Free Zompoc Survivor: Odyssey by Ben Reeder

maintenance yard and turned back south.
    “Give me a minute,” she said.
    “Well, shopping post apocalypse is a pain in the ass,” I said as I drove past the shopping center. Infected were milling around in the parking lot, and they started shuffling our way as we passed.
    “So is driving,” she said. “We need to be about a mile north of here.” I turned right at the first intersection I could find, and ended up headed down a concrete road that ran by a trailer park. The south side of the road was open fields, and the north side gave way to what had once been well manicured lawns. Two weeks without maintenance had taken a little of the cultivated edge from them, and the occasional bloodstain or lump of bloody goo on the road robbed it of its rural charm. After half a mile, things went from rural to rustic, spoiled by the occasional blank eyed face staring at us from a window. Graveled alleys that ran behind houses gave way to simple ruts in the grass. Then we came to a sign that said “Pavement Ends.”
    “Keep going,” Amy said as we neared the straight line of pavement. “You’re looking for 638 Avenue.” I grunted an affirmative, hoping that the street sign was still there. Luck was with us, and I found myself turning north a mile later. I marveled at how clear the demarcation was between “town” and “country.” Like the southern side of Auburn, the western edge was an all or nothing thing. One side, houses and streets, on the other, open countryside. Like Missouri, Nebraska was pretty in the fall, though October was feeling more like November just then. Then the town part fell away and we were traveling down what looked like any country road miles away from a town.
    Pavement started again with no sign to warn us, and I pulled to a stop at an intersection with a broader road. Off to our right was an upholstery shop, and a cemetery loomed across the larger road to the left.
    “This is it,” Amy said, pointing to a green street sign across the way. “This is 136. Turn left.” I pulled onto the highway, and wished for a radio station. At this point, even talk radio would have been a welcome distraction. Rural Nebraska was awful scenic, but after a certain point, the only thing that set it apart from Kansas was a slight roll to the landscape.
     
    Two hours and a lot of turns later, we found a convoy of Army trucks and Humvees just north of a little town called Clay Center. They were pulled over on the south side of the road, and we could see bodies littering the parking lot of the big, tan building beside them. Worse still, there were dozens of infected walking around in the parking lot, along the road, and a few were wandering in the field on the north side of the road. The weapons on the convoy’s vehicles were all pointed toward the building, and the tan walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. Only one of the vehicles showed serious damage. The lead Humvee was blackened and the roof and doors were gone. I could see them laying several yards away on either side of it.
    “So, we just run on through, right?” Amy asked.
    “No,” I said. “We need to get into those trucks and see if they have a working radio, or find out where they’re from. I figure this was a supply convoy that got overrun. Let’s see what kind of supplies they were carrying. Who knows, maybe they have crates of M4s and ammo.”
    “And maybe we’re risking our asses for three truckloads of tongue depressors and rectal thermometers,” she said. “But, now I have to know. Damn it, Dave. So, what’s Plan A?” I looked at the horde for a couple of minutes as I thought about it. Porsche and I had drawn off a horde of ghouls back in Springfield just by showing up and getting their attention. Once you had the attention of the infected, you had it until something else came along. Dumb as rocks, but persistent. The problem was that at the time, we hadn’t planned on going back to Kickapoo High School, so we hadn’t worried