Wheels and Zombies (Book 3): Aground Read online

  “What the fuck? Mags!” she exclaimed. I laughed, took aim, and pulled the trigger again.

  I didn’t take me long to get rid of the remaining zombies and get ourselves down from the roof. The can of soda and box of salted crackers we had found inside the shop hadn’t been much of a dinner, and I was hungry.

  Up close the Knight looked as if it had received a mud bath, except that the mud had been replaced with blood and other gunk. Fortunately, the truck stood on massive wheels that nearly reached my waist, and considering the fact I was a solid six feet tall, that meant they were big. For that reason, the opaque, bulletproof-glass windows reached high over most zombies’ heads, so I didn’t have to do any cleaning in order to be able to look outside.

  We had changed the interior somewhat after we’d inherited the truck. We had removed the backseats, except for one, to make room for Ash’s chair and a mattress we had picked up from a Wal-Mart. Along with a bunch of blankets, pillows, and some other stuff, it made for a cozy home. Every time I stepped inside the mega-SUV, it made me feel grateful Mars had handed me the keys.

  Special Agent in Charge Rodrigo Marsden was one of the FBI agents who had helped us escape Dr. David Warren’s lab in Florida. Mars and his partner, Angela Meadow, had worked undercover at the time to learn about the doctor’s plans. They had been the ones to break us out, and Angie had even gotten herself shot in the leg during the escape.

  The thought of Dr. David made a cold shiver run down my spine, and I shuddered. Pushing the thought of him from my mind, I tried to focus on preparing oatmeal for breakfast, but now Mars kept interrupting my thoughts, and I sighed.

  Ash sat in the open door of the truck, eating the oatmeal I had prepared, while I loaded the gas cans we had filled before the zombies had showed up. Ever since we had gotten a hold of the truck, I’d been a bit neurotic about fuel. The thing drank it like a hippo eligible for an AA meeting. I knew it ran on biodiesel, but what did I know of that, so I collected fuel everywhere I could.

  After that, I was keen to get on the road. The zombie procession had unnerved me, and the stink of the ones left behind pierced my nostrils. Still, there was one thing I wanted to do before we left the coast.

  My skin tingled where the sun threatened to burn it, but my body welcomed it. After spending too much time trapped in the basement of Dr. David’s lab, I had regained a new appreciation for the sun. I had become a lizard feeding on its energy.

  “Are you ready for this?” I said, my trusted Timberland boots buried in the sand. Ash hung off my back, and I stood next to the Knight parked on an endless stretch of beach.

  “Shouldn’t we take off some clothes?” she muttered next to my ear. I glanced down. Like Ash’s, my clothes were limited to military-style cargo pants and black T’s, either long or short sleeve, thanks to a pawnshop I had the sense of raiding at the beginning of the outbreak and to Mars who had managed to help us keep our stuff. Not that I minded, I liked comfortable.

  The beach around us seemed empty except for some bulges in the sand. I pushed the thoughts of half-buried bodies from my head.

  “I don’t want to be caught by something running around half-naked on a beach,” I said and then dropped the backpack loaded with guns and ammo onto the sand.

  “Yeah, but a machete.”

  “I don’t know what this infection does, might affect water life—what if we’re attacked by zombified jellyfish?” I said with exaggeration in my voice, but I knew the blade carried my confidence.

  “Yeah, I’ll make sure to watch out for those,” Ash said, snorting a laugh. I left the unstable, loose sand behind and stepped into the surf.

  “Actually, these clothes stink; they could use a wash,” I said as I waded into the deep blue to give Ash’s feet their first shower of seawater. She shrieked, and her grip tightened around my shoulders.

  “Don’t let me drown, okay?”

  I turned my head to her and rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m sure I won’t let you drown,” I said. Without warning, I dropped us neck deep into the water. Ash squirmed on my back. “You were the one who wished we could have gone swimming back in Neponsit,” I said.

