Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (36 page)

He tried to figure out where his plan had gone wrong. The
road had been clear when he stopped here hours ago in the dark. Therefore the
only logical answer was that they’d followed his taillights all the way from
downtown Bushnell.
Tenacious fuckers
, he thought as he did a modified
pee-pee dance on the bench seat while gripping his junk tightly with both
hands.

He thought about driving away and finding a spot nearby to
hang it out, but he really had to go. So, with the dead banging the hood and
both doors, he whipped it out in the truck and shot a steaming yellow stream
into the passenger footwell.

“Sorry, Farns,” he said with a chuckle. “We’ll have the
motor pool guys clean that up.”

While he pissed, he looked out the windshield at what, the
night before, had been nothing but gray asphalt illuminated by the truck’s
headlights. Now he had a panoramic view of flatland dominated by farms with
faded patches of lawn and waving fields of corn. And in the distance,
illuminated by the rising sun, he saw even more lurching corpses moving about
the roadway in loose knots.

He started the engine, turned his Huskers cap backwards, and
in no time the dead were behind him and he was pushing eighty down the center
of the interstate belting out an awful rendition of Judas Priest’s
Breaking
the Law
.

***

After Bushnell came Pine Bluffs, and that was where he saw
it. Blaze-orange and sitting on the side of the road with the driver’s last
service call, an earth-tone Chevy Malibu, still attached to the wheel lifts.

Elvis pulled ahead of the wrecker, a newer model Dodge 550,
and parked his urine smelling pick-up, and jumped out.

He found the tow operator a dozen yards away. In the grass
beyond the shoulder. The old fellow had been attacked and died, and then
apparently reanimated paralyzed from the chest down.

Elvis spun a circle and didn’t see any additional threats,
so he ignored the crawler and inspected the truck. He found the doors unlocked,
a half-eaten PB and J sandwich on the seat and the keys still in the ignition.

He climbed inside and found what he’d been looking for. A
square navigation unit hardwired somewhere behind the dash. He cycled the
ignition. Nothing. Not even the last gasp whir of the starter draining the
final volt from the battery.
WWFD?

Elvis jumped from the cab. Checked the crawling corpse, and
found it had moved only a few inches along the hardscrabble ground.

He jumped in the GMC, performed a K-turn and nosed it to the
Ram. Sourced a pair of jumpers from the wrecker and attached them to the two
trucks.
Red on positive. Black to ground.
Kinda like ‘lefty loosy,
righty tighty’
, mused Elvis.
Some things you’re taught stay with you
forever
.

The Ram started up right away. And so did Elvis’
relationship with his new road dog when the GPS came online and a voice, soft
and feminine but with a tiny bit of robot thrown in, said:
Searching.

When the display finally refreshed and the unit appeared
operational, Elvis cycled through the menus until he found one where it
appeared ready to accept a string of coordinates. He dug in his pocket and
withdrew the scrap of paper covered with a mess of numbers written in his hand.

He input the numbers exactly as he’d written them down, hit
enter, and watched as the computer brain set to thinking.

Thirty seconds later a new map refreshed, on it a wealth of
information. His current location was noted, and connecting it with the final
destination were a trio of squiggly yellow lines denoting the routes available
to him.

One look at the driving mileage, though, made his heart
skip. He zoomed in by tapping the + button on the screen. Scrutinized the
offerings and then chose the one that would take him farthest away from the
large cities.

He hopped down from the cab, went around back and gaped at
the controls, trying to determine how to release the disabled Malibu.

It took a moment but he worked the correct levers and the
vehicles parted ways.

Heading to the cab, he noticed a number of plastic gas cans
strapped next to the rear of the cab with rubber cords. A quick tap on each
told him they were full.

After transferring his meager belongings from the GMC and
climbing back into the idling truck, he adjusted the seat and mirrors, checked
his watch, and said aloud, “Well, little lady. If I’m gonna get us there before
tomorrow then I’m gonna have to drive like a trucker on meth.”

