha said. “If Topeka’s out, I think we should head south like we originally planned and get the hell out of this country.”

  Daylon held his helmet under one arm and rubbed a hand over his shorn head. “A shitstorm’s headed toward Durbinville. They could probably use our help.”

  “You wanna go back?” Tanesha shrieked. “Two minutes ago you were all for moving on. What the hell?”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Maureen said. “We’ll stick together at least until we see Ashleigh and Aaron safely back there.”

  “I don’t know, baby,” Jake said. “It wasn’t like they treated us fair. We don’t owe them anything. I say we head south.”

  “What about you, Carl?” Daylon asked. “What do you think we should do?”

  “It’s not like any of our options are so great,” he said. “But I don’t think we should split up. Not right now. It’s safer together.”

  “Then it’s decided,” Daylon said. “We’ll deliver this load and warn the town what’s coming. After that, we’ll figure out what comes next.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  The breach in the wall happened shortly before midnight. I’d been half expecting to get a report like that all evening as the press of hungry zombies against the fence grew. During the afternoon, we’d completed a few of the flamethrowers and sent out several teams. They were to draw the zombies away from town before setting them alight. Hunting knives, axes, and a couple of antique swords like Fes’s were used to finish off the charred undead. The result was effective. And the perimete
r guards continued giving their shotguns a workout. The air smelled of gunpowder and scorched flesh and the townspeople were getting nervous.

  Janice found me in the guard tower around eight o’clock and pulled me aside to tell me they’d lost radio contact with Topeka. It couldn’t believe the resurrected U.S. military may have lost control again. With helicopters, tanks and big guns available, they apparently still couldn’t squelch a zombie invasion. While, here we were here in the middle of nowhere, making homemade weapons and surviving by the skin of our teeth.

  “I suppose we’d better call a town meeting.”

  “Oh, I don’t think we need to tell people,” she said. “No need to alarm them unnecessarily. “

  “They should be alarmed, if not about that, then about the walls holding. If every family doesn’t already have an emergency plan, they sure as hell better think of one.”

  She regarded me with cool gray eyes. “If there’s a breach, we’ll deal with it.”

  I stared back. “Just saying ‘we’ll deal with it’ doesn’t solve anything. People need to be ready to protect themselves. Our militia is spread thin as it is.”

  “Regardless, I’m not going to start people panicking, especially so late in the evening. We’ll make it through tonight and figure out how to move forward tomorrow morning.”

  Before I could argue, she walked away. I went outside for some fresh air and leaned against the wall sharpening my knife while I pondered my function in Janice Myers’ world. Was I her flunky now? The past couple of days she’d seemed to have appointed me a sort of advisor yet she didn’t want to listen to what I told her. As usual, she was determined to do things her way. At what point should I undermine her authority? If I took charge of the situation, would people listen to me? And did I even want that kind of responsibility.

  The rest of the evening was a blur of activity as alarms sounded up and down the line and people kept coming to me with problems. Maybe inventing the flamethrower made my new authority take hold so quickly. All of a sudden everybody assumed I could be counted on to come up with creative solutions to their issues.

  By about eleven thirty, I realized I wasn’t going to get a chance to rest that night. And it was then the siren went off, a single long wail that used to signal an approaching tornado. Now it meant zombies had broken through the barricade and were inside the town.

  Abbie was on the monitors. She’d sent someone to sound the alarm then called the patrol team nearest the break-in. The tower in our area was intact so we could still use cell phones locally, which was lucky since there weren’t enough two-way radios for everyone to use but there were plenty of cell phones.

  “Near Rose Lane, behind the old DQ parking lot.” Abbie’s voice quavered. “Looks like three or maybe four of them coming through. I can’t really see. They’re not quite in camera range.”

  “Okay. Keep me updated.” I ran to the scooter I’d been using to get around town.

  I headed toward the breach in the wall about four blocks away, the scooter’s headlight illuminating empty streets. Although we no longer lit streetlamps, there were spotlights spaced at intervals along the fence. Their harsh light made me think of a prison camp in some war movie and sometimes it felt like we were prisoners inside the wall rather than protected by it.

  There was a flurry of activity as I reached the breach site. Cast in white light and dark shadow, the scene in the Dairy Queen parking lot looked like a black and white movie. Several people were fighting zombies. Others were rebuilding the section of stockade that had been knocked down. I jumped off the scooter, pulled my knife and headed toward the action.

