by Will Lemen
"I think we'd need more than a mini-gun if we ran into a pack that size," I said, pushing the accelerator pedal down slightly.
"They're pretty far away, I don't think we have anything to worry about," Jacob said confidently.
"Those dogs would close the gap between us and them in a matter of minutes," Gin added, looking intently at the dogs.
"Well, we're not going to stop to find out," I said. "They're not paying any attention to us, they probably haven't noticed us, we'll just keep going and put some serious distance between them and us."
"That works for me," Gin insisted.
"Me too!" Mary added.
Houston was the biggest city we would have to go through on our way to Galveston, and it wouldn't be long before we would be at its city limits.
"Clyde said not to go through Dallas, I wonder if Houston is going to be any better?" Gin asked.
I could tell by the look on her face that she thought she already knew the answer to that question. I didn't want to tell her that I was thinking the same thing, but I was.
"I hope it's better than Dallas, at least better than the way Clyde made it sound," I answered, trying to make Clyde's warning sound overblown. "He probably exaggerated a bit, you know how people are."
"I know how people used to be," Gin answered softly, and then she added. "I sure hope he was exaggerating."
"Besides," I said. "The Houston area is not nearly as big as the Dallas-Fort Worth area is, we'll have that going for us anyway."
Gin looked down at the map she had unfolded on her lap and said. "It's still a big city, and according to this, we're going to find out pretty soon one way or another."
Gin was absolutely correct, within two hours we were finding out, and what we found out, we didn't like.
We were about five miles inside Houston's city limits, when there seemed to be an inexplicable shortage of abandoned vehicles on the road. Gin was the first to observe the mysterious lack of obstacles in our path, and commented.
"This is nice for a change; we don't have to weave around a bunch of cars. I was getting sea sick with all of that swaying back and forth."
The whole time we had been on the road after we dumped the Morphadite, the only stretch of road that was not littered with wrecked or abandoned vehicles, was in the middle of nowhere as we drove toward Dallas. Now we were entering a large metropolitan area, and there were no cars on the road?
"Something not right, I've got a bad feeling about this, there are no cars, there's no trucks, and notice too, there are no eaters. I don't see any dogs either, something's up," I argued. "Everyone get your guns ready, something's going on."
The sound of metal slamming against metal filled the air inside our cab, as slides were racked and safeties were disengaged in preparation and anticipation of an imminent battle.
My sixth sense of impending doom was verified, when we rounded a turn and passed under an overpass.
"There's the answer," I shouted, as we saw a huge blockade of cars, stacked one upon another, four cars high, and who knows how many cars deep.
The silhouettes of men with rifles lined the top of the stacks of cars, and clicking sounds could be heard as chips of paint and small pieces of metal ricocheted off our windshield, as bullets slammed into the hood of our truck.
Even though I had already slowed down while I tried to figure why there was such a lack of cars on the road. We were still going fast enough to cause the tires to send up a large plume of smoke and cause the truck to slide sideways when I slammed on the brakes.
We came to a stop, setting sideways in the middle of the road, surrounded in a cloud of white smoke from the friction-burnt tires. Sprays of steam shot from the front of the trucks grill caused by the bullet holes in the radiator, adding to the surrounding smoke screen.
"They're shooting at us," Gin screamed, already ducking down behind the dash.
With the damage the truck had already incurred, I knew that it wouldn't be in running condition for long. The attack had not stopped when I threw the truck into the third of eighteen gears available, and tromped down onto the gas pedal. I turned the wheel hard to the left, and amidst the hail of bullets still raining down on us from the towering lofts of our ambusher's fortress, we took off back in the direction that we had came.
Streams of sunlight were now darting into the cab from the holes made by the bullets that penetrated the rear wall of our truck. We rounded the curve in the road that had previously hidden the ambuscade from us, and the ping of projectiles promptly ceased.
"Is anyone hurt," Gin quickly asked, setting up in her seat again.
