I started getting a little pissy, because he was supposed to be less than five feet from me at all times, covering me. I let it pass this one time.
I put the water in the back, closed the hatch and strolled over to him.
He pointed down the road. “What’s that?”
I could see something moving, and I didn’t like it. I put my palm over my eyes, shielding them from the waning sun, and in a moment deduced what was on the way toward us.
I sighed. “That, my friend, is a small horde of infected.”
“Shit.”
“Your mastery of profanity is the stuff of legend sir. Get in the truck, bro, it’s time to vacate the premises.”
Tim put his hands on his hips. “You know, we could just park the thing right here and sleep for the night. They can’t get in.”
“And have them banging on the sides all night messing up our beauty sleep? Tempting, but until you turn into a hot blonde with a great rack, you need your beauty sleep.”
Tim actually pouted. I don’t know if it was my tone, or the fact that I had just told him I would prefer he was a hot chick. I felt like Ship should feel when he gives me that look of reproach. Big bastard can’t say shit, but his looks are worse than those from that teacher you hated in high school.
We finished loading up, and the group of zombies…what is a group of zombies? A pride? A horde? A herd? A swarm? I know a group of crows is a murder, and that would be apt here, but it’s taken. How about a legion? I like legion, but a swarm or flock of something is a group that moves together. Fuck flock, that’s lame, so we have to go with swarm. Yup, a swarm of zombies.
Anyway, the swarm (yeah, that shit works) of zombies had gotten significantly closer, maybe a quarter mile, and Pouting Tim and I climbed into the MRAP and prepared to make ourselves scarce. I started her up, and I’m not afraid to tell you that sexy growl gave me a bit of wood. With a grin that would have put a shit-eater to shame, I pulled into the road, and Tim positively yelled at me to stop.
Wood gone, I jerked my head at him and he was pointing down the road at the mini-swarm. I adjusted my vision, and could not fail to notice that the lead zombie was frantically waving its arms at us. Something was amiss here. Zombies do not wave.
Well shit. That dude was just that; a dude. Not a dead dude, but a live dude. Fucker was close enough now that I could see he was big. Not Ship big, but certainly in the could-have-played-linebacker-for-a-pro-football-team category. He was limping too, and using something as a crutch. The pus bags were gaining, albeit slowly. There must have been fifty of the things, and they were in slow pursuit of said live dude.
Now my momma didn’t raise no dummies. If we picked this guy up and he was the Charles Manson type, we were in trouble. If we left him, he was chow. Even if he beat them to the house, they would get in and get him, plus we had just raided it and swiped all the food. So it was pick him up or live with the fact that we had allowed him to be nosh.
I actually thought about leaving. One more mouth, (and it was a large one), to feed would seriously cut into our rations. Not to mention, he could be on the crazy, or I need all your shit side of things. I spun the wheel to move in the other direction, to leave him, and before Tim could even offer a surprised intake of breath, spun it back and floored the accelerator.
We drove the now eighth of a mile toward the hapless bastard, and I realized he never would have made it to the house. The dead were maybe twenty feet behind him. Jamming on the brakes, we kept the truck thirty feet in front of the guy, and waited. He redoubled his efforts, and climbed up the step and hung on Tim’s window mirror, not unlike the dead prick that had been on mine some hours earlier.
The guy looked at the things advancing on us and looked at Tim pleadingly. “Open the door!”
I looked at Tim, “Not yet. Tell him to hold on.”
The first of the swarm thudded against the nose of the MRAP. I didn’t hear it, I saw it. Dumbass just walked right into it. I backed up, slowly at first, then picked up speed with the guy attached to us like a tick. I slowed and turned the truck around, driving forward with him still outside.
We got about a half a mile away from the swarm, and I stopped. Now half a mile doesn’t sound like much, but you try hanging on to a mirror and travelling half a mile at about thirty miles per hour. Gotta be scary, and in my head I commended this big bastard for his strength of will. What got me on edge was his crutch. It was a fancy black combat shotgun.
