Zombie Road (Book 1): Convoy of Carnage

by David A. Simpson

  He knew all these things and a little more but turned a blind eye. He usually didn’t put too much effort into the little things. The Deputy leaned his back on the counter, sipping the coffee Martha had brought over to him while he was waiting for his breakfast biscuits.

  He recognized Jimmy Winchell sitting a few stools down and smiled at him. “Mr. Winchell,” he exclaimed. “I saw the tour bus. Welcome to Nevada. You guys doing a show in Reno?”

  Jimmy put on his patented “aw shucks” smile that had graced his platinum selling albums, stood and walked over to the Deputy, holding out his hand. “Yes, sir,” he said as they shook. “We have one this evening but with all this craziness going on, do you know if they are shutting down big events? I can’t seem to get through to our manager.” He nodded his head at the phone lying on the counter top.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Billy said. “I haven’t heard anything like that yet, but we’re just now starting to get reports of some attacks in Reno. I’ve called all of my deputies in and I should know more when I get to the office.”

  The entire diner was listening and a few drivers called out questions. “Have you heard anything about Sacramento?” “Are they shutting the highways down?” “Is it some kind of terrorist attack?”

  Deputy Travaho held up his hands in front of him. “Hold on, fellas,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything except a few isolated reports from Reno. That’s all my radio picks up. I won’t know anything else until I get to the office. But as it stands right now, it’s just a few incidences. Nothing to get too worked up about and no, I don’t know what is behind it all. Could be just a bad batch of Mexican drugs or mass psychosis. Remember those German nuns back in the 15th century who started biting everybody?”

  Nobody did, but a few of the drivers laughed at this. Some of them knew Billy from the old days when he would wash their trucks and continually stump them with weird trivia questions.

  Peanut Butter and Butter Cup were in a booth near the counter and the older of the two ladies, Peanut Butter, as the drivers all knew her, asked him if he’d heard anything about the governor declaring a state of emergency. And if he did, would trucks still be allowed on the roads. They had a load of livestock on, they couldn’t wait for days for things to settle down. They didn’t carry extra feed or water.

  Again, Billy reiterated that he didn’t really know anything yet. He’d have someone call and let them know more once he got to the office. The conversations among the drivers started back up again and they speculated about things no one really had any answers to.

  Tiny and Gunny turned back to their plates before the food got cold, Scratch was texting on his phone again. They heard a dull thumping sound before they looked up to see a blacked out Chrysler 300, complete with huge rims and skinny tires, pull up to the gas pumps closest to the building. The heavy thumping bass beat must have been deafening inside the car.

  “Yo, I got 15s banging: they can beat a man up!” Scratch rapped, throwing his best hand and claw gang signs.

  Tiny just shook his head. “And he’s gonna wonder why he gets pulled over,” he said. “Disturbing the peace if nothing else.”

  A skinny black man with braids and beads in his hair jumped out, nearly dancing to the beat which continued on after he shut off the car and swiped his card to start fueling. He was wearing his saggy pants so low, most of his skinny rump and brightly colored underwear was showing. His gold chains, the sideways hat, the silver teeth and neck tattoos announced to the world he was ghetto and proud of it.

  A white cargo van with ladders on the roof pulled into the last island and a couple of guys in paint stained pants got out and stretched, started filling their own gas tank, ignoring the young black man dancing to his music.

  Most of the drivers had noticed the ghetto gangster because of the thumping bass vibrating the windows of the diner and were half-jokingly laying odds on how long till he got pulled over for driving while black. Gunny went back to his blueberry pancakes. He had better things to worry about.

  The two motorcycle riders had finished their breakfast and had walked outside to their bikes, talking and strapping on their helmets.

  “Going to be a good day for a ride” Gunny commented. “If Billy is bringing in all his deputies, they have the road to themselves.”

  Tiny harrumphed. “They can have it. You know they’ll be running a hundred miles an hour through those curves. Gimme my old Harley any day. Slow and easy.”

