The Zombie Road Omnibus

by David A. Simpson

  It was a free country, but by God, they better not abuse it. Sara was there giving them the evil eye, clicking her nails on the handle of the 9-inch blade she had strapped to her thigh. They didn’t know if she was kidding or not, but decided to take her at her word. She was kind of scary when she was pissed and Scratch told them how cool and calm she was about shoving letter openers into the brains of people still alive.

  “Damn,” Lars said as they walked off with a few million dollars worth of powder. “They could teach Tony Montana a thing or two.”

  “Yeah,” sniffed Stabby. “Stacy and Sara. The S.S. sisters.”

  A couple of the trucks had PTO pumps on them and they had been modified to be able to pump fuel out of the ground of any gas station or truck stop they came to. That covered resupply for the trucks ,and the 12-volt pump idea Gunny had was still a good one for Sara’s motorcycle. Until they found one, though, they had filled up a handful of five-gallon cans and strapped them on the catwalk of Griz’s truck.

  She had gotten her Fireblade around to the shop and Tommy had stripped some of the plastics and built a lightweight exoskeleton frame for her, to protect the most vulnerable parts of the bike if she went down. She wanted to ride point a few miles ahead of the main group and let them know if anything bad was coming up. She had shot down everyone who tried to talk her out of it. It was her bike, her life, and she was riding. So piss off, as Gunny liked to say.

  Wire Bender had been working all day rigging up radios. He built a hands-free mic for Sara’s helmet and mounted a peaked and tuned CB, with a small amplifier and its antenna, to the back of her bike. He put a better set of antennas, an extra CB, and a Ham radio in Gunny’s truck, so he could talk to Cheyenne Mountain if needed.

  General Carson had tried to speak with Gunny about a few organizational things, but his reply had been the same every time. “Take care of it. You’re in charge of that. Any luck with my wife’s phone?” And pretty soon, the General had quit bugging him.

  After dinner, Gunny and Cobb walked around all of the vehicles lined up in the junkyard, checking each for any problems or deficiencies that may have been missed. It was most of the trucks that had been there, modified big rigs, and their trailers full of food or supplies. When Tommy cut up the livestock trailer to build the plows, they had let the cattle out to graze what they could from the weeds growing up around the rusting hulks. It wasn’t much, but they would leave the gates open when they left and the cattle could fend for themselves.

  There would be plenty more to round up once they got to where they were going. The cowboys had their tour bus fully fueled and it was to be loaded with the people in the truck stop, and the few surviving family members of Tommy’s mechanics. No one wanted to drive their car, they all felt safer in the armored bus. And it had a bathroom. Besides, once they got to where they were going, they could go to the nearest dealer and pick out any car they wanted.

  They walked on past the last truck, past the impromptu gun range where Griz had been drilling everyone, and to the small graveyard near the back fence. Gunny noticed a cross for Tiny had been erected.

  “Preacher do that?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Cobb replied. “We lost some good men that first day.”

  Gunny stayed quiet. He had nothing to add to that. They stood in silence for a moment, remembering, and he noticed a small, hand-carved sign hanging on the fence above the graves. It read: John 3:16 has conquered Zechariah 14:12.

  “What’s that all about?” he asked Cobb. “I know the John verse, ‘God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son’, but what’s the other one?”

  Cobb looked at it through the haze of his Lucky Strike. “Preacher said this whole zombie uprising was written about by the Old Prophets. He said there’s a bunch of passages about the dead rising. Like most of the weird stuff in there, everyone just thought it was an allegory or something. Guess it wasn’t.”

  “I’ve read the Book a few times,” Gunny said. “But I don’t remember anything about zombies.”

  “It’s in there,” Cobb said. “I just didn’t think it meant what it said.”

  “I was thinking,” Gunny started, wanting to change the subject. “Maybe we should go by Cheyenne Mountain, try to get the General and his men out, or at least clear out the zeds for them. They’re just a bunch of egg heads and we’ve got a pretty hard crew here.”

