“How are there that many?” Gary asked. He’d taken the road Mike had told him to before the signal had been lost. They’d been driving parallel to the zombies for the last mile and still there was more of the horde to pass. “And where are they going?”
“I think that’s obvious,” Tracy said, referring to the secret underground structure.
“Spokane? Why would they be going to Spokane?” Trip asked.
Tracy wasn’t sure if it was even worth correcting the man. She’d been around him long enough to realize that he was so firmly entrenched in his own world that, no matter what she said, it would require further and further explanation.
“Mike said get rid of the truck, and I’m sure he had his reasons, but I really don’t want to until we can’t see them anymore.” Gary was pointing out the window as if anyone needed a clearer explanation.
“I wish I had my tinfoil hat, it keeps the signals out that the government broadcasts to keep us all in line. They use the fluoride in the water as a conductor for it. The fluoride gets in our bones and makes them act like antennas. So I’ve got an antenna here,” he said as he held up a finger. “And here.” He held up another finger and repeated this for every digit on his hand before moving on to his toes. He was undoing his belt when Tracy stopped him.
“We get it.”
“I just wanted to show you my radio tower.”
Gary busted out laughing. “Sorry,” he said when he saw Tracy’s glare. “Wait, I think he’s got something there.”
“Of course I do, I’m not a eunuch.”
Gary would have placed a palm to his head if it didn’t take both hands on the steering wheel to keep the truck from plowing into the various obstacles strewn on the roadway. “No, I don’t mean the…erm…radio tower. I’m talking the signal. Not really that, but I think that’s what Mike meant. They probably put a tracer on this thing so they can find us.”
“And get us back,” Tracy finished. “Hurry up and find something else we can ride in.”
“You’re welcome,” Trip said.
“Don’t,” Tracy told Gary when she saw he was about to ask what for.
They drove a few more miles before approaching a sign that announced they were entering Hallowell City Limits, population 26,732. Gary stopped the truck after they crested a small rise looking down at the city.
“There will be a car there,” he said.
“Along with everything else.”
“I saw the Dead here once.” Trip had awoken from a short power nap.
“Got a feeling we’re going to see them again,” Tracy replied.
“I think he meant the band,” Gary spelled out.
“Is it always going to be the job of Talbots everywhere to drive me crazy? I know what he meant.”
“I was just helping out. Because your dead are not the same as his Dead.”
“Got that, too.”
“Well, how could I be sure?”
“You’re right, you couldn’t. Could you park for a second? I’d like everyone to know what we’re doing and to keep a lookout.” She didn’t want to add that she also needed to get away from them for a moment. Gary, God love him, had been doing his best to keep her from worrying about Mike with his constant chatter. Who knows, maybe that’s what Trip was doing as well. But she wanted to reflect on what Michael was doing, and to dwell at least for a bit on how he was going to get out of there. “Michael, this has got to stop happening,” she muttered.
“You alright?” The words could have only been delivered from one person as the majority of sky was blocked out.
“I’m doing alright, BT. Thank you for asking.”
“You know he’ll get out of this, right? Tommy will get him out of there. Do you believe that?”
“I have to believe that. What other choice do I have?” She looked up at him.
“Do you mind?” he asked, extending his arms.
“Of course not,” she said as he stepped forward. She was completely enshrouded within his grasp. She felt like a butterfly within a protective cocoon. “Now I know why Mike likes this so much,” she said as she tapped BT’s chest.
“Mom? Dad will be here soon. Don’t you think you could show a little respect?” Travis had come out of the truck and had seen his mother within the massive confines of BT’s grasp. He was smiling.
“It’s…it’s not what it looks like!” BT looked horrified.
“The boy is screwing with you, big man. And thank you,” Tracy said as she extracted herself from BT.
“Justin, Mom is cheating on Dad,” Travis called, turning to his brother.
“I’m surprised she waited this long,” he replied.
“Justin!” Tracy yelled. She wasn’t mad, she was actually quite happy to see him feeling better. Since the day of Paul and Erin’s rescue, and the subsequent scratch he’d gotten, she’d watched, wondering and worrying when he would finally succumb. A large piece of her would have died with him as well. And his death would have been for nothing. Paul and Erin were both dead and they’d almost taken her son with them. She knew in her heart that she would never have forgiven them; even if there were such a place as Heaven and she was to get there and run into them. She was certain she would have carried the grudge even to that most hallowed of places.
Justin and Travis were smiling as they came up to her. She reflexively joined them. They had so much of Mike in them. That was both a comforting and disheartening thought at the same time. She ached as she looked upon them. They’d both grown so much in such a relatively short time. They’d both gotten much leaner from their restricted diets and hard life. Justin was a few degrees too gaunt as the virus had been consuming him internally. His pallor, which had been a sickly yellow hue, was not vastly improved, but it was better, and that was a huge comfort to her. Victories were short-lived in this new time though. She’d no sooner got her son back, and now her husband was in trouble. She wondered if there would ever come a time where she could stop to take a breath.
