The cowboys and some of the others had brought in a few beers from the cooler in the C-store. Cobb had refused payment for anything. He and Martha knew the score better than anyone in here. She’d lived through the collapse of everything she knew; lived through utter lawlessness in her home country until Cobb had come back and spirited her away.
She’d helped him when he was injured, when half of his face had been ripped off. She hadn’t saved his life, she couldn’t claim that, the doctors had done that. But she’d been there for everything else. She was one of the local orphan girls who was hired by the Americans to run errands, change bedpans and do laundry.
She picked up enough English and was soon helping with in-country rehabilitation for injuries that didn’t warrant a long trip back to the States. She helped him learn how to walk again on his crutches, speak again with a growl and accept the fact that his face was no longer handsome.
When Saigon was falling and she was sure to be killed because she had helped the ‘enemy,' Cobb had gotten to her, met her among the chaos and bombs and fires. He had taken her back to the last military outpost and had the chaplain marry them right there. She barely understood what was happening, only had the clothes on her back. The next thing she knew, she was on an airplane bound for America with the rest of the civilians and dependents being evacuated.
They eyed each other over their mugs of tea, both reliving those dark days when a country fell into ruin and death and destruction. That was bad. This was worse. The whole world had fallen into ruin. And death. And destruction.
He gently squeezed her hand and stood up. He wasn’t one to sit around and there were things to do. Things really were as bad as bad can be. He needed to start figuring out a long-term plan. Not just a week or month-long plan. A years-long plan.
He stomped into Wire Bender's shop, shoved between Griz and Hot Rod leaning on the counter and dropped an armful of USB sticks he had gathered out of the store. “Still got internet?” he growled
“Yeah, but only from the satellite feeds and it’s going fast. Local access is down.” Said Wire Bender.
“Start downloading everything you can about survival stuff,” Cobb said. “Blacksmithing, seed saving, repair manuals, solar and wind power stuff… I don’t know. Anything you can think of before it’s all gone. Save it. Make back-ups.”
Wire Bender's eyes went big and his mouth dropped open a little.
“Close your gob” Cobb grumbled as he clomped out of the room. “You look dumber than you normally do.”
Cobb made his rounds, checking on security, talking to the men that had been posted around different areas. There wasn’t much happening. Just the occasional infected showing up now and then.
“They seem to know we’re in here but as long as they don’t see us, they’re pretty calm. Just kind of wander around and bump into things but always stay nearby,” Scratch said, when Cobb joined him on the catwalk. Kim was up there with him, watching the glow of the lights of Reno that was visible over the horizon.
“Hard to believe it’s only been less than a day, Paw Paw,” she said.
He grunted noncommittally. Then he told her and Scratch what he had Wire Bender doing and if they thought of anything he needed to download, make sure to radio him and let him know.
“They aren’t interested in the cattle that Peanut Butter is hauling.” Scratch noted, watching the undead meander around the parking lot. “I think they only want to eat human.”
Cobb grunted again.
Kim-Li turned back to watch the distant city lights, her hand resting over Scratch's on the railing. Cobb glinted at Scratch who suddenly felt nervous and self-conscious, almost like ol’ Cobb had caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to.
He held Cobb’s gaze with what he hoped was an innocent look on his face till the old man looked over at the back of his grand-daughter. He turned his hard stare back at Scratch and Scratch wasn’t sure, it could have been a trick of the flickering light, but he thought he saw the old man’s lip curl a little, the hint of a smile, as he turned around and clomped back towards the trap door.
When Cobb announced to the dining area what he was having Wire Bender do with the internet before they lost it completely, he hadn’t expected much of a response. What could a bunch of truckers think of that wasn’t already being downloaded? But Sara and Stacy both jumped up, nearly spilling their herbal teas with a chorus of OH MY GOD and they both ran for the door rattling things off to each other as they went. “Surgery” “Pediatrics” “Dentistry” “Alternative Medicines” “Herbal Remedies” until they were out of earshot.
Cookie mentioned something about preserving foods without refrigeration and canning and some other stuff as he headed out of the back of the kitchen.
Cobb looked at the rest of the group still sitting at their tables.
“Sure you don’t need to know how to drive a space shuttle or something?” he asked, a bit of menace in his voice.
“It really is the end of the world?” Buttercup asked. She was only in her 20s and Cobb could tell she’d been crying but seemed to have it under control now.
“I think so,” he said. Softening his growl a little.
“Well, we better get some things on livestock care and animal husbandry, then.”
Peanut Butter nodded and they both stood to leave. “We know horses, but cattle and sheep are something else entirely.”
“And we need to either set the cattle free that we have in the trailer or start butchering them tomorrow,” Buttercup said. “They can’t last another day without water.”
“We have incoming! It looks like the painter van is coming back.” Scratch blasted over the kitchen CB from the handheld he had on the roof. “And some guy from the parking lot is making a run for it too! Get the front doors open!”
