Ghost Run

by J. L. Bourne

  Just Capital

  Day 9

  The river of undead corpses seemed to flow for hours. I remained in a place somewhere between consciousness and sleep, twitching at the sound of the chrome door handles being pulled throughout the night, or the sleeper walls being rapped on by bony hands. When the sounds began to fade, so did my consciousness. I dipped into restless sleep and awoke at sunup, slowly parting the curtains, revealing yet another wasteland created by untold thousands of undead footfalls. The grass on both sides of the highway was worn away down to mud for as far as I could see down the road through the morning haze.

  Heat attracts them.

  Body heat, the barrel of a gun, engines.

  I started the rig a few minutes after sunrise and positioned it close alongside the other derelict truck. With the length of cut hose, I began transferring fuel from one truck to the other. All was going well until the fuel stopped flowing from the other truck. Siphoning only works when the destination tank is lower than the source. I thought for a moment, dismissing the stupid idea of letting the air out of my tires. But I could let the air out of the truck’s fifth-wheel air bags. I flipped the same switch I used yesterday to release the kingpin from the trailer, lowering the truck a few inches. With my rig now lower than the other one, gravity was able to help me siphon the rest of the diesel out of the tank.

  After jumping back into the cab, I checked the fuel gauge and was happy to see it climb back up above three-quarters. Aside from a tank, this was the least efficient vehicle I could have chosen, but it was also a few feet off the ground, had its own sleeping quarters, and always seemed to win the law-of-gross-tonnage chicken game with the undead.

  I left my highway camp site at about eight, rolling over the disabled undead as they dragged their broken legs behind, following the horde that abandoned them. Approaching the bridge, I wasted no time in pushing a small blue car out of my way, crunching it into the guardrail as I passed by. I’ve learned not to get curious if I see a car seat. It’s bad for your soul, if one believes in those sorts of things. Leaving the bridge, I wished for one of those Green Goblin faces on the front of my truck like in Maximum Overdrive. The stupid shit you think about when you’re on the road . . . I also wondered what it might be like if I could trade the undead for murderous machines.

  It was still early when I crested a hill and saw the skyline of Tallahassee in the distance. Up ahead a few miles before the city was a strip mall, followed by a hardware store. Passing lumbering undead, I mischievously bumped them into the ditches and abandoned cars as I passed, but not without purpose.

  I pulled into the hardware store parking lot and took the rig around the side. There was a tall razor wire fence that protected the lumberyard from petty theft. A lock connecting rusted chain drawn between two gates kept the honest folks out. I could bust through the fence in the rig with no problem but that wouldn’t help me in my quest for sanctuary before entering the outskirts of Tallahassee.

  I leapt from the truck, nearly into the arms of a female corpse. She was visibly excited at the sight of a warm piece of meat and reached out for me as if to offer directions to the nearest gas station. I front kicked her to the gravel and shoved my fixed blade with great force into her eye socket. With more undead no doubt drawing near, I ran to the gate and placed my muzzle against the lock face. I pumped three rounds into the brass lock before enough of its internals were blasted away that I could remove the lock. Kicking the gate open, I hurried back to the cab and pulled the semi through.

  Ten creatures were rushing the fence as I got the gate closed and wrapped the chain over and over between the bars of the gate. With nothing else nearby, I cut the cordage that secured the GARMR to the rig and used it to secure the chain keeping the undead at bay. Soon, ten became twenty and I had to do something. I was running dangerously low on 300 subsonic and trying to kill them up close with my knife would only result in losing it, violating my number one rule.

  Never be in the badlands without a fixed-blade knife. Never.

  I ran to the still-running semi and recovered the Ruger Mark III from its cheesy green plastic case. Open to the late-morning sun, I could see the fiber optic sight inserts shining in their storage vial. I didn’t have time to be picky and I wouldn’t be making ranged shots. I quickly loaded the ten-round magazines, earning a thumb blister from retracting the magazine springs.

