LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (48 page)

She slammed her hand down on the railing in frustration as Ky spoke quietly.
 

“So what now…back? Stay up here and hope they go right under us?”

Kate let her mind’s eye wander back along their course and remembered the lumber mill. A closed gate, a string of trees in front of the fencing along the road, and a stretch of forest to the rear. And a large building that probably boasted thick doors and a second story.

Straightening, she cursed again. With the breadth and length of this herd, it would hit that building head on, but by now they didn’t have time to move outside of its path. They just needed to find somewhere safe to ride it out. With luck, the tens of thousands of zombies approaching would never suspect there were tasty humans wandering the countryside.
 

“No, I’ve got a better idea.”

***

They drove quickly now, eager to make it back before the herd was within sight or hearing distance. The sound of the SUV would have been as much of a give away as seeing them running into the facility. And if a herd that size saw them, they would pursue them with a single minded tenacity that would never die. Not until they had fed.

The sun was sinking quickly, now and in the twilight, Kate knew she had to watch the obstructions on the road.

But she was distracted.
 

Another day before she could finally reach Vancouver.

Another day before she could begin the search in earnest, or die trying.

Another bloody day of waiting, of running and hiding.

She was so sick of this shit.
 

Swerving recklessly, she pulled the SUV through the border with barely a tap on the brakes, and Ky yelled briefly in surprise, although she didn’t seem to be worried by the speed. They were both eager to beat that herd back to safety.

The three miles between the border post and the mill went quickly as Kate plowed through smaller obstructions, and the SUV dutifully performed as she swerved into the median and the shoulder around parked cars.
 

But their haste finally damned them to the whims of circumstance. Within sight of the gates, the front left tire exploded in a cloud of rubber and air as Kate took a particularly sharp left turn around an overturned minivan. Careening sharply, the remaining tires bit into the dirt and gravel, and she tried to recover, but they were surrounded by glass and metal, having reached a particularly gnarled section of roadway.
 

The SUV came to a shuddering stop, and the passenger side slamming forcefully into the side of a large tractor trailer almost across the highway from the entrance, Kate felt like crying.
 

Because there, in the distance, she could see the outlines of three vehicles.

And two of them belonged to Starr’s convoy of raiders.

They were out of time.

***

We found the bodies shortly after leaving the campsites. It didn’t take much investigation to determine the cause of death.

They were in the middle of the road, and we would have had to swerve around them as we drove north.
 

Greg’s head was almost gone, as if it had been taken off by a large caliber shot—maybe a fifty cal. But his leather jacket gave him away. That, and his body seemed to give off the stench of ignorance and arrogance.
 

Blood pooled under his body and ran the width of the highway until disappearing into a crevasse created by the most recent quake.
 

Next to him, Jean’s body paid testament to a sadistic killer. A single gunshot wound to the thigh that tore through the artery and immobilized the victim simultaneously. She had clearly fallen hard, her head bruised and scraped. And her hand also bore a large jagged hole, as if someone had shot her through her upraised hand. Maybe she had been trying to protect herself. Or Greg.
 

But the scene kept us on our toes as we moved further north. We followed the smaller of the two roads that were our options after we passed the bodies, hoping that the convoy had taken the larger, faster route.
 

We were closing in on the border slowly, and thankfully we hadn’t seen hide or hair of the crazy militia.
 

“What the hell was that?” Rhi said, squinting through the front windshield of the battered pickup. I had seen it too. A wildly careening SUV, slipping through the median and disappearing behind an overturned semi-trailer.
 

The light was getting dim in the twilight, but it was too much activity to have imagined. Rhi slowed the truck and I leaned out of the passenger window, past the dingy film of dirt and dust and ash on the glass.
 

“It’s some dumb-ass Sunday driver is what it is,” I said, staring as the SUV failed to reappear on the other side of the large truck.

“Is it them?” she asked, slowing even more, eyes narrowing.
 

I shook my head.
 

“Unclear.” As a precaution, I stuck my hand out the window and made the signal for stop, a firmly clenched fist. Behind us, the two stolen trucks slowed.
 

To our right, a large facility suddenly emerged from the trees and I chuckled out loud at the billboard. That was some quality humor.

But I didn’t focus long on the sign. I focused on the long, unbroken fence that surrounded the building. Not just cheap-ass chain link either. The good stuff—half-inch thick, six foot tall steel and iron vertical bars interspersed with eight foot tall concrete anchor pillars. Even the main gate was heavy-duty—two six foot doors, each one eight feet wide, and it looked like they were kept shut by a huge, thick metal bar on the other side.
 

“Slow down,” I said, pulling my eyes back to the road and watching for movement. “I want to try to get eyes on these people. Let me out on the shoulder, then take a position behind that copse of trees.” I pointed to a large grouping of evergreens in the median and she grunted once in acknowledgement, slowing the truck near the right hand side of the road.

“Give me five minutes and if you don’t see me come out, you all route around and see if you can flank on the left.”

“This ain’t my first ass-rodeo, kid. Get to steppin.”
 

Opening the door, I hit the gravel and crouched down as the truck accelerated and angled sharply to the left. Behind me, the other two trucks sat idling, roughly five hundred feet away. I could almost make out Ethan’s face in the driver’s seat of one of them, staring forward, not caring about me.
 

And what the hell was an ass-rodeo, Rhi? Explains a lot about your home life.

I was crouched behind a large sedan—something my grandfather would have proudly driven through his retirement community, hauling his golf clubs and walker in back, parading his octogenarian badassedness around for the ladies. You wouldn’t have caught me dead in it before the apocalypse, but now I was happy for the cover.
 

