The Broken and the Dead

The next morning, I rose early and got my own breakfast. I waited until everyone else was up and OMT was getting ready to go. As I watched him it became apparent that in spite of his recent weight loss, the Acura was NOT going to work. He discussed things with Mrs. Driscol and they decided he should just go ahead and take Rock-3, our SUV. He used a siphon to drain the tank of the VW Golf to replace some of what we had used in our long journey here. Elaine loaded a dozen MREs and a case of water into the back seat and handed him a couple of spare batteries for the handheld radio, Lucy helped by carrying three cans of chili, apparently remembering how much OMT liked it. OMT spoke to Elaine and asked about her plans for the private road and she said that she and Kyle had a couple of good ideas and that he should definitely call them before attempting to drive up the road upon his return. He actually had the nerve to kiss Lucy on the top of her head before he placed the Moisan in back seat he shoved the antique double barrel 10 gauge between the front seats and checked his colt revolvers. Then he got in and started the engine, when he did that I opened the passenger door and got it. I placed my back pack on the floor boards at my feet, my M16 between my knees and my M9 in its shoulder holster like any well-dressed 12 year old. I stared at him, daring him to say something. He just sat there a moment then ‘harrumphed’ then looked over at Elaine who just shrugged and tilted her head in her patented ’what are you going to do?’ manner. He put the car into gear and we slowly made the turn around the flag pole and started down the road towards the highway.

There was complete silence until we actually got onto the highway. He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt and handed me the spare batteries.

“Would you please put these in the glove box?” he asked.

His voice still damaged from his fight with ‘muscles’. I took them and put them inside but before I closed it I reached in my back pack and took out 2 of my 3 spare magazines for the Beretta. I put them in as well. We drove on, only the road noise to keep us amused but eventually he spoke again,

“We don’t have enough gas to get to Morgantown so we will have to keep an eye open for any abandoned vehicles or gas stations.”

We passed several vehicles but they didn’t seem to be in very good shape and I think that neither of us felt the locale was safe enough. After about an hour I saw a little ‘mom and pop’ on the service road ahead of us and I spoke for the first time

“What about there?”

He nodded, “yeah, looks like it might be worth checking out.”

He slowed and then pulled across the median, down a slight slope and onto the service road. We drove slowly both of us kept looking this way and that but it still looked safe. We pulled up to the gas pump, I say pump because that is exactly how many there were, one. There was a sign mounted along the roof line and the letters, painted in an arch said

“Livingston’s Esso” and below that “Cold Soda, Ice Cream, Snacks”

We both exited the SUV and I held the M16 ready and flipped the safety off. OMT was carrying the shotgun and while it was made in the 19th century, those twin 10 gauge barrels looked menacing in his hands. He nodded at the door and I stepped up to it but it was not only locked it was boarded from the inside. I looked over at him and shook my head ’negative’.

I could see he was weighing his options when I heard a man’s voice from inside

“Don’t shoot!”

And I saw the 2x6’s that had been mounted crossways inside the door being removed. OMT looked around but still not seeing anything else he rested the big gun on his shoulder and waited. Finally the door opened and an older black man held the door open for us.

“Come on in!” he said with genuine happiness.

We walked inside and soon were having a nice conversation with Mr. Livingston. He and his wife had a small house just up the hill from their gas station. He looked to be perhaps 70 but from a photo he showed us his wife looked younger, maybe 60. He wanted to know what we had heard or seen. OMT and I took turns explaining to him just how bad things had become. Mr. Livingston said he had two sons and a daughter. One son was in the Army and was stationed in Germany. The other lived in St. Louis but they hadn’t heard from them in over a week. His daughter, well he didn’t know exactly where she was, she was a wild spirit and traveled with her friends most of the time. Much to my surprise OMT told him about the lodge, he said that we were on a mission but we would be coming back in a day or two at the most, assuming all went well.

