The Rising Horde, Volume One

by Stephen Knight

  Try to be a little more charitable, Harlie, she chided herself. Just a little more, if you can stand it.

  The two women climbed into the truck, Jessica behind the wheel, Harlie riding shotgun figuratively as well as literally. While the rangers were not usually armed in public, these were unusual times, and the fall of Laredo had been all over the news. The Coast Guard and Navy were patrolling offshore, their ships in sight of the two rangers as they headed south down the island. There was talk of National Guard or regular Army soldiers augmenting the rangers, but so far, no units had materialized. Until that happened, the rangers were to keep close to their vehicles and keep their firearms on their persons at all times. The word had already gone out that the zeds could only be taken down by a direct shot to the head, something that Hollywood made look easy, but in real life was pretty darned difficult under most conditions. So Jessica drove because Harlie was a much better shot. Even though both women had marksman badges, Harlie was a dozen times more proficient with the M16.

  “I’ll do the drivin’ and you do the shootin’,” Jessica told Harlie.

  “No problem.” Harlie had the M16 slung over her shoulder and a .40 caliber Glock 23 on her belt.

  Jessica wore her own pistol as well. They had left the shotgun with Harrington since he would be solo until their supervisor arrived from Austin, where he’d been visiting family. At least with the shotgun, Harrington had a chance of being able to deal with whatever might pop up, like a zombie trying to break into the ranger station to eat him.

  They passed several vehicles on their way out of the park. No one flagged down the marked pickup truck, so it seemed these folks were in a righteous hurry to get the heck out of Dodge. Jessica reported the traffic back to Harrington over the radio and drove on, dropping the truck into four-wheel drive when the sand became looser. In the pickup’s bed, several planks rattled. If the truck managed to get stuck, they would use the planks to free it.

  The breeze was a constant refresher, rolling in off the green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and there wasn’t much seaweed despoiling the white, sandy beaches. Nor was there much oil either, which was always a welcome circumstance, though Harlie figured the oil was preferable to the occasional swarms of Portuguese man o’ war jellyfish that oftentimes washed ashore. While she’d never been stung by one, she had seen the effects of those who had stepped on tentacles with bare feet. The result of several hundred poisonous triggers injecting their payloads into human flesh was never a good thing.

  After twenty or so miles into the four-wheel drive portion of the beach—only the first eight or so miles of beach were specifically tended to so passenger cars could get in and out—they came upon their first campers. The people were packing, but moving at a snail’s pace. When Jessica braked to a halt beside the red shell tent and two ATVs, the deeply tanned young man and woman looked at them with desultory eyes. A pair of boogie boards were already strapped to each ATV.

  “I know what you’re gonna say,” the man said as soon as Harlie rolled down the window. “We’re already getting ready to move out.” He wore red board shorts and no shirt.

  “We’re sorry about this,” Harlie said, “but it’s for your own good. There really isn’t much protection if those things make it up here.”

  “Well, it’s not like they can swim or anything,” the man groused. His long red hair flew around his face in the stiff offshore breeze.

  “We don’t know about that,” Jessica replied. “You do yourselves a favor and maybe move a little bit faster, all right? The park’s been closed for hours.”

  “We only heard about it from some other campers who were leaving,” the girl said. She wore cut-offs and a halter-top that showed plenty of cleavage. A red bandana was tied around her head, keeping her raven hair mostly in place. With the bandana and deep tan, she looked like an Indian squaw from a cheap 1970s television movie.

  “That’s all right, just so long as you’re going to head out. Really, it’s for your own good. And don’t stop anywhere on the island. Keep going until you get to Corpus,” Jessica said. Corpus Christi was the nearest city, and it was already under a growing guard. The local police had all been called to duty, and the Navy and Army had contributed personnel to assist with securing the city. That was one good thing about being a military town, Harlie thought. There was always some muscle to be had from the government when things began to get a little wobbly.

  “Yeah, well, we have to stop at the main lot to get my truck and load up the ATVs onto the trailer.” The man favored her with a frosty glower.

