“I do,” the man between the cars said. “And that's just as fucked up.”
Ram couldn't agree more. “That's why I want to give her to you. But those assholes think I'm here to trade so I'm going to need something to bring back. Like some water, do you have any?”
The man with a tan made a face and shook his head. “Look we don't want the girl.”
“Maybe she's cute,” another voice put in. “Is she cute?”
She wasn't, not in Ram's eyes. He made a face and was about to put it as nicely as possible, but the tan man spoke over him, “We don't need no more girls here. We got too many and not a one of them can shoot for shit. Just waste bullets is all they ever do. So, no. We don't want the girl. But if you're good with that there rifle we can talk about bringing you on. Can you shoot?”
Standing among the bodies of the dead had Ram feeling the cold, familiar dread that he had lived with for so long, and he was sure, just as the black girl back in the car was, that this barricade wouldn't hold, and even if it did, would the other parts of the town? It looked wide open on the south with just a highway fence to keep the stiffs out.
“No I can't. I'm not the best. And I don't have a lot of rounds left.”
The man shrugged. “You get some bullets and come on back, but leave the girl somewheres else, we don't want her. And don't give me that crap look. We got eight-hundred hungry mouths in this town and can barely feed them, so sorry. If you don't like how she's being treated you go and do something about it.”
Ram started to argue, but the man's face made it clear that his decision had been made. Ram went back to the Subaru and said, “They don't want her. Though they don't seem like bad guys. I bet if we just leave her here they'd take her.”
“That's dumb, Yo,” one of the gang-bangers said. “I'm not going to just leave a piece of ass on the side of the road, not for nothing.”
This was agreed to by the rest and then another had an idea, one that sent chills down Ram's spine. “Maybe we can pretend to do some trading and then when they think everything's cool, we can pop a few of them? How many were there?”
“I saw seven,” Ram lied, quickly. “And heard another dude. And that's just the guys here. There's a town just down the road and he said there's eight hundred people living there. We try anything and it'll end badly.”
Thankfully common sense prevailed and they took the detour around the town and although it was only a mile or two out of their way it was enough to begin to knock some sense into them. As they passed car after car, each stranded without gas and the people begging for water, the eight of them began to talk about rationing what they had left.
This started with the girl. They refused to give her a drop and though she whined at first, she accepted her place eventually. Because there was so little room in the Subaru, two of the gang-bangers rode on top, and so Ram drove slowly along the desert highway, stopping at every broken down car, searching for gas and water or really anything they could use.
For the most part this was a waste of time, and the sun went down before they found a thing. That night was cold and none of them were prepared with blankets or tent. They talked about starting a fire which thankfully they didn't do. Ram had argued against it and when the votes had gone against him at first, he had for the briefest moment, felt the desire to leave the pathetic group.
His new cowardice swept it away, but it had been there and it had him thinking that maybe, in a few days, he could leave this group behind. His old self wouldn't have put up with them for a minute, because the truth was that they were zombie magnets with all the ruckus they made, and had they been anywhere other than in one of the most desolate areas on earth, they would've been killed long before.
But just then, the idea of firing his gun or facing the smallest zombie made him go queer inside. He slept in the car, with the seat pushed way back and was better off than the others because he had on a woman's pink parka that he had found in a car earlier that day. The gang-bangers had laughed, but now they shivered and pulled their light hoods over their heads to hold in their heat. With the seats folded down in the back, the Subaru held five of them; one in the front with Ram and three in back. The girl was in the back. She might have been thirsty, but she was snug, acting as an anti-gay buffer between two of the men who pressed in on her for warmth.
The three men outside, with their foolish machismo, kept their distance from each other, and at about two in the morning one of them was killed by a pack of undead dogs. They came out of the night in utter silence and just tore into the first man they came to. Ripping into the flesh of his face and hands and then when he was crawling around blind and crying blood, more of the pack came up and tore out his belly.
Ram couldn't watch and he was not alone. The others, in a state of near hysteria demanded that he drive away. He went on for another hour with all seven of them crammed in the car and the heat turned up high and that was how they slept, folded on each other like cats. By morning they were stiff and in a foul mood from lack of water. Ram still had a third of his bottle left, which he kept hidden from the others, figuring it was their fault that they couldn't ration properly. The group drove on and the lucky bangers got lucky again.
They found a minivan that not only had gas, but also a gallon of water in an unopened plastic jug. Unfortunately the van came complete with a pair of zombies who were trapped inside. The pair must have been there for days, baking in the closed van, and Ram had never seen anything more disgusting. The heat of the desert sun had bloated them and there were deep fissures in their shiny grey skin.
Ram's disgust turned to outright nausea when one of the bangers got up the nerve to open the van door. The smell hammered his senses and he reeled, but when one of the men shot the first zombie and it literally burst like an erupting zit, Ram hurled up the little he had eaten for breakfast.
He wasn't the only one. All the men were in various degrees of sickness, however the girl only made a face and said, “Oh that's nasty.” When the second zombie had been killed, thankfully with a clean head shot, the girl braved the smell and came away with the prized water.