  The creatures were beginning to buckle the fence when I took my first point-blank shot. I placed the Mark III up against a nearby creature’s head and pressed hard before squeezing.

  The report was miraculously muffled by the corpse’s skull.

  I repeated the process through two full mags, forcing a reload caused by poor shot timing. I squeezed the trigger before the muzzle was pressed tight against a skull, causing a loud blast, bringing more of them. After forty rounds of .22LR were expended, the onslaught ended with a pile of corpses stacked high on the other side of the fence. The Mark III only jammed once, which is remarkable for any rimfire gun no matter the maker, especially considering the circumstances. I topped off the mags and tucked the Mark III in the small of my back and went on about my business inside the yard.

  Stacks of wood were placed neatly by dimensions in their two-story-high bays. If not for the grass shooting up through the cracks in the lumberyard’s concrete, I could almost see the builders loading up for the day’s contracts. There were plenty of wood planks available but absolutely no plywood; people probably bought it all up to cover their windows and doors from the undead before things got real bad.

  I headed for the office in the back of the hardware store and peered inside the single-locked glass door. No skylights cut the darkness inside; it was pitch-black. Before figuring out my B-and-E plan, I peeked around the corner at the secured gates. Two corpses milled about in the street but were not aware of my presence; I’d shut down the rig before blasting away with the Mark III. Noise brought them here from somewhere distant, but they didn’t know exactly where to look.

  Good.

  I went back to the locked door and decided that I wouldn’t be able to get inside without pulling it from its frame with the rig, but the window ten feet away was cracked. A long-idle oscillating fan sat in front of the window plugged into a nearby overburdened power strip. I cut the screen away with my knife and raised the window all the way up. Peering inside with my weapon light, I could see no movement.

  I squeezed my large ass through the opening and clumsily fought a rolling chair before planting my boots on the dusty tile floor. I listened for any sounds before grabbing the stapler off the desk and chucking it as far as I could into the dark hardware store. A couple seconds went by before I heard it knock something from a shelf. I looked down at my watch, counting the seconds, and listened. After sixty seconds, I was satisfied that if one of those creatures was inside, it would have told me in the way that the undead speak, through desperate noises of hunger and wanting.

  They do talk. You just have to know when and how to listen.

  The back door was unlocked, so I zip-tied it so I could kick through if I needed a fast getaway, but one of those crafty undead bastards couldn’t just pull it open.

  I headed into the dark opening, letting my eyes adjust to the smorgasbord of useful shelves inside. First, I found some heavy-duty zip ties to replace the ones I’d been using. Never thought these things would be so damn handy for securing doors, gates, whatever. I tossed them into a nearby empty shopping cart and made for the next aisle. There was no sign of footprints on the dust-layered floor, no signs of activity. It sort of makes sense, though, as hardware stores are not known for having food or water. I left the cart behind and went to check the front of the store.

  Another chain secured the double doors from anyone getting inside. Whoever ran this place before they abandoned it probably locked the front, hightailed out the back, and secured the gate on their way out. The same type of lock was on the front door. Through the double-door glass, I could see half a dozen
creatures outside across the street in the strip mall parking lot. Keeping this in mind, I continued shopping.

  Spray paint, bolt cutters, cordage, duct tape, 12-volt inverter, battery-powered nail gun, bit driver, Sawzall, and some extra li-poly batteries were among the many items that filled my cart. Wheeling past the generator aisle, I lugged one of the Honda EU2000 generators into the cart along with all the fuel treatment and oil on the nearby shelf. I grabbed an extra gas can for the generator and marked it with a G so as to not confuse it with the cans I used for diesel. I grabbed a stack of coffee filters sitting on the counter at the back office and cut the zip tie I’d attached to the door. Blinding sunlight hurt my eyes as I shoved the door open with the cart. Satisfied that I wasn’t noticed by the undead, I began to shuttle the supplies back to the truck.

