The Zombie Road Omnibus

by David A. Simpson

  Scratch put the plastic gun back into its holster and turned, grabbing his jacket off of the unused Pac Man machine with the metal claw from his prosthetic left arm. “Supposed to take this load of winter squash down into Sacramento, but dispatch has me in a holding pattern here. They want to verify with the warehouse before they send me in.”

  “Verify what?” Tiny asked. “Either they ordered them or they didn’t. What’s so hard about that?”

  Scratch stopped at the glass door Gunny was holding open and looked at them. “Haven’t you heard what’s been going on?” he asked.

  They looked at each other, then back at him. Tiny shrugged, “No. I don’t watch the news. Is it that Mecca thing?”

  “That Mecca thing,” Scratch snorted. “That happens every year.”

  Gunny said, “I’ve been on a Louis L’Amour binge this week. Got a bunch of audio books from the library when I was home.”

  “Geez,” Scratch said and shook his head. “You two hermits ever get out of your trucks and talk to people?”

  “I don’t like people,” Tiny quietly rumbled. “I don’t even like you. You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.”

  They were walking through the tourist areas, making their way to the doors of the diner, Scratch’s metal arm fully exposed in his short sleeve shirt, jacket slung over his shoulder.

  A young college-aged couple, with their carefully matched second-hand store clothes and scarves, looked at them in indignation. They were browsing the authentic Navajo jewelry and heard what Tiny said. They saw the young man's missing arm and shot daggers at the big man for being so insensitive.

  Tiny didn’t notice, Gunny didn’t care, and Scratch was used to it, people taking umbrage on his behalf since he “was a cripple”. But they were all former servicemen. Navy, Marines, Army…it didn’t matter. If you weren’t continually insulting each other, it meant you didn’t care. He was like most people with a disability, just wanted to be treated like one of the guys.

  “C’mon. It’ll be all over the news in the diner. Man, something is making people go crazy. There have been riots in nearly every city. Hell, it’s worldwide according to Alex. How long since you turned on your radio?”

  Gunny was starting to get an uneasy feeling in his gut. He thought, wracking his brain, when WAS the last time he had watched the news? He’d left the house a little over a week ago, had talked to his wife Lacy a few times, and got onto his teenager about homework and chores once.

  He really hadn’t had the radio or CB on, except for traffic checks, since he picked this load up in Maine. More than a week. He’d been burning through the days listening to tales of the old West and gunslingers and Indian raiding parties. Warriors of yesteryear. He got like that sometimes, “one of his moods”, as Lacy would say. Just wanting to shut the world out and live in his own bubble. The news was always the same anyway. Always depressing.

  A cop shot someone and there were protests in the streets.

  Some terrorists blew something up.

  Some politician was doing shady stuff.

  Stocks were up.

  Stocks were down.

  Some celebrity was getting married or divorced.

  The war in the Middle East never ended.

  North Korea was saying they were going to nuke somebody.

  It seemed that the only thing that changed was the names of the people involved. But riots in every city? The last news he had watched back home, that all the talking heads were excited about, was the big announcement by the Salaam meat packing factories.

  It was a Muslim owned company and they were going to start selling pork products to the world during this year’s Hajj. This was to show the world that “Muslims were a peaceful people and were in opposition to the terrorists.”

  But in reality, Gunny figured it was just a way to get their Halaal products on the store shelves without any backlash from people who didn’t want to see them at the local grocery. They were going to release all these pork products when most of the Muslim population in the world went to Mecca for their pilgrimage. Probably so some high Imam would calm the masses and tell them Allah said it was okay.

  Kind of like Jesus did in the New Testament, when he told the Israelites it was all right to eat pork.

  Gunny figured it was just a marketing move. It didn’t matter what your religion was for a multinational corporation. In the end, it came down to making money. It was all about the bottom line. But if it brought Islam into the 21st century, he was okay with it. Maybe it would help stop ISIS. Give them one less reason to chop your head off.

