The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (23 page)

H
e handed a box of .40 caliber pistol rounds to Brain and said, “Give these to Mary.”

“Mary?” Brain asked, surprised that Tick-Tock would give her anything except a hard time.

“You said she was shooting when we got ambushed so at least that’s a start,” he told him. “As long as she doesn’t hit one of us, I’d rather have her armed than not. Now, let’s look around for some more ammo.”

They searched the other tents but found little. They
did come across some canned food and bottled water, but it appeared that all the weapons and ammunition were kept in the tent. After sending Connie back to get some of the others to move what they’d found, Tick-Tock and Brain searched everything again to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.

Brain flipped
open the top of a large cooler that he found at the edge of the clearing, then stepped back at the rotten smell that wafted up to him. Glancing inside, he realized that it was full of decomposing hands. Hesitantly he took a closer look and saw that they all had rings on their swollen fingers. Turning away, he started to gag.

Tick-Tock walked over to see what had caused his reaction. After looking into the cooler, he said, “They must not have been able to get the jewelry
loose, so they cut the hands off and stuck them in there to rot.”

Dry heaving, Brain said, “These guys were animals. Is this what the rest of the world is like?”

Not too optimistic at what they would find as they made their way to Fort Polk, Tick-Tock simply said, “Probably.”

Connie returned with Sean and two of the others in tow as Tick-Tock finished sorting through the weapons. He decided that most of it was crap
, but a few of the rifles and handguns were salvageable. When he told them to gather them up and take them back to the truck, Sean refused.

“We don’t carry weapons,” he said flatly. “That’s your job.”

Leaning toward him, Tick-Tock replied, “I’m not asking you to shoot anyone. All I want is for you to bring them from here to there.”

With the others standing behind him, he
crossed his arms and said, “We refuse.”

Tick-Tock p
ointed to the pile of food and water, saying, “But you’d have no problem carrying things like that so you can feed your face. What’s the difference? It was guns that got it for us. If it hadn’t been for us and our guns, you’d all be dead right now.”

“
That’s a completely different subject,” Sean told him.

Shaking his head in disgust, Tick-Tock said, “Then grab the food and the water, I’ll carry the guns.”

“I’m not sure we should do that either,” Sean said in a pompous tone. “We had a meeting of the committee and we feel we’ve done enough for the day by moving everything to the other truck. We’ve also decided that if you hadn’t driven us into the maws of death, we never would have lost Senator Feinstein and her two aides.”

Tick-Tock burst out laughing
and said loudly, “The maws of death? What the fuck does that even mean? You and your people better get your head and your ass wired together because I’m pretty sure we’re going to run into more people like that before we get to Polk. If you’d been armed, we wouldn’t have lost anyone. We would have tore their asses up. The truth of the matter is, it was a little girl who saved your ass and mine, and I’d rather have her at my back than you. There isn’t a rewind button on this shit, so get it in gear and grab some boxes.”

Distracted by s
eeing Denise coming out of the woods with her arms full of rifles, he said softly to himself, “There might not be a rewind button, but you can always go forward.”

Turning his full attention
back to Sean, he barked at him like his drill instructors used to bark at him when he was on the grinder, “MOVE.”

Sean moved.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Highway 190:

Driving a Dodge Ram extended cab taken from the camp of the highwaymen, Tick-Tock led the way as they slalomed around the occasional stalled vehicle on the road. They had liberated the pickup since the truck that Brain was driving overflowed with people and supplies. No one could ride in the open back of his truck since it didn’t sit high enough, but Tick-Tock was happy to be alone with Denise and Cindy. They played games like I Spy and Slug Bug to kill the time as they looked for a car or truck that hadn’t already been looted. Since entering the highway, they found that every vehicle had already been stripped of anything usable. Doors, hoods and gas cap covers stood open, displaying they had already been picked clean.

Denise saw
a National Guard truck in the distance, “That looks promising.”

“Looks are deceiving,” Tick-Tock replied. “Whoever came through here took everything that wasn’t nailed down.”

“Might be worth a shot though,” Denise said.

Tick-Tock pressed the transmit button
on the radio and said, “I’ve got a truck up ahead that I want to check out, over.”

Heather’s voice came
through the speaker, “It better have something in it, because we’re almost out of gas. We’re running on fumes, over.”

Tick-Tock grimaced. They had
siphoned enough regular gas out of a few abandoned vehicles that still had some at the bottom of their tanks to keep the pickup going, but couldn’t find any diesel fuel. Everything they came across had already been drained dry and left with their filler caps off. The only good thing was that the dead weren’t as thick through this area. When they stopped, they weren’t beset by Z’s coming out of the stalled vehicles, but instead, an eerie quiet. They had come too far to turn back, so their only hope was to keep moving forward.

H
e handed the radio to Denise, and said, “We may have to get a bunch of cars running to carry everyone if we can’t find any diesel fuel. The others are pretty useless, but I’m hoping at least a few of them can drive.”

T
hey pulled past the National Guard truck and stopped. As they looked it over for possible threats, Denise said, “I know Sean can drive, but I’m not sure of anyone else. They’re a bunch of politicians, so I doubt it.” Pointing to where the gas caps were still in place on the fuel tanks of the truck, she added, “Hopefully, we won’t have to find out.”

Tick-Tock’s chainmail clanked as he got out of the driver’s side door. He watched as Denise lifted
Cindy over her before sliding across the bench seat and settling behind the wheel. They had worked out a routine that whenever they stopped; she would get ready to take off if things went bad. They both knew that in reality she wouldn’t, but they still went through the motions. Flipping the hood of his armor over his head, he nodded to her as he hefted his M4 and turned.

