The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (130 page)

The dead were all around, pulled from
their wanderings by the sound of the wreck and the smell of the
living. Billy shifted Beth's weight more fully onto his shoulder,
and lifted the gun. Before he could fire the truck blew up behind
him and he felt himself pushed by the blast out into the street
where he struggled to stay on his feet. A warm rush or air moved
rapidly past him and Billy got his feet moving only a second
later.

The dead scattered. They made this odd
clicking sound, a sort of strangled scream, which Billy supposed
was all they could do with no air to move their lungs, as he ran
they slowly disappeared into the hiding paces they had stumbled
from. An SUV loomed out of the darkness, illuminated by the flames
and the moonlight. Dusty, sitting in the driveway of a house three
houses over from the one they had plowed into. A second later and
Billy had the door open and Beth tumbled inside onto the passenger
seat. He ran around the car to the other side and fired a quick
burst at three of the dead that came from the side of the garage
and started toward him in their stumbling, dragging way. They all
three went down, but they were back up again almost as quickly as
they had gone down. He was too far away for head shots. He got the
handle open and jumped into the car pulling the door shut behind
him.

He sat, his breath coming in ragged
gasps and pulls. His lungs hurt, there was a stitch in his side and
his heart felt like it just might explode at any second. He looked
over at Beth, but her head was rocked back against the seat back. A
sob escaped his throat, but he bit down on it, and breathing hard
checked the ignition.

No keys, but that was what he had
expected. What he hoped for was gas. The car should start, the gas
was the important thing. He reached to the floorboards for his
knapsack and a screwdriver to jimmy the ignition and that was when
he realized he had nothing to get the truck started with. All he
needed was a screwdriver to hammer into the ignition, pop the
cylinder, and then start it. But he had neither the screwdriver nor
a way to get it into the ignition in the first place. He fisted his
hands and slammed them against the wheel. His head sank onto his
hands.

“
Smash it,” Beth said. It
was not much more than a whisper, but it bought Billy's head up
fast. Outside the truck the dead were gathering. Just three or
four, but they could smell them, and it wouldn't be long until more
showed up. He focused on her face which was ashen and blood
slicked, unsure if she had really even spoken. She turned her face
to him, eyes heavy lidded, unfocused. “Smash it, Billy... Rock...
Rocks by the driveway... Saw them... Smash it.” Her head sank down
to the dashboard and stayed there. A trickle of blood ran across
the dusty plastic and rolled toward the edge of the dash before it
slipped over the edge and continued down into darkness.

“
Jesus, Beth. You're hurt
bad, Beth.”

“
Billy... Billy shut up and
get a rock... Get it, Billy. Stop whining, get the fuckin' rock.”
Beth told him. Her words were muffled, whether from the effort or
the position she was in he couldn't tell. He picked up the rifle by
the barrel and looked through the glass at the dead that were
trying to figure out a way into the truck. He waited for the one
near the drivers door to slip backwards along the side of the SUV
and then he threw the door open and jumped from the
truck.

He landed bad, on the very same rocks
Beth had been talking about, and nearly went all the way down
before he caught himself and slammed his knee into the pavement to
stop himself. He had been unable to close the door as his ankle
twisted and he fell away. The one that had just slipped past the
door was already turning to get inside. He couldn't shoot, if he
did he might hit Beth. He launched himself at the shambling wreck
instead and knocked it backwards and to the ground. They were both
snarling he realized a moment later when he shot it in the
head.

A second one came around the back of
the SUV. Billy took two steps and shot it in the head. The third
was on the opposite side of the truck and seemed frozen, unsure
what to do. Billy turned, picked up a large rock, and tried to step
back into the truck. The ankle collapsed and he went sprawling,
losing the rock, barely holding onto the rifle as he once again
slammed his knee into the ground to stop himself from planting his
face on the steel door sill of the car. The zombie on the other
side made up her mind, stood to her full height, and sprang to the
roof of the car. Billy heard the metal buckle as she
landed.

