Forget The Zombies (Book 2): Forget Texas by R.J. Spears Page A

a good job taking them out.
“There’s more coming,” he said. “Out there.”
I must have slept longer than I thought because the horizon was making that gradual transition from black to blue and then orange, the telltale signs of the encroaching dawn. Dotting that horizon were shambling silhouettes. I’d say there were two to three dozen of them.
“I shot two over here,” Jane shouted from off to our right. She was facing southward.
“Gnarly, man,” Jay said. He put up a hand for a high-five and she slapped it hard. “Oww,” Jay said, rubbing his hands together.
“Load up, people,” I shouted, “We need to get the hell out of here.”
With the threat of the undead nearby, people didn’t need any further encouragement. They quickly loaded up and we were on the road. Still even with us in fast forward mode, we had to shoot four more zombies. For shambling creatures, they seemed to be covering a lot of ground. Or else there were more of them and the virus was spreading faster than anyone thought.
     
The cool morning air woke me as we drove northward. Dawn broke fully and the breeze starting heating up as the temperatures rose. About thirty miles down the road, we passed a farmer on a tractor, driving along as if it was a normal day. He tipped a large brimmed straw hat to us as we passed. The whole incident seemed surreal.
Just about a minute after we passed the farmer, Martin’s head popped through the canvas flap and he said, “Mom, I’m really hungry. Do you think it would be okay if I ate one of those Ready-to-Eat things?”
“What are you talking about, honey?” Joni asked.
The canvas opened further and Jay stuck his head through. He was holding a several fist-sized brown packages in his hand. “These,” he said. “Mrees.” He pronounced it as if it were a word and not an acronym.
A light finally went off in the back of my head. “M-R-E. Meals Ready to Eat,” I said. “Where’d those come from?”
“Huck grabbed them before we left,” Jay said. “You never know when you’re going to get the munchies.”
“What do you have?” Joni asked.
“Let me check,” Jay said and ducked back behind the canvas, but quickly came back through with his hands full of more small brown packages. He started reading the labels to us. “We’ve got a barbeque beef sandwich, a barbeque chicken sandwich, green pepper steak with rice.” He rattled off a few more names before he stopped and said, “Bummer.”
“What?” I asked.
“They all have meat in them,” he said. “I’m a vegetarian.” He paused for a moment then added, “Except for bacon.”
Except for bacon? There was not a lot of logic going on inside Jay’s head and there was no use trying to make the puzzle pieces of what he said fit together.
“What do you think, kiddo?” I asked Martin, “Can you eat one of those?”
“It’s like I’m an Army man. Cool.”
“Can somebody supervise him with that?” Joni asked.
“Yeah, I can,” Jay said.
“No, someone else,” Joni said. “You look busy. Don’t you have some more packages there?”
Jay looked puzzled for a minute, then started going through packages again. He stopped with one and a huge grin appeared on his face. “Awesome. Bacon in a bag.”
He started to pull back, but I asked, “Can you leave us a couple?”
“Sure man,” he said and dropped two random packages on the seat then disappeared behind the canvas.
I picked them up and took a look. “What do you want, barbeque or Italian?”
“I don’t know, whatever you don’t want is fine with me,” she said.
I decided to overlook the ‘old married couple’ dialogue that we were about to fall into. I felt like I should reply with, “ No, no, whatever you want,’ and let her have what she wanted, but I just took the barbeque. I should have gone with the Italian because the barbeque was a tough as shoe leather and tasted like melted red crayon with smoke flavoring.
Joni said after taking a bite, “This is pretty