Madness Rules - 04 Read online

  She said nothing more, only staring up at him expectantly.

  “Okay,” he said, “let’s go see what Johnsonburg has in store for us.”

  They walked south on Wilcox Road for a good half a mile before seeing their first house. It was an old country home with a flat metal roof that looked like it had been dipped in a bucket of Army green paint. Its only redeeming qualities were a large wraparound porch and a bright green and yellow John Deere tractor sitting in the front yard. The tractor had a for sale sign taped to the front of the grille.

  Tanner led them up to the house, eyeing several partially opened windows for any clue that someone might still be inside. No heads bobbed out from behind swaying curtains, and the only sound was that of the wind blowing a set of chimes hanging from the eaves. The porch had a thick cobweb stretching between the wooden pillars, and Samantha pointed to a giant spider sitting quietly in the center.

  “Yuck,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Are you kidding? He’s so big and hairy.”

  Tanner raised his eyebrows, leaving the obvious unstated.

  She grinned. “Oh, sorry.”

  He snorted, giving the bottom of the door a solid bump with his boot. No one answered. He peeked in through a small living room window. There were couches, tables, and the usual furnishings but no obvious signs of people, alive or dead. He tried the doorknob, and it turned with a slight squeak.

  He leaned in and shouted, “Relief supplies. Anyone here?”

  No reply.

  “Well?” he said, looking to Samantha. “Shall we check it out?”

  She shrugged. “We could, but what’s the point? They don’t have a car, and our packs are already stuffed with as much as we can carry.”

  Tanner tended to agree. They had a pretty good stockpile of food, water, and ammunition, and he wasn’t sure what else they hoped to find. He turned and studied the tractor sitting in the yard.

  “Do you think it still runs?” she asked.

  “Who sells a tractor that doesn’t run? Besides, it looks brand new.”

  They walked over to the tractor and gave it a quick onceover. Samantha laid her hand on one of the giant wheels as if checking the air pressure.

  “Do you know how to drive one of these things?”

  “How hard can it be? Besides, you’ll be the one doing the driving.”

  “Me?” She stared up at the levers and oversized steering wheel. “Why would I be driving?”

  Tanner draped his pack over the hood and climbed up onto the seat.

  “Because,” he said, “there’s only room for one. You’ll need to sit on my lap and steer while I work the gears.”

  Samantha looked back at the road.

  “Maybe we should just walk.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m riding in John Deere luxury.”

  Tanner turned the ignition switch, and the heavy motor came to life. He pressed the throttle slightly and listened as the diesel’s valves opened and closed.

  “Well?” he said, shouting over the engine’s noise.

  Samantha set her pack next to his and squeezed up in front of him.

  “This thing is huge,” she said, grabbing the steering wheel.

  “Its size gives you leverage.”

  She tried to turn it counterclockwise, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “It’s stuck.”

  Tanner let the clutch out, and the tractor started forward. Samantha immediately felt the wheel loosen up. She rotated it to the left and guided the tractor across the lawn and down onto Wilcox Road. Tanner kept it in low gear, and they never got over five miles an hour. Still, it beat walking.

  Ten minutes later, they arrived at a huge trucking distribution center. Several box trailers sat against the loading dock, but the heavy diesel trucks were nowhere to be seen. There was also no indication of what types of supplies were handled by the facility, and given its enormous size, it could easily take a full day to make that determination.

  Across the street was a second building, much smaller in size. A white flatbed truck sat parked in the gravel lot. He pointed toward the building, and Samantha nodded, steering the tractor in its direction. As they got closer, they saw a nondescript door at the front of the building and a sliding high bay door centered along the side. A corpse lay directly in front of the high bay door, but neither Samantha nor Tanner gave it a second look.

  The flatbed truck looked to be in good shape, and on the back rested a burnt orange Harley Davidson CVO Limited motorcycle. The huge touring bike was held securely in place with a crisscross of thick chains.

  “That looks promising,” he said over the rattle of the tractor.

  “The truck or the motorcycle?” she shouted.

  “Neither.” He killed the engine and pointed to a sign hanging in front of the building. Beer, Drive-Thru.

  “They have a drive-thru for beer?”

  “God bless America.”

  Before she could object, he squeezed by her and climbed down from the tractor. Samantha quickly followed.

  “We already have enough supplies,” she reminded him, hurrying to catch up.

  He stopped and turned to face her.

