Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America (16 page)

“If they follow us, we may need something to keep them back.”

I looked around the trailer for anything we could use when my eyes spotted a familiar duffel bag. “Where’d that come from?” I asked,

“I found it in the back of our bus,” Dave said stepping up next to me. “When we were looking for something to drive out, I checked out the bus, but it was out of gas and the radiator was still wrecked. I remembered Chuck’s duffle bag and grabbed it.”

“Good thinking,” I said. “But did you open it?”

“No. Things got pretty hairy when Jeb’s people attacked. I just grabbed it and ran. That thing is as heavy a mother f--.” He stopped and looked back at Martin and Jessica. “Heavy as hell.”

“Well, you did a good thing,” I said as I shakily made my way over to the duffle bag. It was tough to get any balance as the trailer bounced across the field. I made it to the duffle bag and unzipped it to find all of Chuck’s stash intact including the grenades and C-4. The grenades could come in handy if Jeb’s people pursued us. The C-4 just scared the shit out of me. I pulled out a pistol, and jammed it in my waistband and grabbed a rifle. For good measure, I grabbed a grenade, but hoped I wouldn’t have to use it.

I moved to the back of the trailer and watched out the back to see if any of Jeb’s people decided to follow us, ready to toss a grenade or take some shots at them, but it looked like that they had enough and decided to stay put.

There are too many ways to describe how Joni drove in our escape. Like a bat out of hell would be too pedestrian. Maybe a pterodactyl out of the nine circles of hell with each circle being its own hell would be more appropriate. Whatever it was was, we bounced around in the back like we were Mexican jumping beans. It was only after a few miles before she finally slowed down slower than light speed.

I asked Randell how they got out and he said they were able to fight their way to the southwest corner of the compound. They were able to overpower a couple guards and took the truck. It had been a narrow escape and Dave had ‘suggested’ that they just drive the hell out of there, but Joni insisted that they come back for Rosalita and me. It was good to know that someone had our backs.

I don’t know how long we drove that like, but somewhere around dawn, Joni pulled the truck over and we all shambled out of the trailer, much like the zombies, but still alive. When I looked across all the faces, they reminded me of images of survivors of a plane crash. More than a couple expressions were quizzical, as if asking what the hell happened. Others looked shell shocked like soldiers coming back from a long and terrible war. In truth, that’s what we were in -- a war -- only this one just kept going, endless and relentless.

Joni came up to me and gave me a short, but tight hug. When I looked over her shoulder, I saw Dave giving us a heated stare, but I was too tired to care.

When she broke the hug, I asked her how much fuel we had.

“Three quarters full,” she said.

“Is that enough for us to make the coast?” I asked.

“I’m not a trucker. Probably. Maybe.”

“Now that’s definitive,” I replied and we both smiled. Few thing were clear cut in this dead new world.

“Hey, you’re hurt,” she said as she pulled away and looked at my arm.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” I said, being brave.

“Still, we need to have Rosalita look at that.”

Robbie, looking more shell shocked than most of our crew, walked up to our little gathering. “You guys need to listen to this,” he said holding up a small pocket radio.

The signal wasn’t the greatest and the speaker was tiny, but Robbie adjusted it a little and some of the static dropped off and a voice came out of the small speaker. Most of the rest of our people crowded in around Robbie.

“Where’d you get that radio?” Jay asked.

Robbie gave him a stare as if that was the most absurd question in the universe. Robbie was the anointed king of the world when it came to gadgets, didn’t everyone know that? I wondered too, but was afraid to ask where he had secreted that little radio on his body. There was such a thing as too much information.

The voice said, “We have tried to stave off the spread of the infection and the movement of these infected individuals, but due to the nature of the virus and its virulence, that has been quite challenging. This virus and the infected threaten our nation and our world. As president, the last thing I would want to do is what I’m about to do, but the future of our nation, and, yes, our world is threatened. This calls for drastic and dramatic action. I have consulted with generals in our Armed Forces and after much consideration and prayer, I have decided to take their recommendation and have agreed to the use of tactical weapons on U.S. soil to prevent the spread which threatens humanity’s very existence. As I said, this is a worst case scenario and it calls for the most dramatic action. I say to you all, God bless you and your families and God bless America.”

