The road was wide open, zero traffic. Up ahead, they could see some cars crashed on the highway and a smattering of gimps struggling along the road, all heading in the same direction they were. Tiny grabbed another gear and started bouncing them off the front bumper, sending them flying off into the desert in mangled heaps. The big truck barely felt the shudder of impact while he dodged around the scattered cars that had been abandoned.
“It’s amazing how it happened so fast,” Tiny said, still trying to take it all in. “I guess it only took one to run out into traffic and everybody stops or wrecks trying to avoid him.”
“Yeah.” Gunny agreed. “Probably the same thing out in the subdivisions, too. It spreads like wildfire.”
They continued on for another few miles before the crowds on the road began to get thick. They weren’t exactly starting to bog down, but the undead were attacking them now, turning and charging towards the sound of the big diesel.
“I don’t see how those cars made it through here.” Tiny said, “They must’ve got off somewhere.”
“Or all these things started chasing after them when they drove by.” Gunny replied, bouncing in the seat as Tiny plowed over a pile that had fallen under the wheels.
“There’s no way this many were on the road before.” Tiny’s door shuddered as a particularly fast one crashed into it at full speed, vaulting over the already fallen bodies. He flinched away instinctively and dropped a gear as he slowed the truck, still hurtling through the masses of undead.
Gunny fired up the CB and gave them a quick report. “Crowds are getting heavy down here, Wire Bender. They’re climbing all over the truck and no sign of any of the cars that left.”
“Man, this ain’t good,” Tiny said, fighting the wheel as he started trying to avoid the bigger clusters. “We run into a thick enough pile of them and we could get stuck.”
“Yeah,” Gunny said. “Can you get turned around? Those poor bastards are on their own. They must have drawn this crowd as they drove by or maybe they turned off, they sure as hell didn’t drive through this.”
“I’m looking man, I’m looking,” Tiny said. “I don’t want to slow down too much, they’ll dog pile us. This thing will push down a building but only if it has traction. I get in a pile of blood and guts and we’ll be spinning in place.”
“Did you make it down to the interstate?” Wire Bender came back.
As Tiny man-handled the steering wheel, aiming for openings in the teeming masses and around the more frequent abandoned cars, he was scanning for a wide area to get turned.
Gunny reached over and flipped in the interaxle lock, giving power to both rear axles. There was an emergency vehicle turnaround spot coming up. It was a place where the local smokies would usually sit, shooting radar at unsuspecting motorists. It was full of the infected streaming over from the other side of the divided highway, running towards the noise of the screaming undead. Gunny keyed the mike and replied, “No way to get down that far, Wire Bender, it’s too…”
“There’s too many of them!” Tiny yelled. “Take this one or try the next off ramp?”
“Take it! Take it!” Gunny yelled right back, forgetting to let go of the talk button in the urgency of the situation. He could see an upcoming exit and it was jammed with abandoned and wrecked cars. The mobs were getting thicker, more and more joining the hunt as they heard the sound of the motor revving. Tiny tried to keep the speed up as he downshifted, black diesel smoke rolling from the twin stacks.
The turnaround wasn’t very wide, a little over two car widths. He swung into it hard and fast, knocking screeching men and women out of the way like bowling pins, the steering wheel fighting him as he bounced over cadavers and fought the big truck into an 180-degree turn. He was sliding in the dirt, slowing down fast and the horde of undead just kept piling on them, no concern for their own bodies being battered and bounced off of the rig. They were screaming and leaping, launching themselves relentlessly and repeatedly careening away, knocking others down in their wake to be ground under the tires.
Tiny hadn’t even gotten the truck straightened back out again and he was grabbing another gear, trying to get a little speed back up. The nose of the truck was buried under the tidal wave of bodies who were now scrambling over the tumbling, rolling mass of flesh in front of the bumper.
