Tom, Nathan, and Mark were waiting at the gate for us, and for a moment I got nervous as they were all armed to the teeth. I thought, perhaps, that they too envisioned my truck as their property. They only wanted to say good bye though. Stella, Eleanor’s friend, was there too, and both she and Eleanor began to cry. Soon half the town showed up as the gate was opening to wave to us as we drove out. I got about a hundred and fifty yards away from the gate, and I stopped, looking back in the side mirror. “Huh.”
“Havin’ second thoughts ‘bout leavin’ there, Pard?”
“Nope. I’m waiting for the inevitable wave of zombies to begin to tear into Havre and kill everyone. This time I’m going back if it happens and I’m gonna kill every damn zombie first.” I heard sharp intakes of breath from the ladies, and I realized what I had just said. “Look, I’m sorry, it’s just that Lady Luck has left the building when it comes to me and the undead. Most places I visit are overrun while I’m visiting.”
Clara stood and looked back out the rear windows. “Well I’m glad we left then.”
I shot the back of her head a glance, not knowing if she was serious or kidding. I realized it didn’t matter and stepped on the accelerator. Havre disappeared in the side-view as we moved west down Route Two.
Time to Get Your Geek On
All I can say about today is holy shit. Less than one day on the road, and we get in it deep. I mean, deep, like bottom of the ocean, whale shit deep. I’ve mentioned that things can fall apart in seconds, and they can. They do.
We took Route Two west for a bit, then eighty-seven south quite a while. I saw sixteen abandoned vehicles in four hours, nobody was around, living or dead. I blinked, and realized my eyes were burning. I hadn’t slept since I crashed in Clara’s spare bedroom back in Havre, and that was before I engaged in legendary heroics that could quite possibly elevate me past Achilles or Hercules or even Bruce Willis in awesome status. Now I was just plumb tired. Yeah, I just wrote that. Plumb tired. I sound like Dallas. Whatever, forgive me if I ramble, I had a bad day.
I stopped the MRAP in the middle of nowhere, in the center of the road. According to our map, which was the map that Tim had traded to Eleanor for some food, we were about ten miles north of the city of Great Falls Montana. Yeah, I said city. Havre had a population of about ten thousand. Great Falls was eighty thousand. Screw that noise. We couldn’t safely get through Great Falls, even with the MRAP. Plus, at some point we would have to cross the Missouri River.
There are several very important things I had learned during the zombie apocalypse. One of them, and this is a biggie: Stay the F away from bridges. Unless there is no other option, you go around. Bridges are either jam-packed with abandoned vehicles, which means shitloads of infected, or they just aren’t there. The military blew them up early on to stem the tide of infection. You could get trapped on bridges, and zombies seemed to like them. I don’t know if they just liked the feel of a bridge, or if they somehow knew that food would come to them if they hung around, or maybe just stayed where they were when they died.
None of that shit matters. What does matter is that bridges suck. We planned a route that would take us along the river and we would move steadily south west until we hit the mountains. That was something else: there were more friggin state parks around here than living people. A couple zillion square miles of state park, and that would mean little interaction with the living or the dead.
Or so we had thought.
Growing up in the northeast, I had a different understanding of roads than the folks out west. A highway was something with a ton of cars on it all travelling at sixty miles per hour, and there was no real way off the road other than an off ramp. An interstate was worse for both congestion and exits. Both were elevated for runoff from precipitation.
In Montana, at least the part of Montana near Great Falls, if you wanted off the highway, you took a right or a left anywhere and you were driving on dirt, or maybe a secondary road. Few trees, few houses, and fewer neighborhoods.
We started seeing our first signs of infection and destruction at that ten mile mark I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. When I stopped to look at the map, we were just outside a destroyed neighborhood. Most of it had burned to the ground, but there were quite a few infected roaming the ruins, and they were all headed in our direction. We collectively decided to keep moving, and turned west on West Portage Road. A dinky little paved thing that was almost a road. In fifteen minutes, we were at the gates of something called Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge. I say gates, but it was a sign with a bird on it.