I felt like I had been punched in the gut and the fist belonged to the Hulk. For the next few seconds, I had trouble catching breath, but I somehow was able to maintain my focus on the broadcast.

A hail of questions of shouted questions from reporters filled the room from wherever the broadcast was originating. This chaos went on for several seconds.

Jay stuck his head into the scrum of people and asked, “What does all that mean? What is a tactical weapon?”

“He’s not talking about tactical handguns or rifles,” Robbie said, “he’s talking about tactical nuclear weapons.”

Jay titled his head as if he didn’t understand.

“Nukes!” Robbie exclaimed.

“Whoa, dude, that’s too heavy for me,” Jay said slapping a hand to his forehead and stepping out of the crowd.

“What the hell is going on?” Dave asked, his face etched with concern. “Where are they dropping these bombs.

He started to ask another question, but Robbie cut him off with a loud, “Shhhhh!” Dave shut up as did the rest of our group.

A new voice came from the radio. “We now have General Andrew McCord to detail the plan of attack.”

Yet another voice came from the radio, it was gruff and full of strict authority. “At the direction of the president and the supreme command structure of our armed forces, we have dispatched aircraft carrying tactical weapons to several key targets around the country. Since the spread started in our southern and south central states, those will be the first targets. Florida, southern Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California along with Texas are lost to the virus and the infected.”

With the mention of Texas, Randell let out a soul wrenching wail, “Oh no, not my Texas!” His chin fell to his chest and I thought he might have started to cry.

Joni stepped over to him and threw a comforting arm around his shoulder. I gave her a look trying to say with my expression that I knew she hated Texas, but she just shrugged.

The general’s statement continued on the radio, “Our federal forces have worked with governors of these states to put general evacuation in place and we are confident that the vast majority of the people in these states have made it safely away…”

“That’s what they said about San Antonio and we were still there,” Randell said without looking up, his voice thick with emotion.

Robbie shushed us all again.

The general continued his statement, “For anyone still in the areas mentioned, we urge you to evacuate as quickly as possible. You need to be no less than twenty miles out of the blast area and thirty five miles would be even safer. Any questions?”

The speaker on Robbie’s little radio exploded with a cacophony of different voices as all the reporters spoke at once. The most obvious questions were asked and we all stood, locked in place. What about the fallout? What about other countries? Will this really stop the virus?

The general said that they have developed weapons that had limited fallout. (If you could believe that. This sounded like a desperation move to me.) As for other countries, China had already dropped several nuclear weapons to stave off the spread and bombs had been dropped so extensively on Africa that communication had been stopped completely with the entire continent, so no one knew the effect. Of course, he ended his comments with an effusively confident tone that this would end the virus and the undead scourge unequivocally.

Yeah, and I had a bridge for sale in New York if you wanted to buy it.

I reached out, took the radio from Robbie’s hand and turned it off.

“Hey!” he said with a shocked expression. Several others in the group looked at me as if I had just cancelled Christmas -- forever.

“Listen folks,” I said, “there’s nothing more to be learned from listening. We have to start moving. If there’s anyone south of us, they’ll be heading north, and I mean fast. Every minute we delay, the better the chance we have of getting trapped in a huge traffic jam.”

“What’s the point?” Dave bellowed.

All heads turned to him.

“I mean, if the nukes don’t get us, the zombies will,” he said.

“Dave!” Joni shouted moved to pull Martin and Jessica close.

“What do you mean, dad?” Jessica said.

Joni shot Dave a withering look when he started to speak again.

I decided to head off any further discussion going in that direction, “I know we’re all tired and I know we’ve been through a lot, but we need to get on the road now and head north. I say we stick to the plan and head for North Carolina like we agreed on. Everybody on board with this?”

