Eventually, the truck slowed then bounced heavily as it turned onto a main road. A few minutes later, we merged onto a highway.
Now that we weren’t riding the roller coaster of the road from Sanctuary, Muscles decided it was the right time to make conversation and unleashed a rapid-fire stream of words, bouncing from topic to topic without really giving me time to do much more than nod and indicate my assent with one-syllable words.
It suited me fine. I ignored most of what he was saying and studied the scenery around us instead, trying, and failing, to work out where we were.
We traveled the highway for maybe an hour before the trucks took a smaller road. A couple of minutes after that, we reached the beginning of a construction road. It was narrow, just wide enough for one vehicle with the occasional wider stretch for passing. The trees on either side had been cut down. Every now and then, we passed piles of building materials, mostly gravel, but some wood and barrels of something or other. Each time we did, the trucks slowed, and Santos made notes on a pad.
The trail cut directly through the forest, climbing steadily. The going was slower, but we still had to resort to holding on to the leather straps until the trucks reached the crest of a hill and pulled into a small clearing. Santos and Novak got out of the truck.
Muscles retrieved his errant baseball bat then held his hand out for Santos to help him down. She gave him a withering look, which he responded to with a broad grin. He hopped out of the truck.
Santos glowered at his back, and I sensed genuine hostility there. Clearly, something about Muscles rubbed people the wrong way. I jumped down off the truck and walked over to where Harwood, Novak, and two other men that I didn’t recognize were standing next to a sign that read Future Home of Sunrise Pines.
Ahead of us lay a lake, the water glistening slightly in the morning sunlight. The road continued on for a few feet before diving down the hill, cutting through the forest for a mile or so until it reached the lakeshore and the broad expanse of the construction site itself.
A chain-link fence ran around the site’s perimeter. Beyond it, the frames of what would eventually have become three buildings lined the edge of a wide-open beach area. Two of them were long and rectangular. They looked big enough to hold two floors. Wooden frames divided the foundation into a series of compartments. Apart from a larger area near the entrance and some corridors, the blocked-out areas were pretty much the same size—probably the beginnings of the accommodation.
The third building sat between the other two. It was roughly the same size, but it was three stories high, and a large entrance hall stuck out from the middle of the building. Work was much further along, and a lot of the outer walls were filled in with wooden panels. The roof was covered with plastic sheeting, but with no one to maintain it, the elements had torn away most of the protection and dislodged one of the wooden beams that would have supported the roof.
Despite my expectations, I felt the bitter bite of disappointment. Part of me had been hoping I’d find my own sanctuary here, but none of the buildings looked like somewhere I’d be able to live.
The trappings of construction sat around the site—a couple of excavators, a concrete mixer truck, an SUV emblazoned with the construction company logo. There were plenty of materials as well, at least a half-dozen big piles of wood, gravel, and brick.
And among it all, the zombies.
I counted seventeen in a matter of seconds, and there were plenty of places I couldn’t see where more could be hiding. Most were wearing construction gear, their yellow helmets making them easy to spot. They milled aimlessly around or stood staring at the ground. Dark shapes moved through the main building, casting shadows on the plywood walls. There was a cluster of three zombies on the beach. They were looking out across the water as though admiring the mountains that rose up beyond the forest. I wondered how many more there might be in the lake itself.
Harwood was surveying the area through a pair of binoculars. When he lowered them, his lips were pressed tight together.
“I count twenty-three outside the buildings, another six inside. There’ll be more in the forest as well.”
Muscles sucked in a breath through his teeth. His earlier excitement was quickly evaporating.
Harwood handed the binoculars to Novak. “This road is the only way in or out, which means we’ll have to go through the main gate.”
Novak nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Once we’re in, we’ll use the trucks as defensive platforms. We’ll make plenty of noise breaking down those gates, even more when we start taking out the zees.”
A man I didn’t recognize who’d been riding in the other truck hesitantly raised his hand. “So, we’re attacking the zombies?”
“Yes, we are,” Harwood said.
“I… I thought this was a supply run?” said the man, his obvious fear growing.
“It is, but we need to take those things out before we can load up the trucks. Unless you’d like to try carrying all that wood around while a couple of dozen of them try to eat your face?”
The man shook his head, but he was staring down at the construction site and its zombie workforce.
“Once we get down there,” Harwood said, “Santos, Novak, Stephens, and I will use the rifles to take down the zombies. Black, Johnson, and Wilson, you’re working close quarters. Any zombies get to the trucks, you take them out.”
I realized as Harwood spoke that neither I, Muscles, nor the nervous man, Wilson, had guns. I had my knife, Muscles had his customized baseball bat, and Wilson had a crowbar in his hand and a machete hooked onto his belt.
“Anyone else got questions?” Harwood said.
Nobody did.
“Good, let’s go.”
Muscles, Santos, and I went back to the second truck. This time, Santos didn’t bother opening the tailgate. As Muscles and I clambered into the back, Novak started the truck. He revved the engine a couple of times, and black smoke coughed out of the exhaust. Muscles moved to the front of the truck and grabbed the leather strap in one hand, the baseball bat in the other. He stayed standing, staring out over the cab toward the zombies. I could see his knuckles whitening where he grasped the bat.