He said that Mr. Livingston should talk to his wife and if they wanted to they could travel with us back to the lodge and join the group. He seemed thrilled with the idea and promised to discuss it with his wife. I was wondering what he was up to when OMT brought up the issue of gasoline. Mr. Livingston said he had over 5000 gallons in the ground but didn’t have any power so the only option was a hand pump he had. OMT said that would be fine and that maybe they could trade for it, we had food and water, maybe some ammo but Mr. Livingston said

“Forget it, what I am going to do with a bunch of gas that will probably just go bad in 3 or 4 months anyway.”

They shook hands and Mr. Livingston produced a strange, clear plastic hose, about 10 feet from one end there was a hard plastic tube with a crank on it. We all went outside together, Mr. Livingston showed us where a blue colored fill cap was, it had a white cross on it. It wasn’t locked and he spun it off, then he shoved one end of the hose into the underground tank then how to work the crank and after a few moments golden colored gasoline began to flow through the hose and into Rock-3’s gas tank. OMT took over and I kept watch, Mr. Livingston went inside then reappeared with a 12-pack of diet Dr. Pepper. OMT looked thrilled and actually I wasn’t too upset either. We all had one but as soon as we finished filling the tank Mr. Livingston appeared a second time with two red plastic 5-gallon gas cans. We filled those too. We started to put things away but he said that not to worry that he would take care of things.

Once we got into the SUV Mr. Livingston went around to the driver’s side window and taking out his wallet he showed something to OMT. They spoke quietly then shook hands again. “See you in a day or so” OMT said. The smiling Mr. Livingston said he would keep an eye out for us.

We drove down the service road but this time just took the entrance ramp to the highway since it was in the direction we were going anyway. After a few minutes I finished my Dr. Pepper. OMT had not said anything so I asked

“What did he show you back there?”

OMT didn’t take his eyes off the road,

“He asked if we would keep an eye out for his daughter, Janae, and to bring her home if we could. He showed me a picture.”

I asked him “do you think you would recognize her?”

He nodded, “already did Johnny, I killed her day before yesterday.”

I felt my stomach plummet and I thought I would vomit. I looked at him and he was looking at me. Misery painted on his face, pain burned in his eyes, despair carved on his heart.

Neither of us spoke for a long time but I eventually broke the silence and offered a new subject.

“Just what kind of weapons will be looking for?” I asked.

OMT said “hi powered hunting rifles, semi-automatic if possible. Ruger makes a .44 magnum carbine. Henry, Winchester, and Marlin all make big bore lever guns; we will try to get some in .44 mag, .444 Marlin or .45-70 government if possible. They even make some pretty good replica single shots in .45-70 and someone makes a double rifle too I think. We will try to get some new revolvers, Smith and Wesson makes one in .500 and in .460 but failing that we will look for Ruger, Colt, or Smith and Wesson revolvers in .454 Casull or .44 magnum. I think Taurus and Freedom Arms make some as well.”

OMT was on a roll now, so I let him go on;

“We can also look for some safari grade guns, the really fancy stuff, super high powered rifles that they use on rhinos or elephants or Chevy pickups but even if we find them I doubt there will be much ammo for them. Not too many people want to spend $70.00 a bullet for .700 caliber nitro express. No, the best option we can actually hope for is a British Royal or better yet a Barrett .50 BMG. I don’t care how much scaly armor the dammed crazies grow, those puppies will punch a hole in it.”

I let him drone on about the muzzle velocity and 200 yard absolute energy advantages of 7.62 NATO and God knows what else.

I looked at him, this was not the same guy as 20 minutes ago, he seemed actually happy, just talking about stupid guns. I shook my head and thought to myself “pathetic.” I said no more and left the Old Man to his escape dreams of high powered rifles and death. I decided to let him have his moment free of guilt, free of the realization the he had strangled to death the daughter of a kind and articulate black man we had left behind; a generous man who just helped his daughter’s killer drive away with a tank full of gas. I thought I might cry.

I was half listening, half dozing as OMT droned on and on about some crappy stuff when I thought I saw something far off in the distance, far down the highway.

“Slow down” I said.

