ZOMBIES: Chronicles of the Dead : A Zombie Novel Page 18

"You people aren't going to try to get through Dallas are you?" Clyde inquired, shaking his head.

  "We're not sure yet, that's one reason we're looking for a map," I answered. "What do you know about Dallas?"

  "I came through Dallas on my way here, I'm an over the road truck driver, well, I mean I used to be a truck driver. I was hauling a load of computers out of San Diego; and I was a few hundred miles on the other side of Dallas when all this shit hit the fan. Things went kind of smooth until I got to Dallas, trust me, you don't want to go there," Clyde said, as he continued his story.

  "Roving gangs of people, and roving gangs of those sick people, and I mean a lot of them, all trying to kill everything they come across, men, women, children, dogs, cats, and each other. It was just dumb luck that I made it out of there alive."

  "How are you surviving living here?" Gin asked. "All of the snack machines are empty, where are you getting your food?"

  "Oh, you miss understand, I don't live here," he explained. "Like I said, I drive trucks, trucks supplied this nation before all of this shit happened, everything that you used to buy at the stores were you shopped, trucks brought it there.

  I've been stopping at rest areas and breaking into abandon trailers for food, and just about anything else I need. All you have to do is find the right trailer.

  I was searching the trailers outside when I heard you people coming. It's not like there's a lot of traffic nowadays, you can hear a vehicle coming for quite a long way. I thought you might be doing the same thing, searching trailers I mean, so I ran in here to hide until you left," Clyde elaborated.

  "I didn't think of that, we were going to avoid the trucks, I figured there were too many places for people and eaters to be hiding," I told Clyde.

  "I didn't say you didn't have to be careful, you have to be ready for anything. Making sure there's nobody hiding in the cab is the hardest part. The cab sits up high and those crazy people can drop down on you in a second, you've got to be ready for that," Clyde warned. "If you and your people decide you want to start going through trailers for supplies you'll need a pair of bolt cutters, big one's I recommend, and make darn sure that you find some way to block the back doors from closing all the way. Otherwise someone might lock you inside, and that will be the end of you," Clyde said, imploring us to take his advice.

  "You wouldn't happen to have an extra pair of bolt cutters on you would you Clyde?" Mary asked politely, as I detected her slowly moving the barrel of her gun in Clyde's direction.

  Although Mary had asked Clyde nicely for spare bolt cutters, I could almost read her mind, she was ready to kill Clyde and take his cutters.

  It was too early in the zombie invasion for me to have lost all of my moral fortitude.

  Sure, I had killed during the war, and of course I have no qualms about putting down any number of zombies in any number of ways. Yes, I had accidently fatally clobbered the obese man in the pantry while he dined on fruit jam, and yes I was ultimately responsible for the untimely demise of that frail elderly woman (but remember, I thought she needed killing). Oh yes, there was the maniacal cabin cruiser cannibal (he needed killing too, if you will remember).

  But hey, in my own defense, you might recall that I had nothing to do with the river pirates death, and we're really not sure who actually killed the woman in the speed boat now are we?

  However, putting aside any of my past indiscretions that some people might take issue with, I did not feel that Clyde deserved to die over a pair of bolt cutters. He was friendly and cooperating with us, he'd shown no signs of aggression toward any of us, and he didn't seem to be a threat to our group. So I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt, while keeping my weapons close (as usual), and my mindset in combat mode (as always), ready to kill him quickly if by chance I had misjudged his character.

  On the other hand, it did give me some insight into Mary's own mindset, so I quickly but casually stepped in between Clyde and Mary's gun.

  "No, but you might find one in one of those trucks out there. Sometimes drivers carry a pair with them just in case they lose the key to the lock on their trailer," Clyde answered, trying to be helpful.

  "Here's the map we're looking for," Gin said, handing a map to me.

  At that moment the sound of Billy's AK interrupted our conversation.

  "We've got company," Megan shouted, as she ran to assist Billy.

  "I'm right behind you," Mary called out.

