“But we’ll be the first one’s shot if they go off half-cocked,” Jo said.
Del watched as a tall man with a buzz-cut practiced reaching down for the next magazine for his gun without looking for it. At least twice in the last five minutes, he had spilled his spare ammunition over the edge and was forced to climb down to retrieve it.
“You’re probably right,” Del said as he let out a sigh.
It wasn’t that either of them wasn’t scared. It was just that they had been here so many times before. If it wasn’t zombies about to kill them, it was soldiers or marauders. It had become almost second nature for them to fight for their lives. Sure, they knew this time was probably going to be their biggest battle of their post-apocalyptic lives, but it was just another one. You either knew how to handle it, or you didn’t.
“But remember, it was your idea,” Del said.
“So, it’s up to me?” Jo asked.
Del tilted his head and shrugged his shoulders.
“Coward,” Jo said as she rose from her kneeling position.
Just as she was fully on her feet, someone near the gate yelled, “They’re almost to the river.”
Crewcut guy knocked his entire load of ammunition over the wall and said, “Shit.”
Jo made her way down the wall slowly and cautiously. The catwalk inside the wall was about four-feet wide and was made up of a series of scaffolding put in place by the engineers of the Sanctum over a year ago. If Jo had had time to marvel at their feats of skill, she would have, but with impending death on its way, that fell into the background.
Once she was within a few feet of the Crew Cut guy, she said, “Excuse me.”
“What?” The Crew Cut guy growled out.
“I don’t want to overreach, but I need to let you know that we’re going to make it through this, so you can calm down a little.”
“Who are you?” The man asked.
“I’m someone who has faced down more zombies than you’ve ever seen,” Jo said, feeling her ire rise but knowing going there wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Listen, I’m just saying, if you double stack your ammo against the wall, it won’t keep falling over.”
Crew Cut guy started to say something, but a woman with short blonde hair put a hand on his shoulder. “Tony, take it down a notch. I’ll get your ammo.”
It looked like Crew Cut was about to make a fuss, but the woman said, “Look, she’s right.” The woman took her load of ammunition and double-stacked it against the wall.
“Whatever,” Crew Cut guy said as he started down the ladder to retrieve his ammunition.
Jo heard footsteps coming her way from behind and turned to see Eli coming her way.
“This can’t be good,” she said under her breath.
“Oh shit,” Del said when he turned to look.
Eli wore a determined expression and held a walkie-talkie in his hand as he surged toward them. Bonds and another man dressed in fatigues followed along behind Eli. On their path there, they had to duck and dodge around people poised to fight on the wall.
Jo felt a nervous tingle start to worm its way into her midsection as they waited for Eli to make his way to them.
Eli no sooner pulled to a stop in front of them before he said, “I have something I need you to do.”
“You mean other than fighting a massive horde of zombies?” Del asked.
“Don’t get smart with me,” Eli said.
Del resisted the urge to blurt out a comeback but restrained himself.
“Whatever it is, I can do it,” Jo said to diffuse the tension.
“No, I need both of you on this,” Eli said.
“But we’ll miss all the fun,” Del said.
“This is serious, and there’s no time for bullshit,” Eli said.
“What do you need?” Jo asked as she edged herself between Del and Eli.
Eli stuck a finger in the air and said, “We need someone to take the new nerve gas sprayer contraption Emmett made up and get it to Jones for the last helicopter.”
“Why can’t your two scientists do it?’ Jo asked.
Eli started to answer but stopped, then he said, “I need you two to do it.”
“They’re too scared, aren’t they?” Del asked.
“No, no,” Eli said. “That’s not the point. Besides, your doctor won’t do it. He insists on staying with that...that thing.”
“What about Emmett? Can’t he handle it?” Jo asked.
“He says it’s a two-man job,” Eli said, and it was clear his patience had run out. “I don’t have time for twenty questions. It needs done, and it needs done now. Your Sergeant Jones said it could be the only thing that keeps us alive.”
“And you don’t want to risk your people,” Del said. “So, you're offering us up as the spears carriers to do it.”
“Someone has to do it,” Eli said. “And I’ve picked you.” Something changed in the set of Eli’s face. Where he had been frustrated before, his expression became flat and hard. Del couldn’t help but notice that Eli’s hand rested on the butt of his holstered gun. There was a loud metallic click as the man in fatigues snapped off his safety. Bonds, on the other hand, looked like he might just jump off the wall at any moment.
Jo put up her hands and said, “We’ll do it. We’ll do it. It’s no good to allow things to get out of hand.”
Eli and the man in the fatigues relaxed, and Bonds looked like a balloon someone had just let the air out of as he practically fell onto the wall.
“We’re on our way,” Del said. “Everybody, relax.”
Jo hit the ladder first, with Del following close behind. Once they were on the ground, they started on the long walk to the lab with Del in the lead. Jo felt a curious prickly feeling in the center of her back until they made it around the corner of the first building they came to. Once they were out of Eli’s sight, the tingling between her shoulder blades went away.
