“Well, I’ll president like Eisenhower or Roosevelt. From the front lines, not from a damn desk,” Gunny said, firm in his resolve.
“Hell, next thing ya know you’ll be riding around on a moose, too,” Cobb grumbled, but let it slide. He knew nothing he said would change the younger man’s mind. Some things just were.
“I guess you have the whole team you wanted to send waiting for me,” Gunny said.
“Naw. I didn’t tell anyone. I’ve got Tommy and Carl hooking up some cars for you to take.” He held up his hand to ward off Gunny’s coming protest
“Before you start your bellyaching, they’re dining and sleeper cars that Cap’n Wilson found on his trip to the munitions plant. They’re pretty nice, they were at some trendy depot restaurant and train museum. They’re antiques, but Tommy said they’re in good shape, just needed a few air lines replaced and a good greasing. He up-armored another locomotive for you, too. You can pull it along in free wheel mode until you get where you’re going then just switch, drive it back.”
“That’s nice, Top, but what do I need a bunch of sleeper cars for? What're the chances of me finding that many people along the way? I’ll only be gone for a few days, maybe a week,” Gunny said, a little exasperated at all the fuss.
“Bastille has got it in his head he wants to broadcast your run as a rescue train on the radio station they’re setting up,” Cobb replied. Gunny knew there was a group going out later on this morning to gather up what they needed. The Mayor had said there was a gospel station a few towns over that would have the transmitters and the rest of the equipment. Wire Bender said he could crank up the transmission wattage and pump the signal out from the cell tower. Without any electromagnetic interference or other stations walking on the feed, it would probably bounce around the entire world.
“It’ll be similar to a short-wave output,” Wire Bender had insisted. “Depending on cloud cover, they’ll hear it all the way to Bum-phuck, Egypt.”
Gunny had recorded a couple of messages he wanted broadcast if he didn’t get back before the ships making their way toward the Middle East started their bombardment. One to let them know they were coming, and one to let them know what they had done when it was over. Maybe that was rubbing it in, but they had tried to kill most of the world and he took it personally. The rest of the world’s leaders had added their ideas of what to say, but left it up to the Americans to send it out, to make sure the countries thinking they were safe behind their walls knew they hadn’t won World War Three. They wanted them to know the rest of the world was tired of their shit and would be raining down a little death and destruction. The Russians had the strongest message, and Gunny had to laugh at their command of English curse words and threats. Ivan didn’t keep calm and carry on. Ivan told them exactly how he felt. He’d had to clean it up some, he didn’t want his message being listened to by future generations and hearing him telling the Muslims their “dog eating monkey face would be wiped from face of earth like nose picking is wiped from finger.”
Cobb continued as they walked along the containers. “Bastille plans on letting folks east of the Mississippi know there’s a rescue train coming and if there are any that need a way out, they can flag you down.”
Gunny had a hundred reasons why this was a bad idea, they could be setting themselves up for an ambush, but Carson hadn’t warned them of any significant Muslim activity after the ship was loaded with all the rods. As far as he knew, they were still out west. The General had a submarine shadowing the cargo ship and when they were in deep water, it would be on the bottom of the sea. If it wasn’t there already. Cobb thought the risks were low, and if they could save even one family, one group of survivors, then it was worth it.
“Have him hold off till we’re on the way back,” Gunny said. “He can let people know, but I’ll pick them up after we hit Atlanta. You know the hajis will be listening, too. I don’t want to give them time to coordinate an attack. On the way back, we’ll be moving fast, the rails will already be cleared. We’ll make the pickups then.”
“Yeah, that’s no problem. He can just tell them there’s a train a’comin’ so they can start getting ready.”
Gunny nodded. “Well, I need to grab a couple of M-60s, then and mount them on both engines. If the hajis do try anything, we’ll be ready. The zombies tend to follow the trains around, too,” he said dryly. “May need to lay down some heavy fire while people break for the cars.”
“Already done,” Cobb said.
