He slammed his palms on the outside of the trailer and then shouted at the top of his lungs, “Dinner time!”
They both froze so they could listen to the response.
Not only did the scratching and pawing ratchet up along the entire length of the trailer, but the whole thing shifted as if whatever was in there suddenly moved to one side.
2
“Well ain't that a pantload and a half?” Dave said as the noise and commotion settled back down. “They are paying me to haul sick people?”
Liam looked behind Dave in the direction they came from. The only vehicles on the highway were the big rigs. Another pair crawled toward them but were still miles away on the perfectly flat stretch of highway.
“There were millions of them in that crowd,” Liam said in a weak voice. “Do you think they loaded them all?”
“When I loaded my truck, there were tons of ‘em standing around outside the barricades.”
“We watched as they loaded your trucks all night long. The crowd of infected got smaller as they moved toward the river and the loading area. Somehow, they got rid of a good portion of them.” Liam's mind raced to remember anything Elsa or Hayes might have told him about their intentions but came up blank.
Dave eyed the cargo hauler for a moment. “That thing is fifty-three feet long and a little over eight wide. I've never gotten into the people-hauling business, but figure maybe six rows of fifty crammed together.”
Liam did the math. “300 zombies?”
“Give or take. Probably a lot less because you won't get them to line up.” Dave let out a nervous chuckle.
“We have to do something,” he replied.
“Your friend said they are tracking these trailers. I guess this explains why.”
“Victoria has to know. She won't believe it, either.” Liam's mind was already thinking of how to get rid of the cargo. They could push the truck over a cliff to kill all those inside, but there was nothing but flat fields for as far as he could see in every direction. Even the highway seemed like it was stretched over a dining room table because it had no hills or dips.
“Wait just a damned minute,” Dave demanded. “I don't think they are zombies. Listen.” Dave put his finger to his lips to signify silence for Liam.
Sure enough, he heard something that couldn't be from a zombie and it came from inside the truck.
Someone was tapping the back wall of the trailer, probably with their knuckles.
“Tap tap tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap.”
“S.O.S. they said at the same time.”
“Shit on a shingle, those are living people,” Dave added as he turned to go to the back of the trailer.
Liam grabbed his sleeve to stop him. “You aren't going to open it, are you?”
Dave nodded. “I'm 100% going to open it. You heard that knocking. I bet everyone is alive in there just begging to be let out. I don't care how much they pay me, I'm not hauling people.”
Echoes of That Guy ran through his mind. Was Dave going to do something stupid and be That Guy responsible for their deaths?
“Wait,” Liam said as he let him go. “None of them are screaming or anything.” He put his ear up against the metal exterior of the side of the trailer and motioned for Dave to do the same.
“Maybe they have gags in their mouths?” the driver suggested.
Liam yelled “Knock once if you are alive!”
Immediately the trailer burst into chaos again and the clawing and banging gave no hint of a unified response, other than what one would expect from infected seeking food. Dave stepped back when the whole trailer rocked side-to-side over the back wheels.
It took several minutes for the noise to die back down, and during that time Dave made no effort to make good on opening the back doors.
“I don't know what to say. They aren't alive, are they?”
Liam shook his head.
“What do we do? This is 100% messed up, ya' know?”
Liam flashed a grim smile. “Trust me, I know messed up. The people who loaded these trailers are experts at messing things up. It's their jobs, I think.”
“Geeze Louise,” Dave rambled, “I can't take these monsters to my destination, can I?”
Liam was going to reply but Dave snapped his fingers.
“Disposal! That's what we're doing. We are getting rid of these things. Taking them somewhere to be destroyed. That makes sense, right?”
“Maybe, but there is one little problem.” Liam stepped toward the front of the trailer again and tapped out S.O.S. in Morse code with his knuckles.
The reply was the same.
“Are we going to throw the living person in the trash, too?” Liam wondered aloud.
“Baby out with the bathwater?” Dave asked with a trace of his usual humor.
“Right. This is totally jacked up. I need to talk to Victoria.” Liam looked at Dave with a serious face. “You aren't going to open those doors, are you?”
Zombie books and movies were littered with guys like Dave who said one thing and did the opposite, so he studied the man for an extra-long time even after he shook his head in the affirmative.
“For the love of God, Dave, if you are going to open those doors just tell me right now and I'll get my gun and do it with you. The last thing we need is a surprise.”
“You aren't very trusting for a kid,” Dave responded, trying to be funny.
“Not after what I've seen. The only person I trust in this world is up front. She doesn't screw around when life and death is on the line. Please tell me I can trust you on this. No opening the doors!”
Dave hesitated in a way that made Liam nervous. He felt the pull of the rifle slung over his shoulder and wondered for the millionth time if this was his life now. Kill or be killed, and only because the person standing next to him was too stupid to grasp the new dangers in this world.
But Dave seemed to relax. “I'm going back to the cab to stay as far away from this trailer as I can. I admit I wanted to open the doors, but if those people were alive back there they would have let us know.”