  “Sam, how long have you known me?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Seems like forever. Why?”

  “And after all that time, do you really think I’d pass by a beer distribution center without at least sampling the goods?” Without waiting for an answer, he spun back around and continued toward the door. “Besides, we’re going to need keys to the truck.”

  “Fine,” she said with a sigh, “but if we have to fight a five-hundred-pound beer monster, that’s on you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They carefully approached the front door. It was metal and heavy, and locked up as tight as a nuclear submarine. Tanner thumped on the door with the butt of his shotgun.

  No one answered.

  “Oh well,” she said, “we tried.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, heading around to the side of the building.

  The sliding high bay door was also locked, secured to a metal ring embedded in a small slab of concrete. It was enough of a deterrent to keep out teenagers in search of a six-pack but not nearly enough to stop a determined ex-con looking to wet his whistle.

  The decaying body was that of an old man in a dark blue jumpsuit with the name Willy monogrammed on the pocket. Pieces of his body were missing, probably chewed off by foxes or other hungry critters. Willy had been shot in the back, and from the looks of it, at very close range. A ring of keys hung from what remained of his rotting fingers.

  “What do you think happened to him?”

  “Looks like someone pegged him from behind as he locked up.” Tanner bent over and slipped the keys off the dead man’s fingers. “Luckily, they weren’t interested in the beer.”

  He used the keys to unlock the padlock that was holding the high bay door shut.

  “You ready?”

  She slid her rifle off her shoulder and nodded, her face suddenly becoming serious.

  Tanner shoved the door up and stepped back with his shotgun at the ready.

  The single room building was dark, but enough light shone in to see that the place had been cleared out. Two dented silver kegs were lying sideways in the far corner, and a case of bottles was smashed in the middle of the concrete floor.

  “It’s times like this I think God is punishing me,” he said, slowly entering the building.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

  “I don’t, but that doesn’t keep Him from punishing me.”

  She tilted her head sideways, trying to make sense of his strange logic.

  Tanner reached the broken beer bottles and pushed them around with his foot. A big smile crossed his lips.

  “Well, what have we here?”

  A single sixteen-ounce bottle of Straub lager remain
ed intact. He bent down and carefully pulled the bottle free from its unlucky brothers and sisters.

  Samantha watched him from the doorway, occasionally glancing over her shoulder. She seemed especially nervous.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” She turned and studied the street. “It feels like someone’s watching us.”

  “You see anyone?”

  “No, it’s just a feeling.”

  “You get that feeling often?” he said, walking past her toward the tractor.

  “Not really.”

  He glanced around as he stuffed the bottle into a side pocket on his pack.

  “You’re not going to drink it?” she asked.

  He patted the bottle. “Only got the one. Figure I’ll save it for a special occasion.”

  “What kind of special occasion? Like your birthday?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “So… when is your birthday?”

  “Christmas Day.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “Nope. I’m a Christmas baby. My mother always said it’s the reason I’m so sweet and lovable.” He carried his pack to the truck and set it on the wooden boards lining the bed. “What about you, Sam? When’s your birthday?”

  Samantha looked at her feet as if embarrassed by the question.

  “It’s in May,” she mumbled softly.

  “May what?”

  “May 10th.”

  Tanner furrowed his brow. “That’s in like two days.”

  She shrugged.

  “And when were you going to tell me this?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not important anymore.”

  He turned and faced her.

  “Not important? You’re going to be turning ten years old.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Like I said, twelve years old. That’s a big day. If you’re not back at your mom’s by then, we’ll try to do something special. Maybe find us some Ding Dongs and a candle.”

  “That sounds … nice,” she said, making a funny face.

  He smiled and ruffled her hair.

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  She smiled too. “Okay.” She looked up at the huge touring bike sitting on the back of the truck. “What should we do with that?”

  “We keep it.”

  “Why?”

  “Insurance, in case we break down or run out of gas. It’s got two seats and enough room for our packs.”

  “But aren’t motorcycles dangerous?”

  He laughed. “We’re wandering a wasteland of zombies, criminals, and wild animals and you’re worried about a motorcycle.”

  “Aha! So they are zombies.”

  “Just a figure of speech.”

  He swung the truck door open and climbed in, fumbling with the ring of keys until he found the right one. Samantha climbed up beside him. He gave the key a turn and, after a moment, the engine turned over. The fuel gauge was barely above the empty line.

  “We’re not going to get far unless we can find some gas.”

