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

by Simpson, David A.

  The music started and Sandy kept matchmaking. The men let her choose, they knew she would do a better job at picking the right one than they could. In this world, there weren’t a whole lot of second chances and they’d rather have some guidance than none at all. The women all looked equally beautiful to the men but they knew a long-term relationship had to be based on something more than that. Sandy’s picks would give them a better than average chance of things working out and moving forward. The dancing started, the music and laughter got louder and Hot Rod had to nearly drag the other drivers away from the festivities. They had miles to travel and an enemy was advancing.

  Jimmy and Tony grabbed their bags and loaded up. At least they didn’t have to hide anymore, they could ride in the cab. It would be a lot smoother and they were excited about going to the Tower. Mr. Cobb said they’d been volunteered. Since they’d shown themselves to be competent at operating the Bradley’s, they would be training the men at the tower. It would be easier and faster than for them trying to teach themselves just using the manuals. Rumor had it that the Tower had ice cream. They were looking forward to it.

  They didn’t have much of a sendoff, everybody except the guards were packed into the Gold Digger Road house. Gage was tempted to stow away again but Jimmy told him he had a job to do. He had to get the men of Tombstone up to speed on the Bradley’s. Besides, he had parents back in Lakota and if they were upset now, they’d really lose it if he took off again.

  They fired up the rigs, made their final checks and had the long nose road tractors headed west before the sun had set. They caught up on gossip with the others on the hams and got to tell first hand stories of all the lovely ladies in Tombstone. Two more busloads were out there somewhere. Bastille was broadcasting that on his radio show, getting everyone worked up and worried about them. They hadn’t been seen or heard from since the three groups split up in Oregon but now every train, every trucker and every retriever was watching for them.

  82

  Jessie + Scarlet

  Jessie sat sideways in his car, feet on the asphalt, idly scratching Bob behind the ears. He’d just hung up the mic with Lakota and now he had a problem. Casey was gathering his army, getting ready to start attacking all the smaller settlements and the fortified farms. Wire Bender didn’t say much on the open channel, you never knew who might be listening, but the bottom line was they were pretty busy. Would Jessie be able to get the Island set up with what they needed?

  “So what does that mean?” Scarlet asked “They can’t send men?”

  Jessie sighed deeply and nodded. He understood the defense of the capital city and its close allies was a higher priority than an island community that was sketchy and weak. He and Scarlet had spent the last few hours scouting the island, checking their defenses and talking to a lot of different people. They were soft, they were a lot like the residents in the Tower, they were isolated and mostly unaffected by the end of the world. They had let a handful of men take care of security as they tried to keep life as normal as possible. Most of them didn’t even have a gun. They would crumble under even a weak assault.

  The handful of warriors that were here had chosen to enrich themselves, make their own lives comfortable at the expense of the others. They had set themselves up like royalty, taking what they wanted, keeping the populace unarmed and afraid, keeping everyone constantly in their debt with protection fees and taxes. Jessie understood better how the Director had remained in charge. He was a greasy, spineless politician but the head of the militia realized it took more than brute force to rule over a people. They didn’t have any desire for conquer and conquest, that was much too dangerous, they simply wanted all the luxuries and privilege the Island could offer. They were smart enough to know you couldn’t just take any woman you wanted and do whatever you wanted to her. There would be a revolt. But if there was a law, now that was different. If you controlled the food, the work, where people lived and everything else about their lives, then you could get what you wanted with out a messy fight. Nobody would make waves or complain too much it they were afraid of being put outside the wall. Keep them unarmed and defenseless and they would pay anything, give up any freedom for their security. It had worked well for them. The militia maintained order, made the dangerous runs for supplies, kept the zombies at bay and reaped the rewards.

  That is, until someone bigger and meaner came along and wiped out the ruling class in a matter of minutes. Now he and Scarlet had wiped out the bigger and meaner guys, had promised help that wasn’t coming and basically left the town defenseless.

  He had a problem.

  “Why should this town be special?” Scarlet asked, knowing what Jessie was trying to figure out. “They have had it easy and chose their path, now they must learn to harden up and take care of themselves.”

  “They’ll die without training.” Jessie said. “Did you see them? None of them have been outside the gates since this started. They don’t even know what they don’t know, they’ll get killed the first time they go outside. The Cult will realize they’re missing some men and probably wipe out half the town to teach them a lesson.”

  She placed her hand on his neck and started kneading the knotted muscles.

  “If you save a man’s life, you are responsible for it.” she said.

  Jessie pulled her close, buried his head into her stomach as she ran her fingers through his hair, still wet from their dip in the lake to clean up.

  “We have to teach them.” he said into her belly “We can’t leave them, they aren’t like the kids with all the wild animals, they don’t know how to take care of themselves.”

  “Yes.” said Scarlet. “They are our responsibility now.”