  After the transfer was complete, I ran back behind the store with my new gas can, coffee filters, and a Phillips screwdriver and made for the nearby flatbed pickup truck. Using the chock sitting on the flatbed, I drove the screwdriver into the gas tank underneath the truck. Before removing the Phillips from the punctured tank, I placed a coffee filter into the opening of the gas can to filter out the tank’s bottom debris. I yanked the screwdriver from the tank and precious liquid energy streamed out into the gas can along with flecks of rust and sediment that were trapped by the coffee filter. I lay there on my chest for a long while until the tank dribbled dry, giving me about two and a half gallons of fuel. The truck’s fuel light must have been on when it was parked here long ago. Replacing the cap on the gas can, I hurried back to the rig, the precious fuel sloshing as I went.

  I checked the oil on the Honda generator and added some from the stash I’d liberated from the hardware store. The tank was empty, as the unit was on display, so I poured three bottles of fuel treatment into the genny and filled it the rest of the way from the gas can using a fresh coffee filter to double filter the old gas. The small generator took nearly a gallon before fuel spilled over the side. I had just over a gallon remaining in the gas can, so I poured the rest of the fuel treatment inside, hoping it would stabilize the no-doubt-ethanol-hobbled fuel. I replaced the cap and shook the generator to mix the fuel before securing the unit to the rig’s frame with cordage and zip ties. The small, lightweight generator offered two 110-volt outlets with 2,000 watts of power, if the damn thing worked. I ran an extension cord from the generator into the side window of the rig’s cab and attached the tool charger.

  With that little side project out of the way, I activated the GARMR and helped it down the small steps onto the ground. Running another Geiger scan out of paranoia, I was satisfied that the radiation levels were the same as when I’d first recovered the machine. After shaking a few cans of spray paint from inside the semi to suppress the rattle, I spritzed the GARMR with a makeshift camo pattern to break up its outline, careful to avoid its spinning sensors. I was satisfied with my artwork and moved on to the truck. When I was finished, the rig had a name.

  Goliath.

  • • •

  I secured the GARMR to the platform behind the cab and set up my transceiver. The same Morse was coming in, still faint. I scanned the spectrum on either side of the Phoenix freq and heard a faint voice drift in on a waft of RF energy.

  “Outside Atlanta . . . don’t know . . . surrounded.”

  I instinctively smashed the transmit button on my set: “This is Hourglass, just outside Tallahassee. How do you read? Over.”

  I listened, concentrating on the noise until the response came back.

  “Hourglass . . . Phoenix . . . surrounded . . .”

  The signal was too goddamned faint. I needed to get higher—fast.

  • • •

  After ten or so hard pulls, I brought the Honda to life from its long hardware store slumber. I left it running to charge the tool batteries sitting in the charger on Goliath’s driver’s-side floorboard. A Sawzall and drill could come in handy out here. The genny noise was bringing them to the fence again, so I started up the rig and moved up to the gate. I jumped out and popped them all in the head with the .22, but I was a little sloppy this time. My ears were ringing when I walked back to the rig and drove out the gate. With Goliath’s big diesel humming, I couldn’t hear the small Honda out back. The green light on the battery charger indicated it was still running, filling the dormant tool batteries with energy.

  The radio communications I’d just received pumped me with adrenaline, pushing me in the direction of Tallahassee, to the highest building I could see on the city’s meager skyline. It was idiotic and reckless, but our people were in Atlanta, possibly trapped. It was more dangerous to drive deeper inland to pick up the signal than it was to summit the high-rise in the city. I kept telling myself that as Goliath closed the distance to the city.

  I kept the hammer down as much as possible, moving north until about midday, when the road became dense with abandoned evacuation traffic out of Tallahassee. Both lanes were clogged, making navigation via semi impossible. Giving up on forward progress, I pulled the rig behind a real estate agent’s office building and shut her down. As the engine sputtered and quit, the Honda generator’s small motor echoed off the brick building, amplifying the noise. I jumped out and shut that down too, satisfied with the charge the tool batteries had received since the hardware store. I snapped the battery from the charger and inserted it into the bit driver, placing that and a set of drill bits inside the GARMR’s saddlebags. After loading the machine with things I might need, I led it down off the platform into the tall grass that surrounded Goliath.

