walkers the survivors (4 page)

    
I noticed a lot of food on the shelves, which meant no one alive had come this way in a while. That meant there were more walking dead than the other kind.  I grabbed a Three Musketeers, unwrapped it and grinned big at Mason as we slowly made our way to the back of the building.  We must've spent an hour in there checking to make sure it was clear, it was a big place but in the end we managed to secure the mechanics bay, shut the door, lock it and signal everyone else it was clear.

    
Mercy elected to stay in the RV with the children but Lacy, Sam and George picked their way to the entrance and we began packing.  There seemed to be an abundance of candy.  I found TV's, microwaves, coffee pots and fridges that plugged into a cigarette lighters.  My favorite was an oven, shaped like the old, black domed, lunch boxes.  You just put in an aluminum loaf pan, conveniently sold here for 3 for $2.99, add hot dogs or soup or whatever, plug it in and drive on down the road.  By the time you get really hungry it's ready to eat.  What a deal.  I got all six of them.  Go figure.

    
We placed everything at the entrance so it could be easily and quickly loaded, checked out quite a few CB radios and a boatload of batteries.  I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, well, except of the ankle biter in the parking lot.  That made me think of how extremely gross I was, so I looked around and found jeans and a tee shirt that read 'I'm excited to be here.'  I stole a bumper sticker for Duke because his new bus doesn't have any and his other one was covered with them.  His read 'I see dead pixels'.  I'd let him find it himself.

    
Loading seemed to take forever but it was actually done pretty quickly.  We scooted across the interstate to investigate Cabela's.  There wasn't much left so we headed out of Billings and turned south.  We had several big towns to hit before we got to the east/west interstate in southern Wyoming and it was late in the day, so I figured we grab the first rest area we came to.  As it was we were nearly to Casper when we finally found one.  We were tired, hungry and dirty and no one more than me.  I was informed the hot water heater in Lacy's RV was working so I headed there as fast as I could for a shower with my jumbo bottle of spring fresh shampoo.

    
The three RV's fixed the meals so since I was already in Lacy's place, I'd eat there.  Soon Mason came in and said all the outfits were fueled up and ready to leave in the morning.  I visited with everyone once before hitting the sack.  Howard was helping Bubba pick out the perfect spot while Flynn and Clint watched the girls run and play.  They had some stored up energy and I guess they'd been driving them nuts to get out.  They'd just gotten used to playing whenever they wanted and now they're restricted.  But it couldn't be helped.

   
I dragged my tired self to the truck and the bunk waiting for me there.  The night had turned chilly but I wasn't worried about it.  I would lay in Masons arms, watch the stars move about above me and think only good thoughts, if it killed me.

                                                                     
CHAPTER 4

     Have you ever been to Wyoming?   It put the 'rough' in rugged or maybe not, but anyway, it ain't for wimps.  The great plains of the Midwest meet the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming.  It's a great plateau broken up by a number of mountains ranges like the Black Hills in the northeast and the Medicine Bow in the southern portions.  Prairie grasses dominate the eastern third of the state in competition with shrubs, like sagebrush.   That's what the travel brochures said that Lacy picked up at the truck stop in Billings.  That's about all we saw too as we wove our way south on Interstate 25.  That and the walkers in Casper.

    
You'd think in a state as sparsely populated as Wyoming there wouldn't be many walkers.  I mean you'd at least hope that was the case.  Nope.  And they weren't just any walkers either.  Cowboys and miners/prospectors and military walkers were not to be messed with, dead or alive.  They'd learned to move fast alive and they still moved fast.  They were still hungry too.  It was like a mob and we almost got stopped several times until we found a back way out of the place and headed south again.  We wasted almost half a day playing keep away in Casper.  We'd have to find another route on the return trip.

    
Once we headed south again I started to see mule deer and antelope on the desert-like plains alongside the road.  The snow-capped mountains that stayed to our right was a reassurance that something was right with the world.  You just knew they'd be there the next day.

   
We were exhausted by dinnertime.  My nerves were shot to hell and gone, Mason was holding it together but I knew he was ready to call it quits, so we started looking for somewhere we could rest for the night.  The one rest area on the interstate we came to next was full so we decided to keep going.   I wanted to stop before we got to Cheyenne so when we got to Chugwater, we agreed to stay overnight.

    
Chugwater was located in a valley with deep, clay-stone bluffs to the north and west.  According to Lacy, 'an Indian chief was disabled during the hunt and his son took charge.  Under his direction, hunters drove the bison over nearby cliffs, when the animals reached the ground below, a sound of 'chugging' was heard by the hunters.  Good enough reason I guess to name a town which might account for the population of 212.  Or not.