“Except for the one guy. He's definitely alive.”
“Right,” Dave replied. “But I don't know how he's doing it.”
“Me, either,” Liam replied as he walked back toward the front.
The signal knocks on the wall of the trailer got louder as if the person knew they were leaving, so Liam stopped and went back a bit.
“We'll get you out of there,” he called in a loud voice.
It was hard to tell if the survivor heard him because the rest of the trailer broke out in bedlam once again.
3
The others had to hear the sound for themselves, so before they could leave everyone got out of the truck to go back and listen.
They all agreed someone was alive because of the repeated S.O.S call for help, but no one could figure out how. The only point where they found consensus was that they had to rescue the person.
Sabella had the first suggestion. “What if we unhook the trailer and then shoot through the sides?”
“No, we might hit the living person,” Liam responded.
“We also couldn't get many headshots,” Victoria added. She patted the strap of her AK.
“Could we tip over the trailer, so it ripped open?” Elise offered?
“Then we'd have a bunch of zombies running around,” Liam replied a split-second later.
The young woman looked at him with a frown. “What makes you an expert on this stuff?”
Sabella stepped up. “He saved us, Liz. Give him a break.”
Elise studied him with squinted and intense eyes. “I don't care. I don't trust anyone who obviously enjoys being out here and dealing with this ... this shit.”
Liam was taken aback. He took no joy at all suffering through everything he'd done to date, but deep down he admitted he'd gotten along much better than most people. Yes, it scared the crap out of him a lot of times and his hands shook wildly on occasion as i
f to remind him how frightened he was, but he attributed his overall mental persistence in the face of so many zombies to all the books he'd read on the subject. The survivors are always those who are mentally tough and can think things through before they act.
He looked at Dave, wondering if he really would have opened the doors if he'd not been there to stop him. It seemed totally illogical.
“I assure you I don't want to be here a second longer than I have to, but we are here. If we don't do something to help people--like that person stuck inside the back of the trailer--we are all doomed. My grandma would explain it better, but basically, we have to keep civilization going. We must do the right thing, even when no one else in society is watching. If we don't ... ” he thought of all the books that ended with the total collapse of mankind, “there won't be anyone left to get the cure and rebuild the world.”
Victoria stepped next to him, so her hip touched his. “This is why I travel with this guy. He always does what's right. And Liam is right about this, too. We have to get this poor soul out of there, and then we have to see if all these other trucks are carrying prisoners inside with the zombies. I think we can all agree that isn't right.”
“I, uh, don't want a fight,” Sabella replied. “I have to get my girls to safety. Far away from these zombies. Far away from men like Wilder. There has to be somewhere we can go that will take care of my girls? Doesn't the government have FEMA camps, or whatever?”
“I once heard news of a camp set up in East St. Louis, but that was on the radio on almost the first day. We found something like a camp at Forest Park in St. Louis, but that was going downhill when we left. Since then, I haven't heard anything about distant camps. Most of the East Coast is coming this way, so if there are places of safety maybe they are in the middle of the country or to the west.”
He glanced to Victoria.
“I'm with Liam. He forgot about the big Boy Scout camp we found, but it wasn't run by FEMA. It's been four or five days since we saw it, so who knows if it survived. We've talked to a lot of government types and never heard a word about where to go. I guess Cairo was a camp, right?” She looked back to Liam.
“Yeah, I guess. It was a holdout, at least.”
“But you said Cairo was destroyed,” Sabella responded. “Is nowhere safe, now?”
“Yeah, at least around these parts,” Liam replied.
He glanced at little Susan and smiled when he caught her eye. “But don't worry, m'kay? If there is somewhere safe out there, we'll find it.”
Susan smiled while holding onto her mom's pant leg.
They stood as a group near the fifth wheel and Liam happened to look down the highway. He didn't want to start a new topic if the big rigs were near because the noise would drown him out. However, this time a red sports car caught his eye.
“Well, look at that,” he said.
The others turned to where he focused his attention.
An ancient red convertible stayed in the near lane as it closed the distance. He and everyone else took a step back toward the truck because it was going to pass close.
“What's he doing?” Sabella asked with alarm.
“That's one of the original Mustangs,” Dave remarked.
The sports car driver had the hammer down and he approached like a bullet.
A white-bearded old man drove the car and a similarly old-looking woman sat next to him. She had on a pair of big sunglasses and the wind whipped her long white hair behind her.
The driver hugged the yellow line at the edge of the highway, but at the last second, he raised his fist in the air and shouted. “Waaa-hooo” as he blasted by.
“Looks like someone is having fun,” Dave said with a laugh.
“He could have killed us,” Sabella replied.
Liam knew they were both right, but he sided with Dave. The old guy was probably taking his hot rod out for one last cruise and just wanted someone to see him go.
They spread out a bit after the Mustang passed, but Liam got right back to business.
“Dave?” He asked. “You're the driver. What do you think of the cargo?”