  I couldn’t stop grinning. It was beautiful, and the water felt like heaven. Ash’s arms clung around me. She yelped as I tried to shrug her off, clinging tighter to my body. “Don’t be a baby, Ash,” I said, loosening her grip. With my feet placed solidly on the ground, I had no trouble to keep her head above the water. Water splashed violently where she beat her fist at the rolling waves. I had to close my eyes to keep the salt from stinging.

  “Don’t flap around like a lost puppy,” I said. “Wave your arms through the water. Let it carry you.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” she said, spluttering water. I ran an arm through the water to show her what I meant. She started to mimic the movement. It didn’t take her long to get the hang of it.

  “See? You don’t need legs to swim.”

  Her eyes widened, and she broke into a smile. I grabbed her when she went under, splashing water at me. She coughed, her expression sour as she spat out the salty water. However, the smile that followed was unambiguous.

  “Try this,” I said and held a hand at the back of her head. She gave me a wary look, and I rolled my eyes. “Trust me already.” I scooped up her legs to let her body float on the water. The biggest smile caressed her face as she squinted against the sun before she closed her eyes. Without a word, I let her go bobbing along the water.

  “This is great,” she said, opening her eyes. Panic set in when she realized I had let go. She tried to jerk up. Her head went under, but I had her within a second.

  “Ass,” she sputtered.

  I couldn’t contain a laugh. “Had enough?”

  “No way, help me,” she said. “Just tell me when you let go.”

  I raised her to the surface.

  “You got it?” I asked. She nodded, and I let go. “You’re on your own.” I settled in beside her with a hand on her shoulder, to be sure.

  The blue sky resembled a wonder, containing a purity that these days seemed hard to find on earth. The water caged my hearing. The only thing left was the blood rushing through my veins accompanied by a rhythmic heartbeat. Except for the grip on Ash’s shoulder, I felt disconnected from this world and free. The world around me was gone. The madness of escaping labs, bandits, and zombies was gone. I felt at peace, and as it did often in a moment of silence, my mind wandered to that certain agent of the FBI, and I wondered what he was doing right now. It took me a while to recognize the sound I heard until I feared it was too late.

  | 3

  I jerked up in an instant, fixated on the sound. Ash did the same, heavily blinking and cursing under her breath.

  “What?” she asked confusedly as she grabbed hold of my arm. My hart hammered so fast in my chest it started to hurt. It didn’t prevent me from a nervous chuckle.

  Without explanation, I guided Ash arms around my neck and started waving my arms through the water—frantic to get to the shore.

  “My phone, it’s ringing,” I said. Ash didn’t reply, and I figured she understood the significance.

  As soon as I reached shallow-enough water, I nearly dropped Ash and sprinted to my pack. Water dripped down off my face and clothes as I dropped to my knees next to the pack and jerked it open. By that time, the phone had stopped ringing, but the fact it worked at all might mean there was still a signal out there.

  My wet fingers grabbed hold of the slippery gadget and started to work the buttons. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, and the added tremble in my hands didn’t help with operating the thing.

  A year ago, I couldn’t have imagined abandoning my phone for over five minutes, but I guessed the interest in the bells and whistles of modern technology faded when they weren’t in our daily lives. It showed too, because I couldn’t unlock the screen.

  “They must still have a signal in this area,” Ash said as she crawled across the sand to get to me.

 
“Ya think,” I replied. The added retort I had thought of faded when it started to dawn on me. I had a voicemail. I was still pushing buttons when Ash came up next to me and started to wipe the sand from her hands.

  “Give me that,” she said and in the same instance pulled the phone from my hand. “We changed the code six days ago to somethin’ we could both remember so I could use your playlist after my iPod died, remember?” I clenched and unclenched my fists and drew a breath to calm myself.

  From my peripheral vision, I could see Ash staring at me. I cleared my voice. Her eyes had gone wide, but she bit her lip as if she didn’t know what emotion to show.

  “You have two hundred and forty-nine voicemail messages and about five dozen mails,” she said. “The last message is from a minute ago.”

