The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) (4 page)

Neil was at the window, enjoying the cool breeze of the morning. It was the finest morning that he could remember and he realized he hadn’t been so relaxed in ages. They drove west for an hour, speedily at first, but gradually going slower and slower. In many places the highway was blocked by sudden and inexplicable jams of old and lifeless cars. Time and again they were forced to turn around and reroute themselves. During these times the zombie menace grew, especially if they were near the many rinky-dink towns that crouched along the frontage roads.

“I’m glad we got rid of the Dodge,” he said, rolling up the window and shutting out the fine morning. Thankfully, there were few of the quasi-dead creatures in the middle of the road. Most came out from beneath the trees that were gradually growing more and more sparse the further they traveled west, or out from beneath the eaves of buildings: the Jiffy Lubes, the 7-11s, and the McDonalds, which seemed mandatory structures in every town. Grey did his best to speed past the throngs, which reached out and clawed long lines into the green-painted sides of the truck, but when he couldn’t get past, they were forced to go through them.

Neil’s stomach went wacky as they bounced over the vile bodies and the sound of their innards rupturing reached his delicate ears.

So many roads were blocked that to leave the lands of the Azael, they were gradually turned from their route. They had initially struck out southwest, but soon they were pushed west and that lasted only a few miles before they were forced back north again.

“This is wrong,” Jillybean said, sitting up to see over the bulky dash of the five-ton. “Do you know you’re heading back to the horse person? I really am sure he’s this way. Will we get to see his horse, do you think? I wasn’t allowed to see the horse, before.
She
wouldn’t let me. All I got to do was smell him, which was only ok. It reminded me of when I got to ride a pony when we went to the state fair back when I was little and my daddy was still not a monster.”

“We’re not going back, Jillybean,” Grey said. “And don’t worry, I bet there will be more horses to see along the way.” His eyes, always scanning ahead, went to slits; there was a sign coming up and a dusty road cutting across their front. “Is that road on the map?”

As Neil would get car-sick if he took his eyes off the road for more than a few seconds, Deanna was the navigator. The map lay open on her knees, pinned down by her finger as she traced the small secondary road they were on. “No, but it’s heading west, and the next one going in that direction won’t be for another twelve miles. That will put us right back in Azael lands. So…” She looked to Neil for a decision.

The little green sign said
CO 33.D
. It was weathered and faded, looking older than the dirt road it marked. The road itself consisted of little more than ruts in the dirt. It seemed to go nowhere. On one side of it were rolling hills that looked to have been used to graze cattle, on the other was a low fence, holding in the tired remains of a farm.

“Take it,” he ordered, quietly. There wasn’t a single zombie in evidence, the deciding factor.

At first, the decision seemed to be the right one. The brown dirt road went on for two miles seeming to point at a lonely homestead which came into focus as they closed on it. It started as a smudge on the horizon but firmed up slowly until it was recognizable as a two-story home with a detached shed and an old and shabby barn. It looked as desolate as could be and yet it sat off an actual paved road that crossed the dirt trail at right angles. Grey didn’t need to be told to turn south.

They began to relax when they saw the sign for I-166, the east-west highway they had been on forty minutes before. “That took us a little out of our way,” Neil said. “But no great loss, except for some gas.”

Grey only grunted in his throat. On the left was a local airport, its single runway already starting to crack and heave. There was only one plane on the tarmac. Sitting in the sun was a small, white Cessna with improbable red racing stripes that ran up its aging fuselage. It wasn’t going anywhere; one of its wings was broken square in two.

Further down the road, they could see the beginnings of a town. As an archway of sorts, they crossed beneath a train trestle with a train still on it. It had been a cargo train, and as far as the eye could see in either direction, which wasn’t very far because the tracks curved to run around a series of hills, were the train’s many freight cars, laid out end-to-end with their doors flung wide. There was no sense stopping. It had to have been plundered long before.

On the other side of the trestle was an ugly, semi-industrialized area. Along with lines of monotonous, concrete warehouses and five-story high, joined mega-silos there was a factory that produced corn oil. A sign on the side of the main building read
APC Corn Oil
. Across the street was a dairy and if the smiling cow on its sign were discounted, it was an equally dismal-looking building. Neil found it hard to believe that food of any sort was processed there.

Not only was the area depressing, it also stank of ancient spoilt milk and zombies.

Many hundreds of zombies came charging out at the trucks from both of the industrial buildings. Many hundreds more came out from the warehouses that lined the road, turning it into something of a man-made canyon of cement. Grey floored the gas pedal and the truck picked up speed. The sounds of their huge engines echoed loudly and reached out to announce their presence. The echoes summoned every creature for miles.