  “Shit,” Scratch said, quickly looking over his shoulder to make sure Kim hadn’t heard. “They’ll be going a hundred before they leave the parking lot.”

  The deputy had paid for his dozen breakfast biscuits and was trying to get out of the restaurant without being rude but still trying to answer some of the questions when Cobb stumped in and cut everyone off. “The man said he don’t know nothin’ more than what he’s already told ya so shut yer gobs and let him get out of here and do his job.” He rasped.

  Billy smiled and nodded his thanks, pushing open the door and walking into the C-store, headed for the main doors out to the parking lot.

  The two motorcycle riders, fully kitted up with their helmets and leather gauntlets took off out of the lot with a little too much throttle than was strictly necessary, anxious to start carving the winding mountain roads. Especially now that they knew the sheriff’s department wouldn’t be on patrol. It was going to be a glorious early fall day.

  The bikes were running beautifully, the police presence was at a minimum and the Go Pro cameras were turned on.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter 2

  Sara, on her CBR, couldn’t help but feel the awesomeness of the day coming on. Her riding buddy was on a GSX, a bike equal to hers. She had a full tank of gas, it was perfect fall weather, and there were a hundred miles of curves to conquer. She had been riding all her life, starting on mini bikes and dirt bikes when she was a kid growing up on the farm. As a woman, she had a hard time finding other females she could really tear up the roads with.

  She knew plenty of girls that rode, even belonged to a group that would tool around on day trips and they were fun but none of the other girls she rode with liked to really rip through the mountain roads at 150. Most of them had probably never had their bikes much past the speed limit.

  So she rode with guys. Most were cool after they saw that she knew how to handle her bike, it wasn’t all just show. Today she was riding with a guy she had met at the bike shop. He seemed nice, wasn’t pushy. Cute, too. She’d reserve judgment until she saw how he handled that big GSX, she thought.

  She gave the throttle a quick blip and brought the front wheel up a foot or so, enjoying the feeling of power and control. Whatever the morons in the city were all worked up about didn’t affect her in the least. She just wanted to ride. To lean hard and drag her knee through the twisties, to see the white dotted lines on the road become a solid blur when she hit 140 in the straights. To feel the scream of her engine between her legs. To hear….“WHAT THE?” was all she had time to think before she was tackled off her bike and slammed to the ground by a screaming woman in a house dress and a curious red blotch splashed all over the front of her flapping gown.

  She had come out of nowhere it seemed, launching straight at her while her front wheel was still hanging two feet off the ground. The force of the impact ripped her off the bike, her hand twisting the throttle full to the stop as she flew backward with the gnashing and screaming woman tearing at her as they were flying through the air.

  She was like a rabid dog, lunging at her face, scrabbling with her hands and feet to get up to her neck. Sara’s bike wheeled the rest of the way up and over as they left it and she heard the instant revs of the engine to 10,000 rpms and back down again. Heard the crunch of breaking plastic as it slammed onto the asphalt, sliding towards the high desert scrub on the side of the road.

  They hit the road hard, Sara’s helmeted head bouncing and her Kevlar lined leathers rasping across th
e blacktop and into the sand. She wasn’t hurt by the fall, just stunned and trying to wrap her head around the fact that she had just been body slammed at 40 miles an hour while riding a wheelie by a raving lunatic. The leathers and helmet were designed for things like this… well, not exactly like this, but for taking an impact with an unforgiving surface and allowing the wearer to walk away unscathed.

  The crazy lady didn’t slow down one bit when they finally stopped sliding, just attacked with more ferocity than ever, snapping her jaws, raking her already broken fingernails over her leather, trying to find something human to sink her teeth into. She was all knees and elbows and fingers everywhere all at once.

  Sara felt panic racing through her head! This schizoid kept trying to bite into her face and neck but the helmet and support collar she wore wouldn’t let her. Did she scream? Probably. She tried to push the flailing woman off but she was like an octopus, my God, how many arms and legs did she have?

