by Hoaks, C. A.
“About time you figured it out.” Tate quipped.
The moan of an infected grew louder in the maze of pallets. Tate took a step toward the movement and whispered toward Stewart, “Heads up over there!”
Tate heard the lock snap just as an infected in blue pants and shirt moved into view. One of his arms hung at his side useless, the flesh ripped to shreds. The other arm with a bloodied hand reached out as he stumbled closer. A second moan announced another infected and then a third.
“Shit! Doyle, we got a problem.” Tate stepped forward and met the first infected man with a swing of the machete. The blade connected with the side of the man’s head. He fell to the concrete floor in a heap.
“Shit! Shit! Oh God!” Stewart screamed. “I can’t….” He turned and ran through the door stumbling over the brick and knocking it aside as he passed.
The door swung closed, and the dock was plunged into darkness.
“Fuck!” Tate cursed. “Prick! Doyle, there’s two more creepers in here, and that dick-head chickened out. Get that fucking door open NOW!”
“Got it,” Doyle answered with a grunt, and the overhead door raced upward with a screech of metal wheels on the track. Light spilled around the trailer and into the dock.
Tate stepped deeper into the warehouse and swung at the second infected. Doyle spun around and connected with the last monster. He took out the man’s knee, then as the monster struggled on the floor, Doyle brought the tire iron down on its head with a bone-shattering blow.
“Damn that prick!” Tate swore. “The bastard left us.”
“I’m getting the second door. We need to get more light in here.”
“Go ahead...I got you covered.” Tate advised as she began checking pockets of the dead for keys. She found three sets of keys and pocketed them.
Doyle crossed to the next door and jammed the tire iron in the padlock. It snapped, and he threw the door up toward the ceiling, and the dock was filled with afternoon light.
Tate studied the large concrete warehouse from left to right and back again. She saw a door leading to the front of the store. Two pallets had been parked in front of the swinging doors blocking the entrance to the warehouse. Pallets loaded with soda had been pushed in front of the door and left there. As she examined the pallets, she noticed cases of food had been opened and the remnants discarded in a pile near the dock at the far corner.
“Doyle,” she whispered, as she pointed toward the door. “What do you think?”
“Infected on the other side.” Doyle looked at the bodies. ‘These three got trapped. They had food and water. Only problem, one of them turned, and killed the other two.”
“That must have sucked,” Tate mumbled as the first moans from the store beyond could be heard.
Doyle looked at the back of the truck and with the jerk of his arm, had the door to the trailer open. He turned the beam of his flashlight into the recesses. The trailer was half empty.
“Let’s get this done,” Tate added. “I can hear the infected on the other side of that door.”
She walked to an electric pallet jack and pulled it to a wooden platform loaded with cardboard boxes labeled with the house grocery brand. Doyle saw a hand jack on the opposite side of the warehouse. He made his way to it and pulled it toward a pallet of bottled water.
“I can use this one, and we’ll get it done faster,” Doyle pumped the handle until the pallet balanced on the forks of the jack. He rolled the pallet on the trailer.”
“That works,” Tate answered.
“We’ll get what we can, then get out of here. I got a bad feeling.”
“Fine, let’s get moving. Where is Stewart? We need him helping us,” Tate grumbled.
“Leave him out there. I might shoot the worthless piece of shit,” Doyle groused.
The infected grew more agitated with the sound of the pallets being moved into the trailers. Tate tried to ignore the bodies slamming against the double doors as she headed for a pallet of plastic totes from the health and beauty section of the store, she slid the jack under it and headed for the truck.
“What are you getting that shit for? We don’t need women’s makeup!”
“Not what it is. Vendors fill those shelves. This is how they bring in shampoo, toothpaste, soap, over the counter drugs like Tylenol and Cold meds, and feminine products. It includes everything we need to be healthy that doesn’t come from the pharmacy.”
“Fucking feminine products….” Doyle complained.
“You’ll be glad for the Midol by the end of the month.”
