Total Apoc Trilogy (Book 3): Horde Ravaged (16 page)

            We laughed. It felt good.

            "Ah, intergalactic incest. Good times," Olivia said. She pulled the crowbar out from under Ralph's belt. "Keep look out. I'll jimmy the door open. I don't like being out in the open."

            We popped it open easily enough. My childhood home was intact, though looked pretty messy. The cupboards were cleaned out. So we went upstairs to my old room.

            "I can get a change of underwear," I said, going to my chest of drawers.

            "Give me some," Olivia asked.

            Ralph wanted a few extra pairs, too. I paused, wondering how our main concern was clean underwear. Just changing underwear made me feel cleaner for some reason. We even found clean socks. None of us wanted to give up our camo, despite how dirty it had become.

            "We can stay in here until dark," I said. "Maybe wait for the bikers to go to sleep before heading back to our ATVs."

            "Oh no," Ralph said, looking out the window.

            My bedroom was in front, so the town spread out before us. The house was at the top of the hill, too. We could see pretty well to the other hilltop, though big hardwoods obstructed most of the view.

            Olivia and I hurried to the window. He didn't have to say a word. We figured the problem out. The bikers were on the next street over, going through all of the houses. There were a lot of them, too.

Chapter 20

            "Out the back door," I cried, ushering them out before me. "Hurry. We'll go south to Baker Street, and then turn to the east."

            We'd have to make a wide circle around the town.

            "What if they find our ATVs before we reach them?" Olivia asked.

            "Don't even think like that."

            The very thought stressed me out beyond belief. I turned to look out the window again. From what I could see, the bikers were all moving down the streets from west to east. So that changed my plans.

            I ran past them down in the family room to pass out the door first. We quickly climbed over the back fence and into the Garza's backyard. No alley separated us. Their yard wasn't fenced, so we hurried onto the street. The next street over was Baker.

            "We're going west instead," I said. "From here on we leap frog around to the ATVs."

            I went first, running to the end of the next house before dropping to a knee. Olivia raced past me on my signal. She stopped at the other end of the next house and waved Ralph forward. And that's how we continued down Baker, which ended at 4th Street.

            1st Street was the first cross street on the east side of town. Then came 2nd street which crossed Main Street on the edge of downtown, and ended just past the water tower. 3rd Street bisected downtown, and 4th Street was the cross street all of the residential streets dead-ended into on the westernmost side of downtown.

            "Listen. We have to really run fast when we cross the end of these streets," I said. "If they spot us…"

            "We know," Ralph said.

            Ralph took off running up 4th. He stopped to peek around the corner, then waved me forward. I ran with everything I had past him and across White Street. As soon as I was behind the next house, I stopped and peeked back around to look up White. Ralph waved Olivia across.

            I'd never seen her run so fast. She streaked past Ralph, and across the street. Two women and a man came out of one of the houses when she was about halfway across. My heart skipped a beat and I couldn't breathe. She made it past me before any of them looked our way, though one of the women did a double-take. Then they moved to the next house down.

            I waited until the sound of them kicking in the door ended, and then waved Ralph over.

            "That was close," Ralph said, panting.

            "What was close?" Olivia asked.

            "You were almost spotted," I said. "Come on."

            We made it to Congress Street without incident. Olivia looked longingly down at her childhood home. Then she looked to the west. The top of her family's business could just be seen over the roof of the Franklin's house.

            "Maybe someday we can come back," I said. "The zombies can't live forever, right?"

            "We can only hope," she said. She wiped tears away, took a deep breath, and nodded. "What are we waiting for?"

            "Got some strangers!" a man shouted.

            We looked up to see a big blonde biker pointing a pistol at us. All three of use opened up on him. Olivia hit him with both barrels. He was dead before he hit the ground.

            All hell broke loose downtown.

            "Follow me," I said, and ran toward downtown, only to cut right into the alley behind the shops. Olivia followed close behind, while reloading her weapon, with Ralph falling back to keep an eye on our rear.

            "Keep up, Ralph!"

            As we closed on 3rd street, I noticed men and women running up it toward the downtown. They started shooting at us. At the same time more men came around the corner from downtown. I opened up on the big ass bikers from downtown, while Olivia shot at the others coming from the south. Ralph was firing back down the alley at more of the road warrior bikers.

            Crossing 3rd Street, we continued up the alley. We ran with all we had. A painful stitch developed in my right side, but to stop was to die. More men and women were pouring into the alley behind us, and I heard ATVs, motorcycles, and pickups starting. They were coming at us with all they had.

            I didn't even slow down when I rounded the corner northward toward the water tower. 2nd Street was clear, but I could hear vehicles coming back down Main. I turned my M16 to the left and opened up with full auto as I ran across Main. I was empty before I reached the other side. And before I could fish out another magazine and reload, a large mean looking woman jumped out in front of me.

            "Hai!" I screamed as I clubbed her with the rifle. I lost the rifle, but she was down. Pulling my pistol, I took off up the street. "Hurry!"

            My last call was more a raspy gasp than a shout. My lungs were burning. My legs were starting to feel like lead. When I looked back it looked like a thousand angry men and women were charging after us. Motorcycles and ATVs were mixed in with them, being held up by their comrades on foot, otherwise we'd be overrun in a flash.

            "Aim for the bikers and ATVers," I gasped out. Looking forward, at the sky high water tower and its spindly looking supports, I got an idea. "Ralph, can you grenade down the water tower?"

            "I can try!"

            Olivia and I stopped just past the tower and provided cover fire while Ralph took careful aim and fired the grenade launcher.
Ka-boom!
The closest support to the coming bikers blew apart. The water tower groaned, but didn't fall. So he quickly reloaded and fired at the next leg. And missed, hitting a tree past it.