She drank until one of the bangers noticed and took it from her. Though Ram wanted to drain the van of its gas and use the Subaru because of its better gas mileage, the others wanted the extra room that the minivan afforded. He was over-ruled and then he was again an hour later when he wanted to leave I-15. It led straight to Las Vegas and Ram didn't want to go anywhere near another big city, where the stiffs seemed to breed.
He was vindicated when a few miles later the road became impassable and not just with stalled cars, but also with zombies by the scores. They turned the minivan around and took the first main road that went east. A few hours of steady driving later, he was again vindicated: the van sputtered and ran out of gas.
The Subaru would've lasted another fifty or sixty miles.
They spent another night cramped beyond reason and in the morning, with no other recourse they began walking down the middle of the two-lane road. If zombies came at them in any numbers they'd be in deep trouble, but again the bangers were lucky and all day they saw few stiffs and those that they did were the slower type.
Ram had seen enough of them to be able to categorize them as either fast/strong or slow/weak.
The strength and speed of the zombie was mainly due to its size and its overall state of health—child zombies or those with missing limbs or injuries to major muscle groups were relatively weak. Another factor in their strength and speed was how they were feeding. The better fed they were the more dangerous they were. The heat of the desert seemed to sap a little of the strength of the creatures and those that came at the group came on slowly in ones and twos. Still this was a drain of resources.
By sundown, Ram was beginning to get nervous. The land was no longer as bitterly dry as it had been a hundred miles west, but it was still mainly scrub and there was no cover whatsoever. But as always the bangers had another spurt of luck. Just as the sun dropp
ed below the horizon and twilight made an appearance they saw a brief light a few miles away. It had been manmade.
Excitedly the group hurried across the empty land and saw a house sitting along a dusty little road. It was a pretty, two-story home in the middle of nowhere and Ram's anxiety grew. There were two cars in the drive way and the bangers began to check their weapons.
With his stomach suddenly going queasy, Ram hung back with the black girl. He had no taste for what was to come. Though he tried to tell himself that the bangers would just bluster and threaten to get what they wanted from the people in the house, in his heart, he knew differently. He knew their kind: fatherless gangbangers raised on the streets where morals were essentially boiled down to: if it feels good do it, and if someone gets hurt in the process of me getting mine, well that's just their too bad.
They had been killers before the zombies and now they were ten times worse. The five remaining bangers spread out as they approached the house and the girl next to Ram scoffed at him, “You is such a pussy. What do you think is all up in there? A house full of zombies? Shit, it's probably just a couple of crackers.”
She was very likely right, still that didn't stop Ram's heart from beating any less thunderous. He didn't want to go near the house. It would mean too many questions that he couldn't answer—would Ram allow more innocent people to get hurt? Would he just stand there and watch, impotently like he had when the black girl had been raped? Was he really a pussy now?
Before he had cracked, he had been the toughest of the tough. He had killed with a grim determination, he had a hardwired instinct to protect the weak, and a desire to do his duty. Now he wiped his hands upon the pink parka that he wore and wondered what had happened to him.
“Hey, pendejo!” one of the bangers hissed at Ram. “What you doing? Go around back.”
He could do that. He could go to the rear of the house and wait there, though he was certain that if anyone came out that way he wouldn't be able to do anything. There wasn't a chance that he would do more than point his gun at them, and even that wasn't a guarantee.
Ram went around to the back and leaned against the white vinyl siding and tried to control his breathing. His lungs had begun to work like crazy as if he had just sprinted a mile. “What the hell?” he asked himself as sweat stung his eyes.
He wiped it away with his sleeve and then switched the berretta to his left hand just long enough to run his palm on his pant leg again. Inside someone was yelling. It was a woman's voice and she was threatening...and then there was a crash and gunshots.
Seconds later, the back door came open and a woman stepped out. She was red headed and very thin and her hair obscured most of her tear stained face. In her hand she held a shotgun, which she raised to point at Ram's chest.
“I won't hurt you,” he said. This seemed strange to both of them since he hadn't budged in his position and his gun was pointing down at the dirt. More gunfire erupted in the house—three or four guns going off at once. “What's happening?” he asked.
“My mother, she's trapped upstairs.”
Ram looked up at the house and said, “We should run. We should get away while they're preoccupied.” His fear was obviously sincere and for some reason it bolstered the woman's courage and she shook her head in a tiny way.
“No, I can't leave her.” She began to head back inside and Ram grabbed her. He wanted to say something to warn her of her danger, but he couldn't put it into words. “Let go,” she said and jerked her arm.
“No, get behind me,” he ordered, though he did so with his mouth pulled back in a grimace. It just sprung upon his face and he couldn't seem to relax his facial muscles to stop it. She didn't seem to notice for her fear was nearly as great as his.
He opened the back door and went through a small mudroom to a hall in the rear of the house. Back stairs came down to greet him and midway up them one of the bangers crept. He turned with a start at Ram's appearance and then when he recognized the man he started to relax.
Then his eyes went large and he pointed his gun and cried, “Behind you!”
