On the way home, we stopped to pull the trucks out of the shed.
“
You drivin’ or ridin’ this time?” I asked Jenny.
“
I’ll shoot.”
We called the rest of the group in. We had four pickup trucks we used as main raiders. They’d been slightly modified. After we lost Chrissi on the first run, I wasn’t about to repeat that mercy kill. We'd improvised old-fashioned cow-catchers on the front of the trucks with tube steel and sheet metal. Over the windows, we welded sheet metal with firing ports to see and shoot from. Two of the trucks came with sunroofs. One of those I used as my command truck. The rest served as good shooting platforms. All our trucks had four-wheel-drive and four doors. Easy in, easy out. No getting stuck.
Upon hearing the plan, everyone geared up. Four people per truck. I had three Gulf War vets on my team, plus a couple of Reservists who got left behind in the chaos. Their unit had called them in, but they couldn’t make it to LaSalle back when the outbreak first hit. Together, we pulled on our heavy-duty coveralls, work boots, and leather gloves. Human teeth and fingernails aren’t that strong. If a deader got hold of one of us, it’d have some work to do in order to get a chomp in. Some of us wore motorcycle helmets; the Reservists had their own K-pots. A couple of us wore football helmets. We made a motley crew, but we got the job done.
Our weapons were uniform, though. From our first raid, we'd snagged enough guns to arm the whole town. The men carried AR-15 rifles like the military's, except ours packed a bigger punch. They were all 7.62 NATO. A good, heavy round. The girls carried AR-15s like ours, but theirs were standard military 5.56 NATO caliber. Easier to handle without the recoil. In addition to the rifles, we all carried pistols strapped to our belts. Most of the team members also kept sawed-off shotguns slung across their chests. We carried spare magazines and ammo in ditty bags. No such thing as being over-gunned when driving into a horde of Zeds.
We climbed into the trucks and headed east out of town.
"Fences are coming along good," I mentioned as we passed the first checkpoint. We had almost the entire town enclosed in barbed wire and trenches now. We'd cut a few blocks off the village, but for the most part, we'd built a solid perimeter.
I had Bill and Sandy Henderson in my truck. Bill drove, and Sandy rode shotgun. Jenny sat beside me in the back seat. John and Cathy rode in a second truck. Twelve other platoon members rounded out the team. Bill punched the gas, and we ripped down Bottom Road. No cops, no speed limits. Just don’t roll the truck.
Four miles down, we turned and headed north. The four trucks roared up out of the valley and flew into Princeton. With the rain the night before, it was too wet to cut through the fields, so we had to stay on the pavement.
Our route skirted the edge of town. We’d only have to drive through a little bit of the residential areas. We’d been to Princeton a few times since the outbreak, and we never stayed long. Not so long ago, more than seven thousand people lived in town, and Princeton lay right along I-80. That made for a lot of traffic and a lot of wandering deaders.
We blasted into town and swung down a side street, still pointed north and passing mostly bars and industrial buildings. We blew past one tavern where a dozen or so Zeds wandered in and out of the building. They turned to watch us roll by. Some tried to chase us, but we didn’t even slow down. Up and over the railroad tracks, we were getting close now.
Jenny tapped the magazine of her rifle. We all checked our guns. We’d never hit Wal-Mart before. I hoped it hadn’t been sacked already. How many uninfected might remain in Princeton, none of us knew.
We drove past the warehouse where I used to work, before the outbreak. The place was huge. More than one million square feet under one roof. I saw trucks still backed into the dock behind the chain-link fence and a bunch of personal vehicles filling the lot where the employees used to park. I didn’t know if that meant they'd been out on a run when the shit hit the fan or if they were still wandering around inside, dead.
Next stop: Wally World. A line of dead cars stretched from the stop light all the way back to the edge of the parking lot.
“
Must be a big sale on,” Jenny remarked as we rolled by the store.
“
Huh?”
She jerked a thumb toward the firing port facing the store. “Take a look.”
