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

vehicle with her bicycle pump. She’d been ordered to air up all the tires, make sure they were all at the proper pressure. It had been Gunny’s idea when he’d noticed one of his nearly flat. He made sure he yelled at her loud and clear so everyone could hear.

“A half flat tire can pop right off the rim if I turn a corner too hard, especially in this desert!” He’d tossed her the pump then offered her services to anyone else. Of course, they took him up on his offer. None of them even had a pump.

“Some of you other lazy bitches help her.” Python hollered over at the women gathered around the cook fires and they hurried over to take their turn with the tire gauge and hand pump.

“Might be a nice gesture to the other tribes if we had them fill theirs, too.” Gunny said. “They’ve got too much free time on their hands anyway, all they do is sit around and gossip.”

“You heard him.” Python yelled at them. “Move your asses.”

The girls glared at Johnny Killjoy to hide their laughter inside. These raiders were so easy to manipulate. At every car they came to, all afternoon in the blazing sun while others found shade, they added air where it was needed. They blocked the view of the gas tank as they worked, their serapes or ponchos hiding them dumping handfuls of sand in each one. The war rigs wouldn’t make it far before the filters clogged up. With luck, they wouldn’t make it halfway up the mountain.

Gunny sat back and rolled a smoke. The first part of his plan was working out. The easy part. The radio messages had been received last night and he’d seen the flash of lights at exactly three am. They heard, they understood, they awaited further instruction.

A quick message to Wire Bender about the attack tonight and Joey Tallstrider singing it in a fake interview with Bastille about Native American Culture and the trap was set. A few hundred against a few thousand. It was going to get bloody. Gunny started sharpening his other knife.

The party that night was epic. A party to end all parties. The wasteland raiders had the generators powering the amplifiers and lights and a band of sorts had been hastily thrown together. The drummers pounded out a hard driving beat on dozens of homemade drums. The lead guitarist made up in volume and speed what he lacked in talent and anyone that had an instrument joined in. The singer wasn’t bad. He had been the Friday night hero at a local karaoke bar and his vocals covered up a multitude of missed notes and slightly out of tune players. A dozen bodies had been slow roasted over coals, basted with a hallucinogenic concoction cooked up by the tribe’s best bathtub chemists and drugstore cowboys.

“I want something to make them loose all fear and inhibitions.” Casey had said. “Something that will make them kill crazy.”

The chemist showed him his special recipe, a concoction he’d come up with to do everything Casey wanted and more. A little bit of angel dust, a kilo or two of uncut cocaine and some home-made meth mixed in a washtub then liberally injected into the meat should do the trick. A basting paste of bath salts should give them unwavering courage. After they took the clifftop, they could have an orgy.

“Sounds good.” Casey said. “Better crush some Viagra and add it to the recipe.”

He’d wanted to end the whole eating people rituals but not tonight. Tonight, it was expected and needed to get everyone in the right frame of mind. His last disastrous run at the town had revealed something to one of his lieutenants observing with the binoculars. The Indians were almost out of ammo. By the end of the battle, they had been using black powder rifles. One more hard push and he’d get that gate open and get inside. Things could change then, he told himself. Once I have my stronghold, then I’ll put an end to some of this extreme stuff. We’ll be a real society with real plans.

There was plenty of flesh for everyone, even the slaves, and Casey wanted one hundred percent participation. Everyone needed to be amped up and eager for battle. The Human Hunters were on the outskirts and were some of the last to be ushered to the feast. Gunny and Griz couldn’t stop the grisly barbeque but they tried to avoid it. Both of them were elbow deep under the hood of the Chevelle tinkering with the electric fans and tried to make their excuses. They tried to say they would join them later but the enforcers were there, marshalling everyone in an orderly manner.

“Casey’s orders.” the big, black man with the voodoo skull painted on his face said. “Leave your guns here. Everybody gets in line. Everybody eats. Everybody pledges fealty. No exceptions.”

His band of heavily muscled all black enforcers in their voodoo garb, Lucinda’s personally chosen men, didn’t take excuses and Gunny barely had time to close the hood before the Human Hunters were hustled off to take their place near the end of the queue.

The music was loud and the sturgeon moon hung low over the desert, letting everyone on the cliff top see and hear what was coming. Striking fear into them. Letting them know there was nothing they could do to stop the mighty Casey.

Casey was on a raised dais and sat on a throne made of bones at the end of the buffet tables like some ghastly pope. He wore crisscrossing machine gun belts across his chest, Pancho Villa style. Lucinda, in her high priestess voodoo garb and Edmunds dressed in a ghoulish outfit, complete with long black cape and deer antlers for horns, stood at either side. Once they had their plate of meat carved from one of the roasted bodies, everyone swore their oath when they got to the head of the line. They