27
Jessie
Jessie didn’t stop all that night, just kept chasing his headlights down the endless black ribbon. He wasn’t even sure he took the roads marked out on his map, but he knew he kept the nose of the car running west. He thumped into a few of the undead when he rounded a bend on a two-lane road and Jimmy stirred in his sleep, but went back to his soft snores after a few minutes. The quiet rumble of the finely tuned 429 under the hood was comforting. It was a solid sound, firm and reassuring. The gentle vibrations of the Merc were soothing. It wouldn’t let him down, it whispered. Keep me in oil, feed me gas, and I’ll run forever, it seemed to say.
He had the radio turned down low, it was playing music from Lakota. Every half hour the DJ would announce the same old warnings and tell everyone who could hear that it was a safe town. Jessie tried to empty his head of the guilt, told himself over and over again it wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t make himself believe it.
When the sun came up behind them and Jimmy sat up, they started looking for a safe place to refuel. He took a few quick turns down Arkansas back roads, zigzagging for a half-dozen miles before they pulled up to an old mobile home with a few cars parked in the dirt drive. Jessie liked getting fuel from pickup trucks. The tanks were bigger and most of them were high enough off the ground to give him plenty of room to maneuver. He shut the car off and they listened for a minute before getting out. He gave Jimmy one of his pistols and they watched each other’s back as he punched the holes and drained the gas. They did the same thing at the next house, ignoring the screams and banging from the undead trapped inside. They both avoided looking at the people slapping the windows, they didn’t want to see who had played on the tire swing hanging from a tree in the front yard. Or rode the bicycles leaning against the porch.
“One more house, I think,” Jessie said. “We need another ten gallons to top everything off.”
The Merc was a thirsty beast. His dad hadn’t built it for economy, and he’d burnt through nearly forty gallons of gas just going three hundred miles.
“Then one more gas stop somewhere in Oklahoma, maybe. We should be there tonight.”
They drove a few more miles and made a few more turns to throw off any followers, before they stopped again at a small farm. The front door was wide open on the old homestead and they could see where the screen door had been destroyed by something wanting either in or out.
“You want to go to the next one?” Jimmy asked.
Jessie eyeballed the house, the barn, and the outbuildings. Nothing was moving except some cows out in the pastures. They had looked up at the car and, sensing no danger, went back to their grazing.
“I think it’s safe,” Jessie said. “If it’s not, you ready to kill one? You remember everything I told you about the gun?”
They stared at each other. One, a wiry little orphan with a badly bruised face, and an eye swollen half shut and bloodshot. The other, a teenaged boy with dirt-crusted hands and a jagged, scabbed-over slash disfiguring his face. He was just starting to fill out, still couldn’t grow hair on his chin, but had taken on the responsibilities of a man. A month ago, his biggest concern was which video game to buy with his birthday money and the upcoming Spanish test he hadn’t studied for. Today, he was teaching a 12-year old boy how to kill.
Slippery Jim nodded once, all seriousness, and they exited the car. They went to the house first and both readied their guns when Jessie approached the door and yelled inside. They waited, but there was no sound, no movement. They checked the outbuildings and the barn, but they were clear. Whoever had lived here was long gone.
They made quick work of the pickup truck tank, and within the quarter hour, they were back on the road munching on beef jerky and candy bars for breakfast.
By early afternoon, Jessie was nodding off at the wheel. He needed rest, but didn’t want to stop for a nap. Too dangerous. He knew Jim was pretty good at taking care of himself, but he couldn’t let himself go to sleep. What if the kid wandered off to go to the bathroom or something and got bit. What if he got bored waiting and went off exploring and got lost. Jessie couldn’t risk losing another life that was entrusted to him. He already felt the undead eyes of his friends, and all of the kids from the orphanage staring at him. Accusing him. He could see the nuns with their stern, disapproving stares whenever he even considered stopping for rest. He couldn’t outrun the guilt. This kid was his only chance at even the slightest bit of redemption. He couldn’t let anything happen to him.