   
Grain elevators sat at one end of town with small concrete buildings along main street.  Our convoy stopped in the middle of main street and waited to see what walked out.  I guess maybe Mason got a bit impatient because he reached up, grabbed the air horn handle and blared out a big, old hello.  When he felt me looking at him, he shrugged and said, "What?"

    
"You have to ask?  You must really be tired.  I'll get the guns," and feeling put upon, I unhitched my seat belt, climbed into the bunk where I'd gathered our gear and prepared to do battle.  When nothing happened, we got out and faced a different direction, ready and waiting.  Well, hell, where was everyone.

    
"They're in Casper."  Clint said as he approached us quietly. I looked at Mason but he was as surprised as I was.

    
"Oh, I wasn't reading your mind.  But I asked the same question, so figured you was wondering.  There aren't that many anyway, so they had to go somewhere.  We'll break up into groups and check things out, but I figure the place is abandoned."

    
So Mason and I headed to the north end of town and took the side with the grain elevator and started clearing each building.  I needed the exercise anyway after the harrowing experience in Casper.  We'd spent one whole day in Wyoming and were still only halfway through.  At this pace, it'll be time to turn around and head back as soon as we get to New Mexico.  We cleared most of the buildings when we met Randy and Flynn coming down the street.  They'd cleared the buildings ahead of us but it took nearly an hour to secure the whole town.

    
Clint, Joe, Riley and Howard strolled up the street like they were on an evening walk talking quietly among themselves.  We talked a bit then decided all was clear and let the kids and dog go.  The women soon came out and we investigated the local watering hole, the Chugwater Soda Fountain with the elk head mounted on the wall.  I was surprised to find this one didn't have it's legs mounted underneath holding the rifle used to kill it.   Talk about overkill.

    
The weather here was hot.  It was a dry heat but hot was hot no matter what the humidity was.  The sky was a pale blue, no sign of clouds and that's ok cause this part of the country was known to have a few tornadoes.  The creek running nearby was cool and it felt good to sit on the bank with your feet swinging in the stream, watching the trout swim by.  The other side of the bank was lined with cottonwood trees and beyond them were a small herd of antelope with their white rear ends or diaper butts  munching on the remaining grasses.  Past the creek were the bluffs the indians drove the bison over some hundred of so years ago.  Not very sporting but then when you're hungry...

    
That reminded me I was hungry.  Mason had come to tell me dinner was ready as I was drying my feet off.  He let me use him for support while I pulled my shoes on then he pulled me in tight and  kissed me, nearly knocking my socks, err...I mean shoes off.  I pulled back and kissed his chin then smiled.  He smiled back and we walked back to Lacy's RV for dinner.  Canned stew again tonight.  I could smell it before I reached the RV.  If I wasn't so hungry, I'd just go to bed but I'd better eat, no telling what was ahead of us.

   
Duke came in and said he'd contacted Ken with the sat radio.  They were at a campground north of White Sulphur Springs and planed to stay a few days while he scouted with the plane.  He said except for the walkers in  Lewistown which was in the center of the state, they'd made good time and everyone was doing ok.  Duke told them about the problems in Billings, but since it wasn't worth their time, they could decide if they wanted to stay away from that area.  It was good to know that the Montana crew was doing ok.  They'd been on my mind since Billings.  It was decided that we would call every evening just to see how far the range was on the phone.

     
We poured over the maps that evening trying to figure out what direction to go at Cheyenne.  I knew I didn't want to go through Denver so we'd bypass it and it looked like we would be going east of it.  The road would be flatter, there were more side roads and less bridges to deal with.  West of Denver was nothing but mountains so we had to go east a bit then head south.

    
That decided we turned in for the night.  Mason was feeling frisky and I did by best to calm him down before we finally fell into an exhausted sleep under the stars.  Morning found us eating pop tarts again but the coffee was sure good.  I hated to drink coffee on the road, I seemed to spend a lot of time going to the bathroom and that meant one of the RV's had to stop so I could.  I wasn't the only one with the problem so it seemed to work out ok.  Although, the guys did nothing but grumble which we gamely ignored.

   
We could smell Cheyenne before we could see it.  Smoke rose straight up from the area of the refinery so we could guess what happened there.  We came upon the Little America travel center but we'd already decided not to stop.  After the Billings truck stop no one had the nerve.  There were three big trucks in the fuel bays and several cars in the parking lot but we kept going.   We took the interstate east towards Omaha with no problems then found the road blocked.  So we back tracked to the entrance to the interstate and got back on it to go farther south and then turned east again.  We did this so many times that we suddenly found ourselves in Colorado headed to Carr.  OK, we hadn't planned on that but we decided to go with it. 

    
Traveling south again we found a small area where we could refuel and eat a little something.  Duke was complaining about his bus, so Howard had his head under the hood with Sam beside him.  Duke paced around the bus mumbling and gesturing but was ignored by everyone.  We'd been there, done that, but Clint and Mercy found it all amusing.  The kids and dog ran off some excess energy while the rest of us sat in the shade in the neat fishing chairs Randy had gotten in Billings.

