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  my hand, but I’d gone deep enough, the added weight on the back of that zombie pulled

  him neatly in two. Okay, neatly might be a bit of a gross exaggeration. I guess as

  neatly as a human body can be severed. Every internal organ spilled to the ground,

  it looked like a dog food processing truck had rolled over.

  BT was able to pull his leg up as the two other zombies rolled away when their ride

  ditched them. It was two more strides before I could stop my forward momentum. Now

  I was the one that had a problem. I was running headlong into the zombies and my ride

  was taking off the other way, plus I had lost the knife I hated using so much. I sure

  would have loved to use it now. I didn’t have the room or the time to turn back around,

  and getting to my rifle was out of the question.

  It was time to play unpadded football. I tucked my head in and lowered my shoulder.

  I caught the first one in the chin with the point of my shoulder. I heard his teeth

  shatter right after he severed his tongue off. The flap of meat smacked wetly against

  my forearm.

  I somewhat had the element of surprise as they weren’t expecting me to be where I

  was, but I sure wouldn’t have minded a big blocker to lead the way. They take all

  the big hits, and I take all the glory getting the touchdown. It was a working formula

  in high school. Why not now?

  I was through my second or third row of zombies, each hit beginning to take just a

  little more of my forward thrust away. I could hear the back-up warning coming from

  the truck. Gary had thrown the rig in reverse and was thankfully coming back. I was

  beginning to see the light at the end of the zunnel (zombie tunnel) when Gary crashed

  the truck into a street pole. The truck didn’t give so much of a shit as the pole

  toppled noisily to the ground. I hazarded a glance behind me as I finally broke free

  from the zombies. The truck was weaving all over the roadway, I think it would have

  been better if he had just ghost-driven the thing. No one at the helm would have been

  better than his maneuvers. I started timing when I should dodge to the side, getting

  eaten by a zombie all of a sudden seemed like the better alternative than being run

  over.

  BT was off the ladder. For a moment, I panicked that maybe he’d fallen off, but he

  was waving at me from a hole cut into the side of the dump.

  “Glad to see you’re alright. Now get me the fuck out of here!” I yelled.

  Rifles pointed out of two other slots and bullets began to take down zombies that

  had turned and were beginning their pursuit of me. Gary was pulling even with me,

  which was a good thing, because a bend in the road was coming up and I was certain

  he’d never be able to navigate it. I jumped, grabbing the ladder in flight, my head

  striking the side of the truck as Gary had given the wheel a quick twist. He’d rung

  my bell. I had to hold onto where I was for a moment until my brain stopped sliding

  around inside my skull. The wheels started squealing and jittering along the pavement

  as Gary hit the brakes. I swung against the side of the truck. What the zombies had

  started Gary was going to try and finish. I swung back the other way as we were once

  again going forward. BT reached his arm out of the firing hole and grabbed my shoulder.

  Unlike him, I was thankful for the help. I’d been a human piñata for the last few

  seconds and my body hurt.

  Gary drove another half mile with me like that until he once again stopped short.

  If not for BT holding me in place I would have gone through the same cycle.

  “Nice driving,” I said to Gary. I added ‘asshole’ at the end, but quietly. He had

  saved me after all, even if he wanted to crack me open and see if I housed any internal

  goodies.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, beaming.

  We didn’t have much time; I could already see the zombies coming. I climbed up the

  rest of the ladder and onto the top, which was made of tarp-covered plywood. There

  was a small hatch up there, which I climbed through and into the dump truck equivalent

  of an RV.

  A dark red industrial carpet was glued to the bottom of the bed; two rows of bench

  seats were bolted or welded there as well. The entire area was framed out with two-by-fours,

  which held up the ‘roof’, that was covered with a tarp in case of inclement weather.

  Gun wells had been cut out of the metal body on the two sides and the rear. He’d even

  gone so far as to weld on small channels so that the murder holes could be covered

  up by sliding a thick piece of metal back into place. In the front, he’d cut out an

  actual window, put his channels back in and fitted it with Plexiglas. This way, the

  folks in the back could see up front and, if need be, we could move back and forth

  from the cab of the truck to the dump part. Now, if this thing had a wet bar, we’d

  be all set. My earlier irkdom to my brother was completely forgotten. He’d created

  something pretty unique and fucking awesome.

  “Good job, man!” I said, smacking the glass.

  I could see his grinning face in the rearview mirror.

