Chapter Two
Running had become a way of life for anyone who’d managed to
survive in this crazy new world. You either ran or you died, it was that
simple. Jeb had learned those rules a long time ago, so he was breathing heavy
by the time he made it to the gatehouse, but he wasn’t out of breath. Jeb
snorted, apparently the end of the world was a great exercise program. He
jumped up the few steps and entered the gatehouse door behind Harry and Hog.
“What’s going on?” Jeb demanded.
“It’s those stupid cult assholes again. They’re chasing
Scratches and Bleak’s group, they’re about five miles out and coming in hot.
Fuck, those bastards need to die already.” Viper grunted from the expensive
desk chair he sat in. Jeb could still remember the night they’d been at a
warehouse searching for supplies and Viper had found that chair. He’d nearly
shit his pants in glee because it was some kind of butt-cradling,
five-thousand-dollar office chair that he’d insisted they bring back with them.
Jeb shook his head, hell he supposed that the end of civilization needed to
have one or two perks.
The cult Viper was referring to called themselves, “The
Grinders”. They were a group of men and woman who thought this disease was
god’s way of killing off the unworthy. They had some crazy ideas that they were
the pure one’s, and anyone else was meant to die. They shoved people into large
pits filled with deadheads and laughed as they were ripped apart. It was
sickening to think how insane those fuckers were. The club had been trying to
kill the cult off for the last year, but they always seemed to slip away
without too many losses, and it was frustrating the hell out of the whole club.
“Fuck, we need to kill those sons-of-bitches.” Jeb grunted
to the other nine men who were inside the clubhouse. “How many bikes do we have
charged and ready to go?” Jeb asked Gravel.
Gravel was their mechanic and he was in charge of making
sure the bikes and other vehicles were gassed up and ready to go. Most of the
bikes and cages had been modified to take homemade fuel after gas had started to
become scarce. Thank fuck they’d found Trey a few years ago and he’d come up
with a shit ton of ideas and gadgets, everything from making their own gas, to
filtering rain water, the man was a damned genius.
“Not enough if you guys are out there very long. Ten bikes
are nearing full, but most of the others are going to take at least an hour to
get going. It’s not like pumping gas into a normal tank man, you know that. We
only have thirteen that take regular fuel now and we’re running low on that
again too,” Gravel muttered, his face grim.
“I hate these assholes, they always ruin our day. You know,
we were always a bunch of self-centered dicks before the deadheads showed up,
but at least we don’t want to murder what’s left of humanity.” Viper muttered,
earning nods and head shakes from the men.
“Alright, no time to debate this bullshit, let’s get our
asses in gear. Jeb what do you think? How do we take these dumb fucks out?”
Grit questioned.
“I’ll take Harry and Len with me to get a look at what we’re
dealing with, and the rest of you set up about half a mile from the start of
the blocking along the highway. Don’t forget that these Grinder idiots aren’t
the only thing we have to deal with, so watch each other’s backs. We don’t want
any deadheads making this harder than it has to be by biting one of us. Now
let’s get a move on it.” Jeb watched as the men piled out of the gatehouse
heading towards the garage where the bikes and the trucks were stored before
turning to Grit.
“Grit, you know you can’t come with us. We need one of us
here to keep an eye on things,” Jeb commanded.
“I know, but it still ticks me off that I have to stay here
while you go off and risk your hide.” Grit muttered, looking grim.
After a vote six months ago, either him or Grit—the club’s
president—had to remain safely behind the walls so they weren’t left without a
chain of command. They’d learned the hard way that being left without any
leadership caused mayhem in the ranks. Grit understood why it was necessary,
but he hated sending them out on dangerous runs without him. He’d offered to be
the one who stayed behind most of the time, mainly because he knew Jeb well
enough to know that being cooped up too long was a bad idea for him.
Jeb had some issues with walls after his stint in prison a
few years before the deadheads made their appearance. It was hard for any man
to feel pinned in or locked up, but for men like them it was even harder.
