Ghost Run (12 page)

All at once, the things poured into the loading area from both corners of the store, no doubt attracted by the CB static and engine noise. They began to quickly fill the area. Not wanting to damage my ride, I kept it in first and rolled slowly through the growing crowd, crunching some under the massive weight of the truck and knocking others to the side. After passing the majority of them, I upshifted, eventually getting to twenty miles per hour as I rounded the corner past the automotive bays and into the front parking lot. Coming out of the turn, my tire took out a concrete guard with a loud clang, sending it flying under the semi.

•  •  •

I departed the store lot and turned out onto the road, towing a trailer full of rotten lettuce. As I straightened the rig out on the overgrown road, I checked my mirrors and saw a hundred creatures marching out behind me. I gave it some gas, banking around abandoned cars and road debris. My companions in the passenger seat were the two empty fuel jugs and a length of hose sitting near my carbine. As I stayed slow and attentive to the hazards of the road, I tuned through CB channels, hoping to miraculously land on some intel. I found nothing but silence and static as I tuned the dial back and forth along every citizens band frequency.

I was having luck navigating around the deep potholes and wrecked cars until I came to a roadblock up ahead consisting of a giant red conex box. I stopped the truck, grabbed my rifle and binos, and headed for the roof. I lay prone on the top, glassing the roadblock. The heat coming off the blacktop caused mirage distortion. I saw movement, figures walking back and forth in front of the red box. I got back into the cab and idled ahead for a closer
look. When I got to within two hundred meters, the situation became apparent.

The roadblock was abandoned.

There were half a dozen animated corpses chained by their necks to the base of the conex. As I crept to within a hundred meters, I could make out the faded black spray-painted letters on the front of the metal box:

YOU'RE DEAD!

I rolled up to the roadblock slowly with my carbine sitting across my lap. Scanning left and right, I saw no indicators of ambush or other shenanigans, so I stopped the truck in front of the conex, just out of reach of the incarcerated creatures. I listened to their chains drag and scrape against the ground; the sounds sent me back to a memory of the undead chain gang I was once forced to deal with. My handwritten record of that encounter was lost in some Hourglass lab somewhere too secret for my pay grade.

The creatures here, though, converged on the truck, the slack in their chains pulled taut just out of reach. With duct tape from the truck's toolbox, I attached my five-inch
tantō
switchblade to the tire thumper. The corpses were dispatched quickly and quietly without incident. There was a guard shack (if you could even call it that) sitting out of direct view behind a van. It consisted of a tarp for a roof over a few rusted folding chairs and one of those plastic folding craft tables. Using one of the chairs, I climbed up onto the red conex box and looked over to the other side.

What I saw caused me to drop to the roof, melting into it in order to get as flat as possible. The other side of the roadblock was crawling with the undead. I slunk slowly off the box and went for the yellow tow strap I'd used to fasten rope down into the store. I didn't waste any time attaching one of the undead's chain collars to the front bumper of the semi, not even bothering to free the cadaver. I jumped up into the cab and put it in reverse. Backing slowly, the heavy-duty yellow strap took the slack from the chain, raising the body off the ground in a grotesque pose. The truck stopped moving, so I gave it more gas, causing the large metal box to screech across the surface of the road in my direction.

The adrenaline flowed, brought on by the corpses coming at me from both sides of the box. I gave the truck more gas, yanking the box from its long-held spot on the road, revealing a rectangular outline of rust where it sat before. I barely got the truck parked before jumping out and retrieving the tow strap. I took a parting shot at one of them just before it grabbed me by the shoulder.

It got that close.

I was up in the cab just before the mass of creatures surrounded the truck. I couldn't close the door now; there were too many trying to climb up into the cab. I edged the truck forward, kicking wildly outside, tempted to empty a precious mag into the ones that blocked the door. Rolling past the roadblock, I saw two of the undead wearing severed ears as necklaces. They had guns slung tightly across their chests, FN FALs. Might as well be on a different planet; there was no salvaging them from the sea of undead that surrounded the rig. These guys were probably bad news when they were alive. I kept rolling on, away from the creatures, rounding two more bends before losing them.