  "Me too," Jacob said, following the two girls out the door.

  As I said, Clyde had shown no hostility toward us whatsoever, and it seemed like he was trying to be helpful, I mean with his suggestion of searching semi trailers for supplies, and with that old saying in mind, the enemy of my enemy, is my friend, I said. "Clyde, pickup your guns, and let's go."

  Without hesitation, Clyde grabbed both his rifle and pistol and followed me out the front door, not realizing that Gin had him covered the whole time and would have weighted him down with lead had he made the slightest belligerent move toward me.

  Billy had killed two of the zombies that were approaching us; we could see their remains lying about seventy-five yards out, just passed a group of small trees. A good distance behind them we could see three more of the walking dead maniacs stumbling our way.

  Tucking his pistol into his waistband, Clyde raised his lever action rifle, took careful aim, and dropped one of the zombies in its tracks.

  "That was at least three hundred yards away," Clyde bragged.

  "That was a good shot Clyde, no doubt about it," I concurred.

  "Who says a 30-30 isn't effective," he boasted. "It doesn't have the fire power that your guns have, but it's pretty good for long range," he boasted once more.

  "Well then take out the other two, they travel in groups you know, only head shots count," I said, challenging him to repeat his first shot.

  Racking another round into the chamber, Clyde again took careful aim, and again a zombie dropped to the ground.

  "One more Clyde, and that's the last of them," I said urging him on.

  Racking another round into the chamber, and again taking aim, Clyde dropped the hammer on his model 94 Winchester and the last of the undead that we could see bit the dust.

  "Hat trick," Clyde announced laughing, as he ejected the empty cartridge case from his rifle and eased another bullet into the chamber.

  "Indeed," I said. "I've got to admit, you're pretty good with that thing, all three shots were off hand."

  "We better get out of here dad, that noise is sure to bring more eaters," Billy warned.

  "It's been nice knowing you Clyde, but we've got to go, you better go too," I said, as I got behind the wheel of the Hummer.

  "Get in everybody, we're leaving," Gin announced, as she too boarded our vehicle.

  "Goodbye," Clyde yelled, as we drove off. "Keep your head down and your powder dry, and don't forget, don't let them trap you inside a trailer!"

  We could see Clyde still standing by the information center, waving, and shouting something. But as the distance between us grew, his voice faded and we could no longer hear his words.

  "He's not going to make it," Mary said, shaking her head.

  "Not if he keeps standing there yelling and waving like an idiot," Jacob added, also shaking his head.

  "All that shooting is bound to attract eaters, and he's nowhere near his truck, and he won't last long hiding in a building with no doors or windows," Billy shouted down, still perched in the machine gun turret.

  "I think we need to take his advice though, let's steer clear of Dallas, maybe we should go further south, down to Corpus Christi or Galveston," Gin added, pointing to the newly acquired map.

  "Okay, sounds good to me, if Clyde was telling the truth about Dallas we don't want any part of it. You plot our course honey, and we'll detour, avoid Dallas, and go south. But try to keep us on the interstates as much as possible, their width gives us room to maneuver most of the time, and we've done pretty well so far sticking to I-20.
"

  As we approached Dallas, Gin asked me.

  "Do you think we should stay on I-20 to I-45, or should we cut across to I-45 on highway 34?"

  After taking a long look at the map, I answer her question.

  "If we stay on the road we're on, we'll scratch the outskirts of Dallas, which according to Clyde could be dangerous. On the other hand, if we take the diagonal route, it's shorter, but it's narrower and easier to block, so we could end up getting stopped by a rogue gang, or it could just be blocked by wrecked vehicles from the initial panic. Either way, we'd have to turn around and drive back to the outskirts of Dallas. Or it could be a lot worse you know," I told her, not doing a very good job of instilling a sense of confidence in her. "Let's take our chances and stay on the interstates for now," I decided, hoping I'd made the right decision.

