At first the ride was rather calm as they passed along the main route and over the bridge into Ohio on their projected chosen route that would go through the states of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and then California. It was said that Northern California near the Oregon border was the location of the established refugee zone. At least, it was based on the last communications that were sent before the grid went dark. It was the choice of the council to avoid cities for obvious reasons, and for a while, when they hit the plain states, it was rather peaceful due to the fact there wasn’t too much in terms of population anyway with the usual back drop of abandoned cars, bodies of people long dead, and the occasional outcropping of zombies that didn’t pose too much of a threat. It’s when they reached Nevada when things came to a grinding halt, mostly due to repairs and the abuse of the road. It was hard on the aging vehicles they were using. It was in Nevada that their good luck also ran out, for even in the beginning of their drive, they had a sense of being watched, and judging by how they were low on supplies and water, it was the best time for something to strike.
“What do you have Vamp?” asked Jimmy, shading his eyes from the sun and watching the open road before him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Dust cloud --- like a dust storm,”
“A dust storm?” said RPG. “Well it is the dessert so…”
“No…” Vamp said. “This ain’t no storm man…”
“What do you have scouts for?” said Captain Fellows who was monitoring the communications, “Want to send some of the patrol cars?”
“Yeah… let’s check that out,” Said Showtime. “I’ve been watching that cloud ever since we hit Kansas.”
Jimmy told Vamp, Buzz, and Thrill-Killer to check it out while Frontsight, Showtime, and RPG stayed with the convoy. The three bikers fell back and with the accompaniment of two police cruisers headed towards what looked like a cloudy dust storm. There was a silent moment as the group got closer and saw what exactly was making the dust storm and the awesome revelation was even more chilling --- it was a large freight train that was converted on to truck wheels but the wheels were thick with spinning blades in the wheel wells and at the mast of the behemoth machine was the same zombie they saw in Philadelphia, only he seemed to be directing other zombies like him as they manned the large wheeled structure and kept the pace along with their convoy.
“Holy shit!” Vamp barked back. “It’s that friggin’ psycho zombie from Philly!”
“You mean to tell me that thing has been following us ever since we left?” Captain Fellows asked. “You got to be shitting me --- what is it?”
“Some kind of wheeled fortress,” Vamp said. “It’s got bodies pinned on the sides of it like trophies and that thing is leading them.”
“See what you can do --- we’ll pick up the pace but I don’t know how long our fuel reserves will last,” said Captain Fellows.
“I don’t’ know what we can do…” said Buzz. “But we’ll damn sure try.”
“Alright mon,” said Killer. “Less talking and more zombie killing eh?”
Vamp mashed his foot on the gas and shot by the large zombie platform, watching the zombie with the lab coat pointing towards him, screeching out garbled noises that the other zombies began to react to. Vamp soon veered his bike out of the way of a small appliance that had been lunged at him. The zombies above the massive metal infused deck started to throw large objects in an attempt to make the bikers crash.
Buzz had already pulled out his .44 magnum with a scope and began to pop off zombies from the deck while trying to take out their leader in the process. The lead zombie had ducked and found refuge in the encased metal cage that was at the center of the moving platform while his minions kept up the assault as some were picked off by gun fire and others kept lunging heavy objects. Thrill-Killer with the help of one of his courtesans had drove around the entire length of the fortress attempting to shoot a tire out although they found the zombies took the liberty to put steel plates over the wheels that prevented small arms fire from penetrating into the wheels. To the surprise of them all, the back of the fortress had slowly opened and a make-shift ramp rolled out. Zombies on motorcycles filed out the back and crashed on the road before revving up the engines and tailing the others, pulling out Uzis of their own and attempting to kill off the bikers.
“Fuck man!” said Buzz. “Does this shit get any worse?”
“I donno mon!” said Thrill-Killer. “It’s definitely really fucked up round
