“I don't know. They, uh, digested the town over the last few hours. I'm waiting to see where they go next, so we can make our move. I want to go before nightfall. My lookouts are up on the roof. They'll let us know when it's time to go.”
“The town is still here?”
“The town, yes. The people, not so much. Most left before the levees were breached. The general at least gave them that. Some fought to the death behind the water-filled moat so the rest of us could escape, but that didn't stop the horde for long. Once it filled up with dead they just walked across. Then it was a race into the buildings and houses of the town. I was able to get what was left of my team out in time, but the general assigned me for this special mission. I then grabbed the few that were left and here we are. Lots of people are still holding out. The zombies are strong but some of these old buildings are made of stone or steel. They'll survive for a while. Each zombie delayed here in town isn't swarming over the next town or swimming after the ferry carrying the general's tanks and men to the south.”
“That's very interesting, dear. Can you tell me, please, if that means you've given up your own escape so you can take me in another direction? That seems very dangerous and I'm not happy about that one bit.” She smacked her dentures as an exclamation point of her emotions.
“Ma'am, I'm sorry to say this: we gave up our seats on the lifeboat to get you somewhere else. General Jasper believed someone had infiltrated his unit and he couldn't trust anyone but me to take care of you. Part of it, I think, was that he didn't want to be burdened with you. I know it sounds harsh, but I watched him talk about you, and he really seemed distracted. Another piece of it was that he told me you were important to finding the cure. That other powerful people were closing in to get you. He put his trust in me to get you to safety, and anonymity, so that's what I'm going to do. You don't have a choice in that.”
“Oh, my dear, we all have a choice,” she said with resignation. She thought again of ending her own life but brushed it aside quickly. It may save Chloe from the burden of protecting her and give the woman a better chance of surviving in the near term, but Al-the computer-made it clear she was part of something larger now. The computer program she, Liam, and Victoria had opened. A computer that may lead them to the cure. Her choice now was to make good on the belief she was a key part of saving everyone on Earth.
She gulped loudly at her own revelation. “I ... ” Ready to explain where she needed to go, she and Chloe were interrupted as two orange-haired men ran up to the truck. They jumped into the bed of the pickup and sidled up to the rear window, so they could talk to Chloe.
Chloe waited for her to finish for a moment, but then turned around when one of the men knocked on the window. “Here comes the news.”
2
The two men, both about the age of her grandson-Liam's father-started talking at once.
“They're almost through.”
“We have to go.”
“Whoa, one at a time,” Chloe replied. “Craig, what'd you see?”
“There are more than we can count out there. So many, in fact, they can stand on the shoulders of those underneath. They scramble onto rooftops, then start to yank off shingles and plywood to get at the people inside. Most of the other buildings with windows have long since been overrun. We're one of the last ones. You picked good, Chlo, but we gotta roll.”
Craig looked at her and smiled. “Pleased to meet you, miss. I'm Craig Johnstone. This is my associate Mark Talley. We'll be saving you, today.”
Chloe laughed, not unkindly. “Well, we're all here to save each other. We're all gonna make it, got it?”
“God is my co-pilot,” Marty added. “He always has been.”
“Yes, ma'am,” he said with a mock salute. “I think I'm going to like flying with you.”
She wasn't so sure given what he'd just told her about the outside. Now that she had it in context, the sound of the zombies was a constant buzz from beyond the walls of their refuge. Her deepest desire was to be told the zombies went looking for trouble somewhere else. Anywhere else. Instead, they were still here, and she was in deep trouble.
“So, what's the plan, guys?” Mark asked. He was a stout balding man with a friendly face. The bright orange paint was especially smooth above his forehead where he'd lost his hair. From her spot in the front it was hard to see him in the truck bed, but he wore heavy gloves and held his bloody metal spear up against the rear window frame. He'd done a lot of work with it.
“Here, take a water.” Chloe handed them each a bottle, which they downed in unison. While they drank, she sketched out some ideas. “I don't know what we'll find outside. This truck can get us through some shit, but it has a limit, I'm afraid. If we get bogged down, break an axle, get a flat, run out of gas, or if any of a hundred other random problems strike us-we're dead. Unless anyone has a better plan, I say we drive like hell to the north and hope we can get through the thick of them. If they stop us in the town, we have a chance of finding another house to take shelter, but I don't know how we'll get inside. We can't exactly climb ladders or go through windows with Marty, can we?” Her smile was forced. “But I think we can do this. We'll get north of the levee and the ditch, then use the interstate to put some miles behind us. We'll head east-”
“No,” Marty blurted. “I mean, please. I'd like to go to the west. Will that be OK?”
“West, huh?” She appeared to consider, then added. “I was figuring on going east into the Smokey's over on the other side of Kentucky. There's no big cities the whole way. We'll shoot right between Louisville and Nashville.”
“My Liam is going west. I have to join him.”
“To where? Does he know something we don't?” Her question was paired with probing eyes.
“Kids. They know so much of technology and talk in words I've never heard before. Things he says ... ” she chuckled, “confuse me all the time. It takes all I can to listen to him and not feel overwhelmed. I am certain he knows something we don't. He's a smart boy.”
