“Don’t you think you should try to get back to the road? This car isn’t made for this kind of shit,” John said.
“I’ve been trying for a while. The wheels are slipping. The slope of the ground is getting worse.”
“Stop and I’ll get out and look around.”
I touched the brakes and the ass end of the car started working its way around, trying to catch up to the front end. The car came to a stop, only for a second, then we started sliding down the hill ass end first. We were going down this hill no matter what. I stepped down hard on the gas and tried going up the hill but we kept sliding back.
“Grab hold of something!” I shouted.
I felt Lily grab my forearm. Our eyes locked and we both turned, looking out the back window. The undergrowth lessened in time for us to see the ground drop off behind us. The car went airborne for a few seconds and we splashed down in a river. The car bobbed up and down, pointing straight up in the air. For a split second it seemed like we were going to flip over onto the hood of the car. Then the weight of the car corrected and we splashed down right side up.
“Is everybody okay?” I asked. Lily still held my arm in a vise grip. So I assumed she was alright.
“Which way are we headed?” John asked.
I took that as he would be fine. “Let me put it this way. If we don’t sink first I imagine we’ll probably be in the Gulf of Mexico in a few days.”
Water was rushing into the car. “I don’t think we’ll make it to the Gulf,” John said.
“Doesn’t matter, I was there this time of year once,” Lily said. “This is the off season, too hot. Maybe we can head down in the spring.”
We gathered our meager belongings and prepared to swim for shore. “One of you pick our next set of wheels. I haven’t been too lucky so far.” I crawled through the window and climbed on top of the car. John and Lily joined me. “Let’s try the opposite shore. See what the unknown holds in store for us.”
“Last one to shore field strips and cleans all the weapons,” Lily said, as she jumped into the muddy water.
John went next then I followed. I’d get the duty unless I could catch them and since I was a lousy swimmer that wasn’t going to happen. I was hoping to just be able to make it to shore.
Chapter 13
Gina was right. The highway was clear and it only took us about forty-five minutes to get to the exit for Fort Leonard Wood. Getting onto the base was a different story. I’d been here years before when Tim had graduated from boot camp. Things were a little different from then. After 9-11 security on military bases had been beefed up. There was a guard house at the entrance to the base now. Ten foot high chain link fencing topped with razor wire ran away from the guard house in both directions. The traffic arm that blocked the entrance to the camp was up with a tank parked in the roadway. Dead bodies littered the ground both outside and inside of the fencing. A full out battle had taken place here. From the looks of the bodies on this side of the fence a group of civilians being pursued by a horde of zombies had tried to fight their way onto the base. Stopped by the tank blocking the road, humans and zombies had both been indiscriminately shot dead by the soldiers defending the base. The guard house was shot to shit and behind the fence I could see several dead soldiers. We had missed this battle by three or four days judging by the state of decay of the unchanged bodies outside the fence.
“”How the hell are we going to get in there?” Gina asked.
“We’ll have to go through the fence,” I said.
“What are we waiting for?”
I pointed to the dead bodies on the other side of the fence. “There has to be more soldiers than that in there. I don’t want to get shot trying to break into the base. I’m going to climb over that tank and have a look around.”
“No you’re not.”
“Gina, we can’t just sit here,” Cindy said. “Al’s going to die if I don’t get an IV started soon. Steve, there’s a hospital in there somewhere. Please go check it out.”
“I’ll just walk down the road a ways. I’ll stay where you can see me. Okay?”
“Fine. Don’t go far. I’ll get something to cut the fence. As soon as you get back we’ll all go in.”
I climbed over the tank and into the fort. There weren’t that many bodies on this side and from what I could see no dead zombies. Further down the road I could see another building identical to the guard shack at the entrance but without the fencing and road arm. I wanted to walk down to it but the road curved and I would have been out of sight of the girls. Since I had promised Gina I wouldn’t go that far into the base and after what happened at the lumber yard I turned around and went back. Gina was already cutting her way through the fence.
“Did you check to see if the fence was electrified?”
Gina looked at me with an embarrassed look on her face. “I didn’t think of that.”
“You should have waited for me to get back,” I said. “You could have been killed.”
“Well I wasn’t. Are you going to help me, or just stand there with that smug look on your face?”
“I thought I’d just stand here.”
Gina handed me a set of pliers through where she had already cut and I went about ten feet further down the fence and started cutting through. We had Cindy pull the truck up against the fence so I could climb onto the hood and cut the wires holding the top of the fence to the framing. Once the wire was cut we just laid the section of fence on the ground and drove over it. Using some rope Al had in the back of the truck I temporarily tied the fence back together and then we drove down to the other guard house.
The guard shack was deserted. “What now?” I asked.
“Go inside and see if you can figure out where the base hospital is,” Cindy said.