Cobb and most of the truckers were on their feet and running for the C-store. They had guns drawn and were ready to lend fire support if needed. Griz came charging up the aisle from the CB shop where he’d been hanging out, his Colt .45 at the ready.
They could hear the sounds of bodies thumping against metal and the screams of the undead starting to chase after the fresh meat. As soon as they got the doors open, they crouched to look under the trailer blocking the entrance and could see the van leading the zombies away from the store front again. He had made a quick pass in, ran into a few of them and was leading the rest back out after him on a merry chase.
“Smart.” said Griz and all agreed.
The van led them out onto the main road then did a quick U-turn and came flying back in, plowing into as many as he could, sending them flying in all directions. There had only been about a dozen milling around and he had effectively cut their numbers in half. The broken and maimed ones were still a danger but a gimping, limping broken down zombie was nowhere near as dangerous as a screaming runner who could leap twenty feet and had two good arms to shred you with.
The one headlight that still worked picked up a running figure as he made his way towards the doors, coming out of the truck parking lot. But he really didn’t look like any trucker they had ever seen. His hair was vivid black and in a Mohawk. He was wearing leather pants and a biker leather jacket but the most striking thing of all was the Hannibal Lecter Mask. Or maybe the Wolverine style armbands he wore with the jutting blades glinting in the sodium light.
A few of the runners had seen the man hurtling for the safety of the truck stop and changed their path to intercept him. Griz leveled his .45 but it was already too late to get a clear shot, the masked man was behind the targets. The van slid in quick and the doors on both sides flew open even before it came to a complete stop. The black kid was back and Gunny was with him, already taking shots at the faster ones heading towards them and the weirded up guy in the mask. The first of the runners leaped at the mohawked man running towards them and he picked up his pace and crouched lower.
Not a full out sprint, just enough so the infecteds leap was a little too long and he brought up
the Wolverine claws and drove them in, raking his belly wide open. They dug in a little too deep as the zombie flew over his head, its guts starting to spill out of the deep furrows in its belly.
The blades hooked on the pelvis bone and snapped off, sending them both crashing to the ground. The zombie head first into asphalt with a face breaking crunch and the leather clad man flat on his back, his feet flying out from under him. His arm was stuck wrist deep in the dead man’s abdomen, the broken blades protruding out of his rump.
His was quick to rebound though, wiggling his arm out and on his feet, punching powerfully at the screaming woman with her arms outstretched reaching for him. He caught her square in the eyes, right where he had been aiming for, and the blades punched out of the back of her skull.
He shook her off, using a booted foot to her mouth to help her along, the blades twisting his arm at an awkward angle as he finally jerked them free. He heard the reports of gunfire and jumped over a falling body as he continued his run for the doors. He went into full sprint mode, dropped to his knees to let the plastic pads slide him under the trailer, right past the two guys from the van who were scrambling for the door.
He slid gracefully through the entrance and popped back up on his feet, like he had been practicing this move for months. Actually he had. Not the whole sliding under the trailer thing but sliding across the slippery stage, slapping outstretched hands as he whizzed by and popping up on the other side.
He made a show out of slicing things up with the claws onstage when the band went into a screaming guitar or thundering drum solo. The singer had to do something so he didn’t look like a tool just standing there when there wasn’t anything to be sung. He’d slice up watermelons, political posters of hated candidates, piñatas filled with little bottles of whiskey to sling out into the crowd or beach balls that had been bouncing around. Anything that was messy and made a spectacle.
By the time he did the stage slide hi-fives to the fans in the front row, he had quietly changed the razor sharp claws out for a dulled and blunted pair. The bouncing, brawling fans didn’t know that though and part of the whole shtick was you may lose your fingers at a Brutal Retort concert.
As helping hands pulled the others to safety and the doors were barred shut again, the air was filled with questions.
“Where’s Tiny?” “How bad is it out there?” “Where are the others?” “Did you make it to Reno?” and “Who the hell are you?”
Cobb was there, telling everyone to shut the hell up, let them breathe for a minute and the crowd quieted down. Nearly everyone in the truck stop was there, trying to get a look at them, all with questions.
“Tiny?” Cobb asked.
Gunny just shook his head, still trying to get his breath. He had been running at a pretty hard jog when the van had come off the exit ramp just a few miles up the road and had stopped for him. He was covered in dried gore, his shirt soaked through with drying blood and brain matter and sweat. The biker or punk rocker or early Halloween guy or whatever he was looked even worse. He was covered with foul-smelling nastiness from the gutting and head splattering of the two he had killed.
Long Dawg looked none the worse for wear, never having tangled with the undead up close and personal. He let his Beretta do his talking. His gold chains and chrome grill still intact and spotless.
Cobb pointed at Gunny. “You, hit the showers. You’re stinking up the place.” He growled then pointed towards the truckers’ hallway. “You too, Stabby McStabsalot. You’re dripping all over my floors.”
“I’m Jody.” The masked man said in a thick British accent by way of introduction.
“Sure you are.” Cobb rasped and made shooing motions towards the showers.
The gathered crowd started sending questions at them again as they started to move off.