Ram's heart was a hammer in his chest and his breath was ragged and on fire, and yet as the gang-banger swiveled to point his gun at the girl behind him, his muscles reacted from years of training. Quick as a cat he tracked down the barrel of his pistol and fired. The man fell back on the stairs; he stared at the ceiling while his hands hooked into claws.
If he died just then Ram didn't know. Despite the thunderous explosion from his gun, his ears picked up the vibration of someone running. He dropped down into a crouch just as another of the bangers came down the hall. Ram didn't wait to explain himself; he sighted on center mass and shot a second time.
When the banger when down with a horrified look, as if he were choking on air instead of blood, Ram reached behind him and grabbed the girl. He eased up the back steps as the house went suddenly quiet.
“Mama?” the woman whispered as they got to the second floor. When no one answered she wanted to press forward, but Ram held her back. He peeked around the corner and the wood next to his face seemed to come apart in a thousand splinters.
“Call to her, damn it!” he hissed, wiping shards of wood from the side of his head.
“Mama. It's me Julia, don't shoot.” The girl looked around the corner and made an odd noise before leaving Ram and running with thumping steps.
Julia's mom was leaning against a wall and pointing her gun Ram's way; all around her, the floor and walls were wet with blood. From below came two quick shots and then orders yelled in Spanish. Almost below Ram someone began shooting.
He ducked down and saw two of the bangers, one firing up the stairs and the other rushing forward. They weren't bad as a tandem, but they weren't all that good either. Against the mother of the house, the use of cover fire like this might have worked, however Ram simply slipped back to a point that it would take a master shooter to sneak a bullet up at him.
Ignoring the lead flying his way, he waited with his gun at the ready and squeezed off his own shot as soon as the banger on the move broke from the cover of one of the side rooms. He went down with a gut shot and Ram decided to waste a bullet and finish him off.
Below, the last two bangers jabbered in Spanish, which Ram understood perfectly. They seemed to think that they were only dealing with a single person on the second floor and that the front stairs were clear. To mask what they were planning, one began to fire up at Ram. He fired back just for show and then he waved frantically to Julia, and then pointed at the stairs her mother had been guarding. The older woman now was glassy eyed and vacant.
Julia hitched her shotgun and waited. After a few seconds she fired twice, her thin body jerking back with each shot. And then there was the sound of running feet. Ram spun and there was a banger right on the stairs not four feet away; the two stared at each other and where the banger began to lower his weapon Ram brought his up.
When he pulled the trigger it had the feel of an execution.
“Hey pendejo!” Ram called out to the last one. “Your boys are all dead. If you want to live then you better get to running.”
“Manny? Dino?” the lone banger whispered with fear outweighing the hope in his voice.
“Dead,” Ram told him as he came down the back stairs. “And you will be too if you're still there when I get to you. Go out the front door and start running. You have to the count of ten. One, two, three.”
The front door opened and after the man's footsteps died away there was silence in the house until Julia said, “He's runnin off.” There was a pause before she added in a frightened voice, “Mister? Can you help my mother?”
“Just a second,” Ram said. He had begun to shake so violently that he had to sit down. His breath began to hitch and he was afraid he would begin to cry, but the warm barrel of a gun that pressed against his head from behind stopped the feeling cold.
Chapter 19
Neil
Montclair, New Jersey
Th
e truck beneath Neil was such a beast, was so tall, and rocked to such a degree as it bounced over the living dead, that it felt as though he were riding a giant bull. It was not a sensation that agreed with him, and so as soon as he could he took a side street where the undead were fewer in numbers.
He made to sure to lose himself in the convoluted and squirreling streets of Montclair, and then he cut back on the gas and drove at a much safer speed. Only when he was sure that the previous owner of the truck wouldn't find him did he pull over and take stock of the treasure he had stolen.
The back of the truck rattled with canned goods and weapons, while bullets of various sizes rolled about everywhere. As well there were six large plastic jerry cans filled with gasoline and many jugs of water. In the cab with him were two sleeping bags, some more food and enough alcohol to kill a man of Neil's size.
Though what had him tight lipped was the Sig Sauer 9MM on the seat next to him. It was black and deadly, and gingerly, Neil slid the pistol under a sleeping bag, making sure that it pointed away. For Neil the greater prize than a fully loaded pistol was a package of doughnuts, the kind one would find in gas station convenience store, the sort that Neil had routinely turned his nose up at all his life.
After weeks of a restricted diet, he ate them greedily and then went about blowing the powdered sugar off his clothes. He then fretted about having left his toothbrush back at his home. A pair of old and ratty toothbrushes jutted out of a beer can that sat in a cup holder and he took the time to pinch the can between two delicate fingers and throw it out the window.
The entirety of the cab was far too messy for his liking and so he tossed out all the trash he could find, feeling a quiet guilt as he did. It was bad enough to litter, however it was the fact that he wasn't recycling that bothered him. From everything he could see, the planet was thoroughly trashed and he didn't like the idea of adding to the mess. And then it was just him and the sleeping bags and the gun. It was on his mind. Cautiously he exposed the Sig Sauer, however he could barely summon the courage to even touch it, and when he did, he did so wearing a face twisted in disgust and fear.
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