Zombie Fallout 9 (28 page)

T
iffany had been watching
through her scope and still could not believe what she'd seen. She thought that possibly it had been her mind playing a trick on her or maybe something was wrong with the optics or maybe the shimmer on the road had given the illusion of unnatural speed. Her instincts were demanding action, most were telling her to run far away and never look back. Another was telling her to line up a shot and keep shooting until those things stopped moving. Pappy had taught her how to shoot. She was decent, but she knew her limits. She'd never hit them from this distance. More than likely, she'd put one into the side of the RV.

“Leave, Pappy. Please leave.” Even from her spot, she knew the woman with the child was begging for help. What kind of monsters were those women? She'd been personal witness to the brutality of man, and they did not hold a candle to what she figured those things were capable of. She scanned over the children with her scope, and all of them had checked out. There was no hope in any of those dead, flat eyes. They'd seen things that had stripped away who they were. Parts that could never be replaced. There were long moments where nothing happened. She couldn't see him from her angle, but she could see the brightness of the brake lights he depressed, and she could imagine him behind the impossibly large steering wheel. Everything happened in a flash as the woman and her child headed for the passenger door. She jumped when she heard the explosion of his revolver.

P
at's heart
was working harder than he could ever remember. Pain began to shoot down his left arm, exploding into bursts of pain along his fingertips.

“A fucking heart attack? As crazy as this world is right now, I'm going to die from a heart attack?”

He could feel the constriction as the muscle began to seize into a spasm. He didn't know if the change in his expression got the woman moving or not, but she had circled around the RV and was coming up to the passenger side. The trio in front of him seemed almost bored with the whole encounter. Two of them, anyway. The one in the middle with the red hair, she seemed fixated on him. Concentrating hard. Then it dawned, he wasn't having a natural heart attack. She had somehow psychically reached in and was crushing his heart with her mind as effectively as if she were using a sledgehammer.

“Eat lead.” He used his right hand to pick up the revolver, which seemed nearly ten times its normal weight. He pulled the trigger, blowing out the windshield. The red-haired woman, who had been smiling, ducked to the side as the round scraped against her scalp. He'd not hit his target, but it had the desired effect as she'd released her death grip on his ticker. He whipped his head back and forth, looking for them. When an incredibly cold hand reached up and grabbed his shoulder, he knew it was the end. She pulled his arm out of his socket. His seatbelt performing its job admirably. He undid the restraint before she removed his arm completely. He hit the ground hard when she effortlessly pulled him through the open window. He was certain his shoulder was broken along with a couple of ribs. None of that mattered as long as Tiffany got away. He hoped with all his being that she had left when she heard his gun go off. He was sure she hadn't, but he truly wished she had.

“Hello,” Sophia said, staring down at him. “Do you come here often?” Then she laughed.

He coughed. “It's poor form to laugh at your own jokes.” He was trying to gauge exactly what he was dealing with here. He knew his life was forfeit. He would just have liked to know what had done him in. “What are you?” He thought to go for the direct approach.

Payne heard his question and came forward. “The devil once said that there were great and terrible things that needed to be done on earth. He asked who would go forward and accomplish these deeds. I raised my hand and told him I am here.”

“You're a demon?”

“Of sorts, I suppose. Though demons cannot roam freely in this realm.” Payne implanted in him what he needed to know to understand what had befallen him.

“Please, that's all I have left to me.”

“I have not let a soul escape in centuries. Why would I start now?”

Pat grinned. “I'll tell you why.” He placed his gun up against his head and pulled the trigger.

Payne screamed in rage. Tiffany shuddered from her hiding spot.

“That was
my
soul to collect!” She moved closer, reared back, and kicked, sending Pat airborne for ten feet. He landed in a broken heap.

“His soul will still be lost, Payne,” Charity offered.

Payne spun. “It was mine to collect, not his to lose. And the all-merciful God may still allow his passage if he but asks for forgiveness!” She sneered.

Tiffany watched in horror as Payne bent down and lifted Pat by his head. With one hand around his neck and the other under his jaw, she tore them apart and threw both halves away.

“Oh, Pappy,” Tiffany cried, letting her forehead rest against the ground.

“Round up the meat. We will take the vehicle.” Payne strode inside.