  He didn’t hate all of the Muslims like some of the vets did. Even though he’d killed his fair share of them, he’d met a lot of good folks over there. But were people so pissed off about it, they were protesting in the streets? He doubted it. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

  That was capitalism. Maybe it would bring the price of bacon down. He knew Scratch wasn’t prone to hysterics, even though they had only known each other for a few years. He’d lost his arm in Afghanistan when a couple of AK rounds had done too much damage to repair.

  That story came out late one night at the poker table behind the mechanic's shop, the one the tourists didn’t go to, or even know about. As old soldiers tend to do when they were together and the whiskey flowed, the talk turned to war stories and battle scars. Scratch said they had been under heavy fire after multiple IEDs had trapped his convoy.

  Even with his arm half blown off, the bone shattered to fragments, he was still able to man the .50 while the medic put on a tourniquet. That was one cool customer, Gunny had thought as he lost another forty bucks. But if his tales were coming from Alex Jones, then maybe they could be dismissed. Everybody knew Alex tended to add a lot of hyperbole to the facts, right? I mean, he was famous for all his conspiracy theories. He didn’t talk about aliens or chupacabras. Mostly politics and corruption. And corrupt politics. So he had plenty to talk about.

  As they headed to the diner, Scratch filled them in on what little he had heard. “People are acting weird, man. It all started a few days ago. It’s like somebody spiked the water with bath salts, or Flakka, or Spice, or something. People are, like, eating peoples’ faces. It’s mostly in the big cities, but I read on the net that it’s all over the place.”

  “Ahhh,” Tiny said dismissively. “It’s gotta be just hype, just another internet thing.”

  They passed the Missing Man table that was cordoned off with velvet ropes that Cobb had probably stolen from a bank somewhere, and they all fell quiet for a few paces. All three paying a silent tribute, in their own way, to the empty chair.

  The small round table draped in a white linen cloth had been there ever since Gunny had discovered this out of the way truck stop. When he first saw it, he knew he was at a good place. The chair at the table was empty, symbolizing all the soldiers who would never be coming home again.

  The red rose in the vase was always fresh, never plastic. The lemon slice and the salt on the plate, representing bitterness and tears of the family, were changed twice a day by Martha herself.

  There were a couple of Honor Boxes hanging on the wall. Cobb’s dad’s, Cobb’s and his son Tommy’s. The flags in them tightly folded into triangles, the medals proudly displayed.

  If you knew how to read them, one look and you could tell the type of man you were dealing with. Old Cobb put on a crotchety and cantankerous attitude, a crusty old bastard who only cared about making money, but when you looked at his medals, the silver star, his purple hearts, his drill instructor’s ribbon, it told a different story. A story of heroism and bravery. Of sacrifice for his fellow Marines.

  If you watched him around his wife or grandkids, you saw the soft side of him. He might treat drivers like they were raw recruits on their first day at Parris Island sometimes, but he never barked at her.

  Behind the Missing Man table, there were three rifles, bayonets affixed, muzzles down in a small rectangular plot of dirt with the period correct bat
tle helmets perched atop the shoulder stocks.

  There was an M1 Garand, an M-16 and an M-4, each representing their own era of American Fighting Men. Behind that, in a sturdy case against the wall, was a glass-fronted box half-filled with coins with “All proceeds go to the Veteran’s” written across the front of it.

  There was an O scale train track that ran right over the top of the box and around the entire circumference of the diner, near the ceiling. It wound its way through the walls, into the main Quonset hut, and down to table level in an area near the arcade room.

  Cobb had cleverly modified the trains to look like semi trucks and the tracks to look passably like roads. So instead of train yards modeled on the extensive tabletop layout, there were buildings and loading docks and model trucks and cars in the miniature town. He had built a funnel for pocket change on the loading docks so the children could drop in their coins.

  When one of the semi trucks with the custom made hopper came by, it would trip the lever dumping the money into its trailer. The trucks ran in a continuous loop around the C-store and over the Missing Man table, where they would trigger the bottom release and dump their load of coins into the box for the Veterans.

