Last Stand of the Dead - 06 (6 page)

We were about fifteen miles from where we thought the army would be when we saw the smoke.  It wasn’t a lot of smoke, but it was oily black and thick.  No one with any sense on the frontier would make a fire like that, so my first thought was
that
it was trouble.

“Do we check it out?” Sarah asked.

“Have
to,
” I said.  “If it’s
an idiot
burning garbage, he just raised a flag to our little friends to come and get him.  If it’s an attack, we at least have another trail to follow and hopefully
,
we can ambush another set of the monsters.”

Charlie radioed from the van.  “You see the smoke?”

“On it.
  Hang back and get Rebecca ready to cover from the top.”

“Done.”

Charlie would pull back with the van, and Rebecca would poke the top half of herself through the roof hatch with her rifle.  She’d see a little further than we would, and could nail anything coming at us that didn’t wait for the van.

As ready as we could ever be, we headed for the source of the smoke that rolled lazily into the noon sky.

Chapter 10

“
Jesus.”

“How many down?”

“Can’t tell from here, but it’s bad.”

“Are they up yet?”

“Not all of them, a few by the burning truck.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“We’d better get down there and start finishing them off.”

“Yeah.”

We followed the line of smoke up from the south, not really sure what we’d find.  I was hoping it was just some damn fool burning his garbage, like we all did, and it got away from him.  I did not expect to find what was waiting for us.

When we were near enough to the source of the smoke, we pulled over and crept up to the top of a small hill.  There, hidden by a coup
l
e of bushes and tall grasses, we were able to see what was going on.

The scene wasn’t pretty.  The smoke was caused by a burning army truck, overturned in a ditch.  Several men were
laying
about the truck, casualties of the accident.  A second truck was stopped by the first one, and more bodies were scattered about.  These were bloody and torn, and it didn’t take much to figure out what had happened.  Something had gotten in front of the first truck, causing it to swerve.  The second truck had stopped to help with the accident, and had been ambushed.  At this point, it was impossible to tell
whether
the first accident was caused deliberately, or had simply been bad luck.  Either way, another twenty to thirty soldiers were down.  Freeman was going to be pissed.

“Charlie, see if you can pick up a trail, or anything else.”
I looked at Charlie and he understood exactly what I was asking.  “Tommy, you go with him.  We’re going to go and clean up as best we can.”

We drove slowly down to the trucks, and parked on the southern end. Two of the soldiers rose from the ground to greet us
,
and Duncan popped them both.  I circled wide, not wanting to be too close to the trucks and get nabbed from underneath.  I worked my pickaxe on the ones that were still inert, and Rebecca and Sarah did the same.  It wasn’t easy, since half of them were still wearing helmets, so we had to cut their helmets off first,
and
then crack their skulls.  Duncan just stabbed his big sword through their
face, and that seemed to work just fine.

Another soldier rose to greet me, and this one was a big boy.  He had to be six foot four and was thick in the shoulders and arms. If he grabbed
m
e, he still had enough strength in there to pull me in tight for a hello chomp.  I used my pick to hook his knee, and nearly wrenched my own arm out of its socket pulling that dude down.  He landed hard on his back, with his helmet bouncing off the asphalt.  I jumped on top of him, kneeling on his chest and using my free leg to pin down his arm.  The other one reached for me, but I shoved my knife up under his chin and had just
enough force to penetrate his brain.  With a deep sigh, the young soldier died and slumped down.

We used the flames to purge our weapons,
and then
Rebecca grabbed a fire extinguisher from the still-functional truck, and sprayed out the fire from the overturned one, ending the signal to the rest of the world that something of interest was here. It also took the can from the overturned truck to do it, but it got done.  We waited quietly for a moment and Duncan asked me a question.

“Should we take the truck with us?”

I thought for a moment,
and then
looked over at Sarah.  She just shrugged her shoulders at me, and that was it.
“Why not?
  You feel like driving it?”

Duncan nodded.  He climbed aboard the truck,
and
then immediately jumped out.

“Something
’
s in the back and
it’s
moving!”

We all whipped our weapons up, and I moved slowly around to the back of the vehicle.  Sarah and Rebecca covered the back of the truck as I pulled the canvas back and out of the way.  I watched the two of them, and they didn’t fire, but they didn’t lower their weapons, either.  I walked wide and joined them out away from the truck.

“Okay, I’m open to
suggestions,
” I said.

“Can we keep it?” Duncan asked.

“I think we should just let it
go,
” Rebecca
said.

“What if it doesn’t want to leave the truck?” Sarah asked.

“I think we can manage
something,
” I said.

We all looked at the biggest damn German
S
hepherd
I had ever seen.  This pup must have weighed one twenty five
,
if he weighed a pound, and he
wa
s staring back at us with an intensity usually reserved for something about to be eaten.  I didn’t want to shoot the dog, it hadn’t done anything, but bringing it with us was out of the question.

I released the latch that held up the rear gate and the dog jumped out, sniffing us and getting a general nose of the area.  He looked at us for a moment,
and then
scampered off into the tall grass.

