The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (21 page)

“Mary?” Tick-Tock asked in disbelief.

“She said she wanted a gun,” Steve replied.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Tick-Tock mumbled.

Thinking about it, Steve said, “You’re right about us doing everything and I apologize. I know you’re wiped out, but someone has to stay awake tonight. I’ll split the shifts up between one of our people and two of theirs.”

“That still doesn’t help me get any sleep
.”

“You and Brain are
off the watch,” Steve told him. “You both did enough today.”

Appeased, Tick-Tock asked, “So
, what’s for dinner?”

“Beef stew and chili mixed together,” Steve told him. “It’s going to be cold though since I don’t want to risk a fire. We don’t want to attract any attention.”

Tick-Tock said, “Now that we’re on the road, we need to come up with some kind of routine like we had on the boat. For one thing, we need to stop earlier so we can scout the area.” Looking around at the rapidly darkening forest, he added, “We don’t know what’s around us.”

“Good point,” Steve told him. “I put a plan together
and part of it is stopping sooner, I just didn’t think it would get dark so fast. What I want to do from here on out is hit the road when it’s light enough to see and go for a few hours. We’ll stop and eat about one o’clock and then get back on the road. About an hour before dark, we’ll stop for the night and check the area. If we’re far enough away from anything, we can risk a fire so we can get some hot food. I also want to rotate the driving from here on out between a morning shift and an afternoon shift.”

Tick-Tock considered this before
saying, “Sounds good, but who’s going to do the driving besides Brain and I?”

“Me and Heather,” he answered.

Shaking his head, Tick-Tock said, “Denise and I can handle our truck. We’ll keep Cindy between us so she’s safe.”

“Works for me,” Steve told him. “Let’s go eat.”

The stew ended up being hot since Heather had taken a case of Sterno from the Dead Calm.

They sat in the bed of the first truck while the people from the Texas gathered in the second
after they got their food. Brain told them that if they touched any of the supplies, he would find out who it was, shoot them in the foot and leave them for the dead.

After eating, Tick-Tock leaned back and said, “You know what I miss the most?”

“What’s that?” Sheila asked.

“Bread,” he replied. “Even on the Dead Calm it was all stale.”

“I miss the Internet,” Brain spoke up.

“
All you used it for was to surf porn, Pork Chop,” Tick-Tock told him.

When the laughter died down, Brain put his arm around Connie and mouthed the words, ‘Not anymore,’ to Tick-Tock.

He smiled at that and asked Sheila, “What do you miss?”

She ruffled the fur on Pep’s neck and said, “I know she misses dog treats.” Everyone was looking at her
, waiting for an answer, so she thought about it for a second before replying, “I miss walking into a dark bar at high noon on a bright sunny day and ordering the first drink of the day.” Turning to Heather, she asked, “What do you miss?”

“In some ways
I miss being a cop, but mostly I think it’s walking down to the convenience store when I need something. It was all there, right at your fingertips.” Heather looked at Steve “What do you miss?”

A thousand things ran through his mind that they didn’t have any more. He missed the sound of airplanes flying over
head and drinking a fresh brewed cup of coffee every morning. He missed watching a football game with a cold beer in one hand and a plate of nachos on the table at his side.

His mind struck on something
though, so he said, “What I miss the most is walking the beach.”

“I miss my
legos,” Cindy chimed in.

“Well, we don’t have any bread or
legos, but we might be able to have that drink,” Steve said.

Going back to the cab of the second truck, he returned with a bottle of rum he’d taken from the Dead Calm and a Snickers bar for Cindy. After twisting off the cap and taking a drink, he passed it around
while Cindy shared her candy bar with Pep. The can of Sterno burned with a blue glow as they all sat around it in a circle going over the things they missed the most in this new dead world. When the bottle had gone around twice, he capped it and returned it to the truck.

As he walked
back to join his people, a glint of light in the woods caught his eye. Stopping to focus on it, he could see it was a fire burning deep in the forest.

Steve called
out to the others, “We’ve got company,” then readied his rifle as he watched them pile out of the back of the truck with their weapons in hand as they searched for a target. With satisfaction, he saw that even Mary had the pistol he’d given her out and ready. He remembered when Heather tried to teach her to shoot while they were on the sailboat, and that she was lucky to even hit the water, this at least showed her willingness to help.

Pointing out the campfire burning in the distance, he said, “
It’s not Z’s because they don’t cook their food.”

“
But are they people like us?” Sheila asked.

“Or people like them
?” Tick-Tock said as he motioned toward the second truck.

“Or land pirates?” Heather added.

“Do you think they know we’re here?” Sheila asked. “They should have heard the sound of the trucks.”

“Not if they started a fire,” Tick-Tock told her. Turning to Steve, he said, “We need to check this out. They might be like us
, but you never know.”

Steve nodded, saying,
“Heather, get our people set up to cover the trucks in a three hundred sixty degree radius in case this is a setup. Get the others ready to go in case we have to take off fast.”

She turned to
do what he’d asked as Steve said to Tick-Tock, “Let’s go.”

“Wait a second,” Denise
said and motioned for them to hold on. Going to the truck, she came back and handed Tick-Tock her night vision scope saying, “The batteries are almost dead, so you can only use it for a minute or two before it starts to fade. I just use it for a few seconds at a time and then shut it off.”

Tick-Tock
thanked her, and then leaned forward to kiss her before turning and heading into the woods.

