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

undead followers, stumbling along as fast as they could in the wake of Casey’s Raiders, but dodged around them when they could on the empty road. In some places, where the winds had blown the sands across the asphalt, it was hard to tell where the road ended and the desert began.

“We’ll be on them in another ten minutes,” Gunny said over the radio. “I don’t think they know we’re coming, they probably can’t see us through the dust cloud they’re churning up.”

“Got a plan, Mr. Boss Man?” Hollywood came back, his voice clear over the single sideband CB that Wire Bender had tweaked for them. He had adjusted the upper band frequency so when they had the radios set on channel 40, in reality they were broadcasting on a higher level, maybe channel fifty, he told them. It was a simple way of keeping their communications from being overheard in case someone was scanning CBs for radio traffic.

“Scratch, I need you in line behind me. When we get close, pull out and run beside me, we’ll light up the rear guard with the 60.”

The miles rolled by with the dust cloud churned up getting closer and closer. They stayed in a single line hiding in plain sight, fully expecting the raiders to be overconfident, sure they were the only people on the road. If they weren’t, they were sure they were the toughest and everyone else would hide in fear when they saw them coming.

They were wrong.

“Now,” Gunny said and moved to the left, allowing Scratch to pull up beside him. They were a hundred yards back from the tail vehicle, a pickup truck with bars welded over the windows. They matched speed and Scratch held his Buick steady as Stabby lowered the cage over his window and charged the M-60 mounted on a swivel just outside the door.

“Light ‘em up,” Scratch said and he pulled the trigger, raking the tracer fire back and forth across the back of the truck. It careened off the road and up a small embankment, tearing through some prickly shrubs before leaving the ground in a cloud of swirling dust. It landed in the sand and rolled to a stop a few hundred yards later, with its nose pressing against a boojum tree. Still idling, still in gear. The three men inside were slumped over and bleeding out, the big bullets tearing right through the sheet metal and their pliant bodies.

The convoy in front of them kept rolling at the same speed, they hadn’t heard the short burst of gunfire or seen the truck as it turned off into the desert. They hit a clear patch of road that wasn’t sand covered and the churning cloud of dirt disappeared long enough for Gunny to see how many vehicles were left in the convoy.

“There’s six more cars and a U-Haul truck,” he said over the radio. “Let’s try to take out the two behind it without anyone noticing. The truck probably has the prisoners so we’ll have to be careful.”

Scratch grabbed his mic. “We’ll get them as soon as we hit another sand patch,” he said and eased off the gas pedal, putting a little distance between him and the next truck, so maybe they wouldn’t notice if they looked in the mirror.

A half mile later, the road was covered in shifting sand again and Scratch hit the gas, the 455 under the hood launching him into the cloud and on the tail of the pickups. Stabby opened fire, starting low and working the tracers up to explode the tires on a new Dodge. The driver slammed on the brakes when his front tire blew out and the truck jerked to the left, nose-diving and skidding. He turned the wheel frantically but they got sideways and started rolling, slinging cargo from the bed, doors flying open and bodies spinning helplessly through the air. Scratch jagged the wheel and nailed it, zipping past the tumbling rig. Stabby squeezed the trigger again, stitching a line of holes through the tailgate and shattering the back window of the next in line. The driver took one in the back and floored it, bashing into the bumper of the slow-moving U-Haul before careening off into a pile of boulders. The nose of the Ford crumpled and men went flying through the shattered windshield, broken bodies mixing with the supplies raining down from the bed of the truck.

The jig was up, the rest of the convoy knew they were under attack and sped up, leaving the U-Haul truck to fend for itself.

“Griz, you got this?” Gunny said as he flew by them, chasing after the fast movers.

“Yeah, don’t let them get away,” he replied. “Hollywood, on me. Don’t shoot unless you’ve got a clear shot, we don’t want collateral damage. Let’s just force them over.”

Griz and Hollywood had the biggest, heaviest, and slowest vehicles, but they were a whole lot faster than the cumbersome moving van. Griz shot around the truck, got right in front, and started slowing. Hollywood locked it in on the left, forcing him to either stop, or try to take off through the rocky desert. Bridget had her window cage down on the Cadillac and was behind the trigger of the M-60 dangling from the exoskeleton. The driver saw it and tried to put his hands up in surrender. She smiled grimly and motioned for him to stop.

He did.

They were only running along at about sixty, so Gunny dropped a gear and nailed it. The secondaries on the dual quads kicked in, pinning him to the seat as the big block launched down the road. He grinned at the raw horsepower and wound the tach up to sixty-five hundred before shifting, the blown 454 closing the distance in seconds. The old 55 Chevy rocketed up behind the crew cab truck with the men sticking their arms out of the windows, trying to aim and shoot. Between the bouncing of the truck over the drifted sands and