The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (18 page)

“You forgot to say over, over,” his friend’s voice came through the speaker.

Laughing slightly, Steve said, “Roll right over these things, over. Don’t stop for shit, over.”

“Brain already told me, over,”
came the reply.

With thirty feet separating his front bumper from the
leading edge of the mass of dead, Tick-Tock was only up to five miles an hour when he struck them. The truck shuddered and bounced as it hit and then rolled over the dead. Some stood directly in his path and were mowed down while others were pushed to the sides. These then reached up and whined as they dug at its sides. One managed to hook its arm through the bracket holding the rearview mirror on the passenger side and levered itself up. Denise made short work of it by rolling down the window and shooting it through the mouth.

In the
back of the truck, Sheila watched to make sure none of the Z’s latched on and climbed up. The drop sides were high, but they were also slatted. Dead hands reached through and clutched at her as she made her way around the bouncing bed of the truck. She found a Z near the back that had hooked on and was climbing, so she leaned over the top rail and bashed it in the head with the baseball bat Tick-Tock had given her. Mary sat huddled with Cindy at the rear of the bed in a cubby they’d made between the boxes, while the others moved back and forth as they reeled from the dead reaching toward them. They would scream and jump away from one set of dirt caked hands only to turn and find another sticking through the slats on the other side as it sought them out.

Tired of their shrieking and getting in her way,
Sheila yelled, “Shut the fuck up and get to the center of the bed.”

They continued on with their hysterics
, so she raised the M4 in her hands and fired it twice into the air before pointing it at the nearest of them. This got their attention.

“I said get in the center of the
fucking truck!” She screamed.

They scrambled to obey and were soon crouched in a rough line,
trying to keep as far away from the sides as they possibly could while still flinching back and forth at the dirty hands reaching for them.

Shaking her head at their stupidity, Sheila cautiously
made her way around the perimeter of the jolting bed. A few dead hands slapped against her pant legs but she wasn’t worried. They might be able to reach through, but the openings were too small for them to get their heads in, and their mouths. As the truck sped up, she could see that the dead weren’t grabbing on anymore so she relaxed slightly.

In the second truck
, Brain made it a point to run over the dead bodies struck down by Tick-Tock if he saw them moving. His vehicle jolted as he rolled over a tangle of three of the dead trying to extract themselves from each other so they could come at the food again. Ahead of him, he saw a Z hanging onto the undercarriage of Tick-Tock’s truck. It bounced up and down as it was dragged along the railroad ties. He was wondering how they’d shake it loose when it lost its grip. Swerving slightly, he ran all three of his right side tires down its length.

Steve looked over the top of the cab to judge how far they had to go to
clear the swarm of Z’s around them. From behind him, he heard the thunk of a baseball bat as Heather knocked one of the dead off the back of the truck. He could see there weren’t many Z’s hanging off Tick-Tock’s vehicle, but theirs was just the opposite. After the first vehicle passed by, it was like the dead were ready for them. He and Heather had been hard pressed to knock them off and his shoulders ached from swinging the ball bat.

The truck jolted, causing Sean to call out from where he huddled, “Tell him to slow down.”

“If we do, we’re dead,” Steve told him. “Those things will be all over us.”

His eyes wide, Sean said, “Then tell him to speed up.”

“We’re working on it,” he replied as he checked to see if Heather needed any help.

The steady thumping of the truck’s tires rolling over the railroad ties
, interspersed with the heavier jolts as they ran over the Z’s, increased. Before, the bed had been rocked back and forth only occasionally as Brain rolled over the bodies of the dead, but now it shook from side to side in a constant motion. Checking to make sure the boxes of supplies were still lashed down, he was relieved to see that the cords binding them were tight.

Steve looked
forward and could see they were now moving too fast for any of the dead to do more than paw at them in passing, but ahead of him was a throng of about fifty coming at them down the tracks. Worried they might knock down enough of them to pile up and flip one of the trucks; Steve raised the radio to tell Tick-Tock to slow down a little.

Before he could push the transmit button, he heard his friend
’s voice over the roar of the diesel and the shrieks of the dead as he yelled at the top of his voice into the radio, “Ramming speed, Mr. Scott.”

Ducking, all
Steve could do was hang on.

Tick-Tock watched through his windshield
in fascination as the dead were mowed down. Black puss sprayed the glass so he turned on the wipers. This caused the viscous liquid the dead used for blood to smear, but wiped away enough of it to see. The truck jolted up and down and right to left as he ran over the dead, killing them for the final time.

Seeing they were
close to getting through the last of them, he said, “Almost there.”

Denise laughed and said, “That’s what you kept saying earlier.”

A dead woman in a sundress was the final one they rolled over. Her bluish-green face snarled at them as the bumper took her down. Tick-Tock looked through the sticky black goo smearing his windshield and didn’t see any more dead on the tracks in front of him, so he eased up on the accelerator and checked his rearview mirror. He could see Brain’s truck behind him, bouncing as it rolled over the last of the dead. Turning his attention to the front, he could see that the way was clear.

CHAPTER TEN

Russellville, Arkansas:

Lieutenant Cage didn’
t pay much attention to the names of the two new transfers to his unit, but when they marched into his office to report for duty, he recognized the Staff Sergeant immediately.

“Fagan,” he said with a smile.

“Second Lieutenant Cage?” Fagan asked. “What are you doing here?”

Coming around his desk with his hand outstretched, he said, “It’s Major now.”

Stiffening, Fagan said, “Sorry, sir.”

With a laugh, Cage said, “Quit being a regular army prick and shake my hand. It’s been a long
time since Afghanistan, but it hasn’t been that long.”

