When they first heard the pompous American called Bastille listing off the cities the armies of the world had shelled with their ships, and the missiles from Russia and China, they were confused when he had listed numerous tiny islands, unpronounceable Arctic villages and remote desert towns. Bastille didn’t elaborate, maybe he didn’t know either, but he ran down the list a few times in as many days and it didn’t vary. He made no corrections. Hasif finally understood when Gun Sergeant Meadows came on the radio and announced that it was all over. They had won and the jihadi forces in the States would be hunted down and eliminated. He had declared that the people behind the whole operation had been decimated in their hideaways, the puppet masters who thought they were untouchable. The Caliphate was in disarray and the armies of the undead they had unleashed on the world were now rampaging through their own streets. The enemy was dead or dying, it was time to rebuild. It was a recorded message, they realized when Bastille played it again a few hours later.
It was a good message for the rest of the world, but certainly not for the Middle East. Their time was over.
Hasif wanted to get in contact with his old friend. He believed they could do it with the radio setup they had, but he was waiting for the right time. He had another plan he’d been mulling over that he hadn’t shared with the others. What if the answer was no? He didn’t want to give his family hope then have it dashed. He wanted to ask a favor, if they would be allowed safe passage on one of the ships, or even entry into Israel. It would take some time for them to be able to travel, though. Anyone moving in the streets now was a target for the roving mobs. It could wait a week or two, let things settle down. There was no rush.
41
Jessie
Jessie wandered farther north, thinking he’d better check out this area of the country before the snows started to fall. He had no hard and fast destination in mind, he’d just pick a place on the map that looked interesting and head for it. No particular hurry, no particular rush. He’d sip on his bitter concoction and meander his way there, stopping anywhere he saw signs of the living and spreading the word about Lakota. He hadn’t heard them on the radio in days, not since he’d been awoken by a bunch of undead farmers and one of them had snapped off his antenna as he drove through the mob to get out of the barn. He really should try to fix it, but he was content with the quiet rumble of the motor and the occasional bark of the dog when he saw something interesting, or if he wanted something. Usually food.
He kept running the back roads, stopping at abandoned gas stations for food and fuel, and to resupply his bottle of trucker speed. He was using the new pump system the man from the RV had shown him. It was a water pump he’d pulled out of a camper, and it ran off of the battery. It was a whole lot easier than punching holes in gas tanks or trying to siphon with a garden hose.
He had crossed the Missouri river a few miles back and was headed to a dot on the map called Scotland, South Dakota. No particular reason, he just liked the name. He was stopped at a little Mom and Pop gas station and was eyeballing the sky, trying to read the weather for the next few days as he looked at the map. It was already getting pretty chilly at night, he’d noticed thin ice on the puddles on more than one occasion. He’d turned the whole back seat area of the Mercury into a bed, and with the dog snuggled up, he wasn’t worried about freezing to death. The dreams weren’t quite so bad, either, with him. He didn’t want to get caught up in any snow storms, though. Scotland was it, he decided. Check it out, see if it had castles and guys running around in kilts, then head back south. He’d helped a lot of people in the week or so he’d been out here. The voices in his head screaming at him to end his worthless life had almost faded away. The ghosts in the mirror were nearly gone, the only one he could see with any clarity was Slippery Jim’s sister. Her head was always slightly askew, her accusing eyes still burned into his, though. “I’m doing my best,” he would tell her. “I’m trying to make up for it.”
Bob had sniffed around the place and was off peeing on things as Jessie refueled. He felt safe with the dog, and it wasn’t just that he could sense when the zombies were around long before Jessie could. The dog seemed to make the ghosts a little less real, their accusations a little less acute. He hadn’t seen the nuns staring at him in the mirror for days. Not since he’d saved that family at a farmstead. They’d been surrounded for weeks. They had food in the house, most country people had a few months’ supply on hand, even if they didn’t realize it. Those canned asparagus no one had ever planned on eating didn’t taste too bad when you were starving. Their problem had been water and firewood. They were out of bullets, the well and the woodpile were unreachable. For Jessie, it was nothing. He noticed the crowd of undead, revved his engine a few times and drove slowly off, leading them away for a few miles. For the family on the edge of desperation, he was a Godsend. An Angel.
The dog heard them before Jessie did, and he came over to stand next to him, barked a few times and watched the road with expectation. His Merc was full, so he turned off the pump and he heard it also. The sound of engines coming up the road. He could see a few headlights off in the distance headed straight for him. Jessie quickly wound up his hoses and glanced around. It was too late to hide the car, the plains of South Dakota were flat and mostly barren in this area, just fields of corn stubble and soybeans, with trees along fence lines. Jessie grabbed his M-4 and backpack then crouched low as he ran toward the store. He didn’t know if they were friend or foe. Families on the move, or Muslims on the hunt. If they didn’t see movement, they might mistake his car for one that had been sitting there since the outbreak.
