Five Roads To Texas: A Phalanx Press Collaboration

by Lundy, W. J.

“You little bitch, I was going to help you,” he spat at her.

  “I don’t think so, mister. Just go away and leave me be,” she said as the stench of gasoline hit her nose. She could see water starting to fill the boat from the tiny bullet holes that the .22 made. She was surprised and hadn’t thought her gun powerful enough to penetrate aluminum, which is why she had aimed for the gas can. She was aware that the fireball it could have created was more for movies than real life, but she’d been ready for it.

  The man swore at her a few more times before he grabbed the throttle and headed back out into the lake with more than one hand clutching on to the side of the boat that was slowly filling with water.

  Deena took a moment and reevaluated her situation. Dozens of shadows from the infected displayed upon the lake’s surface, and they all seemed to be frozen in place and looking over the side. None of the ones in the water were swimming and had sunk. She could see the legs of a couple more on the opposite bank, coming to see the commotion the man in the boat had created. Those were the ones that had her concerned. If they saw her and started moaning, then she could be trapped here for a long time.

  She’d fired her pistol, and they saw the man in the boat, so they knew some uninfected had been there, but they hadn’t seen her yet. If she could keep it that way, she might be able to get out of her predicament. As quietly as she could manage, she climbed back to one of the pilings and slipped behind it before sitting down. She hadn’t gone far, a mile or a mile and a half, but she was still tired and hungry, so she pulled an energy bar out of her pack as well as a bottle of juice.

  She sat for over an hour, constantly checking on four of them that searched under the bridge and along the shoreline. Their moans and screams made her feel as if she’d appeared in an alien world, where everything wanted to eat her. Suddenly, one or two of the infected would burst into a full-speed run alongside the lake, only to return with their blood-filled eyes scanning everything. Deena didn’t know why they did it; she only knew that there was no way she could outrun one of them. One was an old woman and even she ran faster and farther than a marathoner could. Deena didn’t understand how that could even be possible. Waiting until they were gone or it was dark was her only option.

  She missed her grandpa and knew that he might be one of the creatures above, waiting to take a chunk out of her. Her world had changed in a matter of hours. The sense that the change was permanent and total threatened to overwhelm her. She put her face into her hands, trying to stifle the sobs that kept escaping. Silence was key to her survival. Any sound or sight of her would keep them here forever…waiting.

  A sound off in the distance caught her ear. As she listened, she could tell that it was coming closer. It was a truck. It was more than just a truck; it was a rig, and it was picking up speed as it approached the bridge.

  Deena peeked around the piling and saw the creatures on the bank scramble up to the road to meet the semi that barreled toward the bridge at top speed. She hoped it was equipped with a heavy herd defender on the front end, which, of course, it was. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have survived this long. There were too many deer in this area not to run heavy grill guards. It protected your investment, as her grandpa used to say.

  Bodies were thrown far out into the lake from the sheer velocity of the heavy truck. They were miniature pins being struck by a giant bowling ball that sent them airborne in a mist of spraying blood.

  Deena made her move. She would never catch the truck and wouldn’t be able to make them stop anyway, not with so many infected around. They wouldn’t know that she wasn’t one of the creatures and would run her down too. The far bank was her goal, and then the woods beyond. She’d mentally mapped her path through the lattice work and made the abutment in record time. There was no time to check out the scene; one of the creepers coming up the bank after having survived being knocked into the next time zone by the semi, was all it would take to end her flight.

  She dropped down and made for the closest grouping of trees fifty yards away. She stayed low and tried to make her motions smooth. Jerky movements attract the human eye, where smooth blends in, she told herself as she wove between some scattered brush before the wood line. She stopped at the trees and ducked low to look back at the bridge. It was empty; the truck had cleared it completely of infected. She glanced down at the lake and saw several coming out of the water slowly, looking stunned—with one exception.

