THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER Book 1: Bleeding Kansas: A Novel Of The Zombie Apocalypse (30 page)

“
Just one more thing. You’ll want to go by your crash site one last time. Say goodbye.”

“Okay, sure.”

“I mean it. Get back on the road, take a right. It’ll take you straight there. You’ll be close to the exit, too. It’ll just take you a couple of minutes out of your way.”

I look towards the approaching storm front.
“All right. I’ll chance it.”

“You’
ll be glad you did,” she says, squatting to lay her Desert Eagle flat on the asphalt. “Closure is a powerful thing. Which brings us to this.”

She rises, threads
her arms around my neck. I take her in my arms in time for her open mouth to meet mine. Another roll of thunder rumbles and booms in the far distance.

“Want something out of the back before I take off?”
Rebecca asks, nodding at the pickup truck with the liquor in it.

“Sure.”

“You’re not going to have time to browse,” she says, picking up her gun. “Just grab a bottle of something. I’ve got to meet those people from the chopper.”

I follow her to the back of the truck, where she unlocks the topper hatch and I reach in to grab a bottle of Tennessee whiskey. I’ve no sooner got the bottle out of the back and closing the hatch when Rebecca has the truck started and in reverse. I step
aside and she takes her foot off the brake and rolls back.

“Take care, Derek,” she says from the open window.
“Long live the legend of the Dead Silencer!”

“
Right. Long live the Queen!”

She has the surgical mask on already so I can’t see her reaction. Just flashing gray eyes and a hand raised
farewell as she drives off. I walk quickly back to the Big Yellow Truck. I’ve got all the room in the world to back out now.

Pulling
onto the main road through the auto mall I look for signs of the “honest refugees” but wherever they are they’re keeping their heads down. I think of the signals Rebecca flashed to the man in the chopper. The chopper moved on to wherever it was already going so I can’t imagine what that was about.

I drive as fast as I dare down the road. It comes up alongside the Interstate in due time. Still, I wonder why I’m doing this. I’m finally free, right? But there was something in Rebecca’s voice that would be bothering me all night if I don’t get that “closure” she’s talking about.

The fields rise with the corn, fall with the soybeans. Between the smoke and the approaching storm the sun takes an eerie cast. It’s as if it’s evening at—holy shit! The clock on the dash says 1:30. I check my phone. The dash clock is running fast by all of three minutes.

Lord, what a day.

Even at 80 miles an hour it feels like more than a couple of minutes but eventually I come upon the crash site. It’s hard to miss a wrecked airplane. It looks so much smaller than I remember it. I let my foot off the gas and let inertia bring me alongside.

The hatc
h is open. No sign of our luggage inside. I guess someone got to eat all that lovely bacon I’d stashed away after all. As for the thing catching fire, it looks like someone threw something burning into the cabin on a goof, maybe to try and make it blow up. It scorched a few chairs, blackened the area above the hatch with smoke. Still, whatever the cause of the fire, it didn’t start with the plane.

To see all this, tho
ugh, I have to avoid the most obvious feature of the wreck, the one that first catches your eye. Other than the open, smoke-stained hatch, the smashed wing with the chunky dried brown splatter of corpse gravy fanning over the tip.

It’s
in the cockpit.

Tanner.

He’s hard to recognize; a week’s constant exposure to the sun has baked his skin to a leathery red-brown. Even the polo shirt I remember him wearing is discolored and disfigured by the wheel column in his chest
and the blackened heart’s blood that soaked it. He rocks violently back and forth against the column pinning him to his seat as he senses my presence.

I have to climb the berm leading to the Interstate’s eastbound roadbed to get to him. I can see how it was easier to pull me out of the passenger seat than it was to get to Tanner. Still, I’m surprised no one else took him out, especially after he reanimated.
I suppose he was part of the tourist attraction bringing potential new workers to Emory Kerch’s plantation.

I’m about to step down into the tilted cockpit when I’m distracted by the sound of a helico
pter. It roars over fast, in the general direction of Kerch’s mansion. Coming in from due north. What the hell?

I look down and realize this may have saved my life. Tanner has somehow worked a big enough hole in his chest cavity where he can slip the wheel behind his open rib cage and swing around to the passenger side. If I’d stepped down there he would have had me. Judging by the blood scabbed on his chin I’m guessing this has worked at least once.

Tanner’s arms are flopping and waving blindly across the empty cockpit seat at me. Ordinarily I’d take my panga, eliminate the threat of those grasping hands, and close the deal with the hammer. I can’t bring myself to mutilate this poor son of a bitch, though. I pull my Glock and edge as close as I dare. Rebecca makes it look so easy. Me, I have to take a full minute to get myself situated just so I can get that bullet right where it needs to go. I’ve only got so many of these things.

Christ.
All this for someone like Tanner. Still, who’s to say we’d have gotten this far if we’d made it to the Interstate with an intact Luxury Tank? It took something a lot of people don’t have to fly an actual plane based only on simulator experience. Then there was the hard decision he made when that woman held us up on the runway. Hard, cold, and stone necessary. We would never have lifted off in time to clear the horde with her weight on board.

Yeah, I guess I do owe him.

I squeeze the trigger. The slug catches him over one eye. His movements are jerkier, but he isn’t stilled. I have to fire a second round in the vicinity of his mouth to stop him.

Me and my gross sentimentality.
I really need to think things over. It’s a world just getting born, all right, and God knows it’s even more unforgiving than the one whose morbidly obese chest it burst out of to get here.

Okay, Tanner’s down.
Closure, and all that. Let’s go home.

25

I don’t bother with the exit. I turn the Big Yellow Truck around and angle it up the berm to the roadbed. I scan the white asphalt ahead, glowing brightly in contrast to the indigo darkness on the horizon. Nothing to suggest spike strips.

