Badlands Trilogy (Book 2): Beyond the Badlands (6 page)

This morning, however, Jasper’s sleep had been dreamless. And he couldn’t have been gladder for that. Today he had the ride. Today he had purpose. Sometimes riding was all his life was about.

A few more houses and then he’d head back to the gas station to refuel. A while back he’d figured out how to access the main tanks there and had poured in all the fuel stabilizer he could find. It probably wasn’t enough to properly preserve the gasoline, but as long as the bike ran he planned to keep using it.

Ahead and off to the right, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Deadheads. How those fuckers survived after four years he couldn’t imagine. They were like cockroaches. The small group of walkers staggered along in the same direction, obviously interested in something.

Glancing further ahead, Jasper saw what had caught their interest. His mystery had finally been revealed, but he hadn’t been expecting what he found. Seeing the carnage, he wondered how anyone could have survived a train wreck so violent.

Most likely no one
had
survived. Much like hyenas, the deadheads would be sniffing around for corpses, picking off what they could. And the last thing Jasper wanted to see was another dead body. He’d seen more than his fair share already.

But as much as he knew he should probably turn around, curiosity had already gotten the best of him. Jasper Carter could resist many things, but a mystery was not among them. Who knew, maybe a fair maiden in distress needed rescuing by a dashing young man on a motorcycle. Stranger things had happened.

Smiling, Jasper took off, spraying gravel and dirt in his wake as he sped toward the curious scene.

Trish opened her eyes slowly. The cold concrete beneath her sapped the heat from her body as waning sunlight filtered in through wire-reinforced windows, illuminating shelves stacked with small boxes and other unidentifiable objects.

Her head pounded worse than ever. Images flooded her mind; the train crash and the guardsman leading her and the boys away from the wreckage.

But he was no guardsman.

The boys…

She felt sick.

“Hello, Trish,” Tall Guard said from behind her.

Adrenaline flooded her system. She tried sitting up, but quickly discovered her hands and feet were bound. Panicked, she struggled to break free of her bindings.

“You can’t get loose. I made sure of that.”

“Who are you?”

Tall Guard walked around in front of her. He pulled her up into a sitting position. “You really don’t remember me, do you? Maybe another name will ring a bell. You remember Darnell, don’t you? Big, black guy with a beret? Scar on his head? Or maybe you remember Trey? You did murder him, after all.”

Of course she remembered those names. She’d never be able to forget them. Darnell and Trey had kidnapped and raped her for days.

“Coming back to you now?” Ryder said, raising his eyebrows. His grin never faltered. “You know it took almost three days for Darnell to die?”

Trish didn’t answer.

“Darnell might have been a brother from a different mother,” Ryder continued, “but Trey, he was my real brother.”

Now it all made sense. “You. You’re the man in the shadows. The one I never saw.”

Ryder smiled. “Well, that explains why you didn’t recognize me. Fortunate for me, eh?”

Trish shook her head. “How?”

Ryder clapped his hands together as his smile widened. “Oh, I was hoping you’d ask. Finding you was tough, let me tell you that much. But you killed my brother, you fucking whore. I’d follow you to the goddamn moon if I had to.” He absentmindedly held up a finger into the air as he spoke. “You see, I figured you’d travel by the interstate. After all, that’s where we found you the first time. I’m not too proud to admit that I did lose your trail for a while, and I’m not gonna say the trip was easy, but I knew if I kept following that road it would lead me right to you.”

Ryder pulled up his sleeve, displaying a long, pink scar on his forearm. “Razor-wire got me pretty good climbing that fence into St. Louis, but I made it over before the deadwalkers got me. After I was in I found you again. Took a while though. I watched you after that, waiting. I had the whole thing planned out. Then BAM! Off went those fucking bombs and on the train we went.”

“This can’t be happening,” Trish said.

“Oh, it’s happening. And if you thought what the three of us did to you was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I’m gonna have a field day with you.”

Trish steeled herself. “The kids…did you kill them?”

An incredulous look swept over Ryder’s face. “What? I don’t kill kids.”