A second later he forced himself to his
feet, adrenaline flooding his body, leaving that sour electric
taste in his mouth as it did. The zombie stood to her full height
once more, nothing but tightly stretched skin and protruding bones,
but determined to have him. Billy raised the rifle and shot her
under the chin. She collapsed on the barrel and he turned as she
spilled past him and burst open onto the pavement behind him. Billy
took two shambling steps of his own, ankle and knee screaming, pain
so hard that it made him stop and double up. He vomited, losing
control for a brief instant. The pain was so hot. A second after
that the adrenaline kicked back in and he finished his shambling
travel, managed to stoop and pick up another large rock and get
back inside the SUV. He slammed the door on the hand of another
zombie that had come out of the darkness. He heard the bones snap,
and the fingers fell away into the SUV as the door thudded home.
Billy collapsed against the steering wheel. He couldn't seem to
catch his breath. He waited for his heart to slow down.

The dead seemed to be everywhere when
he lifted his eyes a few seconds later. One was inches away,
staring into his own eyes through the glass. Dozens of others
milled about as if waiting to be told what to do. His heart
staggered once more, and the rifle was coming up before he realized
he could do nothing. He lowered the gun and raised the rock that
was still clutched in one hand. He smashed it down on the cheap
plastic that surrounded the ignition built into the side of the
steering column.

Outside the zombies went crazy. Sounds
did that to them, but to Billy it was almost as if they knew he was
about to escape. The one next to the window stepped back and cocked
it's head. Billy looked back at the column, smashed the rock down
again and the pieces of the ignition fell to the floorboards of the
SUV. A splinter of plastic cut his hand as he jammed his fingers
into the opening and pushed down into the hole the cylinder had
once occupied. It took a second to find what he was searching for,
but once he found it his finger pressed down and the motor began to
turn over. At nearly the same time the zombie dropped from sight
outside the window.

The motor coughed to life just as the
zombie shot up with a rock in its rotting hands and smashed it down
on the glass. Billy let out an involuntary scream as the rock
skittered across the glass and flew across the hood. The zombie did
it's odd little scream and then fell out of sight once more. Billy
slammed his hand forward, caught the shift lever and yanked it down
into reverse. His foot was already mashing the gas pedal down, the
engine was revving and so when the zombie came back up with yet
another rock the front slammed into him as Billy spun the wheel,
and the car began to race backwards, turning as it went. The zombie
and several behind it flew away from the side of the car, the
wheels hopped as it bounced over them and then caught. The car
rocketed out into the street. Billy locked the brakes up to get it
stopped and nearly stalled it as it ground to a stop. A second
later he dropped it into drive and plowed through a group of a
dozen or more of the dead as he fumbled for the headlight switch
and roared off down the road.

The dead flew up over the hood. One
smashed into the glass hard enough to spiderweb it as they hit and
then tumbled over the roof. He could hear them bumping as they
slammed into the roof and fell into the night behind them. A few
seconds later and all he could hear was the scream of the motor as
he accelerated down the street. He forced himself to slow down so
he didn't wreck. Beth was holding onto the dashboard in a death
grip.

The truck left the pavement and flew
out into the desert once more. Billy mashed down the pedal a little
more and began to put some space between themselves and the housing
project. He reached over and pulled Beth away from the dashboard.
She rocked back into the seat, her eyes closed, blood still running
from under her hairline and slicking her face.

East of Phoenix

Billy and Beth

The moon was fully up. The desert
seemed almost a if it were lit with streetlights to Billy. He had
found a dirt road and followed it to a concrete building that was
part of a complex of buildings. The place didn't look like it had
much going for it. A collection of buildings in the desert. A few
trucks sitting around. Company trucks of some sort, painted the
same colors but no name on them. He passed through the complex
slowly on the dirt road that fed it. Nothing. He turned and drove
through it more slowly. Nothing again.