Fagan
smiled as he held out his hand and said, “The good old days compared to now, sir.”

“Yeah, but hopefully that will change,” Cage said. “We’re working on a few things here that might lead to the end of this insanity.”

Next to Fagan, Jimmy snapped to attention and said, “Private First Class Jimmy McPherson reporting for duty, sir.”

After eyeing him from head to toe, Cage turned to Fagan and asked
with a laugh, “What the hell is this?”

Chuckling, Fagan replied, “He’s a cherry, sir, but he’s solid when the shit hits the fan.”

Cage looked at Jimmy, “That’s high praise coming from someone like the Staff Sergeant. What did you do to get transferred here? We only transfer people out, and then it’s to New Orleans.”

Jimmy started to stammer a reply
so Fagan cut him off by saying, “We were in New Orleans and we saved the life of the company commander’s son. We both got a promotion and a transfer here.”

“Promotion
?” Cage asked. “But you were a Staff Sergeant when I last saw you. Did you get knocked down in rank and just make it back?”

“A few times
since then, sir,” Fagan said with a slight smile. “I was a Staff Sergeant when I got promoted this time but I went out and tied one on. I knocked out an MP when he tried to stop me from taking a Humvee and going into town on a foraging mission for more beer, sir.”

With a laugh
, Cage turned to Jimmy and said, “That’s Fagan. He’s always worried that if he goes above Staff Sergeant, he’ll end up being pulled out of the field and given a desk job.”

“Can’t ride no desk, sir,” Fagan said with a smile.

“And you won’t while you’re here,” Cage assured him as he moved over to a wall covered in maps. Pointing to their location on one, he said, “The only secure area we have in this whole area is the base. At last intelligence estimates, over six thousand Z’s surround us. We provide security for the base as a whole, but there’s a separate platoon that provides security for the farmhouse itself along with their other duties.”

“What other duties, sir?” Fagan asked.

“They go out to get specimens for the doctors to study,” Cage told him.

“Specimens, sir?” Jimmy asked.

“They bring Z’s back so the doctors can cut them up, or attach electrodes to them or whatever the hell it is they’re doing over there. They’re trying to find out what makes the dead tick so we can take them out.” Cage explained.

“And where will we be posted, sir?” Fagan asked.

“At the farmhouse,” Cage told him.

Fagan considered this for a second before saying, “It is what it is, sir. It’s still better than New Orleans.”

“Anything’s better than that,” Jimmy intoned quietly.

Cage turned to him and said, “Private, go find the mess tent and get yourself some chow
. When you’re done, come back here.”

Snapping to attention, Jimmy saluted and did an about face.

Once he was gone and the door closed, Cage motioned for Fagan to sit across from him then lowered himself into his chair. Opening his desk drawer, he extracted a mason jar half full of clear liquid and held it out. “You haven’t joined the temperance movement since your latest demotion, have you?” He asked Fagan.

T
he Staff Sergeant laughed, “I don’t drink any more, but then again, I don’t drink any less.”

After Fagan took a
sip, his eyes began watering and his throat felt scorched.

“What is this?” He gasped.

“Moonshine,” Cage told him as he chuckled at the man’s reaction. “I make it myself.”

“More like battery acid,” he replied
, then took a long drink.

When he recovered, Cage said, “I’m happy to see you here. There’s a lot going on that you might be able to help me with.”

“But I won’t be under your command,” Fagan told him.

“I’m going to change that
if you’re agreeable to what I have to say. I need you for something else I’m doing, so I could send someone else from my command in your place.”

Fagan considered this for a moment before asking, “What about the cherry, Major?”

“If you want to keep him, he’s yours,” Cage said. “I’ll just send two replacements instead of one.”

Fagan nodded and said, “Then what do you
have going on, sir?”

So Cage told him.

***

After eating, Jimmy wandered around the base as he searched for a way out of it. He could see
by the amount of birds perched on the electric fence that it wasn’t charged and his spirits rose. But then he remembered what the Major had said about them being surrounded by thousands of Z’s, and they dropped. If he went out on foot, he knew that he wouldn’t last a day.

As he walked
by the motor pool he could see three Humvees and a Stryker assault vehicle along with a collection of high-lift, four wheel drive pick-up trucks. If he could get his hands on one of those, he could make his way back home and be reunited with what was left of his family. A truck like that would bust right through the gate.

Remembering the stories told by a cousin who had been a bootlegger, he recalled him saying that you could make it all the way from
Texas to Florida and then back through Georgia, Tennessee and Arkansas on the dirt roads that crisscrossed the south. His cousin’s claim to fame was that he could travel a thousand miles without his tires ever touching a paved road.

He resolved
that if an inbred, dumbass could do it, then he could do it. Jimmy had barely taken two steps toward the nearest of the vehicles off the road when a sentry challenged him.

Acting friendly, Jimmy said, “I’m PFC McPherson. I just got in today and I saw these trucks. They’re beauties.
I just wanted a closer look at them.”

“This is a restricted area,” the guard told him. “We have orders to arrest anyone not authorized to be here and shoot anyone who resists.” Studying Jimmy, he added, “I’ve never seen you around
, so I’m going to cut you a break. Just to let you know, since you’re new here, the motor pool and the farmhouse are off limits. So far, no one’s tried to break into the farmhouse, but we get a lot of people trying to bust in here.”

“Why?” Jimmy asked.

“To grab a truck and haul ass,” the sentry replied. Waving a hand around him, he added with a laugh, “I don’t know where they think they’re going though. This whole area is thick as a shit hole with Z’s.”