  Jessie understood now why his dad hated being the president. Why he would rather be out in the field doing something, anything, rather than sit through another meeting or have people look to him for answers he didn’t have. His first instinct was to fire all the people who had been in charge before, the ones who took advantage and abused the power but Scarlet told him not to. They might be dirt bags but they could get things done. She was right, of course. She’d had a ten-month crash course in how to control people and the same principals applied to getting a newly freed people to do what was best for themselves.

  The first thing they did was open the basement of the courthouse and give everyone guns and ammo from the arms room and told them to go practice shooting. There were enough people who knew guns, hunters and sportsmen, to teach the old ladies or children or other men who’d never even held one.

  The wall they’d built was made of steel panels from a construction site bolted to utility poles. It was topped with barbed wire but it was only eight feet tall. Even a small horde of day one zombies would be able to get over it. The town had been lucky, the militia over confident and the Director ignorant about what a preserved horde fresh from inside a mall or school could do to them.

  Jessie wanted two walls, both doubled in height, a sally port system, more concertina wire protecting the shore line and crew serve weapons set up with intersecting lines of fire. He put dozens of sentries on the walls they had and took a full crew of men with him, more than was necessary, to the construction site some forty miles distant.

  While they were trying to jumpstart a backhoe and fork truck to load the panels, he told Scarlet to go to the nearby houses and free any undead trapped inside. She could let them lose and they’d ignore her. They would start chasing the sounds of men and they could get their first taste of combat. Hundreds of rounds were expended on each one she set loose. She freed them one at a time at first. When the panicked shouts of terror became orders to concentrate fire and men ran to where they were ordered instead of jumping in trucks to hide, she released them faster. Two or three at a time and from different directions.

  “Keep working!” Jessie would yell at the crews when they heard gunfire. “Trust the fire teams!”

  His guns never left his holsters although it was close once or twice. The
men and women went from unorganized random fire chaos to competent squads in a short time. Jessie knew anyone could learn to fight, it was human nature to survive, to live no matter what. It had been so long since people weren’t at the top of the food chain, since the smallest mistake would get you torn apart, the instincts had been suppressed. Most people wanted to fight, to kill, to defend what was theirs and it only took teaching them the basics, keeping them alive long enough to learn from mistakes, to turn them into warriors.

  They were there for hours by the time they got the machines fired up and the trailers loaded. Scarlet had run out of undead to send their way, the whole area was cleared. No one noticed she was missing, they’d been too busy staying alive and when she slipped back among them, no one was the wiser.

  The men and women had a new bit of swagger in their step, held their weapons with more confidence when they gathered at one of the loaded flatbeds. When Jessie told them to head back on their own, he had other business to take care of, they nodded and loaded up. They had just been baptized by fire and had come out unscathed. The undead weren’t such a mind-numbing, unstoppable horror after all. They had killed them with hunting rifles and shotguns. Imagine what they could do with military grade hardware.

  Jessie spread a map out on the hood of the car and opened a can of peaches.

  “Wire Bender said there is a National Guard armory here.” He indicated a spot on the map a few towns over. “During the first days, all the Guard and Reserves were activated but even if it’s overrun with them, there’s a lot of empty farmland all around it. We can open the gate and lead them all away.”

  Scarlet took a proffered bite, savored the flavor and slid an arm around his waist, snuggled in tight.

  “He didn’t have an inventory of what weapons they had but it’s the biggest Guard post in the area and it was fully staffed year-round, not just a training camp. Chances are it’s where they kept all the good stuff.”

  “I know where some good stuff is.” Scarlet purred into his ear, ran her fingernails under his jacket and up his back.

  Jessie shivered and tried to continue. “Hopefully they have live rounds for the rocket launchers, if not they must have a bunch of fifty’s. Maybe even chain guns.”

  “I know a rocket that needs to be launched.” she cooed and her hand strayed downward.

  “If we hurry we can make it before dark.” Jessie said, tapping his finger on the map.

  “We’re not hurrying.” Scarlet said, her voice low and husky. “I made sure this town empty, no more zombies. I have nice place picked out. It has swing set. We stay here tonight. We have Jessie and Scarlet fun.”

  83

  Gunny

  “They’re ready.” Sammy said as he closed the hood on the Chevelle and wiped his hands on a rag.

  “Built to the same specs as the others.”

  “Thanks Sammy.” Gunny said and nodded to Jimmy Winchell who was strapping the hood down on the LaSalle. It was the biggest and Griz had already laid claim, his gear already stowed.

  Tommy and his mechanics had gotten pretty good at putting together the war rigs. There were a lot of mint condition, fully restored muscle cars stored away in garages. They were all gear heads and it hurt to cut up period correct numbers matching cars but there were plenty of them out there and their value as a collector’s item was almost zero. People would pay a retriever more for a family photo album than they would for a vintage Ferrari. It was easy to cut the fenders, weld in oversized truck suspensions, add the roll cages, brush guards, window bars, running lights and machine guns. Interiors would be gutted, Kevlar added and back seats turned into beds. The machines were rugged, easy to work on and could easily hit a hundred miles an hour. More if needed in a pinch. They weren’t trailer queens anymore. Meticulously polished chrome was spray painted black. Engines lovingly rebuilt and babied were thrashed and redlined, driven like they had been on Friday nights when teenagers bought them second hand in the seventies.