“That’s too bad.  I was hoping we could take it with
us,
” Duncan said as he watched the grass for a moment, likely hoping it would come back.

“Wouldn’t have worked, and you of all people know it
,
” Tommy said.

“That’s true, but it looked like a nice animal
,
” Duncan
replied.

We took a moment to drag the corpses off the road and decide our next move. Sarah took me to the side and asked about the dog
.
“Why couldn’t we have taken it?” She wanted to know.

“We didn’t train
it,
” I explained. “We don’t know what the command words are, and it would take too long to try and figure out.  You want to be the one who says the wrong thing and suddenly that pile of fur and fangs is attacking Jake or Aaron? Not a chance.”

Sarah looked thoughtful. 
“Didn’t think about that.
  Do you think he’ll be okay out there by himself?”

I chuckled.  “Better him than whatever meets him when he’s hungry.”

Chapter 11

We drove north again, and managed to connect with Route 34 once more.  It seemed to me that our destiny with that road wasn’t over, and I turned east to start the search for the army and to get closer to home.

Duncan radioed over from the
truck;
he had better luck getting in touch with Freeman.  He reported that Freeman took the news of the loss of his men
hard
, and was glad we had cleaned up as best we could.  He told us he was setting up a line of defense around Kirkwood, and the line would extend from 164 to 116.  It would be thin, but he thought they could delay them enough for reinforcements wherever the zombies attacked.  They had reports of activity in the area, so they were confident that they were about to engage the enemy.

I thought about it as Sarah pulled out a map and checked the numbers.  Kirkwood was as big a town as we could expect in these parts, and I had no idea if it was alive or dead.  There were two towns on the way to Kirkwood, and we were going to have to visit both.

I called Duncan back and told him to relay our position to the Colonel, and we would be seeing him at Kirkwood shortly. 

“What do you think, John?” Sarah asked.

“I think it’s the best plan we have right now, provided Freeman got ahead of the zombies. If he’s setting up after they left, he’s going to look like a damn
fool,
” I said.

“Where do you think the little zombies are right now?” she asked, looking over the map.

“They have to be close.  That group that killed the soldiers we just left was heading north, but they could have turned.  With luck
,
they’re cross country right now and are slowing down enough for us to catch them.”  I pointed at the map.  “Right now
,
I’d say they are about in this area.”  I circled a section north of
Stronghurst
.

“Let’s hope you’re right.  I’m getting tired of this
chase,
”  Sarah
said, putting away the map.

I looked over at her, and saw her hair falling forward on her face as she concentrated on folding the map.  She didn’t see me looking, and I got my eyes back on the road quickly enough, but it was just enough time to put another mental picture in my head to fall
in love
all over again
with
this woman.  I d
id
n’t know what I’d do if I lost her.  I really didn’t.

My reflections were broken by Tommy calling over the radio.  “Gladstone’s been hit!  They just got hit!”

The map came out again.  We were five miles away.  I radioed back.  “We’re there.  Call the Colonel and let him know.  This may be the one we’ve been looking for.”

“Roger that, out.”

I looked over at Sarah. 
“Full gear this time.
  Take no chances.”

“Got it.
 
You, too.”

“Definitely.”

We raced around a large bend on 34, and drove as fast as we could towards Gladstone.  It was a little bit off the beaten path of 34, but as Sarah pointed out, it was right in line with the railroad tracks that had crossed the river at Burlington.  Gladstone had survived the Upheaval due to geography.  It was in the middle of nowhere and anywhere, and slightly south of
never heard of
it. 

We reached the southern end of Gladstone about ten minutes after Tommy had alerted us.  As we came up around a bend, I could see what might have been a problem for a town now that wasn’t a problem for the Upheaval.  This was a train town, and the tracks led along the northern border of the town. It wasn’t hard to figure out how the zombies had attacked.

As we turned up Walnut Street, the town was in chaos.  Two buildings were on fire, and there were several people lying around.  One person turned to us as we drove slowly past, but he didn’t see us.  He was focused on his wife who lay in a pool of blood at his feet.  He was holding a length of pipe in his hand and we knew exactly what he was waiting for.

Further in, we passed the fire district building, and I pulled over as a man stepped out and flagged us down.

“You’re too late!  They hit us about thirty minutes ago, pulled out about ten minutes ago.”  The man looked haggard, like he wasn’t used to making serious decisions on a minute to minute basis.

I looked at the building.  It was being used as a treatment center, but it was easy to see they weren’t treating anyone who was going to live.  There were about fifteen people lying on the ground, most of them holding small wounds and looking sick.  I knew in about twenty minutes
that
this town was going to have another visit from the dead.

“What happened?” I asked, looking around.  Several more people had seen us pull up, and were coming over to see what was going on.  I cast a look over at Charlie, and he relayed the news to the rest of the crew.  In situations like this, emotions ran high, and people said and did things they would later regret.  We were actually in danger if we played it wrong.

“They just attacked!” A woman yelled at me. 
“Right off the tracks!
 
Damndest
thing I ever saw!”

“How did they attack?” I asked.  This was the first group of people I had encountered who had seen the attack from beginning to end and they might have some valuable information.