by TW Brown
“Holy fuck!” Malik shouted loud enough to be heard not only in Joel’s ear piece, but above the roar of the ensuing explosion that consumed the transport truck and the revving engine of the Humvee.
“Bandits incoming at our three o’clock!” Will’s voice came over the radio. “Somebody found serious hardware, boss.”
Joel had to wrench himself around in his seat to see as Debra shot across the highway and down the slight embankment, obviously in an attempt to keep them shielded from incoming fire. Once again, Joel had to admit being impressed with the woman, all thoughts of scolding her for her earlier impertinence a distant memory.
Joel thought he caught a glimpse of a vehicle with some sort of rocket launcher on top. The vehicle was briefly masked by white smoke as three more missiles fired in quick succession. The contrails led to a second truck which practically evaporated in a ball of flame.
“We got trouble at about zero-four-zero relative,” Joel barked.
The sound of the turret adjusting could be heard, quickly followed by the hammering chatter of the .50 caliber machine gun. Joel grabbed his field glasses and sighted in on the target. It didn’t look at first like the machine gun would penetrate the vehicle’s armor. He was about to call Malik off when he saw a series of five-round bursts walk up the hood of the vehicle and then shatter the front window. Whatever resistance the vehicle had designed into it to protect the soldiers manning it, apparently a direct barrage of rounds from a .50 cal was not part of the equation. Something dark sprayed the windshield from the inside and the vehicle started to roll forward and at a slight angle as the driver slumped over the wheel.
Small-arms fire sounded from the same direction the now disabled missile launching vehicle crept along, apparently impotent and out of the picture at the moment. Joel pointed that direction and Debra jerked the wheel around, sending the Humvee in a bit of a power slide as her foot never came off the gas. Once again they were airborne for a heartbeat or two before bouncing down on the highway’s blacktop. Then they tipped over the edge and plunged down into the culvert, angling just enough to keep from bottoming out as they came up on the other side.
“Ease up a bit down there!” Malik shouted.
If Debra heard him, she gave no indication as she accelerated across the highway and this time flew off the edge, the engine suddenly revving as all four wheels left the ground for a few seconds. Just after they landed, Malik opened up with the machine gun again. Joel searched to locate whatever target the young man had spied and his eyes caught the puffs of dirt as the rounds walked along the ground until they came to the side of a non-descript tan house. The rounds slammed into an area right beside a large window and Joel swore he saw a dark shadow flutter at the edges for a moment before disappearing.
One of the remaining transport trucks rolled up beside them and came to a loud, screeching halt. A cloud of smoke and dust billowed up and almost completely obscured the front of the vehicle as men and women threw themselves from the rear of it. The former occupants split into two teams, each one sprinting up the side of the stopped transport vehicle, all of them crouched over to minimize their silhouette.
Obviously somebody had seen something and given instructions because both teams converged on a single residence a couple of houses down from the one that Malik was still pouring rounds into. Joel went to open his door.
“Stay put, boss,” Debra said quietly.
“Excuse me?” Joel turned to the woman who was easing her own door open.
“We got this.” She threw off her harness and leapt to the ground, her shotgun coming off her shoulder in one fluid motion.
They’d come to a stop just a few feet from a rock wall that fenced in the residence Malik had finally stopped chopping to bits with the .50 cal. Joel barely had time to register that a person was popping up behind that wall when the woman brought the weapon to her hip and fired. At close range, a human head—living or undead—stands no chance of enduring the blastoff a shotgun.
Scanning the area, so far there were few of the walking dead, but with all this noise, that would change in a hurry. This was supposed to be the next phase of their systematic taking of Boulder City. Now that he was getting a closer look, a lot of the homes had pretty serious damage.
He was so intent on keeping his eyes open for any approaching trouble that he didn’t realize Debra had returned to the Humvee until she smacked the hood with one gloved fist. He glanced over and his eyes went just a little wide at what he saw.
Debra had a man that was easily a foot taller and well over a hundred pounds heavier in her custody. The man had one arm held behind his back, but Joel could see how she had her captive in what he knew to be a very painful wrist lock. The man was bleeding from a nose that looked freshly broken. Both his eyes were already showing dark circles to add credence to the likelihood of the nose being thoroughly busted. Will and a few of the others were also returning with four more captives.
Opening his door, Joel shoved his harness aside and exited the vehicle. “What do we have here?”
“The last of the Mohicans,” Debra quipped. “This little band thought that they were running things in these parts. I guess you took out their only rivals last time through.”
“And this is the thanks we get?” Joel walked up to the man as Debra applied enough pressure to his wrist and brought him down to his knees. “We eliminate the thorn in your side and you thank us by attacking our convoy?”
“We—” the man began to protest, but Debra increased her pressure even more, turning the attempted excuse into a yelp of pain.
“If I had more time to deal with the likes of you, I’d do a proper job of it.” Joel drew the pistol on his hip. “But I don’t.”