They were nearing the tracks and Gunny could see a half-dozen men working on the ten cars and the two engines. There were trucks loading supplies, and he spotted Tommy making last minute checks on the couplings. He could see the machine guns on tripods that were mounted on the roofs and had been leaned over so they would clear any low bridges. The windows were barred and the locos had brutal-looking cow-catchers made of I-beams welded to their fronts.
Well, if nothing else, he wouldn’t have to worry about running out of fuel. He had no doubt both were fully topped off. As they approached the ladder down to the outside world they stopped and looked out over the hustle and bustle going on below them. Gunny should have known they wouldn’t just let him sneak out in the middle of the night.
He’d been busy with drawing up retaliation plans with Cheyenne mountain these past few days, and plotting routes they wanted to take, using the satellite photos as a guide. It could have been worse. Every mosque in America could have been a stronghold, but after tallying all the data, there were only seventy-two. Same number as the virgins they wouldn’t be getting in jihad heaven. They were spread out all over the country, near the nuclear power plants they had cleaned out. At least that went off smoothly. They were a tenacious people, extremely motivated, and Gunny had to acknowledge they had waged a devastating and effective war. There had been long talks of what type of retaliation they were going to do. Whether it was scorched earth, kill them all, or just try to kill the fighters, try to spare the women and children. Gunny had his opinions, kill them all, but this was a new world. If the jihadis were all dead, maybe their families could be integrated into society, what little bit there was left.
Maybe.
Without a support network of crazy Imams continually telling them to kill, kill, kill, maybe the brainwashing could be reversed.
Maybe.
He'd seen plenty of women and kids try their best, and many times succeed, to kill soldiers. His team had died, and he almost had, also at the hands of a bunch of kids no more than eight or ten. He’d reserve judgment until the time came. Play it by his hunches and intuition if a situation ever arose where a decision like that needed to be made. It most likely wouldn’t, though. Not with the plans they came up with on how to win the war.
Lakota was already gearing up to send out teams to take them out before they could concentrate their forces. They were hoping they had a few months, maybe even until Spring, before the jihadis attacked. Gunny had thrown out the original battle plans of going in with shock and awe, a hundred men strong at each mosque. They didn’t need to fight a conventional war, with tanks and machine guns. They already had an unstoppable weapon, if they would use it. They had millions of the undead at their disposal, and they could use them like stampeding cattle, they just had to be pointed in the right direction. He and Griz came up with a plan where small fire teams would go in quietly, blow the walls to their compounds and send in enough rockets to draw every undead thing from miles around. They would get their due the same way they’d killed everyone else: by being savaged by the undead. If there were any survivors, if they came across any away from the mosques, they would deal with them on a case by case basis. None of the fighting age men would live, Gunny already knew that. They’d see about the women and children. If any survived the zombies.
Tommy had nearly every 4x4 in Lakota and the surrounding areas being up-armored and prepped for the raids. SUVs and pickup trucks with quiet exhaust, bristling with armor and weapons. It didn’t take much convin
cing for everyone to warm to their plan. It was safer for the men involved and somehow appropriate.
“Let the dead kill their women and children,” Cobb had said. “That way you don’t have to wake up years from now, shaking from nightmares of butchering whole families.”
The men who had done things in war zones they didn’t talk about all agreed. Sage nods from graying heads.
“They’ll get what they have coming and it’ll be from their own creations. Sounds like justice,” Hot Rod said.
There hadn’t been a word from Shakey since he’d taken the truck into the offloading area near Monterey, in California. They could only assume the worst. Gunny hoped he’d managed to get away, or at least end his own life quickly, not be tortured or beheaded by the radicals. Just another mystery he’d most likely never know the answer to. It had been a bad situation all around for Shakey. He couldn’t try to kill any of them, they were all needed to get the radioactive rods out to the boats, and he sure didn’t want to start a gunfight.
