The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (22 page)

About to pull out the map to find another
route, Tick-Tock heard Cindy ask, “Is that a car over there?”

He turned
to look and could see her leaning across Denise and staring out the window. Squinting, he could just make out the shape of a vehicle with brush piled on top of it in the woods. As he looked closer, he saw that it wasn’t just one car but two. Beyond them, he could see dozens of unnatural lumps in what looked to be a field. As he focused on other humped shapes that were overgrown with weeds, he heard Pep start to bark at something from the bed of the truck. Something seemed odd about the trees on that side of the road and it took him a second to realize that most of them were dead.

They hadn’t grown there, Tick-Tock realized with a start. They had been cut down and stuck in the ground to create a screen.

He pushed the transmit button on the radio then said in a low voice, “I think we just drove into an ambush. I need you to back up.”

Hearing the diesel engine of the second truck
rev, Tick-Tock was about to switch into reverse when he noticed movement to his front. A glint of light from behind the roadblock caught his eye, which gave him just enough time to reach behind Denise and push her and Cindy down before the first bullet crashed through the windshield. It was instantly followed by a fusillade of high-powered slugs and buckshot that slammed into the front and sides of the truck.

Tick-Tock knew
there was only one way to break up an ambush, so he twisted around and opened the door. A bullet slammed through it, sending slivers of metal into his left hand. Ignoring this, he jumped out and ran forward, zigzagging as he fired bursts from his M4 at anything that moved. He could hear the snap of bullets as they flew past him, and the crack of rifle fire coming from behind, but his focus was on the roadblock.

A
man in a baseball cap popped up from behind it with a hunting rifle, Tick-Tock aimed from the hip and quickly squeezed the trigger. A fine spray of red went into the air as his target was hit in the right side. Baseball cap let out a cry of pain and spun around disappearing behind the logs. Tick-Tock saw movement at the right side of the roadblock, so he sent a couple rounds in that direction as he increased speed.

A shotgun boomed and a blossom of dirt flew up from the road in front of him.
From the sound, he knew that it had come from his left, so he was able to change direction in time to avoid the second shot. He saw a figure step out from the trees to get a better aim, but someone behind Tick-Tock let loose a burst of rifle fire, and the figure crumpled to the ground. Emboldened by the knowledge that his people were now in the fight, he dodged around the end of the roadblock.

A
woman dressed in overalls was trying to bring an SKS rifle around at him when he fired a three round burst into her chest. She dropped like a rag doll, revealing a man further down the barricade. He was so intent on firing over the top of the roadblock that he was oblivious to everything else.

Without hesitation,
Tick-Tock shot him in the side of the head.

Spinning around to find another target, he saw a man running down the road away from him.
His rifle already raised, Tick-Tock paused for a second at the thought of shooting someone in the back. When the figure turned and lifted a pistol to fire two rounds at him, all bets were off, and he opened up until the bolt on his rifle locked open.

The man rolled back and forth on the ground, holding his legs and screaming in pain. Tick-Tock’s only thought at s
eeing he’d hit the man in the legs was that he needed to adjust the sights on his rifle.

Quickly s
witching out magazines in one smooth motion, he scanned the area for more ambushers but saw none. All he could hear were the moans of the first man he’d shot in the side and the screams from the second he’d shot in the legs. After shooting them both in the head, he cautiously moved back around the roadblock. Once on the road, he could see Steve and Heather emerging from the woods on either side of the second truck. He felt a moment of fear when he didn’t see Denise, but then noticed her rifle poking out of the shattered windshield. She waved to him and he waved back.

Brain and Sheila were running toward him, asking if he was okay.

With a nod, he called out, “I’m good. What about the others?”

Stopping
in front of him, Brain said, “I think our people are okay but a couple of the others got hit. One lady got it in the side of the head. About five or six guys opened up on us from both sides of the road, so we did like you always told us to and went right at them.” With a laugh, he added, “I think even Mary got one. She was standing in the back of the truck looking like Audie Murphy while she was screaming and shooting into the trees.”

His opinion of her rising from minus ten to minus five, Tick-Tock
saw Steve waving him over from the side of the first truck.

“Got to go,” he said.

“Your hand’s bleeding,” Sheila said. “Let me take a look at it.”

“Later,” he told her as he took off at a jog.

His adrenalin rush from the fight dissipating, Tick-Tock could feel his hand throbbing by the time he reached Steve. The bleeding had almost stopped, but it hurt like hell with each beat of his heart.

S
teve caught sight of his bloody hand and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I
caught a couple frags, but it’s nothing.”

“Get Sheila to look at it,” he said.
“She’s got some antibiotics. You don’t need that getting infected.”

Tick-Tock promised he would
get it tended to and then asked what happened at the second truck.

“We heard the first shot and knew what was up,” Steve told him. “
They opened up on us, so Heather and I unassed from the back while Connie and Brain put down some fire from the cab and then followed us. There were five of them in the woods on either side and we got them all. I don’t think there’s any more since the trees get so thick further in that we would have heard them trying to bust through.” Looking around, he asked, “How did you know it was an ambush?”

Tick-Tock told him about Cindy seeing the car. Together they walked over to the spot and saw that
tall, thin trees had been cut down and stuck in holes to make a screen. Beyond that, they could see a small clearing filled with vehicles covered in brush. The further they were parked toward the back, the more they were covered with natural growth.

