Jerry Lee nodded, his gaunt face stubbled and scarred. The scars were reminders from Maestro that his orders were not to be questioned.
His Magas were the true threat, but if Maestro were not allowed to wield his personal, physical violence on someone with regularity, he would go mad.
“Hurry!” said Maestro.
The other drivers exited their vehicles, as was the standing command when the vehicle containing Maestro came to a stop. Behind them all was an old ice cream truck. Maestro had converted it for his purposes several years earlier. The old speaker was still mounted to the roof, and the faded pictures of Bomb Pops, Fudgsicles and Push-Ups remained plastered on the sides of the heavily rusted truck.
The freezers had been turned down, and now only provided refrigeration for the meat he fed the Magas when traveling. On the west side of Hoisington was a well-fed herd of cattle. Raw meat for the Mothers and Hungerers when necessary; cooked for Maestro’s people.
*****
When the vehicles stopped, Megan knew what to expect. They were going to destroy a town, and the Magas had not eaten for days.
Megan pushed her way to the front of the car. Her hands shook from watching Maestro torture Alyssa, but still, she had to try to do what was right and to gain the freedom about which she had learned from the ones called Isis and Max.
Megan reached the front, standing ahead of the others, just behind the door. They did not know of this freedom, nor would they likely believe it existed. She would be the one to serve the Magas today.
Maestro never allowed his men to serve them; they were women, after all. According to Maestro, women evolved on the planet only to serve men, and it would never be otherwise. Anything else was unnatural and unacceptable.
The door opened and two of Maestro’s men stepped aside. “C’mon,” said the one called Ray. “Chow.”
Megan eyed him as she stepped down. There were murmurs behind her, and she again wondered why none of them had reported her to Maestro. One of them – at least one – had reported Alyssa. The others had protected them, as sisters should.
Megan wondered if the reason was not so much a feeling of obligation, but rather one of self-preservation. When Maestro felt one of them had deceived him, he often took several of them out to torture, just to be sure the deceit was not widespread.
Megan jumped down from the car and felt the baggie tucked into her waistband. She had been working the wafers called WAT-5, crumpling the bag and disintegrating the wafers within into a near powder. Now, as she felt the baggie, it felt like the consistency of the sand she found in the dry fields of Hoisington.
They transported the meat for her and her sisters in large, stainless steel bowls within the chest freezers of the ice cream truck. She climbed inside and slid the top of the chest open. The guards waited outside as usual.
Her eyes darting back and forth between them and the food before her, she carefully unzipped the front of her jumpsuit, turning her body away from the rear door so nobody could observe her should they turn around. She slipped her hand in and withdrew the baggie.
The guard did not rush her. Megan knew, from watching the men in the past, and from pure instinct, that they did not rush headlong into each new slaughter. They took their time at every juncture; but only enough time that Maestro did not grow angry.
That was a death sentence. Maestro could replace any of the men at any time with new men from the towns they destroyed. When it was cooperate or be eaten, the choice was obvious for a clear-headed person, Megan knew.
She opened the bag and sprinkled the fine dust over the entire top of the bowl, like fine pepper. She pushed that bowl aside and slid another, equally filled bowl in front of her, repeating the process with the baggie. One more, but with this one, she took a piece of wax paper from a rack on the wall and placed it in the freezer beside the bowl.
Megan scooped her hand into the bowl of meat and moved a mound to the wax paper. She did it twice more until her portion was separate from the rest.
She then sprinkled the remaining WAT-5 into the third bowl.
“C’mon, unless you want Maestro to cut off your fuckin’ head!” shouted Ray, clearly becoming nervous at the delay.
Megan kneaded two hands in two separate bowls, mixing the raw beef and fine dust together. She then plunged both hands deep into the bowls of raw meat, mixing it around thoroughly until no trace of the WAT-5 was visible.
When she finished, she placed her portion on the top of the last bowl. She would take it out before passing the bowl along.
She carried the first bowl out and hurried to the car. Megan passed it up to the Magas who waited, eager anticipation of their first meal in two days, peaked.
She almost ran back to the ice cream truck to get the second bowl. She got it to the trailer where her sisters waited, then hurried back to the ice cream truck to retrieve the last bowl. When she got it, and turned to run again, the guard, whom she knew as Henry, grabbed her arm.
“What the fuck is this?” he asked. “You take forever in the refrigerator truck and then you run?”
“Ray said to hurry up! He’s afraid Maestro will be angry!”
He did not answer her, but did release her arm, giving her a little shove toward the trailer. Megan walked more slowly, but when she reached the truck, she nearly leapt up inside. The door slammed immediately.
She put the last bowl on the floor and took her separated meat. It was crowded in the car, but she found an empty corner, tucked her back into it, and watched the others consume the tainted meat.
Nothing was happening. She watched them, her heart pounding beneath her orange DOC jumpsuit.
One of the large, stainless bowls hit the floor as the car began to move again. Megan steadied herself and watched as several of the women became wobbly on their feet, staggering into one another and falling to the floor.
One by one they fell, piling one atop the other.
“What is happening,” began Maga 35. She did not finish the sentence. She crumpled atop her sisters.