Bikers had the open road in their blood and not being able to ride, even if you
did have to fight off deadheads, was as close to hell as any biker could get.
Jeb knew that Grit felt that pain more than he did because of his forced
confinement and it made him feel a little guilty. He knew he should offer to
stay behind more often, but at his core, he knew he was a selfish bastard. Jeb
reached out and clasped Grit’s shoulder in a brotherly hug, which Grit returned
before he pulled away and started out the door.
“Play it safe brother,” Grit cautioned, as Jeb let the screen
door slam behind him.
Jeb followed the men into the hanger heading towards the gun
room. He moved into the room where the men were already strapping on weapons.
He joined them as he put on his vest, inserting two handguns into the holsters,
before attaching a machete to his belt and picking up an AK-47. He grabbed a
few extra clips, which he inserted into the hooks and pockets on his gear.
“Let’s get a move on it boys.” He grunted, as he headed over
to his bike fully loaded. Harry and Len were already stocked up and waiting on
him when he walked over.
“You think they’ll have that crazy bastard with them again?”
Len asked, frowning. He pulled his cut back on before he climbed onto his bike.
Jeb grunted as he opened his saddle bag making sure he still had cartridges for
the flare gun, just in case they got into trouble.
“Yeah, you know that fucker just can’t stay away.” Harry
grumbled, his face twisted into a frown. Jeb didn’t disagree, the man they were
talking about was called, “The Shepherd”, by his crazy cult followers. He was
the nastiest of the group, and they’d managed to kill half of his insane flock,
but they hadn’t gotten the Shepherd, and he’d showed up a month later with new
followers. Jeb hated the fact that they’d missed the bastard again the second
time too. He still couldn’t figure out how the crazy son-of-a-bitch was
escaping.
“Don’t know, but I hope he is because I have a bullet with
that assholes name on it.” Jeb muttered as he climbed on his bike. He looked
around seeing that most of the men were locked and loaded. He motioned for them
to get moving, kicking his own ride into gear, and headed out toward the gate
with a grim determination to kill that freak and his followers this time.
Jeb, Len, and Harry headed out the gates like bats out of
hell, ready to help the group Scratches and Bleak led. Jeb hoped like hell
those dickheads hadn’t killed any of his friends because he’d already lost too
many to count. Jeb kept an eye out for deadheads in the road as he zoomed by
burnt out buildings and broken-down cars with grass growing out of them. The
world was becoming one of those eerie places you used to see on horror flicks
that were abandoned and overgrown. Manicured lawns became three-foot grass
sprinkled with weeds, broken lawn furniture, and fallen fences. It was funny
that just two years ago, the street he was currently driving down had been a
ritzy middle-class suburb, and now it was a ghost town filled with monsters.
Jeb slowed down maneuvering around another car, only to
swerve quickly to avoid a deadhead that tried to grab him as he went by. It was
wearing a ripped and faded business suit and looked like it was nearing the end
of its life cycle. He could tell because its eyes looked red—after a while
deadhead’s eyes were nothing but busted blood vessels—and it had some kind of
cysts or boils on its face, drooling like a dog with rabies. Jeb had slowed
down enough that the things arms smacked into his side and he hissed with pain,
grunting as he held the bike steady and zoomed by it. He glanced back to make
sure that Harry and Len made it around ok and was glad to see they’d swung the
curve a bit wider than he had and didn’t have any issues avoiding the deadhead.
Satisfied that they’d made it through, he headed out to the main highway heading
towards the hilltop area where they’d be able to get a good look at what they
were dealing with.