            "Hurry," I cried.

            "I am hurrying as fast as I can!"

           
Ka-Boom!

            The next shot hit the support leg, but didn't take it completely out. So he shot the main "pipe" coming up in the middle, blowing a big hole in it. The tower groaned again. The sound of metal screeching filled the air. The bikers stopped, looking up in horror. And then they turned to run away.

           
Ka-Boom!

            I didn't see where he hit that time, but the tower started falling to the south, right at the street and road warriors. It seemed to fall slowly, but hit the ground with a resounding
BOOM!

            Water swept those murderous bastards away in a tidal wave rushing down the street. We paused to gawk for a second, and then took off around the fallen water tower and to our hidden ATVs.

            "That was awesome!" Ralph cried as we ran. "But I only have one grenade left."

            I jumped onto the four-wheeler and started it. Since I lost my M16, I didn't have to stow it. Olivia paused to eject two spent shells and reload two more. Before she could climb on behind me, a man shouted about twenty feet away.

            My jaw dropped when I spotted a scraggly look man in just jeans and no shirt as he leveled an Uzi on us, aiming straight at me. Olivia cried out and jumped in front of me.

            "No!" I screamed.

            Ralph screamed as well, as the biker pulled the trigger.

            "No!" Ralph cried, leaping in front of Olivia.

            I could hear the bullets thumping into his body. Olivia cried out, dropped to one knee and to the right, and opened fire on the biker. I rose up, turning my pistol on him as well. We fired that goddamned bastard up. The biker finished emptying his weapon straight up in the air as he died.

            "Ralph!" we both cried, leaping toward him.

            He was on his back, staring up at the sky with blinking eyes. Ralph's chest looked like a red ruin. I started crying. It was as if my entire world came to an end. He'd always been there for me. I didn't know what to do.

            "Oh god, what do we do?" Olivia asked. She sounded as hysterical as I felt. "We have to get him out of here."

            "Go," Ralph gasped out. "Save yourselves."

            "We won't leave you!" I cried.

            "I'm already gone," he said, starting to settle down. "I love you guys."

            And he was gone.

            I don't know how long we stared down at him. Ten seconds? Ten minutes? It felt like a lifetime. Angry shouts from the south broke me out of it.

            "We can't leave him," I said. "Help me get him behind me. You take the three-wheeler."

            I half-expected her to argue. Even I knew it was crazy to take his body. I just didn't want those bastards to find it. It didn't want them to have the satisfaction of killing one of us.

            We tore out of there as quickly as possible, with Ralph behind me. I felt the blood soaking through the back of my clothes, but didn't care. He would get a good, Christian burial. No zombie would feast on him. His corpse would not rot where he died.

            We went north, then west, and finally turned southward once out of sight of Plano. I had a destination in mind by the time we stopped and killed the engines to listen for pursuit.

            "Sounds like they're all still in town," Olivia said.

            We could hear ATVs and motorcycles, but they were coming from town. I figured they were getting ready to leave. We probably ruined their fun. Just thinking about them filled me with rage and sorrow, making me shaking like a leaf.

            I wanted to slaughter every single one of them.

            "Where do you want to bury Ralph?" she asked. "We can wait for them to leave town, and then take him over to the cemetery."

            "No. There's a special place we had growing up," I said, looking toward a wooded hilltop south of town. "We're going to bury him at the fort."

            As grade-schoolers we built a "fort" atop that hill. It was our club house. We didn't even let Olivia in it. I wasn't even sure she remembered it.

            We spent entire summers at the fort, living out elaborate fantasy games of knights, cowboys and Indians, and war games. Some of my fondest childhood memories were spent at the fort with Ralph.

            We continued on, driving slowly and quietly. The biker road warriors did leave Plano. We heard them heading west up the county road. Once the sound of their vehicles faded away I felt a burden lifted.

            We buried him at sunset. His gravesite overlooked the little town we grew up in so happily. I could see our homes from there.

            It was the saddest moment of my life. The prospect of continuing on seemed too hard.

Chapter 21

            We stayed off the road the next day, making slow progress cross-country. About midday we caught up to the road warriors. We paused in the treeline about a mile away and watched them slowly cruising down the road as if they didn't have a care in the world.

            "They are heading straight for Indian Village," Olivia said.

            It'd been twelve years since I last passed through Indian Village, but I couldn't think of an easier place to defend. If the people there fortified it then they might even be able to fight off those road warrior bikers. Their numbers were lower thanks to our previous fight, but I counted at least fifty men and women. I wasn’t sure how many were inside the camper, though the pickups all had four people. The U-Hauls appeared to have two people in the cabs.

            "What do you think they have in the U-Haul trucks?"

            Olivia cocked her head and considered it a moment. "Their treasure."

            "That was my first thought," I replied. "Now I'm thinking tents, camping stoves, and stuff like that."

            "And treasure."

            "Of course."

            Both U-Haul trucks were the biggest models they offered. One of them would easily carry all of the tents and camping gear fifty people would ever need. I also suspected they carried extra gas in at least one of them. They didn't have a fuel-efficient vehicle down there.

            And, of course, they had to carry all of the guns and ammo they could find in those trucks. Next to gasoline, guns and ammo were vital to survival for road warriors.

            "You know, if we weren't living through a zombie apocalypse I'd think they were cool," I admitted. Very reluctantly. "They are like pirates of the open road. I loved all of the old Mad Max and road warrior type movies."

            "Me, too. In real life they aren't so much fun."