Ten-Four

This is Jack Hutchingston from the United Federal Shipping Company on frequency twelve-point-two, giving the heads up to all you truckers headed east on the Interstate towards Wisconsin. I'm heading west right now through Idaho and I just went through a big thunderstorm that's heading for the Great Lakes. Had to go through it while I was traveling through the Dakotas, and boy was it a bitch.

Speaking of the Dakotas, I would advise anyone heading northeast to avoid the two states altogether. Better to take a detour through Canada, if you can. I just made it out of that graveyard with my life. Fucking zombies.

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, towns are popping up every day. I don't mind the cross-country assignments. It gives me time to get away from the old ball and chain.

Like I was saying, it was storming pretty damn hard all through last night, and there I was at the border of South Dakota and Minnesota. It's an impressive sight; twenty-foot tall fencing around the entire boundary of the both Dakotas, guard towers every five miles or so.

I suppose not all of you know much about the Dakotas nowadays. No one ever really talks about them, except a few truckers who deliver to the small towns on the inside and a few more who gotta travel through to deliver their shipments. Like me.

It's all about the Nitrate-twelve, folks. Everyone used it in their bombs during the last war, until they realized that the gas crept back into the atmosphere. Then it started coming down in the rainwater. At first, everything seemed okay; the chemical didn't have any side effect on humans at all. But then a couple people started making reports to the local authorities, saying their long-dead relatives were standing outside their door asking to come in for a cup of tea. I think it was about forty years ago when this first happened, somewhere around twenty-six-ten or so.

So this happened every time it rained, and it started getting worse. Zombies were popping up everywhere, and it didn't matter how long ago they died, because they always came back, always with a hunger for meat. The Nitrate-twelve would seep through caskets and enter the pores of the dead and it would bring back brain activity. The chemical would infect their entire bodies and there they'd be, walking around like nothing ever happened. Authorities would send out teams to “purify” the cities and burn the bodies, but that just meant that the Nitrate-twelve would become airborne again and come down in the next rainfall.

Worse, it would spread like a disease. After chewing on someone, the nitrate-twelve in the zombie's saliva would spread into the recently deceased and they would wake up, usually with more than a few chunks of flesh missing across their bodies.

Finally, the powers-that-be decided that they had to band together to fix the problem, so they fenced off the entire states of North and South Dakota and transported all the dead there. Once a week, forty trucks per city make a run to the border and dump off thousands of dead bodies into giant water-tight apartments.

Damn, I'm probably boring half of you to death, which is exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do. So anyways, 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 going through that gate.

“What's goin' on here, Willy?” I asked. I was soaked head to toe with water 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 the apartments.”

The apartments are what most of us Interstate trucker folks call the buildings where 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. Some of the older buildings don't work so well anymore, though. Acid rain really takes a bite out of the concrete. If it's a bad storm, you can bet more than a few are going to get out of their tombs.

“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 Corporation soldiers to guard you, we got our fare share of bandits 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! 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 the gate slowly opens. 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 service 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 old graves and mausoleums, the place is just free of civilization, except 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 living back in the good old days when America was still a Federated country and the land was fresh. Every once in a while, you can spot a herd of buffalos or a pack of wolves off in the distance, on the plains where no buildings have been built yet. It's a shame because the Dakotas are almost like one giant wildlife reservation now. I mean, it's really not that dangerous a place after a purification team comes in and destroys anything that came back after a rainfall. Once in awhile, you may get a zombie animal, but it's so rare that it's hardly worth mentioning at all.

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, maybe twenty years old, and already starting to show wear and tear from harsh weather conditions. Now that sent a chill down my spine, because there were 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 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. I check the fuel cell chargers, but there weren't any at all. Not a lot of truckers use electric fuel cells anyways; they're just too damn unreliable to work with.

Lucky for me, I always keep a two-gallon reserve container in the back of my cab. I grabbed that, which was hidden in the storage compartment under my sleeping bag. Under the reserve container was my miniature armory. For those of you who travel regularly across the land of America, a shotgun and a sharp blade is a must. A shotgun for bandits, and a sharp blade for everything else.

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. A fresher one would have run at me as soon as he saw my tasty white flesh. 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. They can still move, though; the hunger forces them to move, no matter how long they've been dead.

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.

I was driving for my life, but I still couldn't help but take in the sights. There aren't many apartments between Mitchell and Murdo yet, so you can usually spot a herd of buffalo grazing on the plains in the distance. There weren't any herds that night. Maybe all the wildlife was learning to hide when it rained.

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 this 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.

But the energy cell chargers were turned on. Just my fucking luck. 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 try to use fuel cells when I can—I love what's left of the environment! But in some cases, especially 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 truck driver without a permanent address. Nothing positive to say in my eulogy, except for the fact that I was an excellent shot. I picked the three fastest ones out when they were still a hundred yards out, and quickly re-loaded. Kill the quickest ones, because they're the bastards who've still got half a brain. They'll try to outsmart you if they can. 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 in his hand that he was slowly nibbling on, and I said a short prayer for the poor trucker who was now resting in the bellies of his cargo.

I picked eight more off before any of them could even get under the shelter of the gas station, and that was it for my shotgun's ammunition. I had a good run, I thought, but there's no way I could take out twelve-plus zombies with a dinky blade. I reached into my jean jacket pocket and pulled out a fat cigar. I was going to save it for when I delivered my cargo; it's a ritual I have, but I figured that under the circumstances, I might as well smoke her now. I lit it up with my trusty Zippo 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. They didn't even seem to notice as I reached through my open window and grabbed the sword that was sitting on the seat.

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

One of them—probably recently dead—understood 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 driver, because he was running like a fucking track star. Unfortunately for him, I had my blade and I used it to quickly sever the nerve to the brain on the back of the bastard's neck. It was the only way to completely kill them; sever the brain.

About twenty more corpses were 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.

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 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 shirts. One loud crack, 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 I digress. The point is that there was only one zombie left near my truck, and I chopped that bastard's dilapidated head off in a matter of seconds before I even got the other two bodies 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 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' tanks, but using it to siphon my own gas was a close second. I siphoned it all into an empty canister of windshield-washing fluid that was in the garbage can. There was about the amount I had estimated: close to a quarter gallon.

They were about twenty feet away from the unleaded pumps, twenty of ‘em 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, and the gas station was most likely insured by an HMO.

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. It really wasn't a very good cigar, 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 onto the pump hoses and into the diesel gas line, 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 of hunger in their eyes that sent a shiver down my 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. The rest of the bastards 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 a ten-pound blade around.

Then I heard it: the sweetest sound in the world. No, not a woman screaming in pleasure, boys. I'm talking about that three-second beep the pump makes everytime your energy cells are a quarter charged. The zombies were carefully making their way through the opening in the ring, but they weren't fast enough. I looked at the diesel pumps, 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 cab.

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. 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.

- www.KenBrosky.com