Zombie Road by Simpson, A. (best ereader manga .TXT) 📗

been a while since he’d played around with C4, not since his training with the military guys that first winter in Lakota. It seemed like a hundred years ago and he refamiliarized himself with what he had to do to make it go boom as the injured were carried away and others checked out the collider. The elevator shuttled them upward to the medical facilities until there were only a few left in the subbasement.

“It doesn’t look like much.” Charlie Safari said when he followed the rest of the retrievers out of the chamber. “I thought it would be, you know, fancier. More buttons and knobs and lights.”

“Ayup me duck. Probably was.” Ian said in his harsh British accent and nursing his gun blasted arm. “Until the Jester shot it up proper like.”

Others wandered in and out of the rooms, looked in fascination at the misshapen creatures floating in preserving liquids.

“Hey, Ian.” Jessie said quietly and pulled the man aside. “You ever been to Mad Ruby’s place?”

“What? Are you daft? Nobody in their right mind would go there. Besides, nobody really knows where it is now do they?”

Jessie leaned close so no one would over hear and told him the truth of the matter. Told him about the scores of women who wanted babies and would keep him busy for night after night for as long as he could stand it.

Ian eyed him suspiciously. “You wouldn’t be pulling me leg now would you?” he asked.

“You took one for the team.” Jessie said. “They’ll nurse you back to health and I think you’ll like the way they do it. I need you to do something for me, though.”

“Name it, mate. If what you telling me is true, I’ll be owing you a lot of favors.” He said with a wide smile.

Jessie found a pencil and wrote down the address of a little strip mall.

“There’s four Asian women trapped inside here.” He said. “They’re surrounded by a pretty big horde but you can deal with them. Take the ladies with you down to Ruby’s. They’re malnourished and will need her help.”

Ian narrowed his eyes. It was too much to believe. The kid had to be running some kind of con.

“What’s the catch?” Ian asked. “Nobody gives this away for free.”

“No catch.” Jessie said, his bloodshot eyes boring into Ian’s. “The women from the strip mall are pregnant. All by the same man. You’ll meet him but be careful, he has a shotgun.”

“Sounds like he’s been staying busy.” Ian said with a grin.

“The youngest is about twelve or thirteen.” Jessie said and Ian’s lecherous smile faded.

“The other is her mother, her grandmother and her great grandmother.”

“That sick bastard.” Ian said and his face clouded. “I’ll take care of it, mate.”

One of the nurses came in and started scolding him for not taking the first elevator up with the other wounded and hurried him out.

Takeo was the last to leave, the tech fascinated him and he’d spent some time trying to figure out the basics, how it worked. He pulled a Kool from behind his ear, snapped open a zippo and lit it with a flourish.

“It really must be destroyed?” he asked

Jessie saw the two new rips blasted into his usually immaculate custom leather jacket and blood spray stained his carbon fiber pants. The Kevlar had saved him from holes being punched through his chest but he moved gingerly. If he didn’t have a broken rib, he had some serious concussive bruising.

“Yeah.” Jessie said. “It really does.”

“Shame.” He said. “Need help?”

“No, I got it. This part might be tricky.”

Takeo looked at him for a long moment, gave a slight bow of his head then started for the elevator. Jessie remembered telling him about the underground storage facility but for the life of him he couldn’t remember why or if it was important. He was trying to keep the world moving in the right direction, doing the good things he remembered doing and didn’t know if the Hell Driver needed to know about the tunnels under the mountain. Was it critical knowledge that shaped the future or something that meant nothing?

“At mile marker 30 on highway 375 north of Vegas, it you head east into the desert, you’ll find friends.” Jessie blurted out.

“But not for a few more weeks.” He added when he remembered he hadn’t been there yet. Not in this time line.

Takeo cocked his head.

“If you go, tell them I sent you, tell them to give you some of the impact cloth. It’s lighter than Kevlar and a whole lot more bullet resistant.”

Takeo studied the scarred boy who was no longer a boy and raised an eyebrow. Jessie didn’t elaborate and the Hell Driver knew he’d been given something of great value. Knowledge of something secret. He inclined his head again then sauntered to the elevator as he thumbed another Kool out of an aluminum case.

Jessie shouldered the pack and started his trek down the tunnel of the particle accelerator. Marylin had calculated how far he would have to go and by keeping track of his steps he stopped after a quarter mile. He should be directly under the McKenzie river. He shone his flashlight up, found a good spot then attached the C-4 on the roof with duct tape. He inserted the blasting caps and spooled out the wire nearly back to the entrance. The first explosion sent glass, copper, wires and concrete tumbling to the floor and he waited long moments for the dust to settle enough to breathe. He shaped the next charge and blew the hole a few more feet towards the surface. He repeated the process three more times before the first trickle of water started oozing out. He took the remaining plastic explosives, climbed up into the hole and packed it tight. He was already running the second after he fired it off and heard the roar of water rushing in. The elevator was open and waiting for him. The river water was pouring out of the