He and Steve approached the truck and looked in back.
It was empty except for a rotting body dressed in the remnants of a uniform, so they turned their attention to the fuel tanks on either side of the cab. Twisting off the cap on his side, Tick-Tock found that the tank was empty.

“Nothing,” he heard Steve say from the
other side.

Just then, the truck Brain was driving died. Both men heard the whine of its starter as he tried to get it going again
, but they knew it was no use.

The clamor of excited voices filled the
air as everyone got out and milled around on the road. With the lack of Z’s in the area, even the others felt emboldened enough to get out and stretch their legs.

Steve
rounded the front of the National Guard truck and found Tick-Tock looking down the empty stretch of road in front of them. For a second, he was worried that his friend was thinking of taking off on his own until he said, “We can go back and grab a couple trucks to carry our stuff and a bunch of cars to carry everyone else. I don’t know how far we’ll get, since we’ve barely found enough gas to keep the Dodge going, but we’ll give it a shot. We’re coming up to Jasper so we might find better pickings, but I kind of doubt it. It looks like this whole stretch of road has been stripped bare.”

Nodding his head in agreement, Steve said, “
I saw a couple of pickups and a mini-van a few miles back. We can grab those and make our way into town. It’s not something I really want to do, but we’ve got no choice now.”

T
he setting sun threw long shadows through the scrub brush lining the sides of the road. Noting this, Tick-Tock said, “I think we need to stop for the night and go for the cars in the morning though. You, me and Brain can go out tomorrow and do a relay when we find something and bring it back here.” He gestured to a grove of trees in the distance, adding, “That might be a good place to set up. We haven’t seen any Z’s for a while, so we should be safe. There’s one thing that bothers me though.”

“What’s that?” Steve asked.

“This is supposed to be cattle country, but I haven’t seen a single cow. In fact, I haven’t seen a living thing since we turned onto the highway except for a few birds.”

“Maybe whoever stripped the cars did a little rustling when they came through,” Steve proposed.

“Maybe,” Tick-Tock said. “But that’s a shitload of cows to take. It would have to be a pretty good sized group to pull it off.”

S
teve scanned the vacant pastureland around them, as he said, “If that’s the case, then I hope they moved on. I really don’t want to get into a fight out here. If we run into a big group, we’re in trouble.” Turning his attention to where the others were milling about, he added, “With that in mind, we need to get these people organized. I want to get the truck unloaded and everyone off the road before it gets dark. We’ll use the Ram to shuttle everything over to those trees and then park it on the far side to keep it out of sight. Get with Sean and -.”

Tick-Tock cut him off by pointing to where
the man was approaching and said, “Speak the devil’s name and he will appear.”

“Now what are we going to do?” Sean
whined in a loud voice as he headed toward them. “Don’t tell me we have to walk. Your part of the deal is to get us safely to an aid station and so far you’re failing miserably. We lost four people at the rail bridge and three more when we ran into those robbers. As soon as we get back to civilization, I’m putting together a committee to look into your actions.”

Steve grimaced at the refer
ence to the people that had been killed, but refused to take responsibility for their deaths. Bristling at the comments, he said, “And we might lose a few more before it’s all done if you all don’t stop with your committee bullshit and carry a gun. We’ve got enough weapons to arm at least half of you.”

Stopping a few feet away and crossing his arms over his chest, Sean
said defiantly, “And we refuse to carry weapons. What part of that don’t you get?”

In counterpoint to this, a small voice called out from the others who had gathered to watch the confrontation
.

“I’d like to learn to shoot. I’ll carry a gun
.”

Sean w
hirled around and demanded, “Who said that?”

A thin blonde woman in her early twenties stepped forward as she tentatively raised he
r hand and said, “I did. I want to learn how to protect myself.”

“Linda
!” Sean yelled her name, “You’re going to let go of your values and give in to these people? They’re the reason we’re in this situation in the first place.”

Ignoring him, she moved to stand in front of Steve and said again, “I’d like to learn to shoot. I’ll carry a gun.”

“Have you ever shot anything before?” Steve asked.

“None of my people
will -.” Sean started to say.

He was cut off by Steve pointing at him in warning and saying, “Shut up right now or I’ll leave you on the side of the road.”

Steve turned his attention back to Linda, he nodded at her to answer his question.

Quietly, s
he said, “I fired my brother’s .22 pistol a few times back when I was a kid, but that’s it. I’m just tired of feeling so helpless and afraid.” She motioned to the others standing behind her, then added in a slightly stronger voice, “All they do is sit around and whine about how scared they are, and I’m over it. They talk about how we should treat everyone equally and that those poor people infected by the disease are the same as you and me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a bunch of shit. I only took a job as Senator Feinstein’s intern so I could get some experience toward my degree in Political Science.”

“And now you’re stomping on her memory,” Sean cut in.

Turning toward him in a rage, Linda said, “Fuck that liberal bitch! She was nothing but a socialist, elitist, snob. You need to read Animal Farm, and then take a good look at yourself, asshole.”

B
ehind him, Steve heard Tick-Tock laugh and say, “Some pigs are more equal than others.”

Sean
leaned forward to cut in again until Steve shut him up by saying in a low voice, “Like I said before. One more word out of you and I’ll leave you here.”

S
ean closed his mouth with an audible snap, but Steve gave him another warning look before turning his attention back to Linda and asking, “Are you the only one in your group who wants to learn how to shoot?”