  She was all over her, roaring in her face, bashing her teeth against the helmet trying to get at her. She could see her nose break, up close and in bloody 3d as she once again smashed into her faceplate. Her hands pulled and clawed at Sara’s jacket. Every time she managed to push her away she came back in twice as vicious. A pulling, grasping woman-thing trying to tear through the leather and padding of the one-piece suit she wore. Sara knew she screamed that time and mindless survival adrenaline kicked in.

  A blind urgency to get this thing off of her overrode everything else. She no longer saw her as the 100-pound Mexican woman, maybe on drugs, maybe just crazy. She saw a monster trying to eat her face, she saw childhood nightmares had become real.

  Her fight-or-flight animal brain engaged and she started punching the woman in the side of her head with her carbon fiber reinforced leather knuckles. She struggled and tried to roll her off but the madwoman’s strength was unreal, she ignored Sara’s bashing on the side of her head and sank her teeth into the neck collar again, this time getting a solid mouthful and ragging her head back and forth like a dog with a blanket. The collar ripped clear of her neck, the Velcro fasteners coming free.

  Sara’s blind terror ratcheted up another notch. She had to get this thing OFF! The next lunge would tear her throat wide open. She got a handful of the woman’s flying black hair as she spit out the neck collar but the leather of her gloves was slick, not doing a very good job of holding her head back, they were slipping and she was lunging with inhuman strength.

  The banshee saw the unprotected skin of her throat and screamed again, diving in to tear it open. Then Brian was there, ripping off his helmet and using it as a weapon. He smashed it into the side of her head at a full run and a crushing swing, hopping over the two flailing bodies as it dove for Sara’s neck.

  With the momentum of the devastating head blow and her own adrenaline jacked strength, Sara was finally able to shove her off and scrambled to her feet, breathing hard, her eyes finding Brian’s, both of them with stunned looks on their faces.

  “What the fuck!” Brian yelled “Dude… what the actual fuck?” he whispered, almost to himself, staring dazedly at the blood splatter on his helmet. Sara was starting to get the shakes. She looked over at the inert body of the slim Hispanic girl sprawled where she had fallen. Her head was caved in on one side, blood trickling out of her nose and mouth into the sands. Grayish bits poking out of the crack in her skull.

  “Oh man. Oh man. Oh man.” He whispered. “Oh man. I didn’t mean to kill her, Sara.” He sat down abruptly like his legs had just come unhinged.

  “It was self-defense, Brian. She was trying to rip my throat out,” she said unevenly, trying to get her breath back, her hands shaking as the adrenaline fled her system.

  “It was all so fast…” He said “I mean, the way she took you off your bike... It looked like she was trying to eat you. I didn’t mean to kill her.”

  “Maybe she’s not dead,” she said, a quaver in her voice, and started to walk over to her to see if there was anything she could do but stopped after only a step. Her head was crushed. Horribly misshapen. Her brains were leaking out.

  Sara was an EMT for Saint Mary’s Regional in Reno and she knew dead when she saw it. That poor woman was definitely dead. She looked away, flipping up her visor and breathing deeply to get fresh air before she got sick. She was used to seeing blood and the aftermath of violence in her job but not used to having any of it perpetrated on herself.

  She looked instead at her bike. It was laying on its side a few feet off of the road and she started towards it, trying to clear her head. She had to step away; her stomach was really churning around the sausage and eggs she’d eaten.

  The back of the truck stop they had just left was still visible, only a few hundred yards down the road. This was all so surreal. They would have to get that cop that was there, explain what happened. They hadn’t meant to hurt her, everything happened so fast. Surely they wouldn’t get arrested for this. It was an accident and that girl had been seriously whacked out of her gourd.

  Brian looks messed up. Geez, is he crying? Maybe he’s going into shock. All these thoughts and more were rattling through her head as she picked up her Fireblade. It was a big bike and heavy but she stood it back up the way she had learned years ago, using her legs, and checked the damage. It still looked rideable, just some of the plastic scratched and cracked. The sand had saved it from any real damage.

