Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet

by Simpson, David A.

  “This town is laid out a lot like Lakota,” he said, and pointed out the river on one side and the lake on the other, almost turning it into a two-mile-long island “If you build a wall here, either out of timber like the lodge, or semi-trailers or something, you’d have a pretty secure area.”

  The man nodded and stroked his beard, seeing the possibilities. Once they cleared the houses, it would be plenty safe. It was so lightly populated and there were no major cities nearby, they would be able to start living again, not just surviving in a single, cramped building.

  “We’ll try to talk Colonel Norris into moving down here,” he said. “It’ll be up to him.”

  “Pete,” Jessie said, “the lodge is unsustainable and you know it. If you don’t have anything to trade, no one is going to make the trip up here to bring you anything. Traders have to have a reason. This town can be a new beginning for you. You guys can start a fishing industry or something. My dad is laying out trucking routes and I’m telling you, you want to be on it. If you’re not, you’re completely on your own.”

  The bearded man was reluctant to say anything until the others had moved back inside to get more shopping carts of supplies.

  “I hear you,” he said. “It’s just that we owe our lives to Colonel Norris. If he hadn’t been there with all the freeze-dried food, we never would have made it through the winter.”

  “There’s a new day dawning,” Jessie said, starting to fold the map. “Don’t get left behind. If the Colonel won’t move, think about moving without him.”

  The man looked around quickly to make sure the others weren’t in earshot and lowered his voice.

  “Look, we’re not soldiers. I was a manager at Home Depot, Jessie. I volunteered for this mission because I didn’t have a wife or kids in the lodge. None of us that came do. We thought half of us were going to die, we really did, but we came anyway. We know we need to get out of there and now that we see how easy it is, we’ll convince the rest. The Colonel will come. He’s a good man, just takes a little getting used to.”

  Jessie nodded, understood. People living in safe areas didn’t want to leave to face the unknown. No matter how bad it was, it was better than being dead. But now they knew, now they had a town that was cleared. They should be all right.

  23

  Jessie

  Jessie was at the Whippy Dip Parlor, a little standalone building with a sign declaring they made the world’s best homemade ice cream daily. He was on the outskirts of some tiny tourist town in the mountains of Oregon. It was desolate. The harsh winter in the high altitudes had done a lot of damage to the undead and the few he’d seen were shambling wrecks that even old Mrs. Parsons back home on her walker could probably outrun. He’d raided a horse stable and a pet shop over the past few days since he’d left the survivalists back in Idaho. He didn’t go back up the mountain to the lodge with them, he wanted to get rolling. Maybe he’d check back on the town in a few weeks if he was still in the area. See how they were doing. Maybe help out a little. He had no desire to go back to the lodge, it was too claustrophobic and the food sucked. The Colonel hadn’t really been all that enthusiastic when he found out there was a working government and fortified towns. Probably thought he might lose some of his people. Jessie didn’t worry about it too much, after his run-in with the Anubis Cult, and the stories he’d heard about Casey, he just chalked it up to the world was still full of petty jerks wanting everything to be done their way. Probably even more than before, because sometimes you really had to be a jerk to survive.

  He laid the hammer and punch rivets he’d been using down on the picnic table and whistled for Bob. He was sniffing around, looking for something to chase or bark at, but came bounding over at the call. The zombies didn’t attack him like they did people, but he’d been scratched pretty badly by a few of them during his attacks, going for their necks on instinct. Jessie was afraid that one of them might get lucky and do some real damage to him, maybe sink their claws into his soft belly, so he was building the Shepherd some armor of his own. Bob sat obediently and suffered through the adjusting and fitting. It was basically just a harness but made out of some durable leather stripped from a horse saddle that covered his shoulders and most of his back with a pliable section over his stomach. Jessie had unscrewed the studs from a handful of collars, sharpened the points, and added them to the back and shoulder pieces. With a wide one around his neck, Bob looked pretty menacing and anything trying to bite him would get a face full of needle-sharp steel.

