by Luke Duffy
Al noticed the blood seeping through her trousers around her lower leg. She was dressed strangely, wearing a boiler suit with heavy work boots and a thick jacket that was three of four sizes too big for her. She swayed on her feet and looked as though she was about to collapse. Her face was pale and withdrawn, glistening with sweat as though she was suffering from a burning fever.
Al watched her and took a slight step forward, peering into her sunken eyes as he continued his visual inspection. His finger remained lightly pressed against his trigger and the barrel pointed at her chest.
Tommy glanced across at him nervously as the crashes and thuds drifted across the road from beyond the trees, growing louder as the dead continued their pursuit.
“You been bitten?” Al demanded, abruptly, and nodded to the blood sodden wound on the woman’s lower leg.
She blew out a sigh of exhaustion as she continued with her struggle to remain on her feet. Her eyes were becoming heavy and her head seemed to be swimming around in a circle that was increasing with speed. Her vision was beginning to dance and blur and her ears were filled with an electrifying buzzing noise.
“My…my,” she stammered as her energy reserves were spent and her stance faltered for a moment. Her wounded leg almost collapsed but she corrected it just in time to prevent her from falling. “My brother… my brother did it. He… shot me… He…”
She stumbled forward and fell to the ground. Tommy jumped to her side and placed his hands over her back to prevent her from rolling down the hill. He turned her over and stared down into her face. Her eyes were rolled into the back of her head and he suspected for a short moment that she had died. He checked her pulse and breathing and then nodded up to Al, confirming that she was still alive.
“I think we should take her with us, mate.”
“She’s not a stray dog, Tommy. You’ll have to see if she wants to come with us before we decide whether or not to keep her.”
Tommy glanced back over his shoulder and saw the first of the infected as it crashed out from the wood line and stumbled into the road. It stopped and searched around its immediate area, looking for the living woman that had been trying to escape them. It seemed confused and continuously pivoted in a tight circle, looking in either direction along the road. Its head began to rise as it followed the lay of the hill in front of it. Its eyes locked on the two men that were half way up the slope and it let out a long moan as it lifted its arms and began to stagger towards the foot of the embankment.
“We’ll ask her that later,” Tommy replied as he began scooping her up from the grass. “Come on, Al, give me a hand here.”
Together, they helped the woman to climb the hill. Her head rolled and her shoulders sagged as they dragged her along. She was barely conscious and incapable of moving under her own steam.
“Where…where are you taking me?” She mumbled weakly during one of her fleeting moments of clarity. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe,” the big man on her left replied as they reached the peak of the hill.
“Tina,” she huffed. “My name’s Tina.”
“Please to meet you, Tina,” Al said cheerfully. “I’m Mickey and this is Donald. Goofy is waiting for us back at the Neverland Ranch. Now shut up and save your energy.”
END
Read on for a free sample of Zombie Squad
1
There were three congressmen lying in the hallway, their blood splattered all over the elegant ornamental rug. One of them was missing his left arm. It lay several yards away, beneath the painting of Ronald Reagan, which was also streaked with blood.
Nick was barely aware of any of this. His senses were on overload and he was trying to make sense of it all. He was standing in the one of the northern hallways of the White House. The world was nothing but a sheet of noise: the blaring emergency sirens outside, the evacuation sirens within the White House, and the endless report of gunfire from the other side of the White House walls.
Somewhere in the midst of it all, the President was missing. Nick needed to find him, not just because he was the leader of the nation, but because he carried some very specific information that Nick needed.
Nick carried his handgun out in front of him, a Sig Sauer that he had been using ever since he had originally worked in these hallways, protecting the President. He held it tightly, fully prepared to put a bullet in the next thing that stepped around the corner.
In particular, he was keeping an eye out for what the public had started calling ramblers over the last several weeks. These were people that had become sick, infected by something that Nick still didn’t fully understand. They walked slow and killed fast. Up until today, Nick hadn’t seen one up close and personal, but in the last two hours, he had seen far too many of them. He’d put down at least a dozen, taking them out with headshots—the only known way to kill them.
None of it made sense. But he had no time to sort it out. Right now, his family, duties and safety came first. He had to find the President and make sure he was okay.
Nick made his way through the hallway, stepping over the mangled bodies of the congressmen. Past them, the hallway took a left turn. The hall before Nick was empty but he could hear commotion from ahead. Things falling over, the sounds of human exertion.
“Mr. President?” he called out.
He got no response. Just more muffled gunfire from outside and the chorus of sirens. There was a third one now, in the distance. Maybe a fire siren. He wasn’t sure.
He dashed forward, further down the hallway. As he neared the end where it branched off into a T-intersection, something ran out in front of him. Nick nearly pulled the trigger, but kept just enough pressure off to spare the life of one of the White House interns. The girl was about twenty years old. Her hair, face, and the upper portion of her blouse were covered in blood. Nick didn’t think it was hers.