“What did you do with them then?”

“That’s neither here nor there.” He flashed Trish another grin, his canines sharp like a wolf’s. “As much as I want to get this party started, I’m afraid I’m without my tools. The pistol wouldn’t be sporting, would it?” He leaned in, grinning wide, a large, gold crucifix swinging from his neck.
 

He rose to his feet. “I’ll be back in a flash. Don’t you go anywhere while I’m gone.”

Then he was up, walking away, disappearing behind the shelves lining the aisles. Moments later a door opened and closed, echoing in the empty warehouse.

Then silence followed, hard and cold.

“Stop crying,” Zach said to his brother as they sat, tied together, on the kitchen floor of the house where Ryder had brought them.

“But he took Trish,” Jeremy said between sniffles.

“I know.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t really a guardsman, I think.”

“Is he going to hurt her?”

Yes, he is,
Zach thought. “No.”

A pause. “I think Daddy is dead.”

“Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true, Zach.”

“We don’t know it’s true.”

“Well, what are we gonna do then?”

Zach closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? You have to know. You’re the big brother. Without Dad and Trish, you’re in charge.”

Zach gritted his teeth in order to keep his composure. No tears. His brother was right. He had to be strong, for the both of them. He knew his father would agree.

“Well, what are we gonna do?” Jeremy asked again, his voice cracking.

Zach considered the question.
What would Dad do? He’d fight, right up to the end. Just like he did on the bridge.
He swallowed hard, gritting his teeth even harder. He allowed himself a few moments to get himself back under control again.

First thing: they needed to get themselves untied. Then they could look for their father and Trish.

“Jeremy?” Zach asked.

A sniffle. “Yeah?”

“Can you reach your knife?”

“Maybe.”

“Good. I want you to try.”

“What are we going to do?”

“First we’re gonna cut ourselves out of these ropes. Then we’re gonna go look for Dad and Trish.”

“What if we don’t find them?”

“We’ll find them.”

“Promise?”

I can’t promise that.
“Yeah, I promise.”

Another sniffle. “Okay.”

“Jeremy?” Zach said.

“Yeah?”

“Everything is gonna be okay.”

Jeremy nodded. “Okay.”

Zach smiled at his brother. “Now get that knife and cut us out of these ropes.”

Holy shit
, Jasper thought as he neared the scene of the derailed and overturned train. Before him cars lay in upheaval, smashed against each other and twisted up like pretzels. Around the wreck, tall grass grew waist-high, with small saplings springing up randomly between the long grass blades. Blooming wildflowers sprouted randomly within the grass, as if in direct contrast to the devastation. Where the train struck the ground, large swaths of the tall grass had been torn out, exposing bare, brown patches of meadow-dirt.
 

And all around the decimation, the deadheads scurried about.

Jasper killed the engine to avoid drawing attention to himself as he watched them at work. They limped around the scene of the crash, meandering around the wrecked passenger cars.
 

Then something caught his attention. After scanning the length of the train, he noticed one of the passenger cars lying upside down. It was twisted up badly, but that wasn’t what caught his eye. Around it, dozens of the infected gathered. They moaned and screamed, tearing at the metal exterior with their fingernail-claws.

Something inside was drawing their attention. The thought of his mythical fair maiden in distress quickly flashed through his mind. He considered that maybe someone had survived the crash, but then dismissed it. It was a pretty unlikely fairy tale.

For a brief moment he considered riding off, simply leaving the scene behind. He had solved the mystery of where the deadheads were going, after all.

Or had he?

He still didn’t know if that passenger car held survivors. And if it did, then helping them was the right thing to do, no matter how dangerous. Had he been alone so long that he’d lost his humanity? Maybe living and dying didn’t matter to the rest of the world, but Jasper didn’t intend on betraying his conscience just to buy himself a little more time alive.

Like Chuck said: a man can’t be afraid to die.