  To take the dog’s mind off his new clothes, and so Jessie could check the fitment, he brought out a tennis ball and started bouncing it off the side the building, making Bob chase it in a game of keep away. As they were wrestling over the slobbery thing, with Bob growling and wagging his tail, the annoying new clothes already forgotten, they heard the sound of an engine coming through the forest. Jessie rolled free and the ball fell to the ground forgotten and the growl became menacing instead of playful. Jessie ran for the picnic table where his guns, holsters, and armor were laying and Bob kept by his side.

  A U-Haul truck pulled off the two-lane and hit the brakes abruptly when the two men inside noticed Jessie standing by a wooden picnic table, his too-long hair blowing away from his scarred face in the spring breeze. His guns were strapped to his hips. The worn and scuffed plastic guards covered his legs. His bloody old Mercury with a machine gun hanging from the roof rack sat in the parking lot, looking menacing. The armored dog bared his teeth at them, ready to spring. Jessie watched the two bearded men exchange a few words then show him their hands through the windshield.

  Jessie stood unmoving, still as a statue, his own hands hanging loose near the pistols slung low on his hips.

  “We ain’t looking for trouble, kid,” the driver yelled out of his window. “We wanted to get some machinery out of the store, but we can come back later if you want. Ain’t nothing worth getting killed over.”

  “Let’s just go,” the passenger said. “He looks like one of them raiders. There’s got to be more around.”

  Jessie heard this, softly but clearly, even though the man spoke low to his friend. It had taken him months to realize how extensive the changes to him had been from the injections. It took him just as long to learn how to control some of them, dial them back down to normal so he wouldn’t hear every little thing from everyone around him. Or see things distinctly from far distances.

  “It’s alright,” Jessie said. “I was just taking a break. I’m not one of Casey’s goons. You guys plan on making ice cream?”

  The men stared at each other, then back at him. They were both armed of course, who in their right mind wouldn’t be nowadays, but the kid looked like a gunfighter, not just a guy with a gun.

  “We don’t want trouble!” the man declared again and got out slowly. “I’m Darren, and that’s my brother William. We’re traders, kid. We ain’t robbers or raiders.”

  The man called William got out of his side of the truck, not trying to hide the fact that he wore a pistol on his side.

  “I’m not sure what they’re going to do with the machines,” he said. “We just get them what they want and they pay us pretty good.”

  Jessie reached down and scratched Bob behind the ears, said a few soothing words, and let himself relax. The quiet exchange between the men had told him what he needed to know. They were who they said they were.

  “I hope they do,” Jessie said. “I haven’t had a hot fudge sundae in ages. Is there a town with electricity nearby?”

  They didn’t shake hands, Jessie didn’t do that anymore, but they all relaxed and talked for a bit before the brothers jimmied open the back door and determined what kind of tools they would need to remove the old-fashioned ice cream makers.

  They were affable enough, Jessie decided, and they made him laugh as they constantly bickered and insulted each other as only brothers can. He helped them muscle the machines out of the doors and into the back of the nearly full truck. They had heard abou
t Lakota, everyone with a radio had, and were pleased to meet him. He was a bit of a celebrity. They made a pretty good living by retrieving things people in the settlements wanted. They spread out their maps on one of the tables and Jessie showed them where all the communities he’d found were located and then copied the markings off theirs onto his. There were two outposts he’d never heard of and a high rise the brothers claimed was a self-sufficient city.

  “That’s who most of this load is for,” Darren said. “They don’t ever go outside, it’s a bunch of those city people, but they have a pretty good setup. We even brought them some chickens and some goats. We ain’t allowed past the first floor, but they say they turned the roof into a little ranch.”

  “I’ll have to give them a visit,” Jessie said as they folded their maps back up. “Wonder why they never contacted us.”

  “Got no way to do it, I reckon,” William said. “Phones don’t work, now do they?”