The floor of the forest was covered in dead leaves, but the
two men made very little noise as they walked over them. The rain they’d had earlier worked in their favor and dampened them. They crept along in a half crouch, stopping occasionally as Tick-Tock scouted the way with the scope. The light from the fire grew brighter as they approached, and they could now see the shadows of tents around it.

Stopping at the edge of a campground that was overgrown with disuse, the two men lay on the ground in a clump of bushes and observed the people around the fire.

“I count five,” Tick-Tock whispered. “All of them armed with pistols.” Raising the night vision scope to his eye and turning it on, he scanned the area around them and added, “The scope keeps whiting out when I look too close to the fire, but I don’t see anyone else. I can see a couple hunting rifles too, but no automatic weapons.”

As they watched, one of the men grabbed a pot from a makeshift grill over the fire and start
ed spooning its contents into cans and handing them out. They were too far away to make out what the people were saying to each other, but occasionally they could hear them laugh as they ate. Steve could see three women and two men in the group and three tents, one of them only half set up. This told him that they had arrived after his group, and this was why they hadn’t heard the sound of the diesel engines.

“
I don’t see any vehicles,” Tick-Tock pointed out.

“It must suck to be on foot
.”

“So what do you think, should we approach them?”

“I don’t want to risk it,” Steve replied. “Nowadays, most people are going to shoot first and try to find out who you are after. I’m sure there are groups on land just like the pirates we ran into out in the Gulf. Besides, we’ve already got enough on our hands with Sean’s people, and this group looks like they can take care of themselves.”

With one last look, Steve started backing away. Th
e group didn’t look like a threat, but they would have to keep an eye out in this direction for the rest of the night.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Big Thicket Preserve:

The trucks sat
silent where the fire road ended at a two-lane paved road. Tick-Tock crouched with Steve and Heather as they studied a map spread out on the ground.

Pointing
to the spot on the map where they’d stopped, and then dragging his finger down to follow a road, Tick-Tock said, “If we go south, we can make it to these trails and that’ll take us all the way to the other end of the preserve. The only problem with this is we’ll run out of gas before we get there. If we go north though, we can hook up with this road and keep going east, and then we’ll end up on highway 190 heading into Jasper. I know we wanted to avoid roads and towns but we need fuel.”

“And food,” Steve said.

“And we can always use ammunition,” Heather added as she lifted her rifle.

Steve looked down
at the map and said, “I say we head to 190 and hit any cars and trucks we find for what we need. We can restock on supplies and then cut back south. We had good luck raiding vehicles before we ended up out here in the boondocks. Besides that, 190 runs right into Polk, so at least we’ll be heading in the right direction.”

“
Yeah,” Heather said as she looked around, “even the farms we’ve come across out here are stripped.” Pointing to the makeshift shelters of canvas and wood over the back of the trucks, she added, “At least we found enough stuff to do that.”

“
It’s weird that we haven’t seen any people since the night before last at that campsite,” Steve said. “As slow as we’re going, and as much as we’ve had to backtrack because of washed out roads, I figured we’d at least see someone.”

Heather motioned
toward a burned out building across the road that had obviously been looted, “We’re not the first people to come through here, and I’ll bet quite a few of them just took what they wanted. If anyone’s still around, I’m sure they hide every time they hear an engine.”

“Land pirates,” Steve said, using the
name they’d given to the groups that would be roaming around raping, pillaging and looting.

Tick-Tock f
olded the map while he said, “And as far as I’m concerned, it’s a good thing they’re hiding.” Looking at the people from the Texas stretching their legs as they watched the woods around them in fear, he added with disgust, “We’ve already got our hands full.”

With a sigh, Steve said, “I know
that they’re worthless, Tick-Tock, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re with us.”

“So why don’t we change that
fact and dump them,” Tick-Tock responded. “We siphon the gas from the second truck into the first one and load it with all the food and water. Our people can pile in and we leave the others. The only thing they do is eat, shit and complain anyway.”

“
Because we made a deal with them,” Steve said. “If it wasn’t for the boats we got from them, we’d still be back in Houston.”

Not having an argument for th
is, since he knew their sailboat had been so badly damaged it wouldn’t have stayed afloat for more than a few days, he said, “You’re right, we would be, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to risk my ass to save any of them when they won’t even step up to save themselves.”

Looking to where Sean was waving at him and asking
when they were going to eat, Steve said, “That makes two of us.”

“Three,” Heather chimed in.

***

They only had to backtrack once
, and that was because they came across a washed out bridge. After finding an alternate route, they continued north until they rounded a curve and reached a roadblock. The trees were thick and close in on both sides of the road, so several times they’d come across a few that had fallen and blocked their path. Those had been easily dragged off to the side. But this time was different. Huge logs had been dragged across the road that would have stopped anything short of a tank.

Halting a hundred feet away
, Tick-Tock said to Denise, “Tell Steve what’s going on.”

Before she could lift the radio to her mouth, Steve’s voice came over the speaker asking why they’d stopped.

She handed the radio over to Tick-Tock and he said, “We’ve got a roadblock ahead, over.”

Not being able to see around the lead truck, Steve asked, “How bad
, over?”

“Bad enough where we can’t drive around it
,” he replied. “It looks like it’s been here for a while so it’s probably from someone trying to isolate themselves from the spread of the virus, over.”