Their vigor was renewed when they could actually see the frightened faces of fresh meat only a few feet away. A woman with bloody matted hair and a pastel jogging outfit made it over the top of the push bar and radiator grill first but others were soon following. She dove straight for Gunny, hands reaching, not understanding the concept of glass. Or maybe she did somewhere deep in her reptilian brain and just didn’t care.
Her face slammed into the windshield and it spider webbed. It didn’t shatter but she wasn’t the only one. The pile of bodies built up against the front of the truck was making a rolling, seething ramp and they were scrabbling up and over the fallen in their blood lust for flesh. Tiny was doing his best, he had the rig floored, motor screaming and was jagging the wheel from side to side in an effort to sling them off. Impossibly, there seemed to be thousands of them, they were burying the truck.
He couldn’t see out of the windshield anymore from all the bodies piling up against it and was only able to keep on the road by judging where he was out of the side windows. He flipped the air splitter on the shifter to high range and double clutched into 6th gear.
He kept slinging the steering wheel from side to side and the bodies were starting to fly off now that he was building up speed and the whipping movements were getting more effective. The truck shuddered and bounced as the last of the piled up bodies in front of the push bumper were finally either drug under the rig or slung to the side and the screaming masses were starting to fall behind.
“I think we got this!” Tiny grinned when the last man trying to bite the glass in front of his face slid off the hood as he whipped the wheel one last time.
“Watch out!” was all Gunny had time to shout before there was a bone-jarring crash. The big truck slammed into the concrete barrier that had been placed in the hammer lane, along with the ‘left lane ends Merge Right’ sign.
Tiny’s big body went flying through the windshield that had withstood so much these last few minutes but couldn’t withstand 300 pounds at 40 miles an hour. Gunny bounced back against the seatbelt, the CB mic flying out of his hand. The big truck came to a complete stop when it hit the barrier, wrapping itself around the angled concrete. It drove the solid mass into the rest of barricades that protected the workers who would ordinarily be going about their business patching up the road. Normally, they probably would have just bounced off of it but Tiny had the truck at a bad angle, trying to sling the zombies off of the hood.
Normally he would have seen the solid wall of concrete with their bright orange stripes and all of the signs warning him of the upcoming lane closure. But today was anything but normal.
Clouds of steam hissed and billowed up from the punctured radiator as the engine ground to a shuddering silence. A dazed Tiny tried to push himself backward over the steering wheel and back into the cab. His big bald dome was split open and blood was running down his face in sheets. Gunny had his seatbelt off and grabbed the big man’s belt and started pulling him back in as fast as he could but the screaming, clawing mass had caught up.
The ones in front could do nothing more than stretch for them, not tall enough to reach the top of the hood. The shuddering impacts of more and more bodies slamming into the dinner table started the pileup. Within a few seconds, the fastest of them were up and over the press of bodies and reaching for the freshly laid out main course.
Gunny had him almost in, Tiny was pushing frantically with his hands when a teenage face clamped jaws down on his wrist. He bellowed in pain and rage and fear and slammed the meaty fist of his other arm against the side of the young man’s head but more reaching hands and biting mouths were there.
Inertia was against
them.
Physics was against them.
Gravity was against them.
But they had raw strength and numbers and they were pulling him back out of the window opening. Gunny couldn’t hold him in and Tiny couldn’t fight them off. He was crushing faces with his mighty free hand, twisting in anger, trying to pull his other arm loose.
Gunny let go and grabbed the AR, shooting directly into the crowd, hoping he didn’t hit Tiny’s flailing arm by mistake but pulling the trigger anyway. He was splattering heads, blowing holes in chests, sending bullets tumbling through bones and dead flesh. Tiny still raged, still fought, but dozens of hands had him now and were pulling him over the edge of the hood, down into the feeding frenzy.
He went over the side, bounced off the fender and landed on his feet, still screaming in pain and fury. Gunny leaned out of the empty windshield frame and ran the magazine dry then grabbed for his Nine. As he cleared the holster, he noticed the painters van up the road, beyond the masses. He must have taken the previous exit.