"Mary's hurt, she caught one in her arm," Billy answered, poking his head out of the sleeper.
"How bad is it," I asked, now fighting to steer our crippled truck.
Mary stuck her head out of the sleeper.
"Not bad, I'll live," she said. "They just grazed me, it's just a flesh wound, I'll be all right."
"Is everyone else okay?" Gin inquired, concerned about her sons.
"We're fine, but I heard a couple of bullets go by my head, that was a close one," Jacob answered, sticking his head out too.
"The trucks shot up pretty bad, it's not going to make it very far. It's got at least three flat tires, one of them is on the front, I can barely steer this thing. Our radiator is all shot up too, and we're losing water fast," I told them. "We're going to drive this thing as far away from those guys as it will take us. Then we'll be on foot again."
As far away as it will take us, was about three miles from those dry-gulcher's. By then, the tires that were flat, were now shredded and we were riding on their rims like we had done in the Hummer. Two other tires were going flat and almost there. The radiator was completely out of water, and the needle on the heat gage was pegged at its maximum. Our overheated engine was beginning to sputter as its pistons labored to fight against the friction and we came to a stop.
"That's it people, time to bail, the trucks done," I announced, turning the engine off. "Grab your stuff, just what you're willing to carry, leave everything else, and watch for eaters."
We got out of the truck, and while grabbing our essentials, we quickly surveyed the damage to the truck.
"Lots of bullet holes," Billy said.
"Yeah, lots of bullet holes in our water supply too," Mary added, adjusting the makeshift bandage Jacob had made from one of his mother's left over uniforms.
"We'll take what's left, we couldn't carry it all anyway," Gin said, stuffing several bottles into her pack. "Everyone grab some, as usual, we don't know when we'll find more."
I was worried that the people that had ambushed us might decide to follow us, considering that we hadn't fired as much as one single shot back at them, they might feel emboldened because of it. Moreover, with the amount of bullet holes in our truck, I knew that they were serious.
"We need to get away from here now, get your things," I ordered. "We need to get off the road."
Totting what supplies we could carry, we scurried off the highway, backtracking slightly.
"Stop here and get behind the safety guard rail, and put everything down except your guns," I said. "And do it quick."
I could hear the rumbling of a vehicle coming from the direction of the ambush.
"I think they're coming," Billy said, also hearing the rumbling.
"Get ready, let's see how they like being ambushed, and remember, if you're on the left side shoot the one on the left side and work your way to the middle, the opposite goes if you're on the right side," I told them.
As we waited, hidden behind the tall grass and weeds that grew underneath the safety barrier, the rumbling grew louder, and then we could see them approaching. An open bed truck with several men in the back, all armed with assault rifles of different varieties.
"As soon as they stop, open fire," I whispered.
The truck heavily laden with bushwhackers began to slow down as it approached our bullet riddled and smoking semi-tractor.
&
nbsp; "Find them!" A tall man wearing an army uniform bellowed.
The flat bed stopped, and as we had prearranged, before the first man could jump from the truck bed, we open fire on them.
Rapidly firing our semi-automatic rifles into the crowd that stood on the wooden platform of the truck, the ambushers were taken completely by surprise and the men began to drop. Most were killed instantly, and many were wounded, however, some were able to jump down and find cover on the far side of their truck.
Our position offered us concealment, but not much cover, so I decided to move farther to my right in an effort to flank the remaining enemy before they could move to a more advantageous position.
"Keep your heads down," I yelled, motioning for them to move down to a lower area as I crawled into a flanking position.
I hadn't quite reached the optimum point where I could end this firefight, when I saw the first zombie stand up in the back of the truck, and then another, and another.
The ambusher's we had initially killed, had turned, and were now attacking the wounded and the men that had taken refuge from our bullets behind their truck.
There were two men inside the truck, the driver, and a passenger. Neither of them had exited the truck or fired a weapon at us. However, I could see that both men were starting to panic.
