by Damon Hunter
He decided not to bother. He did not need them to get Vance and Holiday, and the political capital he might spend to get something he ultimately did not need seemed foolish. He was glad when they turned around, and as he watched them drive safely away an idea came to him.
He looked over at Mikey, seeing the mix of hatred and hunger in the vampire rotter’s bulging eyes, and smiled in return.
“I may have a treat for you after all, my angry friend,” he said.
Mikey strained against his bonds, trying to get loose and get to Talbot even though he had been trying and failing for days.
“Do you think immunity is hereditary?” Dr. Talbot asked the vampire rotter.
Mikey had no answer.
“I know a way we can find out. I think you will like it.”
CHAPTER 31
Oceanside, CA
Again they were able to use Donna and Katelin’s knowledge of the area to wind their way through neighborhoods to get west, avoiding the clog of traffic on the main roads.
The dead still of the empty houses was disturbing. They passed by hordes of infected roaming the area. Thankfully, by the time any of them looked to the Urban Assault Wagon, Ana had them far enough away that the horde could not follow.
“I’m sorry I pointed a gun at you,” Donna told her as they pulled into a hotel parking lot about a block from the harbor. It was clear this was as close as they would get with the Urban Assault Wagon.
“I’m sorry I almost drove us all into certain death. I think the idea of staying in this mess clouded my judgment. Can we call it even?”
“Fine with me.”
Deke looked back at Bar, expecting maybe a similar apology, and got nothing.
“I’m still not sure we should be putting our lives in the hands of someone who can’t remember to pick up the phone on his only daughter’s birthday,” Katelin said.
“He’s not perfect, but he is good at this stuff,” Donna told her daughter. “If he gets us out of here, maybe you can forgive him?”
“I’ll think about it.”
They got out. Lumpy had actually found a crutch in the back of the Urban Assault Wagon. Jo had thrown it in just for a situation like this. Since she was fairly new to the group, she had not been stockpiling weapons and felt this was a good way to contribute. Everyone got a laugh out of it, but Lumpy was glad they kept it. He held his sword in the other hand as he put the crutch under his arm. He didn’t move well, but Bar no longer had to carry him.
Deke had been right about the beach. It was infested. The harbor less so. Through the binoculars, they could see some boats still docked, including several sailboats, which were Bar’s specialty.
What they did not see was any vampire rotters. They hoped it stayed that way.
“No guns,” Lumpy said, “unless we have no other choice.”
“Maybe not even then,” Ana said as she drew her two hatchets. “If we draw the hordes, we won’t make it anyway.”
Katelin put her guns in the bag at her side and drew her own axes.
Deke produced two baseball bats with long nails protruding from the heavy end and two katanas from the back of the Urban Assault wagon. He handed one of each to Bar.
Bar looked surprised as he took them.
“You remind me of my dad,” Deke told him as an explanation.
“So, you’re starting to like me?”
“I hate my dad,” Deke told him, “but I wouldn’t want him eaten by an angry infected.”
Donna picked up a fireman’s axe and crowbar.
“With any luck, we won’t have to use this stuff,” Lumpy said as they started toward the harbor.
“The fact we are all standing here makes me think all our luck has been used up,” Deke said.
They moved down a hill and ended up in a big public parking lot. The end of the harbor was lined with shops and restaurants. The parking lot was full of cars but very few people. All the humans they saw appeared infected. Both exits had been blocked when panicked drivers ran into each other.
Donna bashed in the head of someone’s infected grandma when she got too close, but otherwise they made it to the end of the lot unmolested.
The shops and restaurants looked less inviting. The walkway between the shops and the water was packed tight with wandering infected.
Bar pointed. “We go around. There’s a gate with a lock just to the right of the shops. Boaters don’t want to have to fight through tourists any more than we want to fight through the infected.”
Donna spotted the gate. A code was required to open it. “You have the code?” she asked Bar.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“When they repo a boat, they change the code, but with everything going on, there’s a good chance they didn’t get around to it this time.”
Donna nodded. They did not really have a better choice than to hope Bar could get them inside.
An ambler stood on the narrow walkway going across the water on the way to the gate. Bar decapitated it with the katana. Lumpy turned and did the same with his broadsword to one coming up behind them.
Bar reached the gate and punched in his code. Nothing happened. He did it again and got the same result.
“I told you our luck had run out,” Deke said.
Bar looked at the gate. It was high and the vertical bars would make a hard climb. On one side was a taller fence, lined with barbed wire on the top. On the other side was just water.
“One of us can swim it,” Bar said, taking off his shirt.
“Keep the shirt on,” Ana said, “I’ll do it. I’m probably the best swimmer.”
“I’m a sailor by trade. Swimming is part of the gig at times.”
“All-league honorable mention hundred-meter crawl,” she said.
“This ain’t no pool.”
“We don’t have time for this shit,” a shirtless Deke said as he put his knife between his teeth and dove into the harbor.