“I'm kind of glad I don't have my peeps watching because I don't think I've been acting very smart of late. I still can't believe what I'm hauling. I've been thinking about our discussion earlier, Liam. Even if I thought we were taking these zombies to disposal centers, why are we all going to different destinations? Wouldn't it make more sense to take them all to the same place?”
Liam nodded in agreement.
“But the trucks left the truck stop going all different directions. What possible reason could there be to put zombies in the back of our trucks and send us all over the place?”
“And why are the locks set up so they can be tracked?” Victoria asked. “Those two women back in the truck stop said the authorities would come looking for any truck that went off course. We saw that when Dave picked us up, but why?”
Liam rubbed the piece of jewelry in his pocket while he thought it over. Elsa said something about the importance of the group of zombies from St. Louis. While the army and everyone else dealt with the zombies in front of Cairo that came from Chicago and Indianapolis, the real threat was marching in a great dust cloud down the western side of the Mississippi River. But this part of the plan made no sense at all. If Elsa somehow controlled them, she could have used the group of a million zombies to attack anywhere she wanted.
That was nuts, but she didn't put it past Elsa after he witnessed the kinds of resources she had at her disposal, up to and including an intercontinental ballistic missile.
So, if she wasn't using the zombies as a great army to do her bidding, then why the hell was it assembled in the first place?
“Dave, I never did ask. Where are you supposed to deliver them?”
Dave looked shocked. “I can't do this job this anymore. I don't care what they're paying.”
“I know, and I agree, but just tell me where they were supposed to go.”
“Phoenix, Arizona.”
“That tells us nothing,” Sabella replied with sadness.
“No,” Liam said, “it does tell us one thing: whoever is on the receiving end of this delivery, they are almost certainly part of the conspiracy. Someone has to be there to open the lock and take ownership of the contents.”
“Uh, I think it's whomever,” Sabella said with a bit of cheek.
“Oh, mom,” Leah gasped. She ripped off her glasses as if she meant business. “You are so embarrassing.”
Sabella smiled at Liam with a knowing look. She'd made him the recipient of her corrections, but she probably did it to comfort Leah.
For that he was glad, because his next suggestion was going to make everyone upset.
It was time to mount a rescue.
Peeping Tom
The farmhouse.
Zombie Robert looked into the window and watched the boy and girl go up the steps and out of his sight. His warped mind felt the presence of many little bodies around him, but he wanted nothing to do with them.
The only thing that mattered was the boy, because they shared the same blood.
The Zombie crept along the back edge of the house and turned the corner to go to the front. He reached the edge of the front porch but halted at the sight of the big machine parked on the front lawn. It rumbled menacingly and spewed out black smoke that acted as a warning. The living Robert might have recognized it as the fear of technology, but Zombie Robert merely saw it as something that could interfere with his quest to find the boy.
He took a few steps backward and leaned against a small bush on the side of the house to wait.
Waiting was his expertise.
It wasn't long before the front door of the house opened. Zombie Robert sensed the vibration and took that as his cue to move back up to the porch.
The boy stood not twenty feet away, but he carried guns. The painful sticks he knew so well.
There was something inside him that wanted to rush the porch and me
et up with the boy, but it shared a place with another voice that wanted him to remain still where he stood. It seemed the safer choice.
Zombie Robert stood there for a long time as the boy and his friends mounted the machine on the lawn and rode it out of his sight.
He felt something that living Robert would have known as loss. He'd been very close to his target and now that target was speeding away.
The zombie ran after the truck as it rolled over the gravel of the driveway, but he had to turn away as it neared the roadway. There were other big trucks and their lights would find him. The boy's truck joined the others and faded into the night until it was a tiny red light on the horizon.
Unable to feel frustration or despair, Robert had nothing else to do but follow the scent for as long as it took.
However, less than a mile down the road the wind caught him just right and he smelled something even more powerful than the boy. Someone else shared his blood and demanded his attention.
He stopped to sort through the two competing directives.
The boy was close.
The new scent was far.
The boy was moving away.
The new scent seemed to be getting closer.
Zombie Robert had no capacity for surprise or elation, but a word crept up from deep inside his broken mind. It had some residual power from when he was alive, and it came out as the closest thing to excitement for a zombie.
Mother.
Despite the powerful draw of the word, he was unable to decide for many minutes which way he should go. He became as still as a scarecrow in the dark cornfield until a new stimulus interrupted him.
“Reorient. Reacquire.” Those two words stood out from the noise in his brain. He felt compelled to obey them immediately. Living Robert might have remembered such words from his time in Korea.
He turned around in the field and headed in a new direction. He wanted to meet her so bad, though none of those words were possible in his ruined brain pan. Yet, that strange longing gave him purpose and drive he didn't have up until that moment.
That's when he figured out how to sprint.
He ran all night in the flat fields and he only stopped at the break of dawn when he finally saw her. The woman who he would have called mother stood on a floating box on the big water.
Zombie Escape: More Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 1 Page 30