Scratches and Bleak would lead them down the highway that
the club had lined with cars to keep the deadheads off the road, so that if
they were being chased, they weren’t also dealing with swerving to avoid
deadheads—alive or dead. Of course, the alive part could be debated because
they weren’t human, but he supposed they were living. The club had lined the
road with the heaviest SUV’s and Semi-trailers for about ten miles. To keep
anyone from slipping under the trailers to escape the long stretch of flat
terrain, they’d welded panels to the sides of the trailers, as well as, filled
in the gaps between trailers the same way. That way anyone following them would
be forced to go the way they herded them. The idea—from some guy who’d once
been a truck driver, who’d joined them about a year ago after they’d saved him
and his sister. Thankfully they saved them because that had saved their asses
more than once as well.
Grit—who wasn’t a fan of adding to their responsibilities by
saving people—had even said that it was a good thing that Jeb and Stitch had
brought him back, and from Grit that was high praises. His brother wasn’t a
bleeding heart like he seemed to be, and he didn’t want to bring in any
survivors they found outside the walls—Grit always said bringing people in was
too risky.
Jeb couldn’t argue that point, and more than once he had to
put down some idiot who tried something stupid. Jeb figured they didn’t have
much choice about bringing people into their home when they had lost men just
about every time they stepped foot outside of the gates. When the club was
strong before the world imploded, maybe they might have been able to get away
with that, but not when they were only a ragtag outfit of bikers and civilians
living together just trying not to die. There wasn’t much of humanity left, and
Jeb figured those that were had to stick together. Bikers for the most part
were good at judging people and their intentions. One good thing about who
they’d been before the fall of the world, was that they were good at handling
shit. Only a dozen or so of the people they’d added to the compound over the
past two years had turned out to be bad eggs.
They began pulling up to the hilltop bridge that would give
him a good view down the road, so that he could see what they were dealing with
before heading down to where the others were waiting on them. Jeb climbed off
his bike, pulling his gun out of its’ holster, looking around at the area
surrounding him checking for deadheads. Two of them were moving jerkily out of
the trees a few feet away and Jeb raised the Glock. He realized as he shot the
young woman—who was wearing a yellow sundress that was dirty and covered in grass
stains, with a bite mark on her cheek—right between the eyes, that she’d had a
broken leg. He made quick work of the second deadhead too, shooting him in the
head as well, watching as the body fall with a dispassionate stare not fazed by
the grimy jeans and ripped Led Zeplin t-shirt the kid wore, or the fact that he
had a bear trap clamped on his right leg.
Len and Harry climbed off their bikes taking out a few other
deadhead’s who’d come up the hill running at them. Jeb turned to the road,
walking to the edge with his binoculars in his hand trusting his men to take
care of any deadheads in the area before they attacked him. He zoomed out
seeing the riders coming towards them. He could tell that they were still about
two miles out, but they were coming in fast and hard. He could just barely see
the bikes and the semi that they were escorting with any supplies or people
that they were bringing home, but he still couldn’t see what was chasing them.
“Jeb, shit, look out,” Harry cried.
Jeb dropped the binoculars from his face and spun to see
what Harry was yelling about. He saw four deadheads coming out of the tree line
fast, two of them foaming at the mouth. Yuck, that drooling shit was always
fucking nasty. Jeb knew that none of them liked seeing the insane creatures
they’d become if one of these things bit them. He wasn’t a fan of the spit
dribbling off their rotted teeth and down their bodies because it was always
disgusting—even if he did know it meant that within days the things would be
dead. He shot one of the deadheads who was closest to him while he tossed the
binoculars down on a patch of grass and grabbed his other gun shooting the
second one while backing up quickly, trying to avoid the two still coming for
him.
His foot slipped on some loose gravel, cursing as he fell
backwards landing hard on his ass. Jeb shot the one in front missing anything
important. Cursing, he shoved backwards trying to escape the deadhead that was
only inches away from him. Close enough that the stench from his likely festering
wounds and rotten teeth made him gag. He shot again hitting the fucker between
the eyes groaning as it fell forward onto him, smearing god knew what all over
his chest. He grunted as he shot the last of the damned things, watching it
fall to the gravel road. He sat there under the nasty thing trying not to vomit
from the odor pouring off the body. He glanced over to see why Harry and Len
hadn’t come to his rescue.