  "Boys, it looks like your mother has decided to go to Galveston, so that's where we're going. The map shows several fresh water lakes nearby, not that we're going to drink any of the water out of them, but some of them might be clean enough to take a bath in, and it's right on the Gulf of Mexico too," I said.

  "It's close to Houston too, I was in Houston once," Mary said. "I was pretty young, so I don't remember much about it."

  Billy had climbed down from the turret, and chimed in on her comment.

  "Houston is a big city isn't it?" he asked.

  "Bigger than Shreveport, but not as big as Dallas-Fort Worth, according to this map," Gin answered abruptly.

  "You think it will be safer there than in Dallas?" Billy asked, questioning the wisdom of his mother's choice.

  "There's no place that's safe, we know that, we'll avoid Houston just like Dallas, and see how things are in Galveston," I answered, hoping my answer would suffice.

  Our journey was uneventful until just after we had turned onto I-45 heading south. On our left was some state prison facility. A flash of sunlight reflecting off the shooter's riflescope, announced that it was from there that the bullet was fired from the rooftop of a building that sat adjacent to a basketball court within the fenced jail.

  The bullet that came smashing through our back left window, causing Megan to be wounded, and literally scarring the hell out of all of us.

  The snipers round had hit its target, our vehicle, but had missed hitting any of us; however, shards of glass were hurled throughout the interior of the Hummer as the window exploded. Some of which had landed in Megan left eye, causing her to scream in pain.

  "My eye," she cried. "There's glass in my eye."

  Gin quickly crawled into the back seat and pulled Megan's hand from her now profusely bleeding eye to assess the damage.

  I on the other hand, slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal, increasing the speed of our massive vehicle.

  "Is anyone else hurt," Gin asked, now looking for something to bandage Megan's wound.

  "I'm fine," Mary answered.

  "Me too," said Jacob.

  "I'm not hurt, I just got glass tossed all over me," Billy replied.

  It turned out that the sniper's bullet wasn't intended to kill anyone, although it would have been fine with the shooter if it had. Its real purpose was to make the driver do exactly what I did. Which was speed up, and be distracted enough by the chaos inside the vehicle, that when we approached the roadblock that had been put there by the sniper's comrades, no one would notice it until it was too late to stop and turn around. Their plan worked and nobody did notice it.

  The prisoners, or the friends of the prisoners, or whoever, had built their blockade in a fashion that at first glance, looked as if a person could drive through by weaving between the vehicles in the center that were blocking the road. However, once they started through the middle, the trap was set, and the prey would encounter some tractor-trailers that had been tipped on their sides, making the road impassable.

  I had been glancing back and forth, from the road ahead, to the back seat where Gin was attending to Megan's eye, all the while Megan screamed and cried, still bleeding all over herself and Gin.

  "Holy crap!" I yelled, looking up from the back seat and seeing the road blocked by several vehicles.

  I quickly slammed on the brakes, hitting the brake pedal too hard. The oversized truck skidded sideways and headed for the right side of the blockade.

  Fortunately for us, the trap worked best if the prey headed straight through the middle of the barricade. Our Hummer was bigger and heavier than most private passenger vehicles on the road, and the barricade was setup so that the prisoners could drive their vehicle the wrong way down an entrance ramp, and make their way back to the confines of the prison after they had looted any unsuspecting passersby.

  Our hefty truck plowed into two of the cars the inmates were using to ferry themselves to and from the prison, knocking them forward and out of our way. The impact brought us to a stop forty feet passed where the cars had been parked.

  Caught off guard by my display of inept driving prowess, the bushwhackers scrambled over and around the blockade attempting to salvage what was left of their carjacking efforts.

  Before the Hummer had come to a complete stop, Billy and Jacob had already grabbed their guns and had them pointing out the broken back window, waiting for their first targets to appear.

  They didn't have long to wait, within seconds the hijackers appeared, climbing over parked cars and trucks, running at us, screaming, hollering and firing their guns wildly, like a world war two Japanese banzai charge.

