“You know,” Wyatt started, “if I were one of your friends, I’d be pretty fucking nervous right now. Why don’t you tell them what happened the last time we ran across one another?”
“They know what happened between you and me, Wyatt. How about you tell your boys about what we did to the last bunch of assholes you brought with you? Last I recall, we fucked up a good deal of ‘em.”
Wyatt waved a finger and smiled humorlessly. “You’re just trying to stall me now, aren’t you? You got some kind of miracle up your sleeve? ‘Cause the way things are looking right now – you’re fairly fucked, buddy.”
Ten years of waiting and all you’re gonna do is throw insults at one another? Why don’t you just lay it all out on this fucker? He’s gonna try to kill you in just a few minutes, so might as well have it out the way you should have a fucking decade ago.
“Here’s the thing, you psychotic fuck. I didn’t ask to be part of your life, and you tried to take mine. What’s with that? I’ll tell you. You were so goddamn hung up on finding something that didn’t fucking exist that you killed for it. You killed friends of mine, you killed innocent people, and all the while you never found what you were looking for. You were so fucking hung up on getting a goddamn promotion that you railroaded innocent people to do so. You were a goddamn butter bar with a chip on your shoulder so big that it affected your fucking thought process.
“So,” Joe continued. “You survive a little encounter with me and my people. Both of us are a little worse for wear, but at least something good came from it. I found out that I was immune to the virus, and that I produced antibodies for others to be immune as well. That led to a vaccine for this fucking plague. That vaccine was to be delivered from King’s Bay, Georgia if I’m not mistaken, but it never made it to its destinations. Why is that? Oh…that’s right. Some power-hungry small-dicked Marine decided that he wanted to take over the fucking world and his asshole friends raided every one of the shipments. So the folks down in the Gulf of Mexico decided to nickname some rescue units ZBRA. What we didn’t know was why you and your ‘soldiers’ wanted to keep people from getting vaccinated. You just wanted to keep all the hardworking, honest people down, hoping they’d all turn to zombies and poor little Andrew Wyatt could use the world as his playground. That about sum it up, cocksucker?”
“Oh such big words from such a little man. You think I give two fucks about saving people? Fuck no! They’re only good to me as stepping-stones. When I take over this country – and let’s face it, I’m going to – fuck ‘em all! You bleeding heart motherfuckers can go suck a dick for all I care!” Wyatt responded. “By the way, you do know that the vaccine was complete horseshit? All that crap was to get logistics on people. How many in a certain area, shit like that. You don’t honestly think that vaccine actually works, do you?”
“I’ve been bitten myself, Wyatt. I didn’t turn and I’ve been vaccinated. Don’t try that psy-ops bullshit on me again. I’m not that fucking stupid,” Joe replied. Part of him wondered if Wyatt was indeed telling the truth. Come to think of it, the only person that he’d seen bitten was himself. Maybe there was something to it, maybe not. He didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision, but the thought lingered.
Joe knew he was getting under his skin, but dragging the conversation along was working for the time being, so he laid it on thicker.
“You’re delusional, Wyatt. No one in their right mind is going to help you take over Washington D.C. No one is that fucking stupid,” Joe said. “D.C. is gone, has been for a long fucking time. Even if by some fucking miracle it’s still there, they aren’t gonna be real kind to some pogue like you who’s promoted himself and tried to take over.”
“Look, motherfucker. I’ve got plenty right now,” Wyatt responded. He was starting to lose his temper.
“Doesn’t look like it! Without that armor, you ain’t shit. Why don’t you come on over here and we can settle this like men?”
Wyatt smiled. There was something disturbing about it, something that Joe hadn’t seen in a long time. The big, sinister grin looked like something the Joker might use against Batman. There was evil in that smile. His mind was switching gears, and Joe didn’t like the direction it was going.
“You were saying something about making a deal. Why don’t we just do that and I’ll get out of your hair, eh?” Wyatt said, the smile still permeating his face.
