by D. J. Molles
Lee slowed in time to make the turn and then accelerated again. Milo’s choice of the Humvee as a getaway vehicle was probably not smart. If he’d taken the Chevrolet Lumina, he might be putting distance between them, but a military Humvee peaked out around seventy miles per hour and accelerated like a tired old warhorse compared to the quick acceleration of the Dodge Ram. After a moment of pressing the gas pedal to the floor, they were right on his ass.
Milo swerved back and forth in the roadway, trying to wait until the last second to dodge abandoned cars. Lee’s reactions were quick and he kept the pickup right behind the olive green tailgate. So when Milo hit the right-hand turn from Second Street onto an inviting four-lane stretch of road, Lee followed, thinking that the four lanes were going to give Milo room to maneuver and possibly get away.
Lee noticed it immediately. The way the land sloped off just slightly but the road elevated just a bit. The way all the businesses and houses just suddenly stopped. How the sides of the road went from barren shoulder to concrete abutments.
“Look out!” Miller pointed.
“I see it.” Lee applied the brakes just a second before Milo did.
It wasn’t the bridge up ahead that stopped them but the concrete barricades that spanned from abutment to abutment, barring anyone from entering or leaving by crossing the river that flowed underneath it. As had become the usual thing, the barricades were topped with concertina wire, and on the Smithfield side of the bridge, a single sheriff’s vehicle sat abandoned.
The pickup truck came to a screeching halt.
It only took the briefest of seconds for Milo to start moving again. The Humvee lurched forward and to the right, hitting the curb and heading for the steep, muddy embankment that led from the road down to the river.
“What the fuck?” Miller sounded bewildered. “Can he make it across in that thing?”
Lee took a glance at the river and knew the answer to that question without too much thought. “There’s no fucking way.”
The water underneath the bridge was high and angry and brown. The heavy summer rain had swollen its banks so that they licked the edges of a paved jogging path that ran alongside the water. Some sections of the jogging path were just barely submerged under roughly an inch of murky water.
But despite the ugly look of the river, Milo appeared to have made up his mind. The Humvee rumbled quickly down the embankment, ran along the wet jogging path for less than a hundred feet before finding a gap in the trees big enough to squeeze through, and made for the water.
“Oh my God,” Miller murmured.
For a brief moment, Lee thought the vehicle was going to make it. It hit the water with a mighty splash and surged forward as though it were built for amphibious operations. But then the front end rocked forward, dipping below the waterline and not coming back up. Lee wondered how many people had attempted this very same maneuver as they tried to escape the horrors of whatever had occurred in Smithfield, only to drown in their vehicles.
Perhaps it was one of these submerged vehicles that the Humvee landed on, because it stopped sinking after a moment, leaving the top of the vehicle above water. Lee could see about six inches of the doors, but there was no way Milo was going to be able to push them open with the water rushing against the sides of the vehicle.
“He’s gonna be trapped in there,” Miller observed coldly.
But he spoke too soon.
A pair of wiry arms reached out of the circular opening of the gun turret, and after a brief moment, a waterlogged figure dragged himself out of the interior of the Humvee, one hand on the roof, one hand on the .50-caliber machine gun on the back end. And then Milo looked right at them.
Lee knew what was about to happen and opened his door, simultaneously reaching for his M4 only to discover that Miller was no longer in the passenger seat and neither was Lee’s rifle. The younger man had already stepped out of the car and was raising the M4 to his shoulder even as Milo swung the big gun on them and gripped it with both hands.
Miller took the shot.
The bullet hit Milo with a wet smack that Lee could hear even from fifty yards away. He could see the spray of misting blood and water come off of Milo’s back as the man pitched backward into the river.
Miller let out an audible breath.
“Holy shit.” Lee raised his eyebrows at the impressive shot but really couldn’t come up with anything else to say.