They were well into Oklahoma, the old car steadily eating up the miles and leaving the screaming runners in their wake, chasing exhaust fumes. They’d already made a stop to dump in the fuel from the gas cans, but the needle was dipping below a quarter tank again. Jessie shook himself out of the waking doze he was in and took another drink of warm water. They needed to find a country store at one of the back-country crossroads to get some Monster drinks or something. His eyes were dry and itchy from lack of sleep, but they were so close. If they kept at it, he’d make it by nightfall.
They saw what they were looking for after another ten miles, a couple of small businesses where two county roads crossed. Dave and Barb’s general store on one corner and Billy’s bait shop on the other.
There were a few of the undead milling around aimlessly until they heard the rumble from the motor as they pulled up to the stop sign. Their heads came up and they darted toward them, arms outstretched, the creepy keening noise they did already calling to any others in the area. Jessie floored it and the car kicked sideways, rolling smoke through the intersection. He let off a little to get traction and got the car back in a straight line.
“I thought you said we needed gas!” Jimmy exclaimed. “We can’t run all the time, we gots to fight sometimes!”
“We’re not running,” Jessie replied.
A quarter mile up the road, with seven or eight screaming undead things chasing them, he hit the brakes, bringing the heavy Merc to a shuddering, screeching stop.
“We’re just killing them smart,” he said and shoved the floor shifter into reverse. He threw an arm over the seat and nailed it, aiming straight for them. The motor revved and they shot backward, catching the first of the runners and sending him spiraling up and over the roof of the car. Jimmy turned to watch him land on the asphalt with a head-shattering crunch, broken legs and arms flailing like a rag doll. Jessie lined up on the rest of them and they crunched and bounced away with broken bone gracelessness. The last in line, a pathetic looking woman crawling down the center of the road, lost her snarling head when it smashed into the bumper, the oversized tires easily gave them enough clearance to drive over the remains of her withered body. Jessie wore his own snarl, although he was only trying to smile.
He used to love going with his dad to the demolition derbies at the county fair and those drivers had always protected the front of their cars, always rammed the other guy in reverse. There wasn’t a whole lot to break in the back of the car. Another trick they did was a reverse spin out. He’d never tried it, but this was as good a time as any, so he whipped the wheel all the way to its stop and flung the car around while he jammed it in first gear. The tires squalled as the front end spun and when he was facing down the road, he popped the clutch to take off. The car bucked once and stalled.
Jimmy was grinning from ear to ear. “Where’d you learn how to drive like that? That was so cool.”
“Car wasn’t supposed to die, though,” Jessie said. “We were supposed to keep on rolling and pull up at the store just as pretty as you please.”
He looked at the shifter. He’d thrown it in third by mistake.
“I think I need to find a dirt field and practice my driving moves,” he grumped as he restarted the car and piloted it into the gravel lot of the little country store.
Between the cars parked there, and the truck at the bait shop, they topped everything off and Jessie loaded up on energy drinks and more snack cakes. While he was in the store, he heard a sin
gle shot from outside. He dropped everything and ran to the door, expecting the worst, expecting a horde of runners bearing down on them. Jimmy had been standing guard and now he stood over a bone broke cadaver that had clawed its way in from the road. One they’d hit and nearly destroyed. It had taken a half hour to pull itself toward them, a dangle of organs and intestines spilled out behind him, already dry and dusty. Jimmy looked up from the gun he was holding, still aimed at its caved in skull, and nodded. Mission accomplished. The deader was dead.
They powered on, eating up the miles, zigging and zagging through the wild backcountry of rural Oklahoma. Sometimes on blacktop, sometimes on dirt, always drawing closer to Lakota. Jessie was glassy-eyed, but he wasn’t sleepy. Tired and weary, but his brain was running faster than the Mercury the closer they got to the finish line. The ghosts in his head were shaming him, speaking with their silent stares and still faces.