“He has to disarm before he gets in, tell him.”
Tim told him and the guy stepped down off the MRAP with a look back toward the swarm, inexorably making their way up the road. He put his shotgun down on the dotted yellow line and stepped back a little, putting his hands up and casting another glance in the direction of the dead.
Tim moved into the back of the truck and opened the back hatch, getting out. He picked up the guy’s shotgun and the guy followed Tim into our mini-tank.
Tim shut the door, brought the gun up forward, and the guy sat down on one of the seats. “Thank ya, boys. I was a goner iff’n ya dint stop. They was gonna git me fer shore.”
“What happened to your leg?”
“Wassat?”
“Your leg,” I repeated, “have you been bitten?”
He looked at his leg, then back at me. “Nosir,” (he had said it as one word), “took a bullet a couple months back, n’ she’s been weak ever since. Twisted it foragin’ in a town ‘bout six miles south o’ here, and them pus bags found me. I been crawlin’ as fast as I could, but I was jus’ ‘bout done when I came across you boys.” He pulled his pant-leg up, and I could see he wasn’t bitten.
I turned around and started to drive south again, toward the swarm.
“Uh…did, ah…did we jus’ turn round?”
“Yes.”
“Back towards the dead-uns?”
“Yeah, we’re heading south.”
He sighed. “There ain’t nothin’ south, son. I been up an’ down this country in the past year, an’ all I’ve seen is death. Been from the west coast t’ the east an’ back this far.”
“Then we’re in the same boat…er, truck, chief. So have I.”
The guy stood up in the back of the MRAP, and Tim tensed, his hand on his pistol.
“I’m much obliged t’ ya for pickin’ me up an all, but I needs t’ head north. Sorry.”
I rolled the truck to a stop, but didn’t turn to look at him. “You’d like to discuss this now?” I had purposely stopped fifty feet from the dead folks. The first hand slapped on the side of the MRAP in just a few seconds.
The guy looked out the side windows and sighed again. “Now’s as good a time as any. I gots t’look for a friend. Actually, I ain’t never met her, but I know her husband. He said she was there when th’ plague hit, and he thinks she must be dead. I’m a find out and tell him or bring her back.”
“Back where?” Tim demanded.
“San Francisco. Alcatraz.”
A prison. Figures.
I put the truck in park, dead fists beating on the side. I clenched my fists on the steering wheel, and Tim tensed even more. If the poor kid was sitting on a lump of coal, we would have had one hell of a diamond.
“So,” I began without looking back at him, “you’re telling me that you’ve crossed an entire infected United States, to attempt a rescue mission for someone you’ve never met based on information that this person might be in a city with a population of ten thousand undead cannibals.” I stated it, I didn’t ask.
“Yep.”
“OK then.” I put the truck in drive and turned back around.
If it were possible, Tim clenched harder. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Dropping off our new pal.”
He looked shocked. “But you know what’s back there! We barely got away!”
I laughed. “Tim, old buddy, what’s back there is small potatoes compared to what’s south of us. There’s way more people to the south, which means way more infecte
d.”
He still looked stunned.
“Zombies dude, fuckloads of zombies either way.”
Tim didn’t say anything, so I asked the southerner his name.
“Dallas. Name’s Dallas.”
I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t. My comedic stylings get the better of me sometimes.
“Oh,” I said, “are you from Texas?”
Havre
So he was from Texas. He began on a fantastical story about how he was caught in San Francisco when the plague hit. He met up with a group of good people, and they got to Alcatraz, where they were fortifying and trying to make it. There’s apparently a military presence on the island as well.
What was really a great plot twist is that he had traversed the country from coast to coast with a group of Navy SEALs trying to find a vaccine for the plague, with a crazy CIA guy chasing them.
Sounded familiar to me.
