by Dirk Patton
Dashing forward Rachel skidded to a halt at the edge, raised her rifle and shot two men that were running towards her from the far side of the circle. Nora had run with her and had dropped to one knee shooting into a small group of men that were pushing their way towards them through the stampeding crowd. Rachel heard Dog growl and a moment later he leapt into the pit before she could stop him. Spinning and looking down she saw Dog impact the chest of an infected male and knock him to the ground, immediately tearing into his throat. She noted John on the ground fighting with another infected then had to turn her attention back to the battle above ground.
Nora had picked off all the men that she had engaged but two more small groups armed with pistols and hunting rifles had formed up and were getting ready to start attacking. Rachel started shooting at one group while Nora kept the other group’s heads down. The first explosion from the parking lot was massive, turning night to day. The attackers paused to gape at the furiously burning vehicles and the woman and girl took advantage of the moment and dropped most of them. Three shots later and the disorganized group Rachel had been fighting was done and she was able to turn her attention to the pit.
Three dead infected lay in the dirt. A female with a wooden stake sticking out of her mouth, a male with an obviously broken neck and another whose throat had been torn out by Dog. John and Dog sat in the center, John’s arms wrapped around Dog’s thick neck. Taking stock of the situation Rachel looked around and spotted an aluminum ladder laying in the dirt a few yards away. Rushing over she grabbed it and drug it back to the pit, letting it fall over the edge as she had to return fire on a man who had popped out from behind a tent. Another explosion from the parking lot ripped the air, then two more so close together they almost sounded like one. The man fell and Rachel glanced around, glad to see the grenade kids running towards the bus, Betty bringing up the rear. That’s what she had forgotten. There was no one to help her with John.
She started to shout at the group to come back but checked herself when John poked his head over the lip of the pit. Rushing over she helped him the rest of the way up the ladder then stepped back as Dog came bounding up the steps, blood from the infected he had killed flying off his muzzle as he moved. Rachel turned her head to call Nora so they could head for the bus, but the words died in her mouth when the young girl flew backwards and landed in the dirt at her feet. A large, red hole was in the middle of Nora’s forehead and blood poured out of the back of her shattered skull and started soaking into the dirt. Rachel stared for a moment before John tackled her to the ground, a bullet cracking the air just over her head.
“There, to the left of that pile of wood.” John yelled at her and pointed out the sniper. Raising the rifle Rachel fired until the magazine emptied, not caring that she had sent ten rounds into the body after she’d already killed the man. When she realized the rifle was empty she dropped it in the dirt and leaned over Nora, tears streaming down her face.
“Rachel! We have to move. Now!” John grabbed up the rifle, nearly dropping it from the pain in his hands, and shoved it into her arms. “Reload and let’s go.” Rachel mechanically dropped the empty magazine and slapped a new one home, slowly rising to her feet.
John looked at the tears streaming down her face and then down at the dead girl. Fighting back the pain he scooped her body up in his arms and stuck his face in Rachel’s.
“What’s the plan?” He shouted over the roar of another explosion from the parking area. Rachel shook her head and refocused on the moment.
“Bus in the parking area.” She said, raising the rifle and firing at a man running in their direction. The bullet caught him in the shoulder and he spun to the ground and quickly started crawling away. “Follow me.”
They set off, Rachel in the lead with Dog at her heels. John brought up the rear, moving more slowly with the burden of the body cradled in his arms. They had to cover 100 yards to the bus, but had only gone 20 when The Reverend stepped into their path. He was a fearsome sight. He had obviously taken some shrapnel wounds from one of the grenades and his shirt was in tatters. His torso was covered in blood and his face a mask of pure rage. He held a wicked three foot blade in his right hand and stood with his legs wide apart, silhouetted by the vehicle fires. In his other hand he held John’s Kukri. Raising both above his head he screamed and charged.
Before John could react, Rachel brought the rifle up to her hip and fired in burst mode, repeatedly pulling the trigger. The impacts of the bullets on The Reverend were obvious, but it took three bursts of three rounds each before he slowed. Raising the rifle to aim Rachel put a final three rounds into his face that blew out the back of his skull. Walking over to the body she bent and retrieved the Kukri then stood up and spit on him.
“Fuck you!” she said in a low, venomous voice, then kicked the body for good measure and started running towards the bus.
Chapter 27
We quickly covered the final distance to the bus and rushed through the open doors. Betty was waiting behind the wheel and leaned into the lever to close the doors as soon as we were aboard. I stumbled with my burden in the center aisle of the bus when Betty hit the gas and would have fallen to the floor except for the hands of the kids that reached out and grabbed me and held me upright until I got my balance back. Moving to the back of the bus I gently laid the girl across one of the back seats and collapsed onto the other. Rachel dug around and found a small towel that she draped over my privates, then dug some more under a seat and found a rough woolen blanket that she used to cover the girl’s body after removing my rifle and laying it on the floor under the seat. That task completed she looked over the bus and after appearing to count heads twice reached out and placed her hand on a boy’s shoulder.