“There appears to have been another here,” Charity said once they were all onboard. “Should we go and look?”

“I am not in the mood. Bring me something to eat.” The screams were muted within the confines of the RV, but Tiffany could still hear the pleas from her location. She did the only thing she could think to do when the vehicle pulled away. She stood and followed. She didn't know exactly what she was going to do when and if she ever caught up to them, but Pappy had been nice to her, and he deserved her effort at least. She didn't look down when she passed the shell that had housed him. She kept repeating that what was there was not him. “It's not him. It's not him.” She was a mile away before she let the tears fall in earnest. She left the highway and went into Portsmouth in search of a car to either head to the West Coast, where she might try and find a way to drive to Hawaii, or continue north and catch back up.

Tiffany had never thought much on religion. Her parents were good people, but they weren't religious. The topic rarely came up in the circles she lived in. But as she walked into Portsmouth, she would have sworn there was something, some unseen force at work. A guiding hand. Something or someone that had seen the evil and sought to right the wrongs. She cleared her thoughts, focusing her white-hot anger on those who had taken Pappy's life. She took lefts and rights, not looking at street names or even knowing where she was. She heard sounds all around her, some human, some zombie, though she never encountered anything. She found herself standing in front of a house at 777 Highgate Drive. The gray Victorian looked slightly out of place in a neighborhood dominated by ranch style homes, but it wasn't garish.

Tiffany walked up to the detached two-door garage. The side door was unlocked. When she entered, there was a vehicle covered in a large off-white canvas covering. She pulled it off, raising thick plumes of dust and exposing a 1969 white Shelby fastback Mustang.

“Is this thing going to work?” she asked the thick ribbons of swirling dust. “This is insane.” She looked inside, and the keys were sitting on the driver's seat. She got in, took notice that she did not need to adjust the seat, placed the key in the ignition, and turned. The loud
thrum
of the high performance engine was nearly deafening in the small garage. “This isn't an escape vehicle; this is for pursuit.” She knew what she had to do. Now, she made up her mind to do it. “Lead the way,” she said once she got out onto the road. “I'm not going to lie and say I understand what's happening here, but if you've chosen me for this, then who am I to argue?”

T
iffany found
her way back to the highway. The speedometer stopped reading at 120. She had it so far drilled to the right she thought it might break out of the small circle it was housed in. It took her an hour and a half at her breakneck speed before she finally caught a glimpse of the recreational van far up ahead. Fear crept up her neck and wrapped around her skull when she saw the brake lights come on. She thought she'd been discovered. She let out a sigh of relief when she saw that the van was getting off the highway. She slowed down to something less likely to end her death by fiery twisted metal. By the time she hit the off-ramp, she had slowed to forty.

“Augusta Route 3. What are you guys doing?” she wondered aloud. She slowed even further, making sure she did not come up on them again should they be parked. After a half hour more of driving, she didn't know if she was relieved or not that she had not come across the van. Whatever was in that vehicle was not human, and she would be better off never encountering them again. But if she did not, she would never be able to give Pappy the payback he deserved. She could honestly not tell which side of the fence she wished she would fall over onto. She was thinking on this when she had to press the brakes hard, thankful it was not enough to lock the wheels and start a tire-squealing skid. As it was, she pulled over to the far right and shut off the engine.

She was close, too close. Not much more than a quarter of a mile away. She could see light coming from the inside of the vehicle. There was no activity outside, which was a good thing. She opened her door, grabbed her rifle, and then quietly exited. She'd not gone more than a hundred feet when she began to hear the screams. Someone's suffering was the reason she'd not been heard. She froze. The screaming was coming from a woman, or at least she thought so. She couldn't imagine a man being able to reach that falsetto, although all things were possible under the knife and where that knife made contact. The sun was quickly setting. Even in the burgeoning darkness, she felt completely exposed and afraid. She headed for the large culvert that ran the length of the roadway. At first, she moved quickly, with the hopes that she would be able to aid the victim. She slowed as she got closer, knowing in her heart whoever was in there was long past the point of being able to receive help. Inconsolable sobbing was met with unbridled laughter.

Tiffany's heart raced as she got up next to the vehicle. She didn't know what to do. Those things that looked like women were in there, but so were the innocents. She couldn't just start blasting away, hoping to avoid the former while hitting the latter. Little did she know she would have been doing them a great service if she had cut their lives even shorter. She backed away when she heard whimpering and what she could only think of as loud slurping sounds.