  He wore a uniform of some sort, maybe military, but also possibly Fed Ex—it was hard to tell in the dimming light. He lumbered as if one leg wasn’t working right, probably the leg that connected with the semi. He moved jerkily, as though half his body wanted to run but the other half couldn’t. Blood seeping from his eyes splayed across his face erratically, staining his chin with red vomitus goo. Pink foam covered the front of his uniform. But that wasn’t what made him special. What made him different was that his eyes were locked on hers and his jerky, lumbering gait carried him directly toward her position.

  She never hesitated as she turned to run, trying to keep the road in sight. There was only a half hour until sunset, and she wanted to be at the tank farm before full dark. Looking back, she saw that her pursuer had separated from the herd, and a satchel bounced from his right hip. A gun maybe, supplies, or first aide… Deena didn’t know, but she couldn’t help but wonder.

  There were more infected along the side of the road who’d obviously tangled with the rig, but they were crippled from the semi, and she kept herself back in the trees. Luckily, the deer path seemed to mirror the road at this point, so the going was easy. Deena heard when the man on her trail broke through the trees, and she realized that she was still in his line of sight.

  Typically, she would have run, but his body was mangled by the impact, so she could stay ahead of him by keeping a fast trot. She’d had some trouble in school with the stealing and all, but she wasn’t a drug addict. She didn’t smoke either, so keeping up that pace wasn’t going to be much of an issue for her.

  The sun was getting lower, and she still hadn’t found the turnoff for the compound. It should cross right in front of her, providing that the road was still off to her left. She couldn’t seem to shake her pursuer. It seemed that every time she went around a small bend, he came out behind her a little closer.

  Fifteen minutes later, and it was getting darker. She couldn’t always make him out, and she was coming into the darkest part of the night: the time before the moon rose and the sky wasn’t dark enough for the stars’ brilliance to shine through. Grandpa always hated driving at dusk.

  The man’s sounds were getting louder, and she knew that she had to end him before it became too dark to see. At a point where the path widened slightly, she stepped to the side behind a tree and readied her .22 semi-automatic. She had a double-stacked magazine, which meant she had at least ten shots left and a second magazine in her pocket. Deena didn’t think she had time to dig the 1911 out from the bottom of her pack. Plus, the smaller gun would be quieter. She waited and listened.

  The stomping down the trail got louder, and then suddenly stopped. The creature froze in place as if trying to hear something.

  Is that it? Is he tracking me by sound? Deena wondered, knowing that all she would have had to do was stop and hide. Then she heard it sniffing, and she realized the path was a lot closer than she thought; the gloom of evening had betrayed her.

  The brush came alive with the sounds of snapping branches as he lunged for her. She fired into what she thought was his body. He kept coming.

  His strong hands wrapped around her throat, fingernails gouging into her flesh. Blood pooled in the space along her collar bone and ran down inside her shirt. Deena screamed and started pulling the trigger at pointblank range, stitching a sporadic line up the man’s torso until her barrel came up under his chin, where she sent her last three shots.

  The man fell stiffly to the side, and Deena collapsed next to him, breathing hard.

  Bit; bit, bit… He didn’t bite
me. I should be good. He sure tore the crap out of my neck though. Deena checked herself and wanted to take time to wrap the wounds on her neck with a t-shirt, but she was afraid of what her shots attracted.

  First aid kit. I don’t have anything in mine other than Ibuprofen and Band-Aids. His satchel… It’s probably a first aid kit, her mind screamed, and she snatched it with a hard tug from his shoulder before she got up and started to move down the path once again, hoping that she’d be able to find the tanker farm in the dark.

  Deena walked now; running had only caused her to bump into trees, so she decided to risk the road. Her fears of the infected were somewhat lessened for some reason. A part of her knew she should stop and rest, but her legs wouldn’t let her, so she walked. The wounds on her neck started to itch.