He slid inside the building and crouched low near the checkout counter, his thumb resting on the safety. On second thought, no one was going to confuse his car with one that had been sitting for nearly two months. The bars on the windows, the oversized tires, and the fenders coated in old blood was a bit of a giveaway. He tightened his grip on the rifle. If a bunch of sword waving Arabs with scraggly beards stopped, he wasn’t going to give them a chance to start yelling Allah Akbar, he was going to shoot the glass out of the store windows and cut them down. After thinking about it for a second, he reached into his pack and pulled out three more loaded magazines and laid them out, facing the way he liked them for quick access.
It was a pair of pickup trucks, both of them with caps on the back, that pulled in with three men in each cab. Jessie watched them check out his car, trying to determine if they were the good guys or the bad guys. They all had beards, but none of them looked like somebody from the Middle East. They looked like farmers or dock workers or truck drivers. Just everyday Americans. He waited, watching them. One of them felt the hood of his car and he heard him tell the others that it was still warm.
Bob stayed still, but he had a low growl in his throat. Like Jessie, he didn’t trust them yet.
The man who had felt the hood of the Merc raised his voice and shouted toward the building.
“We ain’t looking for trouble, we just come to get some fuel. I know you’re in there and I’d bet a dozen donuts you got a rifle trained on us. Just do me a favor and keep your finger away from the trigger for a few minutes and we’ll be gone. There’s plenty of gas for everybody,” he finished and the men went about their business of pulling out siphon hoses and filling up their trucks, ignoring the car and the guns plainly visible in the back seat. They were using a hand pump and it was going to take them a while.
Jessie watched them work and joke for a few minutes before he called out to them.
“Hey, there’s still some food in here if y'all want some Little Debbie’s or something.” They all smiled and waved, then went back to work.
He gathered his magazines, slung his rifle, and came out of the store with a box of oatmeal crème pies in his left hand, still keeping his shooting hand free to grab his pistol if he needed to.
Just in case.
He heard a thumping sound from one of the trucks, but all the men shouted a hearty greeting and
he didn’t think anything of it.
The man that appeared to be their leader grinned as Jessie approached.
“Those things will last forever won’t they?” he said in a booming voice. “And I don’t mind if I do. My names Gabriel Sims, but everybody just calls me Gabe,” he said and stretched out his hand to shake.
It was instinct born and bred, and Jessie didn’t hesitate. It’s just what you did. He stuck out his hand and smiled his half-crooked smile. When the man had a firm grip on his right hand, his left came up smooth and easy, almost slowly, and pointed a big wheel gun in his face. Before Jessie could react, he felt the cold metal of another pistol at the back of his head.
Bob could sense the change in his master, he could taste the fear and adrenaline charge in the air and reacted instantly. With a growl, he sprang at the man behind Jessie and an explosion went off next to his ear. Jessie yelled and pulled out of the grip of the grinning man, but it wasn’t necessary to fight to free his hand. The grinning man was missing half of his head and was falling over backward. Bob was snarling and savagely trying to rip the screaming man’s arm off as the big chrome pistol clattered to the ground. Jessie couldn’t hear anything out of his ear, and it felt like it was bleeding as he reached for his gun, but he heard the sound of the shotgun as pellets peppered him and Bob both. The dog yelped and howled as he was slammed against the car, leaving a blood splatter against the door. Jessie felt a dozen different hurts as he dove to the ground, his right arm suddenly not wanting to work properly. It sprayed blood as pellets from the shotgun blast tore through his muscles and skin, but he barely felt it. He rolled over fast and pulled his Glock out of his left holster, but as he was bringing it up a crowbar slammed into his forearm, shattering it. His useless fingers let the gun fall and he gasped in horror and pain at the wrong angle his arm made. He rolled away from the man with the wrecking bar and ignored the excruciating crunch of bone-on-bone grating agony. He concentrated on making his right arm do what he wanted and grabbed his other pistol with clumsy fingers. He cleared the holster with it, but before he could bring it to bear and kill these bastards, he felt the impact of a steel-toed boot against the back of his head.
Then there was nothing.
42
Jessie
Jessie woke up from the cold and the pain. He was in the back of one of the trucks, his hands and feet bound with duct tape, and he wasn’t alone. Others were with him, tied hand and foot. He knew his head must be hurting and he knew his gunshot arm must be hurting and he knew his heart must be hurting from losing his dog, but he couldn’t feel anything over the white-hot searing hurt of his broken arm. He was trying to wrap his mind around what just happened and how things went so wrong, so fast.
It only took seconds to go from greeting new people and in control, to broken and lying unconscious on the ground. He never saw it coming.
Why did they do this to him? He couldn’t think of any sane reason. There was plenty of everything to go around, there were no shortages of food or fuel or shelter or anything. Wasn’t it bad enough they had to fight unending hordes of zombies, and the Muslims were out lopping everybody’s heads off? Did everyday people have to turn into assholes too?
The truck bounced over a pothole and the pain in his arm jacked up a notch.
Yes. Everyday people had turned into assholes.
