He didn’t waste any time dropping a knee, drawing his weapon, and refocusing on the pizza sign. As he scanned, he saw three zombies huddled around the car, so he took careful aim and fired. One by one, the creatures’ heads exploded, splattering nearby windshields with crimson goo. After taking out the immediate threat, he looked past the vehicle, and his blood ran cold.
“Mother of god,” he breathed.
Between the bomb going off and the constant stream of gunshots, thousands of zombies had been attracted to the noise. Slowly, they navigated their way across the densely packed bridge, breaking through the makeshift barricades just from their sheer numbers. The weight of their mass was too great.
The front edge of the horde was close to thirty yards from the target car. Calvin immediately took aim at one of the lead creatures, hoping that if he dropped enough of the rotted undead they’d stumble up their brethren and buy Mateo precious seconds.
“You’re gonna have to haul ass, brother,” he muttered to himself.
Meanwhile, Mateo did just that. He ran as hard as he could towards the delivery car, picking one of the center aisles and pumping his legs. He could hear Calvin firing at a rapid pace, and the situation worried him.
Oh god, what am I running in to? He thought, and managed to push himself even harder. As he reached within twenty yards of the car, several zombies emerged from behind a truck, cutting over from another aisle. Rather than waste time fighting them, Mateo climbed up onto the hood of the next car, running over the top of the vehicles.
Calvin saw this and readjusted his sights to focus on the new threat that had caused the change in course. He quickly took aim, firing several times and taking out the creatures that had surprised his companion. He paused quickly to reload as fast as his fingers would work.
Don’t worry brother, I’ll have you covered, he thought frantically.
Mateo ran over the cars, keeping his focus on the delivery vehicle ahead. The higher vantage point gave him a view of the mass of ghouls in the distance, which terrified him. He didn’t stop moving, though, pushing forward until he reached his target.
As he leapt down beside the delivery vehicle, he rushed up to the car just in front of it, a late model luxury sedan. He did a quick check around it, making sure he was alone, at least for the time being, before concentrating on the gas tank.
Shot continued to ring out over his head, but he didn’t waste time looking up to see how close they were getting. He knew he needed to trust Calvin to cover him. He glanced on the driver’s side, seeing no gas tank, and then rushed around to the other side, relieved to see the tank door flush against the body of the car. That meant it was likely it still had fuel inside.
Mateo ran over and pried at the flap, but it was latched tight. He jammed the tip of his long blade into the locking mechanism, but it was no use, it didn’t budge.
“Time to get tough on you!” he growled, and reared back with his cleaver, slamming it as hard as he could into the center of the flap, slicing it right in two. He pried both halves off and revealed the gas cap, which he quickly unscrewed and threw aside.
He was unable to stop himself from pausing and glancing at the coming horde as the gunfire ceased, seeing that the zombies were only about twenty yards from him. He froze for a moment in fear, but snapped back to the moment as Calvin resumed firing, presumably having reloaded.
Mateo quickly pulled out the shirt and stuffed it as far down into the gas tank as he could. He pulled out the lighter and flicked it several times until a flame was born. He lit the shirt, pausing for a second to make sure it took root. When it began to blaze, he took off like a shot back towards Calvin.
The sniper shifted his aim towards his companion’s escape, scanning the area between him and the running man. When he didn’t see any stragglers, he turned his attention towards their escape, seeing about twenty creatures had begun making their way towards the bridge.
Rather than focus on the closest creatures, he aimed towards groups that were clustered together. He fired several shots into them, thinning them to the point where two running humans could break through if they needed to. After several shots he was forced to reload, and Mateo banged on the side of the large vehicle.
“Come on, let’s get out of here!” he yelled.
Calvin slammed in a few more bullets before hopping down onto the car next to him and hitting the road. As he gathered himself, Mateo lunged at a few close by zombies and carved them up with his blades.
With the immediate threat cleared, the two men ran hard back towards the camp, darting and weaving around the ghouls they’d dodged on the way in. It didn’t take long for them to get clear of the creatures and back to the first road. They stopped in the middle of Main Street, clear of any undead for at least twenty yards.
They looked back at the bridge, chests heaving from the hard running.
“Do you think you got it good enough?” Calvin huffed.
Mateo nodded. “If that shirt was any deeper in there, I wouldn’t have had anything to light,” he replied.
They stood for another moment, and then the telltale boom of an exploding car went off in the distance. A fireball shot into the sky, sending flaming liquid spreading in every direction on the bridge. They exchanged a relieved fist bump.
“With any luck, a few more cars will catch fire,” Calvin said with a grin.
Mateo nodded. “At a minimum, though, we bought everyone a few extra minutes.”
“Come on, let’s get back,” the sniper said, breaking into a jog. “Pretty sure we don’t want to miss the last bus out of town.”
CHAPTER NINE
Zion and Wendy exited out of the south hole in the wall, walking past the two men she’d sent to patch it up. They seemed to be struggling to find stuff big enough to make much of a difference.
“Forget trying to patch it up,” Wendy barked. “Just focus on clearing the debris right in front of it so we can get through, and shoot anything that gets within fifty yards of the hole, you got it?”
