The Great Wreck

by Stewart, Jack

  Greer came back on a minute later as I cried for Pix who was still trapped inside that god awful warehouse shuffling in circles trapped for all time, “My god Thomas, I’m so sorry. We’ll get him, I swear we’ll get him.”

  James popped in one last time before going silent, “Doubt it.” He said quite cheerfully and then he was gone.

  An hour later another Sandia broadcast came on the air, “To those of you who are receiving this broadcast in the Albuquerque valley area, Sandia Station will be initiating fire station sirens all across the valley in an attempt to draw the dead away from our outer fences. Sirens will be turned on in the next ten minutes and will continue until the threat has abated.”

  I thought that was smart. Use the sirens to lure the dead away from the fences towards the various fire stations around the valley. The dead would be drawn to the sound and flock to the stations…oh fuck, I thought as I rolled on my back and looked at the array of sirens twenty feet about my head. Every fucked dead stiff within ten miles would be converging on this spot. I had less than ten minutes.

  I quickly broke down my hiding spot and crammed my gear into my back. I glanced at my watch: five minutes. I looked over the sides of the fire station. A lot of dead in all directions but I saw a relatively clear path that lead to a tall bank a few blocks away. If I could make it there, I could rush the steps and try to get to the roof. I couldn’t think of a better plan and then I remembered the claymores. If I could make it to the stairwell inside bank, I could plant these along the walls as I ran up and blow up the pursuing dead and destroy the stairs behind me. I had nothing else and only three minutes to get away from the fire station. No time to go over the side and carefully climb down, so I unslung my machinegun, kicked in the rooftop door, and raced down the stairs to the ground floor as fast as I could.

  But when I kicked open the door I was face to face with so many dead that they packed the stairwell. Oh, god, the station was crammed full with dead probably from the times before where Sandia had turned on the sirens. I nearly chocked as the stench hit my like a warm cloud of decay.

  I opened up and cut down the dead, then began running over their fallen bodies. The sound the machine gun made in the enclosed space of the stairwell was incredible and I knew that the dead all around the fire station were going to start closing in but I had no choice so I continued making my way down to the second floor landing, then the first, sliding over the dead in a cloud of rot, reek, and squishing trying not to fall, knowing that if I fell it was all over. Above the racket of the machines gun, I heard the siren come on.

  Oh, fuck.

  I pressed the trigger and kept a steady stream of bullets flying until I reached the ground floor. I burst out of the fire station onto the street and just started running. I knew the dead were closing in from all sides now and with them would be more than a few of the Sprinters and sure enough, a small pack of them rounded the corner and headed right towards me.

  I was surrounded by walkers but the nearest one was still a few feet away, so I crouched down on one knee and picked off each of the Sprinters as they closed in on me. I took down the last one as it lunged and landed on me. I quickly rolled to the side, got to my feet , and ran gain towards the bank’s shattered glass doors.

  I knew it too would be full of the dead all shuffling towards the stairs to head down to the fire station but there was nowhere else I could go so into the bank I went as the small gaps that had been around me closed up into a solid wall of dead. No running back now, I shouldered my way through the bank doors and burst towards the stairwell that would take me to the roof.

  I bolted up the stairs and stopped for a split second to stick my first claymore to the wall and hit the activation button, then raced up to the next floor. I could hear the dead pouring in after me and hoped I could put enough distance between me and the claymore before it went off. I had just enough time to plant another one at the stairwell entrance to the second floor when the first one went off.

  I thought the whole building was going to collapse. The explosion was so strong it knocked me to the floor but the building held and I scrambled to my feet and ran to the third floor, planted another claymore, then raced to the fourth. There the dead that had been inside the building stood waiting for me. I didn’t hesitate and opened up on them.

