Apocalypse Atlanta (Book 4): Apocalypse Asylum (24 page)

Peter was still working on that one in his head — what,
why
, would such a monstrous vehicle need extra protection like that — when the truck’s engine changed pitch and he heard the groan of brakes.  Tires like that were built beyond tough; they had to be in order to support the weight of a working machine in the rough terrain it visited.  They would cost more, each, than a luxury civilian car.  Even some — smaller caliber — bullets wouldn’t bother the tires very much.

The truck came to a halt about twenty feet short of the intersection, and squatted there with its engine idling sullenly.  It really did take up the entire road, no joke.  Any other traffic would have to make way or get hit if it tried to share the road with the truck; because there was no chance of anything except maybe a motorcycle squeezing past without kissing metal or shoulder.

Peter had his hand up in front of his eyes, shielding them against the light as best he could.  The truck’s headlights filled the space ahead of it with plenty of illumination, both wide and high beams mixed in among the mounts.  This close the flashlights were redundant, but he still saw some of them bobbing around on the front walkway, and then descending the stairwell.

“You guys lost?” a female voice called out.

“Lost?” Peter said, pitching his voice loudly so it would carry over the diesel’s background grumble.  “No.  Why, do we look lost?”

“Where are you from?”

“Georgia.”

“Georgia?” he heard several voices exclaim.

“Shhhh.” the woman said.  Five people were on the road in front of the truck now, silhouettes against the truck’s headlights that gave him nothing but outlines to go on.  Actually seeing who he was talking to was right out.

“Uh, is it possible to kill some of those lights?” he called.  “Or maybe you could come over here and we could turn sideways to the truck and talk properly?”

“You’re from Georgia?”

“Yeah, Georgia.” Peter repeated.

“What the hell are you doing all the way up here?”

“We’re on the way to Ellsworth Air Force Base.”

“Damnit, I knew it.” a man’s voice said.

“Shut up.” the woman said.  Peter, still squinting around his fingers and hand, saw one of the people walking forward.  He stepped to the side as the person moved around on his right, taking his suggestion to put them face to face with the truck on one side so he could see who he was talking to without the headlights blinding him.

She was a sallow-faced woman sporting a lot of acne, nearly as tall as he was, and thin to the point of making him want to wince.  It didn’t look like she was even substantial enough to bear up under the weight of her winter coat and boots, but not only was she bundled up in well-worn cold weather gear, she also had a hunting rifle slung behind her left shoulder and the bulky shape of what just had to be a pistol on her right side beneath the coat’s skirt.

“You’re soldiers?”

“They are.” Peter said, gesturing at his companions.  “I’m a Marine.”

“And he’ll never let you forget it.” Crawford said.

“Shut up.” Peter and Smith said at the same time.

“Lot of that going around.” Crawford grumped.

Peter didn’t look away from the woman from the truck.  “I’m Peter Gibson, USMC and recently attached to the Georgia National Guard.”

“Let me guess.” the woman interrupted.  “You received Ellsworth’s transmissions and decided to take a road trip?”

“More or less, yeah.”

“Great.” she sighed, following it up with a mutter that was just barely below an audible level that he could make out.  He wasn’t sure, but it was something about jamming, maybe.

Peter hid his frown, but his eyebrows drew together some.  “What’s the problem?”

“How do we know they’re telling the truth?” a man still silhouetted by the truck’s headlights demanded.

“Whatever you’re trying to accuse us of,” Peter said loudly and calmly — very calmly — as he turned his head back toward those blinding headlights, “I promise you we just got here.  We’ve only been in the area for a few hours, and we haven’t bothered anyone.  Nor do we plan to.”

“You drove up here in a Dodge Neon?” a different invisible voice asked.

“No, we left Atlanta in a nice pickup with plenty of supplies, and had some trouble crossing the Mississippi near Memphis.  One thing led to another, we took a swim, and after some scrounging ended up with that car and not much else.”

“Wait, you’ve been to Memphis?” a third voice interjected.  Peter squinted, but before he could try and make anything out another woman pushed forward out of the light and stood close enough to almost touch him.  “Is there anyone left?”

Peter shook his head.  “No, the whole city’s overrun and deserted as near as we could tell.  We got trapped on one of the bridges with zombie hordes on both sides of us, that’s how we lost our truck.”