From behind the bulky green vehicle, Lee spied the splashing water, something moving around just outside of their view. He began hobbling as quickly as he could toward the embankment. “If he’s still alive, he’s gonna try to run.”
Lee managed to get himself to the side of the road, Miller walking right at his side. They had just begun picking their way down the embankment to the jogging path when they saw Milo lurch away from the sunken truck, splashing through the water with one hand clutching the left side of his chest. His dark T-shirt was already soaked and it was impossible to tell where the shot had landed or whether it had gone all the way through, but it had obviously not debilitated him.
Miller broke into a run, still holding Lee’s M4. “He’s gonna get away!”
“Wait!” Lee reached out and tried to snag Miller’s arm, missing by inches.
But Miller was focused, like a dog running down a rabbit. He hit the bottom of the hill and all semblance of caution was thrown to the wind on the level pavement of the jogging path. Holding the M4 in both arms, he sprinted after Milo with everything he had.
Lee decided the embankment would take too long for him to navigate on foot. He took two painful running steps and then jumped, hitting the ground on his already broken tailbone and sliding down the slick mud of the embankment. He shouted after the stupid kid running in front of him.
“Miller! Get the fuck back here!”
If Miller even heard him, he gave no response.
Lee tumbled to the bottom of the embankment and rolled onto the jogging path, feeling his body surrounded by cool, shallow water in this small patch of submerged concrete. For a moment, he couldn’t feel anything. He stared up at the mottled gray of the sky, moving and swirling in the atmospheric winds. It was almost peaceful.
He coughed and picked himself up.
Down the path, Miller was about twenty-five yards in front of Lee, and Milo was another ten yards in front of him. Miller’s feet pounded the shallow water, causing white crowns of glistening water to explode up around his feet with every stride. Lee was oddly reminded of his childhood; playing in the rain in his yard, he would pretend he was a soldier in Vietnam and would run around, slamming his foot down in each puddle he came across to give it the effect of an explosion at his feet. But the explosion never brought him down, and he just kept running, an invincible man. And Miller ran through the rain with that same mindless resolve to keep going, as though he couldn’t be hurt.
Milo was obviously wounded and was trundling along about as quickly as Lee. Miller gained ground rapidly, and the quick glances that Milo threw over his shoulder said that he knew what was coming.
Lee saw it, even from where he was, almost thirty yards behind them. He could see Milo reach for something on his right leg, and then he stopped running. Lee was too far away to do anything but yell out to Miller.
“He’s got a gun!”
Finally, Miller saw the gun in Milo’s hand, the big .357 revolver he always carried. Miller staggered to a stop as the revolver swung up at the same time, leveling the M4. The two men were less than twenty feet from each other, Milo extending his right arm, the end of which was only a big silver revolver, and Miller leaning back, with the stock of the rifle tucked under his arm, almost aiming from the hip.
The two men began shooting at each other.
It all happened in the span of a second.
The .357 fired. Miller jerked backward as the slug passed through his chest, but he didn’t lose his footing. He fired twice in response, the first round splashing the water at Milo’s feet and the s
econd piercing him in the gut. The revolver roared again, and this time Miller did lose his footing. He staggered backward and fell to his knees, where he swooned like a drunkard but managed to fire three more times. Two of the three shots found their mark—one in Milo’s leg and another into his right side, traveling up as it went through his body and smashing through his shoulder blade.
And then it was over.
Lee moved forward, and he could hear the rising groan of pain coming from Miller. Beyond Miller’s sprawled form, Milo squirmed like a fish on the deck of a boat, trying to get his legs under him again. He was still trying to make a run for it, not yet realizing that the last bullet had pulverized his spleen and pierced his left lung before it had exited out of his back. No amount of running was ever going to save him.
Lee reached him just as he succeeded in rolling onto his hands and knees, still holding that silver revolver in his left hand. Milo seemed to realize that Lee was almost upon him and tried to spin, bringing his weapon to bear, but Lee swiped at it with one swift hand and knocked the thing clear across the jogging path and into the deeper water. Milo watched it leave his fingers with a hiss of pain.
