Zombie Road (Book 2): Bloodbath on the Blacktop Read online

  He keyed the mic again. “I’m not so honorable as all that, Sir.” Gunny said. “I killed some men that I wasn’t supposed to.”

  The quiet talk around him ceased, they were all listening now.

  After a pause, Carson came back and asked “Did they need killing?”

  “I think they did. The brass had different ideas.”

  There was another long pause as the General considered his next words. He silently cursed him for being so forthright. He knew the whole story, no one else needed to. It might change people’s opinion of him and the country needed a gunfighter right now, not a politician. He had guilted him into taking on the role as President, he was aware that he hadn’t wanted the job. He was just glad he wasn’t forced to play his trump card. His ace in the hole. It might have backfired on him, if he had. He knew Meadows, knew he would always do the right thing but what if he decided the right thing was something other than what Carson wanted? Carson wanted his country back. If he had to break a few eggs to get it, he would. He needed a figure the remaining people could rally around. Meadows was the guy, the only guy as far as he was concerned, that could pull this many people together, get them a thousand miles through hostile territory and reestablish a country. The wrong man would let the power go to his head. The wrong man would fail at the nearly impossible task. The wrong man would give up and run away.

  Meadows wouldn’t. If he decided to do a thing, it got done.

  He had the experience and the icy black heart to make the hard decisions if it came down to that. He was a good man but a stone-cold killer when he needed to be. Those kinds of men were rare. Most were one or the other, not both. Meadows didn’t know who Carson was, didn’t know they had worked together for years and for now, he wanted to keep it that way. Carson played his cards close because this was a dangerous game and it had already spiraled almost entirely out of control. They were on the razor's edge of the whole country becoming a wasteland with no organized resistance, ripe for the plunder of the new victors. The players involved hadn’t planned it this way, he was sure of it. Mistakes had been made. They had panicked and they couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle once it was released. It was either God’s Grace or pure dumb luck that Meadows had survived but he wasn’t going to let him go. Wasn’t going to let his country be reduced to a handful of survivalist outposts that could quickly be overrun. He needed someone all of the survivors could rally around, someone they believed had the full might of the still formidable Navy at his disposal. Someone who could order nuclear submarine to unleash their missiles. Someone who could give a little payback. He needed this group to make it to Lakota and to keep increasing their numbers. All this ran through his head in a flash before he replied.

  “Well, we sleep peaceably at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.” he quoted then closed the subject, started telling him about the possibility of getting the electric back on in Lakota. No one seemed to care about the big, dark secret he’d been carrying around for years. Everyone knew about the Bacha Bazi boys, hell they were even in that Kite Runner movie. The Americans were ordered to ignore tweenagers being used as sex slaves but Gunny had walked in on something else. Some of them were only six or seven years old. Something in him snapped at the laughing bearded faces, high on opium, telling him to help himself and inviting him to join them in the fun.

  “Come, Sergeant.” They said “Get your keer bloody, be a man!”

  They even had little a few little girls if he wanted one of them instead. Gunny thought he was saving them but in the eyes of their mothers, who had willingly sent them to the bathhouse, the American had shamed them. The very children he had saved came bearing gifts the next day as they left town. Normally his men never would have stopped the Hummers for a kid in the street. Everything about it screamed ambush. But there they were, shyly offering fruits and flowers with their mothers smiling at the soldiers and urging them forward. He told his driver to stop. Fruits and flowers were definitely not all they offered...

  Gunny quit ruminating over the conversation. They were nearing the end of the line and Cobb came over the radio, told Scratch if he didn’t need to do another run at the followers, he needed to come on in and top off. He was the last truck. As the blood and gore splattered Western Star came down the ramp Lars was hanging out the window, laughing and flipping them off with Scratch’s other mechanical arm. Gunny went up and got into position and the line of trucks fell in behind as they started staging on the highway.

  “What was that arm Lawrence had?” Collins asked “It looked like something out of a Terminator movie.”

