"Remember when you learned how to ride a bike?"
"It was a long time ago Jimbo."
With startling clarity Red suddenly did remember struggling to ride a bike, and how it felt immediately after he did so.
"I thought you weren't going to mess around in my head?"
"I'm not messing, just helping you remember. That's not messing and this is important. Now you recall how often your dad had you out there, how your friends were watching and cheering you on and how you fell over time after time. Except the last time. Then it was like you were flying along two feet above the ground, it was magic. One minute you weren't riding the bike, you just had the fear of falling and the stronger desire to join the big kids pedaling around. The next minute, you got it. This is like that. I showed you how to ride the bike. You'll get better at it with practice, but you can still ride it pretty well right now. You should be okay. I held off Nancy, when push came to shove. How much more powerful than you is this guy you're going up against?"
"Just slightly more powerful than me, enough to dominate me."
"You'll do fine." said Jimbo.
Now Red wasn't so sure. The man ahead of him was herding the zombies, thousands of zombies. Tens of thousands of zombies. More than he Nita and Hugh ever handled at one time.
'He has more precision than we ever had too.'
The zombies were not quite marching in an orderly fashion, but they were avoiding fences, buildings and other obstacles with an almost military precision. After arriving on the edge of the pack Red found he could pull up Ramey's surface thoughts without any effort at all. He was reluctant to press into the man's mind, it was one of the tricks Jimbo had mentioned, the first attack might succeed, or it might just be a critical distraction when the man was doing something like trying to dodge as Red shot at him. Neither he nor Jimbo thought Red had much of a chance to get into Ramey's mind, but they both thought the effort might serve as a distraction.
Red was rather proud of the fact that the other zombie didn't know he was here, before when he had approached Ramey knew he was coming, they were aware of each other. Slowly Red searched through the minds of the other zombies, looking for Hugh. He thought Ramey might keep Hugh close by him, but so far Red couldn't find his friend.
Jimbo and Veronica had filled a couple gas cans and then they drove Red to his motorcycle, where he fueled it up and turned east. He left them there waving goodbye, Bobby looked sad, the boy had found another pellet gun and had them both in the back of the pickup truck with him. 'I suppose he hoped we might get in a game along the way.' Red mused to himself. 'Kids, ever the optimists of the next generation.'
Riding across most of Nebraska to catch up with Ramey had taken Red the entire morning and he arrived close to the tail end of mob around noon. He didn't get close enough for the others to hear his motorcycle, instead he ditched it by the side of the road, pointing it west first with the optimistic hope that he would be riding it back that way. After that he proceeded on foot and it took him very little time to catch up with his foe, Ramey was walking in the middle of the highway, surrounded by other self-aware zombies. None of them were paying too much attention to their surroundings; they were, however, keeping a close watch on the sky.
Red was hidden behind one of the many wrecks littering highway eighty, when the helicopter came over the horizon. It did not attack Ramey; instead it struck at the front of the mob, raining down a stream of lead into the lead zombies. The bullets from the Gatling style cannon literally cut the slow shamblers into pieces when they hit them, throwing body parts thirty feet into the air and causing a black mist to form above the mob from the spray of blood.
Ramey and his friends took cover behind more stalled cars, but did not return fire. The helicopter hovered and fired for less than a minute, then turned and flew east, apparently out of ammunition for its gun.
Peering over the car he was on Red had the bad luck of being spotted by one of Ramey's crew as they got up and started walking again. The older woman zombie pointed back in Red's direction while saying something to Ramey out of earshot.
Ramey's head turned around and he scoured the area for Red. Of course Red had taken cover behind the wreck and concentrated on not being seen, 'I am glass. I am invisible. No one can see me.' Red chanted mentally, feeling foolish.
It did work, either that or Ramey just missed seeing him, however the zombie was more cautious as the march resumed. Red suspected he had somehow checked his subordinate's mind and verified that she had seen something. His thoughts were confirmed when two of the smarter zombies stopped in positions that a human would not have seen them in, if they were coming up on Ramey from behind.
Red liked this idea. The two zombies left in ambush were much weaker than he was, and he could tell they both resented Ramey's heavy handed approach to giving them orders, they were resentful and angry at having to march towards Iowa with the rest of the zombies. The woman on the right wanted to go home, to North Dakota, to check on her mother and father, the man wanted to go to Kansas City, he heard there were still humans to eat there, humans who were not soldiers and didn't have any guns. Breaking into their minds was simple because of their age, he didn't need permission from them or to seduce his way in. Red took them over easily, but in his haste he didn't know what to do with them. This was not something he had practiced with Jimbo. Worse still, he felt something else grabbing a hold of their minds and in an instance he knew it was Ramey, shadowing them, using their eyes to keep watch on what it was behind them. The only good news was that Red was pretty sure Ramey didn't know he had grabbed the two of them.
'Will he notice if I leave?' Red wondered, remembering the lessons Jimbo had taught him a day earlier.
Red decided not to find out, he stayed in their minds and read them in case Ramey gave them any orders, which he would then relay, hopefully the zombie wouldn't notice. With the two held in his grasp Red convinced them to both look north as he slipped closer and closer to end of the pack, in short order he was past them. He didn't release either of them, just in case Ramey would notice that, and proceeded to sneak up on his opponent.
Ramey had gone about a mile ahead of the two ambushers before he relented and called them back. Red was torn between attacking the other zombie while he had less help or waiting, but decided to wait because of the relatively clear stretch of highway ahead of him. Red didn't think he actually was invisible and doubted he could sneak up on the man given the conditions of the road right now.
'I'll wait until we get to another pile up. Let's see what I can do with Sue and Chuck there.' Sue and Chuck were the names of the two zombies Ramey had left hidden behind him. Ramey had given them orders to join back up with him, then left their minds, both were, somewhat resentfully making their way back to him. Ahead the road turned to the north and dropped into some lowlands, it looked like it was going to be crossing over the Platte River again, only this section was very wide and required two long bridges. The bridges were a mess of wreckage, smoke was still pouring from a line of vehicles at the far end of them. 'I can take them up there, after the main horde gets through and they are left alone.' Red thought.