Man Eaters (37 page)

Suddenly, a loud explosion shook the Fuchs as the jet roared by dropping a bomb on the military base.

When the rumbling ceased, everyone looked to Butcher. “He must have wanted to put those soldiers down.”

Einstein shook his head. “I never thought we’d destroy our own infrastructure. I never imagined—”

“Any of this?”

Looking out the tiny window in the Fuch’s, Einstein shook his head. “All of this.”

****

The Fuchs had proven invaluable as they easily shoved stalled cars out of the way, had ample room to sit and even lay down, and could become a boat with a flick of a button. Butcher showed everyone how to operate the Fuchs and how to shoot the forty-millimeter machine gun mounted on the top. By the time everyone knew what the Fuchs could do, they were all in love with it.

As they made their way east, there was much more movement around them as survivors headed away from California in vans, motorhomes, and high end SUVs. After nearly twelve hours without stopping for anything more than bathroom breaks, Butcher pulled the Fuchs into a fire station off the freeway so everyone could get some well needed sleep. Dallas hopped out, ran around to the back of the building, and opened the far right garage bay.

It was empty.

“Pull her in,” Dallas said, watching Butcher back up the Fuchs.

Once everyone was out and stretching, Safety said, “That thing’s a beast.”

And so the Fuchs was christened.

“Anyone seen any eaters in the last hour or two?”

“Nothing besides that one walking along the road way back there.”

Although free of the zombie horde thriving in California, that didn’t mean Colorado was zombie-free. Every zombie they passed, Butcher would back up and one of the others would put a cap in its head before moving on. Twice, families in campers pulled up next to them, thinking they were military, and when they realized it wasn’t the case, asked to share information.

Sharing information looked very different now than it had when the first three started off on their own. Now, they remained in the Beast, one of them manning the forty while Butcher spoke through a five-inch diameter hole used for rifles. The first family’s eyes bugged out of their heads when Roper pointed the forty at their camper.

“Don’t mean to be paranoid,” Butcher said, “but we’ve faced some living who were far more dangerous than the undead.”

Family number one nodded. They were from Las Vegas, where the virus had spread quickly due to the full casinos. The only usable piece of intel they got from that family was that the entire country was infected and the infrastructure was completely down.

The second family had just left their basement after a month and were frightened and hungry. It was clear to everyone that these people hadn’t the first clue about how to survive this and when Butcher closed the circular window she said, “They’re toast.”

Family number three wasn’t a family at all, but a Boy Scout Troop of eight heading east. They had heard there was a safe zone in Maine, but had little to offer other than that.

Now, here they were in the fire station, with family number two parked across the street.

In the open.

Wide open.

“Oh my god,” Roper said, looking out the fire station windows. “Those people will be dead in under a week.” Grabbing her rifle, Roper headed for the back door.

“Roper—”

“Just cover the door, Dallas. I’ll be right back.” Running across the street, Roper banged on the door of the camper.

The mother answered. She was a tiny woman with a weak voice and timid mannerisms.

“Yes?”

“You guys are like a billboard screaming ‘fresh meat here’. You need to hide your camper.”

The husband appeared at the door along with his chubby son. “So far, we haven’t had a problem parking on the side roads.”

Roper shook her head. “Sir, I’m sure you want to do what’s right for your family, but—”

“Jesus, our Lord and Savior has protected us this far. We are resting in the safe bosom of Christ Jesus.”

Rolling her eyes, Roper stepped away from the door. “Jesus can’t help you, sir, but my advice might.”

“We are but walking through the Valley of Death and we fear no evil because Lord Jesus is with us,” he countered.

“Well then, I hope he can keep ya’ll from being eaten. Good luck and good night.”

On her way back across the street, Roper stopped and watched as four undead hobbled down the street about a hundred yards away. She knew where they were going and hesitated for one moment before continuing back to the firehouse.

“Well?” Dallas asked.

“Eaters are coming. They’re toast.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They expect Jesus to protect them.”