One of their previous living comrades had grabbed the driver while still on the deck of the truck, and was attempting to climb through the driver's window from there.
We had stopped shooting by now, and the remainder of the bushwhacker's that were still able to fire a weapon were busy fending off the ever growing population of zombies that were trying to harvest them.
With the driver incapacitated fighting to defend himself, the truck did not move. The man that was riding shotgun could see the situation deteriorating rapidly; his companions were dying all around him, and then coming back and killing more of his friends. In his panicked state, while trying to release the driver of the truck from his former buddies grasp, he fired his rifle at the groping zombie. At that moment, the zombie jerked on the drivers arm and pulled his head directly into the path of the bullet. The man's head literally exploded, covering the inside of the truck, along with the passenger, and the undead intruder, with blood, clumps of hair, pieces of skull, and chunks of brain, (you know, the usual mess). This event sent the man into an even greater panicked state, and sent his zombie friend into even more of a frantic feeding frenzy, as it tasted some of the driver's blood that had landed in its mouth.
"There are more eaters coming up behind us!" Mary yelled, as she pointed in the direction of a group of curious zombies stumbling their way toward what they hoped would be their next meal.
Again, the sound of gunplay had alerted a horde of roving dead and hungry cannibals to our activity, and they were making their way to our position.
"We're going to have to take care of all of them, we don't want any of them following us," I yelled back.
The gunfire from the truck had ceased, all that had arrived alive, were now dead and undead, the only sound coming from the direction of the truck was the sound of the zombies snarling, slurping, and growling, as they chewed on their fallen brethren.
I motioned to the others to converge on the truck by pointing to my AK, and then to the truck. There were about seven eaters devouring the bloody remains of our attackers, with one or two more waiting in the wings to be reanimated and join the group of hungry undead.
"Jacob, Mary, come with me, Billy you stay with your mother," I ordered, as I climbed over the guardrail. "Head shots for all, let's get this done quick, the other bushwhacker's must have heard all the shooting. Hell, everyone else did."
With our guns at the ready, the three of us walked up to the zombie feast and delivered to each and every head, moving or not, a single bullet to the brain.
"Mary, go to our truck and grab the bolt cutters, and while you're at it, get one of the uniforms that didn't fit Gin. With that shirt you're wearing, you stuck out like a sore thumb in that green grass, we're lucky they didn't see us," I said, calmly, but firmly.
Jacob and I kept watch while Mary went back to our truck and retrieved the items that I had requested, she soon returned, and we all rejoined Billy and Gin.
"It's about time," Billy said snidely, half joking. "Those eaters down there are almost here, and there's some more on the other side of the road coming this way."
"Let's get our stuff, it's time to go back into silent mode," I said, picking up an ammo box, and pulling out my newly acquired, and as of yet, unused tomahawk.
We engaged the approaching small horde of zombies in a single file formation. I led the way carving a path through the middle of them, and dividing them into two even smaller groups. The rest of our troop cut them down one by one as they tried to make their way around the fallen zombies that I had dispatched.
"This tomahawk is a good tool for eradicating eaters, it penetrates their skull far enough to kill their brain, but doesn't go in far enough to get stuck, works great," I admitted, while planting the small ax in the head of the last zombie in front of me.
"I'll stick to my sickle," Billy said, jerking the long concave blade vertically through the face of a once attractive twenty-something woman that had just snapped at his arm.
In moments, we had hacked down the rest of the zombies in the horde, and with the latest threat neutralized; we hurried to pick up our belongings and leave the area.
"I think it would be wise if we used a little bit of misdirection at this point," I suggested. "If those men we killed back there don't return to their base in a few minutes, their friends are going to come looking for them, and we don't want to leave a trail of dead eaters for them to follow."
"How are we going to misdirect them?" Jacob asked.
I slung my AK over my shoulder, picked up one of the bags containing our food, and began to walk west.
"We want to go south, so we'll walk west for a hundred yards or so," I shouted as I walked.
