Riders of the Apocalypse (Book 2): Burning Rubber Read online

  Roper shook her head. “That new family is a little squeamish about decapitation. I’m not at all sure they’ll be able to pull their weight in a brawl.”

  Dallas nodded. “Not everyone can slice a head off the way you can. What else can they do?”

  Roper pulled out a small tablet that had seen better days. “Dad’s a mechanic, so I have him looking over the Fuchs. The mother and daughters are pretty useless out here, so Cass is showing them how to collect wood, Spanish moss, and things like that. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Dallas leaned in and kissed Roper’s lips. The humidity made them softer than when they’d first met. She’s fallen in love with those lips the first time they’d kissed, and even though life was one big scary moment, she made sure to kiss Roper as often as the times allowed.

  They had started this blood-soaked journey through hell as strangers, then as survivors, then friends, and finally, lovers. Along with sixteen-year-old gamer, Einstein, whose zombie knowledge had kept them alive, and Butcher, an ex-Army medic and Iraq war veteran, the four of them were the nucleus of the group––a group that deferred to Dallas for leadership.

  So far, Dallas had managed to keep them alive. As a firefighter in her old life, she was used to successful teamwork. She was used to organization, to planning, to having special contingencies. There was always a Plan B during a fire. Those elements were the key to survival, so she reluctantly led their bedraggled group of survivors through the desolate wasteland of the United States, often having to make the tough decisions about who to pick up and who to leave by the side of the road.

  One tough call she had to make was to turn away a trio of football players from Tulane. They’d come seeking shelter, but when it became clear to the group that the three young men had no interest in doing some of the shit chores that every community needs done, they were asked to leave. There was no vote. It wasn’t a democracy. They’d get nowhere in a democracy. This was more of a benevolent dictatorship.

  “You’re a great second-in-command,” Dallas whispered softly, kissing the tip of Roper’s nose. “You have no idea how many times I look over at you and wonder how incredibly hard this would be without you by my side.”

  “By your side. On top of you, sitting between your legs. Get used to it. I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

  Dallas wrapped her arms around Roper and kissed her salty jerky after-tasting mouth. “Nice touch.”

  “I was hoping to make you hungry enough to want more.”

  Dallas laughed. “I always want more, but I refuse to have sex in this swamp.”

  “Aw man, where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Dallas started biting Roper’s neck and growled. “I’ll show you adventure.” They kissed for a few more moments before Dallas reluctantly pulled away. So often, she felt like a finch that landed on the ground to eat seed, pecking at a seed and then looking around, pecking and looking, pecking and looking. In the wild, prey creatures were ever vigilant about their surroundings.

  So was Dallas.

  As they made their way through the mud and muck of the swamp, they checked on several of the snares they set daily. It was from these snares they managed a surplus of smoked meats in any of the three smokehouses they’d built when they first arrived. The bayou, rough living if ever there was, supplied the survivors with fish, wild pig, deer, and of course, the occasional alligator for food, though they had stopped killing the alligators once they realized the creatures would eat the rotting flesh from the man eaters.

  The brackish water was filtered and boiled for potable drinking water, and the houses had been built on stilts long before to protect from flood, now gave them ample security from the man eaters, who could not climb. Once they were able to feed and protect themselves, the survivors returned to the task of living…and even loving, and Dallas loved loving Roper.

  “You thinking of going into the city today?” Dallas asked. She’d known Roper long enough to know when the woman was getting antsy. Roper had always kept her finger on the pulse of the virus and the only way to do that was to see what was happening in the cities, most of which were deserted. With the exception of those zombies who weren’t following the trail of living flesh, New Orleans was a ghost town.

  “You know me too well. Yeah. I was thinking about it. We haven’t gone in a week and it’s important we continue to collect as many survivors as we can and see what’s changed.”

  Dallas nodded. Cities were far more dangerous than any place else in the country. Even if the horde had moved on, there was always the chance that one or two stragglers had gotten caught in a store or a house, incapable of figuring a way out. Those were the ones who could undo every piece of progress they’d made. “It would be good to get away for the day.”

  Throwing her arms around Dallas, she hugged her tightly and nuzzled her neck. “Come on. You just admitted it. You want out of the swamp if even for a day.”

  That was when they heard the unmistakable sound of a foot being pulled from the silt.

  Dallas turned to Roper, who already had her magnum out. “How those fuckers make it this far is beyond me.”

  They stood back-to-back, weapons out in front of them at the ready.

  “It’s coming from over here.” Roper moved to her left. Dallas moved with her as if they were dancing a macabre dance with death.

  A gurgling followed the sucking sound…the sound they all made when they exited water for the first time, like the sound of coke being poured from a bottle. These creatures did not breathe. They didn’t have to. They were, for all intents and purposes, dead. They expelled the water in order to do that one thing they all did regardless of where they were: moan that hideous sound.

  “See it yet?”

  “No. Not yet. Jesus, when did that low fog roll in?”

  “Must have been when you were flirting with me.”

  “I was not flirting. I do not flirt.”

  “What were you––”

  Then the moaning came.

