ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (28 page)

"I don't know what the laws were in Texas regarding silencers before the plague, but if we happen across any at a gun shop, we could sure use them," I said.

"I thought silencers were illegal?" Mary said.

"Only in the movies," I answered with a smile. "If I'd known this apocalypse was going to happen, I would have done the federal paperwork and purchased a couple. The laws go state by state. With the proper paperwork, they were legal in Missouri and many other states. Of course now they're legal everywhere, everything is legal everywhere now."

"That's good to know, if they
were
legal in Texas we might be able to find some, I'll keep my eye out for them, if we ever run across a gun shop that we feel is safe to stop at," Mary stated.

"Yeah, silent and long range both, that would be cool!" Jacob added with a smile, itching to get his hands on a suppressor.

"In the mean time, hand me that tomahawk you found," I said to Jacob. "I want to check out my new toy."

We traveled south for a while, dodging abandon vehicles and observing packs of zombies stumbling through the countryside. Nobody said much as we drove along. Then Mary asked me.

"You were curious about my friendship with Megan, so I told you how it is. Now I'm curious about something," she said.

"What?" I answered, as I concentrated on avoiding a group of abandoned cars.

"Back there at the surplus store you killed that man and that woman without giving them a chance. I wondered how you feel about that?" Mary asked coldly.

How I really felt, was annoyed at her question, but I tried not to show it.

"The man was stealing our water, and the woman was running at me with a knife, what would you have done?" I answered, nonchalantly. "Let him have our water, and let the woman kill you?"

"No," she answered sheepishly.

"Look Mary, we're trying to survive, and I plan to do anything and everything I have to, to keep us alive," I said sternly. "We've all had to do things we didn't want to do, things that we would have never even thought of doing a couple of months ago, and we've all made mistakes. If not hesitating to kill that man and woman was a mistake, that's just too bad for them. We learned early on, shoot first and clean up the mess later is the best way to make it through this hellish world we're in. Even if we regret doing something later, at least we're still around to regret it. Besides, not one of them made any attempt to communicate with us. They sneaked up behind that car while we were in the surplus store, because they weren't there when we pulled up to the front of the building. Then they tried to steal our water," I said, casually aiming our truck at what looked to me like a family of three zombies in the middle of the road. The family consisted of the husband, his wife, and their small male child.

The thud of the already dead pedestrian's bodies hitting the large chrome bumper of our truck, and the slight jostle of the steering wheel as the front tires crushed my victims, acknowledged my aim was true.

"See everyone, that's how it's done, three less eaters we have to worry about, that's the way we have to look at it," I said. "If I could hit every single one of them I would."

"I would too!" Mary agreed, nodding her head.

The death of the undead family I had just run over, and my statement relating to the previous events that had just taken place, seemed to satisfy Mary's annoying curiosity about how I felt concerning my survival tactics, and ended our discussion of the matter.

On our journey south, we began to notice more feral dog packs, one of which was very large.

"Look over there!" Jacob shouted, alerting us to the distant danger. "Dogs, and a lot of them, look, passed those trees, you see um?"

Beyond a small wooded area about nine hundred to a thousand yards away from the freeway, Jacob had spotted a large pack of feral dogs.

"There must be fifty or sixty of them, and there's some more." Gin said, pointing to another group that was trailing the main pack of wild mongrels.

"I think we'd need more than a mini-gun if we ran into a pack that size," I said, pushing the accelerator pedal down slightly.

"They're pretty far away, I don't think we have anything to worry about," Jacob said confidently.

"Those dogs would close the gap between us and them in a matter of minutes," Gin added, looking intently at the dogs.

"Well, we're not going to stop to find out," I said. "They're not paying any attention to us, they probably haven't noticed us, we'll just keep going and put some serious distance between them and us."

"That works for me," Gin insisted.

"Me too!" Mary added.

Houston was the biggest city we would have to go through on our way to Galveston, and it wouldn't be long before we would be at its city limits.

"Clyde said not to go through Dallas, I wonder if Houston is going to be any better?" Gin asked.

I could tell by the look on her face that she thought she already knew the answer to that question. I didn't want to tell her that I was thinking the same thing, but I was.

"I hope it's better than Dallas, at least better than the way Clyde made it sound," I answered, trying to make Clyde's warning sound overblown. "He probably exaggerated a bit, you know how people are."

"I know how people used to be," Gin answered softly, and then she added. "I sure hope he was exaggerating."

"Besides," I said. "The Houston area is not nearly as big as the Dallas-Fort Worth area is, we'll have that going for us anyway."

Gin looked down at the map she had unfolded on her lap and said. "It's still a big city, and according to this, we're going to find out pretty soon one way or another."

Gin was absolutely correct, within two hours we were finding out, and what we found out, we didn't like.

We were about five miles inside Houston's city limits, when there seemed to be an inexplicable shortage of abandoned vehicles on the road. Gin was the first to observe the mysterious lack of obstacles in our path, and commented.

"This is nice for a change; we don't have to weave around a bunch of cars. I was getting sea sick with all of that swaying back and forth."

The whole time we had been on the road after we dumped the Morphadite, the only stretch of road that was not littered with wrecked or abandoned vehicles, was in the middle of nowhere as we drove toward Dallas. Now we were entering a large metropolitan area, and there were no cars on the road?

"Something not right, I've got a bad feeling about this, there are no cars, there's no trucks, and notice too, there are no eaters. I don't see any dogs either, something's up," I argued. "Everyone get your guns ready, something's going on."