“Jared. Where’s the boy with the lighter. I’m sorry, I don’t know his name.”
“Trey,” one of the girl’s volunteered.
“He was lighting the gas tanks like he was supposed to and one of them went out. He went back to re-light it and just when he got to the side of the truck it exploded.” The boy answered her question. Rachel cursed and lowered herself into the seat next to the boy. I glanced around the bus and did a quick head count. There were now only six surviving kids. I wanted to know the details, especially about the girl who had been killed rescuing me from the pit, but that could wait. Climbing to my feet I held the towel over myself and side stepped, bare assed, up to the front to check on Betty.
“How we doing, Betty?” I asked, stepping down onto the first exit step so I could talk to her without bending over. There was also a short bulkhead there that shielded me from the rest of the bus. I’m hardly what you would call a modest person, but I didn’t particularly enjoy running around in front of a bunch of teenagers with just a small towel covering my crotch.
“If I was only 20 years younger we’d both be doing a lot better.” Betty glanced sideways at me and grinned with the familiar twinkle in her eye. “We’ve got half a tank of gas and those crazy people don’t have any vehicles left to chase us. We’re going to follow this road for a bit then turn north to Murfreesboro. Should take us about an hour if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.”
I couldn’t help but grin when she used one of my mother’s favorite sayings. Leaning down I kissed her on the cheek and headed to the back of the bus. Resuming my seat I was surprised to see a large boy walk up and sit my pack down on the floor next to me. I thanked him and dug through, finding a spare pair of underwear. After the third time I dropped them on the floor Rachel helped me get them over my feet and up in place. For not the first time in my life I was amazed at how much better it feels to have some clothing on. Modesty restored I plopped back onto the seat as Rachel reached out and took each of my arms in her hands, holding me by the wrists as she examined my damaged hands.
“We’ve got to get these cleaned and do something to stop the bleeding.” She said and bent down to dig the medical kit out of my pack. The first thing she held up was a morphine aut
o-injector, but I shook my head. As bad as the pain was I couldn’t afford to be loopy on morphine if we ran into another fight. Shaking her head in doubt she put the spring loaded syringe back in the med-kit and spread the rest of the items out on the seat next to her. Waving one of the girls over Rachel handed her a small flashlight that she aimed at my hands.
This was the first good look I’d gotten at my hands and I was shocked at how bad they looked. The nails they had driven through me had been large, so large in fact that when they were removed the wounds failed to completely close back together and I could look all the way through each hand. Worried that my earlier assessment of the degree of damage may have been optimistic I experimentally made a fist with each hand. I can honestly say the pain was the worst I’ve ever experienced in my life. Worse than a dislocated shoulder. Worse than a broken jaw and nose. Worse than getting shot. I leaned my head back on the vinyl covered bench seat as Rachel started to work.
If I thought my hands had been hurting it was nothing like the experience of having alcohol poured into the wounds to sterilize them. How I managed to not jerk my hands away I can’t really say, but somehow I was able to hold them out as the alcohol burned its way through my raw flesh and sweat poured off my body. What’s the expression? Sweating like a whore in church? If that’s the case I had been a very bad girl and the preacher was on a roll. As I watched, Rachel repositioned the light and peered at my palms then started using tweezers to remove debris. Finally satisfied she doused me with alcohol again before slathering antibiotic ointment into the wounds. Thinking the worst was over I was ready to relax until she unwrapped a suture kit. Fuck me.
Half an hour later Rachel trimmed the final stitch, applied a thin coat of antibiotic ointment then started wrapping my hands with gauze. I made her adjust and redo the bandages a couple of time so that I would have at least minimal use of my hands. When everything was as good as it was going to get she packed everything except a fat syringe and a bottle of yellow liquid back into the med-kit. Sticking the not very small needle through the rubber top on the vial she pulled out the plunger and the syringe filled with some of the liquid. All of this was done right in front of my face and if I didn’t know better I’d swear Rachel was enjoying messing with my head. Needle ready she motioned me to stand, pulled down the back of my underwear and after swabbing a spot clean with an alcohol pad she jammed the needle into me.
“OK. That last was a high dose of antibiotic.” She said. “Do you know when your last tetanus shot was?” Actually I did. I had gotten one as part of routine vaccinations for international travel just a year ago.
“Good. I don’t think there’s any significant damage but there’s no way you don’t have some degree of nerve damage. The good news is you can open and close your hands. There may be some numbness and weakness, but we’ll have to wait and see. The biggest danger right now is infection. Those bandages need to be changed twice a day so we’ll keep a close eye for a while.”
“Thank you, mother.” I said, receiving a nasty look in response as she busied herself with cleaning up and repacking the med-kit in my pack. While she was in the pack she dug out pants, a shirt, socks and a pair of athletic shoes for me and helped me dress. I had no boots and had lost my vest. Retrieving my rifle from the floor I checked it then slung it over my head and cut a big chunk of the heavy vinyl upholstery from one of the bus seats. Rachel started working on it to make a sheath for my Kukri while I went back up front to check on our progress with Betty.