An hour after the roadblock, I came to a long straight stretch in the road with nothing for miles in both directions but a few abandoned cars. One of them had an open side window with a small oak tree growing through it and out the shattered front glass. In fifty years, that car would be high off the ground and someone like me would wonder how the fuck that could have happened.

Perspective.

I took this time to shut down the rig and regroup. I was fairly sure the alternator would have charged the battery over the past few hours of hauling ass at a brisk twenty-mile-per-hour average. I checked the atlas I'd found wedged between the seats; I was on Highway 319 heading north to Tallahassee. Using the scale on the map, I estimated that I was more than two hundred miles away from Atlanta. Part of me wanted to turn back right now and head for the gulf, for
Solitude
. The other wanted my wife and child to live in a world where they would never have to worry about a corpse climbing into their window at night. I knew Tara would be concerned and pissed; I missed both her and Bug more than anything in the world.

But my idea? I just had to try.

Everything that gave me happiness in the world was at the mercy of the undead.

As I penciled my route north onto the road atlas, I imagined what these parts might be like thirty years from now. Anyone handy with a gun and a few rounds could make it out here if they were smart and not too brave. Guns got you food and water and everything else left abandoned to the undead. If you had guns, you could waste enough of them to loot an entire warehouse full of food and water. What would happen when the guns wore out and all the bullets resided in the skulls of a hundred million corpses turning to dust out here? Then that will be the age of the mountain man, the true survivor forced to learn to make it out here without endless ammunition and food that hasn't expired. Right now, we're making it off the back of fading technology and production capacity that died along with most of the population. With no refineries, we're all pretty much on foot within a few years. Ammo will probably become currency. I've scavenged spare sails from other derelict boats in my travels, putting them in a safe place along with riggings and extra parts. I've thought this through as much as any man could. We're beyond peak oil now. Beyond peak everything.

•  •  •

I hadn't made much progress since the roadblock. Even this back-road highway was in pretty sad shape. I've had to stop and pull three cars out of the way, some of them filled with hungry corpses. I heard them but couldn't really see them inside their vehicles; the glass was translucent, too glazed over with whatever slime sunbaked corpses secreted. As I slowly edged north, I came to a large lake just off the highway to the east. Rolling forward, I nearly turned the rig around from what I saw. There were dozens of corpses on the banks of the lake walking into the water, trying to get at something. The noise from my engine peeled a few off from the mass at the shore. They lumbered in the direction of my rig with their arms reaching out, as if they had no depth perception that I was over a hundred meters away.

As I watched the advancing creatures, I caught something out
of the corner of my eye. The water flashed white near the beach and a dozen corpses were knocked over like bowling pins in a strike roll. A few of them turned over onto their backs and stood back up. They again advanced into the water nearly up to their knees. The other stricken corpses were flailing miserably on the beach, covered with mud.

Something had broken their legs. Through my binoculars, I could see white bones from compound fractures poking through the gray and rotting skin of their thighs and knees.

The creatures that ventured out into the water were agitated by something.

I watched one as it was taken under in a violent blast of white and black water. Then it happened again. I kept watching the battle between the creatures and the lake, still unsure of what I was seeing. I hadn't been this entertained and mystified in a damn long time.

I rolled the truck farther down the road. Fixated on the water, I nearly ran the truck off the road. I slammed the brakes, throwing me forward into the steering wheel as a massive fourteen-foot something partially beached itself and grabbed one of the undead in its powerful jaws, pulling it back into the black, death-rolling the creature into pieces.

My mouth hung open at the fearlessness of the alligator.

It wasn't working alone.

Two other alligators showed themselves just in front of the group of corpses that were dumb enough to wade into knee-deep water with thousand-pound reptiles. The beasts tore into them, ripping their decomposing bodies to pieces by sheer jaw pressure and lacerating death rolls. The large alligator came back for more after its smaller companions took their enemies under the water. Unafraid, the alpha reptile charged the beach. It was completely out of the water, swinging its large tail at lighting speed into a fresh group of advancing creatures. The undead didn't stand a chance. The alligator's tail impacted with a sickening
thwack
, tossing broken bodies like rag dolls into the water near the muddy shoreline. Similar to the wild boars I'd encountered, these half-ton reptiles were well fed and not afraid to use the weapons that millions of years of evolution provided them.