The five-tons weren’t fast trucks, topping out at just over sixty, but they were quick enough to out-pace the zombies. Neil was just pulling the side mirror around so that he could see them dwindling in size when Grey slammed on the brakes. The street in front was flooding with the undead. It was an amazing and horrifying sight. In seconds, there was a solid wall of them, thousands deep. Charging, they were like ants boiling out of a kicked-over hill.

“Turn!” Neil yelled. He pointed to the right where a road ran between more grey cement buildings. Grey stomped the gas and heeled the five-ton over. Everyone slid along the bench seat into the captain, Neil included. He clawed back to the window in time to catch a glimpse of a sign that read
Cousins Industrial Park
. Beneath the name was a map. It went by in a blink.

“What did that say?” he asked with a sinking feeling.

Deanna answered: “I think it said
Cousins Industrial Park
.”

The sinking feeling bottomed out in the empty pit of his stomach as he saw that the road was short, lined on both sides by more warehouses. There were zombies here, as well. They were awful things, dragging limbs and sometimes lines of intestines behind them, but they weren’t the reason for the fear mounting in Neil. Abruptly, Grey came to the end of the road. It ended at another warehouse, this one a city block in size. In the front was a wide open lot, ready to receive twenty semi-trucks at a time. It was surrounded by high fencing beyond which lay a dense forest and more zombies.

“What do we do?” Neil asked, forgetting that he was the leader.

“We’ll try around back,” Grey said and then chugged the truck around the near side of the warehouse. It turned out that there wasn’t any ‘around back.’ The fencing came right up to the edge of the building. Their options were now even fewer. The warehouse had too many gaping doors to be held against the onrushing zombies and the fence and the trees were too much of a barrier for the five-tons to surmount. They could probably hide in some of the warehouses, but for how long? There were so many zombies that there was no knowing when or even if they’d move on. They seemed to be congregating in the area and their numbers were beyond anything Neil had ever seen before.

“We have to go back the way we came,” Neil said. “Turn us around.”

Grey swept them in a wide circle. Neil was able to see the panic and the puzzlement on Michael Gates and Sadie’s faces as they, too, turned in a sharp circle. He could hear his daughter yell: “We can’t go back!” She was right. The short road back was thronged, while in the parking lot before the larger warehouse, the faster zombies streamed toward them.

“Go to the right,” Neil said pointing toward the far end of the warehouse. “We’ll lure as many as we can down there so that hopefully there will be fewer on the road. Unless someone has a better plan?” Both he and Deanna looked at Jillybean. When she only shrugged, Grey turned the truck to the right. Behind them, the other two trucks kept so close, a person could jump from one to the other.

“Not too fast,” Neil said. “We want as many as we can in this open area.” The captain slowed the truck to that of a fast walk and now they could hear the panic in the covered bed of the truck. Neil rolled down the window and yelled: “Tighten the covering! Cinch it down tight.” Even with the green canvas pulled taut there would still be the rear opening to worry about. There was nothing anyone could do about that and Neil told himself that the truck was tall and the bed was high off the ground.

“They should be fine,” he whispered.

The lead truck reached the end of the warehouse’s receiving area and Grey turned it in a wide arc. “Wow,” Deanna said. In front of them were a couple of thousand zombies. They were of every type: old, young, tall, short, with skin and without, limbed and unlimbed. It looked like hell had cracked open.

Grey’s hands were tight on the steering wheel; they were the only indication that he might have been nervous. “Guns at the ready,” he said in a calm voice as he gradually picked up speed and aimed the truck where the zombies were fewest in number. “Safeties on until they’re needed.”

The next few minutes were an absolute horror and it was a wonder Neil kept his breakfast down. Grey drove with steady determination into the horde and at first it was ‘just’ terrible as they were still in the open. It was when they were in the man-made canyon of the smaller warehouses that things became nearly too much to bear.

The beasts threw themselves in front of the trucks and those in the cab jounced up and down as black blood flew and fanned out from the tires. There were so many of the zombies that the truck’s momentum diminished. It was like plowing through a bog and, at one point, the entire back end of the truck slewed to the right as if it were sliding down hill.

“Steer into the skid,” Grey said, reminding himself. He turned the wheel to the right, but still the truck slid and still the zombies turned to black scum under the grinding tires.

Their speed had dropped to almost zero when Neil, who was staring out the window with eyes that were almost popping out of his head, saw something that resembled a tattered grey and black flag fly up in the air and then slap wetly against one of the smaller warehouses that lined the road. It had been the skin of one of
them
.