  “Thanks, guys,” I told my boys and BT.

  “We’re even now,” BT said. “For today.”

  “Fair enough. How you doing?” I asked. “Come on, man, sit down.”

  “Better now.”

  He looked like shit. Finding Doc was of paramount importance, but there were still

  a bunch of huge problems with that. Odds he was alive and well were slim, and even

  if he was, would he have a ‘cure’? Would he succeed where others failed? He had to.

  There was no other answer. I would not watch BT die and after that, Justin’s steady

  decline. That was NOT an acceptable outcome. This mission was as much about them as

  it was about me. I know I’m flawed, I was doing this in part because I didn’t want

  to be put through the suffering. Is there such a thing as reverse altruism? Would

  God make the distinction that I was doing good for others for my own good? Same fucking

  thing, right?

  Stop looking at me like that. You think Mother Teresa was a completely selfless person?

  I don’t think so. Now I’m not saying she wasn’t worthy of Sainthood, but don’t you

  think she took great pleasure in helping others? Helping others made her feel good,

  absolutely nothing wrong with that. In a nutshell, that’s exactly what I was doing.

  Getting Justin and BT cured would make me feel great--two big birds one huge stone.

  Bullet-proof argument once I needed to present it to the Big Man.

  We had been driving for a while. BT was strapped in to his seat, sleeping contentedly.

  I smiled when I noticed Henry’s head was parked in the big man’s lap a decent sized

  puddle of drool leaking from the dog’s muzzle. I was pacing a bit, it was slightly

  claustrophobic in the back, and the roof was maybe an inch from the top of my head.

  I was going to see if anyone wanted to come back here so I could go up to the front.

  I pulled the Plexiglas back and knocked on the back window of the cab. Tommy looked

  back at me, his smile laced in the red of what looked like strawberry. He shrugged.

  “Wanf fwon?” he asked, holding up the familiar foil packet.

  “Yeah actually,” I told him when he slid the glass back. I was thankful when he handed

  me the entir
e packet. My hands were encrusted in filth so much so that I thought the

  crap might be able to find its way through the protective packaging.

  “You want up here?” Tracy asked as I was enjoying my pastry treat.

  “I’m busy,” I told her, sticking my hand up.

  “I’d kick your ass, Talbot, if I wasn’t so tired,” Tracy told me. “Gary can you pull

  over? I would like to get in the back.”

  Gary looked at her quickly and then at the window I was at.

  “Oh I don’t think so,” she told him. “I’m not crawling through two windows on a moving

  truck no matter how much fun you think it would be.”

  “It actually does look like fun,” I said.

  I stuck my head out of my side and was looking down at the pavement blazing by. I

  thought about maybe Gary hitting a bump and me losing my footing and then I’d find

  myself stuck upside down in the hydraulic cabling as my head started to wear away

  on the ground.

  “Yeah, maybe you should just stop,” I told him, getting a little sick to my stomach

  just thinking about it.

  Gary almost tossed me out the damn window he laid on the brakes so hard. “What is

  your problem with the pedals, man?” I asked him once I realized my heart wasn’t going

  to burst.

  I went back to where the hatch was, stepped up on the small ladder welded to the side

  and then down the other side. Gary had gotten out and was stretching.

  Tracy came around and gave me a hug. “How you doing, hon?” She looked up at me.

  “I’ve been better. At least she’s at rest now. I can at least tell Ron that much.”

  She got up on her toes and kissed me. “Thank you for that,” I told her.

  “Maybe we’ll have to find a stack of books soon.”

  “Works for me.”

  I’d never before equated literary tomes with sex, but I was open-minded. The constant

  danger we were in had some inherent benefits, one being that it made you want to be

  more in contact with those you loved. There is comfort in intimacy.

  “Next stop is Barnes and Noble,” I told her before I helped her on the ladder, not

  that she needed it, but it gave me the chance to cop a feel or two.

  I’d never once considered Tracy anything other than beautiful, but the hardness of

  the apocalypse had sculpted her into something almost otherworldly. Any chance I had

  to grab onto that, I was going to take it.

  “Want me to drive a bit?” I asked Gary once my favorable view was gone.

  “It’s not as easy as it looks,” he told me.

  “I know, man, I just know you pulled some long hours and worked your ass off to get

  this done. Great job by the way.”

  “Thank you…and you’re right, I could use a little shut eye.”

