The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (138 page)

They were now less than a hundred feet
from the car, Billy saw.

“
Sit down!” he suddenly
yelled into the truck, “Now!” As he yelled he swung the Suburban
toward the cruiser, just close enough so that he could clip the
front end of it as they went past. The two men behind the cruiser
realized what he intended to do too late.

The Suburban hit the front of the
cruiser harder than Billy expected, so hard in fact that it sent it
spinning into the ditch like a toy. The collision ripped the front
fender from the truck, along with most of the passenger door. The
heavy bumper of the truck, torn half off in the collision, let go
with a shower of sparks and the Suburban bounced over it leaving it
behind in the road. Billy kept the gas pedal jammed to the floor
boards, even though steam was beginning to pour from the front of
the truck, and the motor was starting to wheeze ominously. A heavy
vibration ran through the truck, and as the Suburban gained more
speed the vibration became a heavy shuddering, that threatened to
shake the truck to pieces. Two miles down the road he spotted a
Dodge dealership and slid the dying truck to a stop in the wide
asphalt parking lot.

“
Out!”
he shouted, as he
quickly jumped from the truck. The others piled out behind him, and
Billy dropped back to help Delbert who was struggling to drag John
along. Beth and Peggy reached the glass doors of the showroom, and
quickly held them open to allow them to hurry inside with
John.

Billy stared back out at the wide
parking lot expecting to see the remaining patrol car come
screaming in, he did not know that Peggy had taken care of that
problem.

“
The ammo,” Billy said
turning toward the doors, “no way should we leave it in the truck,
that other car will be along any minute.”

“
I don't think so,” Peggy
replied icily, “it flipped. I blew out the front tires, and I'm
pretty damn sure the driver was dead at that point.”

“
Okay,” Billy said, he
didn't question what she said at all, “Dell, let’s go get the ammo.
Beth, can you and Peggy see what you can do for John?” Beth nodded
her head, as Billy turned and ran back out of the showroom toward
the Suburban, with Delbert right behind him.

The truck was totaled Billy
saw.

The plastic grill-work was gone along
with the bumper, and he could see now why Beth had jumped through
the window when they stopped, instead of opening the door. The door
was crushed shut. Along with that both of the front tires were
rapidly going flat. Probably from running over the bumper, he
thought, a bullet would have blown them out immediately. A huge
puddle of oil was spreading from under the truck, and green
anti-freeze dripped from what was left of the radiator.

Billy opened up the rear of the truck,
and Delbert held out his arms as Billy piled the first three boxes
on them, and then managed to take the remaining three himself. They
trotted back to the showroom and Billy mentally wished he had
thought to pull the truck out of sight. The wrecked Suburban, with
steam still rising in the air from the hood area, would almost
serve as a beacon if there were others behind them. There were, he
knew, remembering the sound of a vehicle screaming by on the
highway when they had been hiding on the dirt road.

He reached the relative safety of the
showroom just behind Delbert, the glass door whooshed shut behind
them as they entered and set down the boxes. Beth stood and slowly
shook her head as he approached her. She and Peggy had been
kneeling beside John on the floor. “He's gone, Billy,” she
said.

He could see she was close to tears,
and Peggy was more than close, she was openly weeping. Delbert
walked over to John's body and covered it with a carpet runner he
had taken from near the front door. The old man seemed close to
tears himself, Billy realized. Billy said a quick mental prayer to
God, before he spoke.

“
Listen, I don't want to
sound hard, or as if I don't care, but we can't fall apart now,” he
struggled to keep his voice calm as he spoke. “Right now, unless we
want to just give up and die, we need to get ourselves in gear. If
it wasn't one of the patrol cars that blew by us while we were on
that dirt road, and we also know it wasn't that red pickup...
someone is still out there, and once they get their shit together
they'll come back for us. I for one don't want to be here, and if
we intend to be gone I need help. Crying isn't going to bring John
back...”

“
What do you need me to do,
Billy?” Delbert asked.

Billy looked around the showroom. “We
need another truck, Dell, and I don't see any here, which means
we're going to have to go back outside to find one. Which means,”
he looked at Beth and Peggy, “I need you both to keep watch in
front. We're going out the back.” He walked over to a small plywood
board to one side of the double doors, and began to search through
the key-tags that hung from it. “Dell, take a quick look out front
and tell me whether you see a light green Durango out there, a new
one,” he continued to search through the keys as Delbert
looked.

“
Yeah, out next to the
road,” he replied.

“
How about a two-tone red
and white one?”

“
Nope, not out here
anyhow.”

“
Good,” Billy said, as he
dropped the remaining keys in a heap by the board. He had kept two
sets apparently there were two two-tone, red and white, Durango's
out back somewhere. “Okay Dell, let’s go find it,” he said, as he
turned and walked down a hallway in the direction of the back of
the building, he turned back. “Beth?” he asked.

“
Go, we'll be fine,” she
told him.

He nodded, turned, and Delbert followed
him down the hallway through a set of double steel doors and into a
large garage area. Billy searched the garage quickly with his eyes,
but no red and white, two-tone Durango's resided in the shadowy
interior. They walked to a set of double steel doors set into the
back of the garage, Billy pressed the bar handle, and they walked
out into the back lot.

They found the first Durango directly
behind the rear of the garage, Billy checked the stock numbers and
after determining which set of keys went to it, he opened the door
and got in. A low chiming greeted him as he opened the door. The
Durango was one of the upper level models he saw, and it was also
not four wheel drive. The tires were not much more than passenger
tires, and when he turned on the ignition to check the gas gauge,
the needle stopped just above empty.

“
Let's see if we can find
the other one,” Billy said, “this one isn't going to do us a
hell-of-a-lot-of good, Dell.”