  Climbing up onto the hood, I sent the GARMR out into the field and around the building to see what was up ahead. The sunlight sort of washed out the backlit tablet display, but I was still able to make out what the machine was seeing through its advanced, multi-spectrum eye. The machine’s “autopilot” weaved in and out of abandoned cars as it patrolled ahead on the highway. I’d not been using the road to travel, but I was curious what I might find if I had. As the machine moved ahead, a skeletal arm shot out to grab it, reaching too high as the GARMR trotted underneath. Panning the camera backward, I trusted the GARMR’s collision avoidance capabilities as I watched the seat belted corpse flail inside an old Pontiac. Up ahead on the road was a group of them in all their pixelated glory. If the machine continued, the creatures would take notice of the movement and pursue until they realized that titanium and carbon fiber didn’t taste like human flesh. I hit the recall command on the tablet, sending the GARMR into a reverse maneuver back to my position.

  Reaffirming that the main road into the city was still a bad fucking idea, I consulted my maps, taunted by the view of the top of the building I needed to summit beyond the trees. I had to get a stronger signal. Either higher or closer to Atlanta: Those were my only choices. I popped a chemlight, wrapped it with a single layer of tissue, and placed it on top of the cab. The naked eye wouldn’t be able to make it out, but through my NOD it would shine like a beacon after nightfall.

  With the rig locked up tight and my kit stowed on my back, me and the GARMR headed for the tree line in the direction of the tallest building in the city. If I had tried this before things went jungle, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. It was going on two years since anyone mowed the lawn in Tallahassee . . . hell, anywhere. It wasn’t hard to find cover in the city; one had only to run to the nearest patch of green, highway median or otherwise, to disappear. Nature would own everything in a few years when the buildings began to collapse in on themselves, crushing the ancient art that sons and daughters made for their cubicle-dwelling parents. Future explorers might uncover the caricature of a smiling, happy family standing alongside one another and wonder how the hell that could even be possible on this godforsaken rock. Thinking of this invoked thoughts of Tara and Bug, and how I smiled when standing next to them, and I hoped the future families might experience all that themselves.

  If Phoenix found a cure . . . a vaccine . . .

  My resolve was hardened and my pace
quickened into the no-doubt-infested city.

  The GARMR’s electrically actuated motors pushed it nimbly through the tall grass behind me. The rhythmic clicks of its movement were somehow relaxing, providing the illusion that I wasn’t alone out here. Its “custom” Krylon paint job made it look like a war machine, something you might find running alongside some snake eater. I ran through the small field into a wall of taller trees. After a bit of hacking through the heavy foliage and sharp thorns, the tall growth opened up and I spilled out onto shorter grass. A nearby sign jutted from the ground at waist level. Carved into the painted wood was the number 7. I moved around the bend, discovering a large pond with pits of sand up ahead.

  A golf course.

  As I waded through the grass, I came upon a green and marveled at how different it looked without the care and attention it so desperately required to stay playable. On the lakeshore fifty meters ahead, two alligators sunbathed, their menacing heads out of the water, resting on the tall grass. As I carefully edged by, the reflection off their eyes shifted and they watched, not at all interested in the flimsy biped before them. Although I felt a kinship with the wild beasts, I knew firsthand what they were capable of. I gave them a wide berth and kept moving away from the water, from their domain. Leaving the lake, I came upon a golf cart that had been turned over on its side. Rusting golf clubs were strewn around the cart like dropped matches, and a decomposing corpse lay pinned beneath the overturned cart’s roof. Despite the elements, the scorecard remained attached to the steering wheel. The legs of the corpse were eaten down to the bone by whatever roamed here day or night. The upper torso was more intact but still unrecognizable, other than the fact that its neck was broken at an awkward ninety-degree angle. There were a lot of things I thought about doing back in San Antonio when the shit hit the fan, but golf was not one of them. Hats off to this hombre who decided to go out in style.