As Gary was telling his nephews, Dennis, and BT the plan, Stephanie was walking with Trip, who kept stopping to pick up cans for the nickel redemption. No matter how many times Steph told him that the can return centers were no longer open, he insisted on doing it.
“They collected the nickel extra when the people bought these, so they have to pay it back when they are dropped off,” he’d told her.
Henry had a long expression on his face as he sat in the middle of the roadway, looking back the way they had come. Tracy was about to go over to the dog and rub his head, maybe giving each of them some much needed mutual comfort, when she heard the rustle of small growth off to her right. Henry heard it too as he came up next to her. His bark startled her to attention.
“Zombies,” she heard herself say, not nearly loud for anyone else to hear. She cleared her throat. “Zombies!” That did it.
“Mom, get back here!” Travis yelled from the rear of the truck. He had flipped his safety off and was looking for a firing line clear of relatives, specifically his mom.
Henry was barking, his massive chest heaving. He stood squarely in front of Tracy who had yet to move.
“Mom, come on,” Justin said, going over to grab her.
“Henry,” Tracy said calmly as she let Justin guide her back, flipping her safety off as well.
BT brought his rifle up and fired just as she got passed him. His first round hit the zombie high in the chest, shattering its collarbone and sending white fragments of bone spinning into the air.
“Nice shooting, Tex,” Travis told him, placing his first round neatly in the zombie’s forehead.
“Listen, I already have your father to deal with, I don’t need another Talbot riding my ass.” BT fired again as a line of zombies began to emerge from the side of road.
“Let’s go!” Gary shouted.
“I’m pissing!” Trip yelled from the opposite side. “Be there in a couple of minutes!”
“Couple of minutes? Get your ass over here!” BT sho
uted.
“He really likes to take his time when he goes,” Stephanie offered as an apology as she went to get her husband.
“Can he not hear what’s going on here?” Travis asked his brother.
Justin shrugged which sent his round low. The zombie’s head fell forward as the bullet blew out the front of its throat.
“That’s just gross. Can’t anyone hit a head anymore?” Travis nailed the zombie on the top of its now fully exposed cranium. It fell hard to the ground.
Stephanie had grabbed Trip and was physically manhandling him out of the ditch he was in.
“Why are his pants down?” BT asked as he was muscling Henry into the back of the truck. “I thought he was peeing?”
Stephanie smiled sheepishly. “This is an improvement. He normally likes to take them completely off—”
She was about to elaborate. “I don’t want to know.” BT put a hand up and bowed his head. Henry gave him a large slurp on the side of his face. “Fucking Talbots,” he grumbled, before wiping away the goo.
Justin and Travis were holding the line as everyone got back into the truck.
“Just like old times!” Travis said to his brother.
“I liked it better when we were playing video games, and the zombies weren’t real” Justin told him.
Trip was struggling to move fast with his pants around his ankles, nearly falling over before BT bear hugged him and literally tossed him into the back of the truck. He stopped sliding when he smacked into Henry.
“Whoa, that was fun!” he said to Henry.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” BT shook his head. He pushed Stephanie in as she climbed up. “Boys, let’s go!” The closest zombies were within ten feet and more were coming out every second.
“You first,” Justin said to Travis.
“No way, you’re older, you run slower.”
“We don’t need another pissing contest. Both of you get your asses over here, or I’ll launch you into this truck. I’ll make Trip’s flight look like the Wright Brothers’ first attempt compared to what I do to you two!” BT yelled.
“Big man seems angry, we should go,” Travis said calmly.
“You first, I insist.”
“BOYS!”
They both ran. Messing with BT was one thing, angering him a complete other. He cuffed them both on the back of their heads as they climbed in. “Fuck with me, will you? Just because I endure your father doesn’t mean I’ll suffer you as well! This isn’t a game.” He climbed in.
Tracy waited until her boys had gotten in before she climbed into the passenger seat. No sooner had she closed her door than the first of the zombies slammed into it. A snarling face and clawing hands reached for the glass of her window.
Gary was still outside the truck, right by the door, frantically patting his pockets down, a look of sheer panic on his features.
“Gary, get in the truck!”
“Get this thing moving!” BT bellowed as zombies were attempting to get into the rear. Shots rang out as they fought to keep the zombies from climbing in. Tracy spun quickly as she heard the door mechanism click open.
“Shit, I forgot they’ve been getting smarter.” She grabbed the handle and yanked it back, ripping two fingernails clear from the zombie. He groaned, not in pain, but in yearning, as his meal eluded him for the moment. She slammed her forearm down on the lock just as she got the door shut. Zombies were now in front of the truck and would soon be over by Gary, who had not yet entered.
“Gary! Get your ass in here!”
“Tracy, I can’t find the keys!” He was still checking his pockets while also spinning around looking perhaps for where he had dropped them.
Tracy would have berated him if she’d had the time. “There are no keys, it’s a military truck!”
“Oh, yeah.” he said serenely. “I knew that.” He pulled himself up and in.