“How we doing, sweetheart?” I asked as I reached the front of the bus.
“Oh listen to how you talk! We’re almost to the highway that goes north to Murfreesboro. We were a little farther away than I thought, and I’m having to keep this old pile of junk under 40 or it feels like the whole front end is going to shake itself to pieces.” Betty never took her eyes off the road, leaning slightly forward to peer into the gloom that was as good as the weak headlights could do. As poor as they were I was kind of glad the speedometer only read 35. A cheap, dollar store compass was stuck to the dash and it showed we were driving directly south, but less than a mile later the road curved and swung around to the east. At the very edge of the lights I could just make out the stop sign that must be at the highway we were looking for.
Turning my head to check on Rachel and the kids I didn’t see the female infected that ran right at the front of the bus, bouncing off the right front fender. The sound of the impact jerked my attention back to the road and brought gasps from the kids. Rachel rushed forward and stood next to me, peering through the windshield. Ahead the road we were on ended at a T intersection, connecting with a state highway. A small green sign that read ‘Murfreesboro’ pointed to our left, but no distance was indicated. Betty hit the brakes and Rachel and I had to brace to keep from being thrown into the dash and from the back of the bus I heard a yelp of protest as Dog slid off the seat he was sleeping on. The old bus shimmied to a stop 30 yards shy of the stop sign and we all stared through the cracked windshield. The lights didn’t do a good job of lighting up the highway we wanted to turn onto, but they were good enough for us to see the hundreds of infected marching along it in the direction we wanted to go. We were immediately noticed and dozens of males and females peeled off from the group and headed in our direction.
Chapter 28
The narrower road we were sitting on was quickly filling up with infected. A few females raced ahead of the slower males and in seconds were at the grill and spreading out along the sides of the bus pounding on the thin sheet metal walls. Sounds of panic came from the kids and Dog ran forward and stuck his head in between mine and Rachel’s legs.
“Back up!” Rachel said, anxiety causing her voice to raise an octave. For a moment I agreed with her, but…
“Wait,” I said to Betty who had already shifted into reverse. We sat there with her foot on the brake and the bus’s back up alarm beeping loudly. “If we go back, where does this road go?”
“It winds around a bunch of small valleys then turns south and down to Alabama eventually.” Betty said, hand still on the shifter.
“Forward! Push through them and turn for Murfreesboro!”
Betty and Rachel turned and looked at me like I was crazy. It wasn’t doing us any good to just sit there so I repeated myself a little louder, waving at the gear shifter with my bandaged hand. “Trust me. Just get us moving and I’ll explain.”
Betty didn’t waste any more time. Moving the shifter back to drive, she slowly accelerated. The males in our path were either knocked down then run over, the bus’s worn suspension squeaking as the whole vehicle swayed from each body we drove over, or were pushed aside where they lost their balance and fell to the ground. Unfortunately they were back on their feet in no time and in pursuit. The females stayed with us, running alongside and pounding on the bus as Betty kept our speed under 10 miles per hour. Maintaining a steady speed Betty turned onto the larger highway and the bumping and swaying got worse due to the sheer number of infected in our path.
“The herd coming up from the Gulf,” Rachel said a moment later, turning to look at me.
“That’s what I’m thinking. I think it’s a safe bet that the defenses the military was setting up at the southern Tennessee border were compromised when the second outbreak hit. These infected are only a little ahead of schedule based on what we heard Max say the other day. I’m guessing this is the leading edge of the herd. The healthiest and fastest males and a lot of females. If we’d gone back and followed that road south we’d run into the main body of the herd.”
Indeed, there were quite a few males on the road, but the majority of the infected we were encountering were females. Both sides of the bus were now lined with females as they pounded in frustration at not being able to get to us. Two of them were clinging to the large mirror mounted on the right front fender but for the moment I wasn’t worried about them as it was taking all their effort and concentration just to hang on. Betty was still poking along not movin
g any faster and I wanted to tell her to accelerate, my mind screaming at me that we needed speed, but there were just too many infected on the road for us to risk going faster. The impact of bodies was a near constant sound and for as far as the weak headlights could shine there were infected in front of us. By now most of them had turned, having heard the noise of our engine, and were either standing and waiting for us or coming directly at us. If the bus broke down we were royally screwed.
We continued bulling our way through the herd for the next ten minutes. The press of bodies against the old bus alternately thinning out before thickening again. To its credit the bus kept moving, but I was hearing a grinding noise from somewhere in the drivetrain that was starting to concern me. I kept glancing between the dash and the road in front of us and was not happy to see the engine temperature gauge hovering just below red. A quick glance up and I saw the problem. Infected were plastered to the grill, blocking the normal air flow across the radiator that would cool the engine. Our speed was so slow that both males and females had managed to grab on to the front of the bus and were clinging to us. Overheating would also bring us to a dead stop. Glancing back and up at the ceiling of the bus I spotted the vents in the roof I expected to be there. These old busses didn’t have air conditioning so the manufacturers had cut large vents into the roofs and covered them with translucent plastic domes that could be raised a few inches to allow hot air to vent out.