The first woman put her hand on the newcomer’s shoulder, as the second’s face tightened in an expression that was all too familiar these days.  One that showed pain and loss leaking out behind an automatic attempt to, well not conceal it, but rather to try and put a brave foot forward.  She shrugged off the comforting hand and turned away, disappearing back into the blinding lights.

“You know anything about what’s going on around here?” the thin woman asked.

“Look, can we get to some introductions.” Peter said, still keeping his voice calm and reasonable.  “Just to be civilized and all?  Like I said, I’m Gibson.  This is Crawford, Smith, and in the car there is Whitley.”

“Just the four of you?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“You came all this way with only four folks?”

“We were kind of bored with Georgia.” Crawford said.

Peter winced internally, and glanced at her long enough to flash annoyance.  “We were part of a large group, a FEMA refugee camp north of metro Atlanta.  Its situation is stable unless something literally blows up or ten thousand zombies wander by at the same time, and we managed to get into limited contact with Ellsworth.  The four of us decided we’d rather head up here and try to work on the overall problem rather than just sit the whole thing out.”

“So you want to throw in with Ellsworth?” demanded the loud male voice.

“Max, can it.” the woman snapped.

“We go letting their reinforcements just waltz on by, and soon we’re gonna have a real problem.”

“Like we don’t already?” someone else hidden by the lights said wryly.

“Everyone let me talk!”

Peter blinked at the woman in front of him as she got her head only partially turned back toward the truck before she yelled.  He was still blinking from the volume she’d generated when she turned back to him.

“Ah, Gibson was it?”

“Gibson, or Gunny.”

“Great, not just a Marine, a true blue one.” the aggressive man muttered more than loudly enough for Peter to hear.

“I’m Breanna Keane.” the thin woman told Peter.  “You willing to detour long enough to go back to town with us?”

“Which town?” Peter asked.  “Your note said Sioux Falls is a no-go area.”

She pointed, southward and a little east.  “Canton.  About twenty miles over that way.”

“We could use a place to warm up.”

“We all do.  Just follow us.  We’ll sit down and have a talk, and give you guys a warm bed and some hot food.  How about that?”

Peter considered for a moment, then nodded.  “Okay.”

“Place looks pretty empty if you ask me.” Crawford said as they trailed the enormous dump truck east along a four lane road.

“For once you’re right.” Smith said.

“We’re still in South Dakota, and about to stop for a rest.” she said in a less idle tone.

“Whatever.” Smith shrugged.  “No bodies.  Not a lot of damage, roads are cleared.”

Peter nodded, ignoring the byplay.  He’d tried, repeatedly, and was on the verge of giving up.  He meant what he’d said if either Smith or Crawford inflicted lasting damage on each other, but if they wanted to scuffle a bit . . . he wasn’t in the mood right now to intervene.

They were correct though; the town — the sign had said Canton, population 3,117 — was in much better shape than just about anywhere he’d seen since the outbreaks.  Some buildings did show signs of damage, residual fire blackening and broken or collapsed walls or roofs; but by and large there wasn’t much of it.  There was no widespread devastation as was normally the case.

He was still pondering that when the truck, a Caterpillar nine seventy something from what he’d caught of the brand plate on its side, slowed and made a careful turn south.  The road it selected had plenty of open space on its west side where the buildings on the properties there were set well back from the pavement, which was needed as the enormous construction vehicle cut the corner, running over the curb, by several car widths.

Whitley followed without leaving the pavement, maintaining the same separation she’d observed since they started driving.  The road was a standard two lane layout that was only just wide enough for the truck as it rolled south several blocks before cutting another corner and turning back east.  The second turn was clearly one it had made before; the yard there was even more torn up with multiple giant sized tire tracks than the first turn.

“Hmm, they’ve got power.” Peter observed, seeing a glow of urban brightness that had been lost since zombies had pulled civilization apart one bite at a time.  The area several blocks ahead of the truck was unmistakably lit, not just reflecting the construction vehicle’s expansive headlight suite.

“Is that good or bad?” Whitley asked.

“I don’t know.” Peter said thoughtfully.

“It’s different.” Crawford said.

“It is different.” he agreed.

The truck was slowing down again.  They had been passing through residential blocks, but abruptly they entered a section where all the houses north and south of them had been cleared to ground.  Not just leveled, but the debris had been removed as well.  The missing structures gave Peter sightlines to either side that weren’t blocked by the Caterpillar, and he saw a ten foot high white wall that looked new had been erected at the far side of the torn down blocks.  No, it wasn’t quite a wall; more like some sort of berm or raised ridge.

