Ten-Four by Ken Brosky

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Ten-Four

By Ken Brosky

First published in: Alternate Species

Good morning folks. This is Jack Hutchingston, United Federal Shipping on the old radio giving a salutations to anyone else stuck on the road with a shit trucking assignment like me. Helluva storm we got here in Northern Idaho. Raining cats and dogs, but don’t worry about me driving; I’m probably one of the best UFS has on their payroll. Man, I would advise anyone heading east on the main Interstates to watch out for this one, as it’s about to pass through the Dakotas and right on to Wisconsin and Illinois.

Speaking of the Dakotas, I figure I aught to let you in on a little story that happened to me not twelve hours ago, as I just hit the border of Minnesota and South Dakota. A hulluva a story, I must admit. Darn-near didn’t make it out of that graveyard alive, what with those damn zombies and all.

For those of you border truckers who never take a trip to the Midwest, I can’t help but feel sorry for ya. It’s turned into a beautiful piece of land, and it seems like new, small non-Corporation towns are popping up every day. I like to take a few assignments across the country when the old ball and chain is getting on my last nerve, and sometimes just to see the sights. Helluva lot of scenery out here, fellas. Especially last night in the Dakotas.

Like I was saying, it was storming pretty damn hard all through last night, and there I was at the border of the Dakotas. Man, if you haven’t seen the giant fencing they put around the borders of the two states, you are missing out. Guard towers and all, it is one impressive sight. Well, as you know, every time it rains, the Nitrate-12 that’s been stored up in our atmosphere every since we used it in the first HMO War gets mixed in with the rain. Small amounts, mostly, and harmless to us humans. Well, us living humans, no doubt.

For those of you international Truckers hired for special deliveries, you may not know about the Dakotas. After the Nitrate-12 bombs were found to have some interesting side-effects, the Corporations banded together and turned the Dakotas into one gigantic cemetery. Nitrate-12 has this funny problem of waking the dead. Literally. So after the Corporation wars ended in 2610, we figured everything was cool. Then it rained, and this napalm that had evaporated and mixed with the pollutants in the air came back down. Suddenly, people are complaining that their long-dead relatives are outside the doors to their houses. Goddamn half-skeletons are walking around chewing on pedestrians, for cryin’ out loud! You international folks didn’t see too much of this happening because the Nitrate-12 was mostly used between the HMO’s that controlled only U.S. Cities.

But I’m probably preachin’ shit you all know, so lemme continue. Well, the Corporations worked quick to transport all the dead to the Dakotas, and after burning everything that came back to “life” (and I use the term very loosely), they erected a large fence and the dead from the cities have been transported their from then on. Sure, we get a few zombies here and there when a tribesman or loner in the middle of nowhere dies, but that’s no big deal. For the most part, zombies really don’t exist outside of the Dakotas. Once in awhile, a really fresh one will get infected with the Nitrate-12 and will sneak out of the Dakotas or wherever he died or even en route. Sometimes that zombie will go on living like nothing ever happened; his taste for raw meat would go on unnoticed anyways in society now. Sometimes that zombie fool will accidentally mix blood with another carcass, or drool on it, or actually intentionally spit on it and infect it and that carcass will come back to life and if it’s fresh enough with enough brain cells left, that zombie will go on like nothing ever happened. And who really cares? It’s when they start killing people and tearing them to pieces when the HMO’s step in. Especially when you got a half-skeleton thing running around a city trying to take a bite out of your arm.

Damn, I’m probably boring half of you to death, which is exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do. So anywho, I’m at the border of the Dakotas not ten hours ago. It was about nine o’clock in the evening when I reached it.

And right there at the gate is the State Patrol car. Old William Prince the third, all two hundred-fifty pounds of him leaning against the squad car in the pouring rain. He’s chewing on a damp cigar like he always does. For those of you who aren’t acquainted with Deputy Willy, you’re missing out. The man is a classic character from head to toe. Anyone who’s gone through the Dakotas knows exactly what I’m talking about.

So I pull over and step out of my truck. I leave the engine running, because there ain’t no way I’m not passing that gate that night.

“What’s goin’ on here, Willy?” I asked. It’s pouring hard, and I was soaked head to toe before I even reached him.

Willy spat on the ground. “Got a big infestation from the rain in the Southwestern quarter. Shitload of them buggers from one of them run-down apartments.” The apartments are what most of us “zombie-informed” folks call the buildings were dead bodies are stacked ten, twenty, even fifty-high instead of being buried. Less Nitrate-12 rainwater can reach em, and when it does, it’s damn-near impossible for them to break out of their caskets.

“Well I don’t see what this has to do with me and my truck,” I said to the Deputy.