“There will be plenty of time to tell stories after they’ve been checked out and when they ain’t stinking up the place.” Cobb raised his voice to be heard over the crowd again.
Gunny looked at the newcomer who had slipped the mask up on his head. “Come on, Stabby,” He said and the crowd parted quickly to let them by, not wanting to come in contact with anything that was dripping off of them. Sara and Stacy were on their heels. “Where are you going?” Gunny asked when he realized they were being followed.
“Anybody that comes in looking like you two gets checked for bites,” Stacy replied
“That’s right,” Cobb said. “We’ve come up with a few rules while you were out goofing off. That’s the main one. Nobody comes back inside if they’ve had contact unless they are checked out. Nobody. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.” He jerked his thumb behind him.
“Soooo…you want me to get naked?” Gunny asked, a half grin on his face.
“I had your junk in my hands for the hernia check last time you came in for a physical.” Stacy retorted. “If I remember right, I won’t be getting too excited.”
There were hoots of laughter from the drivers and he was saved from trying to come up with a witty one-liner by the British guy.
“You come with me then, Luv. Maybe I got something you can get excited about.”
She just rolled her eyes as they started for the shower area again.
Chapter 15
Gunny didn’t dawdle in the shower, just cranked the water up as hot as he could stand it and stepped in, fully clothed except for his boots. He didn’t have to get naked for Stacy after all. She made him pull his shirt off, but there were no tears in his pants, no seeping blood stains so she pronounced him good.
She left, clucking to herself at the criss-crossing of old battle wounds scarring his back and chest. He scrubbed mercilessly at the crusted gore, watching the drain water circle red as he stripped off, cleaning the worst of it out of his clothes as he went.
While in the shower, he reflected back on the past several hours. He had waited in the cramped area under the bunk, hoping the milling horde would forget about him and leave. A few of them had managed to climb or fall into the cab and couldn’t figure out how to get back out. He was afraid they would smell him or hear his pounding heart but they never reacted, never suspected there was a 200-pound dinner just for them only a foot away.
They just kept bumping into each other and half falling over the shifter from the sounds of it. The horde outside of the truck calmed down after their meal was finished and just bumped around, milling about from what he could make out. They stayed for a long time. Hours.
Gunny kept waiting for something to draw them away, hoping there would be a noise somewhere but knew if there was, that meant this mob would be chasing down some other poor soul. He was afraid to sleep, to even doze for a second. He was prone to snore and if he did, even once…He kept going over what he knew about his wife and son. She was probably safe with the group in the building she was in but for how long?
His son was at school. Maybe he was safe locked away in detention. Maybe he had been one of the ones that were infected. What had caused the infection anyway? What could turn the whole world into mindless killing machines in a single day? It followed the path of the sun, that he knew but what was the trigger? Chemtrails? A passing comet full of deadly bacteria from the other side of the universe? Aliens clearing the planet so they could have it? The Illuminati? He was getting ridiculous and he knew it.
All those things had been in movies he’d seen over the years. That wasn’t it, though. It was something a little closer to home, he thought. Some man-made bug. He wracked his brain, trying to remember, just what was the trigger in all the zombie movies he had seen? This was life imitating art.
Or had the governments of the world had this particularly nasty virus and art had been imitating life? The movies and books usually blamed it on the CDC having a security breach or the Russians or the Chinese. They would blame an infected vaccine or a cabal of the super-rich wanting to eliminate all the useless eaters or some mad genocidal maniac deciding the planet would be better off without humans.
&n
bsp; The whole world fell in a day.
Except possibly some islands.
And the Middle East, if Wire Bender was right. Could the Muslims have done this? They had the desire, the crazy ones did anyway, but that was as farfetched as the aliens doing it. He had known a lot of decent people he met during his time in-country. Muslims that hated the extremists even more than he did.
They would have never let something like this happen. Anyway, how could they? They didn’t have the means. They couldn’t spray that many chemicals in the air or dump tens of thousands of gallons into every water supply all over the world without being caught and stopped.
It wasn’t airborne. No one in the truck stop had caught it and people from north and south of them had. It wasn’t in the water. They had the same city water as everyone else. The sun wasn’t causing it, plenty of them had been out in it, but it was a trigger. Sun came up, people went mad. All around them but not them.
No one there had been infected except by being bitten from someone who hadn’t been at the Three Flags. Divine Intervention? Gunny believed in God but didn’t think He would destroy the world except for a slightly rundown truck stop in an out of the way part of Nevada. Maybe the Globalists.
He’d been to the Georgia Guide Stones since they moved to Atlanta. It said right there on the stones that world population should be reduced to five hundred million. But how? That was the question that was more important than who. If they knew how maybe they could stop it. Or at least make sure they avoided whatever was causing it. He listened intently for a few moments, quietly trying to stretch the aching muscles in his back. They were still milling around outside, just inches away. Still bumbling around in the cab of the truck, occasionally falling onto the bunk then clumsily getting back up.
Zombie Road (Book 1): Convoy of Carnage Page 14