“Whoever they are, they’re serious.” Smith said.

“Yeah, I think that’s concrete.” Whitley nodded.

“And check out that fucking moat.” Crawford said.

Peter nodded as well.  It did look like concrete, and poured fairly recently too.  It was broad enough to have room atop for people to patrol without falling off, and he saw at least three people doing exactly that in various places.  The light he saw was coming from standard streetlights behind the wall, all of them glowing as if everything in the world was normal.

The ‘moat’ dug in front of the wall was a little more like what most fortified towns and camps he’d seen had since the survivors of the apocalypse had started dealing with their new realities; though this one was also more substantial than Peter was used to.  Most of the dry ditches people were creating were six or seven feet deep, and often about half that wide; just enough to catch zombies that stumbled up to the position and keep them off the wall or fence or whatever was in use.

Here, a broad channel at least ten feet — more like fifteen if he judged it correctly —wide had been scooped out of the soil.  He couldn’t see the depth from where he was, but it didn’t look like it had been dug with any less enthusiasm for depth than it had width.  It would not only swallow any zombie horde of any size Peter could possibly imagine, it was enough to stop even tanks cold.

One of the wall walkers waved, and the Caterpillar’s horn tooted twice.  As the train-like sound echoed off the wall, the person who’d waved turned and shouted something.  The truck came to halt in the road, and Peter gave up trying to crane his head to see around the vehicle.  The truck had enough ground clearance to see beneath, except the armor he’d observed on the front tires had been carried all the way around; sides and back as well as front.  Zombies were only getting beneath that dump truck if they’d been squished and shredded into pieces small enough to fit.

And he had absolutely no doubt the truck would do exactly that to any zombie horde it decided to roll through.  The dump bed was as enormous as the rest of the vehicle, and dirt wasn’t typically light.  Its engine and transmission would be
more
than up to the task of plowing through hundreds of bodies without straining.  The tires were big enough to act as steamrollers, not tires, with regard to any human sized obstacle they encountered.

Finally the truck started moving again, and Whitley took her foot off the brake to follow.  The truck drove through a gap in the wall wide enough to admit it, a purpose constructed entry point.  When it was clear, Peter was able to see the moat had been interrupted to leave a land bridge that passed through the wall.  And as they drove through, he saw the ‘gate’ was apparently a pair of bulldozers that were chained to a metal plate of an impressive size.

The plate wasn’t one piece — it was crisscrossed with a pattern of welds showing countless smaller sections had been liberated or found somewhere and joined together — but it formed a barricade section just as tall as the wall itself.  And, he saw looking in his mirror as the bulldozers started up once the Dodge was clear, sealed it off quite securely.  Some sort of pulley system had been put into place on either side of the gate, using chains attached to the ‘top’ ends of the plate to bring it back upright and thus close off the gap in the wall.

“Whoever these people are, they’re not screwing around much are they?” Whitley opinioned.

Peter nodded slowly.  “Best setup we’ve seen yet.”

“Does that mean we like them?” Crawford said.

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

The area beyond the wall initially looked more or less like a standard American suburb, but with some modifications that began to become apparent as they drove along the road and got a closer look.

Most of the houses had newly constructed additions that added additional levels beyond the first or even second, and also that expanded their floor plans considerably further than they could have possibly been originally built for.  Canton was small town America, and here as just about everywhere else in the nation that meant single structures — possibly with the occasional garden shed or detached garage — with a decent amount of yard surrounding it.

Peter was no housing expert, but he knew there was no way an entire suburb had been built in a town of a few thousand people where each house consumed all but a handful of square feet on its lot.  Narrow alleys had been left between the expansions, and the sidewalks had been left untouched as well; but otherwise the yards had been taken over with walls and roofs.  Each ‘house’ had its livable and under-cover area at least quadrupled on the first floor alone; and, again, most had at least one additional story added beyond that.

Whitley followed the Caterpillar through two blocks that were converted like that before the massive truck reached a cleared area surrounded by a standard chain link fence.  It was just grass, but only barely; the vegetation had been shredded and pounded by tires driving over it.  There were a number of vehicles parked neatly on what was left of the grass now, ranging from pickups and modestly converted work-trucks to tractor-trailers to full on construction equipment.  Peter saw a backhoe, two more bulldozers, a roller paver, three smaller dump trucks, a crane, and a mobile drilling rig with oil company markings on its dirty flanks.

