Her nipples involuntarily became firm and hard with the cool water and Jessie looked away, berated himself for being a pervo. He closed his eyes when he washed the blood trails from her cuts on her thigh that stained her yellow hair red. He didn’t know if he got it all or not, he wasn’t going to go rubbing his hand between her legs. It was weird enough just seeing her naked and even though he tried not to look, tried to be dispassionate and completely not creepy, he still saw the fine tone, the taunt muscles and the perfect form.
When she was clean, he pulled back the sheets, got her on the bed and draped wet towels over her. He mixed up a batch of the powdered penicillin and made her drink. He didn’t know what else to do. If the medicine worked, she should be feeling better by morning. If it didn’t, he’d have to decide if he was going to dig a grave or just put some flowers in her hands and leave her on the bed.
7
Lakota
Wire Bender pushed the mic aside and looked up at Cobb, Lacey and Sheriff Collins. He didn’t have to shake his head or tell them anything, they’d been listening for the last ten minutes as he tried to raise Gunny or Griz or anyone else from the team. They didn’t know much, just that the hit hadn’t gone off as planned and now they were running across the desert with an army chasing after them. The last transmission had been from Bridget, letting them know they’d run into a little trouble at a border crossing, couldn’t get across, but were heading to the next one.
They’d been trying to reach Jessie for days but he wasn’t answering either. The last they’d heard, he’d been in Blackfoot and had killed a bunch of Casey’s men in a bar fight. The man on the radio said he was pretty sure the Road Angel had been fine when he left town, he’d had lunch with his dog at the bar and grill right before he took off. No one had heard anything since.
“I can’t stand this.” Lacey said in frustration. “You’ll let me know if you hear from either one?”
“Yes ma’am.” Wire Bender said. “Ricky tick.”
“Let’s get some tea, Debbie.” she told Sheriff Collins. “I’m sure they’re fine. Johnny probably found a cantina somewhere and they’re all sipping on cold beers and staring at dancing girls. Damn men.”
Collins tried to smile but she was just as worried as Lacy. Wire Bender said the last message was rushed, the engines were roaring and he’d heard gunfire in the background. She didn’t know what she’d do if her Grizzly Bear didn’t come back. She was hard as iron when she needed to be, you had to be in this world, but Griz got to her softer side. She’d made him court her the old-fashioned way for months and he was a bigger softy than she was. He held doors open for her, paid for her movie ticket and always got the popcorn the way she liked it. He brought her flowers and bullets, took her water skiing and shooting. For her birthday, he’d taken her for a cruise in an Abrams tank, had let her drive it, blow up stuff with training rounds and run over cars. It was the best date she’d ever had.
Now he was MIA.
Same as her husband the day the world went mad. She couldn’t let it get her down, though. She had a job to do, rounds to make. There were new people coming in all the time and it was important that they knew who she was and she liked to meet them, get to know them a little. Like that new couple with the baby, Dustin and Lexi. They’d been hiding out since the beginning and were so grateful to be taken in. It was unusual for whole families to survive intact and they were welcomed warmly, Lacy had even gotten her a job in the courthouse and Dustin had immediately volunteered as a guard. That was the rewarding part of her profession and it made her proud to be a small part of the rebuilding.
Somebody had picked the locks on the armory. Nothing was taken but somebody, or a bunch of somebodies, had been messing around with the chain guns. From the candy wrapper she’d found on the floor, she had a pretty good idea who it was. There were some manuals missing too and she was pretty sure she’d find them in the secret hideout, the kids playing grownup and trying to teach themselves how to operate the tanks and Bradley’s. She needed to have another chat with the Bullet Brigade. She’d listen to their protestations of innocence and denial, insisting they were perfect angels and would never do anything wrong. All with straight faces. But they’d know she knew, it would be enough to keep them on the straight and narrow, for a while anyway, and the missing manuals would mysteriously reappear one morning.