He asked “What?”

“I said slow down and look!” I said with more urgency.

“WHERE?” he barked.

He was looking around, searching this way and that.

“Right there!” I was practically screaming and pointing down the highway in front of us. I looked over at OMT and he was squinting over the steering wheel. Clearly he wasn’t seeing what I was, but he did as I asked anyway, he slowed the SUV until it was barely moving. Finally the black shapes came into focus.

“Zs.” I whispered.

“SHIT!” OMT spat under his breath.

There were 6 of them, it was getting harder to tell which had been male, which female, even young and old were indistinguishable the only attribute that made them so were their size. Some were smaller than others, but none were fat, their skin was turning black, like the shell of a beetle. They were moving at a good clip, maybe not Olympic level but certainly NFL. There were heading right towards us in two rows of three but not right behind the other, they were staggered as if they had started in a straight line before every other one started off before the others, a military formation. They had seen us long before I had seen them. They were closing the gap fast so I asked OMT,

“What are we going to do?”

They were close enough now that he could see them too; I could see the panic in his face, the gears spinning in his head. Suddenly he reached down and drew his two colts from his holsters and handed them to me. With his left hand he pressed a button on the armrest and the moon roof started to slide open,

“UP THERE JOHN!”

I nodded and stood up as soon as I could, OMT started to rev the engine, it was a game of nerves. I held the Colts out in front of me, one in each hand. At 50 yards the SUV jumped forward and the tires squealed as we raced towards the Zs. I pointed with the revolver in my right hand and squeezed a round at the one directly in front of us. I hit it in the upper left chest and it spun to one side, I raised the pistol I had just fired and pointed with the left one. I fired at the one most center but missed. We were moving too fast, and then we hit the Zs. The one on the left was thrown off to one side, but the one directly in the middle first hit the grill, was almost drug beneath the SUV but it managed to right itself and it started to climb up onto the hood. I heard OMT yelling at me,

“Take your time son, but not too much time.”

I dropped the revolver from my left hand and pointed the other as carefully as I could at the Z. Its eyes were bright white, two black slits made a cross in each. The creature blinked and the slits opened and closed like the shutters of a camera. I fired and the round glanced off of its forehead, it didn’t kill him but it certainly got his attention and he released his hold on the hood, his claw like fingers tearing gouges in the sheet metal beneath them. The SUV bumped high into the air as we drove over the creature. OMT nearly lost control and we served from side to side several times but he eventually he straightened it out.

I looked behind me; one crazy was far off in the distance, jogging towards us. That was the one I had shot I thought. The remaining four crazies had given up the chase instead they gathered around the one we had ran over, it was flopping around on the asphalt, clearly alive and very upset. Just as clearly it was suffering from several broken bones. Somehow that made me smile.

I had slipped back down inside the SUV before I realized I was missing one of his revolvers. I started to frantically look for it.

“What’s wrong John?” he asked.

I gave up and sat down. I held out one of the Colts for him and said

“I lost the other one; I am so sorry Mr. Tucker.”

I surprised myself even as the words came out of my mouth. I knew that OMT loved those guns; at least I thought I did. He glanced over at me and then to my surprise just asked if I would please reload it. He kept driving, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, I looked at the speedometer and it looked like we were going over 90. I took a box of bullets from his pack and pulled the spent shells, replacing them with live ones. I held it out to him and I was afraid that he could see how upset I was because my hand was trembling. But instead of being angry, instead of yelling at me, he just shook his head.

“John, those are just guns, tools, and hunks of metal. They really don’t matter. People matter.” he paused then added “we matter John, you and I and the people we love, that is all that really matters.”

I sat there for a moment, holding the revolver out to him. “Why don’t you just leave it on the dash, we might need it again soon and you see better than I do” and OMT smiled at me. We sat there together, driving towards Morgantown at 90 miles an hour, neither speaking, both of us; at long last, understanding.