  “Already discussed that with him,” Cobb said. “They may be POGs, but they ain’t dumb. They made a kind of maze out of the cubicle dividers in their area. They’ll open the door and one or two zeds will rush in and they’ll close it behind them and then stab them to death with sharpened chair legs from behind the maze walls. They set up trip wires, all kinds of things to slow them up so they can kill ‘em.”

  “Pretty smart,” Gunny said. “So they are whittling the numbers down?”

  “Yeah. They’ve killed about thirty so far. Haven’t lost any of theirs. The biggest problem is the smell.”

  “I can imagine,” Gunny said. “Thirty bodies piled up in a corner, rotting away. How are they set for food and water?”

  “It’s a problem. They’ve got water, as long as the place keeps ticking along. He said they need to get out to service the generators, but Jack said the electricity is powered by turbines from an underground river. So I don’t know. Maybe they’ve changed since he was in M.I. The place is supposed to be fully self-sustaining. They hope to have all of them killed, out of the immediate area, over the next day or so. The mess area is only a few hallways away, once they clear the communications block they are in now. He said they should get there soon. Then they can go on indefinitely.”

  “So they don’t need our help?”

  “We couldn’t get in the front doors, even if we went there,” Cobb said. “It would take a dozen tanks a dozen reloads to blow the barriers. Besides, General Carson said our priority is to get these people to safety, and pick up anyone we find along the way.”

  Gunny had been busy all day, hustling to help everyone get their trucks loaded and ready, checking and rechecking weapons, and making final improvements on his own rig. There was Griz’s mandatory training class, dropping trailers they had no use for, and reloading wagons with supplies they thought they might need. There had been zombie killing duties, and he had pulled a shift atop the roof to take them out before they got close to anyone working outside.

  He hadn’t had much time to think beyond the immediate. Hadn’t had time to think of his “presidential” duties, but Cobb had been on top of things. It was weird having Top defer to him, instead of telling him he needed to shave or something. To treat him like a superior when Gunny was just Gunny. Just Johnny Joe Meadows from Backwater, Kentucky. Same old truck driver he was yesterday.

  Except now he didn’t have a house payment.

  Or any more credit card bills.

  And he could get himself a new $60,000, fully loaded pickup truck just by walking into the dealership and looking for the keys.

  Hell, he could find the fanciest mansion in town and claim it, if he wanted. Well, if the owner was dead, that is.

  But all of these things were the last of their kind. There wouldn’t be a next year’s model. Once the shelves were empty at the mall, they wouldn’t be refilled. Once they ran out of your shoe size, it would be back to hand-cobbled. How would you get a replacement if you broke a window? None of that seemed important at the moment, as he looked down at the wooden cross where Preacher had carved Tiny’s name. Death was very close now.

  He sighed. He didn’t even know Tiny’s real name. He’d just always been Tiny, all the years he’d known him. Didn’t know where his wife lived. He had gone through his truck, hoping to find something with his home address on it. His wallet must have been on him when he went down, and he didn’t find anything else in his search. His phone was missing, too. Probably also in his pocket.

  “General asked if you would check in around ten o’clock, our time,” Cobb said.

  Even th
at was weird. ‘The General asked if you would.' Gunny had been used to taking orders from officers, not giving them. Not being ASKED to do something by a General.

  “Right,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  Cobb just grunted and walked off in his limping gait, knowing the man needed a moment to himself.

  He stared at the crosses with the names carved into them, at the mounds of sandy soil. Guys he had known only in passing, and guys he had known for years. Pure dumb luck he wasn’t one of them, buried six feet under or worse, one of the screaming undead. He was lucky he hadn’t been caught outside and taken down in the first few minutes, like so many others had. He was lucky he had fifteen years of military training to snap him into the reality of what was happening, almost instantly.

