“Can you see anything?” Eli asked.
Navarro tilted his head first to the right and then to the left, and Eli could see Navarro’s eye struggling to focus. It took a couple more seconds before Navarro said, “Yeah, I can see. It’s a little blurry, but I’m okay.”
“Gardner, load up another shell,” Eli said.
“What!?” Gardner said. “Are you crazy? We need to get the hell out of here.”
“He is still out there!” Eli said. “If he can take us out, he can take out the wall. We have to kill him. We have to save my people. This is the only way.”
“We stay out here and we’re dead,” Gardner said.
“No,” Navarro said. “He’s right. We’ve got the flush that fucker out and end him.” He reached up and gingerly probed the cut on his cheek, but groaned in pain. “Load up, Gards. Do it now.”
Gardner fumbled with the shell for a moment before finally loading it.
“How do we even know he’s still there?” Gardner asked.
“He’s still behind what’s left of that building,” Eli said.
“How do you know?” Gardner shouted, his voice shrill.
“Because he has to be there,” Eli said.
The zombies continue slapping against the MAV. The ruins of the building ahead of them belched smoke into the air, but enough of it stood that it blocked a clear view past the structure.
The three men inside were quiet for a few seconds, the air thick with tension.
Gardner broke the silence, “Where do I aim?”
“Dead center,” Eli said.
A second later, Gardner let the shell fly and it hit the building with an explosive force. The broken and beaten building fell like a house of cards, sending up a dust cloud. Zombies in the immediate vicinity were crushed flat by what was left of the front wall.
Eli leaned forward, staring through the narrow visor window, willing the dust to settle so that he could spot the smart zombies. The one that was wreaking havoc on the Sanctum. He had to be taken out. He just had to be.
In answer to prayer, a gust of wind blew in from the west and pushed the dust cloud away. Eli scanned the rubble, looking for movement, but he only saw zombies as they shuffled in and around the shattered remains of the building. The shock of the blast and collapse of the building looked to have disoriented them, because they stumbled in an erratic fashion.
Where is he? Where is he? Eli’s mind screamed. He has to still be here.
A ray of sun broke through the cloud above and beamed down on the right back corner of the building. It splashed onto the ground and revealed a zombie rushing in a parallel path to the back of the building. Eli didn’t spot it had first, but when he saw something metal hanging off the zombie’s back. It was metal and tubular.
“It’s him!” Eli shouted. “It’s him! Drive, Navarro. Drive.”
Chapter 87
An Insane Plan
“Give me your walkie-talkie,” Henry said, sticking his hand out toward Bonds.
“No way,” Bonds replied. “This is crazy talk.
“It’s the only way,” Jo said. “Look at the gate.” She pointed toward the back entrance, where the broken gate seemed to be only holding on by a thread. Two zombies had already crawled through the ever-widening gap between the two gates. “Once that falls, they’re getting in no matter what.”
“There’s got to be another way,” Bonds said, sounding as if he was in pain.
“There’s not,” Henry said, crowding in on Bonds with Jo on his other side. They had him boxed in and knew it. “But we can make this work for us. We can use the buildings along the wall on the north and the south to get our people out.”
“Are you crazy?” Bonds said. “Getting everyone out through the buildings will be impossible.”
“We don’t have a lot of choices,” Jo said. “None, really. Once that gate comes down, It will be like someone took the cork out of a bottle. Zombies are going to flood in here whether we like it or not. This is the only way, and we have to act now, or a bunch of people are going to die.”
“Now, give me the walkie,” Henry said.
Bonds placed his hand on the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt and held it there. He looked at Jeff, who was standing off to the side, but Jeff just looked to the ground.
A rip of gunshots sounded, and everyone jerked their attention to the source of the noise. Clayton and two other people fired at two zombies trying to climb over the top of the Humvee. One of the zombies took a blast to his face from a shotgun and toppled over and out of the hole. Clayton blasted the knees off the second one, and it ended up face down on top of the Humvee. Unfazed by the wounds, it tried to pull itself across the roof, but a man up on the wall put a bullet in the back of its head, ending it for good.
