I stood up and found my legs working again. My face, however, was another matter altogether. It felt like someone had inflated it with an air hose. One eye was swelled shut and my cheek bone had been bleeding but it'd stopped now. George was finishing up putting a butterfly bandage on a cut on my nose. She'd already put one over my eye. Brushing off my clothes and thanking George, I turned to my rescuer and tried to smile. "Well, thanks for the boost up. I hope you get to wherever you were headed and you don't have any more trouble. Bye now."
Everyone just stood there staring at me like I'd grown two heads. "What? You think we ought to take this thief with us? If you remember correctly this guy and his friends flattened all the tires on the motor home and stole a trailer of food from us. I am not helping him anymore than we have already." With that I staggered to the truck, climbed on board and lay was down in the bunk. I was done. I hurt and I was tired and I wanted to go home. Now, everyone wants to help the last living person who had delayed us doing just that. I was damned if I help him. I was past my ability to care.
They talked for a while then Mason finally got into the truck. "You doing ok back there? Need anything?"
"Home. But that ain't gonna happen. Give me a few more minutes of feeling sorry for myself then ask again."
"Okay, brat, you rest a bit, we're gonna try to back these things up and find a place to turn around so we can regroup. Till then, just rest a bit. You got a right to feel sorry for yourself, I'd do it myself but I'm too stubborn and it would ruin my cowboy persona.
See? Now that's a cowboy. It wasn't my face, cause I couldn't stand to look at it right now. So it must be love.
We backed up for what seemed like miles or till we got to an off ramp, then we were able to park on the overpass where there was a nice breeze and regroup. I knew better than to hope no other bridges were gone but that didn't stop me. The new guy, I think his name was Alan, pointed out a couple of places that were impassable especially with the trucks. Another possible route was shot down when he told us the bridge was too narrow for big trucks. I was getting ready to rearrange his face when he pointed out a route that might be ok. The road, however, crossed the river in not one but three places. The same river that was carrying half a load of washers and dryers downstream.
"What about going upriver? Isn't the river smaller closer to it's source. I read that somewhere." This little snippet came from George. Looking at the map I saw if we went west we'd have to cross nearly half of Idaho then go north and then east some more before getting north of where we were. We wouldn't make it home till at least tomorrow night. I was ready to throw another fit but remembered the last one so settled for bulling. So sue me.
To make myself feel better I glared at the one person I didn't care about. Alan just sat there looking stupid, dirty and hungry. I was so not going to feel sorry for him.
"What were you doing with those fools?" I just can't help it. I had to know.
He thought about it for a long time, then he shrugged. "I don't know. When things went south and I had to kill my sister, when she turned into one of them I just didn't give a shit anymore. It seemed people like you, the smart ones, had the security and know how to survive, but didn't want me around. Said I'd eat too much and didn't have anything to give back. So I wandered around some, got me a sweet bike...I always wanted one...and ran into these guys. They said I could stay but had to earn my keep."
"That must not have included food. You need to put some weight on bub."
"Yea, well, I got the scraps and with those guys, there weren't much in the way of scraps. I'd find vegetables and fruit and fill up on that but that was about it. I been with em 'bout six months I guess and to tell the truth, I'm in worse shape now than when I was on my own."
"Why did ya stay?" George asked.
"No place to go. I don't know what's safe anymore. I've taken to sleeping in the trees just to get a good nights sleep. The others have a small forested area where they pretended they were Robin Hood or something in tree houses. I hadn't been there long enough to have my own tree house but I found a tree with a nice wide area way up and planned to make it my home. One of the guys saw it and was getting ready to evict me though. Said I hadn't earned it yet, but I think he was just lazy."
They were all looking at each other with 'that' look. The one that said 'oh this poor little man, we need to take care of him...blah,blah,blah. When they turned and looked at me I threw up my hands and climbed back into the truck. I flopped down into the bunk face first which was a big mistake and quickly rolled over, trying not to cry. Soon, Mason climbed in, shut the door gently and lay beside me, pulling me into the curve of his body and wrapping his arms around me. He didn't say a word, but he didn't have to. That's what cowboys do... isn't it?
Chapter 11
I allowed myself almost an hour for my pity party, mostly because I liked the way Mason felt. I knew it was just hormones but I'd take what I could get. When things started to heat up we agreed to leave the bunk and cool down.
So when we couldn't figure out another way to waste more time, we got into our pretty trucks and went back in the direction we'd come. We drove a little over two hours before turning west. Then the nightmare began. The road was horrible with traffic jams and I swear we spent more time in the median and shoulders than we did on the pavement.
One point we had to stop because we saw a herd coming our way. Turning off the engines and locking the doors, we climbed into the bunk, closed the curtain and opened the window to get some relief and waited. These particular walkers were energetic to the extreme. They actually tried to get into the trucks, rocking and tilting them so badly we had to grab onto anything we could find so we weren't thrown to the floor. This went on for a good half hour before they moved on. By the time we could open a window, I was drenched with perspiration. Mason climbed on the roof of the trailer to watch them and when the last of them went around a curve behind us we started the trucks and continued on our way.
The end of the day found us just turning north. It had been a long, exhausting day avoiding walkers. I swear, they all must of made it to Idaho before stopping and waiting just for us. The land was flat, with snow capped mountains all around us and I was relieved to finally turn north but then any direction that pointed me home made me very happy.
We stopped once to let Duke know we were once again going to be late. We ended up saying we'd see him soon. We had enough supplies to last a while at the lodge before trips to town for the winter stock up so when we got home, it would take something really big to get me out again. But that seemed to be my last words lately.