Peaking my head out over the trunk, I caught movement behind the overturned semi trailer no more than a hundred yards away. Legs were moving in the space between the trailer and the ground, and I noted that one set was much smaller than the other. They both looked smaller—both women.

Shit. This might be the crazy murdering bitches. Or a patrol. We couldn’t let them get back to their friends.
 

I needed a closer look.

Rolling to my right, I dashed for a nearby car, closer to their cover. A flurry of bullets tore into the concrete fifteen feet away and I dove for the ground.
 

A brief yell sounded from behind the truck, then silence. No more shooting. I leaned around the back of the next car, a small blue import with one of those horribly cliched bumper stickers on the back with the picture of the stick figure family.
 

In the distance, I heard a woman’s voice, faint and echoing off the parked cars, half-drowned in the open air.

“What do you want?” I thought I heard it offer.

Well, for one, I would like not to be shot at. A nice dinner. A beer. Maybe a roll of toilet paper?

“What do YOU want?” I responded.

Silence, then.

“Are you a man?”

This conversation was going to difficult places. Would they ask me to put my keys in a bowl?
 

“Are you?”

Silence.

Okay, fuck this.
 

The sun was going down and we had just located a sweet-ass place to stay the night. It was time to get to the bottom of this.

“I’m coming out now. I’m don’t mean you any harm. We’re just passing through, and …”
 

I stood up slowly, and my eyes found where the two women were crouching behind the cab of the semi. One holding a rifle trained forward, the other smaller one already standing straight, abandoning her cover and smiling.

“I thought I recognized that smart-ass voice,” said Ky, running around the front of the truck and allowing a couple tears to escape from her eyes before grabbing me in a huge hug.
 

Laughing, I lifted her off the ground, rifle falling to the ground, eyes welling up in joy and relief.
 

Kate followed closely behind at a stately pace, waiting until Ky had been placed carefully on the ground. I looked up at her, taking in the details of her face, the flow of her hair, the curves of her body. Her presence. Her smile. The brightness in her eyes.
 

This embrace was much slower. Careful, and gentle as we held off speaking for a solid minute, just reveling in the reassuring feel of each others’ bodies. The warmth and the security.

Finally, I pulled my head from her hair and looked her in the eyes, voice full of emotion.

“You are really, truly, quite the shitty driver.”

After we had taken the time necessary to confirm that we were all truly alive and well, and missing no body parts or vital organs, we cut through the reunion bull with the imminent threat. Everyone had seen the horror and destruction that a herd could wreak.
 

And no one wanted to be in their way when they got here.

Left alone, they would break around the edges of the fencing like a weak tide, flowing slowly around us, moving on at a steady pace. Safely inside the fenced perimeter and the mill further on, we would be undetectable.
 

But if they found us; if they knew were there … they would be implacable and constant. Like that same tide at gail force, hurling themselves against the fence until they gained access. And they would eventually gain access. They would pile up on top of one another, or they would press too hard against an earthquake-weakened support. Somehow, they always found their way in.

Introducing the ladies to Rhi was a pleasure, and after the crude jokes at my expense in her earthy way, Rhi gathered the group up with a loud whistle and a wave of her hand.

As the wind shifted, and the unmistakable scent of a herd caught the air, befouling the crisp feeling of a late fall breeze, we decided quickly: we needed to get inside that fence and take shelter in the mill. Not only did the hardened fence present a wonderful barrier, the possibility of supplies and a hidden refuge from the dead and from the band of roving soldiers and their brainwashed adherents was definitely a draw.

We parked the vehicles outside the fence, dismounting and hiking the short, steep rise quickly after mounting the gate. The large, thick steel bar on the entrance was locked and we didn’t dare risk the noise it would require to remove it, even if we could. It was a massive industrial number, and we were short on time.

If we needed transportation within these fences, we were probably already screwed. A herd that size would pass over living bodies like a swarm of locusts on a crop of wheat—within minutes, there would be nothing left of anyone exposed.

The lumber mill sat on a hill that rose abruptly from the thin forest next to the road. Thick copses of trees lined the fence, but sparse foliage on the steep hill didn’t conceal much of the large building. We found it ironic as we hiked up—Kate and I still hand in hand, like new lovers—that a building devoted to destroying trees was surrounding by a bucolic setting such as this. The large mill stretched out over nearly a football field in length, rectangular and plain in its construction, but still sturdy, with no visible damage from the quakes. The sides were made of steel sheet metal welded to what I assumed was a thick wooden frame inside. The roof—paneled in more steel—bore a spotty coat of rust, like the mange of a stray dog.

No one spoke as we approached the building, staring instead around the large lot that was just barely hidden from the main road, around the back corner and facing away from the road. The large dirt area faced a long, unbroken forest of evergreens and pine trees that marched away from the rear of the property, beginning promptly at the fence line—which appeared to be solid around the entire perimeter—and continuing on to the horizon, broken only by power lines and the brief interludes of small roads.
 

How a lumber mill could exist in the middle of such a vast stretch of forest was indeed a curiosity. Then again, as I stared up at the rapidly rising foothills glowing red in the setting sun, as well as the vomiting volcanoes in the distance, of which we had gained a spectacular view with our short climb, I could imagine the rich bounty that the loggers could have reaped from the shoulders of the vast range.

We carefully rounded the corner to the collection of odd machinery. Really more of a haphazard parking lot for a variety of equipment, much of which looked like it was pulled from a bad science fiction movie, with the long articulated metal arms, the huge saw blades, and the tall wheels and tank treads underneath the machinery, it was also a dangerous area. Too many blind spots and sharp angles.
 

With hand gestures, we moved across the area carefully, Ky and Kate joining me to the right as Ethan and Rhi took the left, checking the many corners until we had traversed the whole area, determining that it was clear before bringing the children forward.