She’d have tea at the Sunshine Café before she got on with her day. She had time for that. It was mostly for Lacy, she told herself. She wasn’t worried. Not yet.
“Let me know if ya hear anything from either one of them.” Cobb rasped and clomped out of the shop. He had a convoy to organize, didn’t have time to be hanging around all day, waiting for a call. The Meadows kid found quite a few more settlements and was pretty good at radioing in with the lists of what they had and what they needed. This Tower he’d found up in Oregon was the highest on his priority list. He’d talked to their chief of security, a former cop, and knew they needed to get a load of military grade hardware up there as quick as possible. From the sounds of it, they had one of the most advanced technological buildings in the world before the fall, now it certainly was. They couldn’t let Casey’s Raiders take it down, they’d just destroy it. The Security chief, a captain Macon, said they only had small arms and a few police rifles. Nothing that could stop a determined Raider attack with rocket launchers or even a handful of grenades. He was sending a whole load of heavy ordinance, RPG’s, night vision, TOW missile systems they could mount on the roof and a couple of Bradley’s for the intimidation factor. No body would be stupid enough to attack it if they saw that much of a military presence.
From the sounds of it, the Tower was much more important than Lakota was when it came to rebuilding. They still had all of their technology up and running, they were still 21st century with cell phones and wireless systems. General Carson was already talking about getting some crews together and rerouting the fiber optic cables from NSA and getting satellite sync networks back up. Cobb didn’t understand all that, but Carl the Engineer did and was all aflutter about the possibilities. All Cobb knew was if they could protect the Tower, it was a big step in the right direction to restoring civilization.
Lakota was about as far back as Cobb wanted to go in the overall timeline of things. They’d managed to get the town up and running at about a 1950’s level of technology with running water, electricity and party line telephones. He was happy with it but he knew a lot of the towns were operating at a weird hybrid 1800’s level. Some things were still modern, they might have tractors and machine guns but they only had sporadic generator power and used wood to heat their homes.
His biggest problem was man power. There just weren’t enough of them to fill all the roles, do all the jobs, take care of things that needed to get done. There weren’t enough good people left in the world. Between the millions of zombies, the crazy cannibals to the south and the crazy Egyptian cult taking over Canada, there were casualties every week. Hard working men and women trying to rebuild who were either being killed outright or forced to join up with the gangs.
“Hey Top!” Slippery Jim said and ran to catch up once he was far enough away from the sheriff where she wouldn’t see them. He was headed down to Tommy’s shop where the trucks were lining up, getting ready for the big run.
“Shouldn’t you little hooligans be in school?” Cobb asked, eyeballing the group of kids who were the cause of most of the mischievousness that went on in the town.
“We heard there was a convoy headed up north.” Jimmy said, speaking for his gang of eight or ten kids, the oldest of them no more than twelve. They all fell in behind, trying to look contrite about skipping school but not being very convincing.
Cobb just harrumphed, kept striding along.
“We know you’re short on manpower,” Jimmy said “and we come to volunteer. We can help. We heard you barely have enough guys to drive the trucks. We can be lookouts or gunners.”
“Well you heard wrong.” Cobb
gruffed at them, wondering how the hell these kids knew things the rest of the town didn’t. “Now beat it, get back to school before I call Mrs. Parsons and tell her where you’re at.”
“Yes sir.” they all chorused innocently and took off before he could make good on his threat to call their meanest teacher.
Cobb watched them go, knowing full good and well they weren’t going back to class. He gave his head a shake, wished they were a little older. Even if they were fifteen or sixteen, he might be tempted to send them out. Everyone called them the Bullet Brigade, they’d been instrumental in saving the town last year, but running ammo and guns to people on the wall wasn’t the same as going out into the wastelands and manning a battle station. They weren’t ready to be shooting at zombies or worse, the raiders who fired back. He put them out of his mind when he came to the trucks. He had things to do, cargo to load, people to get rolling. They’d never sent a convoy out on a two-thousand-mile journey. There were a lot more logistics involved than anything they’d done before. There was fuel and food to think about, repairs if a truck broke down or had a flat, they needed to line the doors with Kevlar if they got attacked and the list went on. He needed another dozen men but he just didn’t have them.