Billy stared out into the night. The
moon was moving past the halfway point, there wouldn't be much of
the night left. He looked over at Beth where she sat, head back,
breathing slowly. At some time the bleeding had stopped. He looked
back around at the buildings. Maybe ten, unless he had miscounted.
A dozen trucks and cars sat around buildings. A large building that
was probably a garage, or at least appeared o be. Doors down. A
side door, closed. He drove slowly, circling the building. A back
door, also closed. Maybe, he thought, if it had been closed from
the start nothing had been in there.

Billy pulled back out front of the
building, shifted the SUV into park and left it running. The door
was fifteen feet away. He reached over, pushed the button on the
glove box and let it fall open. He pawed through insurance papers,
candy bars, those would come in handy later, maybe, and a half
bottle of water. There was a small flashlight on a key chain. No
keys on the chain. Probably no battery in the flashlight either,
Billy thought, but when he pushed the click button on top of the
small aluminum flashlight it shot a bright beam that lit up the
inside of the truck and nearly made him blind to the night before
he clicked it back off. He waited a second and then leaned across
to Beth.

“
Beth... Beth I got to
go... Beth?” Nothing. Her breathing didn't change and it scared
Billy more than the attack by the zombies had. He sighed, fingered
the safety on the rifle to make sure it was off, and then stepped
from the truck.

The door chuffed closed behind him.
Nearly silently. Silence, or at least it seemed silent for a
moment. The desert wind reached his ears, just a soft rising and
falling of sound as it slipped around the buildings. Nothing else.
He made himself search the entire area once more with his eye and
then he walked to the door, took one more look back at the SUV and
then turned the knob and stepped inside the building.

Billy stood in the darkness and
listened to the wind slip around the metal building. His hand
skittered along the wall and found the light switch. He flicked it
before he had thought about it. Old habits died hard, he told
himself. The click was overly loud in the darkness and made him
jump. He forced his heart to slow down and then breathed deep.
There was death here, but it was old death. Not the smell of the
zombies. He breathed in deeply once more to be sure.

The building was much more than a
garage. There was a garage area to pull trucks into. One sat inside
now, two large rolls of fencing in the back and dozens of long
steel fence posts. He had seen them before. About seven or eight
feet long with a sharp steel cross piece at the bottom to drive
into the ground. A sledge hammer to the top to drive it down into
the earth and you had a fence post. He stepped forward toward a
glassed in room just past the truck. A lunchroom or sorts he
guessed, or a break room. Vending machines lined the walls and
three tables sat in the middle of the room with plastic chairs
scattered about them. Empty.

Off to the left a steel door separated
another area. He was beginning to panic about Beth. He had been
gone a long time, but he forced himself to twist the knob on the
door. It led to a hallway. A small office, bathrooms, and the door
that lead outside. He walked to the door and locked it. There was a
glass wall that looked into the office and his eye caught something
he had missed as he walked past. There was a chair that had been
pulled over to a window that looked out on the desert. A man sat in
that chair.

Billy's heart leapt into his throat,
but only for a second. The man was dead. He had ben dead for some
time. A gun rested in his lap, his head cocked at an odd angle.
Billy backtracked to the door, opened it and stepped
inside.

The smell was not that bad, but it was
what he had smelled. The dead smelled differently once they rose to
their new life. That was all he knew. It wasn't something he could
definitely put his finger on, just a different smell of corruption.
Billy reached the chair an stared down at the man.

He had dried out in the heat of the
desert. Billy grabbed the armrest closest to him and dragged the
chair from the office and out into the garage. He rolled it up to
the doors and looked them over. Electric, but they could be
manually raised and closed. Probably a nod toward electricity that
might not always be available in the desert. Billy pulled on the
chains that dropped from the ceiling and the door went up,
squeaking as it went. He pushed the chair out across the cracked
pavement and left it close to one of the other buildings. The SUV
rumbled close by, the motor turning over smoothly. He could see
Beth, head back against the seat back. A minute later he drove the
truck into the garage and then worked the chains, lowering the door
down once more.