We took route two-thirty-six west and hooked up with route eighty-seven north skirting Baldy Mountain, and the hundreds of infected that now called it home. It was weird not seeing as many abandoned vehicles and destruction or even undead, but then I remembered our location: Montana. Middle of No and Where. We reached route two at about eleven PM, and I pulled over. We got out of the vehicle, and I made a fire with a broken wooden street sign right on the middle of the road. I used the light of the fire to inspect the MRAP. Several fuel cans had been placed in racks under both sides of the vehicle. Eight in all, looked like five gallons each.
A shit-ton of medical supplies resided in the back of the MRAP, and Tim had dressed Dallas’s ankle with an Ace-type bandage. The big man said it felt worlds better with just the wrap on it, and thanked us. He also thanked us profusely when we cooked up some noodles and had a can of peaches each as well. He was hungry, and while not out of food, he only had a couple of Slim Jims, and a bag of rice left, but he was out of water and had been for a day.
We continued trading stories, and he dropped a bombshell: He had come across some type of spook, whom he had had no choice but to kill. The spook’s name had been Lynch, and that scared the shit out of me. Him too when I told him about my Lynch. I told Dallas that I hadn’t seen my Lynch die, but he had been bitten, and was surrounded in a small room by what had to be dozens of infected.
I was sipping a blue Gatorade pilfered from the homestead when I heard the tell-tale moan of an incoming pus bag. Our fire must have been a beacon to it. Tim stood when he heard the moan, drawing his weapon and looking terrified, pointing the M9 in every direction. The Texan’s shotgun was strapped to Tim’s back, and it slipped off his shoulder with each turn the nerd made.
Dallas looked at Tim, then at me and raised his eyes.
“He was in a secure location since the start of all of this…” I grew thoughtful for the briefest of moments and furrowed my brow. “Tim, is this the first time you’ve been outside the mountain since the plague hit?”
“Yeah. Where is the thing I don’t see it?”
“Relax, Pard, I got this.” The big man stood, pulling a length of rebar that both Tim and I had missed from his belt. The thing coming at us out of the dark hissed and Dallas turned to look at it. It was walking straight down the road, and now we could hear its step-drag as it approached. The Texan moved toward it with a practiced grace (and messed-up ankle). He sidestepped when it lunged, bringing the rebar down on the back of its neck. It collapsed, but wasn’t done, and feebly latched on to Dallas’ injured ankle. Dallas chuckled. “Peppy one, this’n.” He swung the rebar down, impacting the back of the thing’s skull with a sickening crunch. “Finito,” he said. “Thas’ Italian.”
He sat back down and began drinking the juice out of his peach can.
“Tim, old buddy, why don’t you give the big fella his shotgun back?”
Without a word Tim complied, still looking at the sack of death on the ground twenty feet away.
Dallas seemed touched by the fact that we would allow him a gun in our presence. “Now what madeja change yer mind if ya don’t mind me askin’?”
“I think you could have done to us what you did to that,” I pointed at the former human, “at any time. Never saw that piece of metal you’re carrying.”
“Ya dint ask me about it. Ya just tole me t’ give ya my gun.”
“We did. Tim, sit down. Our large friend here has diffused the situation.”
“I’ll sit down, but in the truck. If one of those things found us, there could be a hundred of them bearing down on us.”
Guy had a point.
Dallas stood. “He’s got a point.”
I kicked the fire out, and we all got back in the truck. I didn’t feel the need for a watch, as we were in what we were in. I let Dallas have my stretcher-bed, which I still hadn’t slept in. His leg was feeling better, but I wanted him to heal it overnight if we were going into a town of over ten thousand.
I slept in the front seat. Or, rather, I didn’t sleep. I fidgeted in that damn chair all night, tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable. I saw the sunrise, and the next thing I knew, I was regretting the idea of not posting a watch.
Penguins. I was dreaming about penguins. They were all walking toward me, swaying side to side as they do their little waddle. I heard something familiar, as the penguins waddled. It was a sound I should be afraid of, but I couldn’t remember what it was. It was then I realized all the penguins were dead. They all had red eyes and huge, very un-penguin like teeth, and they were all hungry.