“The hospital isn’t too far from here, probably about a mile down this road. I remember passing it when I was here for Tim’s graduation ceremony.”
“Then get a move on,” Gina said. “Al’s not getting any better. Lead the way.”
I got back in the truck and the girls followed me to the hospital. As I drove it became obvious that this part of the base was deserted. I always thought of an Army base as being just a bunch of barracks, some training facilities, maybe an airfield, something like the old TV shows I used to watch when I was a kid. That wasn’t how military bases actually were. Fort Leonard Wood had all those things but it was also a small community in its own right. There were homes, restaurants, gas stations, everything that you would find in a small town you would find here. The one thing Fort Leonard Wood didn’t have now was people.
I pulled into the hospital’s parking lot and stopped in front of the main entrance. I sat in the truck staring into the large glass windows that made up the front lobby of the hospital. Nothing moved inside. I heard a car door slam and could see Gina in my mirror walking up to join me.
“I don’t see anybody. Do you see anybody?” she asked.
“Yeah. I see you, and you look marvelous.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Hey that’s not nice. I’m doing my Billy Crystal imitation,” I said. “You know, Saturday Night Live, Fernando Llamas.”
“Yeah, that’s nice. Come help us get Al out of the truck.”
“We can’t take him in there yet. Let me go in and have a look around.”
“Cindy’s getting pretty worked up. She’s ready to throw Al on her back and drag him in there herself.”
“Well she’s going to have to wait. Thank God it’s a small hospital. It’s only one floor so it won’t take long. I don’t think there’s even anybody in there. Do you see what I see?”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Neither do I. That’s a good thing. If they had a problem with zombies in there the place would have been shot to shit. I don’t think any zombies got inside this place at all.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“You go talk to Cindy. I’ll be right back.”
“I thought we decided to stick together,” Gina said. “You really want to go in there by yourself?”
“I don’t even want to take a shit by myself anymore. You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. Besides we can’t leave her out here with Al by herself.”
“Yeah, I know. Don’t be too long.”
“I’ll just see if the door is open then look around the lobby.”
I turned and started to walk away. Thinking of all the things that had gone wrong every time we separated, I turned back and grabbed Gina by the arm spinning her around and into my arms. I could tell I had taken her by surprise by the shocked look on her face.
“I love you,” I said, then kissed her deeply.
“What brought that on?” she asked.
“Not exactly the response I was looking for.”
Gina held me tighter, “I love you too.”
“That’s better, little late though.”
Gina went to tell Cindy to get ready and I went to the door of the hospital. Since it was early in the morning the sun shining through the windows illuminated most of the lobby. I forced open the already unlocked pneumatic doors. I hoped this was a good sign, the doors being unlocked, and made my way into the lobby. Everything looked normal. If there would have been someone at the reception desk it would have been like nothing had ever happened. The main lobby was in the center of the building. Darkened hallways ran off both ways from the reception desk and a sign behind the desk pointed me in the direction of the cafeteria.
I stood in the center of the room and listened. The silence was total. Better than the total silence was the smell of fresh air. Absent was the odor of death and rot that I had grown so accustomed to. From the looks of things the place was empty. I grabbed a wheel chair from beside the door and started to head back out. Before forcing the doors open I turned around and called out, “hey”. I stood quietly by the door and listened for the moaning of the undead. Hearing nothing I went back out to get the others.
Chapter 14
Our clothes were mostly dry by the time I’d finished cleaning Lily and my rifles and pistols. John cleaned his own rifle and took care of the menagerie of small arms he’d managed to conceal on himself in the past few days. I gave up trying to keep track after he pulled the third pistol from behind his back. I wasn’t sure but I know there were at least two more after that one. I was surprised he’d been able to swim out of that damn river with all the weight he carried.
Lily insisted that I clean her 9mm Beretta first and as soon as I’d finished that she took off on her own to scout out the area. This pissed John and I off to no extent but since I was no longer officially her superior officer there was little I had to say in the matter. She was only gone for a little over a half an hour but had been able to obtain quite a wealth of intel. There was a road about a quarter mile straight up the embankment. She turned around and came back right away though because at the top of the hill was a highway department facility. Behind an eight foot high fence topped with barbed wire sat three dump trucks.
Lily almost helped me finish cleaning our guns after she got back, she was excited and in a hurry to show us her find, but she decided it wouldn’t be right for her to go back on the original terms of the contest. So instead she prepared us a little snack out of our water-logged backpacks. John had a can of that squirt cheese he’d been hoarding along with some well wrapped crackers that had managed to stay dry.
Once we had our weapons cleaned and had eaten enough to take the edge off our hunger we set out for the truck depot at the top of the hill. I for one was excited at the prospect of getting one of the trucks. It would be like having our own tank. The highway department loved their big trucks and so would I. Those babies would have us sitting a good eight to ten feet off street level. Well out of the biting range of a horde of the undead. Let the bastards come. I’d just drive over the lot of them. I had half a mind to go back for the ones we’d just escaped and running their asses over for good measure.