The blocked doors slammed against the ladened pallets, and one of the pallets moved a few inches. Both Doyle and Tate hurried their steps at the sound. The door bounced again, and suddenly the infected got a glimpse the warehouse. They jammed arms through the opening between the double doors then pulled and pushed at the barrier.
“Natives are getting restless,” Doyle observed wryly.
“Move it old man. Get that last pallet. I think we need to get out of here.”
Doyle pushed the pallet and jack into the truck, then grabbed the left door on the trailer and pulled it closed. He threw a latch and swung the right door closed.
Doyle reached for the chain and closed the overhead door. While he pulled on the second chain, Tate disappeared back into the gloom. A crash and then the sound of tumbling bottles and pallet contents being over-turned echoed through the massive warehouse. Bottles shattered, and the hiss of carbonated drinks spewing out muffled the sound of moans.
“Damn it, girlie! Let’s get outta here.” Doyle yelled.
Tate reappeared with three-liter sized bottles of cola in her arms. She grinned at Doyle as she followed him to the side door.
Just as they got to the closed door, a scream from outside drew them up short. Doyle skidded to a stop, Tate nearly stumbling into him. He peeked out the door. Outside, Stewart danced around trying to avoid two infected making a real concentrated effort to make him the main course on the lunch menu.
“Help!” Stewart screamed. “You’ve got to help me!”
Tate stepped around Doyle, still clutching her prize. “You left us, you prick! Why in the hell should we help you?”
Across the parking lot, Bill slammed a tire iron into the head of an infected near the white truck. He called out. “More coming!”
“Please….” Stewart pleaded as he stabbed at the closest infected. He stumbled away, nearly tripping over his own feet.
Doyle followed Tate through the doorway, then turned to wedge it closed with a sliver of wood from the dumpster, while Tate walked to her truck and placed the bottles of soda inside. With a machete in hand, she turned to face Stewart’s predicament. Two more monsters had stumbled forward, and all joined in chasing Stewart.
Doyle stepped up to a bloodied man in a t-shirt and shorts with a body torn and battered. The monster’s head tilted at an awkward angle and bobbed with each step. Doyle swung the tire iron, and it struck the crown of the head.
“Defend yourself, you pussy!” Doyle yelled at Stewart.
He looked toward Bill who began to jog toward the fray, but Doyle waved him back. “We got this. Get in the truck and be ready to go.”
Tate reached in her pocket and tossed Bill the keys then raced back to join the fray. Tate side-stepped and swung her blade across the hamstring of one of the monsters. She stepped back and sneered. “Take ‘em out now, asshole.”
Stewart’s face glistened with tears and sweat. He raised his right arm to swing the machete and froze. Finally, he stepped back. “I can’t!” He fell to his knees, sobbing.
Tate stepped up and dispatched the monster crawling toward Stewart while Doyle swung the tire iron at the head of a large woman in a bloodied house dress.
“Damn!” Doyle cursed.
The monster had turned at the last minute, and Doyle’s attack had struck her collarbone and snapped it leaving her staggering at him again when she straightened up. Doyle swung the iron into the side of her
head near the temple, and she fell to the ground.
Tate turned to the last infected still closing in on Doyle. Giving up on Stewart defending himself or anyone else, Tate swung the machete and split the teenager’s skull. A quick glance around the parking lot and Tate realized the infected were all dead.
She wiped the blade of her machete on the back of the teen monster’s jacket then looked at Doyle. Doyle picked up the knife he had given to Stewart and grabbed Stewart by the collar and pulled him to his feet.
Stewart stood there red eyes and sniveling. “I…I…I can’t….”
“You’re going to get someone killed!” Tate snarled.
Doyle pushed Stewart toward his cab. “Let’s get out of here.”
Tate backed her rig under the second trailer, and with Doyle’s help, they got airbrake lines connected, and both trailers secured.
When they were finished, Tate turned and walked to her rig. Her chest ached to scream at Stewart. Doyle was now treating him as if he were a child, opening the door and helping him into the passenger seat of his truck.
