He shook her off, using a booted foot to her mouth to help her along, the blades twisting his arm at an awkward angle as he finally jerked them free. He heard the reports of gunfire and jumped over a falling body as he continued his run for the doors. He went into full sprint mode, dropped to his knees to let the plastic pads slide him under the trailer, right past the two guys from the van who were scrambling for the door.
He slid gracefully through the entrance and popped back up on his feet, like he had been practicing this move for months. Actually he had. Not the whole sliding under the trailer thing, but sliding across the slippery stage, slapping outstretched hands as he whizzed by, and popping up on the other side.
He made a show out of slicing things up with the claws onstage when the band went into a screaming guitar, or thundering drum solo. The singer had to do something so he didn’t look like a tool just standing there when there wasn’t anything to be sung. He’d slice up watermelons, political posters of hated candidates, piñatas filled with little bottles of whiskey to sling out into the crowd, or beach balls that had been bouncing around. Anything that was messy and made a spectacle.
By the time he did the stage slide hi-fives to the fans in the front row, he had quietly changed the razor sharp claws out for a dulled and blunted pair. The bouncing, brawling fans didn’t know that though and part of the whole shtick was you may lose your fingers at a Brutal Retort concert.
As helping hands pulled the others to safety, and the doors were barred shut again, the air was filled with questions.
“Where’s Tiny?” “How bad is it out there?” “Where are the others?” “Did you make it to Reno?” and “Who the hell are you?”
Cobb was there, telling everyone to shut the hell up, let them breathe for a minute, and the crowd quieted down. Nearly everyone in the truck stop was there, trying to get a look at them, all with questions.
“Tiny?” Cobb asked.
Gunny just shook his head, still trying to get his breath. He had been running at a pretty hard jog when the van had come off the exit ramp just a few miles up the road and had stopped for him. He was covered in dried gore, his shirt soaked through with drying blood and brain matter and sweat. The biker, or punk rocker or early Halloween guy or whatever he was, looked even worse. He was covered with foul-smelling nastiness from the gutting and head splattering of the two he had killed.
Long Dawg looked none the worse for wear, never having tangled with the undead up close and personal. He let his Beretta do his talking. His gold chains and chrome grill still intact and spotless.
Cobb pointed at Gunny. “You, hit the showers. You’re stinking up the place,” he growled, then pointed toward the truckers’ hallway. “You, too, Stabby McStabsalot. You’re dripping all over my floors.”
“I’m Jody,” the masked man said in a thick British accent, by way of introduction.
“Sure you are,” Cobb rasped and made shooing motions toward the showers.
The gathered crowd started sending questions at them again as they started to move off.
“There will be plenty of time to tell stories after they’ve been checked out and when they ain’t stinking up the place,” Cobb raised his voice to be heard over the crowd again.
Gunny looked at the newcomer, who had slipped the mask up on his head. “Come on, Stabby,” he said, and the crowd parted quickly to let them by, not wanting to come in contact with anything that was dripping off of them. Sara and Stacy were on their heels. “Where are you going?” Gunny asked when he realized they were being followed.
“Anybody that comes in looking like you two gets checked for bites,” Stacy replied.
“That’s right,” Cobb said. “We’ve come up with a few rules while you were out goofing off. That’s the main one. Nobody comes back inside if they’ve had contact, unless they are checked out. Nobody. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.” He jerked his thumb behind him.
“Soooo…you want me to get naked?” Gunny asked, a half grin on his face.
“I had your junk in my hands for the hernia check last time you came in for a physical,” Stacy retorted. “If I remember right, I won’t be getting too excited.”
There were hoots of laughter from the drivers and he was saved from trying to come up with a witty one-liner by the British guy.
“You come with me then, Luv. Maybe I got something you can get excited about.”
She just rolled her eyes as they started for the shower area again.
Chapter Seventeen
Gunny didn’t dawdle in the shower, just cranked the water up as hot as he could stand it and stepped in, fully clothed, except for his boots. He didn’t have to get naked for Stacy after all. She made him pull his shirt off, but there were no tears in his pants, no seeping blood stains, so she pronounced him good.
She left, clucking to herself at the criss-crossing of old battle wounds scarring his back and chest. He scrubbed mercilessly at the crusted gore, watching the drain water circle red as he stripped off, cleaning the worst of it out of his clothes as he went.
While in the shower, he reflected back on the past several hours. He had waited in the cramped area under the bunk, hoping the milling horde would forget about him and leave. A few of them had managed to climb or fall into the cab, and couldn’t figure out how to get back out. He was afraid they would smell him, or hear his pounding heart, but they never reacted, never suspected there was a 200-pound dinner just for them only a foot away.
They just kept bumping into each other and half falling over the shifter, from the sounds of it. The horde outside of the truck calmed down after their meal was finished and just bumped around, milling about from what he could make out. They stayed for a long time. Hours.
Gunny kept waiting for something to draw them away, hoping there would be a noise somewhere, but knew if there was, that meant this mob would be chasing down some other poor soul. He was afraid to sleep, to even doze for a second. He was prone to snore, and if he did, even once…He kept going over what he knew about his wife and son. She was probably safe with the group in the building she was in, but for how long?