Jeb wasn’t surprised to see them killing two more deadheads,
with at least ten more at their feet, because he’d heard them shooting when
he’d been fighting the four coming at him. He was just damned glad Harry had
thought to check his back when he did because he’d likely have been dead if he
hadn’t. Fuck, he hated these diseased
mother-fuckers. Jeb shoved hard on the things shoulder trying to get it off
him. It took a minute because the dead man had been rather large and he was now
dead weight lying on him. Jeb managed to shove it off himself and got to his
feet, wiping the goo from his hand onto his pants, hoping like hell whatever it
was didn’t give him some sort of infection or turn him into a deadhead. He
glanced down and let out a little growl because the nasty shit was all over his
cut and his t-shirt, but his jeans were relatively clean making him realize
that the goo was likely the drool the fucker had all over him. Yuck.
He pulled the bandana off that he’d wrapped around his face, heading
over to his bike to grab some rags from his saddle bags.
“You alright?” Len asked, watching Jeb wipe his face with
the rag, removing any blood that might have splattered on his face when he’d
shot the thing on top of him.
“Just a little gooey. Doesn’t look like anything got on my
face, but the bandana is done for.” Jeb shrugged, tossing the bandana and rags
into the little plastic bag. He kept the used rags in plastic bags after he
used them until he could wash and bake them dry in the dryers they ran, to kill
the virus. He pulled a bottle of alcohol from his pack and used some of it to
wash his hands before he took out another bandana and put it on over his face
covering his nose and mouth. They’d started doing that as soon as they’d
learned that the virus spread via blood too. Jeb knew it wasn’t a full proof
way to stop blood from getting into their system, but it was at least a measure
they could take.
“Yeah, I noticed those second two were about to pop.” Harry
muttered. “Sorry it was a late warning. We didn’t expect to find that many up
here. We send the team up here to clear it once a week, shouldn’t have been
this many here. I wonder where they’re coming from?”
“They’re from that little community that we traded with a
month or so ago.” Len muttered. “Fuck, when are good people going to stop
dying. They had a good set up on that air force base, even if the walls were
made of wood. Wonder what happened?”
“How do you know that’s where they’re from?” Jeb asked,
wondering how the other man could know.
“I recognized five of them, and for sure two of them had
never been out of the compound because I talked to them the night we were
there.” Len explained, his face grim as he shook his head and turned to scan
the area again.
“Shit, well that’s another one down then. It’s the second
one this month that fell. Eventually there won’t be anyone left but us and the
world will be filled with these diseased bastards.” Harry muttered, and Jeb
couldn’t disagree. He wasn’t even sure that they’d survive this damned thing
anymore. There wasn’t a cure coming, that much was clear after two years, but
he’d hoped that maybe they could hold out till they all died off, but that was
likely a pipe dream.
“Let me see if I can see what Scratches and Bleak are
dealing with so we can go get the men in formation to take them out. I want
these cult assholes dead before the end of the day for fucks sake, and we have
to get our asses moving if that’s the case.” Jeb moved over to the discarded
binoculars, glad to see when he lifted them up that he hadn’t damaged them when
he’d tossed them. Thankfully they were military grade and made for durability.
Lifting them to his eyes he stepped to the edge again,
looking out see that during their fight, the group had gotten a lot closer. He
could see that they had about five military trucks zooming up behind them.
Fuck, those weren’t going to be easy to take out. He was glad that Tim was with
the team he’d taken out, because the man had likely brought along some rocket
launchers. He was former military and he’d brought a lot of nice toys with him
and his four guys when he’d joined them. Jeb lowered the binoculars heading to
his bike.
“Let’s move. We need to get down there and set up. I want
men along both sides with the heavy stuff ready. We are going to be cutting
this one close boys.” Jeb ordered, as he
kicked his bike into gear, idling while he waited on Harry and Len to do the
same.
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