  She wondered if it would start. She’d never laid a fuel-injected bike down before. She knew from riding old dirt bikes growing up on the farm in Idaho that they were hard to start once you laid them down. You would have to kick it over a few dozen times to get the carburetor primed and working right once you fell off after trying something stupid.

  She looked over at Brian as she pushed the big Honda back onto the asphalt. He seemed out of it, just sitting there in the sand at the side of the road with his head down. Could they really have been enjoying breakfast just a few minutes ago? A lifetime had happened in a span of time it took to watch a few commercials on TV.

  “Brian,” she said but stopped when she heard an eerie quiet howling behind her. She jerked her head around, thinking “God, there can’t be another one…”

  But there was. Two of them running at full speed, straight towards them, coming from a mobile home that was set back into the high desert at the end of a long unpaved driveway. They looked like kids, maybe ten or twelve, still in their pajamas.

  “Brian!” she screamed this time, jabbing at the starter button of her bike. Nothing happened, not even a click. “Shit, shit, shit” the front part of her mind screamed while the more rational part yelled “Neutral safety, idiot!” She swung her leg over, pulled the clutch lever and jabbed the button again in a single, practiced motion and the bike fired to life.

  “Brian!” she yelled again. “We gotta go! There’s more of them!”

  The rational and thinking part of her brain was trying to come up with a reason why this was happening. The woman had maybe been zonked on Spice or something but kids? No way. But there they were, tearing across the scrub-covered sands, heedless of the thorny bushes shredding their feet, hands outstretched and as crazy as the woman had been. Meth Lab gone bad? Homemade PCP disaster?

  The survival part of her brain was saying “who gives a shit, get the hell outta here!” She turned to look at her newest friend whom she’d only known for a few weeks. The guy she thought was cute and had admired his bike. The guy who had just saved her life.

  He was still just sitting there beside the dead woman, staring at the sand between his legs. Is it shock? The two kids were fast. How could they be so quick? They were at a full sprint but faster. No time to get Brian’s bike picked up and started. She yelled again “Brian! Get on, Man. Get on! They’re coming!”

  This time Brian looked up from the ground and saw Sara shooting over towards him, fear on her face. He saw the two kids coming straight for them, running right through cactus and tumbleweeds not even noticing the damage it was do
ing to their bare feet. He jumped up and started to run away from them, blind panic pushing his body to flee, not even hearing Sara’s screams for him to get on the back of the bike.

  The truck stop loomed in the distance.

  It would be safe there.

  He had to get inside.

  That cop was there.

  He would help him.

  He would know what to do.

  He had to get there.

  So he ran like he was back in high school running sprints. No thought of getting his motorcycle. No thought of just hopping on the back of Sara’s bike. Pure, blind terror. He had seen what that woman did, tearing into Sara like she was some mad demon.

  He couldn’t take that. No way. Those two little monsters weren’t going to do that to him. He had to run. He had to make it to the restaurant. He had to get inside.

  He ran, arms pumping, feet pounding the pavement, blind to anything else except the safety of the truck stop.

  Back to the diner and the people. Back to that cop.

  Sara rode up beside him, yelling “Get on! Get on!” But it was useless. Brian was in full panic mode. Sara looked back at the kids. They seemed to be gaining ground, but they were only about a hundred yards to the corner of the truck stop. Maybe another fifty to the entrance doors. She did some nano-fast calculations. Brian could make it if he kept the speed up.

  Without another second's thought, she twisted the wick and leaned into it, keeping the front tire firmly on the ground. She was up to 80 miles an hour and then hard on the binders, leaning into the parking lot. As she shot towards the front doors, she locked the brakes then let the bike crash to the ground once she had slowed enough to hop off and into a full run.

  The cop was there, just coming out of the door with a bag of food in his arms, and watched in stunned amazement as the pretty little biker with the form fitting leathers threw her bike down. Sara ran towards him, yelling and waving her arms, past the shocked faces of everyone looking out the windows of the diner.