“So, you don't know where he's going? He's heading west with no destination in mind? That doesn't sound so smart,” she said with respectful sarcasm.
Marty realized they would never go somewhere on such a flimsy premise.
“He's going to Colorado ... ”
To find a supercomputer that talks to him.
“ ... to help his girlfriend find her parents.”
Chloe's brow furrowed as she thought about it. She squinted her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Marty took a guess at the woman's pain. “You have someone to the east, don't you?” she touched Chloe's arm in sympathy.
“No, it's fine. I can go west just as easily as east. The main thing is to get away from population. What we see here has to be the bulk of citizens from three states. Up in the mountains they can't get together like this. They'll be spread out ... ”
Chloe seemed as if she was going to continue, but the pause kept going.
“The Rockies sounds good to me,” said Mark, interrupting.
Craig, however, was less enthused. “My family is in St. Louis. If they're still alive.”
“Mine too,” Chloe agreed with a depressed voice. “Not my mom or dad, they died a few years ago. My brother ... my ex-. Lots of ex's.” Her laugh was strained. “But I'm not going back to a city. I've had enough of zombies coming in waves like this.”
A silence broke out, but Marty hoped to head it off. “Do you have family, Mark?” After another long pause, she tried to see his face out back. As expected, the eyes told her everything she needed to know. “I'm sorry. I'll pray for them. Since the sirens woke me out of my old life I've been praying non-stop for the people in my life.” She was talking to them all. “At my age, every family member I lose is someone younger than me. Someone who had a lot of living left to do. It was my great-grandson and his girlfriend that ended up saving me. Can you believe it? Two wonderful children saved an old geezer like me.” She giggled, despite the se
riousness of her delivery. “And now I look at you kids-stop, I know you aren't kids.” Another chuckle. “But to my eyes you are. I'm one-hundred-and-four. I've seen it all. I'll be praying for you, your families, and the world we're driving into. The Lord will provide.”
Chloe answered with “Amen,” as did one of the men. She couldn't tell which. “Let's get out of Cairo and find some clean air, then we can decide who's going where. For starters we'll head west. At least that way we can put a river between us and this sick crowd. Sound fair?”
The men gave Chloe their approval, but not with much enthusiasm. Marty realized the sounds of the zombies had become much louder even in those few moments they'd been talking.
“They're here,” Chloe said, stating the obvious.
3
“Right. Just like when we came in. Mark, you bang open the door then jump back in the truck. We'll plow into them and see how far we get.”
“Nice knowin' y'all,” Mark said with fatalistic humor.
Marty watched Mark run past her side of the truck and go to a shut garage door ahead of them. She had to stretch to see over the big hood of the pickup. Chloe kicked over the engine at the same time and revved it. It was a powerful motor that echoed in the confined space. Black smoke from the dual stacks swirled all around them. Craig coughed.
“Sorry,” Chloe said over her shoulder.
The fumes came in through the window, making her cover her mouth and nose with her sleeve. For a split second the acrid smell reminded her of that day, long ago, in her own garage. It had been filled with similar scents when she had her accident with her little girl.
She let her sleeve drop, her heart wavering. It wasn't just her emotions that made her heart skip a few beats, there was something else happening to her.
I wish I had my rosary.
The world brightened, and her head became light on her shoulders. Heaven had finally come to call.
Hallelujah!
Only that wasn't it at all. The truck dipped as Mark got back on the bed of the truck. They pulled up the tailgate and slammed it shut. Chloe raced the engine, tossed the gear lever, and the tires barked. The acceleration of the big truck kept her firmly in the back of her seat. It was either her heart or an impact that made her wince.
The truck launched out of the garage bay and she recognized the sound and feeling of zombies bouncing off the front bumper. They were solid thuds. Unmistakable. Walking dead people were lined up far down the street. Some looked at her. Some away. Those closest seemed to peer into her soul. Those were the ones she feared.
“Aww man,” Chloe cried as the scope of the crowd became apparent. She whipped the wheel right and then left, making Marty swish from side to side in her seat. Her head neared the side window glass and hands reached up for her from outside.
It almost felt like a black and white movie because all the clothes were pretty much the same color, now. The colors of the rainbow had been washed away from the zombies except browns from the dusty fields or reddish black from the endless blood splatters.
Marty grunted to herself when she saw one man with blue-ish slime and chunks all over his face.
Somehow, Chloe saw the same man. “He's wearing someone's brains.”
It didn't surprise her at all because she'd seen what these zombies had to endure on the way in. The machine guns and tank shells worked over the crowd as it pressed in on Cairo, and it seemed like none of the survivors got across without paying some cost. The only brightly dressed people were the townies because they'd become zombies without being out in the mud or blood.
“This ain't gonna work,” Chloe strained while gripping the wheel as the truck plowed into ten or more bodies at once. Marty's breath was shallow, and her panic blossomed. She couldn't speak at that moment, but she wanted to call for help because the infected seemed to converge on them. The anger of the crowd outside was palpable, as were the furious cries of Mark and Craig out in the open bed of the truck. They cheered when they scored some kills from their perch, but there were far too many for two guys to handle. Even an old lady knew it.