If only having one and a half legs affected his swimming, it did not show. He quickly swam around the gate and pulled himself up on the walkway.
“All-league breaststroke,” he said as he rose to his feet. “None of this honorable mention shit for me.
He stepped to the gate; there was no need for a code to open it from the inside. He was reaching for it when everyone yelled.
He turned with the knife just as the vampire rotter pounced on him, knocking him into the gate. Deke swung the knife, putting it into the vamper’s back, but the rotter had him pinned on the gate. Any damage the blade did was not enough to keep it from sinking his teeth into Deke’s face.
Bar stabbed through the bars, putting his blade into the thing’s exposed shoulder. It kept chewing on Deke until Bar gave the blade a hard twist.
When it raised its head, Ana chopped down through the gap in the bars with her hatchet. Getting an axe to the forehead stopped it cold, but not before it let out a low, rumbling growl.
They had heard one make this noise before. The five on the outside of the gate turned to see the horde by the restaurant and shops turn as if they were all one and head their direction.
CHAPTER 32
The Pacific Ocean
“You want me to get closer to shore? Might have a better chance to get some service?” Holiday asked as he watched Vance staring at his phone. Pushing the boat at full throttle had burned the fuel they had fast. They had already had to gas back up. The good news was the seas were calm and they were making as good time as they could hope for. The bad news was the cigarette boat was thirstier than Holiday had anticipated. When they left, he was confident he had enough to get down the coast with some to spare. Now he was not so sure.
Vance shook his head. “Service is not the problem. This is a TMRT phone with uplinks to multiple satellites.”
He had sent another message, saying:
“I’m on my way, coming by boat. Please have Katelin turn on her phone.”
“I’ve got a charger on board if you need s
ome more juice. We have short-band radio too,” Holiday told him.
“Problem is not on our end. They haven’t responded.”
“Worried?”
“While there are many reasons to not text someone back given the situation down there, it’s hard not to think the worst.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“This whole trip could be a waste of time. We may have skipped the evac to go on a fool’s errand.”
“Probably. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have anything better to do.”
“You are going above and beyond for someone you don’t really know.”
“Not really, you and the Amazon saved my life, for one. Two, I lost everyone I loved when that shit happened. The downside to immunity is you get to watch everyone you love get the rot.”
“I can see how that could be tough.”
“That’s not even the tough part. As you well know, once someone gets the rot they can’t wait to share. I didn’t know I was immune right away. When it started, being immune wasn’t even a thing.”
Vance nodded.
“Watching your wife and kids get the rot sucks, but it is like your fucking birthday compared to killing them to keep from getting it yourself.”
Vance had nothing to say to that. He didn’t figure Holiday was telling him to get his opinion anyway.
“Especially sucks when you learn later you didn’t have to.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Yeah, I know. Doesn’t help that much. Though I suppose it kept me from putting a gun in my mouth.”
Again Vance did not say anything.
“If I can help you save your family it might make some of this feel right. Probably not, I know, but it’s the best I’ve got.”
“I appreciate that. Thanks.”
“No problem. At worst, I figure I get some rotter to do what I couldn’t and put me out of my misery.”
Holiday checked the fuel gauge; they were doing a little better this time around.
“We have enough to get to Oceanside,” Holiday said, “but we are going to need to scrounge up some gas there if we need to go further.”
“Oceanside should be far enough.”
“We’re still going to need fuel. Unless you want to stay there.”
CHAPTER 33
Oceanside Harbor
“Looks like one of you gets to swim after all,” Donna said as she put down the axe and unslung the rifle from her shoulder.
“Change your mind on the guns?” Katelin asked as the mass of infected started moving toward the narrow walkway to the harbor.
Donna answered by putting a bullet in the face of the first ambler to reach the walkway.
Bar drew his pistol. “Kind of like putting a rubber on while getting dressed at this point.”
He and Ana turned to look towards the boat slips. The dead vampire rotter was on top of Deke. Neither of them were moving. Donna was right; someone still had to swim around the locked gate to let them in. Problem was the slip side of the locked gate was not free of infected. This explained why there were so many boats still sitting in their slips.
Most of whoever decided to leave by sea had been infected. Probably by the vampire rotter on top of Deke. All of them were headed for the gate.
“Let’s clear some space and then I’ll go,” Ana said as she put away the axes and shouldered her AR-15.
Bar started to say something but she cut him off. “If I don’t make it, we need someone to sail the boat.”
Bar hated to think his life, a broke loser entering his fifth decade on the planet, would be more valuable than that of this young woman, but in this case he knew she might be right.
While Donna, Lumpy and Katelin protected the narrow walkway, Bar and Ana turned and started taking down the infected on the other side of the gate.
Soon they had left a pile of infected on either side of the gate, but the amblers were still coming from both sides.
“I don’t think we have enough bullets,” Donna said as she slapped in a new magazine.
Ana did the same and handed her gun to Bar. “She’s right. I need to go now.”