Later that afternoon we pulled off onto an exit ramp and then onto the overpass. OMT said that from the extra height we might make sure we were not being snuck up on. We parked and got out but he left the engine running just in case. OMT was reaching into the back seat for a couple of MREs and some bottled water and I walked around to the front of the SUV. I ran my hand over the hood, the metal was torn, ripped open by the creatures fingers. There was a yell from Tucker, he held up the colt I thought I had lost. Each rupture was between 5 and 10 inches long, violent gashes with the metal pulled upwards as if there had been an explosion beneath it. I ran my finger carefully over one and with a start realized that there was no blood, no damage to the Z from this. I startled as I looked up and saw OMT watching me. He held out a bottle of water to me and said

“Pretty damn scary ain’t it?”

I nodded in agreement and opened the water and drank. He handed me one of the MREs and we both leaned against the front of the SUV. I looked at it, ‘spaghetti and meatballs’, should be fine I thought, I glanced at his, ’chili con carne’, figures. Then in honor of my little sister I said

“Ain’t is not a word.”

He barked out a laugh.

After our lunch I asked OTM how much further and after he considered it he said

“Maybe 3 hours? Not too sure where we are exactly.”

I nodded and walked back around the passenger side, looking the direction we were heading it appeared that a storm was heading our way, the sky on the horizon was very, very black.

“Check it out.” I said nodding towards the black clouds.

He had the driver’s door open so he just stepped up into it just to gain a bit more height. “Hmmm...” was all he said.

“Think we are in for some bad weather?” I asked.

“I don’t know John.” he said.

He reached into the SUV and produced our binoculars. He watched for a minute then stretched across the roof and handed them to me.

“What do you make of that?” he asked.

I actually got into the SUV, popped through the moon roof then climbed up onto the roof itself. I looked for a few minutes.

“I don’t think those are clouds” I said, “I think those are from a fire.”

I looked down at him and he said

“I agree, and it’s a big one.”

We finally got back on the road but kept our speed down to about 60. After 15 minutes or so we began to smell the smoke, it was revolting, burned rubber and wood smoke and lots of other things I didn’t recognize. I didn’t have to ask because OMT slowed the car even more, even though the highway was still basically clear with the exception of an occasional abandoned car or truck on the side of the road. Ten minutes after that we came to a complete stop at the city limits of Fairmont, West Virginia, it was only about 20 more miles to the outskirts of Morgantown. OMT said it was a bit more than half the size of Morgantown and from where we were it looked like the whole of the city was on fire.

We sat and watched for a few minutes when suddenly OMT yelled “LOOK!” and he pointed at an incredibly fast, low flying jet aircraft came from our west and headed right for Fairmont. The noise from the jet reached us a few moments later, that was followed by a thunderous explosion and while we couldn’t see what the jet fighter had done, it clearly had done something because a new wall of flame was reaching into the sky obscuring the jets path.

“What was that?” I asked.

“It was a napalm run, basically a jellied gasoline bomb” he said, “but if you mean what kind of plane it was I have no idea. I have not been able to identify anything since the Phantom.”

We watched for a minute or two more and then we heard or more accurately felt the rumble of large artillery fire, but we couldn’t see where it came from or where it was going. It was more like thunder that was bouncing around in a valley someplace.

“So, what do you think?” I asked.

“Well,” he said clearly buying time. “option one, we can turn around and go home but if we do we will still be in the same situation as before, option two, we can try and find a way around Fairmont, but there is no way of knowing if there will be any route that is better, or option three, we can drive right through that.” and he nodded in the direction of Fairmont.

I thought long and hard about the problem, well not really that long, but I had no intention of driving through a city that was on fire and most likely a warzone between the U.S. military and a bunch of Z’s and I said so.

“I agree” he said, “but we need weapons so I don’t want to turn around unless we have no choice.”

“That leaves number two then.”

I said. We got back into the car and started looking for an alternative route. OMT knew that Fairmont and Morgantown were on US Highway 79 and had been along that highway a few times but he had never actually explored the area but then again what did we have to lose?