  “That’s fine,” Harlie said before Jessica could give him what-for over his pissy attitude. “You can get your truck. But keep going until you’re across the bridge and in Corpus. It’s not safe anywhere on Padre, and there’s a mandatory evacuation for both north and south Padre anyway. Stop if you need gas or something, but otherwise, keep moving. And you might want to put some elbow grease into it. This is the real deal. Pack up and leave, folks.”

  The man sneered, but his companion put a hand on his shoulder. She nodded to the rangers and favored them with a thin smile. “We will,” she promised. “Let’s get the tent packed up, Roddie.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Thanks, and have a good day,” Harlie said.

  The man grunted and turned away from the truck, shuffling toward the tent. The girl waved and went to join him.

  Jessica took her foot off the brake and slowly accelerated. “Well, wasn’t he just a breath of fresh air?”

  “Their vacation’s ruined,” Harlie said. “They don’t look like they’re from around here, so it’s probably not like they have lots of opportunities to enjoy camping on the beach.”

  Jessica harrumphed and drove on. They passed more vehicles heading north, and while some folks waved—“They must be locals,” Jessica said—most simply stared as they passed. They encountered some more tardy campers, including one family who hadn’t heard anything about the park being closed, but had wondered about the sudden migration from the south. They’d spent most of the time fishing in the surf, and just watched the collection of four-wheel drive vehicles drive past their 1980s-vintage Chevy Suburban. Harlie urged them to leave as soon as they possibly could, and the family agreed. As they pulled away, the campers began to break down their two tents and pack up their belongings. Unlike the younger couple, they moved with alacrity.

  The F-150 rolled further down the beach, its tires spinning every now and then whenever it hit a patch of unusually soft sand. Harrington reported in twice, confirming that beachcombers and campers were in fact fleeing the park. He asked how things were going, and Harlie told him everything so far had been a cakewalk.

  “Hey, did a guy with long red hair and a girl come by on two ATVs?” she asked him.

  “Roger, they came through about five minutes ago. As a matter of fact, they just got their truck trailer loaded up with their ATVs, over.”

  “Great, just checking on them. Over.”

  Fifty-four miles down the beach, they came across an old International Harvester Scout II sitting on the beach. The passenger door was open, and the vehicle’s tailgate was up. As the F-150 drew near, Harlie leaned forward in her seat and looked at the battered four-wheel drive utility vehicle. It had Texas plates and a Padre sticker, so whoever drove it was a local. It looked as if the campsite around the vehicle was in the process of being broken down, but there was no one in sight.

  “Well, ain’t this a little odd,” Jessica said. She continued driving toward the solitary vehicle, but took her foot off the accelerator. The F-150 slowed quickly in the sand.

  Harlie pulled the M16 toward her and put on her wide-brim hat when the truck finally drifted to a halt about forty feet from the Scout. “I don’t see anybody around,” she said. “Let me get out and check around. Stay here. If you see anything fishy, lean on the horn.”

  “Uh, hold on now,” Jessica said. “I’m technically the senior ranger here—”

  Harlie lau
ghed and flicked a strand of straw-blond hair from her eyes. “But if something goes down, which one of us can run back to the truck faster?”

  “Good point,” Jessica said. “So I’ll just sit here in the truck and keep a watch on things.”

  “Cool.” Harlie unfastened her seat belt and threw open the F-150’s passenger door. The wind was constant, moving across the beach at around eight knots or so, a relatively stiff breeze, and it carried with it spray and salt from the surf, which she tasted immediately.

  Harlie closed the door behind her and turned a full 360 degrees, the M16 in her hands. She walked around the idling truck, looking toward the surf, then back at the dunes that faced the Gulf. There was no sign of life beyond a gaggle of seagulls floating overhead. Harlie slung the rifle over her shoulder and walked toward the Scout. The vehicle had a sizeable lift kit installed and large, knobbed tires. It was painted black over primer, and the chrome work fairly gleamed in the sunlight; apparently, the vehicle’s owner was restoring it. Since she was something of a truck girl herself, Harlie allowed herself a moment to examine the Scout with a critical eye. Through the open passenger door, she saw the interior of the vehicle was still ratty and unrefined, with torn seating that exposed yellow-orange foam. Continuing to move around the vehicle, she came to the open tailgate. A tent had been hastily shoved inside, and it hadn’t been properly collapsed; one long swatch of weatherproofed fabric streamed out of the Scout and whipped and snapped in the wind. A plastic bottle of juice lay in the sand, and half its contents had spilled from its open mouth. The fluid spill was still vaguely damp. Two polyester and canvas camping chairs sat nearby. One of them had been folded neatly, but the other lay on its side. The heel of a pink flip-flop peered out from beneath the fallen chair.