There must have been a thousand deaders milling around the parking lot.
My mouth went dry. “Swing in.”
“
Boss?”
“
Do it, Bill. We need to check it out. Keep it going fast enough that we don’t get bogged down.”
“
Yessir.”
I radioed the others to follow, and we tore ass across the parking lot. The Zeds turned to look. Some made a run for us. They quickly learned that several thousand pounds of armored truck trumps a couple hundred pounds of dead flesh.
“
We’re really gonna have to wash these rigs when we get home,” Sandy said.
We plowed through the zombie crowd in the front of the store.
“
Go around,” I told Bill. “Front looks buttoned up tight.”
We circled the building at thirty miles per hour. Wheels moaned as we made the turns. I didn't see many Zeds around back. The only doors were those that led to the loading docks and the tire-and-lube center. I spotted one or two fire exits. Not much else.
In a couple of heartbeats, we swung back around out front. We drove out to the far end of the parking lot, and the Zeds shuffled our way. Some of my crew members stepped out from their cabs and started taking long-range shots. Black blood and brains blossomed in the morning air.
Even from a hundred yards away, I could hear the moans. The sound got on my nerves. The Zeds had to suck
in
air to make noise, and they sounded like a slow-motion version of that guy’s laugh from the
Nerd
movies.
Bill tapped my arm. “Check out the roof, Danny.”
I popped up through the sunroof with a pair of binoculars. A handful of people waved at us from the roof. They looked a bit tattered. A little greasy, but the guy had a beard. They weren’t gray, either.
“
We got survivors.”
“
Well?”
“
We've gotta get up there. They can open some doors for us.”
“
Yeah, great. How do we load the trucks? I don’t think the deaders're going to stand back and just let us throw everything in and drive away.”
I thought about it for a second. “Those bays fit two vehicles at a time, don’t they?”
“
Think so.”
“
Get us up close.” I radioed for one of the other trucks to come with us and told the other two to lay down some cover. Jenny and Sandy hopped back in. Bill hammered the accelerator, and we rocketed into the mass of dead. Guns fired from every port. Zeds went down. I slid the sunroof open and went out with the shotgun. Heads exploded as I nailed them with buckshot from arm’s length.
“
Open the garage doors!” I shouted up at the guy on the roof, dumping another Zed as she tried to crawl onto the hood. I held up a hand, five fingers open. “Five minutes! Open the garage doors in the shop. Five minutes, and we’re coming in!”
I fell back inside the truck and buttoned up. Bill pulled his gun in, dropped the truck in reverse, and backed out.
A Zed had managed to climb into the bed of our truck. Jenny stuck the barrel of her shotgun through one of our ports and blew the bastard out. We started making loops of the building, keeping the deaders off us and away from the garage doors. On our third pass, someone waved from the side door of the garage. The doors went up, and we swung the trucks in. We had to slow to make the turn, and the Zeds followed. We rolled in at about twenty and locked up the brakes. As our four trucks slid to a stop, the folks inside yanked down the doors and threw the locks.
I popped my door and stepped out. My crew followed. A Zed flopped out of the bed of Jim’s truck and stumbled my way. Jenny grabbed a jack handle and brained him. Twice. He went down.
Outside, the deaders pounded on the doors, running their slimy faces along the small windows. No use shooting them; that would just leave open windows. We turned our backs on them.
“
Wash ‘em, wax ‘em, and change the oil,” I said, grinning as I walked the garage floor. I saw black gore spattered across the cow-catchers. At least now we knew they worked.
“
Not a bad idea, Boss,” Jim said. “Might not get the chance to change oil for awhile.”
“
Do it,” I said.
Two of my guys dropped into the pit. Two more threw a couple buckets of dirty water across the front ends of the trucks to wash off the gore. Then they flipped up the hoods. Others found garbage bags and taped them over the windows in the garage doors. If the deaders couldn't see us, maybe they’d leave.
“
Who the hell are you people?”
I turned. I recognized the man in the tattered deputy sheriff’s uniform.
