Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet Simpson, A. (pride and prejudice read txt) 📖

Bridget was still having a hard time understanding how people could be so evil, how they could take joy in murder. There were reports from some travelers that they found human bones in the campfire remains. Bones that had been eaten on, and it wasn’t from the coyotes. Gunny and Griz understood, though. They knew it was only too easy to fall so far from decency, that things like eating people seemed normal. It was much easier to go crazy than it was to stay sane. Whatever excuse they used to justify their actions would seem reasonable to them. A man strapping on a vest full of ball bearings and explosives to blow up a Christmas market didn’t do it because he thought it was wrong. He did it because he thought it was right. It was just. It was deserved. Men raping little girls didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. Gang members being initiated were required to go out and kill a random stranger to prove their worth. They did it because they thought it was necessary. It was right.

Casey’s Raiders had been men freed from a maximum-security prison. They were gang bangers and rapists and murderers before the collapse of society. Now they had no reason to try to control themselves. There was no more law to throw them in jail. There was no one to stop them. No reason at all not to do whatever they wanted. The only law was Casey’s Law, and he encouraged brutality. If anyone wanted to join the Raiders, he made them eat the flesh of someone to prove their worth. To prove they were the kind of soulless person worthy to be a part of the greatest band of outlaws that ever lived.

The hard-charging caravan had been at it for nearly nine hundred miles when Scratch came over the radio. “We plan on stopping anytime soon? I don’t want to chug anymore of Jessie’s soup if we’re actually going to sleep tonight.”

“There’s a good spot outside of Payson to get some shut-eye for a few hours,” Griz said. “I delivered a loader to some sand and gravel place a few years back. Big lot, plenty of exits, hidden from the road.”

“Sounds good,” Gunny said. “Take the lead.”

He let off on the gas a little and Griz eased past him in the old Dodge panel van. As soon as they were even, Gunny cut his halogens and Griz lit up the high desert for miles when he hit the switch on his. It was nearing two o’clock in the morning and the timing was good. They could get about four hours sleep and get back at it around sunrise. After they made coffee, he amended to himself. Definitely after coffee.

11

Gunny

It took them three days to get to the RV park where the distress call had come from. They came in quiet and slow on the dirt road north of the Gila River and watched through binoculars and gun scopes for a time. The people had done a pretty good job of building a walled community using telephone poles and tin torn from the sides of old mobile homes. The digger derrick truck was still inside the wall they’d built. It wouldn’t have withstood a massive horde, it was only reinforced tin nailed to utility poles, but it was good enough for where they were in the lightly populated desert. The raiders had either seen their fires at night, or maybe heard them hunting the bighorn sheep or mule deer. The gate was smashed in, the car used to ram it buried in the burned-out husk of the manager's trailer. There were no signs of movement, aside from the turkey vultures and their occasional hopping around from meal to meal.

Griz peered down the scope on his Barrett .50 caliber rifle, the magnification bringing the half-mile distant trailers in close.

“They’re gone,” he said, lowering the gun and edging back from the peak of the roof they were on.

“There’s still some smoke curling up from a fire-pit, though. They probably left this morning.”

The land was flat and scruffy, what wasn’t cropland lying fallow. From the rooftop, they had a good view down into the walled compound. Gunny had the spotter’s scope and with the better magnification, he was watching the shattered windows of the trailers, looking for movement inside. There was none, just the fluttering of curtains. There didn’t appear to be any survivors, no one had started cleanup or dragged the bodies off for burial. He and Griz climbed back down the ladder to join up with Bridget, standing guard at the farmhouse. The others were quietly refilling the car’s tanks from the elevated drums of fuel for the tractors. There were thousands of acres of cotton, alfalfa, and wheat gone to ruin without the irrigation pumps. The olive groves seemed to be doing a little better, they might survive.

“Got you some olives,” Scratch told them as they walked up, handing Griz a handful he’d picked from the nearby trees.

“What’d you do, spit on them?” Griz asked, suspicious of the little act of kindness.

“You wound me,” Scratch said, his hand over his heart. “I would never stoop to such juvenile shenanigans.”

Griz took the green olives then held them out, offering them back. “Then I insist, after you.”

“After all we’ve been through.” Scratch sighed dramatically and popped one in his mouth, chewing it to show he hadn’t tampered with them.

Griz and Gunny just watched and waited as the friendly grin became more and more forced.

“See,” he said. “They’re good. Try some.”

“They do look delicious, my good friend,” Griz said magnanimously. “But you are much too kind, here, have some more of mine.”

He was trying his best not to laugh, his dramatic acting skills so bad everyone else was starting to crack up, too.

“Oh, no. I couldn’t,” Scratch said gamely and pretended to enjoy the horribly bitter raw fruit, which