Zombie Road (Book 1): Convoy of Carnage Read online

  Billy Travaho reacted quickly, the bag of biscuits fell to the ground. One hand dropped down to the butt of his gun and unsnapped the safety strap in one fluid motion. The other halfway across his chest, ready to go into a two handed shooters stance if need be. The kid was yelling something and pointing back the way she had come.

  Had the other rider already crashed his bike? Did they need an ambulance? But when his eyes darted back up the road the way the kid was pointing, he saw the other biker running like his hair was on fire and a couple of Mexican kids chasing after him.

  He relaxed his hand on the gun, letting it slide back down into the holster. Something was wrong, that was evident, but not deadly force wrong. But all the same, he didn’t snap the safety strap back into place.

  The music from the Chrysler was still blasting, and Billy couldn’t make out what the girl was yelling. Dead woman, drugs, kids trying to kill them...

  The other biker had just rounded the corner of the building and was tearing across the parking lot towards them. He looked like he was running for his life, Billy mused, taking in the big picture, assessing possible threats like he’d been trained to do at the academy. Right now, it looked like his biggest threat was the two bikers. Something was wrong with them. Had they accidentally killed a woman down the road? Caused a wreck? The biker that had ridden in was close enough now that Billy could hear her over the racket coming from the Chrysler’s over-amplified sound system.

  “The kids!” she was yelling and gesticulating wildly, “The kids are trying to kill us!”

  Billy heard this but couldn’t process it. The two little tweenagers still in their pajamas were trying to kill somebody? It was laughable. But this was no prank. The fear in this woman’s face was real. And she had just dropped a $10,000-dollar bike on the ground like it was her brother’s ratty old Schwinn.

  The young biker still had her helmet on and it looked like there was blood on the visor. Billy was trying to understand her, but the words just didn’t compute. The kids were on drugs. The kids were dangerous. The kids were crazy. The kids were trying to kill them.

  He put a hand up and started to say, “Just calm down and tell me what happened,” but the words didn’t even get a chance to form on his lips. He was looking at the other running biker and watched in disbelief as the little girl sprang at him from at least 10 feet away, landing on his back and driving him down into the asphalt.

  The girl was snarling like an animal and the man who fell was screaming through a bloodied face. She tore into his neck with savagery more befitting a fighting dog than anything human. Jets of blood shot out as she tore a chunk of meat from the back of his head ripping away a strip of his hair with it.

  At the same time, the other kid, a boy of no more than 10 or 11, had veered off towards the gas island and was aiming straight for one of the painters standing next to the cargo van. The kid didn’t even slow the slightest, just tackled the dumbfounded man to the ground and started biting at his face.

  Billy had his gun out of the holster and was running towards the little girl who was going in for another bite, ignoring the flailing hands of the man on the ground.

  His mind was racing. I can’t shoot from here! She’s moving too fast and the way he’s thrashing around I’d probably put the bullet in him! Shoot a little girl? I can’t kill a little girl!

  He wished he had a Taser but his department didn’t carry them.

  “Get inside!” he bellowed to no one in particular and everyone in general. “Get in the building!” It was the only place he could think of for safety until he could figure out what the hell was going on.

  As he ran up to the struggling pair on the ground intending to pull her off, she sprang at him, arms fully outstretched, aiming for his face. Her mouth flew wide open, a chunk of flesh torn from the biker falling aside, ready to tear into him. Billy realized too late he was in trouble. She would be on him before he could level his gun. She plowed into him, her uncannily powerful legs propelling her the distance between them and she was gnashing and clawing at his eyes instantly.

  He managed to get his off arm between them as he fell over backward and she clamped her jaws down on it instead of his face, but she didn’t seem to care. She ravaged it with abandon, shredding open the shirt sleeve and digging her incisors all the way to the bone. He yelled in surprise and pain and brought his service revolver up to her side, just below the rib cage and pulled the trigger twice.

  Reaction, not thought. Years of training, muscle memory and redundancy without thinking.

