The kid had a map spread out on the hood of his car and was waiting for the last of them to show up before he got started with whatever it was he had to say.
Joey Tallstrider had seen forty-year-old boys and fifteen-year-old men in his time. There were some so-called men who still lived at home with their parents when they were thirty. Some who had two or three kids from two or three different women, and didn’t take care of any of them. Some men who wouldn’t hold down a steady job and were just a drain on everyone around them. He’d also seen what he considered real men as young as this boy. Teenagers doing a man’s work, taking on a man’s responsibilities, putting away childish things. This was one of those boys. He didn’t know his story, but Joey knew this boy was a man. He would listen to whatever it was he had to say, he wouldn’t dismiss him as ‘just a kid’. He had saved their lives and he knew how to survive in this crazy new world.
Once they were all gathered, Jessie told them everything he could and it only took about five minutes. He showed them where Lakota was, told them about the new capital and the radio station, told them everything he knew about the habits of the undead and how they reacted to sound. He told them how to avoid the hordes and how to lose them if they started chasing you.
Joey asked him why he wasn’t there, at the new city, why he was out wandering the roads.
“I’ve got a job to do,” he said, unconsciously echoing his dad’s words, “and it’s not finished yet. I’ll be there when it is.”
He spoke with such gravity and confidence the men and women didn’t question it. This wasn’t the same high schooler who was playing video games and complaining about taking out the trash just a month ago. This was a hard young man on a mission. They accepted that the same way they accepted his instruction on how to arrive alive in the only town left in America that wasn’t overrun with the undead.
A few of the crawlers were making their way back into town and the dog noticed first, with a quiet growl deep in his chest.
“Go,” Jessie said, handing the tall Indian the map. “It’s only about three hundred miles. Stay together.”
Behind the crawlers, there were a few limping shamblers hurrying back to town as fast as their broken bones would allow.
“Don’t stop for anything until you get there,” Jessie hollered at them. “You’ll be safe as long as you don’t stop!”
Jessie watched as the little convoy of pickup trucks took off down one of the side roads, kicking up dust in their wake.
“C’mon, boy,” he said and opened the door of his Merc.
The dog was happy to comply and watched the undead until they were out of sight before he turned to stick his head out of the window to enjoy the wind. Jessie watched the dust cloud from the trucks in his rearview mirror until it dissipated once they hit the county road leading them to Lakota. There seemed to be fewer haunted eyes staring back at him. The crowd of accusing ghosts seemed smaller.
35
Jessie
Jessie wandered the roads, occasionally seeing signs of survivors, always helping if they needed it, always warning them about the Muslims and the war they were still fighting. Sometimes he would see smoke from a chimney and pull into a well-fortified homestead and be greeted by a dozen guns pointed at him. They were never unfriendly for long, though. Once they saw he meant them no harm, he was always welcomed to dinner or lunch, and they were always hungry for outside news. A few of the places had solar panels, most of them taken from the solar-powered road signs, and had a lot of the comforts they’d enjoyed before the outbreak. Most didn’t know about Lakota or the Jihadis out chopping off heads, they hadn’t tried the radios since they all went dead in September.
It all sounded too good to be true when Jessie told them about the new capital city, and some of the families had voiced concerns that it was some kind of trap. Either from a hostile government, or from a warlord trying to lure people into slavery.
Or something.
They could never quite articulate exactly what their fears were, but Jessie didn’t blame them for being cautious or try to pressure them to go, but he did think they’d watched too much TV. In the real world, weren’t people basically good? Wouldn’t most people rather help than hurt? He just told them about the safe haven, and the station they were broadcasting on if they wanted to hear the latest news. He had never entered the gates, so he couldn’t tell them what it was like inside the walls, only what he’d heard on his radio when it still worked. His antenna got broken off a few days ago and he hadn’t bothered trying to find a replacement yet. He knew they were showing movies at the theater on the weekends, what the current population was, and how many free houses or apartments were still available. Bastille had organized the radio station into a handful of talk shows between the music, and there was even a call-in show now that the telephone service had been reinstated. It all sounded so normal, like there wasn’t billions of undead wandering around. Or that they were preparing for an imminent Muslim attack. They were keeping calm and carrying on, acting like they didn’t have a care in the world behind their walls.