  As if my brain could not comprehend the information, I just sat there, watching the phone in her hands. She held it out as if I should take it, but I couldn’t move. Her thumb moved over the screen.

  “Don’t,” I said abruptly. She peered up at me with a nervous glance.

  “Don’t you want to know who—” she started to say.

  “I’m pretty sure I know who,” I said, cutting her off. With trembling fingers, I took the phone. The little red circle over the green icon indicated the two hundred and forty-nine messages. It wasn’t a hard guess whom they had come from—my family, my mom, dad, brother, and sister. But I supposed they would think I was dead. If it hadn’t been by the hands of the mindless infected zombies, they knew the cancer should have killed me by now.

  “Call them,” Ash said in a tiny voice.

  “They’re better off thinking I’m dead,” I replied in a shaking voice without taking my eyes from the screen.

  “They obviously don’t think you’re dead or else they wouldn’t be callin’ you every day,” she said. My throat closing up kept me from replying.

  “They don’t know,” Ash added. “Don’t you think that’s probably worse?”

  I shrugged, unsure what to say.

  “Call them,” she repeated.

  The sun had reached its peak by the time we had dried up and changed clothes.

  I needed to get a handle on myself if I didn’t want to turn into a blubbering mess while I called home.

  Ash didn’t understand my reluctance. My relationship with my family was strange at best. For years, I had tried to push them away. I hadn’t wanted them to see me wither away like a fallen leaf. Of course, that had been a stupid idea, and it hadn’t worked.

  The heat rose inside the cabin as I sat behind the wheel, holding the phone as if my life depended on it. Ash watched me with encouraging eyes as I took in a breath and pressed the number on the screen.

  The phone seemed to connect after some static sounds and was then reduced to a simple dial tone. It took a while before the other side picked up and even longer for a tentative trembling voice to answer.

  “Hallo.” Tears started to roll down my cheeks at the sound of Mom’s voice. I had to force myself to choke out the next word.

  “Mam.” The shock in Mom’s voice was evident when she couldn’t construct a sound sentence.

  “Oh God, oh God,” she almost squealed and then started shouting for my dad. In between, she jammed question after question. Are you okay? Where are you? What happened? How can this be? The language I hadn’t heard or spoken for almost a year flooded my ears. I had even stopped thinking in Dutch. But with every feeling I had held hidden over the past year emerging, my mother’s words sunk in. I had become a blubbering mess in a mere five seconds. Ash squeezed my hand. Grateful, I glanced at Ash and could see the tears in her eyes.

  It struck me that all this time I had buried any thoughts of the existence of my family, because I thought they’d be better off by thinking I was lost. Ash had no one left, and I never even considered what she must have thought of me when I had abandoned mine so easily.

  Mom had switched the phone to speaker, and I heard the relief in my dad’s voice, although it didn’t take him long to switch to his business persona. He ordered Mom to calm down and reminded me the line might disconnect any second. He turned the topic to planning an exit strategy. At that point, I too switched my phone to speaker. In the middle of my dad asking where I was so he could send a private jet, Ash spoke up.

  “Huh?”

  I smiled at her, and before Dad could ask who that was, I introduced Ash and requested he speak English.

  “Ash,” he said in a questioning voice.

  “Hi Mr. …” Ash started to say before she faded off and looked at me with furrowed brows. “What was your last name?” she whispered. I mouthed her the name Vissers, but it deepened her frown.

  “Never mind,” my dad said impatiently. “Tell me where you are.” I switched app and glanced at our position. As we’d traveled, I’d occasionally managed to find an Internet or a GPS connection to help us find our way.

  “We’re somewhere south along I-10, I think.”

  “Don’t think. Know, Margje,” Dad replied. Ash’s brows shot up. I shrugged it off with a shake of my head.

  “Later,” I whispered, and then told Dad, “About an hour’s drive east of New Orleans.” In the background, we heard him clicking on his keyboard.