I sort of shocked myself awake. My mother used to call that “falling out of my tree.” I cleared my throat and blinked a couple of times, kind of thirsty and having to take a leak.
I started to stretch, and looked out the window at the backs of a giant waddle of penguins. Yeah, I know some shit, a group of land-walking penguins is a waddle. Except this wasn’t a waddle. It was a swarm. Yup, you guessed it, I was looking at the backs of several hundred undead, all shuffling past the MRAP as if it were a rock. All of them headed east on route 2. Directly toward Havre. Right where we had to go.
I got up slowly and made my way back to the sleeping beauties in the back. The stretchers they were using as beds were fit into frames on each side of the MRAP, over the seats. I put my hand over Tim’s mouth and he freaked. I held him for a second whispering at him to ssshhh until he calmed down. Wait! Wait, wait, wait! I don’t hold him, I held him down, there was no cuddling. Anyway, I pointed out the front window and he nodded. Dallas had heard the commotion and was sitting up. “Damn,” was all he whispered.
“They don’t know we’re in here, or they’d be banging the shit out of the sides.”
“Trust me, all it takes is fer one ta start bangin’ and they’s all gonna be on us.”
“Fuck ‘em,” Tim said, taking me completely off guard, “they can’t get in, and we should just run them over. They’re heading toward where we have to go anyway.”
I looked at Dallas, and he at me. We both shrugged. Why not? Why not run them down and grind them up. It there was anything left of Havre, those people didn’t want a few hundred dead coming down on them, so why not stop them here?
Tim was right again. Fuck ‘em. I got back to the driver’s seat, and buckled up. There were some stragglers but the main force of this small army was now ahead of us by an eighth of a mile. I looked in the mirror, but couldn’t see any more than a few behind us. The weird thing was that every single one of them was on the road. Not one pus bag was walking on the dusty ground or side of the road; they were all crowded on the asphalt. Some random inherent memory maybe? Dunno.
I started the truck, and it turned over immediately, much to the chagrin of the always hungry undead that had just ambled by a canned dinner unawares. The humiliation didn’t last long, and I could see it turn to irritation then downright anger. The scientists at Baldy had told me that these things have no emotion, but they were wrong. They didn’t have compassion, or pity, or mercy, but they could get mad. Pissed, I had seen it.
&nbs
p; I got into an argument about the Alphas vs. the Betas one day with one of the Baldy egg heads. Alphas being Runners. Runners were always pissed, nobody on the planet was going to tell me otherwise, but this woman had tried her best. Maybe they were irritated about the fact that we weren’t infected. Maybe they were annoyed that we looked better than them, I don’t give a shit. They were all mad, and they absolutely hated us.
Runners were way more terrifying than pus bags too, unless there was a huge group of the dead ones. Kind of like what was now looking at us.
OK, maybe they were incapable of humiliation, but they were sure as shit surprised. They all turned, and started toward us. I drove forward and smacked down maybe ten of them before the main mass of the swarm was in front of me. I backed up, running over several more that I had missed when moving forward. The swarm was bearing down on us, but I didn’t care. What could they do?
The faster of them broke away gradually from the slower, and in five minutes of backing up slowly, perhaps sixty of them were thinned out in front of the rest. So I ran them over. Ground them down. It must have been icky outside on that road. There were still so many though.
I rinsed and repeated, and realized this was going to take all day. I drove off the road and circled around the swarm, getting back up on the asphalt and leaving them behind us. They were going to follow, but unless we circled for twenty miles, they would see us on the flatlands in this valley.
We saw the first signs for Havre a minute later, and ten minutes after that we saw the town. It was a fortress. We had to skirt an outer wall of useless vehicles, razor wire, and spike walls until we got up to the massive front gate. It was a school bus with welded plate steel eight feet high that sat in a groove cut in the road. Simple yet elegant. When the bus moved forward or back, the gate would open. I had seen this very type of gate before, at a hastily erected military wall in Tennessee, although this one was way better.
Conspiracy Theory (The Zombie Theories Book 2) Page 6