Determined to find out what was in that train car, Jasper fired up the motorcycle and sped toward the wreck, the engine whining.
The railroad track blurred as the speedometer climbed. The wreckage loomed larger as he approached. It took a while, but finally the deadheads noticed him.

This was exactly what he wanted.

The first carrier broke from the crowd, sprinting toward Jasper in a pair of dress slacks and a sweater vest. More quickly followed. They really weren’t afraid of anything. Bicycle, motorcycle or freight train, they’d charge it all with the same ferocity and lack of regard for their own safety. The deadhead in the lead screeched as it ran, arm hanging limp, eyes bulging from sockets set deep within a face nearly black with dirt and grime. Not even the engine could drown out the sound.

Jasper sped toward the deadhead. To anyone watching it would have looked like a game of chicken. Keeping his hand on the throttle, he reached behind his shoulder and retrieved the baseball bat from the holster attached to his backpack. He held the bat out, level with the thing’s head, veering away from it just before they met.

The bat smashed the deadhead’s face, Jasper’s momentum snapping its head backward, sending it to the ground in a heap.

“Fuck yeah!” Jasper howled, the sound barely audible over the buzz of the motorcycle’s engine. Jasper called this game
deadhead tee ball
, and he’d gotten pretty damn good at it over the years.

Returning the bat to its holster, Jasper gripped the handlebars tightly and maneuvered the bike out and around the group of deadheads now chasing him. Revving the engine, he roared off. By now the carriers inside the train car had come out to investigate, as had most of those still ambling about in the field.

His u-turn complete, he charged back at the crowd again. “Come on, motherfuckers!” Zigzagging between them, Jasper took the bike through the sparse crowd. Their collective screaming had now become a shrill symphony, the horrific chorus threatening to drive him mad.

Ignoring the sound, he drove the crowd back and forth, like a macabre basketball game. By now the entire mess of deadheads wanted him for dinner. With enough figure-eights and circling he grouped the bulk of them together like a herd of cattle.

Piloting the bike through the crowd one more time, so close to the things that fingers brushed along his arms, Jasper emerged out the other side one final time.

He sped away from the wreckage, drawing the carriers behind him. They followed, arms outstretched, mad with frustration. Jasper now played a game of cat and mouse with his herd, speeding ahead and then waiting until they caught up before taking off again. Over hundreds of yards they followed, some slower and some faster, but all of them followed. Their blind predictability almost made him laugh, but the sight of a small girl in a tattered dress quickly sobered him up.

Eventually the wreckage grew small in the distance as he led the deadheads further away. He slowed the bike, making a tight u-turn before coming to a stop. He faced the crowd, looking for a way back to the train car. The horde now blocked the way, having spread out wide as they followed.

Only one path remained: straight through them.
 

Jasper peeled out, leaving a trail of dust and gravel behind. He shifted through the gears, racing toward the tightening crowd. He veered around the first two, but the further he made it into the throng the more difficult it became to avoid them. They closed in, fingers curled, teeth bared, desperate to catch their prey.

He opened up the engine, pushing it as hard as it would go. The speedometer climbed steadily as he raced through from the band of deadheads. They closed in, dragging themselves along, hungry and determined. Head down, Jasper streamlined his body, the wind whistling past his ears, drying out his eyes. The deadheads loomed, arms outstretched, fingers grasping for purchase. He felt hands on his legs, on his back…

And then he broke through them, leaving the horde behind and screaming toward the train. He didn’t dare look back. The faster he got back to the train, the more time he had to see just what was inside. No matter how fast he went, it wouldn’t amount to long.

He crossed the distance between the horde and the train car quickly, slowing when he made it to the overturned train car. He brought the bike to a halt, glancing behind. The pack pursued, but still far enough away. Or so he hoped.

Leaving the engine running, Jasper dropped the kickstand and hopped off the bike. He retrieved his father’s pistol from a homemade shoulder holster before stepping inside the car. Near the back a deadhead crouched, clawing at something lying beneath the twisted metal. At the sound of Jasper’s footsteps it turned, hissing, its black eyes piercing. It sprang to its feet and dashed toward him.