Megan focused on her meat. She ate every last piece, keeping her eyes down. When she finished, she looked back up.
They all slept. She was alone.
She relinquished her last bit of control over the Mothers; it was a conscious effort to do so.
When she heard the sound, seeming to come from all around her, she knew exactly what it was.
The Mothers were entering their destruction mode.
They were operating independently.
*****
The caravan had resumed its progress toward Kingman, Kansas.
“What is that sound?” asked Maestro, but he need not ask the question. He had ordered the Maga to command it of the Mothers many times. He used it when his prey hid inside buildings. He used it to gain access anywhere he wanted to go.
Because there was no place Maestro could not go if he wanted to. He would do whatever he wanted to do, just as he had since the day he escaped his mother’s cage.
“Stop the goddamned truck!” he said. Kingman was around two miles away, and he did not need any disruptions to his plan now.
Jerry Lee put the engine in neutral and left the diesel motor running. Maestro jumped out and stopped.
Before his eyes, the walls of the trailers, just thin aluminum over lightweight uprights, pushed outward. The impression of hands from end to end were easily discernible, and as he watched, the intense, almost sonic vibration snapped every weld and spun every nut and bolt free that once held all of their equipment together.
On his initial run north, he had left the cage cars exposed; now, as he moved toward a town of unsuspecting victims, he thought better of it and ordered his men to put thick tarp flaps down over the cages.
By the time Maestro unveiled what waited within to greet them, it was too late for the idiot townsfolk to mount an offense or defense. If they did, it would be their last stand.
As Maestro and Jerry Lee stood by the 40’ trailer staring at the line of stop
ped vehicles behind them, the floor suddenly dropped out of all the cage cars simultaneously, each one containing 150 or more of the creatures. With each one that disintegrated, a cloud of thick, red vapor blew forth like a horizontal mushroom cloud, spreading low over the asphalt before drifting slowly upward.
“Maestro, this shit is getting out of hand!” shouted Jerry Lee.
As if on cue, the 40’ long trailer beside them began pulsating, too. Maestro’s men had stuffed nearly seven hundred of his army into that trailer, his Magas instructing them to lie on their backs, to be stacked up like cordwood.
As Maestro looked, he saw that the only vehicle that was not vibrating into rubble around them was the smaller truck that held his Magas; his controlling force.
“Where are the Magas!” Maestro shouted. “Why aren’t my Magas stopping this!”
Now the rotters crawled from beneath the collapsing trailers. The leaf springs and U-bolts popped apart and became projectiles, flipping in the air and into the crowd of zombies rising en masse from the ground, finding their footing.
Jerry Lee said, “I don’t know, Maestro, but we need to get the hell out of here, either way! If your Magas are controlling this, they’re rebelling, sir. If they’re not, they’ve lost control of these things.”
“Go to their truck and open it.”
“I … Maestro … we need to go!”
“Do what I said!” shouted Maestro.
Jerry Lee didn’t move.
Maestro ran back to the truck and pulled a machete from beneath the passenger seat, charging back toward Jerry Lee. He held it over his head, his eyes blazing at the man. “Open the goddamned truck! Now! Now!”
The driver eyed the Mothers and Hungerers moving toward them before looking again at the machete held high in Maestro’s hand.
Jerry Lee bolted toward the tall weeds on the side of the road. Maestro knew if he made it there, he could disappear.
Jerry Lee reached the grass at full stride and his body suddenly stopped its forward momentum and bounced backward. The middle-aged man screamed as he struggled to keep his feet beneath him, staggering back five or six steps before losing his balance and falling onto his back, where he slid to a stop on the gravelly blacktop.
Maestro was confused at first, but then he saw the dozens of puncture marks on the man’s front side.
Barbed wire. The entire I-281 from Hoisington to Kingman was bordered with it. The tall grass had obscured it.
Maestro smiled as he stared down at his former driver, blood spreading over his clothing and running down his cheeks. Puncture marks adorned his face, body, arms and legs, and now Maestro really could smell the metallic scent of blood, so familiar to him, and so arousing.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, looking up to see several Hungerers moving toward him, their snarls exciting and frightening him at the same time. He saw that his other men had tried to seek cover in the cabs, but turned to run instead, finding the deterioration had turned them into crumbling death traps. Oil, diesel and water poured from the engines as they, too, vibrated into nothingness.
They had nowhere to hide. Some of the horde went in their direction.
A male drew near, his mouth agape, his black tongue flitting from his mouth. Maestro thought briefly of the garlic, letting the thing get a bit closer. When it stumbled within two feet of him, he drew his arm back and threw it forward sideways, slicing the Hungerer’s head from his body.
More were behind him. Maestro saw two Mothers advancing from twenty-five feet away.
He ran, cutting into the grass on the west side of the road, between the fence and the now crumbling shell of the trailer. He would be careful to stay far enough away that he did not make the same mistake Jerry Lee had.
He ran alongside the now flimsy trailer, leaping over the semi-rig parts that had fallen away from the once powerfully strong Peterbilt cab, skirting by the truck in which the Magas traveled.