I’m in the eastbound lane
s pointed west. Let’s floor this bitch.

One mile down the road
something catches my eye. I slow to look at a trio of walkers shuffling along the dirt frontage before a wind farm. Like me they’re moving westbound into the storm.

There’s something about this group, and then I realize—it’s not
three walkers traveling. It’s two following a questing alpha. This one’s head is up; he’s walking near normally while the others shuffle and drag after him, hopeful for whatever he might find and eventually toss aside. Or maybe they’ll push him aside and take what he works so hard to catch. Looking at this group, I doubt that latter scenario will happen. But he does seem cursed for his success, doesn’t he?

Another thing that occurs to me is that if they’re
out and walking towards their next meal it’s because the alpha missed getting corralled like the others. By avoiding the herd they avoided manipulation and deployment as weapons. Therefore they missed getting shot and burned and blown to pieces for their troubles. No curse to that success, it seems, unless facing into the storm to get whatever’s next is a curse. Like living itself can be a curse. It’s a concept I’m all too familiar with.

Still.
They’re on their feet. They’re moving. There’s a chance.

The third lesson isn’t particularly Zen, but it makes me sit up straighter,
forces me to mind my surroundings and my speed. That is to say, if I wrecked, and God help me survived…and there I am, pinned in the wreckage…these guys walk up....

Slowing to more or less normal highway speed serves me well when the double-
rotored helicopter roars overhead. It all but rakes the roof with its landing gear before rushing ahead to land, straddling the lanes before me.

For a rage-blind moment I imagine putting my foot through the floor and plowing right through them.
For God’s sake I’m not even past the auto mall! The men in black battle-rattle are pouring out. Two stand facing the Big Yellow Truck, ready to cut me to ribbons. Others fan towards either end of the Interstate. They’re taking aim and dropping random walkers attracted to the racket of the rotors. Meanwhile a second chopper lands at the auto mall to my left.

When I see Dr. Hearn step into view in the ope
n door of the helicopter, smiling and waving me over, I push the shifter into park and kill the engine.

I emerge carefully from the truck, my hands upraised to show the two on standby at the door I’ve got no quarrel. Dr. Hearn seems to find this amusing. I step up to the helicopter and immediately a black-uniformed man takes my forearm and pulls me up. I’m plopped down into a chair opposite where Dr. Hearn has seated himself. Someone shoves a pair of headphones at me. This is good, I think. As I can’t imagine how else we’re talking over the racket of two churning rotors and men with M4s screaming at each other, I put the headphones
on, pull the microphone stem to my mouth.

“Mr. Derek Samuel Grace, the Dead Silencer!”

I can’t help but smile for the old man’s enthusiasm. “Dr. Hearn.”

“Did you know you’re driving in the wrong lane?”

“I didn’t think it mattered anymore. Are you giving me a ticket?”

Dr. Hearn laughs. “Oh! We haven’t quite come back to that!
Yet. But it still matters. The old ways haven’t entirely left us. We just buried them. Under so much…well, we’ve done away with all that now. Just a friendly tip.”

“I’ll cross right on over, then.”

“Good, good! Just so you know, that’s a strong cold front coming up on us. Severe thunderstorms, possible tornadoes. We’re just doing a quick mop-up before the rains come in and help us put out the fires. By the way, thank you so much for your efforts on behalf of Oak Blossom Lane! I’m sorry about Paulson. Just so you know, he was off the reservation. Got what was coming, though, don’t you agree?”

“It was a shame to
lose the fire truck,” I say.

Dr. Hearn nods.
“Yes! Yes! You understand! With every destroyed vehicle, every burned building, every wrecked house, that’s one less until we learn to make them again! Will we ever make them again? That’s probably the biggest problem ahead of us. We gave up a lot for this—but it will be better!” He looks out the door where a squad of three take positions to shoot something or someone outside our own line of sight. “But that’s neither here nor there,” the doctor says. Now he snaps forward, his hand out and a huge grin on his face. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. I had to shake the hand of the man who slept with the Mantis and lived!”

I lean forward and shake his hand.
“Uh—what?”

“Ms. Rebecca! Special Agent Rebecca Anne Donaldson, to be precise. She’s got issues, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Uh, no. She seemed fine to me. Very dedicated to her work. I’d be honored to take firearms training under her.”

Dr.
Hearn looks at me incredulously. “They call her the Mantis because she eventually takes the head off of every man she sleeps with! I don’t know what’s going on between you two but apparently you work well together! According to her we would never have rid ourselves of the mestizo infestation if not for your help bringing them here. God forbid they had escaped into the countryside!”

Infestation?
Oh, no. “Look, I’m just a guy minding his own business. Trying to get home and all that.”

“You
’ve saved the oldest neighborhood in town from fire and ruin! You’ve neutralized almost exactly half of the walkers brought together from all over town to funnel into the Dougherty estate! Of course, it helped we had them in a tight corral, but still! Inspired! Then you bring them to a more or less dead-free area for cleanup!”

“
Well, shucks….”

“
And, dear God, I’m forgetting! You rescued that group from the Wal-Mart with that beautiful sword of yours! And you stood for that poor girl this morning when those jackanapes killed her! Your one and only failure in a long and busy day, and you still showed courage of character!”

Well played, Rebecca
. “I really regretted losing Kara. That was such a waste.”

“Indeed
! But you and Rebecca
destroyed
the malefactors! Such a team! My people won’t forget this, Mr. Grace!”

“
Well, here’s wishing all the best.”

“
We wish
you
the best! There’s a farmhouse just up the road we’ve secured! You’ll want to stop there before the storm hits. It has a shelter if it comes to that….”