“Federated Corporation is sending in a Purification Squad tomorrow morning. I’m suggesting every trucker who wants to pass through here to wait it out in the nearest city till then. It just ain’t safe, with so many of them running around. A few of em are digging up old friends and infecting them, too. Could get ugly,” old Willy says.

“That may be,” I tell him, “but I’ve got me a truckload of Heroin that I got to get to Seattle, and pronto. Zombies or no zombies, I need to be there by tomorrow night, Sheriff.”

Sheriff Willy spits again. “I can’t really stop you. All I can tell you is that I recommend against it. If you gotta go, you gotta go. You have some sort of protection?”

Now if there is one thing I cannot stress enough to all you green truckers out there, it’s that you always carry protection. Especially if you cross the country like I do. I dunno how you city hoppers fare, but out here where there aren’t any pretty-boy HMO soldiers to guard ya, we got our fare share of bandits, tribesman, and desperate souls who’ll do anything to get at whatever you’re hauling, even if it’s a shipment of toilet seats. For Willy to ask me if I was strapped was damn-near an insult.

“Of course I got protection, Willy!” I say kindly. “You’ve known me for three years. Are you tellin’ me you don’t think I carry protection when I travel across this shithole of a country?”

“No I suppose not,” he says and with that, it was settled. I got back in my cab and politely waited for Old Willy to move his rust bucket off the road. I honk twice at the guard tower and sure enough, the gate opens. And there I was, in the Dakotas again. In the biggest fucking cemetery in the entire world.

Now my first mistake was not gassing up before I passed through that giant metal gate. There’s gas stations on every main road leading into the Dakotas right up to the gates, and there was one just off to the right where Deputy Willy’s car was. Didn’t even notice it. I suppose Deputy Willy has that effect on guys, and I apologize now to Deputy Willy because this isn’t the last time I’m going to make fun of him in my story. It’s just too damned easy.

For those of you who have never been to the Dakotas: it’s a beautiful place. Since there’s only two small towns, mainly for the caretakers of the graves and mausoleums, the place is just free of civilization, save for the random ten-story-tall buildings filled with dead bodies. But even then, it’s almost as though the entire place is a lost civilization. I know that probably sounds cheesy, but whenever I pass through the place, I can’t help but feel this crazy sense that I’m completely alone. Every once in awhile, you can spot a giant herd of buffalo in the distance. I hear there’s at least twelve million wild animals in the Dakotas now, and it’s really a shame that so few people ever get the chance to see them. I mean, the Dakotas really aren’t dangerous at all after a purification team comes in and destroys anything that came back after a rainfall. Once in awhile, you get an animal that scavengers missed, and that can be trouble, but that’s rare, considering how many coyotes and wolves inhabit this land.

All right, I’m through plugging the Dakotas as a vacation spot. The point is that after about an hour of driving through the southeastern area of South Dakota, I was running on fumes and thankfully saw the city of Mitchell just a few miles ahead. I could hardly spot it what with all of the giant buildings on either side of the highway. Most of em were ten, twenty years old, and already starting to show wear and tear from harsh weather conditions. Now that sent a chill down my spine, as I estimated at least a thousand corpses in each one. That would be a big problem down the road if rainwater ever seeped into those places.

So there I was in Mitchell. When it rains, everyone goes into a large underground bunker and waits for the purification teams to dispose of anything that crawled outta of their grave. I got to the gas station and—wouldn’t you know it—no one was around. I considered trying to talk my way into the bunker for assistance, but I knew they’d be armed to the teeth and would shoot me on sight. Probably would figure me to be a fresh zombie who was trying to sweet talk his way in for some fresh food.

I tried using a credit card, but the pumps were turned off. Just my luck, of course: getting stuck in the most dangerous location in the world. Lucky for me, I always keep a two-gallon reserve container in the back of my cab. I grabbed that, hidden in a compartment below my sleeping bag; all you truckers know about that. What most of you don’t us that large compartment for is an armory. For those of us who travel regularly across the land of America, a shotgun and a sharp blade is a must. A shotgun for attackers, and a sharp blade for other, unworldly creatures. When bullets just won’t cut it, you gotta go old-school.

I decided against the shotgun, what with the giant gas-tanks all around my truck and all, so I took my Japanese hand-crafted Katana and reserve gas and stepped out into the cold, night air. While gassing up, I could see two of ‘em, off on the other side of the highway, standing under a lighted bar sign. They must have been pretty well-decayed, because they just stood there, watching me. One of them tried to move a little, and fell over right away. Rigor mortis: if a zombie has been dead for too long, or doesn’t get a fresh supply of meat daily, it starts to stiffen up. Just a tip to truckers passing through the Dakotas.