  “Over there! It’s over there.” Dallas knelt to one knee and took aim, but someone blew the thing’s head off before she could pull the trigger.

  “You two could wake the dead.”

  They both whipped around to find a man standing there with a rifle in his hands, two knives strapped to his thighs, and his clothes held together by dirt and grit. He was nearly toothless, completely bald, and had eyes that looked like they belonged on a chameleon.

  “Skeeter!”

  The old man shook his head as he made a tsking sound. “I was makin’ my way to see ya’ll when I heard ya trampin’ around out here like two blind elephants. You two ain’t learnt a damn thing from me.”

  They’d met Skeeter when they’d first arrived on the river. He was one of the few who refused to leave the bayou after Katrina and was convinced it was the only safe place in the country. The only place, that is, except the military zone in New England, where it was rumored the remaining United States government was safe and secure from the hordes of man eaters stalking the countryside. The military had pulled back all its forces once it realized it could no longer contain the man eaters nor the angry survivors who refused to live in a police state. Once the true nature of the epidemic and the role the military had played in eliminating even healthy citizens was discovered, the survivors began fighting back.

  “Haven’t seen you in weeks, Skeeter. Where’ve you been?”

  He ran his gnarled hand over his scratchy salt and pepper growth of beard. “Me an’ the boys been to the city ‘fer supplies. They been pretty picked over, ya know?”

  “Supplies? Why didn’t you just come to us? You know we have plenty.”

  Skeeter spat brown tobacco goo from his tobacco , and it kerplunked into the water. “Not them kind. We was lookin’ fer copper pipes, tubin’, thingsa that sort.”

  “Find what you were looking for?”

  “That and more. Them things is movin’ east. In groups. I reme
mbered when ya’ll first got here you mentioned somethin’ ‘bout hordes. Well, they’s sweepin’ through the city on their way east…like a mindless herda’ cattle. Thought you’d wanna know.”

  Dallas and Roper exchanged worried glances. “You don’t think they’re coming here?”

  “Hell ‘naw. Not ‘nuff meat fer the size of them groups I seen rollin’ through, but they’s headed somewheres and I bet my bottom doller ya’ll know where.”

  Roper sighed loudly. If the horde was on the move, that meant no road trip today.

  Skeeter spat once more. “Yeah. I done thought as much. I thought you oughtta know that now ain’t the time to be hittin’ the road.”

  They chatted with him a couple of minutes before Skeeter returned home through the brush as soundlessly as he had approached.

  “Shit. What’s your take on it?”

  Dallas shrugged. “I don‘t really know, but we do happen to know someone who might.”

  “Come on love. Let’s go ask him.”

  Einstein and Cassidy were gutting the fish they’d caught earlier that morning. So named by Roper because of his vast knowledge about zombies, Einstein had seldom been wrong about them and had proven to be an incredible source of information.

  He had seemingly matured overnight. Once a geeky redheaded gamer who had watched every zombie movie ever made, he was now more of a man, taking on responsibilities no teen should have to endure. He had, as they all had, been forced to watch friends eaten or turned into the man-eating ghouls, and he had had to deal with survivor’s guilt once they’d settled down in the bayou.

  They had picked up Cassidy when they stopped at a family’s house that had decided to hunker down in a bomb shelter. Cassidy didn’t like living underground so she took off and joined Dallas and her group. At eighteen, she was two years older than Einstein but worlds away wiser at the inner workings of human being.

  Together, they made quite the pair.

  He and Cassidy had bonded almost immediately, and had become the best of friends, though everyone seemed to think Einstein would have liked more.

  “So, what do you think?” Roper asked Einstein after he finished cleaning the fish. “If they are still moving to the east, what does that mean to us?”

  Einstein studied a cuticle on his finger. “When Butcher first explained that the man eaters act like white blood cells and group together to attack the perceived threat of us, I thought she’d blown a gasket. However, when Dallas asked us all to journal our experiences, I had to concur with what I found myself describing. They coalesce just like cells and migrate toward the perceived threat. I’m thinking they are following survivors who are trying to get to the military zone.”

  “In essence, the survivors are leading the zombies right to the safe zone.”

  Einstein nodded and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “Precisely. The eaters will go where the food source, or in this case, their perception of the virus is. Seems everyone is heading in the same direction…and that’s not good.”

  “So basically, we’re talking two hundred million or so zombies attacking the million to six million who survived and are huddled behind fences in New England?”

  He nodded again. “But that number isn’t the number of survivors, just the ones who might have made it to the compound in New England. That number doesn’t account for the number of folks who are in hiding all across the nation.” Einstein did the math in his head. “Hawaii and Alaska are probably free of the epidemic, but their demographics were low to begin with. Getting to either state is impossible. I’m thinking two hundred million is a low estimate by now, but if you’re asking me if it’s a possible scenario, that the horde is collecting itself to make one final attack on the largest group of survivors, then yeah, it is.”

  “God damn it,” Dallas said. “What in the hell has the military been doing all this time?”

  “The military zone has its back to the water,” Einstein explained. “They’ve backed themselves into the proverbial corner, thinking they are better prepared to not only defend, but to escape.” He shrugged as he wiped his knife blade clean of blood. “Problem is, there’s no place to go. It’s not like our guards will let them into the waters. The guards keep them pinched in.”

