Zombie Fallout 2 (28 page)

“Tracy.”

“I’m trying damnit!” She screamed. The minivan whined under the strain. Brendon and the two chaser trucks fell behind. The tachometer was buried in the red. I could hear the hamsters in the engine caterwauling for their lives. The Ford fell back a couple of inches or the minivan surged, tough to tell at 120. The three men in the back were even with us but seemed much more intent on holding on for dear life than firing off any rounds. We were creeping even. Tracy was sweating bullets. Oh, nope that was me. I was dripping all over her while I leaned over to get a better vantage point.

“Talbot, get the fuck off my lap.” She said in a strained voice.

“Oh right, sorry. It’s going to get loud in here real soon, you ready.”

She spared a split second to look over at me. The strain of the event was beginning to wear on her. “They still haven’t done anything Mike.”

“Yeah and I’m not going to give them chance.”

Tommy picked this most inopportune time to talk. “I watched a special on the History Channel the night before the deaders came.”

BT turned to look at him, even Tracy hazarded a glance. When Tommy spoke and it wasn’t in regards to Pop-Tarts, you definitely wanted to listen.

“It was about Pearl Harbor and how the Japanese had struck before they had declared war. It was something that they still regret having done. It wasn’t honorable.”

FUCK Honor, this was our lives!!! My decision was now not sitting well with the rest of the occupants of the car. We were all 99% sure of the intentions of the truck but there was still that one fucking percent chance they were just creeps, nothing worse. Tracy had pulled up completely even. The engine was in danger of throwing a rod. Redneck number one opened up the back window to the truck bed. The ugly fuck erased all doubts of their purpose. Even over the howling wind, it was impossible to not hear his words. I believe in my heart it was divine intervention we heard him at all. The physics of the speed we were traveling at and the whipping of the wind through the windows made thinking a difficult prospect. But we all heard him as clear as if we were having tea in a library.

Our furtive movements did not go unnoticed. One of the gunmen had got so nervous he dropped the magazine to his rifle. Like two warships of old we broadsided each other.

“FIRE!” I yelled.

Bullets screamed! Lead struck. Metal, plastic, rubber and wood shattered under the assault. The noise was deafening and the clouds of smoke were blinding. Screams of savagery and pain were muffled by the explosions. The gunman closest to us was fatally struck. He leaned forward and pitched out of the truck bed. His crudely fashioned harness had not saved him from the disgrace of being unceremoniously dragged along the side of the truck. Redneck number one watched as his friend bounced and skipped along on the ground. A smear of blood and bone trailed for miles. Talk about chumming for zombies. BT roared in pain as a bullet struck. I didn’t have the time to look how bad. I was fumbling with a new magazine. My thinking was that if he had enough life in him to scream, then he was still breathing. Travis’ shotgun ripped through the rear quarter panel of the truck, fuel was leaking from their truck like a sieve. Our front windshield exploded outwards, Tracy yelled and swerved and she smashed sideways into the truck. The impact loosened the body of the hijacker. He tumbled backwards, seemingly gaining new heights as he bounced like a super ball. His springiness landed him onto the windshield of one of the trailing trucks. Our luck wasn’t strong enough to hope he would take them out. They swerved sharply but recovered quickly.

We had all been watching the macabre accident. As I turned back around I caught the gaze of redneck number one. We locked onto each other for a heartbeat. I could feel his malice.

“Kill them all!” He screeched so loud, Tommy’s special skills weren’t needed.

A renewed vigor of bullets whined through our shell-pocked car. The cars were going so fast, the slightest imperfection in the roadway made anything less than a pure luck shot damn near impossible. But that didn’t keep Travis from pumping round after round into the shredded gas tank. I kept waiting for the Hollywood explosion but apparently they only know how to do that in Hollywood. It never happened.

Wisps of smoke emanated from our chase minivan. Brendon and Jen had joined into the fray. Sometime during our sea battle they had pulled in behind the leading Ford and were now adding their two cented lead. The two gunmen in the rear swung their attention to the new threat.

“Wrong move motherfuckers.” I took a calming breath and unloaded a full magazine into them. They danced like marionettes on springs as round after round of high-powered steel jacketed rounds burst through their bodies. Blood arced, teeth shattered. Their paid out bodies dropped faster than my spent bullet casings. My reverie was short lived as redneck number one had at some point pulled out a Desert Eagle 45 and was busy trying to place a hole in my forehead. The top of our steering wheel exploded into fragments of ragged materials. It was long moments after that thunderous concussion that I noticed there were no more shots being fired. The odds were beyond hope that the spectacular weapon had jammed or the idiot was too dim to keep it fully loaded. No Travis’s fuel tank shredding tactic had come to fruition. I watched as redneck number one slammed his fists in frustration against his dashboard. I would have loved to hear his expletives. By the way he was going I was convinced I would learn some new and interesting words and colorful phrases.

Tracy had completely turned around and over her shoulder to look at the wound. Sure we weren’t going the earth shattering speed of 120, but at 70 we could still get into a lot of trouble real quickly. “Do you want me to stop?” She asked.

“Can’t.”

“What?” She asked incredulously.

“Do you think our friends back there are going to stop? They’re just transferring their stuff over and will be following us in a minute or two.”

Tracy looked over to BT. “He’s right.” BT answered.

Now I’m no doctor and I didn’t even play one on TV, but even if BT's wound wasn’t fatal now, I could tell he would bleed out sooner rather than later.

“Fuck that.” Tracy said quietly.