  Dad was the epitome nerd when it came to electronics. If it used electricity—preferably with a keyboard and a display—then he would know how to use it. Combine that with the business-like thinking he had inherited from his mother’s side of the family, and you had an entrepreneur who had built a company producing computer parts that could rival the best.

  “Then you’re probably nearby Stennis International Airport, or Diamondhead, and that’s why you’ve gotten a signal, but it won’t be any help getting you out—both airports are out of commission,” Dad said after a while. “I need you to get to Jackson. I’m not sure how yet, but I will find a plane to get you out.”

  Ash gave me an incredulous look that made me smile.

  “Can he do that?” she asked in a small voice.

  “You bet I can,” Dad’s voice came over the speaker.

  “You heard him,” I said.

  “So that was your family,” Ash said. I looked at her with a faint smile as I helped her put on the heavy boots and added the load-carrying system to our military camouflage outfit. The latter was more of a vest to help carry the primary load of a soldier, like ammunition, canteens, and grenades. On the road, this getup turned out to be our best bet for staying out of trouble. People kept their distance or treated us with a little bit more respect while roadblocks set up by law enforcement or the military became a mere inconvenience.

  Ash huffed as I clicked her leg holster in place and tugged at her vest. This getup restricted her movement even further, but we had to make sure we looked the part if we wanted to reach Jackson.

  “Yeah,” I replied. I wanted to say more, talk to Ash, see how she felt about all this, but my body felt emotionally drained. Dad had been right, of course—the call was cut short before we could get into anything too personal. Mom had managed to squeeze in some I-love-yous, be-carefuls, and come-back-safes. She also said she would keep calling every night as she had done the past year. I felt so guilty over the fact that I hadn’t even tried to get in touch with them. My reasons seemed so stupid and selfish now.

  My mind remained stuck for a moment as I watched a sea gull land on a half-buried corpse. It started picking at the lifeless form, and I wondered if animals would be able to contract the virus by eating leftover bodies or even zombies. The thought made me shudder, and I snapped out of it.

  I glanced sideways and noticed Ash staring at me. It wasn’t hard to read the curiosity on her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You really think your dad will find a way to get us on a plane?” I turned at the subdued excitement in her voice. She was trying to play it down, but those big blue eyes of hers told she wanted it to be true.

  “If there’s anyone that can do it, it’s him, and even if he can’t
, he’d find another way,” I said, trying to convey confidence. “It might take longer, but I wouldn’t put showing up on a boat past him.”

  “I think he might be pointin’ us in the wrong direction if he’s plannin’ a boat ride,” Ash said.

  “Well, you’re the one who told me to be more positive—so I’m positive.”

  She grinned and handed me a pair of aviator sunglasses. I took them eagerly.

  “Nice,” I said. “Where did you find these?” She pressed a similar pair on the brim of her nose and smiled.

  “Back in the shop.” She smirked as she inspected them in the side mirror. We had changed into the army fatigues given to us by Mars to support our fake army IDs, and the sunglasses gave the ensemble an edge. I flipped the key, and the Knight roared to life.

  “Ready,” I asked and glanced a final time at the ocean and all its beauty.

  “Ready,” Ash replied. I released the brake and pressed down on the gas when Ash startled me.

  “Wait, stop!”

  My foot slammed on the brake while she scooted closer and jammed the phone in front of my face. With her in the frame she yelled, “Cheese.” Before I could adjust my face, the phone clicked, and the image displayed wasn’t one of my prettiest. I frowned at it and then at Ash.

  “Yeah, we better do that over. You look like you ran over a puppy,” she said. She threw an arm around my shoulder and tried again.

  I looked at the picture for a second and smiled. I hadn’t seen a sincere smile on my face for a long time. Our hair—still short for certain female standards, aviator glasses, and army-green jackets made me think of brothers in arms. Well, more like sisters in arms, but with a bond that could have been created on the battlefield, and maybe it had.

  “Now, we have our own Thelma & Louise picture,” Ash said with a smile as she scooted back into her seat. I raised an eyebrow at her.

  “You saw that?” I asked, sounding suspicious.