We tried a couple of exits but finally had some success on something called White Hall Blvd. We turned north and followed along the bank of a rather good sized river. For a while I could see a road on the other side but I didn’t like looking too much. There were burnt out cars and military vehicles. When the Fairmont Airport just became visible across the river we turned away. I had seen hundreds of corpses on the river bank, some in army green, others in civilian clothes; a few others seemed to have that black bug armor. We crossed several other intersections when we came to a bridge, it was a wreck and flaming vehicles were scattered all over it. Some of them so hot that the flame appeared to be under pressure, like a propane torch.

We drove carefully, painfully across the wrecked bridge. Several places the guard rails had been punctured and in at least one the road bed had fallen away to the river below. We had to swing wide to get around it but we finally managed. We reached the other side but still did not make much better time. Several times OMT used the SUV to shove wrecks to one side or the other of the road. I noticed that the road we were on had several names; Highway 250 and Fairmont Avenue being the most noticeable. Finally things cleared a bit and we started making better time. I could tell that things were straining OMT. He didn’t like to leave things to chance and on this trip nothing had gone according to plan.

Suddenly OMT seemed to regain some energy and he looked at me with a grin,

“I know where we are!”

It was so genuine I could not help but smile back. We took the next exit and to my amazement we were back on Highway 79 but this time heading south, we crossed a bridge that seemed basically undamaged. I read the name of the river

“Mono-go-ella?” I asked.

“Monongahela” he said and looked at me excitedly.

“What does it mean?” I asked. “Well, it’s a native American word, it means something like …”,

He seemed to be looking for the words in his own head,

“Something like ‘the river bank falls in’, something like that.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What does the river bank fall in?”

He laughed “into the RIVER John, the banks fall into the river.”

I was getting confused “What river?”

He was barely able to keep from breaking up “The Monongahela!”

He seemed to think this was hilarious.

“So you mean to tell me that the river banks are falling into a river called the river banks are falling in?”

He just about had a heart attack, he was laughing so hard all he could do was say

“Who’s on first?”

“What?” I asked.

This caused him to laugh even harder; I decided to change the question.

“Okay, what tribe was so clever to name the river like that?” I asked.

More laughter but he was able to choke out “The Monongahela”.

I was beginning to like him better when I hated him, still I could always shoot him later. I thought it about it some more and said

“So you mean to tell me that a tribe of Native Americans called “the river banks fall in lived along a river where the river banks fall in and called it the river banks fall in?”

He was laughing so hard I swear he had tears on his cheeks and I gave up muttering

“Stupid name for a river anyway.”

Once we were across the bridge we went a couple more miles then made a sharp hairpin turn onto a road that didn’t have a name as far as I could see. Thank God I thought, my luck it would have been the ’road on the bank of the river with the bank that falls in avenue’. OMT cut the wheels and entered a large parking lot that was paved with gravel. At the far end was a huge warehouse. There was a sign saying “Dray’s Firearms Sales”, its web address and some store front hours below that.

There were no cars that I could see but there was one diesel big rig with a trailer was on the side of the building and was backed up to a loading dock. A second trailer off to one side but that one looked rusty and as if it had not been used in decades or centuries, maybe even since the Bush Administration. He looked at me.

“We made it John.”

I looked at him, he was still wearing that annoying smile but I didn’t fall for it, instead I picked up the .41 colt from the dash board and we both got out of the SUV. I looked over at him, he had the double barrel shotgun in his hands and a Beretta M9 stuffed into his the waist band of his jeans. I shoved the colt into my holster and picked up my M16. It dawned on me that I was getting pretty comfortable with weapons for a 12 year old. We walked slowly, carefully across the lot but 50 feet from the front door we could see that a huge metal garage door looking thing had been lowered and locked in place behind a glass front.

“Great” I muttered and looked over at OMT.

He was looking around then said “Wait here John”

He walked around the side of the building to the Freightliner. He looked inside then hopped down and opened the door. He poked around in the rear sleeper area for a moment then he climbed in. A moment later the big 14 liter 6 cylinder started to turn over and in a moment it caught and the diesel roared to life. I could hear him yell in victory then shut off the engine and got out. He walked over to me and he handed me the shotgun.