Chapter 38
A View from the Hill
Maxwell led his horde along the crest of the rolling hilltops. He hadn’t liked this plan of heading toward the ocean, wiping out any humans still alive along the way. It seems it had just become ‘what they did.’ It was their intractable destiny, unavoidable and undeniable, like the passage of time.
He hadn’t seen Audrey in nearly two days as they marched their separate contingents of the undead eastward. He hated that Lance stood between them. Doubts swirled in his mind, but the voice that came each night that bore its way into his brain, somehow calming and agitating him at the same time. On top of that, Lance would break away from his contingent of the undead and come to badger Maxwell throughout the day. Together, Lance and the voice worked away at his doubts, one whittling away at his questions and the other pounding his resistance into the ground.
Deep down, there was an ache inside him, like a drawn-out, thrumming musical note. He missed Audrey. If Lance and his small army of the dead weren’t between him and Audrey, he would break off from his path and go to her.
The link he had with her was not only his connection to the past but was also his tether to his lost humanity. Sometimes, when the voice at night was quiet, and Lance was away from him, there was an undeniable pull, like gravity, making him miss what he was and hate what he had become. At times, he didn’t even know why he continued on.
But he did, putting one foot after the other, acting on auto-pilot, his thoughts twisted and roiling inside his head. It was only when he noticed that his foot was about to step off a thirty-foot cliff that he snapped out of it.
He shot out a hand, grasping a thin sapling on the cliff’s edge, and that was all that kept him from toppling over the edge. Too bad that line of zombies followed him. A line that didn’t fear cliffs or much of anything.
A small zombie that had once been a teenager rammed into Maxwell’s back, knocking his left foot over the edge. He teetered over the edge, and the sapling bent from his weight. Dirt slipped out from under the small tree’s roots and fell down the side of th
e cliff.
Maxwell dangled over the edge, one foot in the air and one on the cliff’s edge. The tiny, weak little tree bent even further, and for a moment, Maxwell considered letting go. Looking down, he calculated that the fall was probably sufficient enough to break his body and kill him. He considered that sweet release from this dreadful half-life. This excuse for what he called living.
With his eyes closed, he imagined the fall and then the impact. All he had to do was let go.
He felt his fingers loosening when an image of Audrey flashed into his mind. Not the face of what she was now, but what she looked like before. This was from when she was alive. She was smiling in only that way she could. That smile said everything. It said all he needed to know.
He snapped his eyes open and looked over his shoulder. More zombies mindlessly piled up behind the teenage zombie. There was almost no room for Maxwell if he stayed on the ledge.
So, he kicked back with his left foot and swung out over the open face of the cliff. As he drifted in the void with the little sapling being the only thing keeping him from plummeting to his destruction, he reached over his shoulder and yanked his assault rifle free from the gun sling on his back. As arced out over the drop, he brought the rifle to bear on the zombies filling the ledge, and he let loose.
Bullets spewed out of the barrel, the muzzle flashes lighting up the area like yellow lightning. They struck the zombies, tearing into them and driving them back away from the ledge. Blood sprayed out of the zombies as they fell onto the path they had just come up.
Maxwell touched back down on the cliff and looked over the swath of bodies strewn down the path he and his horde had just come up.
The zombies that had just about pushed him to his death lay broken and bloody. The ones in line behind the bodies calmed and came to a stop. Their dead eyes looked on him as if asking, what next, master? He hated those stares but held back from ripping a line of bullets into those dead faces.
Maxwell put both feet back on solid ground, then turned around and looked down into the shallow valley below. He had a spectacular view into the city. The sun’s rays spilled over it and made it look almost idyllic. Like a place Maxwell might want to live someday -- if he were alive.
He knew he’d never live there, though. That was because he wasn’t alive and never would be again. Not fully, at least.
The sad fact and the reality that his only reason for living was to destroy the living fell on him. It felt as heavy as the hill he was standing upon. The voice wouldn’t let him do anything else. And Lance would never let up. His only choice was to proceed with the plan and get into the city, but he spotted a very big problem standing in their way.
The two bridges that led into the city were gone.
This could change everything, he thought.
Chapter 39
Hazard Duty
“What if this thing falls off the cart?” Del asked.
“Well, boy, if it hits wrong, then we’ll all be dead in less than thirty seconds,” Emmett said. He was at the other end of the four-wheeled, heavy-duty, metal cart carrying the ‘super sprayer.’ That’s what Emmett called it.
It was a Frankenstein’s monster of parts and pieces, combining the sprayer and nerve gas canister Emmett and Doc Wilson had put together. The newest addition looked like a generator, but it really was a power booster to the sprayer that Emmett had promised would push the gas at least seventy-five feet. It might go a hundred-feet if the wind was behind them.
Their job now was to get it to the helicopter.
They had to traverse half-way across the Sanctum, crossing several streets and two grassy malls. With the word that the zombies were within sight, the streets teemed with people getting ready to take on thousands of zombies. There wasn’t one of them paying attention to the cart being pushed by two men with another person leading the way. They had no idea that the cart carried enough nerve gas to take out everyone inside the Sanctum and then some.