The wall, the concrete berm, ran south along the western edge of the grass and dirt parking lot before turning due east.  A broad lane, half again as big as the Caterpillar truck needed, had been left on the western edge; with another space at the southern end of the area big enough for the truck to pull into and turn in a tight, slow circle to leave itself positioned to drive out again.  And everything was fully covered by street lights that had been placed around the periphery of the ad-hoc parking lot.

“I have no idea where the hell they want us to park.” Whitley said.

“Does it matter?” Crawford asked.

“It might.” Whitley pointed out.

“We’ll just wait until someone offers an opinion.” Peter shrugged as the Caterpillar stopped and started shutting down.  Even as big as the thing was, seeing it in the light was still impressive.  As was watching how
many
people were disgorging from the mammoth vehicle.  Over a dozen descended from the front walkway and cab, and more were appearing at the rear where they’d apparently been riding in the dump bed.

“Why’d they bother with the flaps or whatever on the bed when there’s no way a zombie could reach anyone or anything back there?” Crawford asked.  The rear of the dump bed was closed off with a sort of wall that had been added to seal it.

“Safety?” Peter suggested.

“Showing off their metalworking skills?” Smith put in.

All told, upwards of forty people were piling out of the supersized vehicle.  Peter saw boxes and bags being handed down from the bed, along with several of the flying drones.  One of the drones was quite large, which made him blink; he didn’t know an RC helicopter or whatever it was called could be big enough to take two or three people to carry around.  At least, not a civilian one.

As the unloading proceeded, some people were breaking off from the activity around the truck.  Most were heading for nearby standard sized pickups, but a trio made straight for the idling Dodge.  Peter lowered his window and stuck his head out.  “We don’t want the car in the way; where should we park?” he called out.

Two of the people pointed, indicating an area near the road at the front of the lot.  Whitley nodded and drove over, then reversed and backed carefully into a spot between a battered Chevy and a platform tow truck.  Shutting the car down, she held up the keys toward Peter, cocking her head questioningly.

“Keep’em.” Peter said, opening his door after taking a quick glance around.  The area seemed secure, but he hadn’t gotten as old and tired as he was by assuming anything when zombies were roaming the planet chowing down.  He straightened his back out slowly, then hesitated briefly as he found himself reaching for the 30-06.

“We’re not making any assumptions, right?” Crawford asked from the other side of the car.

Peter considered a moment longer, then shrugged mentally and closed his hand around the rifle.  “No, we go armed.”

“They might not like it.” Whitley pointed out.

“Too bad, so sad.” Smith said, checking his shotgun over.  “New times, new rules.”

“Damn straight.”  Crawford agreed.

Peter glanced at her as she slung the pink AR-15 behind her shoulder, then grinned.  “Sure you can be tough toting that thing around?”

“Gunny, you know I’m not nearly as nice as I seem.  Maybe this will confuse people.”

Smith muttered something, but he just shook his head, even when Crawford fixed him with a sharp look.

“Okay, sorry.  Let’s keep a lid on the chatter until we know what’s going on.” he said quickly, fixing Crawford with a look that mixed apology with warning.

“Here they come.” Whitley said sotto voiced.

Peter turned just in time to see the same trio approaching; the same woman as before — Brenna — plus two men.  He slung the Remington and adjusted it, then faced them squarely.  “Okay, now what?”

“Let’s get inside and warm up.   You guys hungry?” Brenna said.

“We’ve got some food—” Peter started, but she shook her head.

“No, it’s on us.  This way.”

Peter turned and followed as she led the way north, along the road away from the parking lot.  His people fell into step behind him, and the other local men brought up the rear.  About half a block up a fenced industrial lot started on the right, but he couldn’t make out what it was for.  A block away from the parking area, Brenna turned left and reached for the door of a house that had as heavily expanded as the others inside the defensive wall.

She went to the door and opened it without knocking.  Peter went in at her gesture, and felt warmth in addition to the light.  Not a
lot
of warmth, but enough to knock most of the chill out of the air and render the interior as ‘jacket or long sleeves suggested’ instead of ‘bundle-up’ territory.

“How is it you still have power?” Whitley asked as they filtered through the doorway.  Peter was looking around as she spoke.  They were in a hallway that seemed to lead straight into the original house portion.  Up ahead he could see a weathered door that had been the house’s front door prior to the modifications.

“It’s sort of a complicated answer.”