  Harlie felt something tickle the back of her neck, and she did another 360 degree turn. She spotted vague, almost indistinct footprints in the sand, several of them, emerging from the waterline and advancing toward the camp. She turned toward the dunes and saw two sets of tracks heading off into them. Looking down, Harlie saw the prints were all around the Scout. And they continued on into the dunes in erratic, unusual tacks.

  Harlie adjusted her sunglasses and looked back at the F-150. Jessica watched her from behind the wheel, eyes unreadable behind her own sunglasses. Turning back to the rise of dunes, Harlie contemplated what she would do next. Something had obviously happened, but exactly what, she wasn’t sure.

  Overhead, the gulls continued to hover and squawk. Harlie looked up at them aimlessly for a moment, and noticed they were slowly sliding into position over the dunes. Harlie pulled the M16 off her shoulder and flipped off the safety. Glancing back at the F-150, she pointed toward the dunes, then marched that way. She heard the F-150 trundle forward, and a glance over her shoulder confirmed it stopped just short of the abandoned Scout.

  The gulls became excited, honking back and forth to each other as they bobbed up and down in the breeze. Firming her grip on the M16, she powered herself up the face of the dune and slowly, very slowly, crested it. Without realizing it, she had brought the M16 to her shoulder. The gulls cried louder overhead as Harlie stepped across the dune’s soft summit and peered into the trough on the other side.

  A half-dozen shapes moved, gray shapes dotted with splashes of dark red. More red was spattered across the back of the dune. Harlie saw what looked to be a dismembered, disemboweled corpse at the bottom of the trough. It had been an older man, and the corpse’s eyes stared up at her without seeing. Then, the eyes moved, and the head tilted to one side. Its dead gaze suddenly locked with hers, and it opened its mouth. With no diaphragm, it couldn’t take any air into its lungs, so it just opened and closed its mouth. Even then, it took Harlie several seconds to process exactly what she was seeing. The rest of the figures surrounding the corpse were hunched over its remains, and those of a second corpse—what had been a fleshy woman who lay facedown in the sand. The woman’s buttocks and thighs were almost completely gone, and the sand beneath her was stained the color of rust. The corpse suddenly twitched and shuddered, as if someone had just flipped a switch and turned it on.

  One of the figures crouched over the remains of the man looked up. When its flat, lifeless, opaque eyes met hers, Harlie suddenly figured everything out.

  Oh, my God, they’re zombies!

  Before the zombie released its first moan, the F-150’s horn blared, long and loud. The rest of the zombies took notice, rising off their haunches and turning to look up at Harlie. Harlie shot one through the head, then another, and another. Behind her, the F-150’s horn blared in strident tones. As the zombies below moaned and reached for her, she turned and ran back toward the beach.

  Dozens of zombies were emerging from the Gulf, their gray, bloodless bodies glistening grotesquely in the bright sunlight. Even though the water was only up to their knees, they stumbled in the vigorous surf, and several of them went down, victims of the undertow. It was a horrifying sight, eliciting in Harlie a deep-seated terror she’d never known was possible. They were still well over a hundred feet out—the shelf of the Gulf of Mexico extended for a thousand feet at a very minor angle before suddenly deepening, one reason the undertow was so strong along Padre Island. Farther out, she saw heads breaking through the water’s surface as more of the dead moved to the shore. Hundreds of heads bobbed up and down in the surf.

  Oh, dear sweet Jesus—

  Jessica kept leaning on the horn, and behind her, Harlie heard a body fall to the sand. She didn’t look back, she just sprinted for the F-150 as Jessica goosed the accelerator and brought it closer to her, its tires spinning for a moment, sending up a rooster tail of sand before they found purchase. Harlie reached for the door handle as Jessica screamed from inside the cab; she saw a spray of spittle fly from the heavier woman’s mouth.