We soldiered on, and soon were surrounded by some gorges and marshes and a whole lot of nothing else. There was supposed to be a lake further north, but that was out of our way. The place was pretty, and soon we came across a red structure with white trim. We were not the first people there.
The circus was in town.
Three eighteen wheelers and a dozen other vehicles, some with small amusement rides strapped to them, some with empty animal cages, and some regular pickup trucks sat quietly in the parking lot. All had Harrod Shows logos and were parked in varying locations throughout the lot. OK, so it was more a carnival than a circus, but the bottom line was that in either venue, you have one thing in common: Carnies.
I must profess to always liking the idea of carnies. To have no real ties and move around a lot appealed to me. I never had the balls to pull the trigger on joining, and in retrospect it might have kept me out of prison, but either way we were about to meet a bunch of circus folk. Hopefully they wouldn’t want to eat us.
I didn’t want to shoot anybody, and I really didn’t want to get shot, so we stayed put for a moment.
Nobody came, living or dead.
OK, so maybe I would have to step foot outside the MRAP. Dumb right? But I had to take a piss, and I wasn’t alone.
“OK folks, here’s the skinny. I need to use the facilities. Anybody else?”
Four hands shot skyward, and I realized we all needed to stretch our legs. We were a good distance away from the vehicles, and further away from the structure, so I shut the engine off. “Nobody goes anywhere alone,” I looked at Tim, “not even for a second. Ladies, I realize you have to pee too, and one of us strapping young lads will accompany you, but we won’t peek, I promise.”
Clara looked at the red building. “You mean we aren’t going inside?”
“Inside there,” I asked pointing, “no friggin way. You do whatever you need out here behind our truck. Like I said, we won’t look, but there’s no way we’re going in that building with all these vehicles out here.” Clara started to protest, but I held a hand up forestalling her. “Clara, think about it; either those people are in there alive, and they are looking at us right now with who knows what intentions, or they are all dead and we know their intentions. We gotta stay out here and we gotta stay together.”
She nodded. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry.”
“No apologies necessary. When you came with us, you became my responsibility. The likelihood is that we’re all going to die out here someplace, but I’ll try to prevent that as long as possible.”
“Dallas, would you kindly escort the ladies to the bathroom? That would be the ground to the rear of the truck. Keep the door open. Any trouble, and you can fire a shot, or get back in the truck and make some noise.”
“I got it, Pard. Where are you goin?”
“Tim and I are going to check the vehicles.”
Tim looked dumbfounded. “We are?”
“Yeah. I want to see if there’s anyone here.”
“But you just said—”
“I know. Still not going inside, but I need to see something. Tim, make sure you’re going in weapons hot.” Damn I sounded cool. I wasn’t entirely sure what weapons hot actually meant, but I assumed it meant loaded with safeties off. Weapons hot sounded way cooler. I mean say it. Right now say it out loud. Cool right?
Tim and I moved to the nearest truck. It was a blue Dodg
e Ram 2500. It had been towing a bunch of what looked like rolled up tents on a trailer. The truck was locked up tight, and there was dust on the windshield, but all four tires were inflated. I had no idea if this thing pulled into the lot today or a year ago.
“Cover me,” (Again, wicked cool) I said and unzipped. When I was done, Tim did his thing, and we moved on.
The next vehicle was a big International. Behind it was a huge empty animal cage. A couple more pickups, and an eighteen wheeler later, and I realized that everything was locked. I was getting an eerie feeling, and had decided to bug out, when psychic Tim told me he didn’t like it here.
“I’m with you buddy, let’s go.”
I heard Clyde going absolutely ape shit, barking and doing that howling bay that he does, and Tim and I looked at each other worried.