“You won’t make it,” Bar said as he took out the nearest group of amblers. He pointed to groups of amblers wading in the water. He hoped they would drown before they reached the gate but could not be sure.
“I don’t see much of a choice.”
Bar’s hope they would drown was destroyed as a pair of green hands grabbed the walkway and started pulling itself up. Kate sent it to the bottom of the harbor with a burst from one of her Glocks, but more hands were appearing. They no longer had just a narrow walkway to defend. It also meant Ana would have to contend with infected as she swam to the other side of the gate.
The bad odds had just gotten worse, but the part of there being no choice had not changed one bit.
The look on Ana’s face showed she knew it, but also showed her resolve to do it anyway. She had taken off her shoes when Deke pushed the corpse of the vampire rotter off of him. Half his face was missing, and he was torn up but able to stand.
Bar aimed his gun at him but Deke held up a hand to tell him to stop. The former marine was ripped up, but the infection had not taken hold yet. He reached over and opened the gate.
Once the gate was open he pulled his knife out of the back of the vampire rotter. An ambler reached him, grabbing his shirt. Deke stabbed it in the neck and kicked him off the walkway.
Lumpy fired his pistol until the clip was empty and turned to follow the others through the open gate when a hand came out the water and snagged his crutch. He fell face first on the pressed wood of the walkway. The gun left his hand and bounced into the water.
He rolled to his back to see the ambler pull itself onto the walkway. Lumpy sat up and swung his bag of gear and hit it in the jaw, knocking it back into the drink. Unfortunately for Lumpy, it was holding his crutch when it fell.
Without the crutch, he had two hands to use his rifle. He looked back as he took it off his shoulder. Everyone was through. Katelin held the gate open and called to him, “Come on.”
“Go,” he yelled at her and then turned with the gun and started firing, glad the gunfire would drown out any argument against leaving him behind. He wished this was not the best option, but couldn’t see how he would not slow them up.
This way he could give them a chance. He didn’t want to die but figured if he had to go he might as well go a hero.
Something grabbed him from behind. He turned to see half of Deke’s face staring at him as Deke pulled him through the gate.
“SWARC don’t leave people behind,” Deke told him as Katelin joined him in dragging Lumpy towards the gate.
Instead of arguing, Lumpy turned and mowed down the approaching infected as they dragged him on his ass.
Once they were through the gate, Donna closed it, but not before grabbing the axe. She put the rifle back on her shoulder and moved forward, looking for something to chop up.
Bar pointed at a sailboat, one of the smallest on this part of the harbor near the end of the walkway. “She’s the one called Harold’s Hangover Express, we can take her.” He too had switched from firearms to clubs and blades.
He stepped up and swung the bat with the nails, taking off the head of the nearest infected. When he bashed in the next one’s brains, he did it with the skull of the first one, which was still stuck on the nails in his bat.
Ana split the difference, holding one hatchet and her pistol as she fired at the ones farthest away while hacking into any who got too close.
The other side of the fence was not as thick with infected as the walkway leading to the gate. Plenty of poor souls had gotten the rot on this side, but their numbers were not close to those on the land side.
Even dragging Lumpy along, they were plowing through them. Lumpy kept his eyes behind them. He picked off the few who made it onto this side of the walkway by the water. As the horde slammed against the gate he could see the first group
getting crushed, but just like they had done on the blown-out stairwell back at the hotel, they climbed over each other, and soon infected were on the walkway on the boat side of the gate.
Lumpy took them out until his gun had no more bullets. The stack of dead he left on this side of the gate did nothing to slow down the next group over the fence.
Lumpy put in his last magazine and was aiming when Deke told him, “Save it. We’re here.”
They pulled Lumpy up so he could grab the side and help pull himself in. Once he was inside, Deke went and helped Donna untie the craft while Bar started the small engine at the back of the boat.
“This your boat?” Lumpy asked him as he found a seat where he could fire at any infected who got too close.
“No,” Bar said as the engine came to life. He looked up and saw someone on the walkway. Bar pointed to a man wearing a captain’s hat with rotting, pale green skin ambling toward the boat. “It’s his.”
Donna stepped up and put the blade of the axe between the captain’s eyes and kicked him into the water.
“Sorry Harold,” Bar said as Ana and Kate helped Donna onto the boat.
They all looked to Deke, who was still standing on the dock.
Bar was pulling away, but he put the engine into neutral, saying, “Get on.”
Once a boat gets moving there are no brakes, so even though Bar was not going into reverse anymore, the boat was still slowly floating away from the slip.
“Come on,” Lumpy said, reaching out his hand as far as he could. “You can make it.”
Deke shook his head and turned around. On his back, several large sores bubbled to a head and popped.
“No,” Ana said.
“You ought to shoot me,” Deke told them.
Ana and Lumpy raised their guns but neither fired.
“Come on, do it,” Deke told them as his eyes began to bulge and his jaw began to elongate.