Next, the front of the warehouse was rattled by a spray of bones that tinkled and bounced off the glass doors. The vomit was close to the top of Neil’s throat, now, however he was able to put it aside as the truck’s wheels finally dug their way through the undead and found purchase on the concrete. They immediately lurched forward and Grey gunned the engine which roared as it plowed furiously through the horde, going faster and faster until they were on the street that cut through the town.

There were only slightly fewer zombies here, however after what they had just gone through it was like splashing through a rain puddle and after only a minute they were free and racing back toward the trestle and the train as the last of the clinging zombies fell away. Smiling, Neil glanced in the side mirror and saw something that made his face freeze in place.

The other two trucks were not behind them.

When Deanna saw, she asked: “What do we do?”

Grey was already slowing down. There was an intersection just ahead and Neil knew what the captain would do when he reached it. “We go back for them,” Neil said.

Because of the baby, Sadie was always allotted a seat in the front. Without fail, she chose to ride in the second truck with Michael Gates, who had become its permanent driver. He was a sweet man and seemed to have a hundred different stories to tell every day. His one downfall: he was frequently flatulent. Sometimes it was bad enough to wake Eve.

When they had passed the trestle and train and slowed near the dairy processing plant where thousands of gallons of milk had curdled and had become some sort of crusted bacterial flan, Sadie thought it was one of those times Michael had cut loose. “This is a pretty stinky little town,” Michael had said.

“Yeah, the ‘town’ is pretty stinky,” Sadie answered.

Next to her, Joslyn snorted as if the comment was funnier than it was. She had whined her way to the front seat, kicking Michael’s wife, Marybeth to the back. “It’s only fair,” she had said when they had left Brad behind. “The front isn’t just for Neil’s friends.”

At the window
was Lindsey Caro. She had been rescued from Gunner’s encampment at the Piggly Wiggly. The chains that had held her to the stained mattress had been unlocked by ‘Jillybean herself,’ something Lindsey was oddly proud of and had mentioned to Sadie more than once. At Sadie’s comment, Lindsey gave her a dirty look. Lindsey was a dour girl and hadn’t laughed at any of Michael’s stories—not that Sadie had either. The black cloud in her mind was as dark as the clothes she wrapped herself in.

Luckily, Sadie had Eve to take care of. Anything was better than facing the depression growing inside of her—almost anything. When the lead truck took a sudden turn to the right, Sadie couldn’t believe her eyes. Sure, she had seen the growing numbers of zombies around them, however her view out front had been blocked by Grey’s five-ton.

“Holy shit!” Joslyn cried upon seeing the thousands of zombies. “Turn! Turn!”

Michael was already turning into the industrial park. None of them noticed the map of the different businesses housed there, so they didn’t notice the fact that there was only one way out of the complex and that was the way they had come in. Michael, driving as though he thought he’d be left behind if he didn’t keep up, was again so close that it was a shock to him when Grey took a wide turn at the far end of the building.

“What’s he doing?” Michael asked.

It became obvious seconds later when they saw the chain-link fence and the thick trees. They had trapped themselves. Joslyn began to curse, Lindsey began to moan, and Michael suddenly sprouted rows of deep, worry lines across his forehead.

“Trust Neil,” Sadie said. “He’ll know what to do.” Despite her confidence, she unzipped Eve’s diaper bag and brought out the
earmuffs
she had fashioned for the infant. She had found child-sized ear protection at a sporting goods store where Neil had stopped at two days before in Arkansas. To convert them to infant size took only the removal of a heavy spring that clamped the earpieces down too hard. They were big, but they would protect Eve’s hearing. In the same bag were her own muffs. She fitted them on her head and then took out her Glock and checked the load.

Joslyn watched her as if guns were altogether foreign to her. Only when Sadie slapped the clip back into place did Joslyn dig in her pack for her own gun. She had the .25 caliber pistol that Neil had taken from Jillybean. She also checked her clip. “Eight bullets. All I’ve got is eight bullets!”

“That’s more than I got,” Lindsey said, her voice was harsh and close to hysterics. “I don’t have anything.”

“It’ll be ok. Trust Neil,” Sadie said again. They were driving slowly toward the end of a large open lot. There was nothing beyond it but more fencing and trees and zombies. She almost lost faith in Neil when the lead truck turned slowly as if Grey was uncertain what he was doing. He then aimed back the way they came, moving at a deliberate pace. Michael kept right on his tail and Ricky, driving the third truck was right on theirs; they were as close as railroad cars.

