Mark Clodi - Discovery

“Okay then let's get started. Good breakfast by the way Trudy. And you two wear your bike helmets and don't go taking the runt of the litter from the Olson's either! No matter how cute it is.”

Hopping out of the van Max scanned the road side for danger for the tenth time. He could not see anything moving aside from his group, the place was like a tomb, with none of the normal noise in the air, as if the very earth had swallowed up all those troublesome noisemakers, like cars, people and birds. Their proximity to the crest of the hill bothered Max, any place where zombies could rush them without being seen first bothered him. He was bothered a lot lately.

From this side of the hill the highway looked normal, except for the broken glass. The road was split with a wide median in between the two sections of road. There were no wrecks or even indications of a wreck on this side of the hill, but the glass had to come from somewhere.

“Hey Amelia, why don't you keep the van running and ready to go. Just in case. Nick you and Cory get out the brooms and sweep some of this glass up with Erin. Jess you stay in the van and keep lookout, scream if you see anything moving. Scream twice as loud if its a zombie.”

The kids got to work, there was no bellyaching or complaining these days. The three older kids hopped out and Erin, the tallest, pulled brooms out from under the sides of the roof rack where they kept them between uses. The brooms had saved a lot of time for them so far. Max liked to think they saved the tires too. Plus it kept the kids busy, nothing was worse for anyone than to not have a job, which is why whenever they stopped Max always had things for all the kids to do.

Walking forward with his revolver out Max approached the cruiser. Tom was sweeping the glass away from the side of the car so he could change the tires, Stewart also had a broom and was sweeping a path forward through another twenty feet or so of glass. She was also keeping her eyes peeling on the crest of the hill.

“I don't like this fucking hill Max.” she said without turning as he came up behind her.

“Me either. You wanna sweep or go scout?”

Stewart grimaced, she had taken a pretty bad hit in the fight a few days ago at Max's house, the bruising was healing at an unusual rate, but still caused her some pain if she had to crawl or dodge around quickly.

“You go, I got this. I can't tell what dropped all this glass, its getting tiresome finding tires, not to mention changing them all the time. We need to find another cruiser again.”

“Yeah, I know.” Max plodded forward carefully picking his way through the broken glass field. If Stewart hadn't been on the ball with slowing down the car she could have driven all the way through it and ended up on top of the hill first with four flat tires.

Going into the ditch between the two sections of road Max noticed the glass was only on the road, not even on the shoulder. “Stewart!” Max whispered at her.

She looked at him, he was just about where the glass shards ended, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

“The glass, it's not on the shoulder. Back the cars down a ways.”

She immediately understood, the glass had been placed on the road on purpose. She conference with Tom, then went back to talk to the kids and Amelia, they all redoubled their efforts to clear the glass behind them, not bothering to deal with that in front of the cruiser. Stewart pulled two guns out of the cruiser, a shotgun for Max and a rifle for her. Together they stood at the edge of the glass, waiting while Amelia and Tom slowly and quietly backed the cars down the hill, when they reached a quarter mile away Stewart and Max went into the ditch a few feet and then started towards the crest of the hill.

An oily, burnt smell greeted them as they crept closer to the crest in the hot sun. Sweat was pouring down Max's face, he wiped it with a bandanna from his pocket and they finally got a glimpse of the leeward side. There was an exit off in the distance, some small town or another was straddling the road here, between there and where they were standing was a mad pile of vehicles; there were three recreational vehicles, four or five semis with trailers and perhaps three dozen cars. Some were burned and most were damaged. The wind shifted towards them slightly and Max caught a whiff of decomposing flesh, which could mean zombies or just corpses. The nearest car was hooked up to a wrecker truck and pulled to one side of the road, all four of its tires were flat. It looked like all the vehicles had been heading east and had been towed or rolled into the center of the two roads, with quite a few still on the highway itself, forming an impenetrable barrier. The southbound lane had a couple of cars staggered on it, Max saw that a person could drive between those staggered vehicle, if you went slowly enough. They had driven on around wrecks using the southbound lane before, any way to keep moving.

The tow truck looked fairly new, it was big, painted red and white with what looked like a steel beam for lifting and towing cars. It had “Paul's A-1 Towing Service” stenciled on the white door that Max could see. None of its tires were flat either.

Stewart, nudged Max and they went down on their knees taking them out of sight of the wreckage.

“I didn't see anything.” said Stewart.

“Me either, but that car didn't hook itself up to the wrecker.”

“Super zombie?”

“That is what I am thinking.” The so called 'super' zombies were a rarity, it seemed when any zombie had enough blood or flesh to eat, it became more aware of its surroundings, faster, stronger and more intelligent. Max and the gang had fought several of them at his home while trying to rescue his wife. The zombies that went through this transformation could remember who they had been, they could talk and almost looked alive. They sometimes even remembered how they died. They were extremely good predators. Max's fear was encountering one of them who had a gun and knew how to use it. The only good thing, if there was one, about the super zombies is that sometimes they could be reasoned with. Sometimes they would make deals, when Max had finally gotten the upper hand at his home, he had stopped the fight and parted ways with one of the zombies who could have cause him more trouble. Max often wondered where Jimbo was now and how many living he had killed because of Max's weakness.

“So do we go in or go back?” Max asked. Although he was nominally the leader of the group, he deferred to Stewart in situations requiring fighting, just as he deferred to Tom in all things technical.

“Let's back off, get the cruiser's tires changed and the road clear up to here. We back the cruiser up then explore on foot. If we could take that wrecker…”

Max followed her thoughts, a wrecker would be incredibly useful, they had to backtrack a few times because of all the damaged vehicles clogging the roads, the big truck could push cars out of the way if they needed to or tug them out of the way if they had time.

“Yeah, that would be good. We need more drivers.”

“Nick up for the job?”

“You gotta be kidding.” said Max thinking of his ten year old son behind the wheel of the tow truck, “Who would shotgun with him? Erin?”

The two backed up and made their way back to the others, Max grabbed a broom and then he and Stewart came back to clear the rest of the glass from the road. Nick came with them as an extra set of eyes. The rifle his son carried was a small caliber twenty two, but he now knew how to use it. All the kids, even seven year old Jessica, the youngest, knew how to shoot, unload and clean every gun the group had. There were more guns than hands to fire them, it seemed everyone else had guns when they fled the zombie horde. The bad part, in Max's mind was that the guns hadn't seemed to do the people a whole lot of good, after all the main way their group found guns was by killing the zombies that were the previous owners.