Jessie had finally named his dog. Everyone he came across always asked. He’d finally said the first thing that popped in his head.
“His name’s Bob,” he’d told a girl of no more than seven or eight as she was hugging the bloody dog. He’d happened across a family that had run into a string of bad luck. He’d picked them up on the CB and through trial and error, always taking the roads that led him closer to a stronger signal, he’d found them at a little gas station forty miles from Lincoln, Nebraska. They were driving an RV and had stopped for fuel; the tanks nearly bone dry and running on fumes.
They’d been camping and hadn’t even realized the world had ended, until they came out of the woods of the Rosebud Indian Reservation and heard Gunny’s looping radio message. They didn’t believe it at first, but after seeing the abandoned cars and a near-deadly encounter in the first town they came to, they were convinced it wasn’t a joke or a bad gag of some kind. They’d retreated back into the woods of the reservation and had holed up until they were completely out of food. They’d heard Bastille’s new broadcasts coming out of Lakota and knew the convoy had made it and that’s where they were headed. They had gotten as far as a little country store outside of Lincoln, and had to stop for gas. Before they could get any, they were attacked by a horde that had been milling around a small town some half mile away. They’d heard the RV pull in and had come running. Without enough fuel to get anywhere else, they didn’t want to be stranded in the middle of the road a mile away, the husband had pulled up as close as he could to the store, blocking the front windows and door. By cutting a hole in the roof of the motorhome, they managed to get over to the roof of the gas station and down inside. They’d been calling for help on the CB for over a week, hoping someone else going to Lakota might hear them.
By the time Jessie had shown up, the horde numbered in the hundreds. He had lead them off and then came back, with guns blasting and blades flashing, to kill off the stubborn ones who were still trying to get inside the store. The big Shepherd had done his part, savaging crawlers and bringing down the screaming undead by ripping out throats, tearing their heads half off.
Jessie, splattered head to toe in blackened blood, stuck out his hand to introduce himself as the family came out of the store. The woman pulled him into a hug, ignoring the hand and the gore, and cried with sheer happiness as the man looked a little embarrassed at her show of emotion.
And at being rescued by a kid.
Their daughter immediately started petting the dog, telling him what a handsome fellow he was and the boy, who was probably twelve or fourteen, stared openly at him. At his face.
Jessie grinned at him around the mom’s hug. “Don’t let those things get too close, kid. You’ll wind up looking like me.”
“You’re him,” the boy said. “You’re Jessie.”
“Uh, yeah,” Jessie said, a little confused.
The mom pulled
back from her crushing embrace and looked closer at the young man before her. He was dressed in denim, had plastic arm and leg armor that looked like it was from a sports store strapped to himself. He had longish dirty-blonde hair, a rifle over his shoulder, knives and pistols on each hip, knives in both boots. He was a handsome boy, or he would be if one side of his face wasn’t twisted in a grimace from a long and badly healed gash, but he was just a boy. He wasn’t much older than her son.
“I told you he would save us,” the boy said, smiling from ear to ear and pumping Jessie's hand. “I told you, didn’t I? Didn’t I say he would find us?”
“You did at that, son,” the dad said and pulled Jessie into a bear hug, himself. “I never really believed it, but as I live and breathe, so he has.”
“They talk about you all the time, Mr. Jessie,” the girl said excitedly, now staring, too. “They’re on the radio every day saying about all the people you’ve been saving out here. Mr. Bastille calls you the disfigured road angel.”
“Sharon!” her mom said sharply and the girl suddenly realized she might have been rude. Maybe disfigured was a mean thing to call somebody.