He had train crews rounding up hordes of the undead, he had his best men running with Gunny trying to eliminate Casey, he had three shifts of guards on the walls, he had convoys out clearing towns and warehouses and bringing in food. Every able-bodied man and woman was working, doing their part, there was just too much to do. They had fields they were preparing for crops, they had livestock to manage, he had people at the hydroelectric dam and waste treatment facility and the list went on. The SS sisters wanted more medical equipment, Tina out at the power plant wanted spare parts, their one garbage truck had a hydraulic leak and they needed a new one, the water treatment plant was screaming for more purification chemicals… it never ended. It was enough to give a man an ulcer. The bottom line was there simply weren’t enough warm bodies to do everything that needed to be done. Everyone was doing double duties. The barber was a guard. The various store clerks helped with community meals and the mechanics rode shotgun in the supply convoys. It would be so much easier if he didn’t have assholes like Casey to contend with.
He walked the half mile to where the trucks were being loaded, he needed the exercise and it gave him time to organize his thoughts. He spoke with Tommy for a minute, checked with Eliza with her ever-present laptop and spreadsheets then hurried off to find Captain Wilson and the cases of TOW missiles still not delivered.
The Bullet Brigade watched from the shadows across the street until Cobb was out of sight. They were a rag tag bunch, mostly orphans, who were always trying to do more to help, usually just getting in the way. They’d been through a lot, they’d survived a lot. Most of them, even though they were only ten or twelve, had already killed zombies. Some of them, their own families who had turned. They knew how high the stakes were, not like some of the other kids in town who’d been protected and sheltered by their parents. Kids who’d hid out for a few weeks with grownups then came to Lakota when the walls were up and everything was safe. Slippery Jim had seen every friend he’d ever had, his own blood sister and the nuns that took care of them, killed by savage men. He’d fought with them and had bitten a chunk out of one their arms, the same one who’d cut off his sister’s head. Mr. Jessie had saved him from certain death, had taught him how to shoot and taught him how to be brave.
The rest of the kids in his gang had similar stories they couldn’t tell the grownups about. Only others who had been through the same thing could understand. They’d let a few of the town kids in the gang, kids that still had parents, because they’d proven themselves to be tough and unafraid. During the last battle of Lakota when a thousand Jihadi Muslims and ten thousand zombies had been attacking, swarming the walls, his gang had kept the bullets flowing up the ladders to all the men and women firing the guns. They’d done the impossible, they’d saved the town but now they were still treated like little kids. Slippery Jim said that was all for the good, though. Grownups didn’t pay attention to kids unless they were in the way or being bothersome. He’d learned a lot on how the world worked during his lifetime of living in Saint Sophia’s home for Children. He’d taught everything he knew to his new gang and now it was showtime.
“Rumors were true, then.” he said from their hiding spot. “They’re sending the convoy without any gunners or extra drivers.”
They watched the First Sergeant hop in one of the pickup trucks and drive off. It was their chance to help, not be told to get back to classes. There were only four trucks going so only four of the gang could go. Any more and they’d be in the way, crowded in the cabs. Everyone volunteered but they finally played rounds of rock, paper, scissors to see who could. Jimmy, Gage, Antonio and Lizzie won and it was settled.
“Radar” he said “You grab our bug out bags from the clubhouse. We’ll stash them here and load them up when we get a chance.”
Radar nodded and took off. It would take him a couple of trips to get them but they’d been ready for months in case they needed to run. Most of them had fled their homes or schools last year with nothing but the clothes on their backs and zombies on their tails. Now they kept emergency stuff at their clubhouse, they never wanted to be caught unprepared again. They weren’t the same people they had been last year, there was a new seriousness about them. The old spoiled or lazy kids they used to be were dead and gone. They had grownup thoughts and ideas now. They couldn’t care less about Legos or Pokémon cards. They cared about their town and about helping to keep it safe.