  More dead were rushing in from the lower floors and the next wave hit the second claymore sending me to my knees and a handful of dead above me tumbling down the stairs. I got back to my feet, pushed off a few dead trying to take a quick bite out of me and ran to the fifth floor. With only two more floors to go now, I set a few claymores down on the wall behind me when the blasts from the lower level claymores finally took the stairs down for good. I watched the dead from the lower floors flood into the now stairless stairwell and plummet into the smoke and flames below. Hooray!

  I watched the stairs above those claymores began collapsing as well. Yay! Take ‘em all down, bitch! My joy at sending the hordes of dead down the smoky ruins of the stairwell lasted exactly on microsecond as I spotted a potential problem. The problem of me still standing on the stairs that were now collapsing out from under me. Socorro all over again!

  I could see what remained of the first floor stairs buckle and begin to pull the second floor stairs down with them. I turned around and ran. The slow process accelerated as I ran the last two flights of stairs up to the roof clearing the door just and the whole of the stairwell collapsed. I lay on the rooftop panting, listening to the sirens and the dead in the streets below screaming as they tried to cram into the fire station.

  Then I heard another sound that got me back on my feet and running again: there was another door to the roof top and a whole truckload of dead were now pounding on it trying to reach me. A second later the door burst outwards and here they came. I looked around as I squeezed off a few shots dropping the first few dead and clogging up the doorway giving me a few more seconds to find a way out. I spotted a ladder built into the dome of the bank’s roof. I bolted towards it and scrambled up as the dead poured out the other rooftop access door and towards me. At the top of the dome there was a large radio tower and a maintenance platform enclosed by small wall that I scrambled over and lay there panting listening to see if the dead could climb up the ladder after me.

  After ten minutes, I peeked over the wall and saw the thirty or so dead wandering around the roof, none of them trying to get up the ladder on the side of the dome to get me. Some had in fact already had begun moving back towards the door to get down or had walked off the edge of the building following the sound of the siren on the fire station down the street.

  I collapsed and lay there until, an hour later, the siren stopped. Sometime after that I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up, it was late in the day. I had reached the rooftop in the morning and now the sun was low on the horizon. The dead were still thick in the streets and I figured I was going to be here awhile so I began my routine of setting up my camouflage netting and small camp.

  I knew James was still out there and he was good enough at dodging the dead he might be able to find me so I pulled out a hacksaw and climbed down to the rooftop of the bank. I crept over towards the open door and peaked inside. The first flight was clear but down on the sixth floor the dead were packed into the stairwell. I crept slowly down to the bottom of the first flight, placed a claymore at the base of the steps, then crept back up to the rooftop. I placed another claymore at the foot of the door, then quietly closed the door and chained it shut. I made my way back to the ladder that ran to my camp and began sawing each rung off as I made my way up. I wasn’t going to be getting up and down from my perch again. The next time I was going down would be for good so I saw no need to have a ladder that James could use to climb up and get to me as I slept.

  I probably should not have worried. The dead had crammed into the streets around the fire station so James couldn’t have made it to me without being caught. But James wasn’t human, James was a demon that could
slip through the dead and reach me any old time he wanted. But without the rungs on the side of the dome, I doubted even James could scale up the steep sides of the dome.

  But fear does not know logic and ignores that cool reason of facts so once I crawled back under the camouflage netting I began to scan the surroundings looking for that sole figure sneaking his way towards me. I watched until the sun fell under the horizon then pulled out my night goggles, switched over to infrared, and continued watching for his approach until I fell asleep sometime after midnight.

  I woke when the sun cleared the mountains to the east. I ate a small breakfast and sipped my water knowing it was all I had until the dead cleared out. I had maybe three days of water with me, then it was going to be tough going.

  At 0800 on the nose, Sandia began broadcasting again but this time without the normal standard messages. This time it was Greer and the message was for him. “Thomas, this is Greer. Please don’t respond. We know James is tracking you. I’m so sorry. We never should have let him go, but he was alive and…well, we’re sorry and we’ll do everything we can to help bring you in.

  Let him go?

