Ascension

and had them both in the back of the pickup truck with him. 'I suppose he hoped we might get in a game along the way.' Red mused to himself. 'Kids, ever the optimists of the next generation.'

Riding across most of Nebraska to catch up with Ramey had taken Red the entire morning and he arrived close to the tail end of mob around noon. He didn't get close enough for the others to hear his motorcycle, instead he ditched it by the side of the road, pointing it west first with the optimistic hope that he would be riding it back that way. After that he proceeded on foot and it took him very little time to catch up with his foe, Ramey was walking in the middle of the highway, surrounded by other self-aware zombies. None of them were paying too much attention to their surroundings; they were, however, keeping a close watch on the sky.

Red was hidden behind one of the many wrecks littering highway eighty, when the helicopter came over the horizon. It did not attack Ramey; instead it struck at the front of the mob, raining down a stream of lead into the lead zombies. The bullets from the Gatling style cannon literally cut the slow shamblers into pieces when they hit them, throwing body parts thirty feet into the air and causing a black mist to form above the mob from the spray of blood.

Ramey and his friends took cover behind more stalled cars, but did not return fire. The helicopter hovered and fired for less than a minute, then turned and flew east, apparently out of ammunition for its gun.

Peering over the car he was on Red had the bad luck of being spotted by one of Ramey's crew as they got up and started walking again. The older woman zombie pointed back in Red's direction while saying something to Ramey out of earshot.

Ramey's head turned around and he scoured the area for Red. Of course Red had taken cover behind the wreck and concentrated on not being seen, 'I am glass. I am invisible. No one can see me.' Red chanted mentally, feeling foolish.

It did work, either that or Ramey just missed seeing him, however the zombie was more cautious as the march resumed. Red suspected he had somehow checked his subordinate's mind and verified that she had seen something. His thoughts were confirmed when two of the smarter zombies stopped in positions that a human would not have seen them in, if they were coming up on Ramey from behind.

Red liked this idea. The two zombies left in ambush were much weaker than he was, and he could tell they both resented Ramey's heavy handed approach to giving them orders, they were resentful and angry at having to march towards Iowa with the rest of the zombies. The woman on the right wanted to go home, to North Dakota, to check on her mother and father, the man wanted to go to Kansas City, he heard there were still humans to eat there, humans who were not soldiers and didn't have any guns. Breaking into their minds was simple because of their age, he didn't need permission from them or to seduce his way in. Red took them over easily, but in his haste he didn't know what to do with them. This was not something he had practiced with Jimbo. Worse still, he felt something else grabbing a hold of their minds and in an instance he knew it was Ramey, shadowing them, using their eyes to keep watch on what it was behind them. The only good news was that Red was pretty sure Ramey didn't know he had grabbed the two of them.

'Will he notice if I leave?' Red wondered, remembering the lessons Jimbo had taught him a day earlier.

Red decided not to find out, he stayed in their minds and read them in case Ramey gave them any orders, which he would then relay, hopefully the zombie wouldn't notice. With the two held in his grasp Red convinced them to both look north as he slipped closer and closer to end of the pack, in short order he was past them. He didn't release either of them, just in case Ramey would notice that, and proceeded to sneak up on his opponent.

Ramey had gone about a mile ahead of the two ambushers before he relented and called them back. Red was torn between attacking the other zombie while he had less help or waiting, but decided to wait because of the relatively clear stretch of highway ahead of him. Red didn't think he actually was invisible and doubted he could sneak up on the man given the conditions of the road right now.

'I'll wait until we get to another pile up. Let's see what I can do with Sue and Chuck there.' Sue and Chuck were the names of the two zombies Ramey had left hidden behind him. Ramey had given them orders to join back up with him, then left their minds, both were, somewhat resentfully making their way back to him. Ahead the road turned to the north and dropped into some lowlands, it looked like it was going to be crossing over the Platte River again, only this section was very wide and required two long bridges. The bridges were a mess of wreckage, smoke was still pouring from a line of vehicles at the far end of them. 'I can take them up there, after the main horde gets through and they are left alone.' Red thought.

The zombies were having a hard time pushing through the wreckage and Red crept up along one edge of the highway about a quarter mile into the heavy brush and well out of sight of Ramey and his crew. This wasn't an ordinary wreck, this was a barricade made on purpose. He saw many military vehicles and at the far end two tractor trailers were butted up against each other with sand bags on the top of them. To get around this barrier one of the trailers had been smashed inwards on the southern end of the road, it looked like Ramey had directed one of his zombies to drive another semi-tractor into that edge at high speed, which had edged the trailer over enough to make a gap that the zombies could walk through. The wreck of this vehicle was sitting on the ground below the bridge, where it had somehow been toppled over, probably with just raw zombie power. Guns and true corpses littered the ground around the barricade, though all of the cars blocking one lane of traffic had also been man handled over the edge. Ramey was funneling all of his zombies through this small opening and it was probably because of this that things had taken as long as they had.

'Why didn't he just push them through the river?' Then Red thought about it a little more, the river here was fairly slow and meandering, but it was also deep, which would sweep the mindless undead miles downstream and make it harder for their keepers to get them back together. 'I guess bridges will still have a part to play in this new world.'

He waited until the last of the zombies was on the bridge, then headed back towards the highway, confident that he would catch up to the tail end long before the last of them were through the narrow gap at the other end. The river bank on the far end was littered with the bodies of the true dead as well, for the most part they looked like head shot zombies, but there were a few incapacited zombies missing legs and arms down there as well, casualties from going up against the humans. The body count was impressive. 'How can we take this many losses and keep on going?'

Red imagined that getting rid of the slower zombies was a good thing, even if he hadn't been willing to do it himself. When Nita, Hugh and he were trying to slow the zombies down they locked them in houses or, in Nita's case, tried to fit as many into cars as they could. They rarely killed any of the zombies. What if someone found a way to reverse what had happened? Not that Red gave that serious consideration. 'We're done. There ain't no going back from this, only forward.'

By the time he reached the edge of the bridge Ramey and his crew was halfway across, following the last of the horde as it crawled along at a very slow walking pace. The cars in the one lane gave Red easy places to hide when he needed it, but Ramey and his friends were not looking back. Red was able to get within throwing distance of Ramey and was picking up snatched of his conversation as he drew closer. He went into Sue's mind and nudged her anger and resentment into rage, then watched to see what happened. She causally turned her gun on the zombie next to her and blew his head off. The other zombies reacted immediately, but Ramey held out his hand and Red felt an iron grip descend onto Sue's mind. Seeing the opportunity Red worked on Chuck, leaving Sue gasping and wondering why she just killed one of the people she was travelling with.

'What the fuck Sue?' yelled Ramey. 'Don't tell me that was an accident!'

Sue's arms were slack and her rifle slipped from her fingers to clatter onto the pavement.

'Fuck you Ramey! You son of a bitch.'

Better than Red had hoped for, she thought everything was her own idea, she also knew what was coming and was now choosing to go up against Ramey rather than back down meekly. Unfortunately Red knew she didn't have a chance. Chuck seemed reluctant to get involved. He was not responding well to the pushing that Red was doing. Instead of having the man shoot a random zombie Red was trying to make him go for what his old man would have called 'the money shot', in this case shooting Ramey in the head with his shotgun.

Red continued to berate Sue, escalating the tension all the zombies were feeling. Chuck finally broke, he let out a cry and Red seized control, trying to bring the gun up before Red could close down the other zombie's mind.