    
When we first met him he was hitchhiking in the dessert with one of the chairs strapped onto his back.  Bright red, if I remember correctly.  He had Lacy sitting in a red one at the moment.  It had a small table that sat to the right of the arm. A breeze kicked up and boy did it feel good cause it dried the sweat on my brow.  Pulling my tee shirt open I allowed some of the air to dry my chest.  Mason noticed, waggling his eyebrows at me but I just smiled and shook my head.

     
Howard and Sam told us the bus was almost useless.  Something in the motor.  It wouldn't last much longer.  "Need to start looking for something else pretty soon."

    
"Great!"  yelled Duke, "I just got everything the way I wanted it and now you tell me I have to start all over again."

    
"Yep."  Howard said, wiping his hands on a rag. Not a man of many words, our Howard.  "Soon as possible." Then he turned and walked back to the bus to put away the tools, Sam right behind him.  Duke stood there a minute watching them leave then shoulders slumped, he kicked a rock out of his way and went to his bus to pet it.  Aww, a man and his  wheels.  I turned to Mason and said, "Aww, a man and his wheels."

    
"Stop it,"  he laughed.  "This is serious, cause it's gonna put us behind nearly a day.  He's gonna want to soup it up like this one and that's an all day deal.  Maybe we should go into Denver anyway, we might be able to find something new there.  Then we wouldn't have to worry about it quitting."

    
"Denver!   Are you suicidal?  Nope, no way are we going to do that.  Maybe Loveland has something.  Let's check there first then we can worry about Denver later."

    
"Well, I guess we better route this one before everyone takes off."  After a very few minutes with my head slouched over the map, I gave the thumbs up to Loveland.  We turned and went north a bit then west before hitting the interstate.

    
Loveland started at the interstate.  We pulled off the road at the first  place we could cause the road was blocked as far as we could see.   Prepared for a herd of walkers any minute, we allowed everyone to get out for a few minutes to stretch.  We were huddled around the sick bus when Mandy pointed and said "What's that?"  Like Pavlov's dogs we reacted.  Howard and Duke dropped and rolled under the bus. The women fought each other to get into the bus, while Mason and I crouched next to the front tire, weapons ready and looking wildly around.  Flynn had jumped on the hood of the bus and was turning in circles looking for the 'that' Mandy referred to.

    
"Where?"  I asked.

    
"Where Mandy?  I don't see anything."  Sarah said.

    
"Over there, Mommy, by the pretty, blue truck."  She said, pointing at the something we still couldn't see.  "See that funny looking truck?  I ain't ever seen nothing like it before."  We looked the direction she was pointing and I finally saw the 'that' she referred to.  All I could do was stare. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen.

    
It was a RV with tip outs and around 30 feet long or so.  It also was the prettiest purple you ever saw but after that it's hard to describe.  The front bumper was triangular shaped with the headlights recessed.  The grill was extra large and hung over the bumper, oval in shape and above it...well, the round windshield looked like a 5 foot CD disk had fallen forward to lay over the front of the vehicle and just on top of the grill.  The tandem rear-end was closed in and the whole thing looked like it had come from another planet.

    
I felt the bus sway a bit and looked up to find Duke on top with Randy.  "Oh. My. God."  he said.  I forgot to mention that on the side of the thing in big white words was written, "Communications/Command Center Larimer County".  He took a step, then another and Randy grabbed him before he stepped off the roof.  "It's mine,"  he said, looking at each of us in turn,  "Don't anyone else even think about it.  It's mine.  Get me down.  Hurry."

    
Everyone talked at once.  Trying to convince him to wait for the thing to be cleared before he got himself killed.  We were just barely able to stop him while, Flynn, Clint and Mason prepared to clear it.  Duke finally calmed down long enough to watch from the rooftop of the bus while we took care of business.  A fuel tanker behind the gas station had our attention and when we had Duke busy transferring everything to his new digs, we'd finish fueling all the vehicles.  Our tanker was nearly empty and we'd need another one soon anyway, so we decided to change while we were here.

    
It took the rest of the day to get everything done.  The inside of the Dukemobile (Sarah named it) was set up just like a command center with a conference room in the back.  It had to be cleared out and the conference room transformed into a bedroom for him and Sarah and another smaller room into a bedroom for Mandy.  The place had lights galore, a small kitchenette and a nice restroom.  The rest of the walls were laden with monitors and computers with a long table down the middle.  Gadgets and do dads were everywhere you looked.  We discovered the roof raised and became an observation deck which had Duke jumping up and down like a four year old.  There were satellite dishes, and antenna everywhere and he seemed to know what everything did.