Santos lifted her arm, signaling to the truck ahead. Both trucks rolled forward, taking us down the slope, toward Sunrise Pines and the zombies.
Chapter 37
The Battle for Sunrise Pines
The front truck smashed through the gate. The sound of tearing metal filled the air. Bits of chain and fence broke apart and bounced away.
We followed close behind. The truck’s front corner clipped the remains of the gate. There was a harsh scraping sound, and the gate swung wider, hitting a nearby zombie and sending her sprawling across the ground. The truck slewed to the right, but Novak caught the slide and corrected it.
Ahead, there was an open area—the beginnings of a turning circle out front of the main building. Harwood’s truck accelerated toward it, kicking up plumes of gravel as it went.
The truck bounced over a broad crack that zigzagged across the road and then swerved left. There was a dull thud. A zombie tumbled across the ground. He landed hard, his head twisted to one side, but he’d barely stopped moving before he began pushing himself back to his feet.
Harwood’s truck reached the turning circle and slid noisily to a halt. Novak brought our truck alongside, angling the front of the vehicle to make a V shape and give Santos enough space to get out.
Her door was open before the truck had come to a stop, and within seconds, she was standing on the truck bed, her rifle at her shoulder. Novak quickly joined her. In the other truck, I could see Harwood and his driver, Stephens, doing the same while Wilson watched uncertainly.
Predictably, the noise of our arrival had caught the zombies’ attention. They advanced on the trucks from all sides, our own personal swarm. Their low droning, a chorus of hungry moans, grew louder and more insistent as the seconds passed.
A gun fire
d, two distinct shots that took down two of the nearest zombies. It was Harwood. He fired again. This time, he caught one of them in the thigh. Blood, thick and black, spattered the ground. The zombie went down. Stephens stood beside Harwood. He fired, but his shots were less controlled, and they went wide, hitting a pile of wood and sending a plume of wood chips into the air.
More gunshots, this time right beside me. Santos was kneeling on the tool chest, her rifle propped onto the cab’s roof for support. She squeezed the trigger, and another zombie went down. Novak fired off a couple of rounds.
“Here they come!” Muscles said. The excitement was back in his voice. He tapped the end of his bat against the ground twice.
Three zombies advanced toward us, moving quickly despite their shambling gait. Muscles propped one foot on the truck’s tailgate and rested his bat on his shoulder. But as the zombies got closer, Novak fired off a burst of rounds. One of the zombies went down, the back of his head torn off. The second zombie caught the rounds in her shoulder. She staggered backward.
Muscles glared at Novak over his shoulder, but he’d already turned to face a group of six zombies moving toward the side of the truck.
“Santos,” Novak said, “a little help here.”
“I’m kind of busy.”
She fired again, a longer stream of bullets that slammed into a construction worker about twenty feet from the front of the truck. Novak cursed.
Gunfire echoed around the building site. Harwood and Stephens had fallen into a rhythm, working together to take down the closest groups of zombies, although given the number of rounds going wide, I suspected Harwood was pulling most of the weight.
Wilson was being even less effective. He stood at the front of the truck, his crowbar in one hand, the machete in the other. His face was a mask of pure terror. He flinched every time someone fired their rifle.
His attention was on the zombies Harwood and Stephens were taking out, and he didn’t see the one crawling along the ground toward them.
I pointed. “Wilson! Look out!”
He looked at me, confused.
The zombie had reached the truck and was too close for him to see her. One of her legs was missing at the knee. The other flopped uselessly around, but still she managed to drag herself up the side of the truck.
A look of horror replaced the fear on Wilson’s face as the zombie came into view. He took a half step backward and bumped into Harwood.
Harwood snarled and shoved him in the back with the butt of his rifle. Wilson’s eyes grew wide as he stumbled toward the zombie, who’d now managed to drag most of her upper body into the truck.
She leaned her head back and let out a shrill cry. Wilson froze. His mouth opened and closed, flapping like it was broken and he was trying to speak. The zombie hauled herself the final few inches and flopped into the truck bed with a wet thud.
The sound seemed to break Wilson out of his trance. He raised his machete and the crowbar, but his movements were slow and awkward, as though he wasn’t quite sure which weapon he should use. He half raised the crowbar then seemed to change his mind and lowered it again, bringing the machete up instead.
He took one tentative step toward the zombie, but before he could attack her, Stephens pushed past him. He pulled a knife from his belt. In one fluid movement, he dropped to one knee and slammed the knife into the top of the zombie’s skull.
Wilson looked on with a startled look on his face while Stephens twisted the knife and pulled it loose. He stood, leaned into Wilson’s face, and screamed at him to wake the hell up before he got us all killed.
Wilson swallowed hard and nodded. He moved to the back of the truck, the machete held high above his head. Stephens took up position with his rifle again.
There was the clatter of metal behind me. Novak had thrown aside an empty magazine from his rifle. He pulled another from his jacket and rammed it into place. Beyond him, two zombies had almost reached the truck.