  I guess they were trying to scare and panic us. They probably assumed that we would be panicked and running scared.

  However, after all we'd been through up to now, all of the grisly scenes we'd had to endure, and all of the killing we'd done, all they accomplished with their banzai charge, was to announce their presents and give us closer and easier targets.

  If you've ever tried to shoot a gun, and actually hit what you're aiming at while running, you know that even with some practice it is nearly an impossible task at any distance. Not to sound over confident, but the outcome for the ambushing prisoners was predictable from our standpoint.

  In prison they might have been bad asses, but out here in the middle of an apocalypse of biblical proportion, we six people in the Hummer were the real bad asses.

  They came at us hard, thinking that with their numbers we would cowl down and surrender without a fight. Some of them were even laughing as they ran toward us, some of their bullets even hitting our truck.

  Billy was the first to open fire on them, with his AK-47 leveled on the door of the Hummer where the window used to be, he had a stable platform on which to make his shots more accurate. He shot three of them, killing the third one before the first two hit the ground.

  Jacob and I then joined in, Jacob firing his SUB-2000 over the top of Billy's head as he crouched down taking advantage of the makeshift rifle rest.

  "Keep your head down Billy," he yelled over the sound of the gunfire.

  I knew it would be difficult to get my AK wrestled passed the steering wheel in a timely manner, so I settled for my pistol.

  Steel challenge shooting on the weekends had prepared me for this exact scenario. In steel shooting, most of the targets are twelve-inch diameter, round steel plates (about the size of a human head), anywhere from seven to twenty yards away; the goal was to hit each of the plates with one shot as fast as you could. Five targets, five shots.

  As fate would have it, several of the attacking road pirates just happened to be seven to twenty yards away, so just like shooting steel plates, my bullets ripped through the heads of five of our advisories killing them instantly, while preventing them from coming back from the dead.

  The melee was over almost as fast as it had begun. Gin and Megan were down on the floor, with Megan still reeling from the pain her eye injury was causing her.

  Mary had raised her weapon, but was afraid to pull the trigger; fearing that she would hit Billy or Jacob.

  With the immediate threat extinguished, we watch
ed two of the prisoners that were still alive, abandon their makeshift fortress and run from the scene back in the direction of the prison.

  "Forget about the ones that were killed without a headshot. Our truck is damaged and Megan is hurt, we don't have time to deal with them, we need to leave before they turn into eaters and attack us again, or the noise brings more eaters this way," I said, as I started the engine, hoping the Hummer was still drivable.

  "Some of them are just wounded, still alive," Mary mentioned unemotionally.

  "Hell with the wounded ones, their buddies will take care of them when they come back from the dead," I said, also without emotion.

  With the two front tires flat, and the radiator leaking fluid, our crippled Hummer limped down the road away from our latest battlefield.

  "We're not going to get very far, we need another ride, and we need it fast," I said, struggling to steer our vehicle.

  "I've stopped the bleeding, but she needs some pain medicine and some real bandages, we need to find a drug store or a hospital, and soon," Gin said, as she cuddled Megan in her arms.

  I knew from experience's that I had had as a teen, that we wouldn't get far in the wrecked Hummer, once you have a radiator leak, especially one as large as the one in our vehicle, you're only going to go about four miles before the engine overheats and locks up, and that's if you're lucky.

  I didn't know exactly how far the next exit was, however, it wasn't long before a road sign informed us that it was only two miles ahead.

  By now, the Hummer had shed the rubber from its front wheels and we were riding down the road on just the rims, spewing sparks and making a horrendous noise.

  "Only about a half mile to the exit, with all the noise we're making we're going to have to abandon this ride quick, and get some distance between us and it," I shouted over the screeching of metal scrapping the concrete.

  A short time later, the freeway exit came into sight.

  "Here's our exit," I informed the group. "Start looking for a parking lot, or someplace that we might be able to get another ride," I directed, as we left the interstate.

  "Look, there's some kind of truck place over there," Jacob said, pointing to a large lot filled with trailers.