The disturbing smile combined with his general uneasiness of the situation clouded his judgement. Joe knew better, but there was a small sliver of hope in the back of his mind that the whole thing might go off without a hitch. There were some guarantees that he wanted.
“I give you Captain White and your man Duncan back and I never see you again. Your Peacemakers leave my people alone…forever. That’s my demands. They’re not hard to work with. Just leave us alone, and we’ll call it a day.”
Part of him was disgusted at himself. Joe felt like he was not doing everything in his power to keep his people safe. Had he had more time to plan, they would have attacked as soon as the tanks showed up outside town. There were enemies at all sides right now, and the biggest one was standing right in front of him. There was no way in hell he wanted to give anything to Wyatt, but he was left with little choice. He watched as his enemy thought it over and came to a quick, surprising conclusion.
Wyatt nodded. “All right. Let’s make a deal, Joe.”
CHAPTER 15
Curtis, Kody, and Keith could hear the collective parade of undead coming quickly. Even a deaf man would be able to catch the scent, though. A miasma of death and decay wafted across their noses as they approached the south side of town. The thousands-strong wave of walkers was getting closer by the moment. The explosion from Cornbread and the 105mm round from the Abrams didn’t help slow the pursuit of the horde. If anything, it made them go faster. They were following a sound that they most likely had forgotten, but still onward they trudged.
Curtis sprinted up the steps to the walkway at the top of the wall. What he saw when he got there wasn’t pretty. Most of the time when they’d dealt with large gatherings of the dead, there was a certain amount of organized chaos to the whole thing. The dead would be bunched together, making them fairly easy targets for automatic gunfire. Just keep the rounds at head-level and fire away. Zombies weren’t much for tactics.
This group was different.
Instead of a mass of dead humanity coming at them like a battering ram, the thousands of zombies were fanned out. It was like watching a procession of undead Revolutionary War soldiers lining up on the battlefield, waiting to be taken down. The line stretched out nearly a quarter-mile in each direction, making Curtis’ spot the apex of the attack. Some of the walkers had already made it to the wall, scratching and beating against the wooden battlements. The majority of the horde was less than two hundred yards away, and closing fast.
“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. These fuckers aren’t screwing around, are they?” Keith said to no one in particular. Kody climbed up to the top of the wall and had much the same reaction.
“Jesus. They’ll be here and beating down the walls before we have time to take a dump. Any ideas, Curtis?” Kody said.
“Nope. Not a fucking clue, brother. Best we can hope for is to make it to the hospital before they get here. My guess is that we’ve got about twenty minutes before they’re on top of us and eating our fucking legs off,” Curtis said, not taking his eyes off the horde.
Curtis and Kody started down from the wall, desperate to get away from the foul-smelling attackers. Keith remained steadfast.
“Come on, Keith. We ain’t got time to sightsee,” Curtis said.
Keith looked down to Curtis, motioning for him to follow. “Wait. What if we rig some of the C4?”
“What do you mean?” Curtis asked.
“We’ve got those two LMTVs. Why don’t we take one of them, load it up with C4 and park it in front of the wall?” Keith asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got
the C4, but there’s no way in hell that we’re going to be able to park it outside the wall and get away in time. We’d be eaten or blow ourselves all to shit just trying,” Kody said.
“Then we take both of them. Once one of them is parked, I can climb out and get into the back of the other. Those things are big enough just to drive over the ones that get in the way,” Keith said.
Curtis paused for a moment, mulling over the idea.
“You’re not seriously considering this, are you?” Kody asked.
Curtis turned to Kody quickly. “We gotta move with the quickness if we want this to work. Otherwise, we are gonna get eaten.”
