The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (26 page)

The car spun around in a circle as the
driver was hit. One of the guys leaning out of the back window was
thrown forward under the spinning wheels and then run over. The
driver straightened and gained control of the car for a split
second only to lose it again as he was hit once more. His foot
pressed hard into the floor board.

The front end of the car was aimed
slightly off center of the parking lot which would take it a few
hundred feet down past where Mike and the others were hidden in the
trees. It would probably miss the overgrown woods, crash over the
edge of the cliff and down onto the Old River Road. Mike keyed the
hand held and called to Bob.

“
Bob! Listen,” he said, “We
got a car coming over the cliff at you. Get out of the way… Now!”
About the same time he finished speaking the Toyota jumped the curb
and became air born. It sailed into the low, winter dead shrubs and
brush at the end of the wooded area. The front end caught and began
to tip downward as the shrubs and the trees snatched at it. The
back of the car lifted up over the trees, engine still racing as it
began to tumble, and then plunged down toward the Old River Road.
The noise of the crash from the roadway was deafening and seemed to
go on forever. Candace came over the radio.
“Missed us… Hit the other truck,”
static for a second
“Those guys are
wasted. They’re done,”
she
finished.

The two remaining cars were nowhere to
be seen when Mike and Ronnie turned back to the parking lot. The
one had disappeared up the sidewalk into a hail of gunfire, the
other had simply disappeared.

“
Out the end of the lot…
Maybe headed back to the north,” Tim said anticipating his
question.

“
One just blew by the end
of the road heading back over the bridge,”
Patty said from the radio, confirming what Tim had told
them.

“
That’s got to be the other
one. Good job, Tim,” Mike said.

A second later, the engines they had
heard coming entered the square from lower State Street and Factory
Street.

Two vehicles that had probably not so
long ago been ordinary pickup trucks but were now lifted and wildly
modified, screamed around the edge of the square from lower State
Street, nearly going up on two wheels, and headed for the bridge.
The cabs each held four men, machine pistols gripped tightly in
their hands as they rode out the curve of the square. Once on the
straightaway to the bridge, the men were leaning out the windows
and firing wildly at the fleeing cars.

The last truck careened off Factory
street, a half dozen men riding in the open bed, holding onto the
roll bar, and fell in behind the other two trucks. Mike listened as
they accelerated and headed for the north side.

“
Trucks coming at you,”
Ronnie was saying as Mike watched the trucks roar past the edge of
the square and drop down the short hill that lead to the
bridge.

“
Hear them,” Patty came
back, and a few seconds later, “Got them. They just passed the end
of the road headed for the north side.” The radio went back to
static.

A fourth truck roared down Factory
Street and slewed around, nearly tipping over as it tried to make
the turn down the little hill to the bridge. Up on the square, the
car that had shot up the sidewalk to the square, came back around
the edge of the square and opened up on the truck.

The truck was caught off guard. The
nose came up as the driver floored the gas pedal in an effort to
get away, and then bounced back down on the asphalt as the engine
died. The small car screeched to a stop and opened up on the truck,
the occupants in the truck kept up a steady fire back at the
car.

As Mike watched, Ronnie nudged him and
pointed out a building in back of the small car. A young woman
appeared at the edge of the roof line, a gas filled bottle in her
hands. She lit the rag and tossed it down at the small car. The
bomb hit the roof of the car and liquid fire spread from end to
end, dripping down onto the shooters. For a second there was
nothing, and then the interior of the car bloomed into flame. The
car accelerated across the space between itself and the truck. Mike
could hear men screaming inside the burning car from where he stood
watching the events unfold.

The shooters in the truck opened up on
the small car filling it with lead, but the car never slowed. The
car hit the truck broadside and both vehicles erupted in flames.
Seconds later, the truck's gas tank blew. The rear end of the truck
lifted from the pavement with a wham and then crashed back down, a
twisted, flaming wreck. It landed partway onto the roof of the
small car, crushing it inward, adding its own flames to that coming
from the car. The cars gas tank went next, and the screaming
stopped abruptly.

Flames shot up into the night sky. The
only sounds the crackle of flames and the steady pop, pop, pop as
bullets exploded inside the burning vehicles.

Ronnie keyed the hand held radio. “Two
of them just blew up here. There’s a lot of people still on the
ground though. Keep a watch out.”

Mike was watching the buildings.
“They’re hiding in the buildings. Maybe they’re going to ground,”
he told Ronnie. As he watched, he saw several shadows slipping
between the buildings.

Bob came back on the radio. “Listen,
we’ve got to get that car gone. It’s burning… Caught the truck it
hit as well. We’ve got to push it off into the river before it
blows.”

“
Do it,” Mike said. “Be
careful.”

They heard the sound of one
of their own trucks starting down on the Old River Road just
seconds later and listened to the screaming and screeching of tires
as the truck pushed the two burning vehicles over the edge of the
cliffs and into the river.
“Done,”
It was Candace who called to tell them. Bob had
gotten in the truck and done the pushing himself.

Thank God, Mike thought. “Got you,” he
said aloud.

“
Trucks are coming
back,”
She said next.

A few seconds later the sounds of the
engines came to Ronnie and Mike.

The screaming engines reverberated off
the river cliffs as they came. They crossed the bridge, blew past
the burning wrecks and disappeared up State Street in a roar of
engine noise and a flash of brake lights.

Evening came on in silence.