“Hang on,” Chloe yelled. Marty held onto the door handle, though the turn was so sharp she lost her grip. When the truck straightened, the motion sat her upright, so she could see forward again. Chloe drove them between two houses, but she didn't know if they were on pavement or grass.
The motor growled, and the exhaust pipes rumbled as the truck regained some speed. The beating of hands immediately decreased, but the clonks and plonks off the front of the truck went wild as if they were heading into bowling pins. Marty watched in horror as a head rolled up the windshield, leaving a bloody trail over the glass.
Chloe giggled like she was crazy. “Man, the owner of this rig is going to hate me.”
Marty drew in a deep breath, and still suffered some kind of episode with her heart. It would beat for a few seconds, then stop for ... too long. Then it would beat some more. Stop for ...
“H-” Her voice was weak, and the word help would not come out.
“I know,” Chloe answered. “Hang on.” The truck dropped out from underneath her as it flew off a steep curb. Marty felt the seatbelt grab her legs and shoulder-keeping her in her seat. Then the opposite happened, she dropped into the seat with force as the truck bottomed out. The men in the back slammed into the rear window and cussed.
“Oh God, I forgot about them,” Chloe said under her breath before she turned back to them. “Sorry! Come inside!” Her foot came off the gas. In the reprieve, the two men slithered in through the open sliding glass window. The truck hit another couple of victims, and Chloe had to brake hard while turning again.
“You trying to shake us, Chlo?” Craig joked.
“No, I didn't realize we'd be off roading it. Sorry about that.”
“It wasn't her fault,” Marty wanted to say. But her voice was broken. She felt her own throat, wondering if she was being constricted by her seatbelt, but that wasn't it.
The truck popped out between two dilapidated houses onto what had to be the main drag through town. Marty couldn't speak, and if she could she would not have used the same curses as her companions, though her feelings were surely just as hopeless. The zombies were thick on the street for the mile or so to the levee to the north. Beyond that, there was no way to know.
“We may have made a mistake,” Mark said while sucking in air. The two orange-haired men sat the second row of the crew cab. Craig's response was almost inaudible to her, but he cussed endlessly with words she'd never heard.
Chloe ignored all the complaints and drove the truck at about thirty miles an hour through one sliver of the crowd. The bashing sounds reached a crescendo during the crossing but then dropped to nothing as the truck went into the parking lot of a shuttered fast food joint. Marty bounced with everyone else as some zombies slid underneath the tires, but through the blood smears of the windshield she figured out Chloe's plan. Because all the zombies moved from north to south, their movement created small shadows on the south side of buildings that were devoid of bodies. The parking lot was one such void. She recalled the sound of rain on the roof of Al's Plymouth and how it would stop briefly when they went under bridges on the highway. A moment or two later, as Chloe maneuvered the truck onto the next street, the rain resumed.
Over and over they entered those shadows, often plowing through backyards or side lots of the flat old town. Sometimes fencing created artificial zombie-free pockets, but usually they weren't that lucky. The clunks of pedestrians being run over, and over, was frightening and continuous.
Marty was short on breath, fearful of her own death inside that truck, and confused over the turn of events in which she found herself. Was she ready to die? It was never a question back in the Old World. Comfortable with herself and her relationship with God, death would merely be the peeling back of the veil of the material world, so she could be with those who had gone before her. Though she never took it for granted she would reach Heaven, she felt she'd done everyt
hing humanly possible to live a good life that any benevolent God would approve. But lately, and that dad-gummed computer system was to blame, she'd come to worry that she hadn't quite done enough in the worldly realm. God had something in store for her, and death would interfere with that. As foreign as it felt to her, she wasn't completely ready to pass on.
“We're getting out,” Chloe shouted. “There's the levee.”
She was lucky to fall into the hands of the orange-haired woman. She would commend the general if she ever saw him again.
Chloe's driving and intuition zig-zagged them through town from one void to the next. Several times they'd veered dangerously as they slid through clumps of infected. One time she high-centered the truck on the dead and even putting it into four-wheel-drive didn't get them free. Mark and Craig had to go back out into the truck bed to give some counterweight. The men fought hand-to-hand with some of the zombies, then jumped back inside when the tires finally gripped the bloody cement.
Marty still held her seatbelt strap as they reached the top of the levee. There were no more thumps on the hood and there were almost no zombies standing outside the passenger window, so she began to think they were home free.
Rather than celebrate, Chloe put the truck into park, stared out the front for a few moments, then banged her head on the steering wheel. The woman fought to keep from crying, but a couple of sobs escaped.
“Just one break for crying out loud,” Chloe said through gritted teeth.
Marty's heart pulsed erratically. Three beats and a long pause, like the next two or three heartbeats were missing. Over and over.
She sat up in her seat, making a desperate effort to see what spooked Chloe. The seatbelt clicked, so she was free of it.
Three beats and a pause.
She used a handhold on the top of the door to get her head above the dashboard, so she could see to the north.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 189