Like they had any better choices. They all agreed with the exception of Dave. He put his hands in the air and threw them downward in disgust while letting out a loud exhalation, but, to his credit, he did start moving toward the truck as did the rest of the group. There wasn’t much talk, though. That could have been the fear shutting down conversation or it could have been that they were just totally exhausted. Or, worse, it could have been defeat. After so many struggles and pyrrhic victories along the way, I could see the fight going out of them. Hell, I could feel it easing out of me.

The zombies were bad enough, but in our latest disastrous encounter with our own kind, the living, we had barely escaped. That had cost us two of our own and the wounds didn’t end there as thoughts of Carla lingered in the back of my mind. She was out there wandering on her own. Things were just plain bad,but it was my fear that things were only going to get worse. The use of nukes was an ominously bad sign, but I tried to put it out of my mind and only thought of positive things like a hot shower and a soft bed. Those would have to wait because, as usual, we were on the run again.

We drove the rest of the day. Robbie and I got in the cab with Joni. My job was to navigate, Joni’s was to drive, and I think Robbie was designated as our unofficial chaperone since Dave had to stay back in the trailer with the kids.

We spoke little other than to make sure we were headed in the right direction. Robbie flipped on the truck’s radio periodically, but it was all bad news. There was no definitive information on when the bombs were going to drop, but every announcement made it seem imminent. With news like that, we decided to keep the radio off most of the time.

I directed Joni around Atlanta. Big cities were a big no-no. Once you’ve seen one massive horde streaming out of a major artery out of a city or downtown skyscrapers caught up in an all consuming inferno, you knew cities were things to avoid.

The hypnotic sound of the engine and the tires on the pavement lulled us into a lower state of consciousness as we were all on autopilot after the long and tiring ordeal of the previous night. More than once I had to prod Joni back to full wakefulness as her eyelids sagged and the truck drifted across the double yellows. Not that it mattered, really. No one was headed back the way we had come from. The exodus was on and everybody was headed away from the south.

The government had been right about one thing and that was the fact that people had evacuated. We saw very few vehicles on the road. Most were like us and were headed either north or east. Between the zombies and the impending nukes, the south was becoming a no man’s land.

In several places, we had to slow to a crawl to make it around abandoned cars. At one point, we had to break through what looked like an abandoned military check point. All of these obstacles slowed us down, eating up precious time.

At times, we saw bodies along the road. We didn’t stop to inspect them, but I could tell that many of them had been zombies. Some had been shot, while others had been ran over by those in a hurry to get the hell out of Dodge. It’s no wonder people were listening and obeying the evacuation orders. All it took was one zombie to tell you that where you lived was no longer safe. I was beginning to worry if any place was safe.

Inside each one of us, there was a clock ticking away, waiting for either the bright flash of a bomb to be the last thing we ever saw or maybe some other unexpected calamity to befall us. Maybe more road bandits or a horde of zombies. Optimism was in limited supply in our group at that point.

My eyes felt scratchy and half burned after staring ahead for so long. My eyelids nearly closed when a loud banging noise from just behind my head woke me up. I jerked awake and nearly gave myself whiplash as I turned to see what it was.

That’s when a voice came from the back through the wall. “The kids have to pee.” It was Dave.

Joni gradually slowed the truck down as we entered a one stoplight town on the east edge of Georgia just a few miles before the border of South Carolina. It was called Hartwell or Hartley or something like that. It really didn’t matter. Half the towns we cruised through were already dead. Hartley, Hartwell, or whatever it was either there or on its way there. A few of the houses had lights on, but I wasn’t sure anyone was home.

My knees cracked when I got out and my legs felt like rubber. It had been too many miles since I had been outside the cab of the truck. The others came out of the trailer like refugees of a war with vacant stares, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop. I would have liked to have cheered them up with some positive pep talk, but I was thinking the shoe was really a boot. A giant-sized boot made for Paul Bunyan and it was ready to stomp us flat.