  “Yeah, it is kind of cool.” Gunny said. “It’s a full function appendage, as Scratch calls it. He can articulate all the fingers, even pick things up with it. Cobb helped him buy it with money from the Vets’ box.”

  “I wonder why he uses those hooks then, instead of it?” she asked. “If he wore a glove, you wouldn’t even know.”

  “He said it’s a pain in the ass to operate. The VA gave him the hook arm and I guess he’s comfortable with it.”

  Something Gunny didn’t tell her was that Scratch didn’t want to hide the fact that he was missing his arm. He was young, brash and a Marine. He wanted people to see the cost men like him paid for their right to go to Starbucks and not worry about being blown up. After 9/11 if men like him hadn’t volunteered in droves and taken the war overseas, it would have been fought here in America. One truck bomb at a time with the bad guys killing random people whenever they wanted. He and thousands of others had paid a price. He remembered it every time he had to button his pants or cut a steak or even talk to a pretty girl. He didn’t want sympathy, he just wanted them to remember the men who made their comfortable way of life possible.

  Sara straddled her bike and cracked the throttle. She was ready to start her scout duties again when the last truck was finished, the fire teams and the refuelers were back on board and Jellybean had his hoses secured. Five minutes later, she zipped up to the head of the line as Gunny and the rest of the convoy were gearing up and picking up steam.

  They made their way around the Salty and got up to speed, rolling along Interstate 80. Sara ran the road a few miles ahead of them. They were still in the vastly unpopulated areas of the United States so they didn’t run into any trouble. Tie-ups near exits with restaurants that had served the infected products occasionally slowed them down, but other than that they made decent time. The first stop was nearly three hours into the trip to refill Sara’s bike. They did this a few more times, incorporating bike refill and bathroom breaks and the day passed along uneventfully. They called a halt at twilight near the Medicine Bow forest. They had come nearly nine hundred miles from the Three Flags. The rest area was deserted and made a good place for Martha and Cookie to set up for dinner to feed the nearly four dozen people. After they had eaten, the kids played a quiet game of tag in the picnic area under the watchful eyes of their moms and the men and women on guard duty. The campfire was a welcome addition that chased off the September chill in the air and many of the people had blankets wrapped around themselves. The truckers had grabbed spare jackets out of their rigs, most of them offering them to the women in the group. Jimmy Winchell brought out his guitar and sang a few songs, the members of his band softly picking out chords on their mandolins and banjos.

  “We need to hit a strip mall or something,” Cobb said quietly to Griz and Gunny. “These people weren’t prepared for this, most of them been wearing the same clothes for a week.”

  “I’d rather do a Tractor Supply or even a little gun store. I need a Molle vest. Everybody can just wear camo.” Griz said. “Pretty good chance we won’t even run into any of those things ‘cause those places weren’t open when this all began.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Gunny. “But when is the last time you saw one next to a freeway?”

  Packrat had overheard and popped in “There’s a Wally World outside Cheyenne, kind of off by itself. It would be a good pl
ace.”

  “They’ll have guns and bullets, too.” Shakey chimed in.

  “Crap guns.” Said Griz dismissively. “But they usually do have a ton of ammo and hunting vests. They’ll work in a pinch to hold magazines.”

  Cobb glared around. “Is everybody listening in?” he demanded.

  They were. They started throwing out a variety of other things they needed from shoes and toilet paper to flashlights.

  “Fine, Fine.” Cobb grumbled at them. “What exit is this Wal-Mart at?”

  As the core group of fighters started making plans, brainstorming ways of clearing the store, the rest of their fellow travelers began making their lists of things they wanted to get. Bastille claimed he had never been in a Wal-Mart and was curious to see how “those people” lived.

  Gunny had pinpointed a group men and women he considered capable of keeping their heads in a battle. The two deputies, Hot Rod, Kim and Stabby being the only ones who weren’t veterans.