“No.”

“Yes. And now there are four coming down the road.”

“We ought to dispatch them,” Dallas said.

“You do what you want, Dallas, but those are the kind of people who have prevented us from marrying, adopting kids, and serving our country. Fuck that. If they think Jesus can save them from this, why don’t we all just watch and see.”

Dallas turned to Butcher, who shook her head. “I’m with Roper on this one. Don’t be a fool over someone who would never offer you a hand if you fell in a hole.”

Cassidy took one long stride toward Dallas. “I’ll go with you.”

“Thank you.” Heading for the back door, Dallas was almost through it when Roper grabbed her by the back of her shirt and hauled her back in, slamming the door after her.

Einstein and Safety quickly pushed a huge toolbox in front of the back door.

“What in the hell—”

“Look!”

Dallas gazed out the window as forty or fifty man eaters surrounded the camper, banging on it, pushing it, rocking it.

“I told you they were toast.”

“Roper, we have to help them.”

“Why don’t they just drive away?” Cassidy asked.

“He put blocks under the wheels. Those people are going to die in there.”

“Not if I can help it.” Dallas turned, but Safety stood in front of the door. “No you ain’t. We made a deal, Dallas—a pact—and that was to stay together. You can’t help everyone, you know?”

Tears came to Dallas’s eyes as she slowly nodded. “They’re just children. They don’t deserve—”

Suddenly, a piercing scream filled the air and all six stood at the garage door and peered through the windows looking out at the camper. Standing on top of the camper was the little fat boy, waving his hands over his head. “Help us! Help!”

Dallas’s eyes implored Roper and the others, none of whom acquiesced.

“What on earth are they thinking, letting that kid out?”

“I know,” Einstein said. “He’s bait. They need to get those blocks out so they can get out of here and there’s only one way to—”

The kid took a running start and leapt like a triple jumper through the air. Chubby arms and legs churning, he landed about five feet behind the group, and tumbled two or three times before jumping up, grabbing his ankle, and falling back down.

The diversion worked. The horde slowly turned toward him.

“Get up, kid. Get up. Get up.”

“Ah man, he’s fucked.”

Suddenly, the camper door flew open and the father cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Run Skoubo! Run!”

Skoubo took one look at the advancing horde and hobbled over to the firehouse, where six sad faces stared out. “Help me,” he begged. “Let me in!”

“Sweet Jesus,” Butcher said softly, turning away.

When the door failed to open, Skoubo limped toward the schoolyard near the firehouse, where he made his last mistake. As he scrambled to get up and over the cyclone fence, his bad ankle collapsed and he lost footing. Hanging there with one toe hold, he tried hoisting himself up and over, but it was too late. The man eaters pulled him to the ground, where they tore him apart, devouring any visible piece of flesh and gutting him like a fish. He was dead and half eaten in under ten minutes.

“Ah man,” Roper said, covering her eyes. “Poor kid.”

“Hey, people, it’s not our fault. Like Einstein said, they sacrificed him. We did what needed to be done, but we sure as shit weren’t opening this door for them.”

“I’m sure glad we have the Beast.” Cassidy said quietly.

“I agree,” Butcher said, caressing the vehicle like an animal. “She’ll get us to where we want to go.”

“Now that the freeways are free and clear, it’ll be a much faster trip.”

“Okay everyone, grab something to eat, but stay in here. We don’t need those things knowing we’re in here.”

When everyone had eaten an assortment of canned goods and freeze-dried fruit, Einstein pulled out some cards and played poker with Safety and Cassidy. Roper, Dallas, and Butcher huddled together in the cab of the Beast, going over the control panel once more.

“Either of you notice Einstein checking Cassidy out?”

Dallas shoved Roper. “Get out.”

“Look, love, Safety wasn’t kidding around about repopulating.”

Butcher shook her head “I think you both have cabin fever. Now look, we need to bust a move through New Mexico. Rest and refuel, then we need to book through Southern Texas. With any luck, we’ll be in Louisiana day after tomorrow.”