  “Behind you!”

  Harlie ducked to her left, and a bloodied zombie slammed into the side of the pickup with a grunt. Its head rebounded off the passenger door window, and it stumbled backward as it reached out for her. Its fingertips grazed the sleeve of Harlie’s uniform blouse, leaving a small trail of sand-crusted blood on the fabric. Harlie backpedaled and raised the rifle as the ghoul steadied itself and came at her again. Its lips and chin were smeared with a heavy slick of dark blood, and when it opened its mouth, she glimpsed shreds of meat clinging to its teeth. The rest of the corpses tumbled and staggered down the dune, moaning above the constant rumble of the wind and surf. Harlie fired one round directly into the zombie’s face, driving it back. When it didn’t go down, she fired again, and the bullet slammed directly into its forehead. The zombie collapsed to the beach instantly, a thick ribbon of black-gray ichor funneling from its ravaged skull. Harlie pulled open the door and leaped into the F-150’s passenger seat.

  “Drive!” she shouted as she slammed the door. The F-150’s engine revved, and its tires spun as it accelerated, weaving slightly in the sand. Most of the zombies moved slowly, barely shambling forward at a fast walk, but a few of them were fast. One of them jumped into the pickup’s bed as the truck sped away, leaving the others behind.

  “One of them is in the bed of the truck!” Harlie turned and tried to get the M16 oriented on the figure that hauled itself into a sitting position just on the other side of the F-150’s rear window. The ghoul showed no fear, lurching forward and slamming its face against the tempered glass as it released a long, quivering moan. It slammed its fists into the glass, ignoring the fact that it was splitting open the skin across its knuckles.

  “Hold on!” Jessica said, and she violently cranked the steering wheel back and forth. The pickup careened from side to side across the beach, and the zombie flew into the sides of the bed with great force. After a few evolutions, it was unceremoniously ejected, and it tumbled across the beach in an explosion of sand.

  “That did it,” Harlie said. “It’s gone!”

  Jessica was breathing heavily, and her face was flushed. She spoke between gasps. “We gotta go back. We got
ta go back through those things to get back to Bill!”

  “It’s all right,” Harlie said. “Most of them are dead slow. We can get past them, and if any of them get in our way and we can’t avoid them, run them over!”

  “More of ’em comin’ out of the Gulf,” Jessica reported. Fear was making her south Texas accent even heavier than usual. “Jesus! Lookit ’em all!”

  Harlie saw. Dozens of zombies waded to the shore, trailing thick ribbons of seaweed as they stepped from the foaming surf. She’d grown up a Corpus Christi girl. The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico had never been something to fear, even when the jellyfish were thick and the hammerhead sharks schooled right offshore. But the entire Gulf had become a doorway to Hell, transporting flesh-eating fiends to the bright, sandy beaches of Padre Island.

  “Turn around, Jessie. We have to get back. We can’t keep going in this direction.” As she spoke, she saw a cluster of zombies a quarter of a mile down the beach swarming another campsite. She was too far away to make out exactly what was happening, but Harlie knew. The ghouls were feeding.

  Jessica slowed the F-150 and brought it into a quick turn. Several zombies tried to catch it, but they were too far away. Even the fastest ones couldn’t cover the distance as the truck sped away.

  “You good to drive?” Harlie asked.

  Jessica was sweating, and there was wide-eyed panic in her eyes. Not that Harlie thought she looked any better. She slipped on her seat belt and secured the M16. She didn’t have to worry about the doors; they had locked automatically once the truck accelerated past ten miles per hour. Just the same, she hit the lock button anyway.

  “I’m good,” Jessica said. “Call Bill. Tell him what’s happenin’. These things might be headin’ for him right now.”

  Harlie picked up the radio handset and got in touch with Harrington as Jessica weaved the pickup around groups of zombies. The vehicle bounced once as one of the ghouls went down right in front of it. Jessica swore as the truck fishtailed in the sand despite the four-wheel drive being engaged.