Then they were among the zombies and gaps appeared between the three trucks. The lead truck, smashing into the face of the horde, bounced up and down. It bucked and jerked and shuddered, its rear sometimes swinging out or in. Its speed was erratic causing Michael to slow down to a dangerous degree. The five-ton was a tall vehicle and had to be climbed to be accessed—the zombies were doing just that.

Lindsey began screaming and pointing out the window. She kicked back from the door, forcing Joslyn into Sadie and Sadie into Michael. “Get off!” Michael yelled. “I can’t drive.” Ahead of them, the lead truck suddenly began slewing to the right and was within a second of becoming bogged down in the mass of squirming, flailing creatures.

Michael was forced to stop.

The view out the front window was appalling. Uncountable numbers of zombies surged up to them like a slow-motion grey wave that crested higher and higher as the beasts shoved their kindred beneath them to get at the humans trapped in the truck. Their piled bodies were as high as the hood and up to the doors when Grey finally got his truck moving again.

Michael was already stomping the gas as Joslyn reached across Sadie to hammer on his forearm, screaming: “Go! Go! Go!” at the top of her lungs.

The five-ton bellowed and snorted like a beast as its six wheels dug in and drove up the piled zombies in front of them. The nose of the truck went up as they mounted the writhing mound and then, like a ship in a storm, they pitched downward only to have their momentum stall completely. It felt as though they were high-centered, however it was simply the weight of the truck crushing and collapsing the mound.

The engine roared as Michael kept the gas pedal pegged. At first, the wheels spun uselessly, then the mound of bodies seemed to shift and undulate. The right side of the truck suddenly pitched down and to the side. The angle was so severe that Lindsey slid to the door and Joslyn slid into her. Sadie stuck her black sneakered foot out and held her and Eve back. The baby was clinging like a monkey with both her arms and legs wrapped tight against Sadie’s slim body. She was surprisingly strong for a nine-month old and she needed all that strength when the passenger side door suddenly opened.

With the truck canted, the zombies were at door level and an unfortunate, scabbed-over grey hand had gotten to the handle by accident. Since they were without locks, army truck doors were a simple matter to open; a yank was all it took.

Lindsey’s screaming reached a glass-shattering pitch as the zombies fought each other to get at her. She kicked backwards and flailed in a panic similar to that of a person drowning. Joslyn was affected in the same manner and she scrambled over Sadie and Eve, clawing and kicking.

“Stop!” Sadie screamed, trying to protect Eve. Joslyn continued to fight to get further from the door. In essence, she trampled right over them both. Sadie was forced to twist around to keep Eve from being used as a foothold. Joslyn dug a boot into Sadie’s back, scraping skin back, uncaringly. Joslyn was so far gone in fear she even grabbed the steering wheel to keep from sliding to where the hungry zombies waited. The extra weight on the steering wheel kept Michael from being able to right the truck. They were on a huge pile of zombies with the engine roaring and the wheels skidding and slipping in the horrible mud and mulch created from the blood and tissue of ground up zombies.

The sound of the truck, the incessant moans of the zombies and the howling screams of Lindsey as she was pulled down into the arms of the zombies, penetrated right through the earmuffs on Sadie’s head. It was so loud she could barely hear Michael when he shouted: “They’re leaving us!”

Sure enough, as Sadie struggled up to see out the front window she saw the lead truck had freed itself from the densest part of the horde and was escaping, black smoke shooting into the air from its exhaust pipes. Sadie had one thought:
What about me?
She couldn’t believe Neil was leaving her behind to be overwhelmed and eaten by the thousands of undead. The idea left her breathless and the sight of the truck vanishing plus all the mayhem around her, left Sadie physically numb.

She was jarred back to her awful reality when the truck lurched again. With three different forces acting on her body, she slid closer to the open door. The first force was simple gravity sucking her down, the next was Joslyn kicking her in the back, using her to plug the opening, and the third was Lindsey who had a hold of one of her Converse sneakers and was using it to keep from being dragged out of the truck.

With one hand clutching the baby and the other on the grip of her Glock, Sadie could only stop her slide by again sticking her foot out to the dash.

Lindsey’s screams took on a new note of pain to go with her panic. The endlessly grasping hands of the zombies had pulled off her shoes and now her lower legs and feet were being chewed upon. “Help me!” she screamed at the top of her lungs in desperation.

“Pull yourself up,” Sadie yelled back. She could do nothing for the woman except hold on for as long as she could. Lindsey tried with all her might to get away, however the zombies were limitless in number and too many of them had a grip of her lower body either with their hands or with their teeth and she was slowly pulled out of the truck.