There was nothing momentous about it, no poetic justice, nothing artful. Lee did not use Milo’s own words against him or have anything sharp or clever to say. There was just a brief and violent struggle, during which neither made eye contact with the other. Milo tried for a moment to scratch at Lee’s eyes, but Lee pinned his arms and then took hold of Milo’s neck with his good right hand. He slammed Milo’s head back into the concrete repeatedly, until the hard crack of the skull hitting pavement became a much softer, wetter sound.
Milo’s body went limp.
Lee released his neck, breathing hard.
He looked up at the sky, not wanting to look at what he’d done. Far above him, the pattern of clouds was nearly indiscernible. It was all just one big gray blob, backlit by a sun that couldn’t quite break through.
A weak cough from behind him brought Lee’s attention back to the here and now. He quickly searched Milo’s body and located the GPS in Milo’s back pants pocket. The sturdy construction of it had kept it from being damaged and had sealed it against the water. Lee put it in his pocket. Then he walked back to Miller, who no longer moaned, because he struggled even to breathe. All around him, the shallow water had turned red. Long tendrils of it were caught in the current and gliding slowly downstream. Lee thought he could hear the wet wheezing noise of a sucking chest wound, but he couldn’t be certain over Miller’s labored breathing.
Lee knelt down next to him, looking up at the pickup truck with all of their medical equipment, parked at the top of the embankment. It seemed farther away than Lee remembered it. He stared back down into Miller’s face and tried to look and sound confident. “Alright, buddy. I’m gonna run up to the truck to get something to fix you, okay?”
Miller looked scared, and he nodded. Tears were running down the sides of his face.
Lee grabbed his rifle off the ground and slung into it. He moved as quickly as he could to the embankment and worked his way up on his hands and knees. Going up was much more difficult than going down, and twice he slipped in the mud, nearly losing all the progress he had gained. And when he reached the top, feeling somewhat relieved and triumphant, he realized that his little journey was nothing more than a waste of time, because he would never be able to get to the truck with the hundreds of infected coming toward him.
CHAPTER 25
The Return
Less than three hundred yards down the four-lane road on which their pickup truck was parked, Lee could see the massive throng of infected, stretching the entire width of the four lanes, from building-front to building-front. They were not sprinting, but neither were they taking their time. They had heard the gunfire and were coming to investigate.
Is gunfire something they’ve begun to equate with food? Lee wondered. Or was it simply a loud stimulus to respond to? Lee knew that animals, even the less intelligent ones, were quick to pick up on anything that meant they could eat.
Lee would have to cross two wide-open lanes to reach the pickup truck. The horde would see him, and then they would charge. He looked desperately for something he could use as concealment to get to the truck, but the road was bare of even the trash and bodies that Lee had seen plentifully elsewhere in the city. It was almost a mockery.
His only chance was to hide until the horde passed. Since they were moving with less haste than usual, Lee thought he might have enough time. He slid quickly down the embankment and limped over to Miller’s form. They needed to hide, and the closest spot to do that was the half-submerged Humvee. He immediately grabbed the kid’s arm and struggled to hoist him up onto his feet.
“Come on, buddy. We’ve got company.”
“No…” Miller managed.
“Yep.” Lee struggled and finally pulled Miller into the water, where he became much lighter. The current was strong, but Lee fought against it, towing the younger guy behind him as he worked his way toward the front of the Humvee, trying to keep Miller’s head above water. If he could make it to the front, the vehicle would hide them from the view of the infected, and he hoped they wouldn’t venture out into the water.
The current was much stronger at the front of the Humvee. The vehicle’s bulk had shielded them from much of the river’s pull, but now Lee felt it in all its rushing anger, as though it had been sent by nature for the sole purpose of sweeping him away. He hooked his right arm through the ram bar at the front of the vehicle. The other arm he wrapped around Miller’s chest, keeping it as tight as he could with his damaged wrist.
