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

Casey inhaled deeply and leaned back against the rocks.

Gunny watched.

“You know, I didn’t mean for it to get out of hand like it did.” Casey said. “I’m not saying I was building up a Sunday school choir, but things just got kind of crazy. I didn’t start out planning on cooking people. That was all Lucinda’s idea. When Edmunds came along, that’s when things really went weird.”

“You didn’t stop it, though.” Gunny said.

Casey sighed.

“No, I didn’t.” he said. “But for what it’s worth, I didn’t eat people.”

“Hitler didn’t personally gas anyone.” Gunny said “But they got gassed.”

Casey knew it was useless to try to get any sympathy from the man in front of him. He wasn’t going to talk his way out of an execution.

“When I first went to prison, I was young and scared and was just trying not to get shanked or raped. I was trying to mind my own business, do my time and get out.” he said and stared up at the moon. “One day there was a fight in the exercise yard. When it was all over, one of the guys was mangled, beaten to a pulp by a big guy called Mongo. He walked over to another guy, got a cigarette then went off to smoke it. Mongo had ruptured that guy, put him in the hospital for a cigarette. For two cigarettes, he would have killed him. That’s when I realized that dying was cheap, Gunny. That’s when I learned that the price of life was two cigarettes.”

They smoked in silence in the shadows of a canyon with the stars glittering far overhead. Two old warriors who had fought down to the last man and they both knew only one of them would be leaving the ravine.

Gunny took a drag off of his hand rolled and understood the man in front of him a little better now. He had no regard for life because people were disposable. Life wasn’t sacred. Gunny valued life but not all life. Not Casey’s. He’d feel worse putting down an old dog than he would watching him die.

It was time to end this, time to slit his throat and let him bleed out before he turned and got crazy strong. He stood and pulled the knife.

Casey’s eyes got big and he tried to push back into the rocks.

“Can’t you let me die in peace?” he asked. “I’m done for, you know it. You ain’t gotta end me now. Let me have the last ten minutes owed me.”

“No.” Gunny said, wiped at the blood still trickling down the side of his head and started forward. “The world owes you nothing.”

He heard the plinking of falling gravel just seconds before a body smashed down in front of him and started reaching out with twisted arms. He jumped back in time to avoid two more crashing down in rapid succession then heard the keening cry from above. The fastest runners had caught up, had smelled his blood when they got close and kept chasing after it. Broken bodies started clawing their way towards him as he backed farther away from them. The sudden movement started his head bleeding again and the smell drove them wild. Keens from above told him more and more were showing up. He swung the heavy piston, sent brains splattering all over the canyon wall then turned to run. More were raining down, busted from the fall and clawing their way toward him. He knew a mile or so back up the gulch became shallow enough to climb out where the road crossed it. That would be a good place to get up, at the bridge. The zeds that were chasing him were slow, hobbling or crawling along and he set an easy double time pace. He could run for hours at that speed and cadence calls half-forgotten came back as if he were doing morning PT on base again.

Airborne ranger gonna take a little trip.

Mamma, Mamma can’t you see.

Jody’s got your girl and gone.

He put some distance between him and his followers and listened for Casey’s final screams. He never heard them, maybe they ripped his throat out first. That would be fitting.

When he got to the road, he climbed out of the creek bed and saw headlights in the distance coming up fast. He stayed near the bridge so he could hide in case it was Casey’s goons but the trucks pulling up were loaded with Griz and the Indians. The stumbling dead still coming up the road, the slowest of the zeds from the town, were trying to converge on them.

“Where’s the Chevelle?” Griz asked. “Tommy’s gonna be pissed if you tore up another car.”

Gunny laughed as he climbed in. He was tired, sweaty, bloody and stained with zombie gore but feeling pretty good.

“Casualty.” he said. “But this war is over. Casey’s dead or will be a zombie soon. He got bit.”

“Good.” Lone Elk said. “His army is destroyed. Most have been killed, the rest are scattered and on the run. We sent trucks after them but I doubt if they’ll be able to catch up. If they do, they know what to do. If they don’t, they’ll chase them far enough away they’ll never come back.”

“I think it’s finally over.” Gunny said, leaning back into the seat. “All of his top leaders are gone. I think most of the survivors were camp followers. They’ll probably keep running back to Mexico. Anybody radio Lakota yet? I’m sure Bastille already has victory music on standby and we need to get the evacuated people back home.”

“Not yet.” Lone Elk said. “We wanted to wait until we found you, it would be the first thing they asked about.”

“One problem taken care of.” Griz said, heading back to the cliff top and avoiding the ghastly figures reaching for the truck as he