“Sounds good.” Sammy said and sopped up more ketchup with his fries. “We can watch the whole thing and let them know if we see anything they might miss.”
“They’re coming.” Knuckles said into the radio from his hide, a few miles south of the wall. “I can see the dust they’re kicking up. Must be a lot of ‘em.”
“Okay, you better come on back. You don’t want to get trapped out in the open.” Tackett said into the microphone and set it down.
They’d gotten reports from the other scouts who had been spread out in all directions miles from town. They knew the hordes were coming, now they knew how close they were.
“Sound the alarms.” he told the sheriff. “With a little luck, we can get the fastest ones separated from the packs and take them out as far away from the walls as possible.”
There were grim nods from the gathered cowboys and ranchers as they dispersed to their duty stations. An undead army of thousands was marching on their town. It only took one to get over the wall. It only took one bite, one rampaging lightning fast freshly dead zombie to wreak havoc. Last week their fortifications seemed just fine. Built from rail cars, they were thirteen feet tall and ten-foot-wide with strings of concertina wire angled to the outside. They seemed impregnable. Impressive defenses to hold back anything that was thrown at them. Today they seemed about ten feet too short.
The Bradley sat idling in the sally port and when the Mayor gave the word, the gates opened and they trundled out as the scouts came racing back in on their ATV’s.
“The biggest horde is coming from the West.” Tackett said over the radio. “You boys go do your thing. If you can keep them occupied, we’ll take care of the rest.
“Roger that.” the commander said, and the driver hit the gas. They got up to speed quickly, the tracks clanking on the road and within minutes saw the forward edges of the horde running behind a truck leading them forward.
“Fire at will.” the Track Commander said. “Take out the cult guys first.”
When the driver saw the tank coming right at him, he immediately veered off, narrowly missing the machine gun fire walking tracers towards them. The undead tried to run faster at the new noises as the truck crashed through the scrub brush and into a creek running along the road. The men jumped out, abandoned their ride and disappeared from sight, wary of the main gun.
“Implement the Eyes of Horus.” their commander said into the headset as they ran, fast as jackals. They hid among the scrub and low hills, crouched down behind boulders.
“Keep on them, light them up!” the Bradley commander yelled and popped his hatch so he could get a better look.
“I don’t see them!” the gunner shouted into his mic and spun the turret, searching for the scattered men.
“Hank, get up top, help me look.” the commander ordered and the loaders hatch sprang open.
The men looked in all directions but the warriors dressed in black had disappeared. The fastest of the undead started clawing at the metal and trying to climb for the fresh meat as they buttoned back up, pulling the hatches closed behind them.
“Forget about them, they’ve run off. Take out this horde.” the track commander said and they concentrated on running them down and blowing them up. The driver aimed for the center of the pack as the gunner spun the turret back around to open up on the thousands stumbling towards them. They felt the Bradley shudder and lurch to the left at the same time they heard boots stomping around above them.
“Go!” The TC yelled. “They’re on top, knock them off!”
“I can’t!” the driver answered, “I think we threw a track.”
“What the?” the TC started to say as his periscopes went black. “They’re blinding us! Spin the turret, knock those bastards off!”
The Anubis warriors held on easily, their lightning fast reflexes shifting their balance and keeping their cans of spray paint aimed at the portals. They snapped off the antennas and jammed them into the hasps that soldiers used to padlock the hatches closed. Within minutes, they had disabled the Bradley with a wrecking bar pulled from its straps on the fender. One of the men had shoved it into the sprocket and popped the track off. The Bradley was blinded, couldn’t call for help and was unable to move. They couldn’t fight and they couldn’t flee. The undead started piling on, scratching at the steel, trying to get at what was inside as the men sat helpless a mile from town. Tombstones indestructible weapon, its great equalizer, had been taken out of the equation before the battle had even started.