Without another word, or any sort of warning, he brought his weapon up and shot the big man in the forehead, Turning to the other prisoners, he considered for the briefest of seconds asking them to turn themselves over to him, but they were heading into a hostile and probably chaotic situation. The last thing he needed to worry about was a bullet in his back.
“Kill ‘em,” he sighed, turning to climb back into the Humvee. In his wake, he could hear the beginnings of those last ditch pleas for mercy…quickly followed by single reports from a pistol.
Moments later, and down half the numbers with which they had started while not even to the heart of Boulder City, they were on the move once more. Joel glanced over and watched the corpses on the highway until they vanished around the bend. He had to fight to keep down the anger as the black coil of smoke rose as accusatory fingers pointing out to God—if he did, in fact, exist—that Joel and his people were still far from secure. It was a reminder that the problem they faced did not come in the form of the mindless walking corpses.
The problem they faced was the living, breathing refuse of humanity that clung to life and thought nothing of killing other members of the living to satisfy their own desires. This attack had not been about supplies, or in retaliation for anything. At least Joel did not believe that to be the case. After all, his group was simply passing through.
No, these people were killing simply because they could. Who knew what their inner monologs had said to provide them justification for what they had done. If it had been the people he’d sent away and refused sanctuary…that he would’ve been able to understand. The outcome would not have been any different, but at least he would have been able to make sense of the situation.
“Is this what we will become?” Joel asked nobody in particular.
“What do you mean?” Malik answered in his headset.
“Are we simply going to become killers? Will we devolve into feudal lords or warring gangs…intent on the destruction and death of anything that does not conform to our wishes…that dares to defy us?”
“Become?” Debra sniffed. “I don’t know what rock you’ve been living under, boss, but that has been who and what we are for a long time.”
“Amen, sister,” Malik chimed in.
Jo
el frowned and turned to look out at Boulder City scrolled past his window. They were now entering its heart. Here, there were still fires burning from the power being turned back on. The undead were now more visible as they stumbled and staggered from doorways and shadows.
Did they really need to expand out this far? As of yet, they had not filled half the houses in their tiny fenced community.
Joel pushed all of it away. He needed to have his mind on what lie ahead. If there was a chance to save Conrad, he would do his best. But the more he stewed over it, the more he believed that the complete eradication of that cult was the priority.
They would not be safe unless every single one of those zealots were wiped from the face of the earth. And just killing the apparent leader was not enough; that would simply create a vacancy that would be filled by the next nutcase.
“Kill ‘em all,” Joel muttered. He didn’t notice Debra smile and nod.
10
Who Lives and Who Dies
As Boulder City passed by their view, a few of the team could be heard making sounds of astonishment. The consequences of bringing the power back up in this area without advanced preparations had taken a bigger toll than they’d realized. Joel was mentally berating himself for not taking that into account. He realized that he was learning on the fly, but he would need to be smarter moving forward, and making the same mistake twice would be unacceptable.
Joel’s eyes could not help but drift over and search the scene on the driver’s side. A slight pang came unbidden when he saw what remained of the mobile home park that slid past. It was still shrouded in a haze of smoke that wafted from the remains of what had once been part of his real estate portfolio.
He’d made it a point every year to visit each park at least a half a dozen times. He’d refused to let any of them slip into disrepair. He’d built quite an empire for himself over the years, and likely made in a month more than most of his tenants did in a year if they combined their incomes. He prided himself on knowing almost all of his tenants by name. From what he saw, he doubted that few if any had managed to survive.
“Holy fucksticks,” Debra gasped as they rounded a bend.
Hanging from the overpass they were approaching were at least fifty bodies. All of them were truly dead, but somebody had certainly been busy to fashion each of those nooses and toss each body over the edge. However, that was only part of the horror of the scene.
The overpass was thick with a few hundred zombies. The long line of now defunct school busses the most likely source of this particular group of walkers. Not one of them was over ten years old.
“It’s like they’re watching us,” Malik whispered in Joel’s headset.
“Get us through as fast as you can,” Joel barked, patting Debra on the shoulder.
The Humvee began to accelerate, its powerful engine rumbling louder. They plunged into the swath of shadow the overpass provided and then burst into the sunshine just a few seconds later.
Joel let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. He was just glancing into the sideview mirror when Malik’s voice came through with uncharacteristic horror.
“Dear mother of God, there’s no fucking way this is happening,” Malik moaned.
Debra slammed on the brakes, her own eyes riveted to her sideview mirror as well. Joel was still processing what he was seeing when the sounds of Malik opening fire with the machine gun erupted.
Both embankments were a writhing mass of the walking dead. These were not children, but instead, just massive swarms of the adult version.
“What the hell…?” Malik’s voice sounded strangled as it faded.
Then Joel heard it. The first time, he wasn’t sure of what it was. But as the Humvee’s engine dropped to an idle and the sound came again, he was able to locate and verify what he was hearing.
“That’s just wrong,” Joel breathed.