“Have you seen the President?” Nick asked.
She whimpered and continued to run without answering him. Nick almost followed her, hoping to get some information, but was stopped by the sound of a loud gun blast. This one came from very nearby, within the White House walls. To Nick, it sounded like a very heavy duty rifle.
He took a right, following the blast, and nearly ducked for cover when he heard the sound again. Up and to the right, a set of double doors had been thrown open. Crouching low, he scampered over to the doorway and peered inside.
A lone secret service agent was standing beside a large picture window that had been smashed out. He was pressed against the wall, holding a shotgun to his chest and shucking in a new round. He spotted Nick, but barely paid any attention. His concern was on the carnage outside the shattered window.
About twenty ramblers were walking across the front lawn. Behind them, cop sirens flashed and blared. The cops, however, were all dead. From where Nick stood in the doorway—easily two hundred yards away—he could see the streaks of red in the street.
“Secret service, right?” Nick shouted to the man with the shotgun.
“Yeah,” he said. He swiveled himself out into the open space of the window and fired his shot. It took one of the ramblers in the chest. The rambler staggered, fell, but then instantly started to get back to his feet.
“It’s got to be in the head,” Nick told him.
“Yeah?” the agent said, as if this was unheard of.
“Yeah.”
“Who are you?”
“Nick Blackburn,” Nick said as he entered the office with him. “I’m with the NSA.” It was a lie, but Nick didn’t think the agent was going to do too much pressing.
“When did you guys get here?” the agent asked.
“This morning.”
“Are you alone?”
“I came in with four others. They’re all dead.”
He nodded as Nick checked his Sig Sauer. Three rounds left. Nick reloaded with the little ammunition he had left, giving him a grand total of nine rounds for the growing number of ramblers on the lawn.
Nick didn’t like those odds.
Still, loaded up, Nick approached the window with the agent and fired off his first shot. It took a rambler in the head. It had been an older man, looking perplexed as he toppled over and lay flat in the grass.
The secret service agent fired a shot from his rifle. This time, he took Nick’s advice. His shot obliterated the head of a rambler that had closed to within thirty feet of the window.
“Slow fuckers, huh?” the agent asked.
“Yeah,” Nick said, firing off two more shots. Nick watched as two more fell, keeping tabs on his ammo count.
“Any idea where the President is?” I asked.
“Zero. We were guarding him when the first barrier was broken through this morning.”
“Is he on the grounds?”
“I think so. We can’t get air support and I haven’t been notified of him leaving any other way.”
Behind the group of ramblers that were closing in, more were flooding onto the lawn. They were coming over the security gate that had been destroyed by arsonists and protestors sometime during the last thirty-six hours. When the public had discovered that the US government had been sitting on this secret for several days and had only come clean after news of the contagion had been leaked by a member of the Associated Press, the protesting loons had come out of the woodworks with their stupid signs and Molotov cocktails. Somewhere, somehow, some of them had gotten their hands on grenades.
If the country ever made it out of this mess, Nick thought, the easy access to arms by every angry protestor would be something they’d have to address promptly.
However, as Nick fired another shot out of the window, taking out another rambler, he began to seriously doubt if they’d ever make it out of this mess. Hell, he didn’t think he’d make it out of this day.
He thought of his wife and son, locked in their apartment home in Bethesda, Maryland. The idea that he might never see them again did not sit well with him. Sure, it saddened him but more than anything, it pissed him off.
He fired off two more rounds in rapid succession. Both shots were accurate but he wished he had something with the power of the rifle the secret service agent was packing. When the agent fired off another shot, Nick took sick but justified pleasure out of watching a nearby rambler’s head disintegrate into a temporary red cloud.
“There’s no way we can take them all out,” Nick said. “Let’s get out of here. We have to find the President.”
“He’s fine,” the agent said. “There are at least five others with him. There’s no way these things are getting to him.”
These things, Nick thought. Nice to know I’m not the only one that thinks of them as no longer being human.
Nick turned to leave, not wanting to waste any more time with this agent whom clearly had some sort of cowboy death wish. He made it only one step towards the opened double doors. The three men standing in the doorway froze him.
They were all dressed in suits, covered in blood and gore. One was missing his left arm.
The three congressmen, Nick thought. But they were dead. They were…
They all stepped forward at the same time. One of them let out a groan. They shuffled forward, their stares absolutely blank. Nick brought the Sig up and fired three shots, one right behind the other.
The congressmen fell in a heap. Nick looked down to them, still puzzled by how this damn virus worked. If it was a virus. He’d heard some hyperbole on the news about the possibility of it being some sort of parasite. Whatever it was, all Nick knew was that these men had been dead less than five minutes ago.
Now they were dead (really dead) again.
It made no sense.
Nick looked back at the agent and the growing sea of ramblers outside.
“Come on,” Nick said.
The secret service agent shook his head stubbornly.