We got two thirds of the way back to the truck when we heard the first BOOM! from a shotgun. We got to the truck before the second one went off, and rounded the corner as Dallas was closing the door. There wasn’t a zombie in sight. We looked in all directions, but the only thing we saw was the tall marsh grass. It looked like a wheat field right up to the road. I scanned a second time, and was greeted with nothing but the swaying of the marsh in the breeze.
I went left and Tim came with me. My intention was to get back into the truck and ask Dallas what the hell he had been shooting at.
At that point, several things happened at once. The MRAP started, Tim had time for one of those sharp intakes of breath, and something exploded from the grass to the right. Whatever it was hadn’t made a sound, but it hit us like a hammer. I went flying and the thing was on top of Tim.
Now it was making noise. Not the moaning of a shambling pus bag. Not that inhuman shriek of a Runner. It was making the deep guttural growl of a friggin’ lion. In the half second it took me to process that we were being attacked by lions, Tim started screaming.
The thing had his arm in its mouth and was backing up, trying to drag him into the grass. Blood was streaming down my friend’s arm and he was fighting like a…well…like a tiger. Punching the cat in the face and kicking for all he was worth. The lion was winning.
Not wanting to hit the human, I fired my HK into the air, and the thing looked at me but didn’t let go of Tim’s arm. I had to shoot it. I had to. I know it isn’t fair, and if the Humane Society was still around you would report me, and you are calling me awful names right now, but this thing was going to eat my buddy.
Three black holes stitched across the side of this skinny creature, and it howled in pain letting go of my friend. It limped back into the grass leaving a trail of blood on the stalks.
Did I feel like shit for killing that cat?
Nope.
Did Tim feel like shit with his arm flayed? Damn skippy. I ran over to him, and Dallas opened the back of the MRAP, big shotgun out in front. “We dint see you fellas! Heard the yellin’ and I come out to see if that damn lion was still around!” Dallas noticed all the blood, and me looking at Tim’s arm, and he did something rare. He swore. “Aww shit...”
He saw me dragging Tim over to the back of the truck. “Lemme help ya, Hoss.” He started to get out of the truck.
“No! Cover us, I’ve got him.”
Tim stood, gritting his teeth, and I got a good look at his arm. The skin was pulled down in a band around his bicep, and I could see deep puncture marks in the red of the exposed muscle as it bulged out of the bloody wound. Blood streamed down his arm and saturated his jeans. The poor guy didn’t have big arms, and I don’t know if that was a good thing or bad, but he was looking poorly. I got him to the truck and Dallas pulled him in, me following. I slammed the door and then began rummaging through the small cabinet thingies on the sides of the MRAP looking for something to help him. I found gauze and stitches (they were called sutures on the label) and a curved needle. There was also some hydrogen peroxide and some green packets with KWIK CLOT on the side.
“Tim, there’s no drugs.”
He looked at me, but he was fading into unconsciousness. “I gotta clean this and sew you up, buddy.” We got him on one of the cots, and I went to work. Or I tried anyway. I put some peroxide on a gauze pad and pressed it against the wound. I thought he would go bonkers and start screaming in pain, but he had passed out.
“What are you doing?” demanded Clara. “Give me that!”
She took the stuff from me and began to clean his wound with water from a squirt bottle and a cloth. Clara actually lifted up the torn flaps of skin and rinsed his muscle. She was making faces and they weren’t nice ones. In fifteen minutes, she had him cleaned and was finishing stitching him up. I was amazed. The bleeding had totally stopped, and his pallor was better already. Clara put the back of her hand on his forehead.
“Good.”
“What?” I asked, “No fever?”
She looked at me like I was a moron. “No, I was making sure he wasn’t cold from either blood loss or shock. He seems to be OK. We’ll need some antibiotics and pain killers though for sure.” She moved her fingers up and down his limb. “His arm doesn’t feel broken.”
All four of us were looking for the drugs when Clyde sat up looking around. We all looked at him, expecting him to start growling or something, but all he did was let loose with a tremendous fart.