He jogged back to the SUV and got in. A few minutes later he started it up and revved the engine.

“Oh crap” I thought, “is this the only plan this guy ever comes up with?”

He backed up a bit then peeled out and there was a tremendous crash as the SUV bashed through the glass wall and made contact with the garage door thingy. The garage door was pretty solid but not enough for a SUV going 40 miles an hour. The SUV was sitting there, the engine having died and the rear tires lifted into the air by the strange angle at which it landed. The rear wheels were spinning slower and slower and bits of glass kept falling but there was no other sound. I began to get nervous, what was I going to do if that crazy old man had just killed himself. Suddenly the rear hatch of the SUV popped and it was slowly raised. Old Man Tucker’s face appeared; he had some blood running down his forehead and looked as if he had just been hit between the eyes with a baseball bat.

“Come on John, we don’t have all day!”

I shook my head as I climbed into the rear of the SUV, which was outside. I exited the drivers’ door of the SUV which was inside. I was beginning to miss Mr. Samuel’s history class.

It was dark inside but not pitch black. There was a skylight and that helped a lot, dust was still filtering down from OMT’s rather dramatic entrance. Looking around he grabbed two large gun bags from a display and exchanged them for the shotgun, then he took two for himself. He went over to a glass display and started smashing it with the shotgun. He started shoving revolvers and pistols into the first bag, he yelled over to me.

“44 MAG, and 357”

I realized he was calling out the calibers to me so I ran over to a long set of shelves that were laden with boxes of ammo. I began sweeping boxes of the listed calibers into the first bag.

“Fiffffty Smith and Wesssssson”

He yelled dramatically and I found a half dozen boxes of that. I heard him say “SHIT...” and he banged around a bit.

“Whats wrong?” I asked.

“No casull’s” he barked. He started towards the racks of long guns. “Grab all the 12 and 10 gauge slugs you can, start with the 3.5” and work your way down to the smaller 12s if you have room.”

“Right!”

I said and read through the various boxes looking for 3.5” 12 gauge slugs, why on Earth did they make so many different kinds of shotguns? I found them and started loading the bag. TEhe damn thing was getting heavy fast, so heavy I really couldn’t carry it, more or less just dragged it. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard OMT fire several rounds and I spun around to see him dragging a chain from a locking bar. I went back to loading the ammo and I heard the locking bar slam to the ground. There were so many shotguns that it took him a minute or two until I heard him loading the guns into the second bag.

I heard him grunt as he pulled both bags to the floor near me and he grabbed a third big duffle. He looked at me and I saw something I hadn’t really seen before. It was, well, hard to describe, but the best I can say is ’an urgent sense of hope’.

“Help me with the rifles John, then we will look for the ammo together.”

I agreed and we headed towards the other wall of guns. He was appraising them carefully, finally he reached up and took down first one then a second lever gun and set them both on the counter.

“Take those two John.” he said “both are 44 mag.”

A moment later he added one in 45-70. He seemed to be searching then finally reached up and took down two semi-automatic rifles that resembled my M16.

“7.62 NATO” he said.

He even picked up what I thought looked like one of those old machine guns, like the ones in the ‘Untouchables’, OMT said I was right and that it was a Thompson, he said that they still made them and that this one was brand new and while it wasn’t fully automatic it would certainly put a lot of lead down range in a hurry. Finally he nearly ran to the far end of the last counter,

“I KNEW IT!” he barked. “I knew these bastards would have one.”

He pulled down something that looked a lot like a long black iron pipe with a box attached to the bottom. He took it down and opened and closed a bipod that was attached near the muzzle.