And with her went Sadie.

“Let go!” Sadie cried. “You’re going to kill me, too!” Lindsey’s terror was too great and her mind too far gone for her to realize that she was dooming Sadie. This left Sadie without a choice. She could see that Lindsey was already bitten in a number of places. Sadie wasn’t going to drop what she had in her hands—her only weapon and the precious baby—to try to pull an infected woman into the truck.

“Help me,” Lindsey begged. Her eyes were pleading and desperate. She was so pitiful that it was physically painful for Sadie when she pointed the Glock and shot Lindsey in her pleading face.

That second seemed to extend and elongate as if emotional pain could affect time. It drew out cruelly so that Sadie could savor every horrible detail of it. Lindsey’s fear-stricken face contorted one muscle at a time, until she had switched out fear for utter shock. Slowly her head went back—likely it snapped back, however for Sadie it was glacial in its speed and the blood that sprayed in the air lingered like a sun-shower on a July day.

Sadie got to see it all: the grey porridge of brain that slapped against the lower edge of the door. The ‘O’ of puzzlement Lindsey’s mouth made, the hands that came up out of the mass of undead, engulfing her, the lustful teeth rearing up and then chomping down, biting through the thin cotton of her clothing.

Lindsey lost her grip on Sadie’s foot, and she was carried out into the sea of zombies. She was like a sinking ship. In that slow-motion view of Sadie’s, the girl was slowly engulfed, slipping beneath the grey waves until she was gone.

From behind Sadie, Joslyn accused: “What did you just do?”

Sadie couldn’t answer. Guilt had her by the throat. A million excuses ran through her mind: Lindsey had been bitten! She was going to die anyway! She shouldn’t have been trying to pull Sadie down with her! None of that mattered. Once again, Sadie had killed without a second’s hesitation. Once again, she had put her needs ahead of any consideration…not that she had taken even a moment to consider anything at all. She had taken an innocent life to save her own.

The thought fed the black cloud in her mind. It churned, an evil tempest, brooding, reeking, foul, however there was no time for Sadie to breathe in that self-hate. The truck was still canted and bucking and her pathetic, greedy life was still in danger. The cloud would wait. It was patient.
If
Sadie lived it would be there, waiting.

Somewhere in those endless seconds, she blinked and time snapped back into place. It was with surprise that she felt herself still sliding toward the grey horde. With one hand around the baby and the other holding the Glock, she had to rely on her feet. She braced her left foot on the dash and the right—the one that still felt Lindsey’s ghostly fingers on them—on the door frame. She was splayed and open and, beneath her exposed undercarriage, was the horde, surging and moaning in hunger, clawing over each other to get at her.

Time seemed to speed up more and more quickly as hands took the door and pulled it back and others grabbed the frame and mouths with broken teeth breathed their horrid breath up at her.

“Drive!” yelled Sadie and then fired the Glock. Her hand thrummed at the violence of the weapon. A beastly thing with dangling lips and only a single ear fell away with what was left of its brain adding to the mess on the door.

Michael had been attempting to drive them out, but had only succeeded in spinning his wheels as he tried to force his way into the teeth of a veritable grey wave. So many of the undead surged toward the truck that the mound became a hill and their shredded bodies acted almost like a treadmill. The tires went round and round and the beasts were turned to grey, creamed corn mush that shot out the back.

Still, it was an all-wheel drive vehicle and, gradually, the truck conquered the hill of bodies, only to sink down into the trough where it bogged down in exactly the same spot as Grey’s truck had, only now the bog of shredded skin, and ruptured intestines and the foul soup of black blood was deeper. To make matters worse, Michael also had to contend with the drag of the fifty or so zombies clinging to the sides of the truck.

Michael hit the gas for all he was worth and, just as Grey’s truck had done, Michael’s truck slewed to the right. As a good ‘ole boy from Alabama, he had never driven in snow or even ice and when the truck began to skid, he didn’t turn into it as he should have done and thus he continued to slide until his rear wheel went into the gutter and the truck’s momentum ceased. Out of ideas, he gunned the Cummins 240 horsepower engine until it screamed as if in pain. A shudder racked the truck. It shimmied and shook as if it was coming apart. Confused, Michael stared down at the dash, perhaps thinking that the dials would tell him what he was doing wrong. When an explanation didn’t present itself, he decided to put the truck in reverse. Before he could do so, his door was pulled open and he was confronted with the same horror Sadie was dealing with. The zombies were mounded as high as the doors.