In his sideview mirror, he watched as several of the zombie children had migrated over to the other side of the overpass. Many held an assortment of solid objects in their hands, and in a hellish cacophony, they slammed, smacked, or beat those objects against the metal guardrail of the overpass.
“They’re ringing a goddamned dinner bell,” Debra gasped.
“This isn’t possible,” Will’s voice crackled over the radio.
“Everybody shut the hell up!” Joel snapped.
He knew well enough from his time in combat that fear could be contagious. If a few people started getting panicky, it could turn to a landslide in a hurry.
“We need to get our asses moving before we get cut off,” Joel said with as much calm authority as he could muster.
Debra started forward. Glancing in the sideview mirror, he could see the other vehicles that remained in their convoy starting to roll as well.
Looking around, Joel felt a chill go through his body. Much of the highway was wide open. Unlike the movies that often depicted miles and miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic clogging the streets, there were only pockets. Those pockets often coincided with a major collision of sorts.
This was one of those spots. Up ahead about three hundred yards was what looked like a nasty pile-up. People running for their lives had taken it upon themselves to swing out into the emergency lanes as well as oncoming traffic. The westbound lanes had been probably fairly clear until the accident in the eastbound lane had caused people to try and escape by any means necessary.
People leaving Las Vegas using this particular highway had probably been heading east towards Arizona. The accident up ahead involved what looked to be military transport as well as large chartered busses. In the mix were a variety of privately owned vehicles as well. Some of the smaller ones were probably what made up a good portion of the debris scattered everywhere.
The problem that he had at the moment was that this seemed to be too much of a coincidence. Why would the zombie children gather in this particular spot? Why hadn’t they wandered away from those school busses on the overpass? It was as if they’d congregated here with the sole intention of springing this trap. For the most part, they would be forced to remain within the confines of the highway as concrete walls lined both sides along this part of the corridor that wove through Boulder City.
He would worry about that later. Right now, he just wanted to get free and clear of this mess. Glancing to the left and right, he saw the waves of undead stumbling, staggering, and lurching down the hill toward them. Perhaps later they could come back and check the area out and try to figure out what had brought this horde to this precise location.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” he whispered.
“What’s that?” Debra asked absently as she swerved to get around what looked like the rear half of a sports car that had literally been blown in two.
As they neared the major part of the accident, Joel could see several squirming figures inside the vehicles. Fortunately, the glass was either so cracked or smoke filmed that it was almost impossible to see the interior clearly. His eyes did land on a figure that was on its belly, crawling out from under a large pickup truck.
The man’s face had mostly been burnt away, leaving bits of charred flesh and lots of exposed skull. His mouth was made even more hideous due to the lack of lips. Dark teeth gnashed and a black tongue darted out and swished around like an angry cat’s tail.
By the time they managed to get past the wreckage, the army of the undead had closed almost half the distance. Joel was surprised at the sigh of relief he breathed once they were clear and the Humvee was able to accelerate and leave the scene behind. He would worry about how they would deal with the situation on the return trip later. Right now, his sole focus needed to shift back to what they would face when they reached Las Vegas.
Once Boulder City was behind them once and for all, the drive remained uneventful almost to the point of dull. Only, nobody seemed to be able to relax. Joel noted the way that Debra kept gripping and re-gripping the wheel. They all knew that this little stretch of highway
was only temporarily void of activity. They would be coming to the Mission Hills area next, and that would signal the end of any sort of break they might be trying to enjoy right now.
Up ahead, they would have the choice of Highway 582, or Interstate 515. Both would take them through what had once been a heavily and densely populated area. Joel already knew what waited for them on the interstate. The road, while not empty of abandoned vehicles, was traversable. This was largely in part to the fact that a few of the neighborhoods had been entirely razed by fires that had burned out of control in those early days when power had been on everywhere but all civil services had become non-existent.
He’d recalled the reports of the highways being nothing short of a zombie feeding ground. That had caused many people to actually try and flee on foot. Some of the last local news footage had been of crowds of the living running for their lives…smack dab into walls of the walking dead.
They would stick to the interstate. That much had already been established. They were rounding the big dog leg on Highway 93 and entering a section of road with weathered hills rising up on both sides when Joel called for Debra to stop. The sign on the left hand side of the road read: Railroad Pass Hotel Casino.
The parking lot was massive and included what appeared to be some sort of truck stop. At least ten of the big rigs were still parked, and a few merited stopping on the way back to inspect provided this operation went well and he was alive to make the return trip.
He wasn’t sure why he’d not paid any attention to this location his last time through. The logos on the sides of the trailers were enough to warrant checking the place out. Two of them were gasoline tankers. One was from one of those big box hardware stores, and three were from Walmart. There was an 18-wheel flatbed loaded with what looked like roofing supplies and another with pallets of bags that might be concrete. Of course, the highway would need to be cleared, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. But driving these rigs back to their community would be like an early Christmas.
