“What are you going to do?” The man in the suit asked.
“I need something from the ambulance.”
Jessie used the heel of his boot to smash the ambulance’s windshield. He crawled in and made his way to the back. He opened the compartment marked “Danger Oxygen” and removed the four canisters, climbed back to the front and back to the ambulance’s roof.
“Now what?” The man asked.
Jessie looked around thoughtfully.
“I forgot something in the ambulance I have to go back in.”
He disappeared back into the vehicle and came back out moments later with the long backboard he had seen strapped to the upper wall of the cargo area.
“What are we going to do, surf our way across the grass?” The man asked rolling his eyes.
Jessie said nothing and started positioning his items. He was facing the driver’s side of the ambulance with its hood on his right and the sea of undead things straight ahead. He was eleven feet above the highway and thirteen above the sloping median. He took the first gas can and jostled it and heaved it like he was throwing a pale of water so the gas sprayed out as far from the vehicle as he could make it reach. When he was done he threw the can itself. Several of the creatures noticed the can fly and then roll, but none of them seemed to care. He estimated a six foot burn zone, eight if he was lucky. He repeated the process with the second can just to the right of the first patch he soaked. He threw that can as well and again got little reaction. He picked up the first oxygen tank and tossed it carefully just to the right and as far away as he dared in the patch of gasoline soaked grass. He threw the second closer, but in line with the first. He did the same thing with the other two tanks, only left of center. Once the four tanks were tossed they made a rough square in the gas patch. Jessie removed one of the road flares from the box and put it in his back pocket.
“Now what, Monk?” The man in the suit asked gesturing to the neatly placed supplies.
Jessie looked thoughtfully at his setup and then at the man in the suit. He was rubbing the spot on his arm that had been bitten. It was bandaged with a t-shirt.
“Now you help me get to my family.” Jessie said.
In one fluid motion Jessie punched the bitten man hard in the gut. The wind came out of his lungs in a woosh. Once he was doubled over Jessie reached down, grabbed the back of his collar and his belt and heaved the man off the ambulance and into the rough square of oxygen tanks in the grass. The man landed with an audible crack on his shoulder. He screamed in pain and the walkers took notice. They advanced on the man instantly.
Jessie took the flare from his back pocket lit it and waited for a good number of creatures to reach the screaming man. He tossed the flare into the grass next to the pig pile. The grass caught instantly and the flame rushed to the center of the pile. Jessie dropped flat on his back on the ambulance roof and held the back board over his body at an angle to deflect any debris when the tanks went. He could still hear the man screaming as he lay there waiting for the explosion. As he waited he could smell the burning flesh and hear the skin cooking like bacon on a skillet.
Finally it came. The first tank went off like a cannon and triggered the other three. Jessie counted to three after the second big bang and sprung out from under his protection. There was a black burnt void in the median. The feeding creatures were flung in all directions by the explosion, but the ones with intact heads and necks were already recovering. Jessie leaped from the roof of the vehicle and landed dead center in the burning grass, he tucked and rolled and only seemed to jam his left wrist in the thirteen foot jump. He sprang to his feet and was running for the westbound lane. He felt hands on his legs, but none of them got a firm grip. Three strides from the guard rail a man who was once in his late teens wearing a bloody white t-shirt stepped in front of him. With no hesitation Jessie raised both winter gloved fists and rammed them into the thing’s head. As the blow landed the thing tried to bite down, but the force of the blow caused it to miss. It stumbled backwards and sat down hard on its undead ass. Jessie never broke stride - one foot on the guard rail, the other on the hood of the first car in the left lane, and then both feet on the car’s roof. From there he leaped into the next lane and onto the hood of a tractor trailer, then onto its roof and was eighteen feet above the swarming crowd. He dropped to his knees facing the median and tried to catch his breath.
“Holy fucking shit, man! I fucking told you he was going to throw that fucker off the roof.” Charlie Eckert said slapping his brother Patrick on the back.
“I didn’t think he would do it.” Patrick replied. “But that was a hell of a ballsy job.”
Charlie and Patrick Eckert were one hundred yards away, flat on the roof of a tractor-trailer using the scopes attached to their rifles to watch the action. They were a truck driving sleeper team from Bangor, Maine heading to Hemingford, Nebraska when it all went to hell. The rig they were perched on was their own. Patrick had spotted Jessie when he emerged from the trees on the far side of the highway and had been interested in how he planned on crossing the highway.
“I think we should follow him.” Patrick said.
“Why?” Charlie asked.
“Because he looks like he has some place to be going. He took a hell of a risk crossing this. He must know something. The way he moved, he must be a cop or a soldier. Maybe there is a kind of safe zone he is heading to.”
“I don’t care Pat, we are either going to die here or somewhere else, might as well be seeing the sights.”