“Until you’ve run screaming from your own mother tearing chunks out of your baby brother then turning her dead eyes on you, you can’t appreciate how fragile the world really is.” Antonio had told them months ago. They all agreed. They’d still have fun, hang out at the beach and play with the Xbox, but they all knew they had to be able to take care of themselves. The adults couldn’t do it all and your whole world, everything you owned and everyone you knew, could disappear in an eyeblink.
“Remember,” Jim said. “I’ll give you the signal when it’s time to hide. It can’t all happen at once or they’ll suspect something.”
They nodded then jogged after him as he cheerfully greeted a frazzled Eliza who was trying to direct a fork truck with a pallet loaded with boxes of supplies for Tombstone.
“Hey Mizz Eliza.” he said. “Mr. Cobb said we was supposed to help you load trailers. What you need us to do?”
8
Gunny
It was after dark when they finally trudged into the little cluster of buildings at the foot of the Kofa Mountain. They’d hoped some of Casey’s men would chase down the plane crash and they could ambush them, take their cars or trucks, but no one came. They’d either escaped the Raiders dragnet or Casey was being careful, gathering his men to come at them in force. Or he thought they’d been killed in the wreck. Who knew what that moron was thinking, his unpredictability made it difficult to plan. The half dozen buildings were long abandoned, along with a smattering of rusting cars and broken heavy equipment. The moon and stars were bright in the cloudless sky and the signs of many desert parties were strewn around. There were a few campfire pits, faded graffiti sprayed on buildings, empty beer cans discarded and half buried in the sand. There were a few derelict campers, some painted boulders with ‘class of 2012’, ‘Bobbie loves Jenny forever’ and other slogans along with some metal equipment sheds from some long disused mining facility. A creaky metal windmill still turned when a rare breeze would puff up. The temperature wasn’t too hateful since the sun had set, it was in the high 70’s and wouldn’t drop down much below that. The Sonora desert was a harsh environment during the day but nighttime was bearable.
Gunny took inventory of his crew, they all looked worn out. The merciless hike in hundred-degree weather had sapped them. There had only been a single canteen of water between them and it was long gone. Skin was
red with sunburn, lips were cracked and dry. He was pretty sure he didn’t look much better. He spit out the pebble he’d been using to draw saliva. Things weren’t desperate, not yet, but they would be if they didn’t find water.
“Spread out.” he said quietly. “Check the buildings, see if there are any water tanks left that haven’t been shot up or might have a little something left in them. Hollywood, check the windmill, see if we can get it pumping again somehow.”
They nodded and split up, everyone too tired to make jokes or small talk. He watched them go, watched how they walked, looked for signs of limping or blisters. No one had complained or had a hard time keeping up with the pace he’d set and he felt pride in them. They were a good team and the setbacks hadn’t broken them or devolved into in fighting and bickering. Well, besides Griz and Scratch but that had been going on for years. He took off towards a rusty, dilapidated shed, hoping to find something to drink so they wouldn’t have to dig holes for solar wells. The mouthful of water you got from them was barely worth the effort if there were other options. There was a lot of plant life, plenty of scrub brush and cactus, so he wasn’t too worried about finding water. They’d suck the juice from a barrel cactus if they had to, but only as a last resort. It was so acidic, it would probably make them sick. They weren’t far from the freeway, though. Once they got over the mountain, it was only another fifteen or twenty miles. They could risk getting diarrhea if they were that close, it wasn’t like they were lost and would be out here for days or weeks. If they could find a few gallons stashed away, that would alleviate worrying about it, though. They could make it with that.
Zombie Road (Book 5): Terror On The Two-Lane Page 5