“
Tony. Good to see you. First person I’ve seen that I know.” I smiled and held out my hand.
Tony took it like a man thrown a lifeline. “You, too, man. Been cooped up here for I don’t know
how
long.”
Jenny walked up beside us, pulled off her helmet, and shook out her hair.
“
Tony, this is my girl, Jenny One Sock. Jenny, this is Tony Baker.”
I don't remember when we started going by nicknames, but we picked them up as we earned them. I saw the guy coming from the left before Jenny did, but he knew her on sight.
“
Thought you were Jennifer Mueller. Or did you tire of my name already, dear?”
The man stepped forward, pulled Jenny into his arms, and kissed her.
Jenny’s eyes went big—with shock or fear, I didn’t know which. Then she wrapped her arms around him. Older guy, gray hair, beard, glasses. She’d said her husband was a professor.
Professor Richard Mueller, to be exact.
I noticed the mousy little redhead standing behind Jenny's husband as they talked. She wore the same look I was probably wearing. In any case, I had to break up old-home week.
“
Okay, people, we’re here to shop. You've got your lists. Get ‘em done and get back here to the trucks. Move.”
My unit scattered into the store. A couple of my guys kept crawling around under the trucks, doing their job. It wouldn’t take them long to finish, then they’d help load us up. Zeds still pounded on the door. Some screamed, but they were quieter now.
We loaded up carts upon carts full of supplies. Each squad had their own shopping list. One group went for groceries. One went for hygiene stuff. Another went for clothes. The last went for tools and camping items. We made several trips. I stayed in the back with the trucks to help load supplies as they arrived. Jenny went with the others.
“
You in charge of this bunch, Dan?” Tony asked.
“
Yeah. This is part of my platoon. I’ve got ten more back in Snareville. You folks are welcome to come join us.”
“
What’s it like out there? I lost contact with the office not too long after I got stuck in here.”
I looked him in the eye. “Devastation. Chaos. Apocalypse. However you want to say it. I don’t know much more than that. Princeton seems to be mostly Zeds. We’re okay down in the valley, and we've made contact with the Mennonites. They’re okay, too. Other than that, there’s not much left.”
Tony slowed as he stacked a flat full of bottled water. “God. We didn’t know. We couldn’t get out. I couldn’t raise anyone on the radio, and no one was broadcasting. We lost power four weeks ago. Haven’t heard anything since.”
We were just about finished. Oil was done, fluids were topped off, and trucks were loaded. Someone lifted a corner of the plastic on the doors behind us. The deaders were still out there, but not packed in quite so tight. We checked the windows in front of us. It looked clear. Good thing the bastards didn’t have much brains left.
I pulled a box of shotgun shells out of the stack in the back of my truck and handed it to Tony for his riot gun. His pistol was a different caliber than mine, so we couldn’t fix that.
“
Load up. We’re going out. I’m gonna need every gun on hand. Keep it loaded. Head shots only, unless you can bust a hip and put the thing down. We don’t do body shots.”
Tony looked at me kind of funny and started to say something. I interrupted.
“
This is my platoon, Tony. I give the orders. Like it or not, there’s no law left. You can either fight with us, or you can go be a gardener or build fences when we get back to Snareville, but right now, I need guns.”
He frowned, but he nodded. I laid out the plan with the rest of the crew. The first two trucks would make the swing to the right out the doors and block the Zeds from the back of the store. The second two trucks would pull out, wait for a couple people on the ground to close the garage doors, then load them up and pull out of the lot across the curb. My truck would play tail-end Charlie. We’d cover the rear. We'd leave the opposite way we came in, which meant a lot of off-street driving. Everyone had the four-wheel-drive locked in. We were ready.
As soon as the back doors started to go up, the chains rattled. For a quick second, the Zeds stopped moaning. The guys on the doors pulled as fast as they could. We didn’t need them open all ten feet. I only wanted enough room to get out. The moans started again, and I could tell the direction had shifted. The deaders came our way.