The men in black hopped down and went back to the truck, walking slowly among the dead, careful not to make any sudden moves or act too human. They were pleased with themselves. Commander Ricketts had been right. A multi-million dollar killing machine could be completely disabled with boldness and a can of spray paint. The thousands were massing around the Bradley, burying it in rotting flesh. The four men picked the truck up to get it out of the creek, their strength and speed unmatched by any normal human. One of them tore the fender off where it was crumpled against the tire as another bent the bumper back into shape with his bare hands. The rest of their soldiers, the uninitiated ones who hadn’t been given the serum, were miles behind the horde. They were to wait until the battle was over, the might of Anubis had been proven once again, then they could rush forward and occupy the town. They would force the survivors to comply or die.
The truck started easily enough and they drove through the brush to get around the crowd who were still gathering at the Bradley. Once they were back on the road, one of the men opened a thermos of fresh blood and sprinkled it on the tailgate. Heads turned. Black, undead eyes saw the truck and started towards it, abandoning the Bradley. Rotting noses smelled the blood and dusty throats started keening in hunger.
“We’re back on schedule.” the captain said with a glance at his watch. “That only cost us a few minutes and that was the best they had. We’ll have this town by sundown.”
The stone-faced men nodded as he started the final preparations. It was their destiny. The Lord of the Underworld had told them nothing would stand in their way. The towns were theirs by divine right. The truck rolled along with the thousands stumbling along behind it as he hooked the straps to the steering wheel to keep it in a straight line and adjusted the pole on the accelerator to keep it at the right speed. They knew about the snipers on the wall. As soon as they were in range, they would step out and let the truck keep going. Keep leading the horde to the town.
Gage showed them how to get into the bell tower. He and Lizzie had already been exploring up the rickety staircase days ago. They watched with a telescope as the different slow-moving clouds of dust far off on the horizon came closer and closer until there was only one cloud and it surrounded the whole town. If they listened closely, they could hear the moans of ten thousand undead and the shuffling of twenty thousand feet through the crops and high desert. The cattle ran from them but the zombies ignored them. They had no interest in animal blood, only human. Only human blood could satisfy their insatiable lust to bite. To spread the disease. To reproduce and populate the world with them and only them. It was the base command, the only command, in the virus that had been unleashed on the world.
Jim still had his handheld and they listened to the various scouts checking in and being ordered back to base. They all gave the same reports. The black-clad men were leading the slow charge but once the zombies caught scent of the town, they blended back in to the mob and disappeared. It was like they knew there would be snipers looking for them.
“This don’t look good.” Tony said and gave up the telescope with a nudge from Lizzie. “Not good at all.”
“Nobody can raise the Bradley, either.” Jimmy said and they all wondered how that could be. They heard the machine guns a few minutes ago but now there was nothing. They couldn’t have been overrun, there was no way the dead could break into it.
“Unless they left the hatches open a little too long.” Gage said. “and a fast one jumped up and got th
em.”
They didn’t have answers. No one did.
On the backside of the town, they could hear shots starting to come from the wall. The closest of the hordes was within range and the fighters of Tombstone were trying to drop them as far away as possible. Most of the horde was slow and plodding but there were hundreds of runners breaking away from the crowd, bounding and screaming over the uneven ground. Bullets whizzed by in close misses and they took rounds to the chest but ignored the plumes of blood erupting out of their backs. They stretched out their arms and ran faster. A few fell, a bobbing head running at full speed was hard to hit, but most made it all the way to the wall and started trying to climb.
The people of Tombstone were gun people. Born and raised around them, they had a rifle to call their own since their early years and were shooting the new M-4’s like old pro’s. Plinking targets or hunting mule deer wasn’t the same as hitting a moving head, though. There were plenty of body shots, plenty of bullets ripped through dried out flesh and shattered limbs but the horde kept coming, seemed to pick up speed the closer they got. The RPG’s were almost useless, they would kill ten, maim fifty but they kept coming. The undead didn’t care if they were missing an arm or foot: it barely slowed them down.