Bonds quickly unclipped the walkie-talkie and handed it over to Henry.
Henry jerked it from Bonds’ hand and raised it to his face. “Eli, come in. Eli, come in.”
He released the talk button, and a light static came over the tiny speaker. The static seemed to increase in volume as the seconds ticked by.
“Eli, come in, please,” Henry said, almost pleading.
“Who is this?” A voice asked over the speaker.
“This is Henry. Who is this?” Henry asked, not recognizing the voice.
“It’s Mason,” the voice said. “Eli’s outside the walls. What’s going on, Henry?”
“I’m at the back gate with Jo and Clayton,” Henry said. “You have to listen to me. The back gate is failing. One of the smart ones shot it with a rocket. There’s a hole in the wall. We’ve got it partially blocked, but it might not hold. The gate is coming down, and the zombies are getting in. We have to get everyone out of the Sanctum.”
“Wait, wait,” Mason said. “What are you talking about? The walls around this place, are the only thing keeping us all alive.”
“They won’t be for long,” Henry said.
Jo put out her hand, palm up, toward Henry. He got the message immediately and handed the walkie-talkie over to her.
She didn’t hesitate and started in. “You’ve got to listen to Henry. The walls can’t protect us. The zombies are getting in and this place will be a death trap.”
Mason said, “Hold on, let me get Donovan up to speed.”
Donovan came on the walkie-talkie a few seconds later. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes, absolutely sure,” Jo said.
“You do realize that there are a couple thousand zombies outside the walls,” Donovan said.
“Yes, but they’re concentrated at the east and the west gates,” Jo said. “We can get people out of the buildings on the north and south sides. They have dozens of exits. Once the zombies flood in, we lock them inside the walls.”
“But if the gate at the back is broken, they’ll come right back out and after us,” Donovan said.
“Leave that to us,” Jo said.
“What about the smart zombies out there?” Donovan asked. “They can lead the zombies after us.”
The question gave Jo great pause. As they had always been, the smart zombies were the wild card. That unpredictable element that no one had counted on.
“Then we’ll have to kill them,” Jo said.
“How the hell are you going to do that?” Donovan asked.
“We’ll figure that out,” Jo said. “Listen. We don’t have any choice. They are coming in soon. We have got to get everyone out of here. Now!”
“Okay, okay,” Donovan said. “Most of these people are not with us. I don’t know how I can convince them to leave.”
“Once you leave with your people, they’ll follow,” Jo said.
`“I don’t know about that,” Donovan said.
Jo pushed the walkie-talkie out toward Bonds and said, “You have to convince one of your people on the front wall.”
Bonds looked at the walkie-talkie like it was a snake.
“Do it,” Jo said, shoving the walkie-talkie into Bonds’ chest.<
br />
Reluctantly, Bonds took the walkie-talkie and brought it up to his mouth. He said, “Get Lassiter on the line.”
The zombies continued to build up at the back gate. Somehow the pressure they were putting on it had closed the gap between the two sides, but it was leaning inward, looking as if it might just fall onto the bulldozer. Kent adjusted the blade, doing everything he could to prevent the gate from collapsing, but from Jo’s perspective, it was a losing proposition in the long run.
“This is Lassiter,” a voice said over the speaker on the walkie-talkie. “Who is this?”
“It’s Bonds. You’ve got to listen to me and believe me. The back gate is about to fall, and we have a hole in the back wall. The zombies are going to get in.”
“What happened?” Lassiter said.
“We can’t keep going over this,” Bonds said. “One of the smart zombies knocked a hole in the wall with a rocket and then hit the back gate with another one. The gate is going to fall anytime now. We’re holding off zombies at the hole, but if they get in the gate, then we’re in deep shit.” Bonds paused as sucked in a deep breath before continuing. “We have to get everyone out of the Sanctum.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Lassiter said.