His son was at school. Maybe he was safe locked away in detention. Maybe he had been one of the ones that were infected. What had caused the infection anyway? What could turn the whole world into mindless killing machines in a single day? It followed the path of the sun, that he knew, but what was the trigger? Chemtrails? A passing comet full of deadly bacteria from the other side of the universe? Aliens clearing the planet so they could have it? The Illuminati? He was getting ridiculous and he knew it.
All those things had been in movies he’d seen over the years. That wasn’t it, though. It was something a little closer to home, he thought. Some man-made bug. He wracked his brain, trying to remember, just what was the trigger in all the zombie movies he had seen? This was life imitating art.
Or had the governments of the world had this particularly nasty virus, and art had been imitating life? The movies and books usually blamed it on the CDC having a security breach, or the Russians or the Chinese. They would blame an infected vaccine, or a cabal of the super-rich wanting to eliminate all the useless eaters, or some mad genocidal maniac deciding the planet would be better off without humans.
The whole world fell in a day.
Except possibly some islands.
And the Middle East, if Wire Bender was right. Could the Muslims have done this? They had the desire, the crazy ones did anyway, but that was as farfetched as the aliens doing it. He had known a lot of decent people he met during his time in-country. Muslims that hated the extremists even more than he did.
They would have never let something like this happen. Anyway, how could they? They didn’t have the means. They couldn’t spray that many chemicals in the air, or dump tens of thousands of gallons into every water supply, all over the world, without being caught and stopped.
It wasn’t airborne. No one in the truck stop had caught it and people from north and south of them had. It wasn�
�t in the water. They had the same city water as everyone else. The sun wasn’t causing it, plenty of them had been out in it, but it was a trigger. Sun came up, people went mad. All around them, but not them.
No one there had been infected, except by being bitten from someone who hadn’t been at the Three Flags. Divine Intervention? Gunny believed in God, but didn’t think He would destroy the world except for a slightly rundown truck stop in an out of the way part of Nevada. Maybe the Globalists.
He’d been to the Georgia Guide Stones since they moved to Atlanta. It said right there on the stones that world population should be reduced to five hundred million. But how? That was the question that was more important than who. If they knew how, maybe they could stop it. Or at least make sure they avoided whatever was causing it. He listened intently for a few moments, quietly trying to stretch the aching muscles in his back. They were still milling around outside, just inches away. Still bumbling around in the cab of the truck, occasionally falling onto the bunk, then clumsily getting back up.
Weird how they could be so dumb and slow now, but if they see prey, they are like a finely tuned killing machine. He went back to his exercise in futility, trying to figure out something the best and brightest in Washington hadn’t been able to do with all their NSA databases and spy satellites and war colleges and whatever else his tax dollars paid for.
The sun came up, the world went mad. Not just the States. The whole world. What did we all have in common when the sun came up?
We woke up.
Nope. Nothing there.
We took a shower.
Nope. Not in the water.
Maybe the soap?
No. Some soap was months old, some new. Wasn’t that.
We had breakfast. How could that be it?
Breakfast in Japan was rice and soup, fish and sausage. Breakfast in Europe was cheese and rolls, maybe some salami or something. Italians have spaghetti or pizza for breakfast? What did Russians eat? Bear? Africans? Didn’t they eat bugs and stuff? Lions and tigers? Maybe that was the Asians. Or maybe they ate cats. What about the Brits? Blood Pudding and Spam? He knew he was being ridiculous again. His mind kept wandering off on crazy tangents. He didn’t know what other cultures typically had for breakfast. He knew an American breakfast was anything from biscuits and gravy to sausage and eggs, bacon and eggs, ham and eggs. Green eggs and ham…
Common denominator?
There was none. Maybe eggs, those are eaten all over the world. Somebody spike all the chickens with zombie virus? Meat. That was pretty universal, he thought. More so in America, but most countries usually had some type of meat available. The Indians, dot not feather, didn’t eat beef, but they ate pork and goat and chicken. Zombies ate long pork. He groaned to himself. Geez, you are one sick bastard. The Middle Eastern countries certainly didn’t eat pig.
Probably a death by stoning if they caught you eating a ham sandwich. But none of the Middle Eastern countries were infected, if Wire Bender's map was right. And they didn’t eat pork. The rest of the world did. Haji bacon, Scratch had called it. “You think Paw Paw would serve that here?” Kim had asked.
Gunny’s heart seemed to stop in his chest. His mind reeled at the implications. The Muslim countries had formed a coalition, and had used massive amounts of their oil money to buy up meat packing plants, it had been all over the news. They were starting a new era of peacefulness. They were going to show the world they could adapt and blend into the modern age, no longer holding to century’s old customs. They had begun producing all manner of pork products and shipping them all over the world. Today was the first day they were supposed to be used, although all had been delivered and were selling in stores yesterday evening.
The day before the attacks had started happening sporadically around the world. Today there had been all kinds of breakfast festivities of friendship planned, with free products, and everything on the store shelves had been reduced to costs so low the company was losing billions. The CEO had said they would make up the difference in sales later. They had given every school, every military post, every government cafeteria free samples in hopes they would consider buying their products in the future.