  She bounced up and down on the seat a few times.

  “I don’t like this truck, anyway,” she said. “The springs are poking me in the butt.”

  “So quit bouncing on them.”

  “I’m just saying that it’s not as comfortable as our last car.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s better than a tractor. Baby steps, darlin’.”

  Tanner popped the truck into gear, and they eased out of the gravel parking lot.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Lincoln Pike stared at himself in the small cabin mirror. His reflection was clear but slightly warped because of a bow in the polished glass.

  “President Lincoln Pike,” he said in a regal voice, as if introducing himself to a room full of admiring subjects. He liked the sound of it. President Lincoln Pike. It sort of rolled off the tongue like a witty compliment to a beautiful woman.

  He smoothed back his mane of salt and pepper hair, admiring its thickness and vitality. His mother had told him that a man with a full head of hair will go places that a bald one will not. And by God, she had been right. He had gone all the way to the top. Admittedly, it was to the top of a nation that was a shadow of its former self, but that in no way took from his ascension. He was, at least in his own mind, the most important and powerful man alive.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, replaying the past week. His spy, and clandestine lover, Yumi Tanaka, had murdered President Rosalyn Glass. Cut her throat, as he had heard it told. Pike couldn’t imagine why Yumi had done something so drastic. She had always hated President Glass, but she also understood that killing her would be the end of everything they had built together. All he could surmise was that Yumi’s actions must have been driven by necessity. That likely meant that she had killed the president to protect him. Yumi was, if nothing else, loyal to a fault.

  He had desperately wanted to see the president’s butchered body but could never quite find a way to make the request without it sounding weird, disturbed even. Then without warning, General Carr had had the body cremated and her ashes dumped from a military C130 like sewage from a jetliner—which in retrospect, seemed fitting enough.

  Pike had, however, gone to see Yumi’s corpse in Mount Weather’s small morgue. Her cold body lay stretched out, naked under a white sheet, and he remembered feeling embarrassed for her. But shame was not the only thing he felt. There was also pain that reached deep into his gut. Only with her passing did he really begin to understand how important she had been to him. Yumi was quite simply the love of his life. She was an evil bitch to be sure, but she was his evil bitch.

  General Carr had choked the life out of his beloved. Oh sure, the doctors had some complicated terms for the rupturing of her trachea, but the hard truth was that when Carr was finished, her throat looked like a crumpled soda can. He remembered gently touching the purple indents of the general’s fingers on her soft flesh and wondering whether Yumi’s last thoughts had been of him.

  Emotion suddenly threatened to overwhelm him, and he swallowed hard to keep the vomit from forcing its way out. He shook his head, quickly opening his eyes and staring once again into the mirror. He forced a smile. Yumi didn’t matter anymore. She was gone, and he had to accept that even the most powerful man in the world couldn’t bring her back. As for General Carr, he would pay for what he had done. Not today perhaps, but eventually. If it came down to it, Pike would personally sharpen the knife that found its way into the general’s vicious heart.

  “Revenge,” a voice whispered from behind him.

  President Pike spun around.

  He was alone.

  He held his breath and listened. There was a slight tapping as people walked down the metal corridor outside his room, the high-pitched whine of water flowing through old copper pipes, and the incessant ticking of a clock hanging on the cabin wall. But no voices. Had he said the words himself? Sometimes that happened. Thoughts became words. Sure, that was it. He smiled and let out the breath, turning to face the mirror once again.

  Yumi’s reflection stared back at him.

  Pike stumbled away from the mirror, trying to force a scream. He managed only a soft gasp, like that of a man being strangled with a rope. He squeezed his eyes shut and slowly reopened them, certain that the apparition would disappear.

  She didn’t. Yumi Tanaka stood about five feet behind him, an understanding smile on her face.

  “You’re—you’re dead,” he stuttered, afraid to turn around and face her.

  She held a finger to her lips.

  “Quiet, or they’ll hear you.”

  He slowly turned, once again confident that Yumi would vanish as quickly as she had appeared. And once again, she didn’t. As impossible as it was, Yumi was there with him.

  “What are you?” he breathed.

  “What kind of greeting is that?”

  He stud
ied her. She certainly didn’t appear to be a ghost. He couldn’t see through her, and there was no unusual chill in the air. He reached out and touched her shoulder, unsure if his fingers would find flesh or simply pass through her. She felt solid and warm.