It was atrocious. Given the choice between that eye-watering dog-gas or lions, I bordered on opening the door. The big bastard lie back down and put his chin on his paws, and I swear to Christ he smiled.
We came up empty on the drugs. Tim was in for a painful night, and who knows what that lion had been eating lately, so I did what any prudent plague survivor would do; I tied him to the cot. This lion bite could be as serious as a bite from an infected if the lion had been gnawing on zombies. Time would tell.
I had wanted to see what the circus trucks had in store for us, and I guess I found out. Stupid. Just stupid. I glanced back and saw Eleanor cleaning Tim’s blood off of the floor of the MRAP then threw the truck into gear, pissed at myself.
We travelled west, and in about five minutes I saw entrances for Interstate Fifteen. We drove under the elevated interstate and kept moving west, entering small neighborhoods. All of the street names were numbers, like 4th Rd NE or 7th Rd SE and the neighborhoods were set up like perfectly square city blocks. Other than the overgrown lawns and lack of home maintenance, the only thing out of place here seemed to be the occasional shambler. I saw the name Choteau a few times and figured out that was the name of this small town.
Tim woke up in extreme pain when I juked around an overturned baby carriage that came out of nowhere in the middle of the road. He wasn’t happy, and gritted his teeth when he told Clara he was fine. Tim’s a friggin’ bona fide hero.
The first signs of destruction leapt out at us around the next corner. A mail truck had been hit by a pickup and they had both burned, as had the house on the corner. Three big cement walls surrounding boxy front yards held the vehicle corpses tight, and I was unsure if the MRAP could make it through without damage. I turned the truck around, but then I saw a red S on a white store in my side view. It was a CVS. A drug store. I circled the area, moving up some streets and down others, but it seems this part of town was where a lot of fighting had occurred, and every route to the store was blocked.
Reader, old buddy, you’ve made it this far, so you and I both know what had to be done. I parked the truck near a pretty ranch style house with a broken bow window. I couldn’t see the CVS, but I knew it was only a couple of blocks away.
“What we stoppin’ for, Pard?”
“There’s a drug store up the road a little.” I looked at my shoes and sighed. “I’m going for some drugs for Tim.”
Tim tried to sit up and realized he was tied down. “No! No you can’t!”
“Got to, buddy. You’re tore up pretty bad.” Damn that had sounded like Dallas too, but it had come out of me. “The store looked untouched from what I could see and…” Dallas started checking his shotgun, and the sh
ells in his bandolier. “Uhh, what are you doing, Dallas?”
“I’m comin’.”
“Nope. Your wheel is still bad. You can hardly stand on it. You’ll slow me down, just like you would have at the hospital.”
“I’m fine, now we jus’—”
“You’re not fine. You’re fucked up. If I don’t make it, you need to get Clara back to San Francisco, and before that, you need to get Tim some meds.” I moved into the back of the cramped truck and stood next to him. He was sitting on some cases of food, and his head came up to mid chest on me. Guy is big. I reached out and gave his ankle a tap with my boot, and he hissed an intake of breath. “See?”
“That was uncalled for,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Well here’s the good part: if I get eaten, you get the truck. It’s a damn pretty truck.”
“It is.”
“I’ll be back in a half hour. If I’m not back in two hours, I’m not coming, so leave.”
He stuck his paw out to me. “Good luck, Hoss.”
“You too, bud, get her home safe and take care of Tim if I get dead.”
“Please don’t,” Eleanor said and stood.
“Yes,” Clara added, “we need you.”
“That’s why I’m doing this.” I looked out the rear windows, but you really can’t see straight down, so I moved up to the driver’s side door and checked the area. There was nobody there, so I opened the door quickly, got out, and shut it again.
Nothing in sight was moving, but that didn’t mean every house and car in the area wasn’t teeming with pus bags. That thought got me moving, and I headed out toward the CVS.
Cats and ninjas had nothing on me. I was as quiet as the wind.
The Zombie Theories (Book 2): Conspiracy Theory Page 11
