America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (22 page)

~

"So, they're down to six?" Mike asked. He
looked at Cindy. She looked like an ordinary young woman now
without the excessively short baby T and too tight jeans, piercings
and boots. Her eyes showed a different story though. Puffy,
bloodshot and careful. Much more careful than someone her age
should ever have to be.

"Six," Cindy repeated, "But maybe
some of the others got hurt. I heard Murder saying they hit
somebody else. He might have been talking about Murder's truck
though. And, Chloe, she ran after Murder, and I didn't hear
no...
any
shots,
so I don't know about her," she told him.

Kate had gone back up the hill with Ronnie and
Jeff. Mike picked up the V.H.F. radio and called. "Did you see
someone else running away from the first truck?" he
asked.

“
None of us stayed," Ronnie said.
"That other girl must have made it back to one of the other trucks
though. She's not around here, unless she's well hidden. Seems we
would have seen her though," Ronnie finished.

"Okay. Just keep an eye out," Mike
said.

"Oh yeah," Ronnie said.

But it was three hours before they
came again...

~

"Mike,"
Kate's voice came through, not much more than a
whisper,
"We hear the trucks, but we don't
see them... Too dark..."
She had the
volume down, and held the radio to one ear in order to hear his
reply.

"I hear them as well. Just be
ready for anything,"
he told
them.

"Got them,"
Ronnie said. He had been looking through the night scope,
like all the rest of them, and he had spotted some movement on the
side of the highway about three hundred yards away. Two trucks were
slowly idling along the edge of the tree line.

The skies had clouded over again, and there was
little moonlight. It was hard to see the two trucks against the
backdrop of the dark trees. The sound was all they had to go by,
and that was deceptive, sounding as if it came from everywhere...
and nowhere.

"Yeah... We got them,"
Kate said now.
"They're
moving right next to the tree line... idling along... real slow.
Unsure Jeff and I can get them from here."

The radio stayed silent for a beat
or two longer than she thought that it should.
"You hear me, Mike?"
she
asked.

"Yeah, better do it... Better do
it, only make it count. I don't want to get into a war with
these
guys with those machine pistols, you
know?"
Mike asked.

Kate cursed herself
"Damn it, Mike. There's a whole gym bag full of
clips and rifles down by the first truck. Damn it,"
she said.

"Yeah, Cindy just told me. We have
several, but more would be nice. I'm sending David. You cover him;
he'll go down and get them,"
Mike
said.

"They're really close,"
Kate said, but just as she said that, both trucks
stopped. They simply sat idling by the tree line.

Minutes later David slipped by them and over
the hill. He worked his way down to the truck in the ditch. Ronnie
and Jeff tracked him with their night scopes, while Kate kept her
scope focused on the trucks. They appeared to be doing nothing,
just sitting there.

David was back a few minutes later with a large
duffel bag full of rifles. He stopped as Kate and the others opened
it, each taking a machine pistol and extra clips, then David moved
off with the bag back to the camp. The trucks continued to sit
idling by the tree line.

~

"I don't like it," Kate said ten
minutes later. She kept popping her scope up to her eye, but like
the other two, she found little to see. She could only glimpse a
vague outline of someone in the interior of the first truck, what
looked like the driver, sitting... waiting.
For what?"
she wondered.

"They're still sitting,"
she whispered to Mike over the radio.

"You think you can hit them from
there?"
Mike asked.

"Yeah,"
Kate answered,
"but, hit what? The
front truck is blocking the other truck, and I really can't see
into the interiors,"
she
finished.

Just as she finished, she saw a shadow move at
the edge of the woods down by the road that went into the
encampment. She swung the scope quickly down just in time to see
four shapes come from the woods and run quietly down the road. She
squeezed off three fast shots, glad to see the trailing runner
fall. She snatched up the radio.

"They fooled us! They're sneaking
up the road, coming at you now!"
Kate
yelled.

She turned back to the vehicles and opened up
on the front vehicle blowing the windshield inward. But what had
looked like a driver was just the raised head rest on the back of
the seat.

"Come on," she said as she jumped to her feet,
"We'll come up the row behind them."

Ronnie and Jeff jumped up and scrambled after
her, running down the hillside for the park road
entrance.

She was nearly at the road when two new shadows
stepped from the trees into the road. She dove for the ground as
their machine pistols barked fire in her direction

~

As she hit the ground, she rolled hard to her
left and came up on her elbows, the rifle in her hands. The machine
pistol banged against her side on its strap.

Behind her, back towards the camp, the sound of
heavy gunfire came to her. She drew a bead on the one remaining
shadows - the other one had gone somewhere - squeezed the trigger,
and the shadow dropped into the road. She drew a bead on the second
shadow lying in the roadway and snapped off two more quick shots.
The shadow didn't move. It was either dead already, or she had
missed, and this close, she was sure she hadn't missed.

"Ronnie," she called into the
darkness.

"Yeah, right here," Ronnie answered.

"Jeff?"

Silence...

She raised her voice,
"Jeff?"

But only silence greeted her.

"Fuck it. We got to go, Ronnie.
Cover me; I'll go first. If nothing happens when I hit the road,
I'll turn and cover you,"
she told him.
Gunfire was still heavy from the direction of the camp.

"Got you.
Go,"
Ronnie said.