“A-yeah.” Patrick said
Chapter 3 – Route 78 – Westbound
Jessie sat on top of the big rig in the westbound lanes and brought himself back under control. He wanted to get moving. The rest of 78 would be a breeze after the median. He took a long hard look at the lay of the land on the other side of the highway. He nodded to himself and jumped from the trailer to a Shipper’s Pride van and then to the roof of a toaster looking SUV that was the ugliest color orange he had ever seen. There were no creatures between the orange toaster and the guardrail, so he stepped down the hood onto the guardrail and then was on soft grass, running as fast as he could into the tree line and away from the first of many horrors he would see before he was home.
Jessie ran for what seemed like hours. He went through green fields, cow pastures, thick wooded patches and eventually into back yards and parking lots. This made him very uncomfortable. He didn’t like coming into a populated area this fatigued. He jumped a six foot stockade fence that enclosed a backyard and rested, leaning on the side of the house. As his breathing slowed and his heart beat quieted in his ears, he started to hear the screams, gunshots and movement all around him. He needed to get out of here, to somewhere safe. He pulled the iPhone from his pocket and unlocked the display. He tapped the map icon and went to work on the keyboard. His GPS told him he was hiding on White Oak Lane in a town called Bedminster. He was glad the phone still had service; he gave AT&T twelve more hours at best. He checked the display. It was high noon and the battery life on his phone said 96%. He was very glad he had remembered to plug it in the night before. He exited the map application, opened the search engine and typed in “railroad maps USA.” In a few seconds he was zooming into the northeast looking for the closest tracks in the area. They looked to be two miles or so to the north. He followed the spider web and saw the tracks would take him too far east for his liking. He would have to get as far as Dover before he hooked into a line that connected with the main line that went all the way up to Albany. The iPhone told him from his current location Dover was fifteen miles on a straight line slightly northeast. He did some quick math and figured he could make it to Dover by dark if he could average twenty minutes per mile. If he ran into trouble in the form of water, population or anything else unforeseen it would take longer. He tapped back into the map application and slowly surveyed the area he would be covering. It was populated, but no big cities, a few towns on the way and no big bodies of water. This gave him pl
enty of places to hole up if necessary.
Jessie shut off the phone and secured it in his pocket. He took out a bottle of water and a snickers bar. He finished them both and left the trash on the ground. He pissed on the side of the house and was ready to move again. He peeked over the fence, saw nothing moving and jumped over it, coming around the front of the house and up White Oak Lane. At the end of White Oak he found himself on Route 206, which looked pretty empty as far as he could see. Looking at the map, it went further west than Jessie wanted to go, but if he could find a car he could get there in minutes instead of hours. Who knew, maybe there was a road heading east that was clear as well.
He went back down White Oak and headed cautiously towards a house on the right that had a red Audi A6 parked in the driveway. He got to the side of the house and removed the gun from his pack. He began circling the house sneaking peeks into the ground level windows. He didn’t see any movement all the way around the house. He went to the front door and rung the bell. He then ran back to the corner of the house where he had cover in case someone came to the door blasting. He was looking through the window and saw nothing. He ran around to the back of the house. Nothing moving there either. He went to the back door and tried the knob. It was locked. He knocked. No movement. He looked under the doormat, no key. Jessie craned his neck to see the inside of the door through its window. The lock was a deadbolt with a knob on the inside at shoulder height. He put the gun in his belt loop and picked up a rock the size of a softball out of the small garden that lined the back of the house. The window broke with an unremarkable sound. He used the rock to clear the shards and tossed it behind him into the grass. He reached in and turned the lock. That was when he heard the faint beeping from somewhere in the house. It sounded like an alarm clock or an oven timer or…
The beeping solidified to a steady tone for ten seconds and then stopped. Five seconds after that a piercing whooping alarm filled Jessie ears and the empty house. It sounded at first like an air raid alarm then it changed to beeping a million times louder than the whooping and then it was an angry sounding fire alarm. It repeated these three noises endlessly in fifteen second intervals.
Jessie spun the lock and was in the house before the first interval was complete. He was hitting all the usual places looking for keys to the Audi. No luck on the kitchen counter, the end tables or the kitchen table. He ran upstairs hoping the bedroom bureau would be the last place he needed to look.
He got to the top of the stairs and ran down the hall to what looked like the master bedroom. He found the keys on the bureau and was turning to run out of the room when he heard the crunch of a shotgun chambering a round.
“It’s a stick, and you need the pass code to open the door.” A woman’s voice said from the bathroom.
Jessie held his hands up above his head and did not turn around.
“I didn’t know anyone was here. I need the car. My family is in Massachusetts.” He said.
“You can put your hands down and turn around, but toss the gun on the bed first. If you don’t I will shoot you.”
Jessie tossed the pistol onto the bed and lowered his hands as he slowly turned around. The woman holding the giant shotgun was five foot nothing with long brown hair and an athletic build. Jessie thought if she ever did fire the gun it would knock her five feet back. She was wet from the shower and wrapped in a terry robe. Jessie thought she was in her mid-twenties and acting very calm under the circumstances.
“Step back into the corner.” She said.
