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

the bars over the windows so they couldn’t get a good aim, their fire was all over, only a few lucky shots hitting the car. Gunny kept the pedal mashed, got the nose of the car just past their rear bumper and cut hard into them. They were tearing down the road at just over a hundred miles an hour when the truck went into an uncontrolled skid, white smoke rolling from the tires as it slid sideways. Scratch slammed his brush guard into the corner of the front bumper as the driver fought the wheel, sending them spinning completely out of control until the tires caught a small boulder and the truck started tumbling end over end, slinging parts and people every time it spun. Scratch kept the go pedal mashed and roared past it, chasing down Gunny and the last truck.

Gunny had it floored, the oversized tires and big shocks making the Bel-Air bounce smoothly over the drifts, but he wasn’t gaining on the red truck in front of him. They weren’t bothering trying to shoot at him and it was pulling away, the driver intent on escape. Scratch was slowly falling back in the rearview, his Skylark unable to keep up, either. Gunny couldn’t believe it, he was going a hundred and thirty. It was dangerously fast on these roads, under these conditions, and driving a car with tall suspension. The glimpses he’d gotten of the truck before it took off told him it was a recent acquisition, it wasn’t armored at all. He’d seen the Toyota emblem on the tailgate, and although he didn’t care much for foreign cars, he had to grudgingly admit the Tundra was a fast truck. If he remembered right from an article he’d read years ago, the supercharged version was as quick as a Ferrari. He backed off a little before he wiped out, he could barely control the car at anything over a hundred. He kept the chase up, though. Maybe they’d make a mistake and crack up bouncing over a particularly big drift.

The three men in the cab of the U-Haul climbed out slowly, arms high in the air. Griz had his M-4 shouldered, Hollywood and Bridget had Berettas in both hands.

“On your knees!” Griz shouted after they herded them to the back of the truck, keeping the sense of urgency and their fear high.

“Cross your ankles! Interlace your fingers behind your head!”

The men complied, two of them fearful, one of them angry and resentful.

“Hollywood,” Griz said and nodded toward them. Lars knew the drill, he’d searched many detainees during his time in South America fighting the drug wars. He grabbed the first man’s hands laced behind his head, locking them in place and using his other, ran it quickly over his body searching for weapons. He only found one gun on the angry man and a boot knife on one of the others, who swore he forgot it was there. He wasn’t looking for trouble. He didn’t really know these guys, he had only met them a few days ago. Lars tossed the knife and the gun on top of his Caddy and stepped back, pulling his Beretta back out and covering the men.

“Bridget, open it up, let’s see what we got,” Griz said and she holstered one of her guns to get the lift door. A wave of heat and stench rolled out and they saw twenty or thirty people squinting against the bright sunlight. They had their hands and feet tied, some of them so tightly they were swollen and purple, the rope cutting into their skin. They were filthy and afraid, most of the women were naked.

“I had nothing to do with it!” the frightened man swore on his children’s lives. “They took me prisoner, too. I’ve been playing along, waiting for my chance to get away!”

He was rail thin, had the rotten teeth of meth mouth, with open sores and old scars on his face.

Bridget climbed into the back of the truck, pulled out her knife, and started slicing through the ropes. Lars pulled a case of water out of his trunk and set it out for them.

“Can we move to the shade?” one of the Raiders asked, his hands still behind his head, Griz’s carbine still pointing at them. “The pavement is burning my knees, man.”

One of the men in the back of the truck had died from the beating he’d taken, or the heat and dehydration. Much of the foul smell was coming from him. When the last of the survivors made their shaky way out, Griz motioned the men in.

“Not me,” the skinny man said. “I ain’t part of them. They kidnapped me!”

“Kill them all,” an old black man said between chugs of water. “And kill him slow.” He pointed to the man swearing he was forced to go along with everything they did, that it wasn’t his fault, that he was going to escape as soon as he got a chance and free everybody else, too.

“That crackhead promised to show them how to make meth, said he’s the best cook in three states. He was the one that showed them how to gut a body. Just like a mule deer, I think was how he put it.”

The pockmarked man blustered, insisted he was trying to escape, to help them as soon as he had a chance.

The other two men seemed resigned to their fate, even if they were still hoping for a reprieve. They’d heard stories about the Lakota crew and the big bearded guy had walked right into the midst of them a few months back. He had a hundred guns pointed at him and didn’t even care. He looked pissed now, when he’d been calm then. He was a lot scarier looking when he was pissed. They knew what they had done, and they knew what they had coming. There wasn’t going to be a trial, the best they could hope for was a fast death.

They climbed in