  A zombie came out of the shadows and grabbed a woman was scavenging pallets from the alley to reinforce the fence with. She screamed and struggled to get away. Before I could run to help, Jim Lewis leveled his shotgun and shot the creature in the head right over the woman’s shoulder. She screamed and clapped her hands to her ears. The force of the shot blew the zombie’s head away from her, but her face was blood-splattered.

  “Brian, watch out!” someone yelled.

  I spun around, but wasn’t expecting my attacker to be only three feet tall. Hands grabbed my leg. I looked down at the top of a child’s head. A little girl was tearing through the denim of my jeans with her teeth—human teeth which should’ve been too blunt to gnaw through the heavy material but somehow managed it. I felt a sharp nip on my thigh as her teeth scored my skin.

  I grabbed the girl’s hair, dragging her head back and slashed her throat with the knife. Her pale eyes gazed blindly up at me and her neck gushed red. I pulled her hands off my leg then I seized her hair again and finished cutting through her neck. She slumped in my hands like a doll whose batteries had been pulled. I dropped her corpse on the ground.

  I looked up to find Jim in front of me, shotgun in hand. He kicked at the girl’s limp body then transferred his attention to me. “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” I pulled my jacket over the rip in my jeans. I didn’t think the girl’s bite had broken flesh and the last thing I wanted was to be quarantined. There was too much to do for me to waste time in a jail cell. I scanned the area. “Do you think you got ’em all?”

  “Yeah. But we’ll fan out and look for more.”

  “Be careful who you shoot at.”

  He grunted and walked away.

  I joined the people working on the wall. “Are there any other supplies you need? Anything I can get for you?”

  One of the men stopped nailing. “Hell, I could use a whole lumberyard of supplies. But I guess this’ll do for now. We get many more bodies pressing against this fence and it’s going to give out in more than one spot.”

  “Just keep doing the best you can, Tim.”

  Everything seemed to be under control. A couple of guys were hauling away the zombie corpses, putting them in the DQ dumpster to be taken out and burned later. I was anxious to check out the bite on my leg so I headed toward the scooter and rode home to change my torn jeans.

  The house was dark and silent. I used to appreciate the solitude, but now it just seemed lonely. Having guests—not just Ashleigh but all of them gathered around the dining room table the other night—had awakened my need for companionship.

  I pulled down my jeans and examined the teeth marks high on my thigh, the small circle of a child’s mouth. Zombie kids were the worst. Seeing a child attacking like a savage animal was worse than the many other sickening things I’d witnessed. I would’ve been more shaken but I think by then I’d lost my ability to feel the horror.

  There was no blood on my leg, just the bite, and I breathed a sigh of relief. No chance of infection.

  After changing my clothes, I grabbed an unrefrigerated sports drink from the kitchen and downed the essential vitamins and minerals to keep me going for a while. Then I headed back outside, planning check the wall on the other side of town. But before I got on the scooter, my phone rang.

  “Brian, come to the gates,” Abbie said. “Those motorcycle people are back. They want to talk to you and they’ve got a gas truck with them.”

  My stomach swooped like a plane doing aerial tricks. I jumped on the motorbike and tore off, flying down the dark street way too fast. What did it mean that they’d come back? I couldn’t imagine Daylon returning just to bring us fuel. He’d been set on his course and wasn’t the type to look back. Ashleigh must have convinced him somehow. She’d wanted to come back. The thought sent a rush of joy through me.

  Or maybe one of them was hurt and they needed help. They were offering the tanker in exchange for sanctuary. My happy balloon popped as quickly as it had flown. No need to conjecture. I’d know soon enough what they wanted.

  At the gate, one of the guards was talking through a loudspeaker and Daylon’s voice shouted a response from the far side of the wall. I climbed the ladder to the platform and looked down on the spot lit scene. There were only three motorcycles. Daylon rode alone and the others were in pairs. Ashleigh’s red helmet was not among the
m. A short distance away, outside the circle of light, was the metallic cylinder of a tanker. Coming out of the shadows and heading toward the motorcyclists were about a half dozen zombies. A shot cracked through the air and one of them dropped.

  “Let us in,” Daylon demanded. “Hurry!”

  Ed Barnes bellowed through the bullhorn, “My orders are not to open the gates. I’d need permission from the town council.” Ed wasn’t the type to color outside the lines.

  “Then fucking get it. We’ve got fuel to offer and information.”

  One of the undead lunged at Daylon and he turned to fight it off.

  “Let them in,” I ordered Ed, who seemed ready to stand by and watch him get killed.

  “But Janice said—” Ed sounded like a petulant child.