My concentration on the spectacle was broken by a thumping on the driver's-side door. Four corpses stared at me from the ground below, unsuccessfully attempting to climb the steps to the door. I reluctantly put the rig into gear and rolled forward slowly, past the scene of reptilian carnage I'd never forget. Just like the birds, alligators were suited to survival against the dead. The birds could fly over unthinkable hordes; the alligators could simply swim away or feast on rotten flesh from the safety of the murky waters they dominated.

“
Eat every last one of the fuckers!
” I screamed out the window as I drove past.

1700

I'd only made about twenty miles of progress since leaving Alligator Lake. Fuel state looked good, but I'd be looking out for somewhere to siphon some diesel tomorrow if possible. I found a mansion off the road with a wide turnaround driveway to park for the night. At probably five thousand square feet, I didn't have the inclination or energy to clear the place. This fact was hammered home by the corpse I saw inside looking out at me and clawing at the window on the second floor. There was no telling what horrors awaited me inside.

I climbed up into the trailer to check on the GARMR. It had slid a couple feet from where I'd put it on standby. I began to toss out pallets of rotted lettuce and was assaulted by flies and mosquitoes for my effort. I kept clearing the trailer. The pile of lettuce boxes outside grew larger as I moved closer to the front. As I got rid of the rest of the rotten food, I felt the cool air from the trailer's refrigeration unit blowing against my face. I figured out how to disable it, hoping to save a few precious drops of diesel.

I slid the aluminum ramp down and hit the follow button on the GARMR. As it exited the trailer, I pulled out the tablet and began to direct the machine through the tall, unkempt grass leading behind the mansion. Like the spiral staircase house I'd used for shelter, this one had a large screened-in back area with a pool. I watched the high-definition feed streaming onto the tablet as I
sat in relative safety inside the cab. The GARMR feed showed five or six corpses standing in the field behind the house. There was also a detached three-car garage in the back near the pool.

I recalled the machine, waiting until I heard the soft clicks of its synthetic hooves on the driveway outside the door. I could handle half a dozen of them. With no swarms in the vicinity, I stowed the GARMR and listened to Willie Nelson, the only CD I could find in the truck.

2145

The thing in the window kept rapping on the glass, trying to get out. I pulled the NOD from my pack, dialed my red dot down to the lowest setting, and rolled down the passenger window. The moon was reflecting its bright eight-minute-old light showdown, illuminating the area.

Through my optic I could make out the female corpse standing there with a bandolier of something hung across her body. Possibly shotgun shells. She'd been dead a long time; her eyes were sunken and her lips shriveled, allowing the moonlight to shine from her jagged and broken teeth. I took aim with my SBR and squeezed the trigger. The round impacted the glass, shattering the pane instantaneously, sending the corpse to the floor with a thump. I couldn't hear anything else coming from inside the house. I sat there in the cab with my NOD still on, watching the smoke slowly rise from the ejection port.

Day 7

1100

Last night I dreamed of alligators, hundreds of them chasing me all over God's green earth. At some point, I thought I'd gotten up and checked the window again, seeing the curtain move as if something was inside. Now my back aches and I'm fatigued from tossing and turning. Something about the nearby house puts my hackles up.

•  •  •

At about 0700 I had put my boots on, stretched, and checked my surroundings in the morning light. Satisfied that nothing would grab me on the way out, I jumped down to the running board and to the driveway below. Without even thinking, I pressed the Follow button on the Simon and watched the empty lettuce boxes I'd stacked fall away from the sleeping GARMR. Its sensor spun up and its head tracked me as I began to walk, waiting until a space of ten feet was between us before its electrical and hydraulic servo motors sent it trotting after me. I don't know why I told the machine to follow; I just did. It wasn't a dog, but it was something that filled some primal void in my brain that didn't like being completely alone. The machine was utterly efficient in its movements, rationing every joule expended. I'd only seen cheetahs walk like that on TV. With the African population being what it was before the dead walked, I doubted that any cheetahs remained. Perhaps they weren't nuked and the corpses were all being picked apart by the sand and birds of the Sahara.