Deep down, she knew they were vampires. It was just that her consciousness would not allow her to believe something so insane. As if her mind were trying to protect it from itself. She hardly remembered her walk back to the car or falling asleep exhausted in the back seat. When she awoke the next morning, she thought perhaps it was all a dream. The RV was gone and all her problems could be as well if she but merely turned around. She started the engine and drove forward. Within an hour, she once more came across the RV, nearly slamming into the rear end. It had been left in the middle of the roadway. She waited for someone to come out and investigate. When no one did, she got out, this time leaving the car running in the hopes she would be able to get back in and make good on an escape attempt if it came to that.

She walked around the entire vehicle, hyper sensitive to any noise. It was quiet, save the flies buzzing around the roof, looking for a way in through the vent system. When she felt fairly confident no one was inside, she did another loop around. This was her life she was playing with. She felt the extra carefulness was warranted. The next part of her plan involved knocking on the door and stepping back. If any of the gothic looking women answered, she was going to start shooting and at no point start asking questions. She knocked and jumped back, catching her right foot on her left and going down in a tangle, hard on her ass.

“Stupid, stupid,” she berated herself as she dusted off and stood. Had anyone answered, she would have been dead. If she lived to be a hundred, she'd never be able to give a satisfactory answer as to why she decided to go inside. It was the smell that assailed her first—the thick aroma of iron, sweat, fear, and something else. She thought if evil had its own scent, this would be what it was like. She expected blood to be running down the center aisle, to be splattered across the ceiling and be pooling in the beds. She was surprised at first to barely find a few droplets. She was more horrified when the reason of why this hadn't occurred struck her. Apparently, even vampires adhered to the policy of waste not, want not. Children sucked dry were placed almost tenderly in the small RV beds. She thought she was going to be sick as she quickly exited.

After ten minutes, she was able to get herself back under control. “Now what?” she asked as she shielded her eyes from the sun and did a complete 360. In the end, she decided to walk in the direction the van was pointed. She hid in the brush when she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. She looked up to see perhaps the biggest man she'd ever seen in her life driving, and in the back was an older man with a long goatee, laughing. By the scowl on the driver's face, it appeared he was the butt of whatever was making the man in the back laugh. They looked friendly enough, but she'd learned the hard way that looks could be deceiving. This world brought out the worst in some of the best, and it was better to avoid than encounter. She thought a man in the back of the truck had spotted her, but the way his head was canted to the side and smoke was emanating from his mouth, he looked like he was smoking something that held way more interest for him than anything surrounding.

“Safe to say they haven't come across the trio yet,” she said as she extracted herself from the bushes. She stayed on foot, going in the same direction as the truck had been. She couldn't be sure, but it was safe to assume that vampires would look for humans, and a truckload of them had just whisked by. The sun was high overhead by the time she came across what had to be a trick of the light or the first signs of dehydration or just a major stroke. She stopped fifty yards away, unsure as to what to do next, when she looked upon a roadway littered with zombie heads and the body of a dead boy and a woman that looked a lot like the person that had been running toward Pappy's truck. She looked around wildly, fully expecting monsters to jump out from all around. The heads were almost as effective a roadblock as a twenty-foot wall. She lost more than a fifteen minutes, transfixed by what she saw.

That it was zombies made it marginally better, but still. “Who takes the time out of their day to do something like this?” she said aloud. “It's a message. The women are sending someone a message. Is it to the people in that truck? But why?” She could see that this train of thought was going to produce more questions than answers. She might find what she was looking for if she kept going, or she could stay alive and just turn around. She knew the events were bigger than her and could easily roll her over. She continued on when she remembered something her father had told her many years previous: “Honey, it's the smallest splinter that causes the most pain.” He'd been laughing as he looked upon the living room she had absolutely destroyed with her toys, five rolls of toilet paper, and what had previously been a full container of baby powder.

“I am that splinter.” She kept repeating those words as she skirted the beheaded roadway. She did her best to push the imagery from her mind as she walked, but the darker it became outside, the darker her inner thoughts became. It helped little that a gusty chill wind had begun to kick up.