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

the same conclusion. Joining forces was in everyone’s best interest. When Jessie was convinced the old rancher was a good man doing the best he could with what he had, he retrieved one of the ammo cans from under the bed in his car.

“This is what we’re using for money,” he said as he opened it, revealing neatly stacked gold coins, freshly minted at a small foundry in one of the warehouses in Lakota. Carl the Engineer had designed them and printed out prototypes with a 3D printer. It wasn’t hard to create the molds, and once General Carson told them about a precious metals storage facility in Dallas, it was just a matter of taking one of the trains in to clear a path and pull any hordes out of the immediate area. A team with up-armored trucks and all manner of jackhammers, cutting torches, and drills, went into the building and proceeded to break open the vault.

“If you have your own form of currency or barter, that’s fine,” Jessie continued. “But this is universal, a Lakota Dollar is good anywhere and its value is the same everywhere.”

Tackett was suitably impressed. “You really do have it together down there,” he said. “We really are rebuilding this country, going to make it great again?”

“We’re trying,” Jessie said. “We only have about five years to do it, according to some of the smart guys. They say if we can’t get a few dozen towns up and running with electric and water, a lot of what we have will be lost. We might have books that tell us how to fix a broken power plant or an oil refinery, but if we don’t have the part to fix it and no way to make that part, then it doesn’t do us any good. We’ve got to be able to make new batteries, weave cotton into cloth, get oil out of the ground and turn it into fuel. The president is trying to tie all these little communities together so we can all help each other. Everything is plentiful now, but in another few years, where are you going to get nails or toilet paper if we don’t start working toward getting the infrastructure back in place to make those things?”

Jessie sipped at the honeyed whiskey, his throat dry from all the talking he was doing. His dad had told him not to try to pressure anyone to get on board, some of the towns would have despots running them who wouldn’t want to give up any of their power. Petty but hard men who were only looking out for themselves. People like Casey. He’d told him to just lay out the truths of what they were facing and all the decent men would gladly get on board with the rebuilding, happy for a chance to trade. But never take your guns off, he’d said. Never let them catch you unarmed.

14

Jessie

Mayor Tackett took him over to the Gold Digger when they finished their long conversation. It was going on eight o’clock and they were both hungry. There was a chill in the air, it would probably drop down below freezing sometime before dawn. The bar was a big, open place with a couple of men playing guitars and a fiddle on the stage, a dance floor covered in peanut shells and sawdust, dozens of booths and tables, and a long horseshoe-shaped bar that was nearly full with thirsty patrons.

“Pretty lively place,” Jessie commented over the music.

“We serve up dinner to anyone that wants it,” the mayor said. “It’s free, so most of the town turns out, and we’ve got a lot of folks from the outskirts in today. You came in during our first trade days. We’re going to have it once a month and it looks like it’s going to turn into a party.”

They sat at a booth, Jessie with his back against the wall, and sipped on beers, cool from being stored outside.

“We can’t afford to run refrigerators all the time just for the beer,” the mayor said. “We keep a few going for the beef we butcher, or if someone brings in a deer.”

“No one here can drive a truck?” Jessie asked. “You can’t go get fuel from one of the gas stations or depots?”

“There are only a few gas stations around here,” Tackett replied. “It got mighty cold up here over the winter and we ran generators constantly. Most of these houses in town don’t even have fireplaces and there wasn’t a whole lot of wood cut anyway. We emptied out the stations nearby and haven’t had time to make trips any farther. We need to build a war rig, just haven’t got around to doing it yet. The towns are swarming with the undead and you can’t go in without serious protection and serious firepower. We’ve been too busy trying to survive the winter and the zombies, but it’s on my list of things to do.”

Jessie nodded. “We could probably help you with that, we’ve got the armored trucks thing down to a science. Let Wire Bender know when you contact him.”

“That’d be good,” the mayor said. “We’ve got a mechanic, but nobody here knows a thing about welding.”

A waitress brought them another round of beers and more chips and salsa, the band was picking out some country song and people were starting to dance.

“We only had one bad patch of them dead critters come through,” Tackett said as he slowly sipped at his, trying to sober up a little. “They come screaming down the road for no reason, maybe a thousand of ‘em. It was a month-long battle before we finally killed them off. Other than that, we’ve just had to fight the cold.”

“It hit everyone pretty hard, them releasing the virus at the start of winter,” Jessie said. “I’ve come across fortified houses where I’ve found bodies without any marks on them. I think they froze to death, surrounded by the undead.”

The