Outside, Nick saw something on the right side of the lawn. There were five men, running as quickly as they could. Four of them were armed with semi-automatic weapons, firing into the crowd of gathering ramblers. From what Nick could tell, they knew about the headshot rule as well. Ramblers dropped like flies as they passed.
From the left side of the window, a large truck was rumbling across the White House lawn. It was heavily armored and looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It was headed for the group of five men.
Nick took several strides towards the window and took a closer look at the group of men dashing across the lawn. The man in the middle was the only one not firing a gun. This had to be President Ames.
“There he is,” Nick said, pointing.
“Don’t care,” the agent said. “You go on out. I’ll cover you.”
There was no point in arguing. Nick had seen this mindset before, mostly on soldiers that had been in combat too long without the opportunity to kill something. The agent had death on the brain and there was nothing Nick could say that would change his attitude.
“How many shots do you have?” Nick asked.
The agent nodded to a small box on the floor between his feet that Nick hadn’t noticed before. It was half full of shells for the rifle. There were easily twenty remaining.
“Headshots,” Nick said.
“Got it. Now go. Haul ass.”
Nick wasted no time. He knew he only had three shots remaining and he’d have to make them count. Other than that, he’d have to rely on the eye of the secret service agent.
He leaped out of the window and dropped five feet to the ground. The ramblers saw him but did not speed up. As far as Nick knew, they couldn’t move very fast at all.
He got to his feet and immediately heard a blast from behind him. The head of a rambler to his left vanished in a spray of red and white.
Nick ran at an angle, away from the central bulk of ramblers, so that he’d only have to worry about the stragglers to the side. The closest he came to one was about five feet. Before he had time to worry, his secret service friend beheaded it. Its body dropped to the ground like a pile of dry straw.
Nick continued to dash forward. President Ames and his guards were within just a few feet of the armored truck. The guards continued to mow down the ramblers as they moved.
“Mr. President,” Nick yelled. “Stop! Please! I’m Nick Blackburn!”
Two of the guards turned in his direction. One of them raised their weapon and aimed it towards him.
“No,” Nick screamed. “I’m not infected, you idiot!”
His ability to speak and run apparently clued the guard in. He lowered his weapon and looked to the President. President Ames waved him forward towards them like a man that was trying to decide if he was asleep or awake.
Nick had been so distracted that he had nearly run directly into a rambler. Its lifeless hand reached out for him as he came to a halt. Nick felt himself overcorrecting his direction and then slipped.
He went to the ground, raising his gun as he did. He fired a shot and it took the rambler under the chin. Its head snapped back and it staggered forward. Before the rambler could hit the ground, another boom sounded out from behind Nick. The wounded rambler’s head was blown from its shoulders in fragments of skull and a wash of blood that splattered on Nick’s shirt.
He scrambled up, looking behind him to where the secret service agent still stood in the window. The ramblers were getting closer to the White House now, closing the space between their horde and the window by less than ten feet.
Nick looked back to the armored truck and watched as the guards helped the President inside.
“Wait! Mr. President!”
“Come on,” one of the guards yelled. “Hurry up.”
Nick ran, now being covered by two of the guards as the other two climbed into the truck with President Ames.
He covered the space in less than ten seconds, running alongside the trail of fire the guards were laying down. Nick heard the dry sound of lifeless rambler bodies hitting the ground all around him.
“Get inside
,” one of the guards demanded when Nick was standing by the truck.
Nick did, helped by a brutal push from the guard.
Both guards quickly leaped into the truck. The driver took off, peeling up patches of grass even before the guards could close their doors.
“Mr. Blackburn,” President Ames said. “It’s a miracle that you made it.”
“Yeah, it kind of feels that way,” Nick agreed.
“Sir,” one of the guards said, “Who is this?”
“Nick Blackburn. I believe he can play a huge part in getting us all to safety.”
The guards seemed more than satisfied with this and said nothing else. The driver had curled off the White House grounds and was on the pavement of Pennsylvania Avenue with a series of jerks and jolts. The truck was rocked several times as the driver struck ramblers and sent them under its heavy frame.
“I’ve heard good things about you and I won’t waste your time,” the President told Nick. “You tell me what you need and we’ll make sure you get it.”
“Good,” Nick said.
He brought his gun up and placed it squarely against President Ames’s head.
The guards moved in a flurry, screaming and drawing their guns up.
“Don’t be stupid,” Nick said. “Anyone touches me and I’ll blow his head off.”
“What the hell is this?” President Ames said, his eyes filled with alarm and confusion.
“You just now asked me to tell you what I need,” Nick said. “And right now, I need this truck to take me to my family.”
“Where?” Ames asked.
“Bethesda.”
“Can’t,” the driver said, clearly nervous. “We’re headed in the opposite direction.”
“You will,” Nick said, “or I’ll kill him.”
“We’ll shoot you as soon as you pull that trigger,” one of the guards said.
“Look outside, asshole,” Nick said. “You think I care if I die?”