  He heard other shots going off, over near the gas island. The rapid fire sound of someone with an automatic and trying to empty the magazine from the sounds of it. He expected the little girl to go limp, to fly off his arm from the impact of the two .357 hollow point rounds blasting into her at point blank range.

  She didn’t even register the slugs other than a jerking of her body. She ragged her head back and forth, trying to tear the chunk of flesh from his arm, ignoring the little holes in her left side and the two gaping holes in her right from the bullets exit. He was on his back, her on top, his arm in agony and he could hear himself screaming at her. Incoherent nothing words of rage and pain.

  He was bringing the revolver back up again to empty it into her when he saw a heavy work boot connect with the side of her head, breaking her jaw and her hold on him. She tumbled off but was back on all fours, turning to attack again, crouched to spring, spittle and teeth flying from her broken mouth. Billy shot her in the face and she dropped like a sack of potatoes. He turned to see who had kicked the girl off of him.

  Gunny was in a protective stance over him holding out a hand, palm towards him, in a “be still” gesture. In the other he held a black pistol, covering the area over by the gas pumps where he was intently staring.

  Chapter 3

  Gunny had been in the diner finishing up his breakfast as Old Cobb had basically told everybody to shut the hell up so the deputy could leave. He watched the bikers pull out and smiled as he saw the girl on the Honda goose it a little and bring the front wheel up as they went out of view past the end of the building.

  “Cool,” Scratch said. “I wonder if I could rig a bike up to work with this hand somehow.” He held up his hooks and examined them, turning them, thinking of some way he could modify the artificial limb to work a clutch lever.

  Gunny thought for a minute then said: “You could always hook both brakes up to the foot pedal, put the clutch over on the right side.”

  “How would I give gas then?” Scratch asked

  “Lord, Gunny. Don’t encourage the boy” Tiny rumbled “He’ll wind up losing his other arm.”

  Scratch ignored him. “Do they make automatic bikes?” he asked. “I wonder if I could get Kim to go riding with me.”

  “Boy, when are you gonna work up the nerve to just ask her out?” Tiny said. “You two been dancing around each other for months.”

  “I don’t know, I will. Just waiting for the right time.” Scratch mumbled, looking almost embarrassed, very unlike his usual bombastic self.

  Tiny knew what the problem was. The arm. Scratch carried on like he didn’t care, like his mechanical arm was better than the old one he had. Like nothing bothered him. Tiny knew Kim didn’t care about it, or he was pretty sure she didn’t, but you can’t tell a young buck things like that. Tiny didn’t have the words. No one did. It was a thing Scratch just had figure out for himself.

  He looked over at Gunny, saw he was staring at something out of the window. The gal on the Honda was flying back into the parking lot, hell bent for leather. She let the bike just fall over as she jumped off and ran to the front of the building. “What the…” Scratch started then trailed off.

  Tiny turned in his seat to get a better view of what was going on, as were some of the others in the booths. The girl was running wildly towards Billy, arms flailing and pointing back towards the road. She was yelling something, but no one could hear over the constant thump, thump, thump
of the bass pounding out a steady beat.

  Gunny saw the other biker come around the corner of the building in a full sprint, two ragged looking kids in pajamas screaming after him, arms outstretched. They all watched in horror as the little girl leaped like a leopard taking down prey.

  They all watched her land on the man’s back and drive him into the ground then tear a chunk of flesh out of his neck, spraying blood and ripping skin. All actions ceased.

  Martha’s eyes were wide as she stopped in mid-pour of a coffee at the counter. The diner went silent, only the muted droning of the TV and vibrations of the bass in the windows. Forks of food and cups of java held in limbo, halfway to the mouth. The country musicians at the counter had spun on their stools and like everyone else just stared, dumbfounded.

  A mother had covered her child’s eyes. It was like a snapshot, everything frozen in time except for the splash of coffee overflowing the cup being poured by Martha.