Tracy wanted to slap him in the side of the head, she was just afraid she would do it so hard she might knock him out. Barring that, a good tongue-lashing might be in order. She wouldn’t do that either; unlike Mike, Gary had a much kinder soul and would take it to heart, no matter the heat of the situation they had been in at the time. Mike, in most cases, would blow it off or come back with a speedy retort and then not think on it again. Gary, on the other hand, would hold on to that hurt, and she just couldn’t do that to him as he looked so relieved over there.
“Umm, now might be a good time to drive, Gary,” she said, biting back the list of things that came to the tip of her tongue—none of them good.
The truck lurched forward as it hit a line of zombies. Tracy grabbed handholds while the truck rocked back and forth as it ran over zombies. “They should call you Rut!” she shouted, nearly biting her tongue off for the effort.
Gary was looking at her, and not the roadway, for long seconds. “OH! I get it…because of the rough ride,” he answered before once again focusing on what was in front of them.
“And I thought Mike was a bad driver,” she mumbled, still holding a minor grievance for her Jeep he’d ruined on day one. More than once, Gary launched Tracy so high in her seat that her hair had scraped the roof of the cab. She couldn’t even imagine what was going on in back of the truck.
“When did we rent a bouncy house?” Trip asked as he landed roughly on BT’s stomach. He was laughing hysterically.
Justin had an arm wrapped around Henry and an iron grip on a strut from the small wooden bench that ran down the length of the inside of the truck.
“You need help?” Travis asked him.
“I got him, just hold on.” They were both sitting on the floor.
Travis would never admit it, but he was thankful his brother was back and looking out for him.
“Trip, honey, come over here and hold on with me,” Stephanie pleaded as she saw the angry look BT gave Trip every time he went airborne and somehow, like a magnet, found his way back to land on some part of BT.
“Hold on? Why? I haven’t had this much fun since I went up in that plane and experienced zero-gees.”
“He’s serious,” Stephanie told BT.
Zombies kept spilling out from the woods.
“Where are they all coming from?” Tracy asked.
Gary kept nervously looking down at his speedometer, the needle slowing with every contact. If they didn’t get past the zombies soon, they were in danger of being stopped. The road ahead was filling up rapidly.
“Gary?”
“I see them. I don’t know what to do though.” To the right was brush and then trees, to the left was a drop off he had no chance of navigating as the truck would roll over long before he got to the bottom. He stomped down on the gas and became alarmed when the large machine did not gain speed but only held steady. “We’re in trouble.”
The zombies nearest the truck took notice, but the ones up ahead seemed completely oblivious as they crossed over the road and down the ditch. Some were even heading off into the field.
“They look like they’re going to meet up with the rest of the group,” Tracy said. The bumps and jostles had slowed down considerably, but surprisingly enough, that was not a good thing.
“Why aren’t they in stasis?” Gary asked. Their speed had dropped to under ten miles an hour. Any slower, and the zombies would be able to outpace the truck with a power walk.
A valid question for which Tracy did not have an answer.
“Tracy, I’m not going to be able to push them out of the way much longer.”
“I know.” She was busy slamming bullets into her magazine.
The trucked rocked to the side.
“What the hell was that, Mom?!” Travis asked. He had to shout over the cacophony of the zombies snarling and the whining of the engine as it fought harder and harder, only to move slower and slower.
“Oh, God, it’s bulkers!” She braced for impact, the side of her door dented inwards as a behemoth of a zombie thumped into it.
“Bulkers?” Gary’s face got long as he t
hought on that one word. The last time he’d heard it, his father had died. The truck took another direct hit. Tracy wasn’t sure, but she would have bet money that her side had raised up off the ground. Loose bullets fell from her lap as she came back down.
“Round two!” Trip yelled joyously.
Bulkers were crushing regular zombies as they hurtled themselves into the truck. One had impacted the front tire guard and pushed the heavy metal into the tire, making it shred like an apple corer. The front dipped down as the tire lost air and dropped down onto the thick rubber of the “run-flat”, a modification specifically designed for military vehicles to be able to keep moving should the tires ever be shot out.
The ride, which had already felt like a teenager’s first go with a clutch, was quickly devolving into something more along the lines of a rider-less stagecoach being pulled by rabid horses. The truck somehow was being nearly imperceptibly moved a fraction of an inch at a time to the precipice on their right.
“I think they’re trying to roll us.” Gary kept looking from the front to his side.
“I know this goes without saying, Gary, but do something.” Tracy was doing her best to try and stay calm.
Gary cut the wheel hard to the right and was standing on the accelerator. The truck was moving as much forwards as it was sideways. “This can’t be happening,” he murmured. “I’m trying, Tracy.”
Tracy was just about to roll down her window and start blasting when she saw a subtle shift in the zombies—something she didn’t think Gary had quite taken note of yet. The zombies directly in front of them were quickly moving to the sides of the truck, leaving an opening directly ahead. The truck leapt forward when it came free. It was with horror that Tracy realized what had just happened. The wheels of the truck were cut so far over that, when it began to move again, it was headed straight for the trees.
Gary had not eased up on the gas pedal yet, but was frantically trying to right the ship; he was having about as much luck as the Titanic when it had tried to dodge an iceberg.
“Shit.” Tracy braced her legs against the dashboard as the tree line dominated their view.