“Right, 50 BMG, that’s the lot” he said. Together we went over to the section of shelves that held the rifle ammo. We called them out as we found them: 45 ACP, 44 magnum, 45-70 government, 308, 50 BMG. When we took all we could we fished out one last bag and filled it with all the 9mm and 5.56 we could fit. The duffels were piled up like a big black and green mountain, The Barrett rifle balanced like some bizarre candle on top. The only things we took after that were a number of scopes, (I really had no clue what they were, some were short and squat in their boxes, others were long but OMT seemed to know what he wanted), a half dozen black plastic bottles of what I found out later was gun powder, and several heavy cloth bags of lead shot labeled 00 and one of 000.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Go grab a couple of carts from the front John.”

I did as he asked and we loaded them with the bags.

“Follow me.” he said.

I started to wheel the cart towards the back of the store.

“Where are you going? Where are WE going?” I yelled.

I couldn’t hear whatever he said in the squeal of the shopping cart wheels. Suddenly he burst through a steel door that had a sign on it that said

“WARNING: ALARM WILL SOUND. FIRE USE ONLY” I started laughing and I followed him out into the back lot. The huge Freightliner sitting right where we had left it only an hour before, “pretty as you please” my dad would have said and remembering that made me smile. OMT pulled the passenger door open and lifted me up and in. He started pushing the bags up onto the floorboards. I pulled them as best as I could into the back, I even got the one with the pistols and revolvers up onto the neat bed in the back. When we had finished, the other bags made a mound so high, that I had to climb over it into the passenger seat. A moment later OMT opened the driver’s door and slid in next to me.

I leaned over and watched his hands.

“What?” he asked. “I wanted to see how to hot wire this thing.” I said.

He laughed and said “like this” and he produced the keys and slipped them into the ignition and once again the big semi came to life. I started laughing as we moved forward with a lurch and the gear box whined as we pulled out of the parking lot and at last started our journey home.

We made it easily crossed the bridge over the river which shall not be named because it’s banks keep falling in and started to retrace our route. We talked a bit, OMT and I, but we actually didn’t have to say too much. I was pretty happy I realized. I was going home, to be with Elaine and Lucy and Mrs. Driscol and Janey. I was even looking forward to seeing Kyle and Karen and Mrs. Franks. The jury was still out on Mr. Franks although I guess like OMT I felt that maybe he had suffered enough. OMT did ask me to dig out the Thompson and to load the two clips that came with it with .45 rounds. I had to rummage around a bit but there was a lot of room in the semi so I was able to get it all done easily enough. The long thin ‘stick’ magazines held 30 rounds each, but I was still surprised how heavy they were once loaded even though OMT asked me to only put 25 in each.

It didn’t take long until he started to lament all the things he was sure we had missed. He said he was sure they had class IIIs somewhere but he “sure couldn’t find them”. I nodded sympathetically and said

“Well, maybe we could get lucky and find some 3s or even 4s or 5s some other day”.

OMT laughed and asked if Lucy was back there some place. I was beginning to wonder if Old Man Tucker had finally gone crazy.

We hadn’t gone much further and were only a few miles from Fairmont when OMT pulled the truck to a stop. The air breaks ’swooshed’ loudly and it rocked a bit.

“That’s new.” he said.

Stretched across the highway was a school bus, it was acting as a gate and several other pickups and four wheel drives were arranged on either side.

“What do you think?” he asked me.

I felt grown up and respected, it was something I like very much so I took his question very seriously. I lifted the binoculars and saw that there were at least a dozen armed men and older boys scattered in and around the vehicles.

“I think this sucks.” I said.

He nodded and the sighed deeply as he added “oh dear.” I looked back at the road block and saw three men heading our way. The one in the middle held a pump shotgun, the one on the right a hunting rifle and the left I recognized an SKS but his didn’t have the long banana clips that OMT’s did.

“Whatever we are going to do, we better do it soon.” he said.

The river was on our left, but the right was wooded, I glanced over in that direction and I saw movement.

“They are coming in on the side as well.”

“Shit. Well, if they want our truck they are going to have to earn it.”

He reached over and picked up the Thompson, he laid it across his lap. I chambered a round in the M-9 and held it down between the door and my right thigh. I also checked to make sure that the door was locked. I hated this, killing crazies was one thing, fighting other survivors was another.