Eden Compound

Coming and going from the compound had always been stressful
for Logan—more so now after learning that the stretch of two-lane fronting the
feeder road had been under surveillance by the Chance kid, who was now lying
dead a dozen yards away, his bullet-riddled carcass buried under two feet of
dirt.

Logan brought the Tahoe to a crunching halt short of the
foliage-covered lattice that served to keep the compound’s entrance safe from
prying eyes. Leaving the engine running, he slid out of the driver’s seat and
jogged to the fore, parted the makeshift blind, and looked the length of the
state route, east and then west. For as far as he could see nothing moved. The
air was still and heavy with a ground-hugging fog that was just beginning to
burn off. He brought his binoculars to bear, walking his gaze up the grassy
slope before settling on the distant tree line. Swept them left to right, and
then, using hand signals, silently motioned Lev forward. The two men conferred
for a moment; then, after setting their radios on the same frequency as
Phillip’s, who was on duty in the security container, they shook hands, and Lev
darted across the road in a low crouch.

With a couple of quick twists, Logan removed the wire
holding the blind in place. He unlocked the padlock and pushed the hidden lever
that allowed the gate, lattice and all, to swing freely on well-oiled hinges.
It was a pretty elaborate set up which he had designed to keep the place hidden
from humans during a world-rocking financial crunch brought upon by the
supposed computer-killing Y2K bug. And for the first few weeks of the zombie
apocalypse it had been worth its weight in gold, as fleeing survivors and the
rotters following them from Ogden had passed right on by. Now, however, it was
merely a pain in his ass as he stood out in the open vulnerable to attack.

With the specter of a set of crosshairs settling on his
forehead, he pushed the gate open and hustled back to the Tahoe. Climbed behind
the wheel and rolled forward at walking speed as Chief closed and latched the
gate and secured the lattice in place.

After taking a left into the rising sun, he lowered his
visor and flicked his eyes to the rearview, where he saw his old friend scale
the fence and disappear from sight.

***

Logan watched the odometer tick ahead, and when three miles
had spooled out behind the truck, thumbed his two-way and informed Lev that
they were nearly out of radio range. To save batteries he powered down the
device. A steady clicking sounded to his right as Jamie thumbed all thirty
rounds from the earth-toned polymer Magpul magazine. She corralled the loose
shells on the seat between her legs, where they produced a brassy tinkling with
each dip in the road. She turned the spare mag upside down, blew into it a few
times to dislodge any debris that might gum up the workings, and then
painstakingly clicked all thirty shiny cartridges back into place. Tapped the
mag against her palm to seat the rounds, swapped the mag with the one in her
carbine, and repeated the process until all of her spare mags were good to go.

Like a kiddie rollercoaster, the two-lane wove through
forested hills, rising and falling minimally, and then shot a straight line for
a couple of miles before taking on a steeper pitch where the road snaked
through, what were obvious to Logan, man-made slots in the hills.

Getting closer
, he thought. Patches of reddish rock
where the elements had eroded the native grasses and topsoil were becoming more
evident the farther away they went from their valley.

As the Tahoe’s transmission geared down, a sign flashed by
on the right. It was the usual beehive cutout with writing in black indicating
they were currently travelling on Utah State Route 39. The first heading on the
sign read:
Woodruff, 11 miles
. The next line had a smaller beehive that
was labeled
SR-16
with
Randolph, 22 miles
and an arrow indicating
the town lay to the left. And below that, using the same reflective letters and
numbers, the third entry read
SR-16, I-89 South, Bear River, Wyoming, 24
miles
with an arrow indicating the town was to the right.

From the back seat, Gus said to no one in particular, “Where
do you think all the rotters went?”

“No idea,” answered Logan. “But I’m grateful we’re not in
the thick of them. I had a feeling we’d be seeing herds of them this close to
the junction.”

“Well, Logan, I’m glad your hunch is wrong,” said Jordan.
“Feels strange being out here all alone, just the four of us.”

“Not to worry. As long as we keep moving we’ll be alright,”
he said back.

Stowing the extra magazines in a cargo pocket, Jamie asked,
“What about humans?”

“In our neck of the woods? Aside from Huntsville, Etna, and
a few other holdouts still broadcasting on ham radio, there’s nothing but
rotters left.”