  Then a plate shattered on the floor, dropped from Kim-Li’s hand. That was the catalyst that broke the spell. Somebody yelled Charlies in the wire!” As Scratch bellowed at the top of his lungs “Haji at the gate!”

  These both were triggers, deeply ingrained in many of the men there and movement was instantaneous and unthinking. They both meant the same thing from two different generations of warriors. They both meant death was right here, right now and if you didn’t want it to be you, you’d better move right this instant.

  No hesitation.

  No consideration.

  Move or die.

  Those words demanded action. Those words meant the bullets were about to fly, the bombs were about to explode and if you faltered for even a second, it would be you the Captain would be writing home to your loved ones about.

  Old Cobb’s drill sergeant voice came booming out as he sprinted to the missing man table and the three rifles with their bayonets in the dirt. “Secure the perimeter!”

  Booths were emptied. Chairs tipped over backward as men jumped to their feet, old habits and training springing to the front of their minds, no matter how many years it had been since they had last heard a Sergeants bellowed orders.

  Cobb’s was the voice of command that would not be ignored, a ringing voice that filled the vast spaces of the Quonset hut, drowning out all others.

  “Kim, on the roof!” he roared, grabbing the Garand and tossing it to her as she came running over. “Pick your targets, only 8 rounds!” He grabbed the M-4 and threw it to Scratch as he flew by, already out of the booth and at a full run, close on Gunny’s heels.

  “Front door!” he said and Scratch grabbed it with his good hand, never breaking stride. Cobb glanced around quickly, at the men in his diner, taking in everything with a well-seasoned eye. Many had guns in their hands, pointed at the floor, facing out, searching for danger. For targets. They were unsure of exactly what to do but ready to do it, whatever it was now that old Cobb had established command.

  “Griz, Jellybean, get down to the shop! Secure the doors!” he barked out at the two men closest to him that were armed.

  They took off at a sprint.

  Peanut Butter had her pink Lady Smith 9mm drawn and Cobb yelled at her to go wake up Wire Bender, make sure no one in the parking lot got out of their trucks. He sent others out to rouse the sleepers in the Airbnb trucks.

  Cobb had an eye on the parking lot during all this and saw the painter go down under the assault from the pajama-clad kid. He’d watched Billy Travaho put two rounds in the little girl and Gunny boot her in the face and all it did was piss her off. He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew there was going to be some more killing going on.

  The trouble from the cities had come to the high desert. Old habits came back instantly. Stay alive first, figure it out later.

  “You two, front door with Scratch,” he pointed out two more men he saw had their side arms drawn and ready. “Martha, lock the back door!” he yelled over to the counter where she had returned after seeing her granddaughter climb the ladder in the back of the kitchen to the roof.

  Most of the civilians, as Cobb thought of them, were still at their tables, staring in disbelief at what was going on. At all of these nice truckers suddenly running around with guns like it was a war zone. Wasn’t it against the law to just carry a gun around willy nilly? They had seen the attacks, the blood, and the viciousness. But the police should handle these drug addicts, not a bunch of armed truck drivers.

  “Someone dial 911!

  “Has anyone dialed 911?” They asked each other.

  Mothers soothed crying children frightened by the shouting who didn’t know what was going on but felt the tension and fear in the air.

  Cobb didn’t know what it was, what was happening, why little kids would attack like he had just seen. But like some of the other combat vets in this room, he remembered children with grenades in Vietnam and children with suicide vests in the Middle Eastern wars. “Better safe than sorry,” he was thinking. “Better too much than not enough.”

  He had known a lot of the truckers carried, had seen the printing of their various firearms over the years against their untucked shirts. Knew they were a breed apart and tended to ignore the rules or bend the laws. Men who had seen shots fired in anger and never wanted to be defenseless.

  A balding man stood up and tried to make his voice heard over the din of the others in the dining area, over the crying children and frightened voices of women. “See here, all these guns are scaring people,” he said “Is all this really necessary? Someone should just call the police.”

  Other voices chimed in and Cobb heard things like “overreaction” and “must think they’re back in a war zone” and “PTSD.”

