The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (17 page)

“Ass, gas or grass,” he said to her with a smile, “no one rides for free.”

“Then I guess I know how I’m paying for this trip,” she said as she slid into the passenger seat. Looking around at the stark interior of the vehicle, she said, “I think you need to take this thing to Pimp My Ride. A little fake fur on the dashboard, get some hydraulics so you can bounce the front end up and down, hang some fuzzy dice from the rearview, and you’d be the shit.”

Tick-Tock laughed and replied,
“Paint some flames on the side, too. Green is so unbecoming.”

“Although it does go with my eyes,” she pointed out.

Looking back over his shoulder, he asked, “Where’s the pit crew? I need to fuel up.”

“They should be here in a few minutes,” she told him
. “Steve is making Sean and some of his people do it.”

“Then I might as well do it myself,” Tick-Tock said.

Sliding over next to him until their hips were touching, Denise said, “But it’ll give us some time.”

“Time for what?” He asked with a smile.

“Let me show you,” she said.

***

Steve was standing guard, looking down the railroad tracks while the last of the supplies were loaded on the trucks. With Sean and his crew doing most of the work, it felt like it had taken an eternity. He glanced at his watch, surprised it was still early. Gauging the time it would take, he felt they still had plenty of daylight left to go after one of the Humvees parked on the bridge.

He turned
to look for Tick-Tock so they could get going when motion from down the tracks caught his eye. Steve squinted and saw a rabbit as it gingerly made its way out of a line of trees on his right. Entranced by the sight, he stood motionless as he watched it look both ways, its nose and ears twitching as it tried to sense any predators. Finally deciding it was safe, it hopped forward.

Even before its
furry little paws hit the ground, a whining noise filled the air as a naked form leaped out of the brush and threw itself on top of it.

Steve watched in horror as the dead thing wrapped its
hands around the rabbit’s neck and lifted the poor creature to its mouth before sinking jagged teeth into the bunny’s throat. Even from a distance, he could see that the rabbit’s eyes were huge with fear. Beyond this, he could see a flurry of motion. At first he thought it was shadows from the sun shining sideways through the trees, but then his mind registered the fact that it couldn’t be shadows since the sun was directly overhead. His eyes then focused on the first of hundreds of the dead coming down the tracks toward them.

“Z
’s!” He called out loudly.

Standing nearby as he supervised the loading of the last of the fuel cans, Brain rushed forward as he un-holstered his pistol.

Seeing this, Steve called out, “There’s too many of them, get everyone on the trucks.”

Brain changed
direction so fast that he almost tripped as he shouted, “On the trucks. Everyone get on the trucks.”

The people on the Battleship Texas,
busy arguing with each other about who carried the most supplies, had no idea their lives were in danger.  When they finally noticed Steve and Brain yelling to them, they called out to each other in confusion and fear. Steve screamed to them again at the top of his voice, “Get on the damn trucks or you’re dead!”

This caused more
frightened cries of, “What’s happening?” and “What is it?” but at least it got them moving.

For whatever reason
though, they ran in the wrong direction.

Steve
saw them heading for the river and screamed, “No, no, no! Get on the trucks,” until they halted their stampede. But once again, instead of doing what they were told, they stood there in shock and fear, their eyes like that of the rabbit he’d just seen slaughtered.

Heather
ran out from behind the rear truck with her rifle at the ready and he called to her, “There’s a shitload of Z’s coming down the tracks. We need to go.”

Instantly assessing the situation with the refugees, she smacked
the nearest one on the back of the head before grabbing him by the upper arm and shoving him in the direction of the nearest truck while yelling, “Move!”

This got
them going.

Worr
ied about his own people, Steve ran back down the tracks as he sought them out.

Pep was standing on the supplies stacked behind the cab of the truck barking at Z
’s, so she was okay.

He saw Denise
already sitting in the lead truck’s cab as Tick-Tock fired up the engine. Calling out for them to cover the front, he heard the sharp crack of Denise’s M1 as she echoed his calls for everyone to get on the trucks. At the rear of Tick-Tock’s vehicle, he found Sheila and Mary helping a woman into the back.

Sheila
caught sight of Steve and called to him, “Cindy’s already on.”

“We’ve
only got a few minutes before they’re all over us,” he told her as he raced by.

Brain and Connie
were throwing the last of the boxes into the second truck when he yelled out, “Leave that shit. It’s time to go.”

Immediately, they stopped what they were doing and headed for the cab.

“Where’s Heather?” He asked.

“A couple people ran for the boats and she went after them,” Connie
told him.

As he headed down the embankment to the river, he heard the starter whine
when Brain cranked his engine over. It caught with a roar as he looked around for Heather. Steve slid down the loose dirt of the embankment, and then breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her coming toward him.

Before he could say anything, she said, “They’re coming along the river, too. They’re right behind me. G
et back to the trucks.”

Steve grabbed
her by the hand as she neared and pulled her up in front of him. Slinging his rifle, he scrambled on hands and knees up the steep grade to the railroad tracks.

***

Jeff Fahey, a congressman from the great State of California, stood at the wheel of the tugboat and said, “I propose we go back to the Battleship Texas.”

K
ym Mevers, one of his aides, said, “I second that motion.”

Two other
aides that had joined them in their frantic dash from the dead nodded their heads in assent.