“These guys were highwaymen,” Steve said. “It looks like they’ve been doing this since the beginning. They wait for someone to come along and ambush them
, then take everything they’ve got and dump the cars here. They put the trees up as a screen so no one else who comes along sees them and gets suspicious.”

“Think we got them all
?” Tick-Tock asked.

“I
don’t know, but we need to find out,” Steve said. “I don’t want these assholes sniping at us.”

Moving back to Tick-Tock’s truck, Steve noticed all the bullet holes in the front
grill and said, “That doesn’t look good.”

The engine was still running
, but thin wisps of steam were coming from under the hood.

Tick-Tock said “Shit,” at the top of his voice and ran for the truck. As he reached it, the engine gave a rattle and died.
He asked Denise to switch it off, then climbed onto the bumper and opened the hood. As he looked into the engine compartment, he heard a high whistling noise and jumped back just as the radiator blew. Landing on his back in the dirt, he was enveloped in a cloud of steam, the smell of antifreeze thick in his nose as he crab walked backwards.

As he stood
up, he heard an urgent call from the second truck, which caused him to start and then stop. It was Heather calling for someone to help her with one of the others who had been wounded. Steve moved forward but Tick-Tock stayed where he was.

Steve stopped and asked, “Don’t you have first aid training?”

Looking at the steaming engine, he answered, “If it’s not one of our people, then I have more important things to deal with.”

Steve’s voice softened as he said, “
There are wounded people back there. You can’t ignore them.”

After thinking about it for a few seconds, Tick-Tock said, “Alright, but I’m still not putting my ass on the line for them.”

Two of the people from the Battleship Texas had been killed outright when one of the highwaymen had sprayed the bed of the truck with an AK47 before being shot by Brain. Four more had been wounded, but only one of them was in serious condition.

Tick-Tock climbed into the back of the truck
and found Heather leaning over a man lying prostrate on the floor. The man had blood all over his chest and was wheezing in and out as he tried to get air into his lungs. A medical kit was open next to Heather and she was reaching into it when she saw him.

Without preamble, she said, “
It hit him in the lung and he’s got a sucking chest.”

Tick-Tock assessed the wound and saw
that it was hopeless. Shot through the upper chest, without a medevac chopper and a team of surgeons waiting at a hospital ready to receive him, the man was history. Nonetheless, he asked, “All the way through?”

“
In and out,” Heather told him. “Looks like it shattered his scapula on the way out.”

Bone fragments on top of everything else, Tick-Tock thought. This guy is a goner.

“You sealed the entrance and the exit wound?” Tick-Tock asked.

“I got the exit wound but not the entrance because I ran out of dressings,” she told him as she waved her hand at three people
leaning against the side of the truck.

Tick-Tock saw they had dressings tied over their arms and legs.
He wondered what they would do now for dressings if one of their own group was injured. Pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, he slid the cellophane cover off it and handed it over to Heather, saying, “Improvise, adapt and overcome.”

She smeared it with Vaseline and
held it against the bullet hole while Tick-Tock retrieved a roll of duct tape and secured it against the wound. The man’s breathing eased almost immediately.

“Help me push him over onto the side of the wound,” Tick-Tock told her
. “It will keep the blood from pooling in both lungs.”

The man was unconscious so it was easy to roll him onto his left side
. When they were done, Heather asked, “What now?”

He wanted
to reply, ‘wait for him to die’, instead he said, “Treat him for shock when he comes to.”

“That’s it?” Heather asked.

“Without a hospital, it’s only a matter of time,” he replied.

The man gave a final gasp and died ten minutes later.

***

They found the highwaymen’s camp
an hour later. It consisted of a dozen tents clustered around two fire pits near a creek. After circling the area to make sure none of the land pirates were still around, they moved in to search for things they needed.

Picking up a fishing creel, Brain opened it
and discovered that it was packed with gold and silver jewelry. Chains, rings and bracelets gleamed in the afternoon sun filtering through the trees.

Brain showed
it to Tick-Tock, asking, “Is this stuff even worth anything anymore?”

“Not unless you can eat it,” he replied.
“But if you find any money, save it for toilet paper.”

He dropped the creel, letting
the precious metals and gems spill across the ground. Brain said, “If I can’t eat it, drink it, shoot it or use it to run my truck, I don’t want it.”

Tick-Tock flinched at the reference to a truck. The whole bottom of the radiator
on his had blown out. While they were out searching for the camp, the others were transferring everything out of it and into Brain’s. Sheila and Mary were overseeing this while Steve and Heather checked the vehicles in the clearing for fuel and to see if any of them would run. Denise was taking the weapons off the men and women they’d killed and gathering whatever ammunition they had on them.

From his right,
he saw Connie emerge from a tent and call out that she had found something. Not seeing anything in her hands, he asked her what it was.

“You’ve got to see it
for yourselves. It’s like an armory or something.” She replied.

Flipping back the flap on the tent, they saw two
piles of weapons stacked haphazardly on either side of a cot. Tick-Tock entered and was amazed at the variety of rifles and handguns. A few automatic rifles and even more hunting rifles were placed on one side while handguns were scattered across the ground on the other. Picking up a FN automatic rifle, he ejected the magazine and saw it was empty. Pulling back the bolt, he saw that it was starting to rust with disuse and lack of care. He picked up a scoped hunting rifle, pulled the bolt back and saw it was empty too. A few assorted boxes of cartridges were stacked on a camp table but that was it. Pawing through them, he found some .30 caliber rifle rounds that he pocketed for Denise, but most of it was .45 caliber.