  The kids loved it. They followed their chosen truck around to watch it dump, squealing with delight, and ran back to parents asking for more change. The parents didn’t mind, it kept the kids busy so they could browse and it was for a good cause.

  Cobb liked it because it kept a steady stream of money coming into the box, and he gave it to where it was needed. Whether to the POW/MIA groups, the Wounded Warrior Project, or to some vet whom he knew needed a little help.

  It was too early for the kids to be up and active, so the trucks rolled quietly by on their never-ending journey as they entered Martha’s Diner.

  Cobb’s Vietnamese wife’s real name wasn’t Martha, though. When Gunny had asked Cobb what it really was one day, he growled out that he couldn’t pronounce it and it sounded like Martha, so that’s what her name was. And that Gunny should mind his own business. And he should see the barber over in Driver’s Alley ‘cause he was looking mighty scruffy. And that his truck was dirty and he needed to take that rolling scrap heap around to the Truck Wash to get cleaned up some so as to quit disgracing his parking lot with it. Then he walked out of the diner, saying something to her in very fluent Vietnamese.

  The café was already starting to fill up with the early birds. There were a few dozen people in the main dining area. Families with sleepy-eyed kids, or couples on scenic day trips up into the mountains. Guests from the Airbnb trucks. A group of cowboys at the counter drinking their coffee, a couple of bike riders wearing full leathers with their crotch rockets parked out front, getting ready to go carve up the mountain.

  It was going on 7:30 and the “Professional Drivers Only” area was already half full with men working on their breakfast platters and bottomless cups of coffee, although the conversation was sparse. Gunny knew most of them by name, or at least their CB handles, and there were nods of acknowledgment and half raised coffee cup salutes as they made their way over to a booth by the windows looking out over the gas pumps.

  They were a motley looking bunch, the men and women in the driver’s area. They weren’t scary looking men in an outlaw biker gang sense, but these were, indeed, some quietly hard men. Most were 40ish, calloused hands and laugh lines. Cowboy hats or steel toed boots. Jeans, of course. The type of men who held doors open for people, whether man or woman. Men who would say please and thank you and Ma’am.

  Men who would apologize if they bumped into you at a crowded bar, or offer to buy you another drink if they spilled some of yours. But men whose hold on their bottle would innocuously go from a grip to sip beer, to a grip to wield a weapon, if you were unwise enough to push the issue into a confrontation. Men who wouldn’t back down.

  Owner operators, most of them. Men who owned their trucks and took pride in them. Spent money on extra lights and lots of chrome. These men hauled heavy and oversize, live cattle and swinging beef. They were the guys who strapped loads of steel with 100-pound tarps and logging chains in blistering July heat. They slung iron and rolled through the mountains on chained up tires when the snows were piling up and the other drivers were hunkered down in the truck stops.

  Most were bearded, tattooed, and former military. Men who couldn’t stand being cooped up in an office or warehouse. Men who wouldn’t tolerate having a boss looking over their shoulder or telling them what to do. Some because that’s just how they were built, some because they suffered varying degrees of PTSD and knew they were better off away from people, for the most part.

  Men who got out of the service and couldn’t hold down a normal job, so they turned to trucking. The career choice had probably saved a lot of marriages, also. A team of psychiatrists would have a field day, diagnosing them with everything from oppositional defiant disorder to excessive patriotic zeal.

  America had been at war in the Middle East for over 20 years and nearly everyone that sat in the driver’s area had done his time over there. They’d seen death up close and personal and now they knew the importance of living life, not just going through the motions.

  They rode America’s highways and saw what there was to see, getting off the four lane and onto the small roads whenever they could. These were the men who took the time to stop and help a stranded motorist change a tire or give them a ride to the gas station. Some of the older guys had even taken part in the Trucker Wars back in the 70s. They were the old school Knights of the Road, who tolerated all the new laws and regulations that came down every year when they were tolerable, and ignored them when they weren’t. In short, they were men who could take care of business, and it didn’t matter what that business might be.