The sound of metal slamming against metal filled the air inside our cab, as slides were racked and safeties were disengaged in preparation and anticipation of an imminent battle.

My sixth sense of impending doom was verified, when we rounded a turn and passed under an overpass.

"There's the answer," I shouted, as we saw a huge blockade of cars, stacked one upon another, four cars high, and who knows how many cars deep.

The silhouettes of men with rifles lined the top of the stacks of cars, and clicking sounds could be heard as chips of paint and small pieces of metal ricocheted off our windshield, as bullets slammed into the hood of our truck.

Even though I had already slowed down while I tried to figure why there was such a lack of cars on the road. We were still going fast enough to cause the tires to send up a large plume of smoke and cause the truck to slide sideways when I slammed on the brakes.

We came to a stop, setting sideways in the middle of the road, surrounded in a cloud of white smoke from the friction-burnt tires. Sprays of steam shot from the front of the trucks grill caused by the bullet holes in the radiator, adding to the surrounding smoke screen.

"They're shooting at us," Gin screamed, already ducking down behind the dash.

With the damage the truck had already incurred, I knew that it wouldn't be in running condition for long. The attack had not stopped when I threw the truck into the third of eighteen gears available, and tromped down onto the gas pedal. I turned the wheel hard to the left, and amidst the hail of bullets still raining down on us from the towering lofts of our ambusher's fortress, we took off back in the direction that we had came.

Streams of sunlight were now darting into the cab from the holes made by the bullets that penetrated the rear wall of our truck. We rounded the curve in the road that had previously hidden the ambuscade from us, and the ping of projectiles promptly ceased.

"Is anyone hurt," Gin quickly asked, setting up in her seat again.

"Mary's hurt, she caught one in her arm," Billy answered, poking his head out of the sleeper.

"How bad is it," I asked, now fighting to steer our crippled truck.

Mary stuck her head out of the sleeper.

"Not bad, I'll live," she said. "They just grazed me, it's just a flesh wound, I'll be all right."

"Is everyone else okay?" Gin inquired, concerned about her sons.

"We're fine, but I heard a couple of bullets go by my head, that was a close one," Jacob answered, sticking his head out too.

"The trucks shot up pretty bad, it's not going to make it very far. It's got at least three flat tires, one of them is on the front, I can barely steer this thing. Our radiator is all shot up too, and we're losing water fast," I told them. "We're going to drive this thing as far away from those guys as it will take us. Then we'll be on foot again."

As far away as it will take us, was about three miles from those dry-gulcher's. By then, the tires that were flat, were now shredded and we were riding on their rims like we had done in the Hummer. Two other tires were going flat and almost there. The radiator was completely out of water, and the needle on the heat gage was pegged at its maximum. Our overheated engine was beginning to sputter as its pistons labored to fight against the friction and we came to a stop.

"That's it people, time to bail, the trucks done," I announced, turning the engine off. "Grab your stuff, just what you're willing to carry, leave everything else, and watch for eaters."

We got out of the truck, and while grabbing our essentials, we quickly surveyed the damage to the truck.

"Lots of bullet holes," Billy said.

"Yeah, lots of bullet holes in our water supply too," Mary added, adjusting the makeshift bandage Jacob had made from one of his mother's left over uniforms.

"We'll take what's left, we couldn't carry it all anyway," Gin said, stuffing several bottles into her pack. "Everyone grab some, as usual, we don't know when we'll find more."

I was worried that the people that had ambushed us might decide to follow us, considering that we hadn't fired as much as one single shot back at them, they might feel emboldened because of it. Moreover, with the amount of bullet holes in our truck, I knew that they were serious.

"We need to get away from here now, get your things," I ordered. "We need to get off the road."

Totting what supplies we could carry, we scurried off the highway, backtracking slightly.

"Stop here and get behind the safety guard rail, and put everything down except your guns," I said. "And do it quick."

I could hear the rumbling of a vehicle coming from the direction of the ambush.

"I think they're coming," Billy said, also hearing the rumbling.

"Get ready, let's see how they like being ambushed, and remember, if you're on the left side shoot the one on the left side and work your way to the middle, the opposite goes if you're on the right side," I told them.

As we waited, hidden behind the tall grass and weeds that grew underneath the safety barrier, the rumbling grew louder, and then we could see them approaching. An open bed truck with several men in the back, all armed with assault rifles of different varieties.

"As soon as they stop, open fire," I whispered.

The truck heavily laden with bushwhackers began to slow down as it approached our bullet riddled and smoking semi-tractor.

"Find them!" A tall man wearing an army uniform bellowed.

The flat bed stopped, and as we had prearranged, before the first man could jump from the truck bed, we open fire on them.

Rapidly firing our semi-automatic rifles into the crowd that stood on the wooden platform of the truck, the ambushers were taken completely by surprise and the men began to drop. Most were killed instantly, and many were wounded, however, some were able to jump down and find cover on the far side of their truck.

Our position offered us concealment, but not much cover, so I decided to move farther to my right in an effort to flank the remaining enemy before they could move to a more advantageous position.

"Keep your heads down," I yelled, motioning for them to move down to a lower area as I crawled into a flanking position.

I hadn't quite reached the optimum point where I could end this firefight, when I saw the first zombie stand up in the back of the truck, and then another, and another.

The ambusher's we had initially killed, had turned, and were now attacking the wounded and the men that had taken refuge from our bullets behind their truck.