  But even that was a fluke. Wasn’t part of his plan of years ago. He had been a senior, getting ready to graduate from the Tri-cities vocational school, with a degree in auto mechanics. He was working part time at the tire store in town and had his applications in at all of the big car dealerships, hoping to land a job as a service tech. Life looked good for him.

  He was a great mechanic, with a wonderful girl who was going to community college that Fall to study to be a teacher. He had plans to put a ring on her finger in a few years, when he was making good money. But life got in the way of his plans. Big Billy Wilson and his crew of guffawing idiot jocks came in to get the oil changed in the new Camaro his daddy had bought him. He could put up with their bullying and being an asshole to everybody that didn’t play football, love football, or love them because they played football. Their snide comments rolled right off of him.

  But when Lacy came in after her shift at the McDonald's to wait for him to finish up, things got ugly. He hadn’t meant to break Billy’s jaw, he honestly didn’t realize he had the ratchet wrench in his hand when he swung on him after he had grabbed her ass. The only way the judge wouldn’t charge him with felonious assault as an adult, was for him to join the military.

  The judge made it clear he was going to be leaving, one way or another. He wasn’t going to have a small town feud between two hotheads causing more violence or bloodshed. He was leaving as a recruit in boot camp, or as a new fish in prison. Not much of a choice, really, so he decided to join the Army as a mechanic. Repair their trucks and tanks. Good work experience and enhance his resume.

  The recruiter said there weren’t any slots available for any mechanic jobs. If he could wait until next quarter, there would be some opening up. But he couldn’t wait. Judge needed his early enlistment papers at the next court hearing in a week, or he was looking at jail time. Air Force or Navy didn’t want him with the charge pending, and he didn’t know if he could cut it as a Marine.

  So he went back to the Army recruiter and went over his list of available positions. Supply Clerk, clerical assistant, ammo specialist, trumpet player. A whole list of dreadful options in his opinion. But infantryman was always open, the recruiter had said. And there’s even a ten thousand dollar sign on bonus.

  Gunny sighed, coming back to the present. He reached out to touch the cross, to say goodbye, then turned and headed to the CB shop.

  There was a new voice on the radio. He introduced himself as Captain Barnett and called Gunny “Mr. President” when he addressed him.

  “Yeah, no need for all that, Sir,” he said. “Where’s the General, is he all right?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” he said. “He is sleeping and asked me to relay this information to you when you checked in. Shall I wake him?”

  “No, of course not,” Gunny said. “What’s the good news?” He crossed his fingers, hoping it WAS good news.

  “We were able to pull messages from your wife and son’s phones. They were uploaded from the Atlanta towers, but that’s as far as they got, they were never delivered.”

  “No shit,” Gunny thought, but said, “Can you read them to me?”

  29

  Jessie

  Day 3

  In the Woods

  They were miserable. Utterly exhausted.

  Parched beyond belief, and ate up by mosquito and ant bites. Jessie didn’t even care if the whole world watched him take a morning leak on the zombies still milling around down below. Not that he had anything left to pee, he was so wrung out. The crowd below knew they were still up in the trees.

  They had settled down, stopped their screaming and frantic jumping after a few hours, but they weren’t giving up. Some had wandered off, but there were still dozens gathered around each of the trees they were in. It was like they knew all they had to do was wait them out, the meat would be falling from the sky soon enough. It didn’t matter if it took a day or a week, they would blunder around and wait. They had nothing better to do, no pressing engagements to attend.

  Jessie, Doug, and Gary had been able to lick a little moisture from the bottom of the leaves that had accumulated during the night, it wasn’t much, but he supposed it helped. Sheila had it worse than all of them. She had climbed a pine and the needles didn’t have any place for the dew to form. And she was covered in the tacky pine sap.

  They had spent a dangerous night trying to be as quiet as possible, tying themselves to the trunk of the tree with their clothes, belts, or vines so they wouldn’t nod off and fall out. It was really a sign of how bad things were for them when Sheila, bare to her jeans, didn’t try very hard to hide herself as she struggled back into her sticky shirt, and Doug barely noticed.