He couldn’t believe it.
Wouldn’t believe it.
It was too monstrous, too evil. No one would do that, he told himself. But now that he had thought it, he couldn’t unthink it. He needed more information. That little bit he had heard when he was listening to the traffic reports in the different cities wasn’t enough. The news had been playing while he was waiting for Helicopter Bob or Janie at the traffic desk, but he hadn’t been paying attention, just waiting to hear which way was the best way to go. But it all came back now, the news he had been ignoring. The president praising an end to hostilities soon. The helicopters flying in fresh Salaam products to the Navy ships at sea. The thankful clips of city officials telling the reporters how many homeless and low-income families they would be able to feed with the generous gifts from the New Muslim Alliance of Nations. Peace and goodwill to men. The world without conflict by Christmas. He had to be wrong. Had to be. But the pieces all fit. Of course there would be no more war. They had won. He felt sick. Were there really Army safe zones for refugees like his wife had said they were going to? From what he’d seen and heard today, he doubted it. He bet the military got hit the hardest, they were the earliest to rise and they always had bacon and sausage for breakfast.
He understood now why the government didn’t have some kind of warnings out, to shoot on sight anyone acting strangely. They had seen Europe fall, knew it would be here when the sun came up over the Eastern Seaboard. They were probably scrambling everybody that drew a government check to try to find a way to stop it; hunched over keyboards, testing air and water samples, measuring gamma radiation, or whatever NASA did.
As they ate their bacon and egg biscuit.
The military had surely been on red alert, all soldiers report for duty, calling trees initiated, all passes denied, all leave canceled, all hands on deck.
“Now have a hearty breakfast while we wait for orders.”
Gunny had been so lost in his thoughts, the sudden screaming of the horde as they sensed some new prey made him start, bumping his head against the bottom of the bunk lid above him. He heard the two, or was it three, inside the cab of the wrecker keening and scrambling to get out, heard them bashing themselves against the windows and clawing at one another. “Now or never,” he thought, while they were distracted and making too much noise to hear him. He didn’t want them to stay trapped in the cab and then go back to their aimless bumping around. He gave it a few seconds, until he heard the last of the horde outside disappearing down the road, and slowly opened the lid just enough to see out.
They were at the driver’s window, trying to go through it, but one of them had climbed up on the dash and seemed to realize he could just go back out the way he came in. There were only two and he had the Gerber pulled out of his leg sheath and in his hand. Hopefully this time he could hit the soft part of the skull, through an eye or ear, if not at the base of the spine. It hadn’t gone as planned. They had heard or sensed him and both came at him, forcing him back into the sleeper and just stabbing frantically at faces and chests and arms, barely keeping their teeth off of him using the pillow on the bed as a shield. It was nasty, gruesome work, with blood and guts and all manner of disgusting body fluids splattering everywhere. By the time he finally killed them with lucky stabs, they both had been cut wide open and must have had 50 gaping wounds in them. It had been simple after that, he had opened the door and started running toward the truck stop, the horde having disappeared in the other direction.
The water running off of him and his clothes on the tile floor of the shower was clean finally. The gray matter and black blood all washed away.
Chapter Eighteen
Gunny came out of the shower wrapped in a towel and carrying his wet clothes and boots. He walked down to his truck that was still in the shop and grabbed
a fresh pair of jeans and t-shirt, draping his wet ones over the mirrors to dry. He wanted to get with Wire Bender, run his theory of how all this happened by him, see if he could dig anything up to either corroborate it, or to let him know he was way off base.
As he neared the shop, he heard raised voices coming from the diner again. He was going to ignore them, wasn’t his problem, but he heard someone say, “Your fault, boy.” He couldn’t place the voice, but he knew they had to be talking to the ghetto kid.
None of the black drivers he knew would let that slide if it were said in anger, and he didn’t hear the sound of someone’s nose breaking. He didn’t even know the kid's name, but he knew he had tried to help him at the wreck, and he’d been out scouting the rural areas. He’d picked him up on the road when he was pretty much done in from all the running he had been doing.
He dressed like some rapper gangster from the ‘hood, but he had a calmness about him. A good head on his shoulders. He was more than he seemed to be.
Gunny didn’t hesitate. He opened the door to the CB shop and yelled in, “The Muslims did it. They spiked all the meat they were selling, they sent it out with the zombie virus. See if that checks out.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, he just lengthened his stride, heading straight for the commotion. When he came through the doors, he stopped and just watched the little drama play out for a moment. Shakey was in the kid's face, red-faced and angry about something. He looked sweaty, even though the air conditioning was working fine. He was pointing his finger, poking it in the kid’s chest, punctuating each word.
Shakey was a big man. But big as in he’d let himself go over the years. Too many buffets, too many bags of chips and sodas driving down the road, and not enough exercise. He had been in the military, but he was always a little vague on specifics. Gunny had seen him around over the years, but only had a passing acquaintance with him.
The Zombie Road Omnibus: The Road Kill Collection Page 15