“I’m sorry,” the mom said, and now it was her turn to look a little embarrassed for her daughter’s words. “I never did like them calling you that, it just doesn’t seem very nice. But they do talk about you a lot. They have interviews with new people every day who say you helped them, or told them about Lakota. It’d just be nice if they called you a Road Angel and left that other part out,” she trailed off.
Jessie didn’t know what to make of all that. He’d only been out here for a week or so. It was hard to keep track of the days, but had he helped that many people already? Had they in turn helped others on their way to Lakota? He supposed he had, and they had, too. He met at least one person every day. Occasionally they needed help, most of the time not. They were holed up in fortified homes or buildings out in the country, and were doing okay. He wandered around, zig-zagging all over, but Lakota was less than a day’s drive if you took a direct route, even from where he was at now in Nebraska.
“We ought to get you filled up before any more visitors wander in,” he finally said and went to look at the fuel tanks, to see what they would need to get the gas out of the ground.
36
Lakota
Cobb was trying to run a well-oiled machine, but it wasn’t easy with all the civilians gumming everything up. He was sitting in the diner, trying to enjoy a morning cup of coffee and figure out a bunch of things he never had to worry about before. In the Marines, even at some far-flung outpost babysitting foreign nationals, it wasn’t as bothersome as his duties in Lakota. Not everything was bad, he was just in a grumpier mood than usual. He hadn’t slept well last night. Martha could read him like a book. After more than forty years of marriage, she knew what he needed. Strong, hot, coffee. An ear to listen as he griped about his troubles and, in the end, a pat on his hand as he figured it all out for himself. And his blood pressure medicine. He needed that, too.
She pushed the pills over as she sat down beside him at the counter, green tea steeping in her cup. The diner was empty, except for Cookie rolling out dough and Kim-Li yawning as she used the biscuit cutter. They had a good half hour before the guards bustled in getting ready to go on shift. They’d be busy until dinner time after that. The Sunshine Café was where most people came for at least one good meal a day. Cobb was still working on getting a food distribution system set up. It hadn’t been real high on his priority list, securing the town had been number one. It was bad enough preparing for hordes of mindless zombies, but when he had to factor in the jihadis, the possibilities were endless. Hell, for all he knew, they had Apache pilots and would come in with gunships. He fretted about it. Complained about the civilians. Worried about an escape plan. Was concerned about the winter fast approaching. Wanted spare parts for the power plant. The Mayor was a pain in his ass. Gunny should be here acting like a president. He had a long list of troubles and griped about all of them. Martha listened and let him figure it out for himself like he always did. In the end, she patted his hand as he kissed her on the cheek, taking a BLT with him to the office.
James Robert Jones had taken over an empty insurance office on a side street, a few blocks from the courthouse. It had been abandoned long before the zombies came. There were a few long-ago boarded up shops in this section of town that hadn’t been prosperous since the sixties. The windows were soaped over and a half-rotted piece of plywood had been nailed over the front door years ago. It was perfect for his gang. He had gained entrance by jimmying a window and now the only way in was through the secret entrance in the alley. There were a lot of kids in town that had come in with the car loads of people that arrived daily. Some were with families, but there were other orphans, too. All the grownups were busy getting the town ready, they didn’t really have time for the kids. They were supposed to be watched by the ladies at the church, but Jimmy already knew how that would go. He’d been there, done that, for years. They’d have group activities of boring games; the big kids would have to watch the younger kids and they’d get Kool-Aid and cookies every afternoon for a snack. No thank you. He slipped away the first day and took the older kids with him. As long as you didn’t get caught up in the system, if the ladies didn’t start depending on you to mind the toddlers while they took care of the babies, they wouldn’t even miss you if you weren’t there. He’d picked out all the kids who were eager to go, and didn’t care if they were breaking the rules. The ones who weren’t sure or hesitated, he left behind to change diapers. His gang would take care of themselves. He’d had a secret group like this at Saint Sophia’s, but this one was way better. Here they had more than the woods to explore, they had a whole town. He’d teach them how to ‘appropriate’ the good snacks and sodas from the trucks. He’d show them how to shimmy up gutter pipes and all the other tricks he knew about being slippery.