Jo walked five-feet in front of the cart, acting as the navigator and making sure they didn’t collide with anything. It wasn’t an easy task, and she wasn’t sure what she would do if one of the Sanctum people came at the cart on a collision course. Jo had her pistol in hand, but she was pretty certain she wouldn’t use it. Unless she really, really had to.
They hit a long straightaway and thought they would make up some time when a group of people pushing their own cart full of weapons and ammunition rolled onto the street from an alleyway. Their heads were down, and they were driving their cart forward like they were in a contest.
Jo put up her hands, waved them back and forth, and yelled, “Make way, make way.”
One of the men behind the other cart yelled back, “You make way.”
The man was one of three people behind their cart. It was loaded with long guns and stacks of ammunition, and it was picking up speed.
Jo knew this could mean trouble. “Please slow down.”
The same man yelled back with a tinge of irritation in his voice, “We got guns and ammo we have to get to the west wall. You make room.”
Jo set off toward the oncoming cart at a jog as she holstered her gun. Taking them on with her gun might just set things off in the wrong direction.
“We are carrying a canister filled with a highly toxic nerve gas. If it rolls off this cart and goes off, then it will probably kill everyone here, and you’ll be the first to go,” Jo said, coming to a sliding stop.
A look of guarded suspicion went across the faces of the people behind the ammunition cart, and they slowed their progress. Five seconds later, their cart slowed even more. Three seconds after that, without saying a word, they made a hairpin turn onto an intersecting street and disappeared from view.
“Smooth talking there, Jo,” Del said as he and Emmett caught up to Jo.
“You guys good?” Jo asked.
“Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes,” Emmett said.
“Not full speed,” Del said. “Steady as you go.”
“Yep,” Emmett said as he helped guide the cart along, “that’s a better way to put it.”
The cart hit a pothole, and the ‘super sprayer’ jumped a foot in the air, slamming back down with a dull metallic thud. Both Del and Emmett shot out a hand to steady the device while another gallon of sweat poured out of their bodies. They dropped their speed, balancing speed and caution in equal measure as they rolled the cart along.
“This way,” Jo said as she pointed down a short and narrow walkway that led to the grassy mall where the last helicopter had landed. To Jo, it looked like a forlorn, wingless bird, longing for the sky.
Two of the Humvees were parked off to the side of the mall. Each of these vehicles had men poised to head off to counter any threat at a moment’s notice.
Sergeant Jones balanced on his crutches, shouting orders at the soldiers standing around the helicopter.
“Get the MAV ready to go,” Jones shouted at two men standing beside the Stryker MGS vehicle with its 30mm gun. It was their mobile artillery unit, speedy and lethal, and could be used to blast a large number of the approaching zombies into the next life. The only problem was that they were limited on shells, but the men inside knew they would burn through every one of them if they had to.
There was a mood permeating the air that this might be everyone’s final battle. It was easy to see this galvanized some of them while it terrified others. The fearful ones had a nervous look in their eyes, making them seem like mice. There was an equal amount of people putting on brave faces, but they were more scared than the others. These were the dangerous ones because they were unpredictable.
Another segment of the people just bore down, becoming tighter versions of themselves. While they didn’t admit they were afraid, they knew it was no shame to be that way.
Del and Emmett slowed as they made the transition from pavement to grass. The turf was smoother than they expected, but still, they took it slow as they rolled toward the helicopter.
Across the field, Jones caught their progress out of the corner of his eye, and he shifted on his crutches. He followed them with his eyes, then crutched toward the chopper to meet them. The last thing they wanted was for the super sprayer tumble off the cart.
They nearly converged on the helicopter at the same time, with Jones beating them by about five seconds.
“Is that thing going to work?” Jones said, eyeing the contraption suspiciously.
“Sure, it’s going to work,” Emmett said with a deep conviction that seemed a little forced.
“I only see one canister in there,” Jones said, pointing to the canister that looked like the cross between a small keg of beer and an old fashioned milk jug. “Shouldn’t we be bringing up a refill or something?”
Emmett bit his lip, then said, “Getting these two things to hook up together is like trying to mate an alligator with a lion. If you do one thing wrong, it’ll turn around and bite you. It took everything for me and the Doc to get these things connected on steady ground. Doin’ that while flying in the sky...well, I don’t think I’d like to try that. No, siree.”
“Okay, okay,” Jones said, putting up a hand for Emmett to stop. “We fly with what we have. Speaking of that, how much of that gas do we really have?”
“That depends on how much you use it,” Emmett said.
“That answer is not helpful,” Jones said.
“This ain’t scientific by any measure, but I’d say you have six spraying runs of about thirty seconds each,” Emmett said.
Jones rubbed his chin and said, “That’s not a lot.”
“It’s the best we can do,” Emmett replied.
Clayton stepped out of the helicopter, and his eyes went a little wider than normal. “What the hell is that thing?” He pointed at the super sprayer.
A look of hurt passed over Emmett’s face for a moment, then he said, “This is the thing that might save all our asses.”
“And we’re bringing it onboard the chopper?” Clayton said.
“That’s why I made it,” Emmett replied.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 18