“We’re going to be sending out the first crews to blow the mosques in the next couple of days,” Cobb said. “It’ll be the guys who are going to be pissed that you took off without them.” He grinned, already anticipating their anger, then their smiles when he told them what they got to do instead of babysitting a train.
“Wire Bender will have somebody monitoring the Ham 24-7, so keep in touch.”
Gunny nodded and mounted the ladder.
“I’ll be back in a week,” he said and started down the ladder. “We’ll take the war to them before they have time to regroup and come after us.”
4
Gunny
The guards, and other men who had been loading supplies, met Gunny on the tracks as he approached the train. They all had grins on their faces, liked they’d pulled one over on him. They had, he had to admit. He had planned to slip away quietly with no big production, but Cobb, and probably the General, had seen to it that it was going to be a dog and pony show. A regular circus train, complete with dozens of stops for survivors.
He nodded at them, told them all thanks, as they headed back for safety behind the Wall. Tommy was the last in line and he stopped to wish him luck.
“Thanks, Tommy,” Gunny said, eyeballing the ten-car train. “That’ll take on a lot of survivors, if we find any. Looks pretty stout, too.”
“We only had a day to put this together,” Tommy stated. “But it should do. All the windows are barred and there’s enough food to last you guys a month or more. Enough guns and ammo to start a war.”
“You guys?” Gunny asked.
Tommy grinned at him and held out his hand. “You’ve got your entourage, Mr. President.”
Gunny chuffed. “Piss off, Tommy,” he said with a half-smile as they shook, then he climbed aboard the rear-facing engine, cutting through the cars to see who was waiting for him.
He heard them before he entered the last dining car behind the lead engine. The usual suspects, minus Scratch, were arguing with someone.
It was Bridget. She was geared up, had a pack at her feet, and was standing her ground.
“I’ve got just as much right to go as you do,” she retorted to one of the guys who was telling her a woman didn’t belong on a dangerous mission. Gunny tried to remember his name. Mike something. Evans, maybe. He’d come in with a crew of people out of Iowa, if memory served him correctly.
Gunny stepped into the car and saw a dozen or more men lounging on the benches and watching the argument.
“I wasn’t expecting any of you,” Gunny said. “I’d planned on making this run by myself.”
“I figured you’d try something like that,” Griz said, forcing the door on the overstuffed closet closed and latching it. “I didn’t want to miss out on all the fun.”
He was wearing his black pants with the kneepads sewn in, and his body armor. His killing clothes, he called them.
“You guys, too?” Gunny asked, indicating the rest of them. “Evans? O’Neill? Jellybean? Hollywood? You haven’t had enough close calls these past few months?”
“Nah, I’m just going for the women,” Lars said, already relaxed, his feet kicked up on the seat. “If you haven’t noticed, Hot Rod took the only sister here in town, and I can’t be trusting you to bring back some more on your own. Serious lack of melanin out here in Hicksville.”
“I saw that Carol bird chatting you up, mate,” Stabby said. “You don’t like the white girls?”
“Man, I don’t like the skinny girls,” Lars replied. “You know the black man be gifted.” He slapped the back of his hand against his knee, indicating the size of his manhood. “I need to get with a fine ass Nubian Princess that can handle the Long Dawg.”
Stabby guffawed and held his fingers up about an inch apart.
“More like this size,” he said, to the laughter of the others.
Griz rolled his eyes and shook his head. Kids.
“Bridget, you gonna be able to put up with this kind of smack-talk for the next week or so?” Gunny asked. “Because it never stops.”
“These guys are amateurs,” she said. “You should hear what comes out of the mouths of the people in the movie biz.”
Gunny tossed his pack into a corner and headed for the engineer’s seat as everyone got settled.
“Let’s roll, then,” he said.
The train was quick to get up to speed as they thundered through the night, heading for the Mississippi River on the route General Carson had laid out for them.
5
Jessie
Jessie finally had a stretch of road where he could open it up. As far as he could see, wide open, two-lane blacktop. He let the big Ford purr as he eased it up to eighty miles an hour. He was barreling across the middle of Alabama, heading due west through the Talladega National Forest.
