“Can we go through the heating vents to get to different floors?” Robert asked. “Maybe we can get down to the garage that way.”
“Naw, too small,” Phil answered. “But we can use the maintenance ladder in the elevator shafts.”
There was a quiet uproar and everyone got excited. They hadn’t even considered it, hadn’t known there were ladders in the shafts. Phil smacked himself in the head, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before and Lacy reached over and lightly smacked him again, just for good measure.
“Okay,” he said enthusiastically. “This is something we can work with. All the elevator cars are on the bottom floor, in the lower parking area. They automatically go down if there is a loss of power.”
“YES!” Lacy chimed in. “And they have access panels on the ceilings, right? We can climb down, open the panels, get in the elevator then pry the doors open. Voilà! We’re in the garage!” she beamed at them, the fine French Brandy already making her a little tipsy.
There were smiles and glasses held up in a toast all around the table.
“But what if the garage is still full of them?” Mr. Sato asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Alex from accounting said and downed his snifter of 100-year-old spirits like it was bottom shelf sour mash whiskey.
They slept comfortably that night. They had full bellies and a soft glow from the $3,000 dollar bottle of Cognac that most of them couldn’t afford. The lawyer's offices had soft leather couches and there were plenty of spare golf clothes and tailored suits hanging in the closets to use as blankets or pillows.
They had a plan that held promise and now they had a way to easily move between floors.
Tomorrow they would get out of here.
Chapter 25
The Three Flags Truck Stop
Day 4
Everyone was up early the next morning, coffee and breakfast being served at six, people grabbing last minute items off of the mostly bare store shelves, the truckers making one final load check to ensure everything was tight and secure. They weren’t sure what to expect but no one was planning on smooth sailing.
Every vehicle had the best radios Wire Bender could tune for them, fuel tanks were filled to the brim. When breakfast was finished, Martha and Cookie washed the dishes and tidied up, much to the annoyance of Cobb who wanted every hand to help with the final loading.
“I not leave this mess for people to see.” she had told him. “What kind of pig you think I am?”
He knew not to argue though and stomped around in a mood, barking at everyone else to hurry up and get situated. “We’re rolling at zero eight hundred,” he kept snapping. “If you’re not in the convoy, you’re getting left behind.”
The nervousness was in the air, some taking it better than others. As it grew closer to departure time, Gunny noticed a few people make a hurried dash for the bathrooms, suddenly having to go in the worst way.
Some of the non-drivers were teaming up with the truckers to ride with them and all of the ladies had been asked more than once. Most of the truckers that had seen real combat, had fired shots in anger and were laughing the pre-trip jitters away. They were cracking jokes and doing their best to appear unconcerned.
Gunny had the paper maps spread out on the big table and was going over the route again with Sara, making sure their GPSs were all taking them on the same roads. Cobb had given her one of the big Truck GPS units out of the store and Tommy had welded up a bracket for it on her handlebars.
The problem with them though, is those units didn’t like to route on the small roads and kept trying to direct them back to approved truck routes. That was part of Sara’s job as scout. She was watching out for major road blockages from accidents and making sure there were no low bridges they couldn’t get under. They didn’t need that kind of surprise along the way and then have to back fourteen trucks and a tour bus down a little, windy road until they found a turnaround spot.
Firecracker and Jellybean were the only two drivers who wanted to head to their own houses to see if they could find family members. Firecracker had been lucky on the telephone when this all started and had actually gotten to speak to his wife. He had told her to stay inside, he would be coming to get her.
Everyone else was single or from a big city east of the Mississippi. Boston, Cincinnati, Orlando or the like. They didn’t mention wanting to try to get home and Gunny knew they had seen the videos and knew it was probably impossible. Maybe once they got to where they were going, they could get rescue parties together.
They had decided to take the northern route to Lakota, it wound through a part of the country that was much less populated. They were passing through Salt Lake City so they could check on Firecracker’s family. It was only five hundred miles and once they wormed their way past Reno and Sparks on the back roads, they hoped the interstate would be passable all the way to the Salty.
“This just doesn’t seem real.” Scratch said. “I mean, it’s supposed to be the end of the world and we’re still eating home cooking, taking hot showers, playing video games and watching movies. The kids are still bugging everybody for change for the vet’s box.”
Gunny glanced up at the train tracks with their semi-trucks making the never ending rounds. He hadn’t really noticed, they were part of the background noise like the jukebox that never stopped since Cobb had put it on free play. He was gathering his road atlas and GPS along with the other supplies he had on the table and before he could answer, the lights flickered once and went out. The Hank Williams that had been playing quietly in the background stopped mid-sentence.
“It just got real,” he said. “Countdown starts now until the nukes start blowing if the General is wrong and the Hajjis don’t get them shut down.”
The ambient light wasn’t much with the trucks still blocking the windows, but it was enough to get everyone moving towards the junkyard area. Gunny’s truck was lead, he’d been out in the new world twice now and his Peterbilt was a little stouter than some of the rest. Griz had the only other heavy haul truck with a double frame but he had a low boy trailer. Not so good for clearing a path because it was only a few inches off of the ground.