Bill cranked the white truck and waved at Tate, but she ignored his wide smile as she opened the door and climbed into the Bitch. She took a deep breath then exhaled before she cranked the engine and shifted the rig into gear. She wanted to kill the coward. Not once, but twice, he’d put people in danger.
Two hours later Tate stood in front of Phil. “He’s going to get someone killed,” Tate raged. “Bastard left us to deal with the infected in the warehouse, then couldn’t even deal with them when his own skin was on the line outside.”
Phil moved his head from left to right. “Some people are having a hard time dealing with looking at the infected and not still seeing people. Afraid he’s one of them.”
“No shit,” Tate fumed.
Doyle reached out to place a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll do better next time.”
“Not with me,” Tate stated. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I’ve got a family. I’m not hanging around waiting for that bastard to get me killed because he’s a chicken-shit.”
“You know you can stay. We’d like you to stay,” Phil pleaded.
“Are you going to live up to our deal? I need fuel and supplies,” Tate answered.
Phil looked stricken, “Of course. We’ll provide the fuel and supplies I promised.”
Chapter 6
Quiet Night
The three riders had been on the narrow country road for four hours before they stopped on the rise overlooking a small rural community. They stepped off the motorcycles to walk to two roadside tables under a massive live oak tree. The small park overlooked a narrow creek behind a developed neighborhood. The water spilling over the rocks bed was sparkling-clear and fast moving.
The tranquil scene was a brief respite from the horrors of the open road until they looked into back yards beyond with swing sets and sandboxes. The infected had appeared. One by one, men, women, and children, all horribly maimed and injured, were drawn by the sound of the motorcycles. They crossed yards to be mired by fences or appeared on a dead-end street to continue their stumbling trek toward the small park.
“I guess we wore out our welcome.” John sighed as he and Harry climbed back on the motorcycles.
Harry complained. “My ass is too old to be riding this hard.” His machine roared to life, and he motioned for Liz to climb back on the bike.
Liz settled behind Harry. “I don’t know how much longer I can sit on this bike. I’m so tired.”
They moved out just as the first of the monsters stumbled into the creek. They spent the next three hours trying to stay relatively close to the interstate, but time and again, they were forced to detour down narrow blacktop roads to avoid large groups of infected. It was nearly one when they stopped to rest and hydrate under an overpass.
The silence, of a world without speeding cars and SUVs or the roar of massive eighteen wheelers climbing the hills of the Hill Country, was eerie. Even the buzz of a mosquito seemed lurid until they heard the rumbling of several engines in the distance.
The trio stood still, listening for a moment until John pointed toward a dilapidated shed in the distance. “Let’s get off the road.”
Harry answered, “That’s a lot of horsepower heading our way.”
“You think it’s Ryder?” Liz asked.
Harry answered with a shrug, “It’s hard to know for sure, so let’s just avoid contact.”
They mounted the bikes and John led the way as they turned off the road and followed a narrow trail to the out building. After a quick perusal, they pushed the bikes through the tall grass into the gloom of the shed.
While they waited in the shadows of the crumbling shed, John opened a cloth bag and pulled dried beef strips from inside. Liz bit off a piece of jerky with a bit of trepidation. She was never a fan of jerky, and the thought of chewing on beef until it was moist enough to swallow was not something she looked forward to eating.
Hazel and Benny had given them dried meat, deer sausage, dried apples, bottles of water and a bag of flatbread. It was food, but not anything Liz looked forward to spending the next couple weeks eating.
John opened the second bag and pulled out a piece of flat bread. He looked at it somewhat dubiously as he passed a piece to each Harry and Liz. He settled on a bale of hay with his own piece of hard bread.
John spoke around a huge bite of the dried beef, “We ain’t making much headway.”
Harry bit off the end of the jerky, “No, but nothing we can do about it.”
“Why haven’t we seen survivors?” Liz asked.