You let us die and you go to a safe place, a warm bed, and a hot dinner. You killed us. We were nothing to you. You haven’t suffered enough to pay for what you did.
Jessie had counted them. He hadn’t meant to, hadn’t been his intention to know how many people he had let die, how many lives he owed to balance the scales. Jimmy had lined them all up in neat rows when he was trying to find all of their heads and put them back on their bodies.
Five rows of five children.
The two nuns.
Jimmy’s sister.
Doug, Gary and Sheila.
Thirty-one lives he owed. Thirty-one people he had to save before, maybe, the staring faces would leave him alone. That would work, the monster in his head told him. That would balance the scales. The prowling wolf kept pacing, his quiet snarl telling the world he just wanted revenge.
Payback.
Justice.
It was late afternoon when they came off of a dirt track near Lakota and got back on the blacktop road leading straight into town. They saw an overloaded pickup truck in front of them and Jimmy waved excitedly at them when they passed it. The driver was grinning ear to ear and tooted his horn. Other survivors. The town was real, it wasn’t just a dream! Jessie was glad for Jimmy, but was feeling trepidation for himself. The end of the journey was within sight. A walled city with electricity and running water. Jobs and school. A life where things were almost normal. He reached up and scratched lightly at his healing face, the scab itched like mad sometimes. He wiped a bit of drool from his cheek, that tended to leak out if he wasn’t constantly paying attention. The thirty-one faces stared, silent and recriminating inside his head, as they pulled up to a short line of cars and trucks waiting at a gate. The man on the radio hadn’t been kidding when he said they had a walled city. It towered above the cars and people and disappeared over the horizon, as far as the eye could see in either direction. Jessie could see guards walking along the top of it as two of them approached his car.
“Howdy,” the first one said, a smile on his face. “Welcome to Lakota. We’ll be letting the cars in one at a time and the doctors will check you for bites. If anyone is bitten it’s best to let us know about it now, we’ve been trying some treatments, but the faster you get the medicine, the better they do.”
“We’re not bit,” Jessie said, wondering if they really did have a cure, or if it was just something they said so people wouldn’t try to hide bites. The man was staring hard at his face. He touched it a little self-consciously. “I’ve had this since the beginning, it just keeps getting ripped open.”
“Man, this car is something else,” the other soldier said, eyeballing the jacked-up chop top Mercury, with the gold brush guard and bars over the windows. “Did you build it yourself?”
The car in front of them moved forward and the soldiers stepped back and waved them on. Jessie looked in the rearview and saw them talking to the man in the overloaded pickup, letting him know what the procedure was. The eyes of the thirty-one stared back. Jessie tried to push them away, tried to shut up the voices arguing in his head. Part of him knew it wasn’t his fault. Part of him said he wasn’t a babysitter for the world. Part of him wanted to get revenge. Part of him wanted to run to his dad and let him take care of everything. Part of him wanted to cry. Part of him wanted to kill.
They moved up another car length. They were next in line to go through the gate and into the city. The next to start a new life with good food and air conditioning and Xbox. Hot showers and clean clothes. His mom and dad were here. The faces in the mirror stared, silent and accusing, a tightly grouped huddle of children, teenagers, and nuns. His dad’s dog tags hung from the mirror, gently swaying back and forth. What would his dad do? Would he hide behind a wall when there were things that needed to be done? Would he turn his back on responsibilities?
What would Gunny do?
“Jimmy,” Jessie said and turned to face him, drawing the excited boy’s attention away from the wall and all that it stood for. “I can’t go in. I’ve still got things to do.”
“But we made it,” he said, not understanding how they could be so close and then leave. “We’re safe.”
“I know, little buddy,” Jessie said, “but I can’t. Not until I take care of some things.”
“Can’t you come in with me? You can go back out later.”
