busy, nothing was worse for anyone than to not have a job, which is why whenever they stopped Max always had things for all the kids to do.
Walking forward with his revolver out Max approached the cruiser. Tom was sweeping the glass away from the side of the car so he could change the tires, Stewart also had a broom and was sweeping a path forward through another twenty feet or so of glass. She was also keeping her eyes peeling on the crest of the hill.
“I don't like this fucking hill Max.” she said without turning as he came up behind her.
“Me either. You wanna sweep or go scout?”
Stewart grimaced, she had taken a pretty bad hit in the fight a few days ago at Max's house, the bruising was healing at an unusual rate, but still caused her some pain if she had to crawl or dodge around quickly.
“You go, I got this. I can't tell what dropped all this glass, its getting tiresome finding tires, not to mention changing them all the time. We need to find another cruiser again.”
“Yeah, I know.” Max plodded forward carefully picking his way through the broken glass field. If Stewart hadn't been on the ball with slowing down the car she could have driven all the way through it and ended up on top of the hill first with four flat tires.
Going into the ditch between the two sections of road Max noticed the glass was only on the road, not even on the shoulder. “Stewart!” Max whispered at her.
She looked at him, he was just about where the glass shards ended, her eyebrows raised questioningly.
“The glass, it's not on the shoulder. Back the cars down a ways.”
She immediately understood, the glass had been placed on the road on purpose. She conference with Tom, then went back to talk to the kids and Amelia, they all redoubled their efforts to clear the glass behind them, not bothering to deal with that in front of the cruiser. Stewart pulled two guns out of the cruiser, a shotgun for Max and a rifle for her. Together they stood at the edge of the glass, waiting while Amelia and Tom slowly and quietly backed the cars down the hill, when they reached a quarter mile away Stewart and Max went into the ditch a few feet and then started towards the crest of the hill.
An oily, burnt smell greeted them as they crept closer to the crest in the hot sun. Sweat was pouring down Max's face, he wiped it with a bandanna from his pocket and they finally got a glimpse of the leeward side. There was an exit off in the distance, some small town or another was straddling the road here, between there and where they were standing was a mad pile of vehicles; there were three recreational vehicles, four or five semis with trailers and perhaps three dozen cars. Some were burned and most were damaged. The wind shifted towards them slightly and Max caught a whiff of decomposing flesh, which could mean zombies or just corpses. The nearest car was hooked up to a wrecker truck and pulled to one side of the road, all four of its tires were flat. It looked like all the vehicles had been heading east and had been towed or rolled into the center of the two roads, with quite a few still on the highway itself, forming an impenetrable barrier. The southbound lane had a couple of cars staggered on it, Max saw that a person could drive between those staggered vehicle, if you went slowly enough. They had driven on around wrecks using the southbound lane before, any way to keep moving.
The tow truck looked fairly new, it was big, painted red and white with what looked like a steel beam for lifting and towing cars. It had “Paul's A-1 Towing Service” stenciled on the white door that Max could see. None of its tires were flat either.
Stewart, nudged Max and they went down on their knees taking them out of sight of the wreckage.
“I didn't see anything.” said Stewart.
“Me either, but that car didn't hook itself up to the wrecker.”
“Super zombie?”
“That is what I am thinking.” The so called 'super' zombies were a rarity, it seemed when any zombie had enough blood or flesh to eat, it became more aware of its surroundings, faster, stronger and more intelligent. Max and the gang had fought several of them at his home while trying to rescue his wife. The zombies that went through this transformation could remember who they had been, they could talk and almost looked alive. They sometimes even remembered how they died. They were extremely good predators. Max's fear was encountering one of them who had a gun and knew how to use it. The only good thing, if there was one, about the super zombies is that sometimes they could be reasoned with. Sometimes they would make deals, when Max had finally gotten the upper hand at his home, he had stopped the fight and parted ways with one of the zombies who could have cause him more trouble. Max often wondered where Jimbo was now and how many living he had killed because of Max's weakness.
“So do we go in or go back?” Max asked. Although he was nominally the leader of the group, he deferred to Stewart in situations requiring fighting, just as he deferred to Tom in all things technical.
“Let's back off, get the cruiser's tires changed and the road clear up to here. We back the cruiser up then explore on foot. If we could take that wrecker…”
Max followed her thoughts, a wrecker would be incredibly useful, they had to backtrack a few times because of all the damaged vehicles clogging the roads, the big truck could push cars out of the way if they needed to or tug them out of the way if they had time.
“Yeah, that would be good. We need more drivers.”
“Nick up for the job?”
“You gotta be kidding.” said Max thinking of his ten year old son behind the wheel of the tow truck, “Who would shotgun with him? Erin?”
The two backed up and made their way back to the others, Max grabbed a broom and then he and Stewart came back to clear the rest of the glass from the road. Nick came with them as an extra set of eyes. The rifle his son carried was a small caliber twenty two, but he now knew how to use it. All the kids, even seven year old Jessica, the youngest, knew how to shoot, unload and clean every gun the group had. There were more guns than hands to fire them, it seemed everyone else had guns when they fled the zombie horde. The bad part, in Max's mind was that the guns hadn't seemed to do the people a whole lot of good, after all the main way their group found guns was by killing the zombies that were the previous owners.
The glass sweeping was done and Tom had both tires changed after that. They left the other rims and tires by the side of the road, stacked up, one on the other. Tom didn't know how to operate the machines to take the bad tires off the rims and the machines required electricity to work anyway. Tom had mentioned that he had seen a video on youtube about how to re-inflate and reseat a tire using gasoline, but Max and Stewart were not ready to try that yet, not until they absolutely needed to.
Tom backed the cruiser up to just below the crest of the hill and Nick climbed in and waited with him, rolling the back window down and sitting facing backward with his rifle ready. Down below, near the van Amelia had the girls leaning with their rifles out too, though they were pointed in a more skywards direction.
Stewart and Max again found themselves crouched near the crest of the hill. “Should we try to unhook the car or just get in, start it up and go like hell?” asked Max.
“I'll get the truck, you ambush anyone who comes after me, but lets have a look see again to make sure nothing has changed.” Stewart and Max exchanged weapons, giving her the shotgun and him the comparatively longer ranged hunting rifle.
Both of them moved forward again in a half crouch, staying low in the ditch between the two ribbons of highway. They could not see anything. Ducking lower Max looked under the cars as best he could, looking for legs and feet of people who might be hiding under the vehicles. He didn't see anything. Looking at Stewart, she shook her head at him and then proceeded to move forward towards the object of their desire. Max went prone, with his gun pointed towards the vehicle. Stewart ran in a half crouch towards it and made it to the door. She swung it open, pointed her gun inside and hopped in when nothing jumped out at her. Sensing movement off to one side Max turning his head slightly, but not his gun, he saw a fast zombie rushing to get around to the back passenger corner of the wrecking truck. Some slower zombies were moving along behind it, there were also some of moderate speed in the pack as well. The zombies had stayed out of sight in the pile of vehicles in the middle of the two roads, it was not the first time they had run into this type of ambush.
The slow zombies were not Max's problem. He put his eye back down to sight along the rifle barrel. The fastest zombie was good, using cover as best he could to keep from being seen by Stewart, who probably only suspected he was there. However it was obvious he did not see Max and was making no attempt to hide from him. The zombie Max was watching may very well have been 'Paul' of the A-1 towing service, he was dressed in black work boots, not for show either Max could see them under the vehicles as the thing moved from place to place.