  That was the main reason the hit teams didn’t drive Hummers like the convoy escorts. They were just too slow. A lot of Casey’s men favored new pickup trucks off the showroom floor. They weren’t very rugged but that didn’t matter if you were the one doing the chasing, not the one being chased. If your truck broke, the guy behind you would carry on running the victims to ground. Some of them knew the usefulness of old cars, jacked up, souped up and highly modified. They had the machines the Lakota crew had abandoned in Mexico and all the war chiefs drove them.

  Gunny tossed in his go bag and fired it up. He wasn’t sure what was under the hood but it felt torquey, probably a 396. Definitely a Rat. Maybe he wouldn’t lose or break this one for a while. Maybe he’d have it long enough where he’d actually have to check the oil.

  Him and Griz were headed out alone, just like old times before the fall. They told the mechanics they were headed up to the Island to help set up defenses. Once they were discovered missing, word would get out, the mechanics would talk. Cobb would be annoyed but he’d figure it out, he’d know they were spreading a rumor for the benefit of the spies.

  They had a name at the top of their list and they wouldn’t be coming back until it was marked off. They didn’t have anyone else to take care of, to make sure they got home safe and sound. If anyone would have known what they were planning, they would have tried to stop them but the two old warriors were headed out to do what they did best. Eliminate a threat.

  They rumbled up to the airstrip on the outskirts of town where Eustice was working on the heavy lift bi-plane. Tommy had the engine panels off and was elbow deep in it double checking the hoses and wires. The plane was old but the forest service had done a good job maintaining it. It was rigged for firefighting and had auxiliary tanks that could hold a thousand gallons of water or fire retardant. Eustice was routing a feed tray through a hole he’d cut in the cockpit for the chain gun bolted to the wing.

  Griz whistled when he saw it and what they were doing. There was a pallet of ammo waiting to be loaded and some of the kids from the Bullet Brigade were cutting the back panels out of a stack of flak vests. Wilson had brought thousands of the old style BDU armor that had been stockpiled in one of S-2’s warehouses on Fort McAlester. The kids were using them to line the floor of the airplane, making it pretty much bulletproof. The twin chain guns were bolted solid, didn’t have any joystick control, but they would rain down lead anywhere he pointed the nose of the plane.

  “When do you think you’ll be taking it up again?” Gunny asked.

  “Maybe tomorrow, probably the next day, though.” Eustice answered and stood up straight, stretching his back. “There’s still a few more improvements we’re trying to add.”

  Gunny wasn’t sure exactly how he could use the airplane to his advantage, how he could hunt Casey down with it, but it was good to have it nonetheless. It had about a five-hundred-mile range and could haul twelve or fifteen men and their equipment. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. It was the fastest way to get from point A to point B and it could land on nearly any stretch of road as long as there weren’t electric lines in the way. If Eustice could get the fuel stops set up, they could travel all the way to the Tower in an easy day instead of the three or four dangerous days it would take now. The Tower had real doctors and real medical labs. Hot Rod should be getting close with the Bradley and the TOW systems. He knew he’d sleep a lot better knowing it was defended with more than a few guys with pistols and a couple of rifles. Arguably, it was the most important building in the world and also one of the most fragile.

  They crossed the moat and left Lakota behind them, running through the gears and getting up to speed heading west again. They’d lost Casey back in the deserts of Arizona, some thousand miles away and knew he had plans to take over a cliff top fortress. Gunny didn’t have a plan worked out, not yet. He’d figure something out along the way. They were loaded for bear and this time they weren’t running away. They were driving straight into the heart of the beast.
/>   84

  Jessie + Scarlet

  They slept, he knows they did, but he really can’t say when. While she was out rounding up undead for the Islanders to hone their skills on, she’d come across an estate of breath taking beauty. A two-story stone home surrounded by wrought iron fencing, overgrown gardens and paths. It had a backup generator to power the whole house and she’d filled it with gas. It started up on its own when she reset the breaker, the automatic power interruption circuits still working. She’d gone through and removed all the photos, anything that could remind them of the family who used to live here and cleaned up the mess in the kitchen that had leaked from the refrigerator. Between darting out to free the trapped undead in the rest of the town, she refilled the oversized hot tub on the back patio and turned it on to heat the water. The house was all electric and everything worked. The showers were hot, the music played from hidden speakers, flames danced merrily from the artificial logs in the fireplace. The central air conditioning cooled it to a comfortable temperature and there were sensuous oils in the master bath.

  Scarlet had planned their evening well. Jessie had never guessed the things that two young, agile, flexible and inhumanly strong people could do on a swing set. He’d never realized that being able to hold your breath for five or six minutes could lead to such delicious pleasure in a hot tub with dozens of water jets massaging all parts of your body. He’d never known peach juice could taste so good when poured over certain parts of a body when she was hanging upside down from her knees over the banister.