  Cobb glanced at him briefly and dismissed him as unimportant to the mission right now. That was to make sure those kids or whoever sent them to attack didn’t get inside his building. That was number one priority. Nothing else mattered. He racked the bolt on the M-16 clone and stepped into the main building, hurrying for the front doors.

  Chapter 4

  Long Dawg was doing it right. The bass was pumping, his fingers were jumping. He was gassing up the Whip for the last time today. The long night’s drive would be over soon, the run up from his home turf in LA was just about finished.

  Obeying all the traffic laws, cruise control set three miles an hour over the speed limit. Everything was going according to plan and no one had screwed anything up. This was it. The big one. The score that would get him out of the mean streets and onto easy street. It had taken him long years to get this far.

  Careful planning, slow climbing, trust building. Learning to speak enough Nahau to communicate with the farmers when he was a translator down in El Salvador for Uncle Sugar. Knowing the right people, saying the right things, being cautious in a world where you could lose your head or wind up in prison doing hard time for even the smallest of mistakes.

  Loose lips sink ships, as they say. He wasn’t a dealer, he was a business man and he only dealt with other business men. Supply and demand. He had spent every dime he had on this run. His bank was dry.

  If something went wrong and he lost the shipment, he wouldn’t even be able to afford a pack of smokes in jail, let alone hire a decent attorney. He wasn’t a mule. He wasn’t carrying for somebody else. This score was all his. All the risk, all the profit. Go big or go home, right?

  Three hundred and sixty pounds of the finest and purest uncut, unmolested cocaine money could buy. Close to Three Million dollars in unmarked Benjamins would be his in a few more hours.

  He had started with 500 pounds, gotten at great risk and great expense from contacts he had made in Comalapa when he was stationed there. But paying the fees and sharing the wealth with the right people ensured it got to him unscathed. Don’t get greedy. A night time boat ride around Guatemala and into Mexico. A long drive up through the country and dozens of trips back and forth with his drones out in the middle of nowhere.

  Then it was into LA where he recruit
ed his best friend and cousin to help him with the final phase of the plan. Now, finally, almost to where the man with the briefcases full of money was going to meet him. A man Long Dawg had been doing business with for years now and a man he trusted. A man who wouldn’t double cross him because he was under the impression that Long Dawg would do this again next year when the new crop came in.

  But this was it for him. One and Done. Three Million was enough to retire on if he was smart. He wanted out of this life. Wanted out of South Central LA. Wanted his mom to not have to struggle anymore. He wanted a good neighborhood, a place near the water, maybe get his Car Audio business started.

  It was a good plan. A perfect plan. A solid plan that had contingencies for contingencies. A plan he had begun working on when the Army had sent him to a remote little drug intervention place down in El Salvador, simply because he was fluent in Spanish. When he showed up, nobody knew what to do with him because they were expecting a Hispanic guy who could blend in.

  Long Dawg did not blend in.

  They assigned him to a desk, told him to keep out of the way, so he did. Drew his check each month and tagged along with some of the CIA guys and Rangers when they went out on drug raids. Some of it got pretty hairy, but he learned the native farmers’ language, he’d always had a knack for picking up things like that. When he went back after his time with the Army was up, he started making deals. Started doing a little business.

  He looked up from the gas pump he was bobbing at and saw a roaring little Mexican kid smash into Mario standing in front of the van, driving him down on the concrete.

  The plan! No!

  “Mario!” he yelled, just standing there, pump nozzle in his hand.

  The kid tore into Mario’s screaming face and ripped a great chunk of his cheek off. His fingers and thumb stabbed into Mario’s eyes and deep into the sockets for something to give him a firm grip to hold on with as he tore the flesh loose. Mario batted at him ineffectually, blinded and screaming incoherently. Long Dawg’s cousin was at the back of the van, pumping the gas and he yelled out also. The kid sprung at him, sprung at him, like Spiderman or something, and they disappeared out of sight behind the painter's van, Jimmy screaming as loud as Mario had.