Jessie stepped back and she went over to a keypad on the bedroom wall and punched in a code that made the whooping and beeping and buzzing stop, then she went and picked the pistol off the bed. She tucked it into her robe’s drawstrings. It made the loose knot start to come undone.
“Turn the fuck around.” She yelled just as the robe swung open.
“I saw nothing.” Jessie said trying to sound convincing.
“I’m going into the bathroom, if you leave while I’m in there you will be leaving your gun. If you try to come in I will shoot you.”
“I’m not going to move a muscle.”
Before he was done speaking the bathroom door shut and locked with a quiet click. Jessie didn’t move. He heard her put the shotgun on the sink and heard the sound of rustling cloths. He didn’t move. A moment later she came out in a pair of jeans and a wife beater tank top. She had left the shotgun in the bathroom, but had Jessie’s gun.
“Alright.” She said. “You can turn around.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jessie.”
“No shit cowboy, so is mine.” She said smiling.
“Yeah?” He asked
“Well, Jessica Jane but Jessie for short.”
“What are the chances?”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t, I guess.” Jessie said. “I just tried to steal your car, not a very good first impression.”
“I’d say not.” Jessica said.
“I guess you can look at it a couple of ways. Either you trust me and we try to get out of here together, or you don’t trust me and you can stay. I’ll only take the car if you say it’s alright.” Jessie said. “You have the guns, so it’s your decision.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as they both just looked at each other. The silence was broken by the sound of glass breaking downstairs. Jessica went over to the window and looked out.
“Well, fuck.” She said.
Jessie joined her at the window. They were looking down at a yard filled with two dozen or more creatures. The alarm had drawn them in. Half of them were between the front door and the Audi.
“So my plan seems to have hit a snag.” Jessie said.
“The car?” She asked.
“Yeah, the car.”
“No worries, get us to the garage, I have another one.”
There was another crashing noise downstairs and low moans.
“Explain the Route to the garage.” Jessie said.
“Down the stairs, turn left and then go straight through the kitchen. The garage door is next to the fridge.”
“Keys?”
“In the ignition. It doesn’t have a pass code, but it is a stick.”
“You keep my gun and I’ll use the shotgun. Only fire if it’s a last resort, I will try to clear the way.”
“I have more guns - two revolvers.” Jessica said.
“Where?”
“In the safe in the study downstairs.”
“Where is that?”
“Down, right and right.” She answered.
“We will make that call when we see the situation down there.”
Jessie looked down at Jessica’s feet. They were bare. He slowly brought his eyes up her legs, her torso, her large breasts and stopped at her face.
“See anything you like?” She said with raised eyebrows.
“No, it’s not like that. You aren’t ready to go anywhere. You need your best sneakers, a sports bra, a long sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt and a baseball hat if you have one.”
She gave him an “Excuse me?” look with one hand on her hip.
“We are going to be running and jumping and those things are going to grab for you. Think about it.” He said.
She softened her look and nodded.
“You stay here and get ready and I’ll go down to the study. What is the combination?” He asked.
“It’s a digital pad. 2, 3, 9, 5, enter.”
“Close the door behind me, get your stuff and get into the bathroom to get dressed. Lock that door and only open it if you hear my voice, got it?”
“I got it.” She answered and went to the door ready to close it when he left.
“My gun?” He asked holding his hand out.
She handed him the gun and nodded again. Jessie started down the hall and heard the door close behind him. He inched to the top of the stairs and peeked down. It was clear. He desc
ended the first half of the stairs and stopped. He bent over and looked down and to the right through the banister. The view to his left was obstructed by the wall. He would not be able to see the kitchen until he got to the bottom. He stood very still and listened. The sound of movement came from his blind side in the kitchen. He clicked off the safety, stepped forward and leaned out over the banister. He could see the study and could see the study had a door. If one of those things was in the study it would be a mistake, but he was pretty sure he would have heard if there was. He tucked his pistol into his belt, leaped the banister eight stairs from the bottom and made a dash for the study. He saw it was empty, rushed in and closed the door and locked it. He stood perfectly still a foot from the door listening. The shuffling sound came to the door and there was a dull thud as if someone nudged it with their elbow, then the shuffling sound went away. Jessie feared the thing might be heading for the stairs and he knew he had to hurry. He punched the combination into the digital pad and the safe beeped and the light turned green. He turned the lever and opened the safe. Jessie saw that there were two revolvers in the safe. She failed to mention they were Remington .44 Magnum Colt Anacondas.
Jessie didn’t know much about guns but he knew what these were and knew they were badass. He grabbed both and the ammo next to them. He looked on the bottom shelf of the safe and had to do a double take. There were four bricks of one hundred dollar bills and a shit load of coins all housed in thick protective plastic cases. He swung the pack from his back opened it and swept everything in, including the hand cannons. He noted the pack was getting heavy and he would have to do another house cleaning. He zipped the bag and swung it back into place. He went to the door and listened. He didn’t hear anything so he opened the door and raised his gun.
Sawkill [Omnibus] Page 3