The two men nodded and immediately went to work moving the debris that Zion had jumped with his truck earlier. They moved at a brisk jog, knowing their time was short.
“You really got your people whipped into shape,” Zion said as they moved, eyes scanning for ghouls all the while.
Wendy chuckled gruffly. “Years of being a fitness instructor paying off,” she replied. “Nothing like getting paid to yell at people, am I right?”
“You are correct, ma’am,” Zion replied as they ran down a few more blocks. They looked side to side down the streets as they went, seeing several zombies emerging from the neighborhood. They were slow moving and far enough away that they didn’t pose any immediate threat.
When they reached the corner of the park and ride lot, they saw a few of the shuttle buses in the distance, parked across from the main office building. Dozens of zombies had poured into the lot, seemingly attracted by the noise of the camp.
“Best guess is that the keys are in the building,” Wendy said.
Zion nodded. “If not, I can hot-wire those vehicles, but I’ll need some time,” he admitted.
“We’ll give it two minutes inside,” she said in her no-nonsense tone, “and if we can’t find the keys, we’ll go that route.”
He gave her a little salute. “So how do you want to play the zombies in the lot?” he asked.
She looked over his massive wooden weapon, which still sported bits of brain and blood all over the business end.
“Guessing you’re pretty handy with that thing?” she asked.
Zion grinned. “Hundreds of crushed skulls can’t be wrong,” he replied with a smirk.
“In that case, if you want to hold them off, I’ll get the keys,” the redhead suggested.
He winked at her, giving his weapon a swing. “Let’s do it,” he replied, excited at getting to crack more zombie heads.
The two of them raced towards the small building on the other side of the lot, Zion taking the l
ead. He ran up to the first corpse, a middle-aged looking man in a tattered and bloody business suit. He swung hard, sending the zombie careening into a nearby car, crumpling to the ground with a wet smack.
There were several rows of cars parked closely together, a throng of creatures in the aisles.
“Run over the cars, I’ll handle them,” he suggested, and Wendy nodded, clambering up onto the first car she saw and darting over the tops of them. Some of the creatures reached up in vain, drawn by her footfalls on the fiberglass, giving Zion an easy time in dispatching them while they were distracted.
With a single blow he caved in the heads of two ghouls, crushing them against the top of a sedan. He looked up the aisle, seeing six more monsters lumbering his way. The moans grew in strength as zombies from the flanking aisles came his way, attracted by the noise of their comrades being crushed.
Zion rushed towards the six in front of him, using his blunt weapon like a jousting lance. The front edge cracked the sternum of the lead zombie as he drove it back into the others. With three creatures on the ground, he quickly delivered an overhead strike, killing one.
He quickly whipped around when he heard moans coming from behind him, seeing zombies coming in between cars from the other two neighboring aisles. He ran back, swinging his weapon like a bat, smashing the face of the creature on the left before spinning around with the weapon held high to avoid the tops of the cars and bringing it down with vicious force onto the next one.
With zombies pouring into his aisle, he hopped up onto the hood of a car. As he scrambled, a zombie grabbed his ankle, and he kicked back with his free leg to deliver a heel strike to the creature’s nose. The sound of snapping bone was loud, but didn’t free him from the death grip, so he punted the corpse again. Finally, the zombie’s skull cracked, and he wrestled his leg free from the defeated ghoul.
He looked around as he sprung up onto the roof of the car, seeing zombies coming at him from all angles. With a wild grin, he began to play whack-a-zombie, bringing his weapon down hard with gleeful overhead strikes. One after another, the zombie heads smashed, bodies crumpling all around the car.
The mass of ghouls grew so thick that the vehicle began to sway back and forth, causing Zion to widen his stance to regain his footing. He stepped back onto the trunk and leapt over outstretched rotting arms, whirling with his weapon on the downswing to catch a creature in the side of the head.
He looked back and spotted creatures heading into the lot from the neighborhood, heading towards the door of the building. “Shit,” he muttered, and then glanced back at the twenty or so left around the vehicles he’d been whacking. He shook his head in frustration, knowing he didn’t have time to deal with them at the moment.
He hopped down from the car into the aisle, a foot away from the group, and ran as hard as he could towards the building. As he reached the end of the aisle, within fifteen yards, the leader of the neighborhood zombies was almost at the door.
Zion raised his weapon to shoulder height, straight out so it led with the blunt end. He rammed it into the side of the ghoul’s head, crushing it against the wall, sending a splatter of blood against the brick. He turned to the next creature, swinging like a baseball bat, severing its head from its body to sail back towards the cars.
The zombie conga line branched out a bit, going from single file to three or four wide in spots. He swung wildly, taking out a few more zombies, killing another, and knocking one to the ground. He glanced back at the group he’d run away from, only to find that they’d begun to follow him, thirty yards and closing.
“Wendy!” Zion yelled into the door. “You gotta hurry the fuck up!”
Inside, the redhead heard him, and ran around a desk, narrowly avoiding a grasping zombie. She stumbled over the corpse of the first one she’d put down just seconds earlier.
