Jake stood beside the military truck and waved when they approached. Dora pulled up alongside him and rolled down her window. 'Got yourself a new ride Jake? I thought you would tag along with one of us?'
'This seemed like a better idea. I stole their truck. Now they don't have it and we do.'
'I am good with that, how are things out here this morning?'
'Stirred up. Like someone poked a stick into an ant hill, stealing their truck didn't make it any better. I got in a bit of a tussle with one of them when I took it. I made my move when I saw them shifting their slow moving zombies around to this side early before sunrise. Did they figure out your plans?'
'Yeah. We had a leak.'
Jake nodded, 'Too bad, we better get moving while they are still all riled up and disorganized.'
'Oh, Jake, wait a second, we brought you something, a down payment.' Dora reached over and pulled out a small lunch pail style cooler, inside were two pints of blood, their donors names written on them carefully by Mary, there was also a walkie-talkie. The blood was sitting on top of a chemical hand warmer and before Dora had grabbed it Beth had been rocking it back and forth in her hands as Mary had instructed her to do. 'I hope you like red.'
Jake caught the cooler with one hand and unzipped the lid, when he looked inside Dora saw a change come over his face, like he was seeing God, he pulled his eyes away and nodded curtly to Dora, 'My favorite color.'
'So it isn't spoiled?'
Softly he answered, 'Oh no, it isn't spoiled.' then louder, 'Okay let's get out of here before they find new vehicles, if we can get a mile away we will leave all of the shamblers behind. I am going to get in line behind the first bus, okay?'
'Sounds good, the walkie-talkie is on the channel we are using and has a two mile range, if we get further away than that we area probably all fucked anyway.'
Dora radioed the others that Jake was moving behind the first bus and then told Seth and Becka to move out. The previous night Steve had outlined the rout he wanted to take and gone over it with the two teens until they had it memorized. However looking at a map and driving along the route were two different things. Steve wanted to go about a mile towards the heart of Kansas City, then head north, sticking to main roads where possible, but driving around major wrecks using side streets. One unfortunate change in plans had been the tow truck, there just hadn't been time to run down a wrecker and get it back to join the caravan. Steve was confident they could push any minor wrecks out of the way, if they ran into bumper to bumper gridlock, they would just have to find another way around.
The first goal was to get over the Missouri river, something that could only be done at a few key points. Steve's first choice was at highway six thirty five, it was the closest bridge to cross the river and with any luck they could head north to highway one fifty two and then east to highway thirty five. After that it was just a matter of sticking to the road until they got to Bethany, or wherever the National Guard was fighting these days.
The two motorcycles would start ranging ahead to find the best roads once they crossed the river, they had strict instructions to stop whenever things looked bad ahead. Both Seth and Becka had shotguns and fifty shells to fend off anything they might run into. Alex had rigged up a swivel mount on each of their handlebars to hold the guns more or less in place, so if they had to fire on the move it would be a simple matter of pointing the motorcycle at the target and pulling the trigger. The main drawback with his system was the guns required about thirty seconds worth of untying to get them free, which is why both carried hunting knives and back up revolvers as well.
The other vehicles had a few adults spread among them, the group was relying on teens to fire out the windows and drive off any zombie hordes that they ran into, a strategy no one was sure would work. Dora had three passengers in her point vehicle, Willy, his friend Beth and another twenty year old named Cliff. The buses were pretty much unchanged, other than having a few seats removed from the tail end of each of them. Into that space went everyone's belongings, a single pack for each person and extra fuel, ammunition, spare tires and food.
The motorcycles led the way towards the bridge, they had used it before and knew it should be clear, the streets were eerily silent as they crept along at fifteen miles an hour. Getting over the bridge was no problem, both lanes were open, though they were separated with a guardrail. Dora called to the cyclists to let her catch up a little then they all proceeded onto the bridge. When they were about halfway over Dora caught some sign of movement on the far side, at the same time Becka slid sideways on her motorcycle, skidding to a ragged halt along the cement rail that kept traffic from rolling into the river. Seth flipped up his shotgun and took a shot at the zombies that appeared from the sides of the road at the far end of the bridge.
Dora yelled 'Ambush!' into her walkie-talkie and slowed the suburban to a halt next to Becka, who was writhing around on the ground. 'Beth, get her in here!'
The girl climbed out and offered Becka a hand up to pull her into the vehicle. There was some sort of an arrow sticking out of Becka's leg. Even with the injury the young woman maintained enough piece of mind to draw her buck knife and slash at the binding on the shotgun, after retrieving it and the backpack with the extra ammo off of the bike she allowed Beth to help her inside.
'How bad is it?' Dora asked as Seth's shotgun rang out again in front of them.
'It is okay, really, just a scratch. It hit the gas tank first and bounced into my leg, the padding slowed it down. I am bleeding but it isn't stuck in me or anything.'
'Can you ride or are you staying with us?' asked Cliff, his black skin was very pale as he looked at the girl pulling at the shaft of the arrow.
Dora kept her eyes ahead of them, some of the zombies had guns and as she watched they aimed them at Seth and fired. The boy was living a charmed life, at least he appeared to be, he didn't fall off of his motorcycle, but kept heading more or less towards the mob, as Dora watched he straightened up for a moment and took another shot with his shotgun which knocked a zombie back into the mob.
'They are behind us, they've moved in behind us mostly with super zombies.' Came Steve's voice.
'Fuck! Jake you didn't sense this?'
It took a moment then Jake's voice came over the radio, 'It was too far to sense the shamblers ahead of us and I can't sense the supers at all. I am coming up to try and move them out of the way.' In her side view mirror she saw the military truck swerve out of line and pull up alongside of her. Bullets were starting to pepper the area around the suburban, one hit the upper left corner of the windshield, putting a network of stars into the safety glass, but not injuring anyone. Dora rolled down her window, Jake's passenger window as already down.
'Can you move them?' Dora asked, watching as the mob crept forward, behind them at the base of the bridge she saw a couple of old cars drive into place across the bridge.
Jake concentrated and the zombies ahead ground to a halt, but only for a moment, then they started moving again.
'Dora! We gotta get moving the supers are almost to us!' yelled Steve.
'Jake!' Dora yelled.
He shook his head, 'They got supers blocking me. I guess we do it the old fashioned way.' Jake shifted the truck into gear and started forward. Ahead of them Seth took one last shot at the mob then turned his bike around and started back toward them. Dora saw his face clearly when he was shot. A surprised 'oh' took over his mouth and he struggled to control the motorcycle, he lost that battle and veered into the cement rail. Seth had been accelerating as he came back and was going a lot faster than when Becka was hit, the bike twisted sideways into the railing and Seth was airborne, he toppled onto the top of the rail, made a frantic grab for it with one hand and then tumbled out of sight off of the bridge.
'Fuck!' Dora yelled, and started the suburban forward, the passenger door slammed shut and Dora glanced back to find Cliff holding onto a short arrow, looking in the side view mirror she saw Becka picking up the motorcycle and hopping on. 'Now what the fuck is she doing? Cliff, Willy, Beth, get your guns out the windows and start firing, aim for the ones with guns!'
'Fuc…' the radio started, 'Overwhelming us, lost all the kids in the bed, just like that Dora. Go faster!'
Dora was already way ahead of the buses, following close on Jake's trail, the military truck ran through and over the zombie mob like a hot knife cutting through warm butter. Willy started firing at targets in the mass of zombies and Dora saw one super go down, shot in the head.
Just before Dora drove onto the bodies left by Jake the motorcycle passed her, Becka pulled the bike up in a hop to clear the first body and somehow made it into the wake created by Jake's truck, Dora was not so lucky the