Harry answered, “Because most of the dumb shits did the same thing they did when a hurricane was predicted to hit the Gulf Coast. In Houston, everyone lined up on the freeways and interstates.” Harry took a deep breath, then continued, “They were probably overrun when they were caught in stalled traffic. Now, they’re all part of the problem. They wandered off the highway and overwhelmed the nearby communities. Now the countryside is full of dead fucks. All because stupid people headed out of town, ran outta gas, and just sat there waiting for someone to save them.”
“They laughed at us old folks, but we can read a road map. Without their damned GPS, the dipshits didn’t know where to go.” John snorted. “That’s culling the herd, for you.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” Harry chided, then turned to Liz, “We do what we have to do, Lizzy. We’ll head northwest, and eventually, we’ll end up where we want to be.”
Liz protested, “At this rate, it’ll take weeks to get to my dad’s place.”
Harry shrugged. “We’re closer than we were yesterday.”
When the angry growl of engines faded into silence, the trio waited another thirty minutes before they left the shed and resumed their journey. After an hour of riding, they spotted lettering on a distant roof advertising the Hill Top Café.
“What do you think?” John asked over the intercom in the helmet.
“It’s worth a try. Let’s check it out,” Harry answered.
When they got within a couple hundred yards, the riders stopped to study the parking lot. After a few minutes, they could identify half a dozen infected stumbling around a dozen vehicles in the parking lot at the front of the building.
“I’m getting low on gas,” John announced.
“Same here,” Harry responded.
“The lights are on. Does that mean the pumps are still working if they have them?” Liz asked.
“They probably have a backup generator. I can see a propane tank at the back of the building,” John answered. “The walking corpses could be a problem. I doubt they’ll stand back and let us fill up without trying to eat our faces.”
“Yeah. We’ll have to take ‘em out,” Harry answered.
“Look how many vehicles,” John lamented. “There could be a lot more infected behind the building.”
“We don’t have a choice. We’re almost out of gas, and I see a fueling island. It's either doing it, or w
e end up walking.”
Liz studied the scene below. “We could take one of the vehicles.”
“No way!” John answered. “I’m not leaving my bike.”
Liz chuckled. “Just a thought.” She pulled the handgun from the back of her jeans. “Well, we’re not getting anywhere sitting here.”
Harry looked at John. “Okay, this is what we do. We stop on the edge of the parking lot…rev the engines, and it should bring ‘em out from around the building. We’ll know if this is more than we can handle. If it doesn’t look too bad, we pick them off.”
“Sounds like a plan,” John answered.
Both men slipped their bikes into gear and made their way down to the café. They watched the infected cock their heads, then turn toward the sound of the bikes. The men guided the motorcycles toward the parking lot. The monsters stepped out into the sun and focused on the pair of machines approaching.
As soon as Harry stopped, Liz raised her handgun and fired at an infected man stumbling toward them. The bullet missed the middle of his face and struck the side of the infected man’s head, knocking him off balance and to his knees. He fumbled back to his feet and continued shuffling toward them.
Harry pulled his helmet off and stepped off his motorcycle. He put his hand on Liz’s shoulder. “Easy, Lizzy. Take your time.”
She took a breath, let it out slowly then pulled the trigger again. The infected man’s head exploded with a spray of red gore that fanned out to shower across two dead following a few feet behind. Swallowing back the bile, Liz sited on another undead monster and squeezed the trigger again. The woman fell, just as Harry’s gun fired and took out a man in boxer shorts and the remnants of a white t-shirt.
Liz stepped off the bike and turned just in time to see John take three quick shots with his colt. Two bloody corpses fell to the asphalt exposing a small female with half her face ripped to shreds. Two small children with horrific wounds to their arms and legs followed the woman.
Liz stared at the dead children stumbling toward them. Her muscles refused to respond despite the terror that screamed at her to pull the trigger. The children had been near her daughter’s age when they died. Tears filled Liz’s eyes as she watched the horror when suddenly racking sobs stole her breath away. Her hand, still clutching the gun, fell to her side as she stared at the youngsters.