Miller moaned.
“It’s okay, man.” The kid’s head rested on Lee’s shoulder, just above the water. His skin was cold. “Just hang on. We only have to wait until these crazies are gone and then we can get you some help. Just stay strong for me and don’t fall asleep. Can you do that for me?”
Miller didn’t respond.
Lee felt his stomach drop and he shook the kid slightly, eliciting another moan. Good. He was still there, still fighting.
From behind them, Lee could hear the growing sound of the approaching infected. When they were not excited, they issued strange guttural noises back and forth, and Lee could have sworn they were communicating on some instinctive level. The grumbling noises grew to a loud rumble, but Lee could not see them from where he clung to the front of the Humvee. In his mind he could imagine all of them, hundreds of them, packing the banks of the river, milling mindlessly back and forth.
Their growling grew excited as they found Milo’s body and fed on it. A brief but ferocious fight broke out between a couple of them that sounded like a pair of dogs in a pit. Lee could only imagine that they were fighting over scraps of Milo’s flesh.
The sunlight grew dim.
Lee wasn’t sure how long it had been. The infected still milled around behind them, but it sounded as though they had finally finished feeding on Milo. Lee hoped they would leave in search of other food. He wondered to himself how much normal food the infected scavenged out of trash bins and whatever convenience and grocery stores still had products in them. Marie had mentioned that they were drawn to the smell of cooking food. Then, Lee had to wonder how long a horde this size could survive on the scraps and dead bodies that littered the city streets. Perhaps the hordes were the first step when food was plentiful, and the packs only came afterward when they realized on some subconscious level that they needed to hunt to survive.
Hours passed.
It was now completely dark out. The cloud cover had dissipated in the last hour and the moon was nearly full, illuminating everything in a cold chrome light. Lee’s thinking became muddy. Thoughts would seem important and poignant and then they would be quickly forgotten, only to leave him confused and frustrated. The water was not what he would consider cold, but after hours of exposure in it, the river was beginning to take its toll, making his whole body shake. His muscles ached with the strain
of holding onto the Humvee’s ram bar and holding onto Miller.
The infected were quiet now but not gone. He could still hear them muttering behind him, sometimes their voices so low that the sound of the water overcame them, and other times they barked loudly at each other.
Lee went in and out of consciousness. He wouldn’t define it as sleep or passing out, because he never once let go of Miller. But he would open his eyes and have the sense that his last jumble of confused thoughts had been the rambling of his dreaming mind, and that time had passed.
The whole night, he had been afraid to stir Miller for fear that he would yell or moan and draw the attention of the infected, sending them into a frenzy. So he stayed quiet and still and hoped and prayed that Miller would stay alive just a little while longer.
It was sometime in the early morning, just as the sky above his head had begun to turn a deep, melancholy blue, that he realized Miller was stiff in his arms. Lee pressed his face against the side of Miller’s and felt the chill that wasn’t just cold skin but the tombstone coldness of death.
Lee held on a little while longer, though he couldn’t explain to himself why. Perhaps he didn’t want to simply let Miller go and be discarded like all of the other bodies in Smithfield. Perhaps he saw himself in this kid. He had seen him fight with everything he had and still come up short, and that sense of impending mortality scared Lee more than anything else.
But eventually he let Miller slip out of his arms.
The current took him, much gentler now that the water had receded some. Lee watched him, floating on his back in the pale half light of dawn, and pictured him as a boy, just spending a warm summer night floating away on the river.
* * *
It was full light by the time Lee could no longer hear the strange noises of the infected. He moved for the first time in hours and felt the screaming pain of his stiff muscles and injuries. He drifted slowly to the edge of the Humvee and looked around at the riverbank, where he could see a bloody mound of clothing and gristle that used to be Milo.