  “They don’t have ham radios?” Jessie asked, tucking his map into a cargo pocket.

  The brothers looked at each other and their mouths fell open a little. “Tarnation!” Darren said “Why didn’t we think of that?”

  “I bet the Radio Shack down to Eugene has some,” William said. “I bet they’d pay real good chips for a couple of ‘em.”

  “What do you use for money?” Jessie asked and Darren pulled out a small pouch and showed him a handful of poker chips with the Lucky 7 casino stamped on the back.

  “These here are good at most places, although Ryan’s Roost and the group down at Crater Lake won’t take ‘em. They only trade goods for goods or gold. Can’t nobody seem to agree on what a ten-dollar chip is worth.”

  “Yeah,” William said. “Paper money is worthless. Some folks like real gold, but nobody can agree on what it’s really worth because if you wanted, everybody could just blow open a bank vault and be rich. So, in some places, a gold coin is like spending a dollar. In some places a little more.”

  Jessie grinned at them and went over to his car to pull out a box of the Lakota gold.

  He came back with it and set it on the table.

  “How much money y'all got between you?” he asked.

  The brothers got quiet and eyed him suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?” Darren asked.

  “Because I’ve been authorized to buy up anything people are using as currency in exchange for real money. New American money,” Jessie said. “This is what’s being used and it’s good anywhere, not just in certain areas. It’s real gold, minted by the government, and a twenty-dollar piece is worth twenty dollars.”

  The brothers eyed the box as Jessie opened it and pulled out a coin to show them. “They only make so many so there’s not a glut. I’m passing these out everywhere I go, but only this one time. Once my trip is finished, this is the only money that’s going to be good everywhere.”

  The brothers left twenty minutes later, their load strapped tight, their maps marked with more places to trade and their money bags quite a bit heavier, the painted clay chips exchanged for newly minted gold. Jessie looked at the pile of poker chips on the picnic table, pretty sure he’d paid a lot more than what they were worth and left them laying there as he headed back to his car. He wanted to check out the high-rise building that had a farm on the roof.

  24

  Jessie

  Bob’s tongue was lolling as he had his head stuck between the bars of the passenger window, breathing in the crisp mountain air. Jessie was driving relaxed, one hand on the wheel and adjusting the heater controls to aim more hot air at himself. It was still a little nippy this high up in the pine forest. He’d been wandering around the forest roads and county two lanes for nearly a week since he’d left the survivalists. He’d hit up a few of the hot springs, had taken long baths, washed all his dirty laundry and generally let himself relax. He did a little trading at Ryan’s Roost, spending the gold and spreading the word. He cleaned out a few little towns, using the Merc to lead the small hordes off until he could get a clear shot, then brought out his .22 rifle and sniped them as they came stumbling down the road. He found a few survivors, but they were well fortified. They were taking care of their own and amassing stockpiles of supplies by the easy scavenging runs they did. He was surprised he didn’t find more people, the mountains were a reasonably safe area to be in, but a family holed up in a hot springs lodge told him almost everyone had gone into one of the fortified towns near the coast. There weren’t a lot of genuine mountain people left, most of the inhabitants that survived the outbreak had either been work from home consultants, or rich enough they didn’t have to commute to the city. They didn’t want to try to live in the wilds on their own and had packed up and moved once word got out that there were safe places to go. The few that were left were the hardy ones. Second and third generation mountain people who liked the solitude and having the forests to themselves again, without all the city folk building McMansions and driving up property values.

  Little by little, Jessie was adding dots to his map. New settlements and trade routes. Everything from fortified towns to hardened, oversized, lodges tucked away in the mountains. Most people were friendly once they realized he meant them no ill will, but they all warned him about raiders. Gangs out raising hell for no good reason, not trying to rebuild anything for themselves, just taking whatever they wanted from others. Casey’s Raiders came in, terrorized or recruited, then moved on, working their way up the coast. The Raiders were why many people moved to the towns. There was safety in numbers.