We climbed the hill and had no trouble finding the enclosure. Our resources were severely limited, we had nothing to cut through the fence, so we had no choice but to climb over instead. Once inside it only took us a few seconds to locate the keys to all three trucks. I was a little worried about breaking into the office where the keys were stored. There was a sign on the door advising us as to the silent alarm that would be activated when John kicked the door in. We took a vote and decided we could risk alerting the local constables to any transgressions on our parts. Lily pointed out that we could use the help when they came to check the situation out. I must admit I was a little disappointed that no one showed up to arrest us. It would have been a nice vacation spending a few days in a hospitable southern jail for a few days.
Even though it would have been relaxing to take the rest of the day off, sitting behind the secure ten foot fence that surrounded the facility time was of the essence. If we didn’t get a move on we wouldn’t have a hope in hell of beating General Simmons to Fort Leonard Wood. I knew his patience had to be running thin. Any day now he was going to get tired of waiting on us and decide it was time to go after my dad. We would have to load up and get a move on as soon as possible.
“John see if you can find any keys for these beasts then check them for fuel. Lily and I will look around and see if we can find anything useful.”
“On it boss.”
I hadn’t given many orders while I was actually in the military but I had to admit, I kind of liked it. John soon had keys for all three of the trucks. They all had full tanks and he also found spare tanks in the small shed positioned at the far end of the enclosure. From the looks of things we would have enough fuel to make it all the way to Fort Leonard Wood. Other than the trucks there wasn’t much that would be of much use to us. We did find some nice shovels and some dandy bags of cement but in the end decided we could do without these items.
The one thing we hadn’t found were the keys to the padlocked front gate. With these trucks though I really didn’t think that would be a problem. We would just drive through the front gate. What little gear we had left was loaded onto the only truck Lily would consider letting us use. They all smelled of cigarette smoke. Even the one of them that had a little pine tree air freshener thingy hanging from the mirror. But for some reason that was all it took to make the truck useable, a pine scent soaked piece of cardboard. We took one last quick look around to see if we could scavenge anything at all from the place.
“Did you guys hear that?” John said, as he was climbing up into the truck.
Of course we all heard. A helicopter was closing in on our location. Without thinking I pulled out the phone and turned it off. Goddamn military piece of shit that it was didn’t even have the common courtesy of shorting out when we’d landed in the river. Not that it was supposed to. Being military issue it was made to be water resistant. You’d just think it would have broken like so many of the other standard pieces of equipment I’d been issued over the years.
“Is that wise?” Lily asked.
“They’ve got us anyway,” I said. “Maybe we can buy a little time before they come for us. I’ll try to call my dad and warn them. We’ll just have to meet them somewhere else.”
“That’s a good plan. Only thing is, how are you going to call them with it turned off?”
We sat in the truck and watched the chopper for a while. It seemed to me that they were following the river. They didn’t know where we were after all. I decided to take a chance and turned the phone back on. After about ten minutes and a dozen tries. I realized they had no idea where we were. The phone had shorted out when we went in the water.
“Looks like we’re in the clear boss. What now?”
“Well John, I guess we’ll sit here and watch them for a while. If they get far enough away we’ll go ahead and drive on out of here.”
Lily leaned up against me and closed her eyes. “Wake me when you two decide what we’re going to do.”
“You can b
oth get some rest,” John said. “Get comfortable. I’m going to stretch my legs. I’ll wake you guys up if anything changes.”
John climbed out of the cab. Lily took that as her cue and wrapped her arms around me. “Are we okay?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I know I haven’t been too nice to you lately.”
That was true she had been a little touchy lately. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything’s fine.”
“Thanks for saying that but I’ve been a bitch and I know it. This always happens. I meet someone I like and the next thing you know I’m treating them like shit. Before too long it’s over. I’ve pushed them away. Please don’t let me do that to you.”
I kissed her and held her close. “I’m not going anywhere and neither are you.”
“Make love to me.”
“I don’t think this would be a good time for that.”
“That’s true. Let’s wait until after they capture us. That would probably work out better any way.”
“We don’t know what they’re going to do. Maybe we’re worried about nothing.”
“Do you really believe that?”
I hesitated for a second before I answered. “No. He’s got something up his sleeve. I know he does. I just wish I knew what it was.”
“I hope we never find out. I just want to get to Fort Leonard Wood, find your dad, and go somewhere where they’ll never find us.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“One last thing though.”
“What?”
“Make love to me.”
I woke with a start. Something was shaking my shoulder. “Jesus Christ you two, put some clothes on. They finally landed. They’re not very far from here.”
Dead Life (Book 5) Page 11