The black kid was there, his pistol in his hand and the door of the van open. He looked like he wanted to help but there was no help. Gunny saw that now. Saw it on the kid’s face. Heard it in the screams of Tiny and the thousands of undead rushing towards the feast. They were already four and five deep surrounding the wrecker with more on the way. Rocking it, pushing towards the warm blood. He couldn’t help Tiny. He couldn’t jump down and run. He couldn’t drive away. He couldn’t keep them out of the truck with only fifteen bullets. He waved to the young man. An acknowledgment of his willingness to help. A thank you. A “you better save yourself” goodbye salute.
He turned back to Tiny. He was still on his feet but no longer fighting, too many of the undead had his arms, were taking great chunks of warm meat out of them. The only reason he didn’t fall was the press of the bodies against him, battering and pulling him this way and that. Gunny put a bullet into the top of his head then ducked back into the cab.
He had fourteen more rounds.
Thirteen dead made permanently dead and then one for himself.
Easy math.
He was calm now.
Panic mode had subsided.
Fearless.
He knew the future.
Knew how it would end.
Knew he had a minute, maybe two.
He wished things had turned out a little different, but they were what they were. He grieved for Tiny but knew he did the right thing. Knew Tiny would have wanted him to. This wasn’t the first time he had danced with Lady Death. Not the first time he had looked her square in the face and smiled, fully expecting to be in her cold embrace within the next few heartbeats.
He slipped back into the tiny little sleeper and waited for them to make their way through the windshield. As soon as they were finished with Tiny, they would be coming for him. They were still screaming and keening in a high frenzy like a school of piranhas and he knew he couldn’t hear the sounds of flesh being ripped and chewed.
He knew it was only his imagination that heard the crack of bones being broken and warm marrow sucked out. He couldn’t hear those things. Only in his mind. He thought about closing the privacy curtain, maybe they would forget about him if they couldn’t see him but he didn’t want to be taken by surprise.
He would just sit here on this bunk and wait for them. Wait for that uncaring, cold embrace of the Lady he had danced with in the past. There was only one easy way in, through the broken windshield, and he wanted thirteen head shots. A flimsy vinyl curtain wouldn’t stop them anyway, not even for a second. They’d be here, any minute. They’d finish their grisly meal and then start tearing the truck apart to get to him.
Or would they?
At the truck stop, they just milled around aimlessly, like they had forgotten why they were there, that there were people inside. Like they had pretty short attention spans and if they didn’t see or hear a meal...
Suddenly Gunny felt fear. His heart started racing again. He wasn’t calm and cool any longer. He thought he just might cheat the Old Girl one more time. He quietly slid off the bunk and reached under it to grab the latch. He lifted the bed and hoped the storage area under it wasn’t completely full of heavy chains and bulky tie downs but it was nearly empty. Tommy only kept the safety triangles, a stash of rags and some cleaning supplies in it. “
Thank God for guys who like to spend time polishing chrome, he thought as he silently slipped into the little alcove, not much bigger than a coffin. As he pulled the hinged bed back down on top of him, he could hear them scrabbling up the hood and clumsily making their way into the cab.
Chapter 13
Long Dawg knew now. Knew there wasn’t going to be any investigation by any government officials of the North Reno Truck Stop Mayhem. Wasn’t going to be any reporters. Wasn’t going to be anything. He had seen the mob of the undead and knew this van wouldn’t plow through them, so he had exited the highway.
It would be like driving into the ocean. You would be surrounded, stopped and covered. There were thousands of them. Thousands upon thousands. How had a whole city turned into zombies in only a matter of hours? It boggled his mind. Chemical spraying from the air?
No. Couldn’t have been. The medics at the truck stop were pretty sure it wasn’t some airborne virus and that made sense because no one there had caught it except the ones that were bit.