The machine gunners were taking sniper fire from the black clad men hidden far off in the dust cloud. Their aim was uncanny and the .50 caliber bullets were concentrated on the guns themselves, rendering them useless after a few well-placed shots.
Gunfire on the wall became constant and came from everywhere. They tried to take them down as far away as possible but most of the undead didn’t fall until they were within spitting distance. The popping of guns became the roar of war as the battle began in earnest. The train cars shuddered with the brute force from the impact of a thousand bodies slamming into them and scrambling over each other to climb to the top. Magazines were emptied and fresh ones slapped in. Hundreds of guns weren’t a match for thousands upon thousands of zombies and the horde piled up. The fastest ones were cut down, crushed and trampled but more were coming. As far as they could see from their position in the tower the dust cloud lingered and more were coming. Stacking up. In some places they were already reaching for the concertina wire and men with pistols were blowing apart heads from only a few feet away. Smoke filled the air and curses of the living couldn’t drown out the screams of the dead.
It was all happening too fast; the horde wasn’t being thinned out. The Bradley missing, their machine guns were destroyed and the horde was bigger than they had ever expected. They were hitting the walls by the hundreds and piling up, constantly reaching and grabbing, trying to claw their way to the top. Bodies were tangled in the wire, pulling it down. The fields surrounding Tombstone were black with them, stumbling and dragging themselves along. The slower ones hit the edge of the killing field and climbed over the fallen. Bullets found them, some died the second death with chunks of their heads missing but right behind them another grabbed a handful of withered skin and pulled itself a little higher, a little closer to the fresh blood only yards away.
Mayor Tackett had a pistol in each hand and stood above the sally port where the worst of the crowds were running in. He blasted heads and kicked away arms reaching through the wire, stomped on grasping hands and sent bodies tumbling back down the fleshy slope. Grenades shook the ground as they exploded but mostly, they only slowed the things down. The bombs sent them sprawling with missing legs or blown open belly’s but they kept coming.
Kept dragging themselves forward.
Kept adding to the ramp.
The thunder of guns was deafening and everyone fought in desperation for their lives. The orderly battle plan had become a close quarter struggle they were losing. They were being overrun, there were too many of them.
No one heard the drone of a heavy biplane as it dove out of the clouds.
Eustice held the yoke in an easy grip and came in at speed.
“Steady.” he said into the headset. “Prepare to drop in three. Two. One.”
The airplane came in like a crop duster, hard and fast, skimming just feet above outstretched hands. On his command, Dani flipped the switches on the old forest service plane. The belly nozzles opened up and a cloud of diesel, oil and gas sprayed out. Eustice banked the plane and followed the curve of the wall, his wingtips so close they nearly skimmed the tangled wires. Grasping hands reaching through the concertina wire turned and lunged at the plane.
“GET BACK!” Tackett yelled and word moved fast down the line. They could smell the fumes and knew what was coming next. They abandoned the wall, flew down the ladders and jumped to rooftops of nearby houses.
Eustice finished his circle skimming the wall and widened it, spraying the fuel into upturned faces and mouths as he buzzed them, just a scant few feet above their heads.
“Toss it.” he said and Dani slid open his window, pulled the pin on the incendiary grenade and let it drop.
The whoomph of the explosion was small, the gas fumes ignited instantly, but the vast majority of their payload was diesel and oil. It was a slow burn. A ring of blue fire spread around the wall almost instantly, followed by the slower, hotter burning orange and yellow flames of the diesel mix. Black smoke roiled into the air and undead corpses, dried out and rawboned from a year in the elements, collapsed in burning heaps. Eustice cut the fuel flow then banked out towards the gathering of cars and trucks they’d seen from fifteen thousand feet. The town was surrounded by a ring of fire but the boxcars would keep it away from most of the buildings. There was nothing to burn on the outside but the corpses and they went up quick. Flashfires that melted eyes and brains and scorched flaking skin but died out quickly. The kids were out of the tower and running with the stacks of buckets to where the bodies were piled the highest, where flaming corpses fell over the wall and tried to rise. Some of the roofs had small fires licking at them but they were quickly beat out with sweat soaked shirts. Men who’d been on the verge of despair moments before quickly formed a line and the started dowsing the flames burning brightly from the fallen dead before they could spread.