  “Listen carefully. We believe the James is still in the museum safe house. The dead over there are especially heavy and we don’t think he could have gotten out of the plane and if he did venture outside he would have surely been caught. We’ve kept watch on it day and night since his last transmission. We’ve also done everything we can to jam his radio signal so he can’t hear us or track you but we don’t know if it is entirely effective so listen carefully because this will be quick.

  “We see where you are and we cannot reach you. Our helicopter can’t get close enough to lower you a line. We know you’re running low on water so it’s time for you to come in Thomas. Do you hear me? You must come in. Our spotters have seen a large break in the dead heading your direction in about two hours. You must be ready to go when that break hits. It will be your last chance for the next week or more.

  “Head north to the Balloon Fiesta park. We’ll be waiting there for you Thomas. Good luck.”

  I looked to the south hand saw the large area clear of the dead that Greer talked about. I quickly broke down my camp and packed my gear. I found the Balloon Fiesta park on a map, then found it with my binoculars. It was less than two miles away. I could make it in twenty minutes.

  So I waited, scanning the horizon looking for James, waiting for the break. It came around ten. By then I was already at the door to the stairwell. I had unlocked the door, deactivated the two claymores and made my way back up to the roof careful to chain the door closed again.

  There was no way I could make it down the stairs, there were just too many of the dead clogging each and every level. So I pulled out a rope and looked for a place to tie off to.

  I found a sturdy metal bar, tied my line to it, then to myself and slipped over the edge of the building wall. Below me a few stragglers drifted north, so I quickly slid to the sixth floor window beneath me, then looked around again. None of the dead had seen me so I slipped down to the fifth floor. Again, no dead converging on me so I decided to go all the way to the ground.

  As I slid past the third floor I heard that familiar scream of a Sprinter and knew one must have been in the building and had now locked on to me. I quickly slid the rest of the way to the street and scanned the area around me. To the north, a large group of dead that had already passed by the bank had been alerted by the Sprinter’s scream, turned, and were beginning to head back in my direction.

  I quickly dropped the rope, adjusted my pack, and began running east and then north towards the balloon park. I knew the Sprinter inside the building would be out on the street within minutes and wanted to put as much distance between me and it before it got outside.

  I got three blocks before I heard the crash of a window letting me know the Sprinter had made it out onto the street. It screamed in rage as it scanned the area for me. If I were lucky, there was enough buildings between it and me to shield my from it.

  It screamed again and I could hear it take off towards me. I guess I wasn’t lucky. I took off at a full run but knew I was not going to get away from this thing by running. So as soon as I could, I rounded a corner and pulled out my pistol, attached the silencer, and waited for the it to come running around the corner with a horde of its buddies.

  I guessed it would come around a burnt out pet store and aimed where its head should pop around the corner. I guessed wrong and it came around behind me. If it hadn’t screamed when it saw me I would have been a goner. But it did and I had just enough time to spin around nearly losing control of my bowels as the thing tore down the street towards me.

  I froze for just a second as I took in what used to be a young girl screaming and racing towards me. She must have been about twelve when she was bit. Instead of slowly rotting into a shuffler, she had a strain of the virus that both kept her from decaying as rapidly, gave her that fucked up tracking ability, and kept her really, really fast.

  She was wearing what was left of a pair of green daisy duke shorts, yellow tank top over a black halter top, and somehow, even after what had to be months of chasing and eating the living, a blue baseball cap that was stuck to her short, blond streaked hair. Her skin was pale, she had button nose, braces, and faded yellow-green eyes. She was beautiful and I put two bullets right into her forehead blowing that ball cap back off of the ruin that was now her head and onto the street.

  I didn’t even stop to consider anything but running now that the rest of the dead had been alerted to my presence. I ran harder than I had since leaving Los Angeles. I ran past the shufflers careful to keep an opening always ahead of me, and keeping the dead from surrounding me and suddenly I was there. A sign shot by on my left saying Balloon Festival Grounds one quarter mile ahead on left. My legs were burning, my lungs were on fire, but I had broken free from the larger groups of dead, now many yards behind me.

