The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (31 page)

“How so?” Tick-Tock asked.

Pointing to where Fort Polk was situated on the map, he said, “Let’s say their patrols are going out a maximum of ten miles. If we siphon all the gas into one truck, we should have enough to make it that far, if not all the way.”

Tick-Tock nodded as he caught on and said, “
All we really need to do is send a couple of people to link up with the soldiers at Polk and bring back help.”

“Exactly,” Steve said.

“Denise and I can go,” Tick-Tock volunteered. “We can leave in the morning.”

Steve smiled at his friend’s offer. He was glad to see that
he was coming back to life.

“I think that would be a great idea,”
he told Tick-Tock. “Now the big question is whether or not the Z’s on the other side of Jasper will stay where they are. If they don’t, then we’ll have to bug out.”

“We can set up some rendezvous points,” Tick-Tock said. “We’ll pick two points to the north, south and west. That way
, if you’re not here when I bring back the cavalry, I’ll know where to look.”

Bending over the map, Steve said, “Then let’s do it.”

***

It was early in the morning when Steve saw Tick-Tock and Denise off. After a good hot meal the night before
, and the luxury of having real beds, the rest of the group was still asleep.

The previous evening, they had tried to calculate how long it would take them
to get to Fort Polk and finally settled on three days. They were amazed at the thought that what could be driven in a few hours before D-Day, now took days, but with having to backtrack and keep their speed slower on the dirt roads, they’d added in the extra time.

Once on the road, Tick-Tock felt relief wash over him. He had always been a loner, so being around
the others had been trying on his nerves. His own group was tolerable since he felt comfortable with them, but Sean and his crew could be difficult even in the best of circumstances.

As he slowly wove
his way around a jack-knifed tractor-trailer, Denise reached across the seat and took his hand before saying, “You know I’d take a bullet for you, Tick-Tock.”

“I’d never take one for you,” he replied adamantly.

Looking hurt, she asked, “Why not?”

“Because if I have time to jump in front of you and stop one, you
’d have time to jump out of the way,” he replied.

Denise laughed and said, “You’re a trip without luggage.”

Extracting his hand from hers so he could navigate the turn onto the dirt road, they only drove a short distance before entering the woods. It felt good to roll down their windows to let the wind blow over them as they relaxed in their seats. The road ahead of them was long and straight and they could see nothing blocking their way.

***

Brain pounded on Steve and Heather’s door while calling out excitedly, “I got someone on the radio. I got someone on the radio.”

Still half asleep
, Steve rolled out of bed and shook off his grogginess. He was confused for a moment when he looked around and realized that Heather was gone. Checking his watch, he saw it was nine-thirty in the morning. He’d been up for three hours during the night to take his turn at watch, and then woken up early to say goodbye to Tick-Tock and Denise, so he was wiped out. She must have left quietly to let him sleep.

As he was pulling on a pair of jeans, Brain started knocking again
, so he said, “Hold on a minute, I’m coming.”

Opening the door, he found the tech bouncing from
one foot to another in excitement. Before he could speak, Steve asked, “Don’t you have a bathroom in your room?”

“What?” Brain asked.

“You look like you need to pee,” Steve told him.

“No,” he said. “Well, maybe. But that doesn’t matter. I finally reached someone on the radio.”

“Military?” he asked as he pulled on his boots.

“Civilian,” Brain told him. “They’re about halfway between Livingston and Jasper and they’re heading our way.”

“They’re mobile?” Steve asked.

“The guy I talked to said he was part of a group of ten people
,” Brain answered. “They’re coming from Fort Worth and they’ve been on the road for a week now. They managed to fight their way out of the city and now they’re trying to get to a relief center just like we are.”

“What did you tell
him about us?” Steve asked.

“I lied and said that we’re south of them and that
there are only three of us,” Brain replied.

“Good job,” Steve told him and then asked, “Is he still on the radio?”

“He’s talking to Connie right now,” Brain answered.”Everything he’s talked about so far is legit.”

They entered the radio room
and found Connie sitting in front of the CB. Brain had rigged up two external speakers, so the voice of the man she was talking came through clearly as he said, “Some more good news is that we’ve got enough fuel to make it all the way Florida if we need to, over.”

“And the bad news
? Over,” Connie asked.

There was silence for a moment before he said, “We’re going to need it. We had to swing way around Livingston to avoid a group of about three thousand dead
and we’ve been playing tag with them ever since. This group is huge and it’s moving east on highway 190. Good thing you’re further south, over.”

Everyone in the radio room froze at these words.

After a few seconds, Connie recovered and said, “Yeah, good thing we are. But just to let you know, there are about twenty thousand Z’s on the east side of Jasper, over.”

“That figures,” he said. “I guess we’re going to have to cut south and then east. Maybe we’ll run into you, over”

“Why not north? Over,” Connie asked.

“We already tried that way
,” he said. “Everything to the north is more dead than alive. I wouldn’t suggest you try it unless you have a tank. We lost four people trying to get through, over.”

Connie was about to say something when the speakers crackled to life and the man said, “Just ran into a roadblock. Got a fallen tree I have to help clear
, so I’ll talk to you later, over and out.”

Steve’s mind spun with the news. They were now blocked in three directions.
That only left… “Call Tick-Tock and find out how he’s doing,” he told Connie.

Within
seconds, she had him on the radio and was handing the mike over.

“How’s it going so far
? Over” Steve asked.