  The guards were what Dallas and company called the global army positioned all around the perimeter of the country.

  Dallas held up one finger. “Wait. Let’s think about this. Isn’t that a good thing? If the zombies are all in one place, then killing them becomes a lot easier.”

  Einstein shook his head. “The Military Zone will be overrun before they can defeat them all. No way the MZ can withstand half a million man eaters, let alone twenty or thirty million. They’ll be crushed in less than a day. It’s a bad idea, and unless they move, they’re screwed.”

  “What about our President and his cabinet? What will they do?” Cassidy asked as she chopped the head off her fish. She had long ago stopped polishing her nails even though Einstein had stolen a bottle from a local store. At eighteen, when most girls were concerned about their looks, Cassidy let Butcher cut her hair in a short bob so there was no fuss or worry.

  “They’ll probably board a ship off the coast and surrender to the global army.” Dallas turned to Roper. “This whole thing has given me an idea. Would you do me a favor and round everyone up for an early dinner?”

  “Even those who don’t eat fish?”

  Dallas nodded. “Even those.”

  Roper’s Log

  When Dallas first asked us to journal our experience, I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Who’d be around to read it? If we fail here, the good old U.S. of A. has screwed the pooch and will be run by some other country rubbing its fat hands together in anticipation of all the goodies we have.

  Who could blame them?

  In less than 300 years, we’d made a mess of a lot of things and fucked over plenty of other countries. We’ve used more resources, contributed the largest carbon footprint, threw out more food in a day than people in most countries eat in a week, and butt our know-it-all noses into so many other countries’ government affairs we’re like some old busybody with nothing better to do.

  And the world let us, until it discovered our scientists had created a biological weapon that would infect only a certain kind of DNA, while leaving agriculture, architecture, and businesses intact. It was a brilliant concept for a bioweapon, really. Kill the people but keep their property intact is a good strategy. If you can keep your weapon a secret. Well, apparently this information leaked to other powerful countries who decided it was time to rid the world of the plague called the American government. It is easier to destroy a super power government when there are no longer people to govern.

  As a result, ten canisters of the shit were released in ten major US cities. I doubt if those countries knew then what they know now, that they’d have unleashed a modern horror for which there was no antidote, but they did. It’s too late now. Once the virus got into the general population, the man eaters were everywhere, killing everyone and growing exponentially by each passing day.

  Well, not everyone. There are those of us we call CGIs, or those who Can’t Get Infected. We started using the term to avoid people using slurs like homo or gay. The only people immune to the virus are homosexuals. Whether or not the government likes it, we’re they’re only shot at beating these things.

  We’re guessing that NATO believed the antidote would keep this thing contained. After all, if our government was going to use it, they surely must have created a workable antidote, right?

  Wrong.

  The antidote had not yet been perfected, so when our own government tried to use it against the man eaters, it worked with only minimal success. Some died, but most just carried on, dragging bloody limbs from one place to the next looking for flesh to tear from someone’s bones.

  So here we are. Stuck in the Louisiana bayou for the last eight months hoping to wait this thing out. Recently, D
allas and I talked about leaving here in order to see what’s going on in the rest of the country. Are we just prolonging the inevitable? Not sure what we expect to find when we go out there, but it’s time we got an idea of the lay of the land outside of New Orleans. As much as I have enjoyed playing house with Dallas and the others, I’m starting to go stir crazy here. I can’t stop wondering if we shouldn’t be looking at the bigger picture. I mean, what’s the point of surviving if we aren’t doing our damndest to save the rest of the country?

  I’ve been wanting to ask her that question, but it never seems like the right time. I’m afraid she’ll think I’m tired of her…but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I adore her. I have fallen in love with her in a way I’ve never felt about anyone. She is the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met, and she’s done an outstanding job of creating a safe and stable environment for us all. We have food, a secure shelter, and fresh water. Oh, and don’t forget the yacht. We have a place where once a week we each get to take a warm shower.

  Sometimes, it’s the little things, ya know?

  But now, it’s time for the bigger things. It’s time to look beyond our little swamp community and figure out how we are going to save this country.

  One of the greatest acquisitions they’d made along the way had been the Fuchs–– a state-of-the-art amphibious military vehicle equipped with topside automatic machine gun turret and more bells and whistles than you can shake a rotting zombie arm at. It had saved their lives and enabled them to move through hostile territory regardless of the road conditions or enemy beating on the sides. At the moment, the Beast, as they all lovingly called it, was getting the once over from Luke.

  “I hear you’re thinking of taking her out.” Luke wiped his hands on an old rag and flashed them a Clark Gable smile.

  Dallas peered at the engine he kept running smoothly. “She’s purring.”

  Luke looked up from the hood, his face smeared with grease. He was a handsome addition to their group who had fallen for Butcher during a search and rescue mission. His hair was shoulder length now, and he sported muttonchops everyone teased him about. True to form, Luke said he was starting a trend. Everyone started calling him Elvis, but he didn’t care. Anything that wasn’t military worked for Luke.