Suddenly Logan slowed the cruiser, hunched over the steering
wheel and said, “The roads aren’t clearly marked so keep your eyes peeled. One
of them climbs off to the left and the other is on the right ... both are
probably a little grown over.”

“My money is on the left mainly because staking out the high
ground makes more sense to me. With just a couple of competent snipers it’d be
way easier to defend.”

“I like the way you think, Jamie,” said Gus, earning himself
a quick jealous glance from Logan via the rearview. “But on the other hand”—he
added, meeting Logan’s eyes—“the Ogden River runs along 39 to the south. Water
is necessary for mining. And from a survivalist’s perspective, definitely a
must have for any kind of self-sufficiency.”

There was a break in the scrub brush on the left and Logan
slowed to a walking speed. “Left now or do we look for the river road? Let’s
put it to a vote. Jamie first.”

“Left,” she said.

“Jordan?”

“I don’t know, Logan.” Then, after seeing an animated Gus
pointing towards the passenger side, she added, “I vote for a right turn.”

Stopping the SUV on the centerline, Logan twisted around and
caught Gus’ eye. “How do you vote, Gus?”

“The river side makes the most sense to me.”

“I’m with Jamie,” said Logan. She cracked a smile and placed
her hand on his thigh. He went on, “It’s a tie, so why don’t we flip a coin?”

“Here,” said Gus, handing over a gold-hued Sacajawea dollar
coin he carried around with him for occasions such as this.

“I hated those things,” stated Jordan. “Always mistaking
them for a quarter.”

“Heads or tails, Jordan?”

She looked to Gus for help. He shrugged. She said, “Tails.”

Flipping the coin, Logan said, “C’mon
heads
.” He
caught the coin rather theatrically, peeked under his palm and blurted out,
“Heads. Left it is.” He reversed a few feet, set the brake and stepped from the
truck.

Jamie watched from her seat as Gus exited from the rear
passenger door, looped around the hood, and joined Logan on the road’s
shoulder. The two scrutinized tire tracks in the crushed red rock of the entry,
scuffing the chevron-patterned ridges with their boots. They looked closely at
the puddles remaining from the night’s thunderstorms. Then Gus crouched down on
his haunches, fussed with the low scrub on either side of the rutted track,
turning the branches over in his hand. He looked up at Logan, shook his head,
and then rose.

A ton of information was conveyed between the two men with
very few words, and Jamie was dying to know if turning
left
was the
correct decision. And then, answering her unasked question, the men climbed
back in, slammed their doors in unison, and Logan cranked the wheel to the left
and sped up the unimproved road.

“Well?” said Jamie.

“Well, what?” said Logan.

“What did all that detective work tell you?”

“Left is as good as right,” answered Logan as the SUV dipped
into a deep pothole jostling everyone like ragdolls.

“We found some tire tracks. No telling how old they are
because of the rain,” said Gus. “So we decided it would be best to check it out
since we’re here, and if this isn’t the right place we check it off the list
and move on.”

“And we spare ourselves a twenty-mile backtrack if Sacajawea
is right,” added Logan.

With no guardrail between the Tahoe and a deadly drop off,
the narrow road twisted back and forth on itself and gained several hundred
feet in elevation before leveling off at the gated entrance to what appeared to
be a long dormant mining operation complete with an old, water-filled quarry,
the rising sun glinting from its surface.

Logan pulled up close to the gate, which was adorned with a
host of colorful OSHA safety signs. One, red and black, read
Hardhat Area.
Another depicted an exploding stick—complete with lit fuse—that could only be
construed as
Danger - Dynamite!
Under the picture, for the low IQ crowd,
were easy to read bold letters stating that blasting took place on the premises.
Topped with razor wire and at least twelve-feet-tall by his estimation, the
fence looked pretty formidable—but Logan had an ace up his sleeve. Craning his
head to see the top of the fence, he said, “See that?” to no one in particular.

“See what?” said Gus as he chambered a round into the Les
Baer AR-15 sitting between his legs, barrel pointing downward towards the SUV’s
floorboard.