  It was only the third night for them to be gathered around a campfire but it already seemed like an old habit. After Gunny had put a stop to their fantasizing about getting anything they wanted for free by telling them they would only have about five minutes to get in and get back out, some of them started asking Stabby for a story. He was good at telling them and even though nothing exciting had happened today, he quickly started spinning a yarn of Sara, her motorcycle and the exploits she did while out of sight of everyone. Apparently, the three stooges as Collins called them, were the only ones who heard these things over the radio. Scratch and Lars chimed in on occasion with comments like “Yep, we heard her screaming over the private channel.” And “I saw the rooftop of that building she had to jump her bike up to.” Sara, still in her leathers, just rolled her eyes at their antics as Stabby sat astride the boys, pretending they were motorcycles and riding wheelies through hordes of zombies.

  .

  Chapter 2

  Jessie

  The Lake House

  Day 6

  His cheek was finally beginning to heal enough so that it didn’t start bleeding again every time he ate or yawned. His hands were doing better, too.

  They had slept the entire day away, only waking for a bathroom call or to eat and drink. They heated up spaghetti-o's on the grill and sipped warm sodas. They slept through that night, too. The following morning, they were all feeling whole again, had cleaned up a little and raided the closets for clean clothes. The boys were similar in size so Jessie’s t-shirts and jeans fit them and Sheila spent hours in Lacy’s closet trying different things on and sampling her perfume. Except for the gash on Jessie’s face and his torn hands, they were about as good as they were going to get. They had tried to sew his cheek back but after the first stitch, he couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t Chuck Norris. Gary had heard you could super glue deep cuts back together, maybe that’s what soldiers did. So that’s what they wound up doing and with plenty of Neosporin liberally applied, it looked like it was going to heal nicely. Except it was definitely going to leave an ugly mark on his face.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Doug had said. “Chicks dig scars.”

  “Right,” Jessie rolled his eyes. “And broken bones heal, pain is temporary but glory lasts forever. My old man quotes Evel Knievel too.”

  He went to the gun safe standing in a corner downstairs in the TV room and punched in the code to open the door. It was the biggest safe the others had ever seen they were amazed at how full it was. Jessie laughed.

  “You should see some of his army buddies’ gun collections. Whole rooms they turned into a walk-in vault. The old man wanted to do that in the spare bedroom but Mom claimed it. Said it was going to be a proper guest room.”

  “I saw stuff like that on TV,” Gary said “but I didn’t think anybody really did it.”

  They started pulling the guns out and it was evident Doug and Sheila didn’t know anything about them, had never fired one before. They pushed the furniture out of the way and laid everything out on the floor, including all of the bullets that were in various military ammo cans under the bottom shelf. There were a bunch of them and once they had the safe cleaned out, Jessie and Gary began discussing which would be the best to use. They immediately eliminated the black powder rifles and pistols and put them back in the safe along with all of the ball and powder that went with them. They put back all of the big hunting rifles that they figured would be too loud and way too much overkill. All of the .308’s, the .30-30’s and the .30-06’s and their ammo. The old Russian made Mosin Nagants and all their ammo. They eliminated all the big bore pistols, too. The .44 magnum, the .357 wheel guns and a bunch of .45’s. That left them with a pile of shotguns, a handful of AK’s in various configurations, a half dozen AR’s and M-4’s, a bunch of .22’s and a stack of pistols chambered in .38, .380, .22 and 9mm. Gary had a pretty good working knowledge of weapons, his dad was a hunter and they owned a small collection. He’d been around guns most of his life, same as Jessie. Up until a few years ago when he and his dad started to argue all the time, they’d gone shooting a lot. At least once a month they’d be out at the South River Gun Club running drills, shooting trap, plinking targets and sometimes entering a competition. He’d fired every gun in the safe on multiple occasions and he knew how to tear them down and clean them, the worst part about a day on the range. He and Gary argued the pros and cons, the merits and drawbacks of each gun they had left lying on the floor as Doug and Sheila watched, him eating chips and her slowly running a brush through her blonde hair.

  They eliminated the AK’s. Too loud.

  They eliminated any gun that wasn’t from a quality manufacturer. Too unreliable.