* * *
Jamie shuffled, moving the rifle to a better spot as he did. Whatever was going on looked to be fairly mundane – for the moment. Joe was talking to Wyatt, looking to be making some kind of deal. Captain White was bound with handcuffs, as was the recon sniper Duncan. He figured White to be working in some kind of subterfuge against Wyatt. Whatever it was, it seemed to be working. If White could get close enough to Wyatt, maybe the whole thing would end without bloodshed. ZBRA was still better than twenty-five minutes away.
The explosion from the other side of town meant that Cornbread was taking care of Father Rife and his merry band of religious nutjobs. While not an impressive army, they were another threat nonetheless. Jamie would have rather been on that side of town, slowly picking off the zealots, but he was lining up a shot on Wyatt instead.
The was only one problem. He couldn’t get a good line of sight.
The horde was another factor. One that was far more difficult to task. The undead were going to come, especially with the noise. What they lacked in strategy, they more than made up for in numbers. Jamie shuffled around to his right and peered through the scope. What he saw wasn’t pretty.
Curtis, Keith, and Kody were standing at the top of the wall, pointing and contemplating something. Whatever it was, they came to a decision and got down from the wall quickly and headed towards the parking lot underneath him. The only things of use in the lot were the LMTVs along with some extra ordnance. Jamie looked at the three men trotting towards the lot, the massive horde less than two hundred yards away from the wall. The idea came to him as it had his friends a few moments before. They were going to blow the wall.
Jamie shuffled back to the meeting between Joe and Wyatt. It must have gone well, as Joe was helping Duncan down the ladder on the outside of the wall, along with Captain White. Jamie frowned. There was no way in hell it was going this well. Something was decidedly off about the whole thing.
Some sort of exchange was taking place.
* * *
Roman and Laura ushered the line of people towards the hospital as quickly and quietly as they could. After the Abrams had shut off, the area was decidedly quiet. The only noise was the quickly approaching horde, sending moans and other unholy sounds across the air.
The lack of noise did pose a problem for the group of fifty-plus souls. The door on the west side of town was complete, but it was still loud and somewhat unfinished. After getting the rest of the group out of town, the noise from the tanks had stopped. The steady rumble of grinding tracks and engines gave them something to mask the sound of fifty people trying to leave. As much as it pained them, Roman and Laura had to leave the gate ajar. Not that it would matter. The horde was going to tear the town down any minute now. The few remaining brave souls were meeting with Joe and the others at the north side of town.
Roman pried open the door into the former ER. With a quick sweep of his 870MCS, he cleared the room. The ER had been cleared out the day before, so he wasn’t expecting anything to jump out. He quickly made his way back to the entrance, the huddled mass still waiting for him there.
“All right, everyone inside. Those of you with weapons, stay near the entrance. We need to keep this area secure as long as we can,” Roman ordered.
A woman carrying her seven-year-old girl stopped at Roman. The rest of the group filed inside. “Are they really coming to rescue us?”
Roman placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I promise they are coming. All we need is another twenty minutes or so. I know you can hear the dead coming, but we will hold them off as long as we can…or die trying,” Roman said.
The woman joined the rest of the group inside the hospital. Three younger boys came back to the entrance, armed with M4s. They stood at the door and nervously looked around. Laura helped the last of the group inside, and then stood with Roman and the three boys.
“They’re scared, Roman. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t. Seems like a waste to be standing here waiting on rescue while we let Joe and the others wait here and die,” Laura said.
“I’m not waiting here, Laura. I’m going back to town to make sure these people make it. If I catch the chopper, I do. If not…well…I can make it on my own if I have to.”
Laura looked back to the three young men guarding the entrance. While they were scared shitless, she had little doubt that they would take care of the rest. She only hoped that she would be able to do the same.
“Look, you and I are still new here. No one is gonna blame you for running while you can,” Roman said, sensing Laura was having second thoughts.
Laura grinned at Roman, and then started back towards town. “Who’s running?”
* * *
Joe watched cautiously as Captain White was led away with his former cohort Duncan. He still didn’t know what White had up his sleeve, but a half-assed plan was better than no plan at all. Of course, as far as he knew, White didn’t know what the hell he was doing anyway. Joe was content to roll with the punches for the moment, but you always have to watch for that knockdown sucker punch.