Behind him, he heard a loud crash and turned to see the 40’ trailer had now fallen to pieces, its undead passengers crawling out and filling the street.
He did not have the key to the Magas truck and did not know where Henry was to retrieve it.
Frantic, he rounded the corner of the now collapsing trailer, and saw his way out; the ice cream truck parked twenty feet behind the Maga vehicle.
Maestro ran. The engine of the small truck was already running when he yanked the door open. He jumped in and slid into the driver’s seat, pulling the door closed behind him.
“Maestro,” said a meek voice from the back.
Maestro jerked his head around to see one of his men cowering there, looking terrified. “Henry,” he said.
“You better hurry, Maestro! They’re right there!” He pointed frantically to the advancing horde visible through the windshield.
“Have you been hiding in here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Henry. “I got around the backside of the trailer. They never even saw me.”
Maestro leapt out of the chair, his fingers curling around the handle of the machete between the front seats, and with a powerful blow, brought it down atop Henry’s head. It cracked the skull and sliced cleanly down to his shoulder blades.
He had always insisted his men keep his cutting tools razor sharp. If done correctly, they would slice tissue.
Henry had never seen it coming. His body convulsed three quick twitches before falling still.
Maestro slid the machete out and tossed it back between his seats. He cursed to himself as he scooted past the corpse, grabbed Henry’s boots and dragged the coward to the rear of the truck. He glanced out the filthy back window to make sure it was safe before turning the handle, kicking the door open and heaving his former guard’s body into the street.
His warm flesh and innards would keep some of them busy for a time.
As Maestro pulled the door closed, he saw a horde come into view, their eyes on the dead man’s meaty corpse.
Maestro ran to the driver’s seat, threw it into drive, and floored the accelerator, spinning the panel truck around. As he turned, his eyes fell on the Magas trailer, still intact. Maybe they were all dead somehow. There was no time to find out, as his former army was now pouring into the street, and he knew that without control, they would attack and tear him to pieces.
He threw the wheel sharply to the left and right to maneuver between two staggering rotters, solely to avoid damage to his only means of transportation. When he was past them, he floored it.
Maestro, for the first time in many years, did not have a plan. He did not like that. He needed to regain control of his army.
*****
Inside the car, Megan waited. She waited until the sounds were only those of the Mothers and Hungerers. She heard the sound of an engine recede in the distance.
She closed her eyes and reconnected with the Mothers. No. Just one Mother. It was all she needed.
Come to me, she pushed.
Megan waited. She pushed the command again.
A sound came to her from just outside the door.
Lift the padlock and drop it, she pushed.
A moment later a thunk! sounded. Megan moved to where she heard it.
Repeat it, she pushed.
Again, the sound came, and she re-adjusted. She held her finger on the inside wall at the exact point.
Megan closed her eyes and concentrated. Her first command was, Go now. Leave this car.
She did not know for certain the Mother would follow that command, but she then turned her thoughts to the padlock.
Squeezing her eyes closed, she again focused her mind. Thirty seconds. She smelled rubber burning.
Steel melting. Hardened steel, pungent as it softened and became molten metal.
Another sound came at her feet. The lock had melted away. All she had to do was open the trailer.
Instead, she remained there, standing amidst her sleeping sisters, silently waiting.
For what, she was not certain.
*
****
The cars were where they had left them. Beauty rode in the Hummer with Max, Isis, Trina and Taylor. Trina insisted on driving.
Gem smiled, thinking back to when Trina was very young, sitting in Flex’s lap, steering his truck. He had taught her how to drive and she was damned good.
Flex rode beside her in the passenger seat of the Crown Victoria while Gem pulled it between the idling GTO and Hummer.
“Should we stop and get the sole survivor of Great Bend before we leave town?” asked Nelson, his head hanging out the window of the GTO.
Dave shook his head, answering before Flex could. “No way. We don’t know what we’re up against when we catch Maestro, and Irene doesn’t need to be there.”
“Good point,” said Flex. “She was all set with food and water for a while, right? We’ll send a party to pick her up and search for other survivors once we get past this. Let’s fly.”
Gem drove, with Punch following close behind him in the grape GTO, and the Hummer bringing up the rear. Gem kept the speed up to sixty miles per hour, but occasionally had to slow as the zigzag between cars demanded it.
Everyone kept up. They drove an hour, and had gone fifty-three miles.
“If he’s hauling trailers he can’t be going very fast,” said Charlie.
“I feel like a dog chasing a car,” said Hemp. “What do we intend to do when we catch him?”
“We gotta play that by ear, buddy,” said Flex. “I’m fuckin’ wiped, though. That hour at the shack didn’t do a damned thing for me.”
“Good thing I’m driving,” said Gem. “I’d need five Quaaludes to sleep.”
“Nelson might be able to hook you up,” said Charlie. Flex could hear the smile in her voice.
The banter stopped. Gem drove the car more slowly, but it was necessary. There had apparently been a slight traffic situation exiting Kingman back when the gas started bubbling out of the earth, and while they had been pulled off the road by various travelers’ winches, it was still a zigzag proposition.
Dead Hunger VII_The Reign of Isis Page 32