  “No more!” Gary shouted, struggling around on the branch he was perched on, to face them. That got the undead gathered around his tree animated again and they started their keening and jumping.

  “Listen, they aren’t going anywhere, they can outlast us and I’m freaking ate up with mosquito bites. I’m tired of this shit. I’m gonna get them all over here and then you guys make a break for it.”

  “How you going to do that?” Doug asked. “Jump?”

  “Yep,” he replied. “You guys would have made it if I hadn’t slowed you down. Thanks for trying, but this is the only way. You know we can’t last another day up here. Sheila, can you show me your hooters before I go?” He was trying for nonchalance and bravado. He almost nailed it.

  “Wait up a minute,” Jessie said. “I’ve been trying to come up with some ideas. Let’s figure something out.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” she teased, her voice cracking a little from the dryness. “For now, what are you thinking, Jessie?”

  He grinned at that one. Good for her.

  “When I was little and we would visit my grandparents in Kentucky, my dad showed me something he did as a kid. He used to climb saplings, up until they would bend over from his weight, and ride them back down to the ground. He’d let go and the tree would spring back, with him ready to find another. We called it the hillbilly roller coaster. I think we can do the same with these trees,” he finished, cracking on the last words, trying to swallow with nothing left to moisten his throat with.

  “These trees are way too big,” Doug said. “There’s no way.”

  “Only gotta bend to the next tree, closer to the water,” Gary said, seeing where this was going. “Do a Tarzan kind of thing, tree to tree.”

  Jessie could only nod. His voice was shot. He grabbed a few of the fattest leaves he could find and tried to suck anything damp out of them.

  “And if you miss? Wind up out in an open area?” asked Sheila.

  “Better than staying here for another night,” Gary said, and laboriously started to make his way to the thin branches at the top of his tree.

  Doug shrugged to the rest of them as if to say, ‘there isn’t a better plan, why not?’ and started to climb. They were all exhausted from the miserable night they had spent slapping mosquitoes and trying to find a position that was comfortable for a few minutes. It could have been worse, Jessie guessed. At least he didn’t pick a tree that was ate up with ants.

  He looked up, trying to determine the best way to climb, w
ishing now he hadn’t picked such a huge tree. It went a long way up before it looked like it was thin enough to bend with his weight. He followed the path it would go, determining which tree he would need to land in. It was the pine that Sheila was in.

  He watched her climb for a minute, then got started himself, the milling horde of undead getting agitated at their movement and starting to keen and claw skyward toward them again. Gary had the farthest to go out of the four, he was the first one they tossed up into the gnarled old oak. He was managing, though, using only his upper body, swinging and scrabbling, steadily moving upward.

  They all climbed until the branches were too thin to stand on, and the tops of the trees swayed back and forth dangerously with them. They could see each other clearly now, three figures with arms wrapped tightly around the narrow tops of their trees, each nearly a hundred feet off the ground. Gary was far below them, resting. He didn’t have the strength to go on, his arms were shaking from the exertion.

  From this vantage point, Jessie could see he didn’t have a chance. Even with a good set of legs, the old Oak towered a long way above him, and he doubted if Gary could get it to bend in the right direction.

  “Forget it, Gary,” he yelled hoarsely over to him. “Your tree tapers off the wrong way, you’ll never get it to swing toward the lake.”

  “Just hang on, dude,” Doug added. “When we get down, we’ll figure out a distraction to draw them away.”

  Gary just nodded, too tired to disagree, or even answer. Jessie looked over at Sheila who was frozen, arms wrapped tightly around the gently tilting pine. It was going the right way, if it bent far enough it would take her all the way to the lake, but he knew it wouldn’t. It would snap before it went that far down. But there was a decent sized something… Oak? Maple? Poplar? He didn’t know, but it was there, right in the path of the Pine and it had branches that stretched out over the water. All she had to do was go a little bit higher and ride it over.