He had headed straight back home after he’d escaped from the rehab center. Somebody had raided the house, all the guns were gone, and after being pissed at his stupidity for not putting them back in the safe, he realized it must have been his mom that had done it. Who else would have washed the dishes and tidied the place up? That had been her at the strip mall, leading all the undead away so he could get out. He was sure of it. The gunshots had been them busting into the store, mounting a rescue. The undead hadn’t wandered off, and the more he thought about it, the more he thought Doug must have survived. Why else would they stay?
Doug had been rescued, then they’d left him behind. Hadn’t even bothered to look for him.
That wasn’t fair and he knew it, although it felt good to wallow in pity sometimes. They thought he was dead. The last Doug had seen him, he’d been running for the manager’s office and the zeds had torn the door off its hinges to get to him. How could they know he’d gone up to the roof and down into the rehab place? They still should have looked, a petulant part of him insisted.
The black SUV they’d seen when they were leaving the subdivision, on the way to the mall, was parked in the garage. He thought about taking it instead of the Mercury, but he liked the old car. He wanted to bring it back to his dad, that would sure surprise him. He had almost left immediately to try to chase them down, but knew it would be a stupid move and he kept telling himself; no more stupid moves. There were a thousand roads they could have taken. Instead, he had pulled most of the four-wheel drive stuff off of the Range Rover and bolted it on the Mercury. He didn’t care if it looked dumb. This car had saved his life, he knew enough about it to keep it running, and besides, it was a stick shift. A dead battery wouldn’t mean you were dead in the water. He didn’t need four-wheel drive, he wasn’t planning on going mudding, so if he had something up front to protect the radiator and some sheets of metal over the windows, he’d be safe in it. Besides, his old man loved this car. He’d be happy to get it back.
Jessie stripped the tin from the roof of the carport and covered the side and back windows, just leaving slits to see through. He didn’t have electricity for the welder, and the battery was run do
wn on the drill, so he had to punch holes with a nail and screw it all on by hand. He stole the wheels off of a Jeep a few blocks over, and the oversized tires fit nicely, after a little fender trimming with a pair of tin snips. He had the most trouble with the windshield and finally settled on the big iron headboard from his parents’ bed. It was a fancy job, with lots of ornamental scroll work, but after he hacksawed the frivolous stuff off, he was left with a heavy-duty, barred, windshield protector. He set the ends up on chunks of firewood and ran over the center of it with the car to give it the proper curve. He laboriously drove holes where he needed by using nail after nail, until he finally got one to punch through the metal, then held it all together with drywall screws and zip ties.
He found some more ammo and a few guns, after closer searches of neighboring houses and with a couple of spare gas cans, he was ready to go.
That was yesterday. Today, Jessie had the music blasting in his ears from the iPod, steering with one hand and feeling better than he had in days. He didn’t sleep much, just catnaps, but the black cloud of guilt was finally starting to fade and there were times he could almost forget.
He nearly missed seeing the kid running out of the brush toward him, only just caught him out of the corner of his eye. That was enough for his mind to process what he saw, instantly, though. Bedraggled boy, maybe ten or twelve, careening through the last of the kudzu hanging from the trees and waving his hands frantically at the passing car.
Jessie hit the brakes.
He came to a hard stop, the Merc rocking back on its shocks, and hopped out, shouldering Gary’s M-4. The kid stumbled to his knees over the vines, looked over his shoulder and whatever he saw in the woods made him scramble back to his feet and continue running toward Jessie. He didn’t even notice the gun pointed in his direction, or if he did, decided what was behind him was more dangerous than what was in front. They came pouring out of the woods after the kid, a few dozen runners, screaming and getting caught up in the kudzu vines that were covering nearly everything at the edge of the woods. Jessie popped off a few rounds when he had good shots, but didn’t waste any ammo. He didn’t have enough to spray and pray.
Zombie Road III: Rage on the Rails Page 3