Muscles shouted.
He was still standing at the tail of truck. Blood sprayed from the wire-wrapped bat as he swung it toward a zombie who was trying to climb on board. A second zombie appeared—a construction worker, complete with bright-yellow hardhat. He was tall and muscular and, despite his decaying limbs, was having little trouble climbing into the truck.
I ran at him, my knife clutched in my hand. I reached the side of the truck just as he got his shoulders above its edge. His hardhat gave him a measure of protection and forced me to aim at the side of his neck. The blade dug into dense muscle then hit bone. He fought back, swiping ineffectually at my hand. I pulled the knife free then drove the heel of my boot into his face. His head snapped back, and gouts of blood burst from his nose. He tumbled off the truck and fell out of sight, only to reappear moments later.
Muscles appeared and swung his bat. It struck the zombie in the face with a solid thwack and a splash of blood and bone. He went down. Muscles let out a loud “woot!”
My breathing came in short, sharp breaths as I scanned the construction site for more of the zombies. I spotted one—a decrepit specimen slowly dragging himself across the ground toward the trucks. He was moving too slowly to be much of a threat, but Muscles saw his chance. He vaulted over the tailgate and took off.
He was on the creature in seconds. He brought the baseball bat up over his head, smashing it down on the zombie’s skull with a triumphant yell. The zombie’s skull shattered and sent gobbets of black-and-gray goo across the ground. Muscles’s face twisted into a look of manic delight. He whirled around, searching for his next victim, but there were none within striking distance.
The gunfire was petering out. At least a dozen bodies lay around our truck, with more scattered near Harwood’s. The remaining zombies were slow and virtually harmless. Santos, Novak, and Stephens relaxed. They took their time to pick their targets and place their shots. Even then, Stephens took two or three attempts to bring down each target.
Harwood had climbed out of the truck and was checking the nearby dead, driving his knife into a few to finish them off.
A few minutes later, Santos took down the last of the zombies, and the battle for Sunrise Pines was over.
Chapter 38
The Calm After the Storm
An odd calm settled over the construction site, punctuated only by the soft ticking of the trucks’ engines as they cooled. I felt a mixture of elation and disappointment—an odd sensation created in part, I’m sure, by the shadow.
The silence was suddenly broken by the sound of Wilson retching, closely followed by the sound of vomit spattering against the ground beside the truck. Muscles laughed.
“Okay, everyone form up,” Harwood said.
Muscles trotted across the site, making a slight diversion to cave in the skull of a relatively intact zombie on the way. Wilson finished throwing up and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. He took a deep breath, but he looked pale and was clearly shaken by the fight with the zombies. I didn’t know his background, but I doubted he’d been this close to the living dead very often.
I took my time climbing down from the truck, watching the tree line around the site warily as I did so. Our attack had generated a lot of noise, and we were sure to have attracted attention. Santos was clearly thinking the same thing. She was still standing on the truck bed. She turned slowly around, covering the entire site with her weapon.
But I wasn’t just looking for threats. I needed a new place to live, and I still had a glimmer of hope that Sunrise Pines might be suitable.
Harwood pointed toward the larger of the three structures. “Santos, you, Wilson, and Black, check out the main building. You’ve got ten minutes to find anything useful and bag it. Johnson, you’re with me and Novak. We’ll sweep the rest of the site and the vehicles. We’ll meet back here and get the trucks loaded.”
Santos threw Wilson and me a green canvas pack each. “Okay, let’s go.”
She set off across the building site. Wilson started to follow but turned back aft
er a few steps to retrieve the crowbar and machete from where he’d dropped them when he started throwing up. He looked at me sheepishly as he passed by.
I wondered why exactly he’d volunteered for the trip and why Harwood had let him come along. He was taking up space that could have been taken by one of Harwood’s group. Even someone of Stephens’s caliber would stand a better chance of making it back to Sanctuary alive. The idea that Harwood had made him part of the team so that he would get killed didn’t seem particularly far-fetched. The look of disgust on Harwood’s face as Wilson jogged after Santos did nothing to dispel that thought. I checked my own knife then followed after them.
The main building was maybe thirty percent complete. The foundation and frame were in place, along with the external walls and some of the internal ones, too. The windows, roof, and the four side doorways had been sealed with sheets of thick blue plastic. A few were still intact, but most had split or come away from the nails holding them in place. I tried to picture myself sheltering in the building for the winter, but even if I boarded up the windows and doors and somehow managed to repair the roof, I doubted there would be enough protection from the cold.
Tools, workbenches, and piles of materials lay dotted around the interior. Given the number of zombies in construction gear we’d just taken down, it was a safe bet the outbreak had hit Sunrise Pines without warning. All but the most paranoid tend to think the worst will never happen to them. From what I’d seen, it had happened a lot during the first few weeks when people still hadn’t realized just how badly things were going. A lot of people had kept to their daily routines back then. After all, life goes on. Until it doesn’t.
Serial Killer Z: Sanctuary Page 19
