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

by Simpson, David A.

  “Yeah,” he said “But not private stuff. You better not tell that idiot anything about me. He’ll start another one of those dumb call in shows.”

  She nodded, ignored him, and went back to writing.

  The house was big, had a pool table in the basement and was a good place to spend the night. They made some hasty defenses with boards nailed to the floor in front of the doors, hung blackout blankets over the windows then Jessie dug around in his trunk for the little Honda generator. The propane tank on the grill still had plenty of gas and the kitchen hadn’t been overrun with insects. With some Bisquick, tomato paste, pepperoni from the gas station and other canned ingredients, they made the best pizza either of them had had in months. Jessie pushed the Toyota out of the garage and backed the Mercury into its place, they went over a few escape plans if things went bad but neither expected any trouble. They’d been prowling around town all afternoon and hadn’t seen any other undead. They strung extension cords from the genny, played pool then watched movies until late at night. Scarlet fell asleep with the cat curled at her feet and her head in Jessies lap. He stared at her as the movie credits ended and the DVD went into its endless loop of playing the trailer. Her pale blonde was growing out and contrasted sharply against the jet black. She reminded him of the Bride of Frankenstein with the stark two-tone hair. Her face, too, he supposed. It was beautiful, almost perfect except for the three violent slashes across one cheek. He wondered what had done it, what kind of weapon left marks like that. Maybe a spiked fist, like his knuckle dusters.

  He wasn’t sure what to think of her. Sometimes she was astute and sharp witted. Sometimes she was a mess. A disaster train to Loserville, nearly getting him killed or wanting to cut some guys junk off because of an overheard conversation. She was smart but not wise to survival in the wastelands. She made newbie mistakes. Sometimes she surprised him with her grace and speed. She was ruthless and violent, she’d killed her own men, but cried after she’d done it. She was soft and carried hurts inside of her. She’d had an unusual childhood and she’d done some pretty messed up things in that cult. Jessie supposed he could sort of understand, her father had been the driving force behind it, telling her what to do. Things had been crazy when it all started, nobody knew what was happening or why. He wondered if they could negotiate with the group, come to terms or something. Don’t kill us and we won’t kill you kind of thing.

  She looked peaceful when she slept.

  Vulnerable.

  He needed to get up, turn off the generator quietly humming away under the back deck, but didn’t want to disturb her. She was wearing a pair of shorts and a loose-fitting Minnesota Vikings jersey. Her hair was much shorter now, the long black braid cut squarely off with a butcher knife. She was shedding her old identity, becoming someone new. He’d noticed she still walked with a slight limp after the zombie battle. She’d been tired and upset, had let her aura of invincibility down. The long gashes on her legs still showed, they hadn’t healed properly and the scars still looked fresh. The one’s he’d gotten the same day had already faded from pink to white, completely healed. Her body was still working on hers. Maybe that fever had slowed everything down, causing her to heal slower. He noticed tiny black runners spreading away from the slashes. Probably traces of infection from the filthy knife that cut her. Maybe they should get her some more medicine, some more penicillin. If he remembered right, you were supposed to take if for weeks, even after you were all healed up. They’d do that tomorrow. Stop by the pharmacy before they hit the road. Before they started the nearly two-thousand-mile trip on twisty turny backroads that snaked along the river.

  The lights fluttered, the TV flickered and then all went dark. The generator had run out of gas. Bob raised his head and sniffed the air then closed his eyes, relaxed again. They were safe. All was well in Minnesota that night. Jessie twisted a little on the oversized couch, put his feet up on the ottoman and leaned back, absent mindedly stroking her hair like he did to Bob as he drifted off to sleep.

  68

  Jessie

  They cut through the Leech Lake wilderness area and made their first stop at the Federal dam. Scarlet had a map all worked out for them and Jessie had to grudgingly admit her meticulous planning was probably, maybe, possibly, just a little teensy tiny bit better than meandering wherever the car wanted to go. He was pretty sure he never would have come down this road or found this dam if she hadn’t pointed it out in one of the travel books she’d snagged from the library. There were a dozen trees blown down across the blacktop within a mile of turning on it. He would have gone a different direction, saved himself a lot of work, sweat and bug bites sawing up trees into pieces small enough to move.

  He pulled up on the bridge when they finally got there and everyone except Nefertiti got out, Scarlet with her books. She read to him from it, telling him when the dam was built and how many gallons the reservoir held and a bunch of other useless facts that he ignored as he scratched at his mosquito bites. It was the middle of the day, why were those damn things out already?

  “Gonna have to update that book soon.” he said cutting her off in the middle of her telling him how the first dam had been built in 1882.

  She looked up to where he was pointing. A lot of trees had fallen during whatever storms or tornados had come through the area. A lot of boats had been torn lose from docks. Splintered hulls and broken boards and who knew how many engines were pressed up against the dam along with a lot of driftwood and fallen trees. It was clogged, the waters backed up and flowing around one side of it, already flooding some low-lying areas.

  “That’s slowly washing away the shoulder.” Jessie said, pointing to where the water was rushing past the concrete. “It’s going to create a new path and drain the lake.”