Wyatt didn’t say anything. That in of itself was fucking weird. Joe offered an exchange, and it went off without a hitch. That uneasy feeling in his gut was trying to tell him something, but he was three steps ahead of it and still couldn’t figure out what to do.
Joe waited until he saw White being escorted to one of the Humvees to say anything for fear of spooking the whole thing. As soon as Wyatt’s goons were out of sight and the hatch closed, Joe reached for his radio.
“Jamie, you seeing all this?”
“Yeah, I do. What the fuck is White doing?” Jamie answered.
“I have no idea. I sure as hell hope he knows what he’s doing, though. Crazy bastard is going to get us all killed if he doesn’t.”
“There’s no way this is going off without a hitch. You want me to follow?”
“Just keep an eye out on where they’re going. No sense in poking the bear if we don’t have to. As soon as they’re out of sight, holler at me. We still have Father Rife and the horde to deal with.”
“I think the horde is being taken care of right now and I assume that explosion on the other side of town was Cornbread taking care of Father Rife. We still got problems, but they just got a lot smaller with that tank driving off.”
“Damn right. Look, Rick and I are going to hang here for a few minutes. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Like I said, as soon as they get out of sight, let me know.”
“Will do. Looks like we might just…”
The speed of sound is 1,126 feet per second. The speed of a fired .308 Winchester on average is 2,700 feet per second. Depending on the distance, there is a 1-2 second pause before the fired round can be heard.
That’s why Jamie never saw or heard it coming.
By the time Jamie heard the round, his brain had stopped sending messages to the rest of his body, mainly because a sizeable portion of it was splattered on the roof behind him. There was no dignity in his death, no forewarning, nothing to indicate that it was about to happen. It simply popped up and was taken from him without a moment’s notice. Jamie had lived his fifty-plus years as a gun enthusiast should; taking out undead targets from a distance and blowing them all to shit. His body went limp, the Barret still clutched in his hands.
Joe jumped from the shot.
<
br /> Wyatt did not.
Wyatt simply spun Captain White around and put a gun to his head.
White tried to play it off as best he could. He chuckled nervously. “Sir? What are you doing?”
Wyatt grinned devilishly. “There’s no way you’ve made it five months with these people and made it out alive without giving them something, White. Don’t expect me to believe anything you have to say.”
White flexed against the handcuffs, wishing he’d put the key a little closer to his hands. There was no way to get to it now without tipping off Wyatt. Sweat ran across his forehead and around the cold barrel of the .45.
“Sir, I promise you I didn’t tell them shit!” White yelled. He shrugged his shoulders up, trying to reach for the cuff key in his back pocket. Either he was going to get to it, or Wyatt was going to put one in his forehead.
Wyatt cocked the hammer back on the .45. “Sorry, Marcus. That’s just not a chance that I’m gonna take.”
Another shot rang out.
Wyatt did duck from that one.
Captain White didn’t waste any time. Luckily, the key hidden in his waistband didn’t fail him. The instant Wyatt ducked down, Captain White lowered his head and drove the psychotic Marine backwards, planting him on his ass. Captain White fumbled with the key for a moment while Wyatt tried to get to his feet. The key slid into the small hole on his right cuff, and that was enough. He twisted the key and the cuff fell away. He didn’t bother with the second one. He was free and running back towards Tazewell. Their ruse was haphazardly put together and snuffed out quickly. There was no more stalling. Captain White sprinted towards the far end of town, making tracks to the hospital as fast as he could.
General Wyatt got to his feet, shaking off the cobwebs from busting his ass. He saw White running off the side of the road, into the myriad of trees and houses. He started to raise his .45, and then thought better of it. A devilish grin spread across his face. Fuck that traitor.
Six Feet From Hell (Book 6): End Game Page 9