Kate took a deep breath, tensed, and came up
running. She made the road, encountering no resistance at all.
Ronnie was up and moving before she even motioned to him. She
waited for a second, wondering what had happened to Jeff, and then
Ronnie was there and they were running off down the road, covering
opposite sides of the road and the shadowy trees as they
went.

The gunfire began falling off as they closed in
on the camp. That only made Kate worry more. Why had both her and
Jeff gone to the hilltop? They were the two best, leaving no good
shots in the camp. She slowed, and Ronnie matched her pace, really
only a fast walk now, then a slow walk, and then they split up,
taking opposite sides of the road, creeping tree to
tree.

A shadow popped up directly ahead of Ronnie and
fired a burst into the camp. Ronnie fired back at point blank range
and the shooter collapsed. They both faded back into the
trees.

Kate squatted behind the cover of
a large pine and whispered into the VHF. "We're coming up behind
you,
copy?"
she
asked.

Nothing... Then a quick click of a mic
button.

She clicked her own mic button once as well,
stood up and began moving tree to tree once more.

Cindy had said there were ten total. That left
six or seven depending on what had happened to the one Cindy had
called Chloe. They had killed two by the road and one here. She had
only seen four come down this way, that left three or four
depending on where the girl had gone.

As she was thinking, she nearly walked right
into another one of them crouching behind some bushes. She didn't
hesitate but walked up and fired a quick burst into their back. Not
even realizing it was a young woman her own age, until she fell
backwards, and Kate caught a quick glimpse of her face as she went
down.

A burst of gunfire came from some where up
ahead and ripped into the trees next to her. She dove to the ground
and rolled several times. She rolled up on to her feet and only
realized she'd been either hit by a bullet or something else when
she felt blood running from her forehead and into her left eye. She
wiped it away and scanned the trees around her carefully. Two or
three left, she thought to herself.

She took several deep breaths to calm herself
and began moving forward once more, moving tree to tree. Across the
way she saw a shadow gliding through the trees matching her pace.
She didn't know if it was Ronnie so she didn't dare
shoot.

Another shadow stepped partly from
the trees just ahead of the shadow she had been tracking and looked
her way.
Ronnie!
She realized as the moonlight painted his face. And even as
she had the thought, she tracked back with her rifle and sprayed
the trees behind him.

When she looked back, Ronnie's face wore a
shocked look. She pointed behind him where a young man crashed out
into the road holding his chest. Ronnie quickly faded back into the
trees.

She keyed the mic.
"You hit any?
" she
whispered. The speaker clicked once, paused, then clicked
again.

She keyed the mic once more "If you're sure you
got two," she whispered, "then we got..." And that was when the
girl stabbed her.

~

The blade bit into her arm, but
hit the bone and didn't pass her arm and plunge into her chest as
the girl had hoped. Her first thought was,
Thank God my arm was there
. Her
second thought was...
she means to kill
me.

Kate swung the machine pistol downward with all
of her weight, forcing the girl's knife hand away from her body.
She looped one foot behind the girls leg and pushed her forward,
sending them both to the ground. The girl was like a snake, turning
and twisting under her to get away. The machine pistol had slipped
from her hand as she fell, and it landed somewhere between the two
of them. The girl had held on to the knife though, and Kate felt
the point scratch across her throat as she struggled to keep the
girls arm away.

She brought her knees up and leveraged them
between the girl's thighs, driving them apart, then drove one knee
into her crotch. She gasped, but would not let go of the
knife.

Kate looked at her face in the
sparse moonlight. So much like Cindy's had looked,
stress lines, puffy eyes.
But this girl's eyes were flat, hard and determined. There
was no soft edge to these eyes. She meant to kill Kate if she
could.

Kate tried to leverage herself with one knee
again, but the girl came up with one of her own, catching Kate in
the stomach, driving most of the air from her lungs. The girl took
advantage of that by rolling Kate over and straddling
her.

Kate struggled to hold the knife
back, but it was sinking lower and lower. A face suddenly appeared
over the girl's shoulder.
Another
one,
Kate thought. A shot exploded like a
thunderclap, something warm splattered her face.
Blood
, she thought, and
then the knife was falling away as the girl slumped onto her
side.

Mike's face appeared above her as she struggled
to push the girls dead weight off her. Mike grabbed the girl by one
arm and flung her off into the brush.

Kate got shakily to her feet.

"Jesus," Mike breathed.

"Yeah, this shit has got to stop," Kate joked
in a shaky voice. Then she burst into tears.

~Janet's journal~

We are somewhere to the southwest of Kentucky.
Maybe even long out of Kentucky by now. We have heard nothing from
the ones we left behind, and we are all worried.

We ran the logging trails at first, but they
ran out. So we ran the rows between the tall pine trees, obviously
a reforestation effort; all the trees are planted in fairly
straight lines. But it had to have been years ago. The trees were
giants. There are about 60 miles showing on the trip meter on the
dashboard.

We left the straight lines of the trees behind
and rolled out into a grassy valley a short time ago. The grass was
cut short, or we thought it was cut short until, in the distance,
we saw enormous Bison grazing, or are they Buffalo? They look to me
to be bigger, like real buffalo, but it's too dark to
tell.

We have half a tank of gas, about the same for
all of us. But we each have another ten gallons riding in cans on
the back. We're all tired. We're all worried. We're going to stop
here and wait for morning to arrive. Hopefully some of us will get
some sleep.