  Gary went up the ladder as well. I didn’t help him, if he fell off and bruised himself

  up a bit, I would consider it a fair measure of payback. Gary had stopped at the interchange

  exit for 495, which was basically a route that skirted Boston and went down through

  Connecticut and picked back up with its parent route. So I could stay on 95 Southbound

  or take 495. It wasn’t like Boston was going to be a hotbed of traffic, so that wasn’t

  really a factor. And in terms of distance, I think it was about the same mileage.

  Route 95 stayed closer to the coast, so one way bowed to the east, the other the west.

  “Any reason to take one over the other?” I asked Tommy. He shrugged. “I liked it a

  whole lot better when Ryan would at least give you some vague clues.”

  I hopped up into the cab. I was driving somewhere in the neighborhood of five miles

  an hour, looking back and forth at the route signs. I could not figure out why this

  was such a big deal, they led to exactly the same place. I cut the wheel at the very

  last moment, taking 495. My final reason was that if I was that close to Boston on

  95 and saw a zombified Dustin Pedroia it would make this day just that much worse.

  I’d been on 495 for fifteen minutes or so and nothing untold was happening. There

  was a build-up of more abandoned cars as we got closer to the outskirts of Boston,

  but nothing that we wouldn’t be able to navigate through quite yet. And unless we

  started seeing tanks, I didn’t think there were too many things this truck couldn’t

  get through anyway. For about the fortieth time, I asked myself why no one had thought

  of this sooner, least of all me.

  “You see that?” Tommy asked.

  But unless he was talking about the small pile of crumbs he was creating in his lap,

  I didn’t know how he could see anything else. He had not looked up from his parade

  of junk food the whole time I’d been in there. I wasn’t complaining; he’d given me

  a Mallo Cup and a Devil Dog. From where? I didn’t care. Sometimes it’s way better

  to allow the mysteries of the universe to remain just that. What good has it been

  for science to remove all the mystery in life? Isn’t it cooler to think that the Northern

  Lights are the gateway to the Spirit world and that the crackling sound it sometimes

  makes is that of the spirits talking? Or would you rather ‘know’ that its charged

  particles from the sun reacting with the earth’s magnetic field?

  “See what?” I asked, realizing that Tommy had even spoken.

  “The smoke.” He pointed through the windshield.

  I could see a small funnel of it. It didn’t look like much more than a small campfire

  throwing it off. Campfire meant people, though. I took a small glance through the

  back windshield. It seemed my driving had been relaxing enough for all of them to

  get a little much needed sleep. We weren’t yet under attack; I was going to see how

  this rode out before I awoke them.

  “Buckle your seatbelt in preparation for a bumpy ride,” I told Tommy.

  “Had it on since Gary started driving,” he told me.

  “Okay so it wasn’t just me.”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “I thought he was trying to kill a snake on the floorboard

  every time he hit the brakes.”

  It was the further I drove that I realized this wasn’t just a marshmallow roasting

  fire. Something was going on. Now I’d wished I’d taken 95. I was slowing down looking

  for the best place to turn my truck around when I saw it.

  “Oh shit,” I said as I saw the bus heading our way. “He’s gotta be doing seventy.”

  That was fairly miraculous considering all the vehicles on the roadway. Smoke was

  billowing out of the front, luckily, the driver was going so fast that the smoke was

  traveling down the sides and to the back.

  “Where’s he in such a rush to get to?”

  “I think it’s what he is in a rush to get away from,” Tommy said.

  A bevy of bikers came into view. I did not want to get involved. First off, because

  I didn’t want to expose anyone to the danger; and secondly, how did I know who the

  good guys were. Just because bikers were chasing a bus didn’t necessarily make them

  the evil ones, now if it was a school bus that might change the equation. Sure…it

  cast them in a worse light, but by no means was it a definitive answer. No matter

  what I decided, I couldn’t stay where I was; the path through the cars was too narrow

  for us and a bus. The ear-irritating sound of metal squealing on metal pretty much

  woke everyone up as I pushed against some cars in an effort to mak
e room.

  The herking and jerking of Gary’s braking had nothing over what I was doing. Professional

  rodeo riders would have been complaining. I had created a sort of dugout through the

  cars and at the same time made myself vulnerable. There was always the chance the

  bus would race on by and the bikers would stop to check us out.

  “Shit,” I said just as I decided this was a horrible plan.

  The bus was within a quarter mile or so when I threw the truck in reverse. I was pinging

  the back of the truck off of more than a few cars.