OMT looked at me as he rolled down the window, “put on a happy face” he said, shut off the engine and then he turned back to the men, one was over by me, a second was directly in front, the one from the middle, the leader I suspect had come over to stand by the driver’s door. OMT called out happily

“Boy we are sure glad to see you guys.”

The man looked suspicious but not scared but that might change if he could see what I could, OMT had slipped the safety off on the Thompson and the barrel was just out level with the man’s throat.

“Is that right?” he said.

“Damn straight!” OMT said, “We just barely got out of Morgantown alive.”

He looked over at the other man in front of the truck.

“Oh yeah?” he said then he paused, “this here your rig?”

We all knew it wasn’t, it had DRAY’S FIREARM’S written on the side in letters a foot high. OMT didn’t miss a beat, in fact he almost laughed,

“No, no… not mine, I wish it were, me and my boy, we found it outside of Dray’s, barely escaped some of those monsters as a matter a fact.”

The man suddenly looked upset,

“Did they follow you?” he asked.

“Not that I know of, we stopped a while back and checked out the trailer and didn’t see anything. Of course we were hauling ass out of there.”

He seemed to relax. I watched as the two men in the tree came out onto the side of the road and I waved at them like I didn’t want to kill them. One of them looked about 18 and he waved back, relaxing a little and he laid his shotgun up onto his shoulder.

The man pressed one hand against the truck,

“So, what’s in the trailer?” he asked.

“Boots mostly, and boxes of hunting camo’s. “

The man looked back towards the end of the truck and OMT caught his attention,

“Oh, there were some smaller boxes, not sure what is in them though, could be ammo.”

He turned back and he actually had a smile, “Oh yeah?” OMT waved him over,

“Yall think that maybe we could trade this lot for something smaller? A pickup maybe?”

The man looked at his friend in front and smiled we can

“Oh I imagine we can find something?”

“Great!” OMT said, shall we leave it here?” and he started to open the door.

The man bristled “NO, no. Let’s pull it through the gate and we can complete our business.”

I saw something wicked in his eyes. OMT started the engine and the man waved at someone behind the blockade and the school bus started to slowly move out of the way.

“Get ready John.” he said. He slowly started to pull forward,

“Keep a grin on your face.” he said.

When we got past the bus a man with a hunting rifle slung on his shoulder waved for us to pull into one side.

“Here goes nothing.”

OMT slammed the accelerator to the floor and the engine whined. Men were screaming and rifle fire rent the air. We had a head start and we were past their barricade but there was no way we were going to get away without a fight. Faster and faster we went but it felt like we were trying to ride a turtle. Pretty soon I could see at least three vehicles behind us. The one in front was a pickup and there were armed men in the back. OMT stayed to the right and the pickup started to pass us, like they wanted to cut us off, how stupid, I thought. When they were nearly side by side with us OMT yelled at me to steady the wheel so I grabbed it, he shoved the Thompson out the window and started squeezing off rounds as fast as his trigger finger would allow.

The sound inside the cab was deafening. The front windshield was shattered, the driver must have been one of those hit because the truck suddenly made a sickening slide to one side, the rear end of the truck catching up with the front and soon it was rolling. Over and over it, it looked like a toy in the rear view mirror. Men, or at best, parts of men from the back of the truck were scattered over the highway. Their bodies shredded between the truck and the asphalt. The car behind them must have been tail gating because suddenly the truck exploded as it ran into the truck. I saw the other vehicles pull to a stop behind the wreck; even as we sped away I could see the horror on their faces as they tried to pull the bodies of their friends and family from the carnage.

I looked over at OMT, his smile was gone, and we were the same now, the tired old man with a thousand secret agonies and a 12 year old child-soldier who should have been playing ‘Magic the Gathering’ and trying to get out of unloading the dishwasher instead of figuring out how to kill people and monsters. I could see the pain in his eyes, the same pain that I felt behind mine.