He’d had a single piece of huge steel pipe over nine feet tall on it going to a construction site but he’d simply unchained the load and turned the wheel sharply when he was bringing it around to the junkyard. The giant pipe rolled harmlessly out of the parking lot and stopped at the edge when it hit the soft sand, much to the disappointment of everyone who hoped he would crush zombies with it. They had discussed leaving the trailer but decided if they came across a good bulldozer or earthmover, it would be nice to be able to take it with them. Might come in handy. Sara had pointed out that it was low enough so she could bounce her motorcycle up on it if they had to plow through a big horde.
She could pass through the crowd without being stripped off of her bike. Most of the guys had reservations about riding a motorcycle into this brave new world and had tried to talk her out of it but she was adamant. She pointed out that it was infinitely more maneuverable than their trucks or a car and fast enough to get away from any danger.
She readily agreed that if things got too hairy, she would load it up on Griz’s low boy but she wanted to ride. It was her decision and they needed to back off and stop telling her what she could and couldn’t do. They finally did.
Gunny climbed into the cab and started when he saw Bunny sitting in the passenger seat. She was smiling, wearing a T-shirt from the children’s rack she had taken a pair of scissors to, looking good and drinking a beer. “Hi,” she said, bubbly as ever “Can I ride with you?”
“Um, yeah, if you want.”
“The bus was getting crowded,” she said and took a pull off of her Longneck.
He wasn’t sure if he believed that. He was sure every unmarried driver there had asked her to ride with him.
It was eight o’clock in the morning and she was drinking a beer. She would want to stop t
o pee every half hour. He was trying to figure out a way to tell her he changed his mind, he didn’t need some drunk bimbo flashing cleavage in the truck with him and she needed to get out. But in a nice way.
Then the passenger door opened and he heard another woman’s voice. “Ms. Cruz, I’m to be riding in this truck. That big man they call Griz is about five trucks back. He wanted me to ask you to ride with him.”
As Bunny hopped down, happy to be away from the cop who had arrested her on numerous occasions, Deputy Collins climbed in. Still in her uniform. Hair pulled back tightly in a bun. “Do you mind?” she asked.
Gunny smiled. “Not at all. I think you saved me from a major headache. Griz really asked for her to ride with him?”
“Not exactly,” she said, a slight smile on her lips.
Gunny nodded. Women’s games. He wanted to stay out of that. He’d seen Griz giving the Deputy an appreciative stare a couple of times and he was pretty sure she’d caught it too. He bet the big teddy bear hadn’t had the nerve to ask her to ride with him so this was her way of… what? Payback? Testing him? Who knew? They’d figure it out if it was meant to be.
“Cobb tell you to ride with me?”
“No,” she said. “I was on the tour bus and saw her climb in. Thought I would do you a favor and get rid of her. I knew she wouldn’t want to be in the same truck with me, we have a bit of history.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Besides,” she added, “The president needs a bodyguard.”
“Don’t you start...” Gunny groaned. “I’m just a placeholder till they find the right guy.”
She just nodded, thinking to herself, “They may already have the right guy.” She was still grateful that he had gotten her out of the holding cells where they’d been trapped.
“Just help me negotiate through jams if we come to them. Watch for open areas, things like that”. Gunny said. “Keep an eye out for big crowds of those things.”
Cobb’s voice came over the radio which was surprisingly quiet. No static at all in the background and Gunny had the squelch all the way off.
“Take us out,” he said, and Gunny dropped it in gear as Tommy opened the gate.
As soon as Sara zipped by on her bike and the trucks started rolling past the front of the Three Flags, the dozen or so zombies that had wandered in took off after them and the guys a few trucks back got to practice running them down.
For all of them except Lars, Scratch and Griz, it was a brand new experience but no one faltered. They all did the grisly job and none of the walking dead was walking when the last truck rolled by.
Chapter 26
By the time Gunny got up to speed, Sara was already out of sight, the tail light disappearing towards the cut off they wanted to use a few miles up the road. Cobb was riding with Tommy bringing up the rear of the convoy. After a few minutes, Sara came in on Channel 9 over the second CB Wire Bender had installed, asking for a radio check.
Most of the guys stayed on 19, Cobb had given very direct orders that channel 9 was for the lead and tail elements, if you wanted to blabber on about nothing, then stay on 19. Wire Bender had installed a second radio along with the Hams and antennas in Gunny’s and Tommy’s truck to be dedicated to the emergency channel so Sara wouldn’t have to worry about being talked over.
Before Gunny could reach the mic, the deputy had grabbed it and replied with a “Roger, Lead One. We read you Lima Charlie. What’s your yardstick?” They went back and forth a few times, made sure Sara was within range and her radio was working fine. Sara knew most of the police radio protocols from riding around in her ambulance and picked up on the trucker terms the deputy threw in.
As they drove, they experimented with range and the radios seemed to work fine over a three to four mile area, anything over that and it got a little iffy.
“You’ve got the trucker lingo down pretty good,” Gunny observed.
“Oh, we listen in when there’s nothing else going on. How do you think we bust you guys dodging the scales?” she asked. Gunny couldn’t tell if she was joking. Probably not.