  The few ladies in the crowd were just as tough, if in a different way. They had to be in order to be accepted. Their nails weren’t long and painted; their hair was usually short or in a ponytail. They had to be able to drive better than most men because when they pulled up to a dock, more often than not a small crowd would gather to watch them back in. Some expecting them to take five or six attempts to get it right so they could look at each other and smile knowingly.

  Gunny slid over against the window and Scratch plopped down beside him, leaving Tiny room to spread his bulk out on the other side of the booth.

  “Check that out!” Scratch pointed out the window to a gleaming red Ferrari parked at the main entrance. “Man, I’m gonna have one of those someday.”

  “You gonna be as big an ass as he is?” Tiny asked. “He’s in the handicap spot.”

  “Maybe he’s got a dose of Affluenza,” Scratch laughed back.

  Gunny grabbed the menus slotted behind the condiments rack and passed them out, announcing, “I’m having the special, and I don’t care what it is. It’s always good.”

  The TV was usually muted, with the weather channel on, something that affected all of the drivers. Today the volume was up, not loud, but enough to be heard over the quiet clinking of silverware and coffee cups, and they turned to watch as they settled in.

  It was a local channel, the Reno Morning Show, which usually didn’t cover a lot of hard news. It was the early morning friendly banter, cooking tips, and today's weather show, with a healthy dose of celebrity gossip thrown in.

  There was a banner running across the bottom of the screen stating ‘viewer discretion is advised’ and they kept using the same footage over and over of some extremely violent protesters or rioters attacking people. It was a long distance shot and shaky, but it got the point across.

  It was brutal to watch and it left the three speechless for a few moments. When the show hosts came on again, they were talking about out of control gangs and police budget cuts, and whatever else they could come up with off the top of their heads when they really didn’t know anything. The two local personalities seemed completely out of their depth, trying to cover something so deadly serious.

  “Damn,” Tiny said q
uietly. “You see that guy just body slam that girl? It had to break bones. That hurt me just watching it. I didn’t take hits that hard when I played ball. And we had pads on.”

  “Yeah. That ain’t normal,” Scratch said.

  “Why don’t they have CNN or Fox on?” Gunny asked.

  “The feed is out,” Scratch said. “I asked the same thing when I was in here earlier. None of the cable channels are working.”

  Gunny fell silent, just watching the film loop and ignoring the chatter of the anchors and their guests. “You see that?” he asked suddenly, “Watch in the background, to the far left. See that body with the guts hanging out. That guy is dead. Has to be. Now watch.”

  The body was still as they stared at the TV, the camera fully zoomed in from a balcony overlooking the street from the looks of it. It was shaky, the operator obviously frightened. The main focus was of some guy in a suit jumping up from yet another bloody man writhing on the ground. He plowed into a screaming woman at full bore as hard as he could, knocking her out of camera view.

  But in the corner of the frame, just for a scant second, the gutted man in the background started to sit up. The film ended abruptly and started looping again.

  “Dude, that’s whack! Why did they cut it there?!” Scratch demanded. “I’m telling you, man. Alex is right. They’re covering something up!”

  “It probably just got way too bloody, they can’t show that stuff on TV,” Tiny said. “It was rigor mortis, or something. Or somebody grabbing him. Folks with their insides hanging out don’t sit up.”

  Kim-Li rattled a plate of toast and three cups down on the table and started filling them with from her coffee pot.

  “You boys know what you want?” she asked, whipping out her order pad, her perky Midwestern accent a surprise to anyone who had never heard her speak before. Most people assumed she would sound like she looked. Vietnamese. “Hey, did you see Jimmy Winchell over there?” she continued, not giving them a chance to speak and obviously excited, pointing with her pencil to a handsome thirty-something cowboy sitting with a few of his friends at the counter.