Eustice was on top of the gathered army of black uniformed men before they realized what had just happened. Dani opened up with the chain guns mounted on either wing and raked along the convoy that was neatly lined up on the road. The people tried to run and scream but a blanket of diesel flames covered them and they died sucking in lungfulls of fire. Eustice flew all the way down the line and didn’t stop spraying until the last truck was engulfed. Exploding gas tanks sent debris flying and he pulled up to circle overhead, looking for survivors like a vengeful eagle. His napalm formula wasn’t quite as good as what he’d seen over in the Nam but it did the job. It killed everything in its path.
“There.” Dani said and pointed out some black-clad figures darting through the scrub, trying to make it to the cover of a stand of trees by a creek.
Eustice didn’t see them but went into a dive where the kid had pointed. His old eyes weren’t what they used to be but once they were down below three thousand feet, he spotted them.
“Fire at will, Lieutenant. I’ll get us in close.”
Dani took aim through the home-made sights and rested his finger on the trigger. It was a flight stick from a video game Carl had helped him rewire. He waited until they were coming up behind them at two hundred feet and eighty miles an hour before he applied the pressure. The twin Gatling guns cycled to life and spit lead that found their targets almost instantly. Two of the bodies exploded into pieces, churned to meat and mist by dozens of rounds blowing through them. The other figure cut hard to the right, faster than anything they’d ever seen and was gone by the time Eustice circled back around.
He buzzed the tree line one more time but they’d never find a lone survivor from the air. The battle was over. One man wasn’t going to change that and they flew back over the burning caravan, watching for movement. They were either all dead or smart enough to play dead.
“We used about
half our payload, we’ve got almost four hundred gallons left. Enough for one more fight.” Dani said, flipping the gun safeties and checking the gauges on the tanks that were normally used to put fires out, not start them. “Anselmo evacuated but the Island is still in the fight. Going there next?”
“Next stop.” Eustice agreed and banked off towards North Dakota. “Right after we refuel at that airport we cleared up near Valentine.”
18
Mount Rushmore
“There.” Scarlet said, pointing to a long, dirt drive that branched off of the unpaved road they were on.
He’d learned not to question her house selection, she had an uncanny knack of picking ones that were empty of the undead and usually perfectly fine, if a little musty. The driveway had a little shed at the end, a shelter for school kids to get out of the weather while waiting for the bus. Two bicycles were laying in the weeds next to it. Crop lands were growing wild on both sides of the drive and there was a tractor near the barn. She was good at reading little clues like that. To her it meant a farm family with school age kids. They had already caught the bus when the virus came through. The bikes were still there and the gate was open. Chances were good they hadn’t eaten the infected meats for breakfast if the kids were at the bus stop. Scarlet was pretty sure they’d find the place intact, unbothered and with food in the cupboards. The open gate meant no one was there to fortify the farm, one or both of the parents had probably gone to work in town. If bugs hadn’t infested the kitchen, there was a better than average chance of finding chocolate of some kind.
She was right, as usual.
It had been a long day of driving and they’d hit it pretty hard, covering some seven hundred miles. By tomorrow night, they should be at the Anubis headquarters but this evening, they were celebrating along with everyone else who’d heard the news. Blackfoot had been overrun but the survivors had regained the town. The Anubis cult had been defeated, every last warrior killed and their bodies dumped over the wall. Food for the scavengers. The stars and stripes still flew.
Zombie Road VI: Highway to Heartache Page 15