  “Can we do something?” she asked, her book forgotten for the moment.

  Jessie looked at the eroding soil and the reservoir already spilling over its banks.

  “Yep.” he said. We can get out of here before it breaks. Might be five minutes, might be five days but it’s failing. Nothing we can do but report it.”

  He called for Bob to get back in and they took off, both of their spirits a little dampened. In less than a year, something that had been standing for over a hundred would be gone and it would take every little town with it on the way to the Mississippi. By the end of summer, it would be as if it never was, the lands returning to what they were before man molded them to his will. A concrete finger beside a river that would flood every time it rained would be all that was left. The world was falling apart much faster than they had realized.

  They avoided Grand Rapids, bypassing the downtown area and sticking to the outskirts. Scarlet directed him to the Great River Road as she read from the guide book, telling him about its history and length and how many bridges spanned the river.

  “There will be a lot of them up north.” she said “The river is small but the farther south we drive, the fewer there will be. Did your guy really blow all of them up?”

  “Guess we’ll find out.” Jessie said “I know they got the big ones, like Memphis and Saint Louis. They were gone for a month or more, living on boats. Some of his teams went south, others went north with a bunch of C-4 from the army depot.”

  “Oh look!” she exclaimed, bouncing in her seat with excitement.

  “What? What?” Jessie said immediately looking for danger, some unseen hand of doom coming at them.

  “There’s a Judy Garland museum in Grand Rapids! I wonder if they have her ruby red slippers?”

  “Don’t do that!” he yelled at her. “Geez, you just about gave me a heart attack.”

  “But I loved that movie!” she beamed. “Glinda was so beautiful. I dressed up like her for Halloween one year.”

  “Who’s Glinda?” Jessie scowled, his racing heart starting to slow down. “One of the flying monkeys?”

  The miles rolled by with Scarlet taking notes and wanting to stop at every ‘point of interest’ sign they saw.
If they stayed on the river road, it would take them all the way to the gulf. The map showed it crossing over the Mississippi in places but she had already traced out their alternative routes to stay on the Western side. Jessie had never considered his journey a vacation, it was a duty for him. An atonement. A job that needed to get done. For Scarlet, aside from the weeks she had trailed Jessie on her motorcycle, it was her first time away from her parents, her first time traveling in America. Her first time to be free and go where ever she wanted. It was also the last time anyone would see much of what they saw. The quaint little river towns would be swept away without the dams and flood control. The markers reminding people of great battles or historic events would be forgotten. The road was a two-lane blacktop, covered with limbs and leaves and the occasional fallen tree or telephone pole. In another year or two, it would probably be a struggle to travel on it. It would be a slow process of moving dead trees out of the way or working your way around them. There would be washed out culverts and bridges over creeks, cracks in the asphalt that would get bigger with every freeze. They passed hay fields long past due for a cutting and occasionally, if they saw herds of cattle still living, they’d spend some time tearing down fences. Old John Deere tractors sat in fields, buckets over their exhaust pipes. Cars were rusting away on flat tires in driveways and shingles were missing from roofs. Out in the country, all they saw were empty houses. Some probably had dead inside, most didn’t. Most people left their homes on that fateful morning, going to work or school or grocery shopping. Most never made it back.

  They looked for signs of survivors, for smoke from chimneys or fortified houses but any one that lived through the outbreak and the harsh winter was long gone. They had fled to the new walled cities and started over. It was depressing and it usually had Jessie in a constant state of quiet sadness. Every swing set, every fluttering curtain or broken-down door reminded him of all the life that was no longer there. With Scarlet, it was impossible to be melancholy. She was boisterous and excited about living. Excited about their epic quest and excited to see new things. Her giggle was contagious and MRE’s were still new enough to her she wasn’t burnt out on eating them yet.

  They traveled a lot differently, too. When it was just him and Bob, Jessie would drive until he was tired, crash out in the back until he wasn’t then start all over again. Always in motion, constantly seeking the next town or survivor. Now, they took frequent breaks and stopped well before the sun went down. Sometimes they would only travel seventy-five or a hundred miles all day.

  When Jessie started grumbling because she wanted to stop in the next town, to check out the antique stores, she asked him what his hurry was. Why did they have to run the roads at breakneck speeds? There weren’t any more survivors who needed to be saved, no one was in a house surrounded by zombies praying for rescue. Anyone who had made it for this long didn’t get themselves into situations where they needed to be rescued. If they did, they were dumb or the horde was so massive, two people in a car wouldn’t be able to do much about it. Jessie didn’t have an argument. There was no pressing need to hurry. If it took them a month to reach the Gulf Coast, so what? If they found a settlement, they would map it. If they didn’t, they would travel in leisure. He was starting to warm to the idea, to spend every night in a different house. They could stay in everything from double wide trailers to the governor’s mansion. They could see how the other people used to live.

  “Do those books say if any movie stars had houses along the route?” he’d asked “I want to drive a Lamborghini. Maybe we can have a demolition derby with a couple of them.”

  They spoke of doing all the craziest things. Riding jet skis in a swimming pool. Having a black-tie dinner in a million-dollar mansion. Racing go-carts through a mall. Taking selfies wearing all of the diamonds from a jewelry store.