As the last of his gang was coming in through the secret door, he saw a group of boys approaching. They were new, he’d been hanging around when Miss Eliza and Miss Lacy were checking them in yesterday, assigning them houses. They had come in with a convoy and a lot of people. They had families, though. They weren’t orphans.
“Hey, whatchall doin’?” one of them asked. “Can we come in?”
“Sorry,” Jimmy said as he started to shut the door. “Members only.”
“Can we join?” he asked. “We’re hiding out. They won’t let us help with guard duty or anything. They want us to go be babysitters for the little kids.”
Jimmy cracked the door back open and looked at them. So, they had snuck off, too. He felt an instant kinship for other scofflaws.
He pretended to look them over. There were six of them, and a girl.
“You’re too young,” Jim said. “This is for older kids. We’re doing important stuff.”
“I’m ten,” Gage lied. “And we’ve all got combat experience. We’ve been on missions. We want to fight, not just take care of babies. I thought you guys might be doing something to help, but if you’re just hiding out, playing Pokémon or something…”
He let it hang, letting Jimmy know what he thought about playing baby games when there was a battle coming.
The rest of his crew were slipping back out of the secret door behind the dumpster, which wasn’t so secret anymore.
“You’ve been on missions?” Jimmy asked, disbelief evident in his voice.
“Yep,” the kid said. “It was our job to clear all the warehouses of rats at the Army base. Some of them were as big as cats. We had guns and everything.”
The other kids were nodding in agreement, even the girl.
“They were pellet guns,” she added, to the annoyance of the boys. “But we killed lots of rats. Hundreds.”
They were sincere. Jimmy could tell they weren’t lying. He knew a lot about a lot of things, but he didn’t know hardly anything about guns and stuff, he’d only shot a pistol one time and helped load bul
lets in magazines one day.
“Okay,” he said. “Come on in, lets figure out how we can do something useful around here. We’ll show them we ain’t just kids in the way.”
Lacy thanked Hot Rod again as he left the box of printer ink on the corner of her desk. The truckers had come through for her and Eliza, making an extra stop at the Office Supply store. It was the little things that made the town function, and besides running water, flushing toilets, and lights that came on when you flipped a switch, printouts, schedules and rosters were a close second. He tossed Scratch a plastic bag full of potato chips and smiled as he heard him whoop.
“Dude! Voodoos! My favorite! I’ll play a song for you on my show tonight,” he said as he tore into the bag.
“No smoochy smoochy, you two,” he added, when Hot Rod slipped into Eliza’s office to see if she could get away for a quick lunch. Lacy looked at the clock and stood. The Sisters had radioed, they had another group of survivors that were ready to be placed in houses.
“Hold down the fort,” she told Scratch as she gathered her jacket and lists of available houses.
“Sure thing, Mrs. First Lady,” he said as he munched on chips, chewing loudly and making a mess of the reports he was supposed to be organizing.
“Get your feet off the desk and I told you to stop calling me that,” she said as she left, knowing he would do neither. The kid was incorrigible.
Phil lumbered in as she was leaving, gave her a smile and gave him a frown.
“There better not be no chocolate on my rosters this time,” he said without preamble. “I couldn’t even read half the names on the guard list.”
Scratch sat up quick and started dusting the potato chip crumbs off the papers. Phil had taken over as head of security and was the kind of guy that might thump you one, gunshot or not, if you pissed him off. Phil glowered even harder at him when he saw the greasy smears from the chips on his sheets. He snatched them out of his hand then reached over and took most of the bags of Voodoo Chips before he walked out, without saying another word
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 87