“Making the first turn now” Sara came over the air.
“Now comes the fun part,” Gunny said as he approached the turnoff a few minutes later and started downshifting.
“You got a name?” he asked “Something besides Deputy Collins?”
She looked at him sideways, hesitated before she answered.
Gunny picked up on it, quickly realized that she probably thought he was hitting on her. He flashed his wedding ring at her as he spun the steering wheel.
“It’s Debbie,” she finally said a little grudgingly, her eyes going back to scanning for danger.
Gunny slowed at the bottom of the ramp and started nudging cars out of the way with the blade, swinging wide into the oncoming traffic lane to have the clearance for the trailer. He saw a few of them coming out of the strip mall parking lot, running towards them at full speed, the strange warbling screams that seemed to call to the others starting to come from their throats.
Sara was gone, having zigged and zagged through the stalled and crashed cars. Gunny’s trailer caught the front of a Toyota that had been abandoned on the road and pushed it out of the way, the front plastic bumper tearing free as the headlights shattered. “Man, we should have thought of the wide swings,” Gunny said. “Should have built some kind of deflector at the rear wheels of the trailer, hope I don’t get a flat.”
Collins was staring in the mirror as he knocked it the rest of the way aside. “Looks okay,” she said. “You moved it cleanly.”
The first of the dozens streaming towards them had made it through the maze of cars in the parking lot and started to fling themselves at the truck and its occupants, heedless of the danger. Gunny had the rig straight now and grabbed another gear, trying to ignore them and the bouncing of the tandems crushing them under the tires.
“Save some for us!” Scratch yelled over the CB, still on the main road and seeing everything that was happening ahead of him.
Now that he was rolling in a straight line, the blade easily knocked the few cars he couldn’t avoid out of the way and he kept the speed to an even twenty miles an hour. The jolts weren’t too bad and it was fast enough to keep most of the runners falling behind. Let the other guys cut them down, get in a little practice.
They wound through the secondary streets, staying on the bigger roads and avoiding ninety-degree turns where they could. The crowd of zombies kept getting bigger, more and more streaming out of the subdivisions, running at them as fast as they could. They were outpacing most of them but the faster ones kept trying to leap and grab onto the trucks, most of them being ground to paste when they would miss and fall under the tires.
Cobb and Tommy had fallen back a little, letting the rest of the convoy get ahead and then they hammered on it, running down the growing horde from the rear as they chased the trucks, slinging broken bodies’ yards into the air. They only had about fifteen miles of two lane before they made their way back to the highway running east. Sara was at the top of the on-ramp with a clear view all around her, waiting for them to arrive. There were a couple of dead ones laying near her bike, bullet holes in their heads.
“Road is clear as far as I can see,” she said over her helmet mic. “How fast can those big trucks roll?”
“Better keep it under sixty.” Tommy cut in. “The over-sized tires we put on don’t like speed too much.”
“10-4” she came back, spun her bike around and pulled a small wheelie as she took off.
The day passed by in uneventful boredom. There weren’t too many cars on this lonely stretch of highway. As they passed exits, sometimes there were some of the undead who would give chase, but they were either too slow and would be easily cut down by the blades or chased Cobb and Tommy until they were out of sight. They stopped twice during the long day to refuel the bike and let Sara stretch her legs and drink.
She made for a good scout and had alerted them to a pileup under
a bridge that blocked the road and had them reroute over to the westbound side for a while. Martha and Cookie had been utilizing the little kitchen in the tour bus and when she called lunch break, everyone was pleasantly surprised at how good road food could be. Even out in the middle of nowhere with no other vehicles in sight, Cobb had posted guards and they took turns eating.
Gunny, Griz and Firecracker went over the maps for the umpteenth time, checking their speed averages for an accurate ETA. There was a good scenic overlook area before Skull Valley with enough room for all the trucks to make a sort of wagon train defensive perimeter on one side. With the steep cliffs on the other, it was as safe a spot as they were likely to find to spend the night. The trucks could stay there in an easily defensible position as a crew of them bob-tailed into town with Firecracker to check his family.
“We’re making real good time,” Griz said, tapping the overlook they were heading towards. “We’ll make it there before nightfall if we can keep it up. I want to be able to scout the area before it gets dark.”
“I could have made it in twenty minutes.” Richard Bastille said quietly but loud enough for them to hear. “If somebody hadn’t smashed my car, that is.” He had been making snide comments like this every chance he got and not just about his Ferrari. He was a generally negative guy who was having a hard time adjusting to the new reality that his big shot days were over. He had been a movie producer and liked to name drop whenever he was talking to anyone.
Although he had been deferred to and treated with the respect he deserved during the first hours of this nightmare, all the people who had been his new friends had taken off in their cars the first day. The rest of these people didn’t seem to care who he was. He had been rich, successful and a part of the ‘in’ crowd who went to all the right parties and knew all the right people. Now he was stuck with these truckers and mechanics and his gal pal still wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He just didn’t want to believe the good life was over and no one would jump and grovel to him like he’d been used to most of his adult life.
Zombie Road (Book 1): Convoy of Carnage Page 27