“Clear sailing,” Tick-Tock replied. “What’s up
? I just did our first radio check with Brain not even twenty minutes ago, over.”

Not wanting to give up anything over an open line, Steve said, “Just making sure you’re doing okay. I’ll fill you in on everything when you get back, over and out.”

Steve handed the microphone to Brain and said, “Don’t let any of the others know about this. I don’t want them to panic. I’ll go around and let our people know what’s going on.”

“This is really bad, isn’t it?” Connie asked.

“Not if Tick-Tock comes through,” Steve replied.

***

Tick-Tock and Denise were singing at the top of their lungs to the Stone Temple Pilots’, ‘Interstate Love Song’ as they cruised down the dirt road at a steady twenty miles an hour. The music was courtesy of some CDs that Denise found in the glove box, and the slow speed was courtesy of the sharp curves in the road.

The song ended and Tick-Tock hit pause before saying, “It
’s about time to check in.”

Cruising
through the woods with her man by her side, no uglies in sight and music playing had gotten Denise feeling good. Checking her watch, she said, “We’ve still got five minutes. Play one more song and then we’ll call.”

He was waiting
to turn on the music until after he navigated a particularly sharp curve and was just about to twist the wheel when he saw a Z come staggering onto the road from the trees on his right. It was the first one they’d seen since leaving the asylum, and it was particularly gruesome.

Completely nude, its head lolled back and forth on its exposed spinal column in time with its lurching walk. All the flesh had been eaten or torn away on its left side, showing everything from its rib bones to its ankle. Black puss leaked in a
slow stream from these wounds and a dozen other smaller ones.

Wishing he
were still driving the National Guard truck so he could run it down, Tick-Tock swerved to avoid it. He knew that the last thing he wanted to do was have to stop and pick zombified flesh from the undercarriage if it got stuck.

The dead thing reached out to grab at them as they drove by, raking its hands down the side of the truck and leaving a black streak. One
hand hit the side view mirror, knocking it askew and spinning the Z around before it went sprawling into the dirt.

Twisting around in her seat
to watch it drop, Denise said, “Jesus.”

“Has left the building,” Tick-Tock added.

Denise laughed then faced forward again just in time to spot five more Z’s. Beyond them, she could see a huge crowd of the dead coming toward them down the road, lining it from one side to the other. The mass of dead stretched back for hundreds of feet. Beyond them, they could see another group heading their way. Tick-Tock braked hard, sending a cloud of dust rolling past them as he called for her to hold on. The trees were too close to leave him room to turn around, forcing him to throw the truck into reverse and start backing up as fast as he dared. Within seconds, he was up to twenty-five miles an hour.

Whipping her head back and forth as she tried to watch
both their front and their back, Denise saw that the first ugly they’d passed had regained its feet and was standing in the middle of the road. She knew if they swerved at this speed that they’d wreck, so she braced for a collision.

The truck hit the dead
thing dead center of its tailgate with a loud bang. Denise figured that the body would be pushed down but was shocked to see the force of the impact flip it into the air, and then it landed upside down against the cab. Its legs were sticking up through the rear window, and to her horror, they started swinging around as it tried to right itself. She moved her hand to roll down her window so she could lean out and shoot it, but then saw that it had managed to regain its feet and was heading toward Tick-Tock’s side of the cab. With only its torso in view, she pointed the carbine at it and started pulling the trigger.

The rear window blew out in a shower of safety glass
as her .30 caliber slugs passed through it and into what remained of the thing’s stomach and lower chest. It lurched backward in a spray of black puss and let out a screeching whine. Lowering its head, it stared at her with coal black eyes before letting out another whine and lurching toward the rear of the cab.

With
her target in sight now, Denise blew off the top of its head.

“Clear,” she called out.

Twisted around in his seat to see behind them, Tick-Tock said, “I can see that. Good job, babe. Now we have to get the hell out of here.”

They had to travel backwards for a
nother quarter mile before they finally found a place to turn around. Once they were heading north, Tick-Tock started rolling his head around on his neck to get the kinks out of it as he said, “Get on the radio and call Steve. Tell him we’re screwed if we go through here.”

***

Steve felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he listened to Denise’s report on what she and Tick-Tock had run into. When she was finished, he said, “Get back here as soon as possible. We’ve got a lot more to deal with than just that, over.”

“Be there in a few hours, over and out,” came the reply.

Handing the microphone back to Brain, he saw the worried look on the tech’s face. Steve gave him a pat on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, there are other points on the compass besides north, south, east and west.”

“Like where,” he asked, “straight up?”

“We can make it overland if we need to,” Steve replied, already knowing this wasn’t a realistic option, even if they left the others behind. “We’re only forty or fifty miles away from Polk as the crow flies.”

“But we’re not crows,” Brain replied glumly.

“Keep trying to contact someone,” Steve told him as he headed for the door to find Heather. “And don’t worry about it, I’ll figure something out.”

When Tick-Tock and Denise showed up two hours later, he had the beginnings of a plan.

***

The radio operator knocked on the door
to the office of his commanding officer and was told to enter. Marching in, he stood at attention two feet in front the man’s desk then said, “We’ve got a relay message from Fort Polk, sir.”

“And that means what to us here in DC?” The Captain asked
sarcastically.

The radio officer kept his face blank as he thought of what an insufferable prick his CO was. Trying to keep his tone neutral, he said, “
We have been advised that the NSA’s computer is set to flag certain keywords. One of those is ‘immune’, and it came up in a civilian transmission that was picked up by Polk, sir.”