  They eliminated all of the long shotguns. They decided to load the rest of the short barreled or pistol gripped 12 gauges and leave them all over the house. The last line of defense if everything went south. If an outsider were watching, listening in, they would surely be unsettled at how much knowledge this group of ordinary teenagers had about tactics, guns, fields of fire and killing. They weren’t goofing around. They weren’t ‘playing’ army. There were no jokes, no horseplay. They’d been trapped for days and nearly died, watched all of their friends come back from the dead and had killed hundreds of them to be where they were. They drew on every TV show, every movie and every video game they had ever played for their knowledge. They discussed the different zombie games they had played, the scenarios they’d battled through in the various Call of Duty’s and Doom games. Every Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead encounter that was useful in their current situation. They applied it to real life because now it IS real life. Previously those same outsiders might have accused them of being dorks at a comic con, living in a fantasy world where video games are real, but they were deadly serious because the zombies outside were deadly serious about trying to eat them.

  They wound up loading all the magazines for the M-4’s and AR’s to use as emergency guns, placing them in every room of the house so they would be handy. Gary and Jessie chose a 9mm pistol and extra magazines for it, they would teach the other two how to shoot after they got the house secure. They were going to use the .22 rifles for now because they were relatively quiet and there were plenty to go around. They had 30 round magazines for the Rugers and they had thousands of rounds of ammo.

  They managed to pull the sheets of plywood out of the rafters in the garage without making too much racket. They were loaded with swap meet car parts that his dad was eventually going to use on the old rust bucket he’d been tinkering around with for years. Fenders and bumpers and things. They stacked the parts in the corner and using the cordless drill, attached a sheet across the kitchen window and screwed one over the entry door. They kept watch, trying to be as quiet as possible, but they didn’t see anyone stumbling around. Or worse, screaming and running right at them. The neighborhood was quiet, anything wandering the streets had already been drawn off during the past week. With the wood firmly attached, the front side of the house was solid now. They felt
secure, it would take a coordinated and concentrated effort to get in and they knew the zombies didn’t have the brain power to use a crowbar. That only left the lower level of the house and the windows there. It had windows in both bedrooms and a sliding glass door that overlooked the lake in the TV room. They didn’t have enough plywood to cover everything, so they unscrewed boards from the lower deck and sealed all the windows and the glass door. It made the lower level dark with the only natural light blocked off. The other three sides of the house were buried into the hillside. They were saving the deck stairs for last. Once they cut them off, they would be using a ladder to get in and out of the house.

  They all kept watch, constantly looking for danger, listening for the ungodly keening sound those things made when they spotted prey. They had been careful not to drop boards or clatter things around but now they had come to a point where it was inevitable. The stairs off of the deck had to go. Once they did that, the house was as zombie proof as they could make it.

  Sheila had made a checklist and she made sure they did everything on it. They didn’t want to cut the stairs then realize they forgot to bring the ladder up to the deck or something else equally dumb. They were nearing the bottom of the “Secure House” list of things to do that included Doug and Jessie filling up every bucket they could find in the garage with lake water. There was a Big Berkey water filter on the kitchen counter because his parents complained about the taste of chlorine in the city water. Said it made the coffee taste bad. Well, that wasn’t exactly how his dad had put it but he got smacked for cursing in the house for that one. Clean water wouldn’t be a problem, as long as they could get to the lake to fill the buckets. They still had running water in the house but had no idea how long that would last. None of them knew why it was still working without electricity, they expected it to stop at any time. The house was on a septic tank so the toilets and drains would work fine, as long as there was water to flush with. Jessie knew all about septic tanks because this one had to be pumped out a few years ago and they’d spent many hours digging around with a shovel, trying to find the big concrete lid. By “they”, that really meant him. His old man had found the general area of the tank then went trucking. He told Jessie to have it dug up and ready for the pump truck when he got home in a week. It took him nearly that long to do it, working for hours every day after school, trying to dig through the rocky soil two feet down to find the stupid lid. Of course, he had nearly dug the whole damn thing up until he finally found the right spot.