  They were approaching a deserted town north of Minneapolis. It was a quiet little village, only an hour out of the city, and had thrived on the visitors that came for shopping, cheese and craft beers from the local brewery. The tires crunched over broken glass that littered the streets and he had to maneuver around abandoned cars, some with the doors still open and long dead skeletons hanging out. This had been a battleground, bleached bones were scattered on the streets and sidewalks, the windows of the shops were smashed. Guns lay on the ground where they had fallen and spent brass was mixed in with the broken glass. The remains of a bridge crossing the Mississippi jutted away from the bank and stopped halfway across, the center pillar blown away by Wilson’s men running speedboats up the river.

  They traveled on in silence, Jessie trying to avoid the fallen bodies and neither wanting to stop in the graveyard of a town. Scarlet made notes in her journal and they kept rolling, glad to put it behind them and let it rot in peace.

  They skirted Minneapolis, staying far away from the downtown area. There was no telling if it was a ghost town or wall to wall zombies and Jessie didn’t care to find out. He’d been buried by the undead in Colorado. Safe inside the car but it was a chore killing them all and then clearing a path so he could move again. It stank, too. That much rotting flesh and spoiled blood piled all around him was enough to make him gag. He didn’t know how Bob could stand it. His jacked-up Mercury would go a lot of places but it wasn’t a tank, it couldn’t drive over stacks of bodies five and six deep.

  Scarlet got them back to the river road, zig zagging through the outskirts and the industrial districts, and they followed it along the wide, muddy Mississippi. This stretch of the road was in good shape but they could see where it would probably be washed away in a few years. It was close to the water in many places, cut into the hillside. When the dams failed and the river breeched its banks, it would wash away the dirt, trees would tumble and eventually the erosion would eat away enough of the hill and large portions of the road would break away. For now, they were enjoying the cruise. Scarlet constantly played with the iPod and phones changing songs every few minutes. She read from the guide books and pointed out interesting and unique features of the landscape. She wanted to stop at every historical marker and Jessie was willing. It was easy to get caught up in her enthusiasm.

  Despite all the stops, they were still making good time. They were approaching the Iowa border, finally putting Minnesota behind them, when she pointed out a marker right on the state line.

  “There.” she said, indicating another stop was in order. Jessie slowed, turned on the gravel road and wheeled over the railroad tracks that paralleled the road. They pulled up at a little kiosk and learned that they were looking at the survey marker that every plot of land and property boundary west of the Mississippi was based on. If anyone had a dispute about property lines, it would be traced all the way back to the rusty metal rod stuck in the ground.

  “We should move it a few feet.” Jessie said. “That’d screw everybody up.”

  Nefertiti refused to get out of the car, which wasn’t unusual, but they noticed Bob was acting funny, too. Instead of peeing on everything or trying to find something to chase, he kept pacing with his nose in the air, constantly sniffing. He sensed something or heard something they couldn’t and his hackles were up. Jessies hands instinctively fell to his sides near his guns and they both started straining their own senses, looking and listening for danger. For an uncountable massive horde lumbering towards them.

  The breeze shifted and they heard it then, far off and faint, the beeping sound of a truck or some piece of heavy equipment backing up. Survivors.

  “See.” she said in triumph. “I told you it’s good to stop at these attractions.”

  Jessie rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I don’t have any settlements marked on the map in this area. Must be a new one we don’t know about.”

  They climbed back in and started chasing the sound, sometimes he’d have to shut off the car and they’d strain their ears to catch it but once they determined it was coming from a town just down the road, it was easy to follow.

  They cut through a small industri
al district and Jessie caught movement a few blocks away, a truck backing into a dock.

  “There they are!” he said and rolled towards the next street to circle back around.

  “We should keep going.” Scarlet said, pointing out a turn ahead that would take them back to the river.

  Jessie pulled the car to a stop then turned in his seat to look at her. She stared straight out of the windshield, her face blank, not acknowledging him or the fact that they’d stopped.

  “You know who they are, don’t you?” he asked

  She remained silent, started biting her lower lip.

  “It’s your people, isn’t it?” he prodded, taking his hand from the steering wheel and absently dropping it to his leg. Near his gun.

  She said nothing.

  He waited.

  The seconds ticked by. Bob was alert and sensed their tension. He could feel the mistrust and mounting anger from his master and the fear and uncertainty from his new female friend. He stared from one to the other, confused by the way they were behaving.

  Jessie waited.

  “Can we just forget about them?” she finally asked. “Can we please just drive on?”

  “What are they doing?” Jessie asked in return. “Are they getting ready to attack Lakota? Raid our towns and take slaves? Kill our people like Casey does?”

  She started to reply, tell him they were nothing like the raiders, they didn’t eat people. She couldn’t lie to herself, though. It was true that they didn’t eat people, they let the zombies do it for them. Pretty much for the same reasons also, to teach a lesson.

  “I’m not a part of them anymore.” she finally said. “I’m helping you now, aren’t I? I’ve killed my own people for you haven’t I? Isn’t that enough? I see your hand, are you getting ready to shoot me? You don’t trust me, do you?”