“Day after tomorrow? God, that would be great.”

“If we put our heads down and get to going, we can move ahead with our master plan of finding a safe place to restart our lives.”

Roper and Dallas looked at each other for the first time with hope in their eyes.

“Restart our lives. That sounds...”

“Impossible?”

Dallas smiled. “Wonderful.”    

****

They were up and on the road by sun up. By noon, they had shared intel with five other groups, all of whom were headed east...to Maine.

“They’re thinking there’s a safe house or a safe haven for survivors, just like Luke had said.”

“And there isn’t?”

Einstein shrugged. “Who knows? But you can’t trust a government that’s done what ours has done, can you? Look, if Luke thought Maine was where we should have gone, why didn’t he say so? Why the bayou?”

No one needed to answer. They had already culled information from the road that indicated the country had lost the battle. California was just the beginning. The border states initially saw military along the border. Then, people were told to evacuate their states and go eastward just before bombs were dropped that seemed to kill any zombies close enough to be affected.

The notion that whole states were requested to evacuate seemed preposterous, but after seeing what happened in California, they all realized the government was herding the healthy to run the gauntlet from their infected areas through more infected areas and to the Promised Land...wherever that was. Some people had heard it was in New England, others were headed to the Capitol.

The group within the Beast voted to disregard anything coming from the government. Even when they had tried to share what had transpired in California, people refused to believe it. Denial is a strong drug and many of the people they came across were addicts.

Some people didn’t even believe those infected were undead. They’d heard stories about people tying infected loved ones to their beds while they waited for the government to develop a cure.

You can’t cure the dead.

You also can’t fix stupid, and there were plenty of those as well.

The group had also decided not to join the caravans of people who had begun grouping along the way. There were some inherent dangers with traveling with larger groups. Food was one issue, weapons another, and they were unwilling to give up access to the Fuchs. Some of the caravans they’d chatted with were run by one or more men who were more dictatorial than the six were comfortable with.

Of course, everyone invited the group to join them, wanting well-armed and well-armored individuals for defense, but no one wanted to join another group. It was pretty clear they were all in it for the duration.

Dallas spoke individually with everyone to let each know they each had the freedom to go or stay and not to worry about hurt feelings or anything else. Everyone was a free agent, but not one of them wavered in their commitment to the group or to their intended destination.

This did not surprise Dallas at all.

They had become a family and decided they would sink or swim together. The idea of joining didn’t interest anyone, though plenty of men dressing in paramilitary garb eyed the Fuchs like a naked woman. So instead, they politely declined and continued moving south.

While they weren’t the only ones moving south, when the freeways diverged, the number of people caravanning around them dropped dramatically.

Everyone had heard that the Mexican border had earned the label ‘The Kill Zone.’ Helicopters, planes, Jeeps, men on horseback, in dune buggies, and on foot gave people one chance to turn around. If they didn’t, they were killed then and there. Horror stories of dead vehicles all around the border filtered up to the eastward survivors. The Mexican government had called on their neighbors to the south for aid and got it. The border had never been so secure—only moving in the opposite direction.

South was sure death.

So, east was where most people believed safety lay, but that was a treacherous journey into the unknown—a journey Dallas’s people did not want to make. There was something comforting about the idea of hiding out in the depths of the bayou. Hard to find by water, easy to hide from choppers, they all agreed it was the best plan while the government and military sorted it all out.

And it needed to be sorted.

The hardest part was not knowing.

Had they contained this in the United States or had the infected managed to get outside the borders? And what was the rest of the world doing to help? Or was it? So many unanswered questions. Their small group understood there would be no answers. Survival depended on trusting only those sitting in the belly of the Beast.

“This is worse than I thought it would be,” Roper murmured as Butcher deftly maneuvered the Beast through the cars littering the Texas freeways. Dead bodies were everywhere. They couldn’t look in any direction without seeing dead, as well as undead corpses scattered about.