Gassed up, it was important that I hauled ass to the town of Murdo. I could make it, but not by much. I had to keep a steady fifty-five miles per hour to make the best use of the remaining gas, and I couldn’t stop for anything. Well, on that cold, rainy night, “anything” constituted mainly of about forty walking dead who just happened to have lurched their way onto the freeway. What could I do? I ran the suckers over and never looked back, all the while keeping a steady pace of fifty-five.

This may be going off on a tangent again—and I apologize for it—but I can’t help but stress just how beautiful the Dakotas really are, especially when you’re passing through a giant ghost town or a big row of mausoleums holding thousands of dead like cheap apartments. Even though I knew at any minute, my gas could run out and strand me in the middle of the most dangerous place on the planet, in the cold rain that sent a shiver down my spine every time my windshield wipers squeaked across the glass, I couldn’t help but enjoy the sites.

Well, I got to Murdo, thank God. Obviously I did, or I wouldn’t be telling you this story right now, probably boring you all to death. But here is where the story really starts to get interesting, because like the town before it, the gas pumps were turned off. Apparently, the locals had decided that no one in their right mind—even a trucker crazy enough to take a job hauling prime drugs across the country—would be traveling through the Dakotas on a night like this. In the rain.

So what else could I do, besides charge up my energy cells? I hate energy cells for two reasons: they take close to two hours to fully charge up, and—more importantly—in an older, beat-up cab like mine, they have a tendency to short out in the rain. Don’t get me wrong; I always use fuel cells—I love what’s left of the environment! But when it rains, I always switch my power to good old fossil fuel.

So I’m in the southwestern part of South Dakota, charging up my power cells at the agonizing speed of a thousand volts per minute. And there they are. A shitload of the buggers, no more than a few days old. It’s a turned-over truck that was hauling a hundred-plus bodies to their new homes in the Dakotas, the bodies strewn all over the ditch just off of the highway, about a half a mile past the gas station. I quickly ran back into my cab and got my shotgun, putting my blade on the driver’s seat and shutting the door. Never leave a weapon sitting around if you can: fresh zombies are likely to grab it and use it on you if they get the chance. And the ones that had begun noticing me were starting to make their way towards the gas station.

Damn, I thought. This is where I was going to die. This was the legacy old Sammy Hutchingston was going to leave: thirty years old, a successful truck driver without a permanent address, and a helluva shot. I picked the three fastest ones out when they were still a hundred yards out, and quickly re-loaded. There’s a tip for you rookies: kill the quickest ones, because they’ll also be the smartest ones and—as a result—the most dangerous. The ones that have been dead for a while will be slower, more of their brains disintegrated.

And then I saw about twenty more of em, making their way out of the truck, and I knew I was in some deep shit. The nearest one had a chunk of flesh dangling from his beard, and I said a short prayer for the poor truckers who were no doubt resting in the bellies of more than twenty undead.

I picked eight more off before any of them could even get under the shelter of the gas station, and my shotgun was dry. I had a good run, I thought, but there’s no way I can take out twelve-plus zombies with a dinky blade. I reached into my jean jacket pocket and pulled out a fat cigar. I lit it and inhaled deeply. It felt good, and I watched those bastards as they slowly made their way under the metal canopy where the unleaded pumps were. There they were, some of the older ones dragging their feet, some of the others approaching me cautiously, keeping their eyes on the shotgun at my feet.

“Go on,” I said, chewing on my cigar. “I ain’t got anymore bullets left anyways.”

One of them—probably recently dead—understood it and came rushing at me as hard as he could. I tell you this: I almost froze when I saw the hunger in his eyes, fresh trucker blood on his lips. He must have gotten a pretty chunk of meat from the drivers because he was at full health as he charged at me. Unfortunately for him, I still had my blade and I used it to quickly sever the nerve to the brain on the back of the bastard’s neck. He wasn’t really completely dead, though; no zombie is until it’s burned to ashes. But at least it was completely paralyzed, and I almost felt sorry for it, laying on the ground, probably in the worst pain—a pain that wouldn’t go away until the guy was incinerated by the Purification Teams in the morning. I laughed, too, when I thought about what the poor guy was thinking at that point, wondering if he was in Hell yet or not.

I wasn’t laughing once I saw that there were about twenty more corpses making their way out of the flipped-over truck, towards the gas station. I checked my fuel cells: fifteen percent done. I figured to be on the safe side, I would need them at thirty percent to make it out of South Dakota. That meant another twenty or so minutes in this place, fighting for my life.