Jo grabbed the walkie-talkie from Bonds and said, “This is Jo. We are not crazy. What Bonds said is true. Listen, there’s a brief window here. We’ve looked to the north and south sides of the Sanctum and there’s almost no zombies in either direction. We can get people out through the buildings and get them either to another place or they can go on the run.”
“What keeps the zombies from coming back out after us?” Donovan said.
“We’re working on that,” Jo said.
“That is not reassuring,” Donovan said.
“It’s the best we got,” Jo said.
There was a long pause on Lassiter’s end of the call, then he said, “How is this going to work?”
Jo handed the walkie-talkie to Henry, who looked a little surprised. He took the walkie-talkie, then said, “Listen up. We don’t have time to go over this twice.”
Lassiter didn’t like much of what he heard, but as far as he could tell, there wasn’t anything this kid said that didn’t make sense.
Chapter 88
Pursuit
The world was a blurry mess to Navarro. He saw differences between light and darks but most of what he saw came in blocky shapes. Some of those shapes were human sized in motion. But as his dad used to say, he gave it the old college try. Whatever the hell that meant. His face stung like someone had thrown acid onto it.
“Cut to the right,” Eli said.
Navarro was nearly completely reliant on Eli for navigation as he turned the MAV to the right. The big vehicle rumbled over the debris spilled across the ground from the decimated building.
Their target, a smart zombie, was on the move, running down an open street toward a group of one and two-story buildings. It was clear to see that his progress was slowed by the mob of zombies swarming around him. Eli was only able to pick him out of the crowd because of the rocket launcher he had slung over his back.
“He’s trying to move to that group of buildings down that street,” Eli said. “He gets there and we’ll lose him.”
Eli knew that as long as their enemy still had that rocket launcher, the Sanctum was at risk.
“We’re going to have to drive right into them,” Gardner said from his seat in the back of the MAV.
“We have to take him out or everyone inside is dead,” Eli said.
“But we could die,” Gardner said.
“Everything is a risk,” Eli said. “We need to take this one.”
“Tell me where to drive,” Navarro said.
“Take a left, say ten degrees, then head straight,” Eli said.
Navarro did what he was told, watching the blobs of color move along ahead of them. He could see well enough to tell they were humanoid and guessed they were zombies. So, he plowed forward, rolling over the zombies with all thirty tons of the MAV.
It was no contest. The MAV cut through the crowd like a giant metal wedge. Zombies flew in the air or went under the heavy duty tires of the MAV. The ones sent airborne were just bags of flesh with broken bones inside. The ones that went under the tires were crushed flat.
It was easy at first, but the bodies built up under the vehicle, putting up resistance, nearly stopping it. But Navarro gave it more gas. The passengers felt the tires spin, then the MAV got through the first clump of zombies, but their progress was short-lived as they rammed into another cluster of undead.
Eli frantically scanned through his narrow window visor, trying desperately to follow the smart zombie pushing its way through the packed scrum of zombies. More than once, he lost sight of it, but then would find it again, trudging through the horde.
“Don’t let it get to that next building,” Eli yelled.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Navarro said, nudging the MAV forward.
“Gardner, load up another shell,” Eli said.
“We’re almost out,” Gardner said.
“I don’t give a shit,” Eli said. “We need to blast that thing before it gets away.”
“This isn’t a fucking gun,” Gardner said. “I can’t just shoot one guy.”
“Then blast the building past it,” Gardner said. “Maybe it’ll turn around.”
Under his breath, Gardner said, “Shit. Yes, Captain Ahab,” as he loaded up the next shell. He rammed it in and did his best to aim the cannon. For a short few seconds, he attempted to find what Eli was saying was the target, but that was impossible. So, he decided to go with Plan B and to hit the building. It was a one-story affair made of stucco and wood, made to look like it belonged in the southwest. It took him a few seconds, but he locked in.
“Fire in the hole!” Gardner said and fired away.