I was thrown against the passenger door violently as she did something physics wise I didn’t think was possible. She had u-turned a minivan at 70 miles per hour and we didn’t violently flip down the roadway. Somehow Tommy had had the foresight to grip the roof-mounted handgrip and hadn’t even lost a beat as he popped what appeared to be the remainder of a Kit-Kat bar into his mouth. It would have been humorous if I wasn’t pinned nearly upside down by the g-forces being applied to my body. Brendon respected applied pressures (even if Tracy didn’t) and slowed his car down to a saner but still scary 45 miles per hour before he tried to do the same maneuver. Within a quarter mile he was alongside our right side.

He nearly shattered his voice to be heard above the whistling wind as it came in through our now defunct windshield. “What’s going on Mike?”

I wanted to give him the full story about BT’s injury and the need to get him some attention and quickly. Being succinct seemed more prudent. “We’re going to finish what they started.” He nodded gravely to my words. Jen had replaced Nicole in the front seat and was busy loading her extra magazines. There was a barbarous set to her features. BT was breathing laboriously through the haze of pain as Travis and Tommy fashioned a crude tourniquet on his upper thigh.

“Dad I think it broke his leg but we got the blood stopped.”

“Holy shit BT, does it hurt?” I asked stupidly. It’s common knowledge that there is no greater pain on the planet than a broken femur, yet he hadn’t cried out since the initial shot that caused his injury.

“What do you think Talbot.” BT winced as Tommy pulled the slipknot tighter on the tourniquet.

I winced in sympathy with him. And then like an idiot, I let my thoughts wander and wonder. Is a broken leg worse pain than say, someone gripping one of your nuts in a pair of pliers and crushing it? Oh, God, I nearly vomited at my own speculation. Better not to go there at all.

Within thirty seconds of cresting a small rise in the road, our quarry was in sight. The hunters had become the hunted. Redneck number one might be an asshole but he wasn’t a dipshit. While his traveling companions were staring at awe at us as we bore down on them, he was punching and cajoling and kicking them into action. They were nearly done with the transfer of supplies and the unceremonious disposal of their brethren when we had come upon them. If they got behind the wheels of those trucks and got them moving this was going to become a very dangerous game of chicken.

I saw Tracy hesitate. She wasn’t sure if she should keep going or turn around. The odds of making another 70 mile per hour u-turn unscathed weighed heavily against us. She pinned the gas pedal down. I tasted tooth fragments as my head slammed into the dashboard. Tracy had used the minivan like a guided missile as she smashed the living fuck out of the nearest redneck that had not been thoroughly convinced to get his ass moving. His ass was moving now, at least what was left of it. His broken body hurtled into the air like he carried his own jetpack. I prayed that I would not be able to hear the sound his body made when it struck back to earth. What was not already broken would shatter like dry sticks under a heavy moose’s hoof. I barely had time to recover as Tracy peeled the car off to the left. I’d like to say she narrowly missed the parked truck but that would be an outright lie. The shower of sparks and the squeal of metal on metal would have made me a liar. The caustic smell of burning paint assaulted my nostrils. Sparks showered my lap looking for fuel to grow into a larger version of itself. A loud tell-tale report let me know that someone’s tire had burst. I could only hope it wasn’t ours. I was thinking it was going to be a bitch to get triple A out here on such short notice.

And then it was over. The metallic burnt smell whisked out of our car. The din of war was reduced to just wind coming though our various new ventilation systems. Brendon had come through the far side in much better shape than us. They had decided wisely to use more conventional weapons. They had struck at least two and possibly a third man. What was left of our would-be hijackers would fit comfortably in a tollbooth. Tracy had tears streaming down her face as the stress finally wore her down. How the hell she could see through the stream of tears and the shear of wind through the dispersed windshield was once again something that eluded me.

“Tracy.” I said softly. She looked over. “We need to go back.” She didn’t question my sanity she merely acknowledged my words. BT was near to passing out as his eyes were beginning to roll up into his head. “Do you want me to drive?”

She turned the car around and sped back to the trucks. That was sufficient answer for me. This time, however, there was no call to arms as Redneck number one and one of his militia sprinted out into the snow-covered field. Throwing their weapons to the side as they did so.

“So much for comrades in arms.” I said as I pointed to the lone injured gunmen that hobbled desperately to keep up with his fleeing leader. By the time we were abreast of the trucks, the two lead runners were nearly out of sight and didn’t look like they were going to stop any time soon. The injured one had fallen over maybe a hundred yards away and seemed to be rapidly succumbing to whatever injury had taken him down. “Stop.” I told Tracy.

Now she did question my sanity in a backfire of neatly phrased expletive words. I was duly impressed.

“Hon.” I placed my hand on her shoulder. “We need to work on BT. Plus, how far do you think we can go in this cold weather without a windshield? I’m already freezing my ass off and I must have a couple of quarts of adrenaline running through me.” She didn’t think I was any saner but she did as I asked. I knew appealing to a lack of warmth would get to her. I have the heating bills to prove it.

I shivered as I went through the contents of the trucks. Not because of the cold but because of what they contained. There were handcuffs, zip ties, duct tape, rope, a variety of knives and what could only be described as medieval torture tools. Everything the home rapist could wish for. Jen had been more and more disgusted as we moved from cargo hold to cargo hold. There was food and medical supplies and even some oxycodone, which I knew BT would appreciate. But interlaced with this were the true purport of what these animals were up to. There was s&m magazines strewn about that would only arouse the sickest and twisted that society had to offer. Polaroids’ of previous victims spilled out from the glove compartment as I searched through the truck. These pictures made the magazines seem tame in comparison. The reality of how close we were to disaster struck me physically. I could see the tortured faces of my wife and daughter in these pictures of misery. These women and girls screamed in agony as every inconceivable act of depravity was forced upon them. I had not noticed Jen as she peered over my shoulder. I bumped into her as I had grabbed the pictures and was headed for the nearest snow bank, no one else needed to see this.