I took another puff of my cigar and wondered just how much reserve gas I had left. My cab could get an extreme amount of mileage per gallon, which was one of the reasons I have never purchased a newer one. That, and I’ve become somewhat attached to it, like it was my own. It almost is; two more years and I’ll have paid it off. After that, it’s all profits for me.

But more importantly than paying off my cab, I could tell from the gauge that I might just have a quarter gallon left to my name. If I could take out the twelve zombies that were nearly on top of me, I could use the gas to fight off the next wave and make it out of the Dakotas in one piece. A few chops took out some of the quicker ones, but I was already winded when the remaining eight came down on me at once. I kicked, punched, and bit—yeah, I even bit—every one of them for some breathing room, before I started hacking off legs to give me some time.

Drenched in blood, I felt two of them grab my arms as they tried to hold me down while the other two with both legs intact tried to reach for my stomach, which probably looked like a nice pot of stew to them. I wriggled like a madman and felt some give when the hands holding my arms lost their grip in the sticky—however slippery—blood of their cohorts. With a good kick to the nearest one, I let my weight drop and grabbed the two holding me by the collars of their tuxedos. One loud crack later, and they’re both on top of me, their heads split open like melons.

Man, it felt good to get some of that pent-up anger out. Probably the best way to reduce a whole lotta stress is to crack open a few zombies. I bet the Purification Squads have some of the best jobs available nowadays.

But that’s aside from the point. The point is that there was only one zombie left near my truck, and I shopped the bastard’s dilapidated head off in a matter of seconds once I shoved the two zombies off of me. That left about twenty of them making their way towards the gas station, and my cells needed another five or ten minutes at least to charge up. I reached into my toolbox in the back of my cab and pulled out a large tube for just this type of occasion. Okay, maybe I used it more often to siphon gas from other truckers’ gas tanks, but using it to siphon my own gas was a close second. I siphoned it all into an empty canister used normally to hold windshield-washing fluid. There was about the amount I had estimated: close to a quarter gallon.

They were about twenty or so feet away from the unleaded pumps, twenty of ‘em in all left. It wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, and it sure as hell was gonna leave a dent in my wallet. But I figure I would still break a profit from the entire outing once I got to Seattle and delivered the goods to the Drug Pharmacists, and the gas station was most likely insured by one of the HMO’s.

With my trusty blade in hand, I began chopping away at the clothes of the dead around me, and got myself a nice pile of suits and worn tuxedos. I dumped the gasoline on the pile and lit it with my cigar. I’m not much of a smoker, anyways.

With the pile of clothes in flames, I used my blade to scatter them all around my cab and the energy charger, including on the diesel gas pumps so that I had myself a nice circle of flames around me. Now, I’m no fool; once those flames crept their way into the diesel pumps, there would be an inferno a mile high. But I figured I could be outta there and on my way to the fine state of Washington by then.

There they came, stumbling and dragging their feet on the ground, that look in their eyes that could send a shiver down anyone’s spine. But—sure enough—when they got to that circle of flames, they stopped dead cold, and I thought I had those bastards beat. But damn! For a bunch of already dead piles of shit, they’re pretty crafty; one of ‘em reaches the circle and decides to keep on going. Not only does the bastard catch fire and burn up, he catches a few clothes on his feet and opens up a nice big gap in the circle. Well, the rest of the bastards—sans the charcoaled one who opened up the gap—decide to follow right on through.

I went to town on the first few, but I’m no Iron Man; for those of you who’ve ever been in a fight, you know what I’m talking about. For those of you who haven’t: I suggest you try it once just for the reality check. It ain’t like the movies where the heroes are karate-chopping their way through thousands of people for hours at a time; when you’re jumping and swinging your arms, you get winded fast. Especially when you weigh close to one-ninety. Especially when you’re swinging around a ten-pound blade around.

Then I heard it: the most sweetest sound in the world. No, not a woman screaming in pleasure, boys; I’m talking about that three-second beep the pump makes when your energy cells are charged up. There was still a shitload of zombies making their way through the ring, but I didn’t care at that point. I looked at the diesel pumps and saw the flames creeping their way along the hoses and said a quick prayer before I pulled out the energy cells and attached them to my truck.

Yeah, that gas station went up in flames, all right. But by then, I could only catch a glimpse of red on the horizon in the side mirror of my trusty cab, heading west towards Washington with a nice big grin on my face and more than a few drops of cold sweat running down my forehead.

Yup, old Jack Hutchingston lived to see another day, however barely. I’m almost to the border now and I’d like to leave all you truckers out there with a piece of advice that could very well save your life someday: next time you’re traveling cross-country and it starts to rain, get yourself a nice warm hotel and let it blow over. Jack Hutchingston, cab number four-three-two-six-one. Ten-four.