The shell flew straight and true, striking the building on its right side and exploding. Wood, metal, and pieces of concrete blew into the air, followed by flames and smoke. Any zombies on that side of the building went down, some for good and others maybe just put out of commission temporarily. The smoke cloud rolled down the street, obscuring much of the scene.
“Where is he?” Eli asked, his head bobbing back and forth, trying to spot their target. “Drive forward.”
“I can’t see shit and the street is full of smoke,” Navarro said.
“He’ll get away,” Eli said.
“Give it a second,” Navarro said. “For the smoke to clear.”
“GO!” Eli shouted as he sat forward in his seat.
“No,” Navarro said, and it came out like a growl.
Eli slumped back in his seat and settled in to wait, but he didn’t look happy about it. The seconds ticked by and the smoke cloud slowly dissipated, assisted by a breeze coming out of the west.
Eli spotted him first, shrugging off what looked like a large support beam from the smoking building. The creature tossed it off like it was made of balsa wood, when Eli could tell it weighed a lot more than that.
“There he is,” Eli said, pointing out of his visor window.
“I can barely see and I know there’s a shit ton of rubble in the street,” Navarro said.
“This thing is like a tank,” Eli said. “Drive over it.”
“We get hung up on that shit and we’re done,” Navarro said. “There’s no fucking cavalry coming to save us.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Gardner said.
“Wait,” Eli said. “Just get me close enough to shoot him then.”
The smart zombie stumbled along for a couple of steps. It looked as if it was possibly injured. The other smart zombie had been disabled. Maybe this one was about to go down?
It fell forward two steps, almost going down, and stopped in the street next to the rubble. Eli could swear he thought he saw the thing shiver, making Eli think of a dog shaking off water. It slumped forward, putting its hands on its knees. This went on for
a few seconds, but it straightened up, and then turned in their direction and glared with such a sense of hatred that Eli thought he felt the heat of it inside the MAV.
“Go after him, now!” Eli shouted. “He’s going to get away.”
Navarro gritted his teeth, and despite the fact that he could barely see, he said, “Fuck it,” and started the MAV forward.
The creature stood his ground, watching the vehicle roll toward the rubble that stood between them. Navarro jagged a little off course and Eli told him to cut right five degrees and Navarro followed the command. The MAV rumbled up onto the mound of rubble, making it halfway up, when it fell on the right side, landing hard, jarring everyone inside.
Gardner let out a yelp and Eli slammed into the right side of the cabin, grunting. He quickly pushed off and asked, “What’s going on?”
Navarro gave the vehicle some gas, but the MAV gained no traction.
“We’re hung up!” Navarro shouted.
“I told you this would happen!” Gardner cried out. “We’re fucked. We’re totally fucked.”
“Shut up,” Eli shouted back. “Get this thing going.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Navarro yelled. “We’re stuck on this damn rubble and we lost two tires earlier when that damn thing hit us with a rocket.”
Eli rushed to his visor window and looked out. The smart zombie had gained his feet and was limping away.
Eli turned to Navarro and asked, “What can you do?”
“Not sure,” Navarro said.
Eli looked back out the visor window and saw the disoriented zombies starting to get on their feet again. What was worse was the fact that the smart zombie was getting further down the street.
“He can’t get away,” Eli said. “He just can’t.”
“We’re stuck and there’s not shit any of us can do about it,” Navarro said.
Chapter 89
Back and Front
The gate leaned in further by the minute, and all eyes were on it. A few of the people on the wall took token shots into the surge of zombies at the gate, but the angle was bad, and only a few of the zombies were taken down. Those that fell were replaced a second later by another hungry mouth, pressing against the zombies ahead of it. The pressure was building, and the gate looked like it could give out at any moment, even though Kent jockeyed the bulldozer every few seconds to prevent the gate from falling. He was doing a masterful job, but the zombies pushing on the gate, and the laws of gravity and physics stood against him.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 37