~ Runners In The Darkness ~

Two hours after sunset the fires were
still burning, casting the parking lots in yellowed shadows. The
thick, cloying smell of burning pork hung in the air, mixing with
the smells of burning gasoline, rubber and hot metal.

The last gunfight came then, directed
at them.

~

Ronnie saw the first one coming and
nudged Mike. The shadow of a runner broke from one crazily titled
building and ran towards the tree line and Mike and the
others.

As the runner grew closer, they could
see one of the machine pistols clutched in his hands. As he jumped
the curbing, heading for the tree line, Mike, Lilly, Tim and Ronnie
all opened up on him. He spun off to one side, fingers squeezing
convulsively on the trigger, and collapsed just past the curbing.
His shots went wild into the air in a short burst, breaking the
silence, stabs of bright white light stitching the yellowed shadows
where the four hid in stark relief, painting their faces in washed
out white.

The radio squawked,
“What’s going on up there?”
Candace called. In the brilliant stabs of bright white, all of
them had seen the dozen or so men hiding in the shadows of the
buildings. They knew for sure they were here now and where they
were.

“
Send two up the road to
back us up,”
Mike called.
“But don’t give up your positions down there.
Keep your eyes peeled. We got about a dozen of them on us up
here.”

He clicked off and turned his attention
back to the parking lot. All the men he had seen were gone now,
hidden once more by the shadows. The would be assassin lay crumpled
partway onto the sidewalk, hanging over the edge of the curbing,
his legs still in the parking lot. The machine pistol lay next to
his open hand. Silent. Everything was silent. But the silence only
held for a moment, and then the men they had seen in the shadows
opened up on them.

They returned fire as they threw
themselves into the dirt, but after a few short seconds, those
hidden away on the other side of the parking lot stopped returning
fire. They faded away, either deeper into the buildings or out of
them and off into the square somewhere. Mike suspected they hadn’t
intended to run into them in the tree line, that they had assumed
there would be nothing between them and the cliff face down to the
cave. They had sent only one man, after all, and he had run
directly at them, as though he seemed not to be aware that they
were there.

Three or four men in one building at
the edge of the parking lot began to suddenly return fire. For
whatever reason, they decided not to retreat along with the
others.

Mike, Tim and Lilly shifted further to
the right. Ronnie moved off to the left, running hard for several
feet then crashing to the ground and reloading, preparing to return
fire.

Answering fire crashed into the tree
line where they had been. The four held their own fire, waiting.
When no return fire came, the gunmen rushed from the shadows,
running the hundred yards or so towards the tree line.

Mike slammed a fresh clip home and took
aim on the runners. Return fire came from Lilly and Tim to his
left, and Ronnie off to his right. Now, because of the change in
position, they were firing into the side of the running line of
men. A second barrage of fire came from the far right. Most likely,
Mike thought, whoever had been sent up to help them.

All four runners were cut down before
they reached the tree line. Silence descended again, and the third
and final gunfight of the day was over just that fast. Smoke hung
over the parking lot from the gunfire, drifting into the tree line
with the light breeze that was blowing through the empty, tilted
buildings.

“
Cover me,” Mike said. He
ran quickly out onto the blacktop, using the drifting smoke as
partial cover, and retrieved the machine pistols and clips. No
gunfire came from anywhere. He collected the four weapons and
hurried back into the tree line.

~

Two hours later Mike sat sipping
coffee, replaced up top with a two man guard that would immediately
call on the radio for backup if anyone showed up, and before
sunrise a fresh team would be sent up ready for a fight. Candace
sat next to him. Tom, Ronnie and Patty sat with them too. Sleeping
on the far side of the cave were the two young women from the day
before. Candace filled Mike in on their story.

“
They had been doing their
best to avoid those guys for four or five days... maybe
longer.”

“
How could they not know
how long they had been avoiding them?” Mike asked.

“
Because they think the men
were spying on them for a few days before they became obvious,”
Candace explained.

“
Okay,” Mike
answered.

“
They finally made their
move. These two women were part of a group of six, two men and four
women, living in some railroad cars out Massey Street.”

“
There’s an old rail yard
out there,” Patty said.

Mike nodded. He remembered playing
along the tracks as a kid. The rail yard had been a major employer
at one time, but like everything else, its time had come and gone.
Trains became too slow, too expensive, at least here, and the yard
had closed.

“
They attacked them. Killed
the two men outright and one of the women. They think killing the
woman was an accident.” She paused. “The three remaining women
managed to get away, but they had been tracking them down. They
finally caught them two days ago. They had thought things would
immediately be bad, and in some ways they were, but not like they
expected. Not rape, not that, but what was about to happen was that
they were going to be traded off for something big. They didn’t
know what, just something big,” Candace paused.

“
So, something happened
yesterday and suddenly everybody is shouting. And in the middle of
that they decided to run. They thought they might never get another
chance. They had talked it over and agreed if the chance did come
they should take it. They knew what was coming after all. Rather
than face that, being sold and used like a piece of meat, they
decided they’d rather take the chance. If that meant death… well,
they were ready to accept that.”

“
So,” Candace continued
after another pause, “they ran and the men chasing them didn’t want
to damage the merchandise, so they chased instead of just shooting
them dead. Molly, that’s the one that nearly ran into you, said
when you suddenly appeared in front of them, they thought it was
over. But they knew about us. They knew where we were. That’s where
they were trying to get to.” Candace rubbed at her eyes and then
the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were streaked with red, Mike
noticed. He supposed his eyes didn’t look much better. It was also
obvious that talking about what the two women had told her angered
her.