He wracked his brain on the way back to the truck stop, trying to think of what it could be, what caused it, what to do next. Where to go next. Home was out of the question. Hell, if this little wide spot on the road was completely infected and overrun by those things, LA was worse. If that was possible. Those maps must have been accurate, all those cities…. All those countries were lost.
He drove slow, feeling bad about the truckers he couldn’t help back there. That Gunny guy had probably saved his life when all this started. He’d been living the gangster lifestyle for a few years now but he hadn’t forgotten the creed that had been ingrained in him during his stint in the Army. It was deeper and stronger than the so-called street creed.
Niggas in the hood would rat you out just so they wouldn’t have to do a few months in County. All the Rangers he’d tagged along with in South America would take a bullet for you. They would never leave a man behind. He had, just now. But that was a hopeless situation and if he had tried anything, it would have been three dead instead of two.
That Gunny guy knew it too. He saw. He had waved for him to leave. Still didn’t sit right with him, though. He needed to get back to the truck stop. Let them know what he saw. Let them know how bad it really is out here. He doubted if anyone that had left the safety of the Three Flags was still alive. He had to get out of his hood attitude, get back into a military mindset.
That’s what had kept everyone back there alive and if he wanted anything, it was to stay alive. They were the best chance, joining up with them. He wouldn’t last no time at all out here on his own. Besides, where would he go? No. He’d throw in with them.
That truck stop was plenty safe, had plenty of food and water and a lot of vets who knew a thing or two about defenses. And killing. They’d figure it out. But he wanted to bring something to the table, also. He’d just watched two of them get eaten, and they seemed like they were pretty well known to everyone at the Three Flags. Pretty well liked. He could just say he hadn’t seen them, but that would be hard to pull off. He’d pulled out of the truck stop after they went by and that one armed guy on the roof had seen that.
No. He’d tell the truth. Be brutally honest. Tell them what he saw. Give an accurate situation report. And to give an accurate sit rep, he needed more information. His mind made up, Long Dawg took the next exit to do a little scouting. To get a feel for the extent of the spread of this infection. Travel a few miles off the main roads, see if there were survivors or zombies. He was careful, he had a few hours of daylight left and a full tank of gas.
If he saw a group of them, he would get turned around ASAP.
He just needed to bring a little something to the table if he were going to join this group as an equal and not as a civilian they would think they had to take care of. It was an ugly truth, but it was a truth nonetheless that civilians saw the color of your skin and more often than not, judged you for it.
Soldiers didn’t. Everybody that wore a uniform was green. They judged you on your abilities. Although he’d joined Uncle Sam’s Army to do the least amount of work in the easiest job possible, he’d learned a lot under the tutelage of the Rangers and Delta Force and the CIA guys he had been assigned to translate for.
He was a fast learner and an extra gun in the field who knew what he was doing was better than one that didn’t. There was a lot of downtime at the base and they had taken it upon themselves to make sure he was competent in the field.
By the end of his tour, they were all encouraging him to re-up, to go to Ranger school. The LT said he would make sure he got a slot but Long Dawg had other plans. Plans to get rich, not hump a pack and get shot at.
Plans that led him to right here, right now, scanning the road ahead of him for escape and evasion routes.
Chapter 14
It had been hours. The clock was ticking closer and closer to midnight. The atmosphere in the diner was tense as everyone was waiting. Anticipating the big wrecker to radio, to tell them to open the gate, they were coming in.
They were trying to hold on to hope but it was fading with each passing minute. They had heard Gunny’s and Tiny’s frantic yells as the mic in the wrecker had been keyed and held open. They heard the screaming of the zombies, the roar of the motor, Gunny yelling to watch out, a sound of impact and then nothing.
The kitchen radio, the one Kim got on sometimes to advertise to the truckers the daily specials when business was slow, had been turned up loud but there was only static over the airwaves. Nearly everyone that was left at the truck stop sat around at the tables talking quietly, waiting for the radio to speak and sipping coffee or tea.
Zombie Road (Book 1): Convoy of Carnage Page 13