“
All in agreement say, aye,” Jeff told them.

Their response was lost in a
series of high pitched whines coming from the shore as one of the dead broke through the brush lining the river and loped across the sand toward them.

Congressman Fahey’s demeanor chang
ed in an instant from statesmanlike to terrified child at the sight of the dirty figure approaching. When it was joined by two dozen more, a dark stain appeared at the crotch of his pants. He twisted halfway around, lunging for the ignition of the boat and turned the key.

Nothing happened.

He pounded on the rail, crying out, “What in the hell’s wrong with this thing?”

Seeing
even more of the dead approaching, he turned to Kym and said, “Get out and push us away from shore.”

She
immediately jumped over the rail and heaved at the beached boat while Fahey and the others moved as far away as possible on the stern. Lifting, pushing and straining, she slowly edged the boat into the water then waded in after it. Kym was about to jump aboard when the first of the dead grabbed her by the hair. Pulling it back to expose her throat, it let out a whine as it lunged forward with its mouth agape.

Jeff
Fahey watched in horror as the thing sank its teeth into his aide’s neck before whipping its head back and forth to rip out a chunk of flesh. Blood flew into the air as Kym screamed out a gurgling plea for help. On the boat, Fahey and the others ignored her as they leaned over the sides, paddling with their hands to get away.

Until the anchor rope stopped them.

When he noticed that they weren’t making any progress, Fahey turned to see what the problem was. Following the line from where it was tied to a cleat at the rear of the boat, he could see it ended where the anchor had been buried in the sand, effectively securing them to the land.

Scared into immobility, he relaxed
once he noticed the boat was far enough out in the river that the dead couldn’t get to him. As he watched, a dead woman with a shredded face waded in after them then suddenly disappeared below the water when she reached a drop off. On the shore, hundreds of the dead now gathered to glare at them with hungry eyes. He averted his own eyes from the group that were biting and tearing at Kym while thinking that this is what aides were for, to be of service to their betters.

Turning to
his remaining underlings, he regained his composure and straightened up to his full five foot four. Mindful of the urine stain on his pants, but ignoring the fact that he’d wet himself, he said in a pompous tone, “I know you’re grateful that I saved your lives, but you have some work to do. We must wait here until they go away and then you can go ashore and release the anchor. Oh, and find something to use as oars. Once equipped, you can paddle me back to the Battleship Texas.”

About t
o raise an objection, a junior aide turned to point at the dead on the shore and say that this was a collective where everyone worked. But on doing this, he stopped before he could get the first word out of his mouth. Only able to make a gurgling noise, they all turned to see what he was looking at.

In shock, they watched as a dead thing
, dressed in the remains of a Texas State trooper’s uniform, pawed in the sand at the anchor rope, then stared in disbelief as he picked it up. Horrified, they began to shake as he pulled it up.

C
ongressman Fahey looked around wildly then squeaked, “Untie the rope.”

After trying
for a moment, one of his aides said, “There’s too much tension on the line.”

“Then
cut the rope.” Fahey said hysterically. “We can drift away on the current.”

“Cut it with what?”
The aide asked. “They stripped the boat of everything.”

Hearing a splash, Fahey turned and saw that one of his people had jumped overboard
and was swimming frantically for the far shore.

“Coward
!” He shrieked at the top of his voice.

This was followed by another splash
as the man trying to untie the rope dove into the water.

Fahey turned to his
final aide and realized he’d forgotten her name. Giving her a friendly pat on the shoulder and a benevolent smile, he said, “Well, at least you showed some loyalty.”

Shrinking
away from him, she screamed, “Only because I can’t swim.”

He looked up at her and
said, “And neither can I, so we must make some kind of deal with them.”

The whine of a hundred
dead voices filled the air, drowning out Fahey’s voice as he turned to the dead and addressed them, “I know we can discuss this like human beings…”

***

Steve and Heather made their way up the embankment and found Brain waiting for them. From the front of their small column they heard the steady sound of gunfire.

“Where
did those people go?” Brain asked.

“To the boats,” Heather answered.

Looking beyond them, he asked, “Did you find them? Where are they?”

“Dead
, or about to be,” Heather answered.

“Call Tick-Tock and tell him to roll,” Steve said as he climbed
onto the bed of the truck and reached down to lift Heather up. “Tell him we’re not stopping for shit.”

Brain pulled the two-way radio out of his pocket and
began talking rapidly as he ran for the cab.

The gunfire from
the front died and was replaced by the roar of a diesel engine as Steve and Heather took up positions where they could look over the supplies stacked behind the cab. In awe, they saw that the railroad tracks were packed from one side to the other with the dead.

From his position hiding in the corner, Sean asked, “Where did they all come from?”

“The cars on the freeway,” Heather answered as the trucks started rolling forward. “They were inside them.”

“All of those things were hiding in cars?” Sean asked.
Suddenly a thought struck him and he said, “They followed you here. You’re breaking your end of the deal and putting our lives in jeopardy.”

With a laugh, Steve said, “Okay, the deal
’s off then, you can get out here.”

This shut Sean up faster than a double wrap of duct tape.

Climbing atop the stack of supplies, Steve slapped his hand against the back of the canvas covering the cab and said, “Give me the radio.”

Connie unzipped the rear window and handed it through to him. Pressing the transmit button, he asked, “Tick-Tock
, do you read me?”