Back in Hazlehurst, Casey had perused the maps on my tablet and figured out a somewhat direct route to the old riverside dock where Captain Sal would supposedly meet us. Unfortunately, the courthouse battle had impeded the road we needed to leave town, so I struggled to find another way through the mayhem.
Thanks to the influx of eager zombies, I had to decrease my speed and take a lot of inconvenient turns before doubling back to Anthony Street—the route Casey had suggested. Zombies pounded against the rear and sides of the van. Some even hurled their bodies against the barred windows. But we managed to keep moving and eventually leave Port Gibson in our dust.
Of course, we didn’t leave all the zombies behind. As we wound north on Oil Mill Road, a massive horde trailed us toward the Mississippi River. Not all the creatures had decided to make the trip, but too many did to count—or kill. I picked up speed, hoping to lose them, but even as I turned left onto Grand Gulf Road, which apparently led to the riverside boat ramp, most of the pus-sacks were still following us.
“Man, I sure hope we’re not leading these guys to other folks,” Casey lamented. “We’ve passed a few houses along the way.”
“I’m not happy about it either,” I muttered, glancing in my side-view mirror. “But I can’t seem to shake ’em.”
Happily, though, the map hadn’t lied. At the fork near the Grand Gulf Military State Park, I veered left onto a newly constructed road that soon dead-ended at a cracked concrete platform beside the river. Trees flanked both sides of the isolated site, and two decrepit warehouses sat at the far end of the platform, a twelve-foot-high concrete wall separating them.
Sporting rusted exteriors and holey roofs, both structures looked as if a stiff wind would blow them into the river. Strange, given the decent condition of the road leading to the place. Either the weathered structures were as ancient as they seemed—or, else, poorly constructed and rarely maintained.
Each warehouse featured large, overhead doors on both the front and back, and luckily for us, someone had left all the doors open, offering a clear view of the Muddy Mississippi on the far side. Knowing we had little time to make a move, I pulled through the closest warehouse and parked in front of the ramp we intended to utilize to board the Stargazer—if the boat ever fucking showed up.
Of course, it was at that precise moment that our temporary streak of good luck ended. From the inland side of the warehouse, I hadn’t been able to discern that the ramp was in the “up” position. Not all the way up—that I might’ve noticed—but enough to be a problem.
My eyes traced the ramp to a spool of heavy chains preventing it from descending. The chains, in turn, extended upward, through the wall and toward a slender tower—a tower situated on the other side of the twelve-foot-high barrier that separated both the warehouses and the rear docks.
“Damn things look completely rusted to that tower,” I said.
Briefly, I wondered if the other warehouse had a more usable ramp, but one glance in my mirror told me it was too late to investigate. The first zombies had appeared at a bend in the road behind us. We had precious little time to get gone.
“Joe, look,” George said, leaning down to gaze through the windshield. “There’s some kind of release up there, next to the—”
The loudest horn I’d ever heard cut her off. I gazed at the river, where the sunlight glinted off an enormous double-decker ferry drifting toward us. Way bigger than the ferry that once transported people and vehicles from downtown New Orleans to Algiers Point on the west bank of the Mississippi—and way sturdier than the Cajun barge that had carried me, Azazel, and my gore-covered van to Gonzales.
Jess bolted up from the table. “It’s my dad!”
“I should hope so,” I grumbled.
Immediately, Jess and Casey started setting up the shortwave equipment so they could communicate with him.
Clare, meanwhile, glanced in her side-view mirror. “Uh, Joe…”
“Yeah, I know. We gotta do this thing.” I sighed, fed up with having to figure shit out. “Just not sure how yet.”
“We could leave the van,” she suggested.
I gaped at her. “Yeah, not gonna happen. Even if we do make it to Louisville, we’ll have nearly six hundred miles left to go, if not more… and this baby’ll help us get there safely.”
“But, Joe—”
I slid my driver’s-side door open, hopped out of the van, and walked toward the warehouse, my Glock drawn. The mirrors hadn’t lied. About five hundred yards lay between us and the zombie horde, but it was closing fast. Too fast. Objects were definitely closer than they appeared.
Desperate moments demanded harebrained ideas—even if such crazy-ass plans hardly ever succeeded.
But, hey, why stop now?
I gazed at the overheard door closest to the road, weighed my limited options, and sprinted back to the van. Clare, George, Casey, and Jess all offered their opinions, with varying degrees of panic and desperation, which predictably worsened my renewed headache. The only traveling companion not hurling around conflicting ideas was Azazel, who instead stared at me with her intense, green eyes, as if urging me to make a decision already.
Ignoring the hyper voices around me, I pulled the van as close to the ramp as possible. In case my plan went sideways—which was exceedingly likely—I needed to ensure that the rear end of the vehicle, which I’d angled toward the wall, lay several feet from the warehouse.
“OK, enough! Here’s the plan,” I shouted, loudly and confidently enough to silence the others. “I’m gonna bring this warehouse down. The horde will then have nowhere to go but backwards or into the next building. Then, thanks to the wall, they won’t be able to reach you. At least not right away.”
“Um, and where are you