“Don’t worry,” she declared as she grabbed a glass paperweight from the desk, “I got something for you too, just like your friend here.” She lunged forward and smashed the paperweight onto the zombie’s forehead. The glass cracked, as did the skull as she hit it a few more times for good measure. After the third strike it fell to the ground, and she tossed the bloodied instrument to the side.
Chest heaving, she looked around at the four ghouls she’d put down before staring as Zion bellowed in the door again.
“You got fifteen seconds before we have to go!”
The timeline frightened Wendy, who quickly began looking on the desk, throwing papers around to find the two sets of keys she’d dropped during her zombie encounter. With the rings finally secure in her fist, she raced to the front door, skidding to a stop at what had her companion so worked up.
Straight ahead, a horde in the aisle quickly gained on them. There was a sickening crack to her left, prompting her to look over and see Zion delivering another skull-cracking blow. He glanced over his shoulder and spotted her.
“Finally,” he said.
She jingled the key rings. “Sorry, had company.”
“Same here,” he replied, putting his weapon in lance mode and ramming it into the chest of the next zombie, driving it back into the ten or so remaining creatures. He thrust hard, knocking several of them to the ground before darting back to Wendy.
“Follow me,” she said, and handed him a set of keys before they ran towards the shuttle buses. They were moderately large, enough to hold thirty people comfortably, or forty uncomfortable if need be. They each took a bus, getting inside quickly and closing the doors behind them.
Zion sat behind the wheel, watching as the zombies staggered to the door, smearing blood on the windows as they tried to get to him. He looked forward when Wendy honked her horn, prompting him to start up his engine.
It took a moment for the large vehicle to rumble to life, and they sat there for several seconds, letting the buses warm up from their long slumber. A few moments later, Wendy honked again before popping the vehicle into gear.
Zion followed suit, and they slowly rolled out to head off back to camp.
CHAPTER TEN
The two vehicles raced down the road towards the camp, at least as fast as buses could go while still navigating the streets. As they came around the last corner, Zion saw that the road horde had arrived at the hole in the wall.
The two guards fired as quickly as they could, dropping zombies thirty yards away from the entrance, but it did little to stem the tide. Wendy put the pedal to the metal, gaining speed and honking the horn as she led the charge to the hole. The two gunmen dashed out of the way, allowing the buses to zoom on by.
Wendy sped off towards the meeting spot, but Zion screeched to a halt. He dove out and pointed to one of the gunmen.
“You, drive!” he barked, pointing at one. “You, with me!” He pointed to the other one, and then glanced at the man clambering up into the bus. “And don’t leave us behind,” he said.
The driver nodded and took off, while Zion and the other man stepped out through the hole in the fence, staring down at the hundreds of zombies bearing down on them.
“Start shooting!” Zion bellowed, and the man complied, picking his targets carefully and delivering headshots with his hunting rifle. The lead creatures fall, causing some stumbling, but really only buying them mere extra seconds.
Zion, meanwhile, looked around the area at the debris the two men had moved out of the way. He eventually focused on a large piece of sheet metal, that if turned sideways could cover the gap in the fence, but only up to waist height.
“Help me with this!” he yelled.
The gunman slung his rifle over his shoulder and rushed over to his companion, and they picked up the large piece of metal together. They pulled it inside the camp, and Zion motioned for him to set it up against the wall.
He looked to his new friend. “Do you trust me?” he asked.
The man blinked at him and shrugged. “Sure, why not?” he replied.
“Good!” Zion declared and pointed to his feet. “Lay down on the ground in the
middle and press your legs against this!”
The man blinked at him again, and then it dawned on him what Zion was going to do. “You’d better be swinging that thing like a goddamn madman,” he said, motioning to the wooden weapon.
“Oh, you ain’t gotta worry about that,” Zion assured him.
The man begrudgingly laid on his back and pressed as hard as he could against the sheet metal that plugged the gap in the wall.
Zion gripped his weapon tightly, watching as the ghouls approached, spreading out across the line. “Here they come, get ready,” he warned.
The man gave a thumbs up as he focused on keeping pressure on the wall with his considerably muscular legs.
As soon as the first creature touched their makeshift barricade, Zion brought his weapon down in an overhead strike, dropping it. Then he flew into a flurry of swings, two-by-four whooshing and cracking and delivering death.
The man grunted on the ground as he strained to hold the wall in place, looking up in terror as he saw zombies grasping down at him, fingers coming within inches of his feet on the waist-high wall.
Zion rushed to the center, crushing blow after blow to the creatures closest to his partner on the ground. They slumped over to the side, adding weight but also a bit of a corpse barrier to the creatures reaching for the blockade.
He looked to his left, seeing that the flimsy material was starting to give way on the edge. A creature was able to push its way through, flaying the rotted flesh from its legs as it did. He rushed over and smashed its face in, and then dropped his weapon, grabbing the slumped corpse by the shirt and belt and flinging it into the crowd, hoping to trip up some of the creatures and relieve the pressure on the wall.
As soon as he picked up his weapon, a few zombies began to push through on the right. His stomach sank, knowing his plan was busted. The man on the ground saw the incoming ghouls and began to scream incoherently.
Dead America-The Northwest Invasion Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 5