They found the other truck farther back
in the lot. It was a low end model, built more with a hunter, or
some other type of sportsman, in mind, and much better suited to
their needs. Plain stark vinyl interior and the gas gauge leveled
out at half when Billy checked it. Not great, he thought, but a lot
better than the other truck, and he felt they didn't have the time
to pick and choose.

“
This is her, Dell,” Billy
said, “let’s go.” Delbert climbed in as Billy started the truck and
drove out of the back lot toward the front of the
dealership.

Billy had been tensed, expecting to
hear the chatter of machine pistols while they were out back, and
when he drove by the glass encased showroom and saw Beth and Peggy
crouched by the side of a car on the showroom floor, he breathed a
sigh of relief. He just caught Beth's waving hands out of the
corner of his eyes, before two men jumped out from behind one of
the trucks in the front row and opened fire.

Too late, he thought, as he realized he
had left the machine pistol lying on the front seat instead of
keeping it in his right hand where it should have been. Delbert had
held on to his though, and nearly kicked his side door open as he
leaped from the truck and opened up on the two men. Billy could
hear the sound of machine pistols behind him as well, as Beth and
Peggy also opened up. He aimed the Durango at the two men, levered
the door-handle and jumped from the truck, just as the windshield,
hit by several of the rounds fired by the two men, was blown
inward.

As the truck lumbered toward them, the
two men opened up on it in an effort to stop it. Billy rolled,
re-gained his feet, and opened up on the two men. They were both
dead before the truck rolled over them, dragging one of the men
with it, as it crossed the road and crashed into the ditch on the
opposite side, a long red smear marked its trail across the
road.

Billy turned to look back for Beth, but
she was already stepping through the shattered front windows of the
showroom and running toward him with Peggy close behind. He turned
to look for Delbert. He had lost track of him after he had jumped
from the truck. The old man was walking toward him, limping Billy
saw, an alarming amount of blood seeping from one leg, staining
that leg of his jeans nearly red. He became aware of a stinging
sensation on the side of his cheek, and just as he raised his hand
to touch his face, Beth raced up.

“
Let me see,” she said,
pushing his hand away from his face, “Damn, Billy, you got
hit.”

He thought at first that it had been
the flying glass from the windshield, but Beth quickly crushed that
train of thought when she said. “Looks like one of the rounds that
took out the windshield got you, Billy. It's gonna scar, but you'll
live.” She sounded calm as she spoke, Billy was surprised when she
suddenly burst into tears, and threw her arms around him as she
spoke. “Billy, it could have killed you, j-just a-a l-l-little
b-b-bit...” she broke down and couldn't continue. He held her as
Delbert walked up.

He raised his eyebrows, and said,
“Dell, you okay?”

“
Took one in the leg, I
think,” he replied.

Beth let go of Billy and tried to stop
the tears as she turned to Delbert. Billy looked over Beth quickly
with his eyes, and then moved on to Peggy, finally allowing his
eyes to fall on Delbert's leg. Beth and Peggy appeared to have only
a couple of minor cuts, probably caused by flying glass, Billy told
his questioning mind. Delbert, however, was losing blood at an
alarming rate. The entire right pant leg was shredded as well as
being soaked with blood, and as Beth carefully pulled the material
away from his leg to get a better look, Billy could see the torn
flesh beneath. It doesn't look good, he thought. He had Delbert
lean on him as they hurriedly headed back toward the
showroom.

The one side, closest to the side lot,
was untouched. They entered through the double doors, and Billy
helped ease Delbert down onto the floor. He pulled out a small
pocket knife, and quickly cut away the remainder of the pants
leg.

The wound was bad, he could see, but
thankfully it didn't look life threatening. With all the blood, he
had been convinced he would find that one of the large arteries of
the leg had been nicked, or even severed. That wasn't the case
however, and the flow of blood was already beginning to slow. Beth
folded the pant leg into a small square, and held it over the wound
to further slow the bleeding. “Billy,” she said, “I need the first
aid kit from the truck.”

“
Going,” he said, as he
trotted out the side doors and headed toward the wrecked Suburban.
He kept his eyes searching as he went, but saw nothing, and the
only sound was of the Durango, which was still running in the ditch
across the road. He pulled the first aid kit from the back of the
truck, and ran back into the showroom. He handed it to Peggy who
was kneeling with Beth beside Delbert.

“
Damn,” Delbert said,
“makes a man wish he could get shot everyday so he could have two
pretty women fussing over him,” a small smile appeared over the
tight set of his teeth.

Billy smiled back, surprised that he
could, but a glance over at the covered form of John's body quickly
wiped away the smile. “I'm getting us another truck,” he stated, as
he turned and walked over to the small pile of keys. And not from
the back either, he told himself. He searched until he found the
set of keys to the green Durango that Delbert had said was out in
front, and then headed toward the front of the lot. He could still
hear the other truck idling in the ditch, but all else was quiet
and he saw no one at all.

This Durango was another stripped down
model, with a bare interior, and aggressively tread tires. He
thanked God mentally, got in, started it, and pulled over to the
wrecked Suburban. Fifteen minutes later the contents of the
Suburban were loaded into the rear of the Durango. The Durango was
smaller, but he managed to make it all fit, and when he was
finished he pulled the truck up next to the side doors, glancing at
the gas gauge as he shut it off, which was resting between half and
full, at three quarters of a tank. “Thank you God,” he said aloud,
as he exited the truck and walked back into the
showroom.

Delbert was sitting up, resting against
the bumper of one of the cars in the showroom. “How are you
feeling?” Billy asked, as he looked over the bandaged
leg.

“
Not bad, and I'm about to
feel a lot better,” he said, raising a small pint of whiskey, “Beth
found this in one of the managers drawers. I think it'll do the
trick just fine.”