"What are you yelling for?" Gin asked, befuddled by my behavior.
"Yeah, dad, I thought we were in silent mode!" Jacob contended.
"He's wants to draw in some more eaters," Mary asserted, in her usual monotone way.
"It's working, look, there are four more of them coming this way," Billy said, pointing to the northwest.
"Perfect," I said, turning toward the four approaching zombies and increasing my pace.
"Someone catch up and help me!" I shouted, once more dropping my supplies.
I stopped in an area under an on ramp that could be seen from the location of the two trucks we had just left. Partially covered with gravel, and where the grass and weeds were mostly shaded from the afternoon sun, it was the ideal place to butcher the oncoming zombies and try to mislead the ambushers.
Mary was the first join me, followed by Billy. The three of us waited in the small clearing for the four hungry zombies to arrive.
"Back to silent mode," I said, shaking my tomahawk in the air Indian style.
One by one, the zombies broke through the dense brush into the clearing, and one by one, they were destroyed with forced trauma to their brains.
"Step in their blood, and follow me," I ordered Mary and Jacob as I drenched my boots in zombie blood.
Without questioning my directive, they followed my lead and walked through the puddles of blood.
We set out in the same northwesterly direction that the zombies had appeared from, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in the grass.
The zombie's blood soon was wiped from our boot soles by the tall grass, but we walked several more yards, crushing and bending down the brush until we came to the beginning of the on ramp under which we had eliminated the four zombies, and which ultimately led to the pavement covered streets of Houston.
Backtracking our way back to Jacob and Gin at the clearing, we resumed our journey south, being careful to leave no sign of our true direction of travel.
Twenty minutes later, the s
ound of a vehicle broke through the noise of our panting, as we trudged along lugging our supplies by hand.
"Hear that, it sounds like another truck," Gin said, stopping to listen.
We were traveling parallel to the interstate highway that we had been ambushed on earlier. Only a few hundred yards to the east, we could see another flatbed truck also filled with men, speeding down the road in route to the spot of our earlier firefight.
"Get down everyone," I ordered, dropping to one knee.
Everyone knelt down quickly, and we watched the truck go by.
"I don't think they saw us," Mary concluded.
As the truck drove out of sight, Jacob stood up and said. "Yeah, they didn't see us, they would have stopped."
"Maybe," I said, standing up myself. "We don't know much about them, we know that they shot at us, and then sent more men after us when they failed to stop us at their road block. I think they cleared the highway of vehicles, and used those vehicles to build their wall of cars. I also think they cleared the area of eaters and feral dogs. If they have the resources to do that, we certainly don't want to under estimate them," I pointed out.
"We don't know for sure that they did all of that," Billy quibbled.
"That's right we don't, do you want to make camp here, and see if they show up. I'm sure they'll be very pleased to see us, maybe we'll all sit around a campfire and sing Kumbaya together," I said sarcastically.
"I get it dad, we can't take any chances," Billy retorted.
"While we're stopped here, Gin, you and Mary get into those camo uniforms, we didn't get them so you could carry them all over hell creation, we got them so you could wear them," I prompted, thinking we all might need a short rest anyway.
We turned our backs and the girls complied without an argument, which actually surprised me. They put on the uniforms and when they were finished, they started acting a little giddy.
They began to compare the air force camouflage pattern they were wearing, with my multi-cam pattern, Jacob's army digital camo, and Billy's old school Viet Nam camouflage. They said they thought theirs was a much better color, it went well with Mary's blue eyes, and they said how well it blended with the surrounding vegetation. I thought it might have been because in the new world we were in, anything that reminded us of how it used to be before the outbreak, like getting new clothes, was a welcome diversion from the gruesome reality we were living. It didn't really matter why they seemed happy, it was enough that the new uniforms gave them a bit of pleasure, and for a moment took their minds off whatever they might be imaging could be ahead of us, or behind us.