  I nearly wept as I ran across a huge parking lot, past a broken down chain link fence and into the Balloon Park. The area was wide open at least a half mile on each side. I didn’t stop running until I was in the dead center. Then I stumbled to a stop, dropped my gear onto the ground, and fell to my knees panting and watching the black spots swirl around my vison. I waited for the sound of a chopper coming from the distance, coming to take me up and out of this forsaken dead valley.

  But nothing came. I listened, strained my ears, but heard nothing but the sound of approaching footsteps. I didn’t even bother getting up or grabbing my weapons. He would already have me in his sights, waiting for me to lung at my pack, “Hello, James.”

  “Hello Thomas! God it’s good to see you old friend,” he said with genuine warmth.

  I finally opened my eyes and saw him standing there in the early morning light, a rifle pointed at my head. James did not look good. In fact, he looked near death, In fact, fact, he looked dead.

  “I’m not going to tell you it’s good to see you too,” I said wearily, James flinched a bit but shook it off.

  “Yeah, boy. I don’t look so good, do I? Let me tell you why: I’m infected. Been infected since we left Los Angeles. When I fucked Pix after she was dead, my condom broke. Ha, ha! Pretty fucking funny, huh? A necro-venereal disease. So after Pix, I never bothered with protection again. And man did I fuck a lot of dead chicks. Tight and rough! Just how I like it. Yeah! Why I didn’t totally turn? I have no idea, but the dead paid a lot less attention to me, Mostly.”

  “So I made it all the way up to Sandia. Oh, yeah, I beat you up there by a few days. What the hell were you doing anyway? You move slower than old people fuck. Jacking off out in the desert somewhere? What, like, every hour or something? Good god, man, I’m surprised you’re not blind.”

  “I went east at Las Cruces instead of heading north. Added a few weeks to my trip,” I said wondering if the folks from Sandia had just given up on me.

  James did a little dance there in the dead grass of the field and said, “Fuc
king east! I knew it! Through Alamogordo and then over to Socorro! I knew I should have gone that way. Fucking nearly died heading straight north. Fuck! That would have saved me a lot of hate and discontent.”

  “Well, water under the bridge. So I get up to fancy fucking pants Sandia and they put me in an isolation facility and pulled a sample of blood. Well, old boy I knew the gig was up right there and then. Waited for them to punch my ticket and send me out of this world but there was nothing I could do but wait for the men in the armor to come put a bullet in my head. Except they didn’t! Can you believe it? Those dumb mother fuckers let me loose! Said that technically I was still alive and it would be wrong to kill me! And they let me go!” he said laughing until tears streamed down his filthy, pale face, “Dumb. Ass. Mother. Fuckers!

  “But I digress. Can I tell you something, Thomas? I’m proud of you. You made it all the way from Las Cruces here without me and you dropped that Sprinter like it was a sack of potatoes,” he said as he dropped his pack on the ground, set down his rifle, and pulled out a huge handgun, “But you left me. Left me like a rabid dog so now it’s time to put you down,” he said and aimed his gun at my belly, “But not in the head, oh, no, pal. Now it’s time for you and me to wander the deadlands forever old buddy…” he said as he pulled the trigger.

  But the sound of the shot never came. Instead James just looked down at his chest, confusion crossing his face as a gout of blood shot out of his mouth. I followed James’s eyes to the large metal bar sticking out of his chest, “Whada fuggg…” he said looking at his blown open chest as he fell forward.

  Behind him, a quarter mile away, a sleek black helicopter hung silently above the trees. It glided towards me without a sound until it was nearly on top of me and James’ body and only then I could hear the air rushing around us. The stealth copter set down and four heavily armed troopers came out and circled James. They adjusted the bar sticking out of James’ chest placing large locks on his chest and back locking the bar in for good.