  She stopped and checked the satchel for a first aid kit. The zipper to the main compartment had a lock on it like the kind used on a bank bag. The outside pockets carried some kind of credentials with official stamps on papers, but no first aid. She stuffed the papers back into the pack, never thinking to discard it.

  Deena was losing her capacity for rational thought. She was tired and hungry, not to mention very cold. With the exception of the wounds on her neck, which felt like they were on fire, the skin around them was icy cold. She’d been wandering for hours and still hadn’t found the tanker farm. Though she didn’t feel like crying, she could feel the warm liquid on her cheeks and her eyes were starting to burn. More than likely, it was due to her not having enough sleep over the last day.

  She wiped her cheek and was surprised to feel that her tears were sticky and shined dark on her fingertips in the moon’s light. It looked like…blood. She was instantly nauseated and heaved whatever was left in her stomach onto the road. Her vomit was also dark and glistened in haunting, reddish ripples. She heaved again.

  Deena had to get to that tanker farm soon, or she was going to be sick again. She started to run. She ran slowly at first and then faster. She increased her pace again, and then a fourth time until she was running faster than she ever had. Her breathing was hard, but easy, and she felt as if she could run all night. Hell, she could probably run forever if it wasn’t for the incessant hunger twisting her stomach into knots. She was hungry, and she screamed it out into the night, hoping someone would hear, but her words didn’t sound right. She vomited again, the spew coating the front of her shirt, but she didn’t care because she could run.

  She ran for hours, screaming her pains into the night. Still, nothing sounded like the words that she was trying to say. The sun rose and she screamed again, ravenous! The words, more like an enraged growl than what she had actually yelled, were a guttural sound coming from the pit of her empty stomach.

  Her hunger grew to proportions that she’d never imagined. It was a pain deep within her that stretched up through her throat, enveloping her tongue and mouth. She dreamed of something thick and hot filling her mouth and running down her chin. She would swallow it and trace every inch of its path down inside until it splashed within her empty belly, and then she would be satisfied, finally satisfied. Dreams of cheese burgers vanished to be replaced with the vision of fresh, tender flesh and hot blood that she could savor during its inward journey to sate her appetite.

  She found herself on a dirt road, finally staring at the fenced tanker farm shining like a beacon in the sun’s rays, not a hundred yards away. There was a man there, walking by the fence, carrying a stick or a leg of meat. Meat, he had to be carrying meat because she was so hungry.

  “So hungry!” she screamed.

  Without fear of the infected all around, she turned and ran toward the man, screaming for help and food. Delicious, hot food combined with blood and flesh. Flesh that would revitalize her and give her what she desperately needed and finally stop the howls coming from her stomach. She no longer noticed that her words never came out as words, and her blood-filled eyes never registered the rifle that was leveled at her by the man who had turned at the sound of her screams.

  A single shot stopped her run, and she collapsed in a heap just feet from the fence.

  “Poor kid,” another man who’d come upon the scene stated. “Hey, isn’t she that trucker’s granddaughter who was here yesterday morning? I think we were expecting another delivery from him.”

  “I don’t think it’s coming now. Poor bastard,” the other man replied, shaking his head at just one more of the infected that he’d had to put down. “Hey, is that a courier pouch on her shoulder?”

  “Yeah, it looks like one. You don’t think it could be the one the big boys were waiting on, do ya?”

  29

  Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

  March 28th

  “How do you think she got it?” one of the truckers asked the guard, Toby.

  Toby shrugged. “How would I know? We don’t even know what it is.”

  The conversation between the two men tapered off as another man approached. “What are you shooting at, Tobes?” the man asked.

  “One of the infected charged the gate, Ian, and I put her down,” Toby said.

  Ian tried to contain himself. He’d ordered no unsuppressed shots, especially since there were several hundred of the infected gravitating in their direction. The bastards didn’t have a direct bead on their site—yet—but their drones had identified groups, or pods as some were calling them, spiraling away from the lakes as if searching for the chance to feed.

