The dead were advancing steadily with a particularly gruesome individual leading the way. It was a middle-aged man who had been eviscerated, his guts hung out of his body and dragged along the ground. He jerked every time another zombie stepped on his entrails, which would then snap off, leaving bits behind. His dead eyes remained fixed on us, however, and he was going to hit us any second.
I moved the gate closed and Tommy did the same. I slid a zip tie through the bars and secured them, stepping back just as the first zombie slammed into the barrier. The gates strained the tie, but didn’t break it. Tommy and I knew we needed more ties to secure the gate, but we didn’t want to get caught by the grasping hands that tried to get through the gap between the gates.
Tommy came up with the answer. He waited until the push subsided, then charged the gate, keeping his hands on the reinforcing bars. The sudden push knocked down several zombies which tripped the ones coming up from behind. Using the opening, I quickly threaded three more zip ties before the hands came grasping again and I had to step back.
The zombies surged again, but the gate held. Tommy and I exchanged a look then picked up the generator and took it to the cars. We didn’t have room in the back, so we used a length of cord and tied it to the roof, threading the cord through open windows. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
Behind us, the zombies groaned and strained at their prison and I decided we needed to get out of sight before they broke free. We jumped into the cars and drove away, heading back the way we came, leaving behind yet another dead zone. Maybe we had the answers I was looking for riding with us, maybe not. I rummaged through my pack and dug out the binders and handed the one marked “Solutions” to Tommy to look through while I browsed through “Communications”.
Sarah drove back the way we had come and headed south at the appropriate crossroads, leading our little convoy towards our new neighbors. I thumbed through the binder and found a few interesting pieces.
July 9 Communication from State Center Bravo: Infection spreading through housing units. Troop desertion increasing. Need reinforcements.
July 18 Communication from Governor: Contain all infected citizens.
July 29 Communication from Maryland Centraclass="underline" Capital has fallen, designated dead zone. Congress disbanded. President dead.
August 15 Communication from Colorado: Military in full retreat. Fall back to Cheyenne Mountain.
September 3 Communication from New York Centraclass="underline" UN collapsed.
October 18 Communication from California Coast: US Navy evacuate San Diego.
November 4 Communication from Houston: Dead Zone List update.
I ran down the list of Dead Zones but after four pages I gave up. I figured we were pretty much on our own and it was up to us to decide whether we lived or died. I shook my head as Sarah gave me a questioning look and turned my attention to Tommy.
“Anything good in there?” I asked, tossing the binder on the floor.
“You wouldn’t believe some of the stupid things they wanted to try,” Tommy said, shaking his head.
“Try me.”
“Well, one of the suggestions was to douse the zombies in anti-bacterial gel, figuring it would kill them as they are walking disease factories.”
I snorted. “You’re kidding”
“Nope. Here’s another. Use incendiary bombs on all population centers to burn out the infection.”
I shook my head. “Good thing we missed that one.”
Tommy laughed. “Here’s my favorite. Develop an anti-zombie spray as personal protection against the undead. There’s even a chart describing the effects of pepper spray on zombies.”
“And?”
“All failed. Test number four resulted in the researcher getting bit.”
“Figures. They’d have saved themselves a lot of trouble by just writing ‘Shoot in head, then burn.’” I turned back to the front.
“Any info in the ‘Communications’ binder?” Tommy asked as he put away the ‘Solutions’ binder.
I nodded. “It all went to hell too fast for them to get a handle on it. Congress and the President are dead and the list of Dead Zones is longer than Jacob’s Christmas list. The military might be somewhere in Colorado or Wyoming and there might be a bunch of people on boats in the Pacific Ocean.”
Tommy and Sarah digested the news, then Sarah spoke up. “In all honesty, I’d rather be where we are than looking for help from the government.”
“Amen.” Tommy and I spoke together.
9
We drove for a few minutes, then Sarah slammed on the brakes, tossing the car into a shambles and nearly causing the cars behind us to pile up.
“What the hell?” Tommy yelled, pushing a pack off his head.
Sarah didn’t say anything, she just pointed out the window.
A grey mist was undulating on the horizon, ebbing and flowing like a grim tide. Staring closely at it, I realized it was not a mist at all. It was a mass of zombies and they were headed in the same direction we were. I looked ahead to their destination and my heart sank. They were going to Coal City. The town was going to be hit sometime soon.
Sarah looked at me and my mind was racing. We needed to get to the town to warn them of the approaching swarm, but I didn’t want to just drive ahead of the masses just to bring them to their dinner. I looked at my map and followed Dresden Road which led to Coal City. If we followed that road, we would surely be seen by the horde and they would follow us to the town. Looking at the size of that swarm, we were facing two or three thousand undead.
I stared at the map until the answer came to me. I turned to Sarah and told her to turn around and go back to the last intersection. She looked at me quizzically, but hurried to comply. When we had started east again, and were moving away from the horde, I outlined my plan.
“We’re heading to the railroad. The line runs alongside the town itself and we should be able to stay out of sight of the main horde,” I said, pointing to the rail lines coming up fast. “At most, we will have a few miles to go.”
“Are we walking?” Tommy asked.
“Have to, unless there is a service road,” I said.
As luck would have it, there wasn’t any road, so when we reached the railroad, we had to ditch the cars. We packed up as much as we could, taking every weapon and round of ammo we had. We put the generator in the car and packed as much food and water as we could. Hopefully the supplies we left behind would be here when we got back, if ever.
We moved along the railroad track at a steady clip, walking briskly, but not so fast we would be exhausted if we had to run. We had about two miles to go, if I read the map correctly. Sarah walked behind me, followed by Tommy and the others. Charlie brought up the rear.
Tommy spoke up. “I really hate being exposed like this. I feel like we’re going to suddenly be surrounded.”
I pointed to the graying horizon. “We will be if we don’t get to that town.”
“What if the town is already dead?”
“We’ll burn down that bridge when we come to it,” I said.
“Backup plan?”
“Got one.” I did, but it was iffy at best and required more than my allotted lifetime share of luck.
Tommy went silent again. We moved closer to the town, and I could see a multi-colored barrier sticking up out of the ground. It stretched for about two miles off to the west and out of sight to the south. I wondered what it was made of for a while, but when we got closer, I realized it was made of the same thing that we had made our first fence out of. Surrounding the better part of the town was a line of cargo containers. I noticed some containers standing away from the fence and wondered briefly what they were out there for, but I figured they must have been leftovers.