He tried to sit up and on the second attempt, he made it. He was gasping in short, shallow, breaths at the agony in his arms. His nose was clogged from where it had been broken after the love tap from someone’s boot. Some of his teeth felt loose. His ribs felt like they’d been kicked by a mule. Or by size 10 steel-toed boots. He looked around through swollen eyes, when the black dots swirling before them finally swam away, and took inventory of what he saw. There were eight or nine other people with him, all of them were bound and gagged. Jessie didn’t have duct tape over his mouth, at least. They probably thought he would suffocate since his nose was smashed flat. He would be pissed if it didn’t take all his willpower just to breath and not cry out with every tiny movement he made. He remembered that one of his abductors was dead, with half his head blown off. He hoped the one Bob had torn into had bled to death. That would be two down. Good ol’ Bob. He hoped his dog hadn’t suffered, that the gunshot had killed him quick, not left him dying slow.
The people around him were in various conditions, some seemingly not hurt at all, some beaten and bloodied. There were nods of acknowledgment as he looked at them. He realized what the thumping noise was that he heard right before everything went south. Somebody had tried to warn him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he berated himself. He had believed that everybody left alive was basically a decent human being, but apparently that wasn’t the case. There had to be plenty of people that relished the outbreak just so they could do whatever they wanted, without any consequences. He still couldn’t think of a reason why, though. Why do this to people? There were so few real live breathing humans left in the world, why would someone want to go to the trouble of rounding up prisoners? He could understand if they killed the men and took the women, he could see their motive. But to take everyone? Slave labor? It just didn’t make sense. Unless there was a gay warlord who liked to rape the men, too. They were on the outskirts of some town and slowing to turn into a power station, the acres of transformers and towers still and quiet.
The tailgate dropped and men with guns ordered them out. Jessie was going too slow, trying to keep from moving his broken arm, and one of the men grabbed him by the ankle and drug him out, slamming him down on the asphalt. He remembered screaming, but nothing else.
He awoke with a groan, then tried to lie very still, tried to stop the waves of pain shooting up his arms.
His head.
His ribs.
He could barely see in the dim light, but he could tell he was lying on a cot in a room with a rounded ceiling. It was all stone and concrete, with dozens of other makeshift beds lined up along the walls. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he realized he was in a giant tunnel with a chain link fence over the entrance. He could hear sounds out of his one good ear, the other still seemed to be ringing from the gun going off right beside it.
People breathing, some snoring.
Faint sobs of someone softly crying.
The quiet murmur of low voices.
At least he wasn’t tied up anymore.
“Let me give you a hand,” someone said as he tried to sit up and a man helped him lean against the wall.
“Thanks,” Jessie breathed out between gasps as the pain slowly quieted back down to a tsunami of dull bricks slashing at him.
“Wasn’t sure if you were going to make it or not,” the man said. “You must have put up a helluva fight. You’re busted up pretty good.”
The blood had been wiped from Jessie's face, but it was still in his hair and felt all crackly when he moved his head. Both of his eyes were already black and nearly swollen shut, a result of the boots they put to him after he was unconscious from the kick in the head. He just grunted in reply.
“Heard you killed two of them. Good for you,” someone said.
“Did I?” Jessie asked. “I don’t remember.”
The man chuckled and a few more people came over and hunkered down beside him.
“Where are we?” Jessie asked. “And what do these assholes want?”
“We’re in the underground sewers. They’ve got them blocked off from the rains so they stay dry,” a man with a patch over one eye replied, then explained further at the questioning look, “I’ve been here for a few weeks, not exactly sure how long. They’ve had me out on a few work details.”
Jessie nodded. It made sense. No more power, no more flushed toilets, no more sewer flow. Safe from the hordes, warm in the winter. He looked around. He could see the dirty water marks on the walls. The place had been hosed down, but not very well. Gross. He was glad he couldn’t smell anything.
Someone had set his broken arm and bound it in rags, usin
g his own belt to try to hold it in place. It obviously hadn’t been a doctor, just one of the people down here doing the best they could with what they had. More people came over to see how he was doing and he recognized a few of them who had been in the back of the truck with him.
“What do they want?” he asked through cracked lips. “All this trouble just to make us work?”
“No,” a woman replied. “They’re using us as guinea pigs. They do medical experiments or something. They’re trying to create a vaccine.”
“Emma works as a cleaner in the hospital area,” another man explained. “She’s probably seen more of this place than any of us.”
“So, it’s the government?” Jessie asked. “What the hell, man. They can’t be doing this. What kind of government is that?”
“It’s not the government, or even the military. It’s just one scientist. He probably worked in a biomedical lab before all this happened, but this place is run by another guy. A nut-job who thinks he’s an Egyptian God.”
Jessie was hurting too much to even react. Just thinking about it ratcheted his headache up a few notches. It was ridiculous, but it had a weird sense of predictability to it. Nearly every video game he ever played had some madman and a cult of followers who would do whatever he said. Real life, too, he supposed. He knew a little about dictators from his old man. Every time his dad would see somebody wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, he’d get annoyed and always wondered aloud why anybody would proudly display the face of a “mass murdering piece of shit.” If his mom weren't there to calm him down, he’d get right in their face if they said anything back, and tell them about the millions of people the communists and socialists had killed. It was embarrassing and Jessie would always try to blend into the background. But he learned a few things about charismatic leaders and their followers, even if he didn’t want to.
Zombie Road III: Rage on the Rails Page 26