“No,” Jessie said, his resolve hardening. “If I go through those gates, I may never get back out. I might be too afraid.”
He glanced at the mirror, at the accusing eyes. At the dog tags. The gate was starting to slide open. It was their turn.
“Hop out now,” he said. “Find my dad, he’ll help you get settled. Just ask anybody for Sergeant Meadows, they’ll probably know him.”
Jimmy opened the door and got out, the guard was waving them forward.
“But what do I tell him?” he asked. “Won’t he be mad that you left?”
Jessie almost smiled at a hundred different things that suddenly clicked into place for him. The stories he’d overheard growing up from his dad and his army buddies. Before, the things they talked about were just words to him. They hadn’t really meant anything. Now he understood duty, honor, and revenge. Deeply and truly. He knew his dad would, too.
“Tell him everything we’ve been through. Tell him I have to fix a few things, and tell him I’ll be back. He’ll understand.”
The guard was walking toward them when Jessie put it in reverse and backed away from the gate, away from safety. He stuck his arm between the bars on the window and waved goodbye to James Robert Jones. The staring group in the mirror didn’t seem so disapproving at the moment, and he could see an empty space where one was missing. Now only thirty remained.
28
Gunny
Gunny and Griz spent the hours working on defenses and going on supply runs while they bided their time to see if Lars was going to make it. Griz kept a close eye on him, and did what he could with the meds they had. They found the keys to a little Hyundai in the pocket of a store manager at a second-hand shop. Gunny drove it back to his house, he had to see for himself, to make sure Jessie hadn’t returned. He would have gone to the strip mall where Lacy said he was killed, but he didn’t know which one it had been. Probably for the best. He didn’t need to see that.
His house was in total chaos. He noticed his headboard was missing, along with the Mercury, and figured the kids had armored it before they left. At least they were smart about that.
They were going to leave Stabby and his charges at the crane warehouse instead of trying to move them. It was isolated, behind a fence, easily barricaded against the undead, and had more than one escape route if needed. The road or the river. They had hustled hard all day and had them set up with a solid month’s worth of food and water by the time they were ready to go on the second morning. Gunny was impatient to get rolling. He wanted to get to a radio and warn Lakota. Bridget was doing well and Lars was over the hump. He’d probably make it.
Their plan was for Gunny and Griz to walk the mile or so to the Petro Truckstop. There should be some old RVs back on P
arty Row for the folks that lived there. A lot of truck stops had a few people that had run into hard times staying at them. Indigent travelers whose RV broke down and they couldn’t afford to fix it, ex-con mechanics who spent most of their waking hours turning wrenches at the shop. Working girls on occasion, until they got busted or run off. Truckers destitute from divorce or IRS taking everything they owned. It was common enough that it didn’t even raise eyebrows in the trucking community when you heard of someone having their house confiscated for unpaid taxes.
Owner-operators had to withhold their own taxes and pay them quarterly. If they weren’t smart businessmen, an unexpected setback, like a couple of major truck repairs or something, would get you behind. With all the penalties incurred, many drivers never got out of the hole and just quit paying. The long arm of the law took years to catch up with them and when it did, they usually lost everything and just continued to work in the shadows. Under the table, running sketchy freight, living in their trucks or RVs. A lot of them had small generators chained to them, the old campers either never having one installed, or the original was long dead. They might get lucky and the CB shop was run out of one of them, sometimes they were if there wasn’t space inside the truck stop. Neither Griz nor Gunny could remember the layout, it had been years since either one of them had been inside. The radio repair shop, if it were like nearly every other one in America, would have a Ham radio set up. They’d get in contact with Lakota, let them know what was happening, and then hot-wire a semi to get them there. Most big rigs more than a few years old didn’t have all the same anti-theft deterrents cars do. No lock steering, no laser cut or computer chip keys. All they would have to do is pull the wires from the back of the ignition switch, twist together the hot leads and tap it with the starter wire.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 81