We were streaming along nicely, crossing some bridges that made me really nervous but held just the same. My face was as swollen as it was going to get, I hoped because I could only see from one eye. If we'd had some ice it would've helped a lot but I had to content myself with holding a cold, wet rag on it, I was still in pain, but until we found some drugs that wouldn't change.
Ken was driving while Mason snoozed in the bunk. Mason had found me a new toy. It came from a small police station we came across in a little town. The boys couldn't stand passing it by so we waited while they hunted. I would've been right in there with them but I was done in. Maybe another time.
I had a sleeve gun, an auto-loading handgun that was a double action revolver. Robert DE Nero used one in 'Taxi Driver and it was featured in 'Desperado. Just a flick of a wrist and the gun slides into your hand ready to fire. I'd just loaded the thing in preparation for the next dinner break and target practice, when we came around a corner and before us was a line of motorcycles. I wondered briefly what these fools drove in the winter before Ken brought us to a stop.
Trouble babe, might want to slip a gun into that sling. George tell the others to arm themselves, discreetly.
There appeared to be a dozen riders, a few female but mostly men. They appeared heavily armed so we'd play along for the time being. A rather large man had a bull horn he was rather fond of. "Shut off the trucks and get out slowly with your hands up." You ever tried to get out of anything with your hands up? No? Well, give it a whirl next time you get the chance.
"Oh for heavens sake. This is really starting to piss me off."
"Just do what they say for the time being, JD. We'll get out of this."
What are we doing JD? Do we do what they say?
George asked.
For the time being, we play along George. Ken, you getting any of this?
Yea, but I don't like it.
Neither do we but right now we have no choice.
So we did what they said. They lined us up beside the trailers with some rather impressive guns pointed at us while they checked out the trailers.
"Where did you get this stuff?" asked one rather large, leather-clad man with the greenest teeth I'd ever seen. I could smell him six feet away but I couldn't tell if it was body odor or bad breath.
"You really shouldn't wear leather in this heat. Unless you're shooting to loose some weight which..."
"Shut up bitch."
"Dudley! Get away from them. It doesn't matter where they got it. It's ours now."
He's dead. Both of em, dead as door nails.
Just watch for now. I want to see how the others feel about this.
They're taking our supplies. How do you think they feel about it?
"Can I put my arms down now. You have enough guns trained on us to feel safe."
"You have a smart mouth, bitch. No wonder someone knocked the shit out of you."
"Look asshole..."
"Dudley, I'll shoot you myself if you don't stay away from them." The biggest of the men sat on a three wheel motorbike, the kind with two wheels in the front. I could see why. He must have weighed in at three hundred pounds. Must not have been able to find leathers big enough cause he wore good, old fashioned, denim bib overalls. I never thought of bib overalls as showing good sense let alone authority. But then I'm a jeans kinda gal.
One man ran back and reported what they had found in the trailers.
"What? No food? What the hell we gonna do with all that junk?" He turned to Dudley and said, "I thought you said they were loading food at that warehouse. You didn't stay around long enough and watch you stupid shit, now we've gone to all this trouble for nothing." He drew a gun and shot Dudley right between the eyes. I felt my eyebrow's climb to the top of my head.
Well, what's your thoughts now?
I think we need to take out Santa, the two beside him and that guy to the right that can't stand still. He's itching for fight.
Ken, you able to take out the guy on the right?
The one with ants in his pants? Yea, just give the word.
Mason, I got the ones on the right. You can have Santa.
On three then. One....two....three . It sounded like one very loud, gunshot when all three of us shot at the same time. My handy dandy sleeve gun worked like it was meant to. Thanks, Mr. De Nero. Masons gun was loaded for bear and he managed to kill more than Santa. Dudley forgot to check us for weapons. Yep, smart but very dead guy. Riley took out a couple others that went for their guns. Mason went down and when I bent to see to him I felt a sting on my shoulder. While I was looking after Mason, Jill, Riley and Ken had managed to round up the rest of the gang and line them up in front of the trailers.
"You're not going to believe this, but most of the guns were empty. They have very little ammo, except for Santa, so it was all mostly show. How's he doing?'
Mason had a wound to his shoulder but it was through and through, so as soon as I could get the bleeding stopped he should be ok. He was unconscious but I figured that was a good thing, cause it looked like it hurt like hell. George kept messing with me and when I turned to yell at her I saw where a bullet had burned a crease along the top of my arm, which accounted for the sting I'd felt. Of course as soon as I acknowledged it the damned thing starting hurting like hell. It wasn't bleeding much, but she bandaged it anyway while I held pressure on Masons shoulder. Then we went to work on him.
We'd made him comfortable in the shade of one of the trailers. I sat with him as Riley and Ken questioned the riders. I was only half listening but what I heard was enough to make me feel better about killing Santa and his crew. Seemed as though they had run out of food and was in the process of making a run to town when Dudley returned from scouting. He told them about us, so they decided to wait for us and take what we had. Trouble was, we didn't have much in the way of food that was ready to eat. Flour and sugar wouldn't have done them much good cause no one could cook. I guess they traveled around, staying in one place long enough to eat everything in sight before moving on. Kinda like locust.
When asked if they were all that was left of the group, they said Santa, whose name was Mad dog, had killed off most of the group. They were the last. I counted five people in all, three woman. They needed help.
Oh hell no, I wouldn't even think about it. It was out of the question. I wouldn't allow it. I'd agree to help them get established on their own before I'd bring them back to the lodge. It was time they learned how to rely on themselves anyway. I was tired of taking in every stray because they weren't smart enough to take care themselves.