  Ian wanted to shout at Toby, but he never reprimanded his men publicly; it was simply bad business. Instead, Ian guided Toby between the trucker and himself before saying quietly, “All right, where’s your suppressor?” The trucker leaned in slightly to try to listen, but there was nothing Ian could do about that.

  Toby hesitated for a minute before answering. He’d been issued a suppressor, but they were all made for the larger Special Operations Combat Assault Rifles, known as SCARs, that he didn’t like. He used his personal M4 with extended magazines so he could put more rounds down range. He liked his rifle, and they were in the middle of nowhere, so using the SCAR didn’t seem like a good option to him. As a result, he’d ignored the directive. “I couldn’t get it to fit,” he stammered.

  Ian glanced down at Toby’s M4 and shook his head. The first distant screams of the infected sounded in the distance. “Well, you might have just fucked us all, Tobes.”

  “The girl he put down has a courier’s satchel with her,” Ernie, the trucker, said earnestly and pointed at the dead infected who lay just outside of the fence, fifteen yards from the gate.

  Ian stepped closer to the fence to get a better look. After a moment of thought he said, “Set your rifle down, Tobes. You have to go and get it.”

  “I’m not going out there for a satchel that we don’t even know is worth a shit.”

  “We all know that they were waiting on correspondence. Why would a courier’s satchel be in this area unless it was for here? I’ll cover you, now move.”

  “I didn’t want you to take this contract to begin with,” he protested.

  Ian remembered Toby’s whining at the time. He didn’t blame him, but they needed the revenue.

  “Look,” Ian whispered sternly, not wanting the trucker involved, but knowing that he was too close to avoid overhearing. “This contract is the only reason we aren’t out there with them, Toby, so move!”

  A quarter mile down the road, the three men saw the first of the infected break the tree line, running toward them at an unnatural speed.

  Toby didn’t want to leave the security of the fence, but he also recognized the look on Ian’s face. This wasn’t an option. It may have been a private security company, but Ian ran it with the same guidelines as the military. This meant when an order was given, that order was to be followed.

  “Come on, man. I’ll go with you if we move now,” Ernie said.

  “You man the gate. The last thing I need is a truck driver getting in my way,” Toby said, resigned to his fate.

  It wa
s only a smallish horde of ten to fifteen infected rushing toward the gate, for now. Those few, however, would be enough to infect everyone within the fence, so Toby moved with an urgency that bordered on panic, though he kept his movements deliberate and focused. In seconds, he was outside the gate and running the fifteen yards toward the girl’s body. The approaching infected were spurred to greater speed now, having an accessible target in sight. Their screams increased, as did the sounds of their pounding feet, until he could feel the ground vibrating. More came from the surrounding woods even closer to the body that Toby raced toward. He increased his speed.

  Toby did his best to keep his wits about him, dreading the moment when he would have to stop and undo the satchel. He could see that it was hooked awkwardly around the girl’s neck and one arm. He flinched slightly when he heard the plunk, plunk, plunk of suppressed SCAR fire coming from behind the fence but didn’t look at the source. He stayed focused on his target, not wanting to get caught flat-footed outside the gate.

  From where he stood, Ian watched as Toby approached the body like a relay runner. But instead of snatching up a dropped baton, the man reached for the two straps of the girl’s backpack with one hand and pulled, only to struggle with the competing resistance of the body’s deadweight.

  “Leave the pack! Just grab the satchel!” Ian shouted, knowing they were running out of time. She’d been a small girl, but even still, that left her at over ninety pounds, which was more weight than a typical man can pick up like a duffel bag, as he’d attempted to do.

  Toby turned back to grab her again and flinched when he saw two infected bearing down on him. Their screams echoed across the clearing, but he didn’t stop. Ian took one of them out, only to have his space filled by a third.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Toby blurted over and over as he watched them approach. They were too close for him to turn and run, even if he abandoned his task and returned empty-handed back to the gate.