  Jessie knew his dad and his crew of soldiers had taken off for Mexico, the last known place Casey had been spotted. Apparently, he was sending out his bandits to do all the dirty work while he was relaxing at the beach all winter.

  Not for long, he thought. When my old man finds you, he’ll be checking you off his people to kill list.

  Jessie had found a handful of phones at the last hot spring lodge he’d stayed at and was plugging them in one by one to charge so he could see if there was any decent music on any of them. Most of them were password protected, but enough weren’t that it made it worth the bother. He was scrolling through the music folder on an android, only half paying attention, when a car roared out from a side road. Jessie dropped the phone and hauled the wheel over hard to avoid slamming into the pickup truck. The oversized tires squalled in protest as the nose went into the grass and started sliding. Jessie counter steered, dropped a gear and hit the gas, breaking the rear wheels loose and sending the car into a controlled drift. He kept it sideways, white smoke rolling and engine roaring, as he steered into the slide. The moment of panic was over, he was going down the road at a crazy angle, but he’d done it a hundred times before, practicing his car skills in the dirt. He let off the gas and let the car straighten and looked around for the truck, thinking it had careened off into the woods.

  Bob barked a warning a second before impact as the big Dodge slammed into the side of the Mercury, forcing him over toward the shoulder again. Jessie slammed the brakes and the truck shot by him, swerving on the edge of control. Bob was barking frantically behind him and a glance in the rear view showed him headlights looming fast. He let off the brakes, floored it, and hit the nitrous button on the shifter. The big horse motor leapt forward, throwing both of them against the seat. Jessie ran it up to redline, grabbed third, and tapped the nitrous again, easily pulling away from the chasing cars.

  He flew past the Dodge in a long curve, the driver hesitant to try to ram him again and saw the flash of guns. He ducked low, heard a few of them hit. The layers of Kevlar stopped them and within seconds, he was rounding another bend, getting out of the line of fire.

  Casey’s Raiders, he thought. We meet at last. Hope you’ve got good insurance.

  The Mercury wasn’t built to carve through twisty mountain curves like a Ferrari. It sat too high, the tires had off-road tread, and the suspension was too soft for high-speed curves. He could keep ahead of the trucks, though. They were set up about the s
ame way, they wouldn’t be any good on the turns, either. He was pretty sure he had a lot more motor than any of them did, so all he had to do was lose them in the straights until he could find a cut off to slip down when he was out of sight, maybe come back up behind them and see how they liked getting rammed off the road. He concentrated on his driving, taking up both lanes and aiming for the inside of the curves, sliding to the outside and trying to put distance between them. He worked the transmission hard, slamming through the gears and trying to keep at least one curve ahead, so he was out of gun range. At last glance in the rearview, he was walking away from them, widening the gap at every bend.

  He glanced at the side mirror when he heard a different sound from behind and saw three headlights carving the curves and coming up fast. The high-pitched whine of crotch rockets was unmistakable and they would be on him in seconds. He saw guns come up when they straightened out of the last curve. They must have had them in the back of the trucks. Silly raiders, he thought. You don’t bring a bike to a car fight.

  “Hold on, Bob,” he said, when the lead bike twisted the wick and came zipping up beside him, the passenger aiming an Uzi for his head. Jessie threw open his door, slammed on the brakes, and hunched his shoulders against the flying debris when the bike plowed into it. The passenger went flying over the top and landed face-first on the asphalt at a good eighty miles an hour. The other rider tumbled and bounced into the woods with the motorcycle

  Jessie hit the gas and his door came slamming shut, cutting off the view of a wide streak of red painting the blacktop. Bullets tore into his car, stitching a line of holes across the trunk as he powered into another curve.

  “One down, two to go,” he told Bob.

  Bob said, “Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!” Or probably something similar, Jessie thought. He was barking enough to say that and a whole lot more.