by David Rogers
“Get everyone mounted up.” Bobo said. He turned to the left and gazed across the parking lot. Darryl glanced in that direction almost automatically. He saw some cars, driven in by other looters he assumed, and a couple of people who seemed to be hiding behind their vehicles as they peered this way. But nothing that looked like a zombie or a problem.
“DJ.” Bobo said, and Darryl started. He couldn’t figure out why he was so tired. Normally he didn’t even go to bed until about five in the morning. But whatever the reason, his focus was drifting and it was a problem.
“Yeah, right. Sorry.” Darryl said, then turned and raised his voice into a loud shout. “We rolling! Hop on your rides!”
He went down the line of vehicles quickly. Doors were opening and closing as Dogz slid into seats. Motorcycles roared as their engines came to life. He looped around the back of the convoy and went up the other side. When he reached the Silverado he opened the door and stepped up on the floorboard so he could see over the vehicles. “We ready.” he called forward.
Bobo was still studying the parking lot, but he turned and gave Darryl a quick glance before nodding. Still with his Beretta in his hand, Bobo slid in behind the wheel of the Home Depot truck. Little Chief was in the passenger seat now, with Mad crouched in the space behind the seats fussing with the bloody shirt.
Dropping into his own seat, Darryl pulled the door closed. Making sure his shotgun was on safe, he wedged it in between his knees so it wouldn’t flop around inside the truck and dug in his pocket for his cigarettes.
“What the fuck happened to Chief?” Low asked.
“Dunno.” Darryl shrugged, sticking a smoke in his mouth. He flicked flame to life on his Zippo, then dragged deeply. “Worry about it when we get back.”
“He gonna make it back?” Low asked as the truck ahead of him released its brakes and started forward.
“Dunno.” Darryl said again.
* * * * *
Chapter Nine – Running on empty
Peter
“Christ Almighty, there some place they ain’t?” someone behind him muttered. Peter didn’t bother to turn, nor did he say anything. The last several hours had been hard on everyone, and the weekend warriors he was stuck with were barely holding it together. A few, technically, weren’t. He knew there was only so much gung-ho by-the-book bullshit they could tolerate before they started snapping.
Instead he nudged the point once, and made a hold here signal. Johns nodded once and sank to one knee, peering around the corner silently. Peter took another good long look at the street to the north, but the zombies there didn’t seem to have noticed them yet. They would soon enough, especially if the unit tried to move in that direction. In the mean time, he could leave the Guardsman covering point to do just that.
A couple of the zombies wore the tattered remains of costumes, something he was still shaking his head over. There had been a convention of some sort happening this weekend, something that drew people into the city with the intention of wandering around dressed up colorfully. Zombies were bad enough, and seeing children or the elderly staggering toward you with the same pale skin and hungry eyes of a ‘normal’ zombie was worse still.
But for some reason the prospect of having his throat chewed out by a zombie dressed as a comic book or movie character just really bugged Peter. He would have preferred the zombies all be a little more generic. Or, at the very least, maybe the apocalypse could have waited a week or two more before kicking off?
Shaking his head as a zombie wearing a ninja outfit tottered about amid the others blocking their path, Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out the smartphone he’d appropriated from one of the Guardsmen. The cellular network was down, or at least it had been every time someone checked. The phone wasn’t much use for anything Peter was used to using a phone for. But phones apparently had turned into little handheld computers sometime when he wasn’t paying attention, and this one was one of those.
It had a mobile version of a street map program he was familiar with from home. And this one worked offline, or perhaps it just kept the local area’s maps in its memory. It didn’t matter how it was working, just that it gave a proper map view of the area. Among the many things that would have been given to the Guardsmen as they deployed were this for a combat operation, and that they were lacking, were maps.
The phone’s screen lit, and once he’d swiped his thumb across the unlocking icon the map filled the screen. Peter scrolled carefully, still unused to the touch screen gadget, and tracked along the last couple of twists and turns they’d made until he found their current position.
A quiet footstep caused him to glance up, and he nodded as Foreman joined him. “Sir.” Peter greeted him in a low voice. Whispers tended to carry further than just speaking quietly, so he didn’t whisper. Foreman had a smartphone in his hand too, and Peter could tell almost immediately he was looking at the same map. “Not sure what our best bet is right now.”
Foreman grimaced as he zoomed his map out and scanned around the area with his finger, dragging the map in a circle about their current location so he could check out the surroundings. “I know what I’d do if someone would answer the Goddamned radio calls.” he muttered softly, too softly for anyone except Peter to hear.
Peter said nothing, merely scrolled his map while trying to provoke something that might qualify as ‘A Good Idea’. So far, the best he or Foreman had been able to come up with was to keep moving, and when pressed, run. It seemed like the zombies were everywhere. No one had told Peter how the zombies were being created, but it was ultimately an academic question when there were so damned many of them.
For some reason, probably a bad one, the radio was going unanswered. They had some communication trained soldiers with them, and the radios had been checked as best as was possible while moving nearly constantly. The radios were fine, or seemed to be. There just didn’t seem to be anyone monitoring the frequency. Surely someone at Clay, at least, should be on communications watch; but theirs was not the only Guard unit deployed tonight. There were a couple of likely answers to those questions, and none of them boded well.
About two hours ago Peter had decided, and very carefully kept to himself, that out of all the places to be stuck in during a zombie apocalypse, the middle of a big city was not a good one. Especially one that was playing host to a number of different events at the same time, each one guaranteed to draw extra people in that would normally be elsewhere. Labor Day was on Monday, and Atlanta had been gearing up for a very busy weekend.
In addition to the science fiction convention, apparently a big one that drew tens of thousands of participants, there had been two college football games scheduled. The first would have been earlier tonight, and the second tomorrow; both in the Georgia Dome. All four teams involved in the games were out of state schools, and each had brought thousands of fans along to root for them.
Then there was the three game series the Braves had been supposed to play as well, also having been scheduled to have started earlier tonight. And rounding out the sports draws was a NASCAR race on Sunday. To be fair, the race would be happening south of the city at the Speedway, but some of the fans had apparently taken hotel rooms within the city rather than closer to the track.
There were representatives of all of the above mentioned groups amid the zombies that were hounding and harrying the Guardsmen through the streets. In addition to the not infrequent ‘comic book’ zombies, there were zombies wearing the colors and clothing of all four of the college football teams, more decked out in Braves hats and shirts, and others sporting attire emblazoned with the faces and names of various race car drivers.
Added together, they actually out numbered the ‘regular’ zombies. Peter caught himself before he chuckled, mindful of the need for quiet. Whatever a zombie wore, be it tights or sweatshirt or business suit or plain and simple blue jeans; they all wanted to eat you. They were slow, but their numbers almost made up for that. Well, and the fact that they seeme
d to be around every corner, on every street. Hungry roadblocks.
As bad as all of that was – the lack of phones and communication, the concentration of workers and visitors in the area, and the press of buildings and concrete canyons that limited the ability to maneuver – the worst probably was the exact makeup of Atlanta itself. The part of Downtown that actually met the stereotypical image of a downtown area, big buildings and such, wasn’t really all that big. Pretty quickly the skyscrapers thinned out and were replaced with neighborhoods of houses.
The neighborhoods surrounded Downtown, any of them differing from a suburban development only in the size of the lots (invariably smaller) and the age of the houses (usually much older). Rather than providing a buffer zone that perhaps could have broken up or maybe even ‘absorbed’ the crush of the zombies, they had instead fueled it.
Peter and Foreman had been trying, kept trying still, to break either north or east. It had seemed logical; they were east of the Connector and on the northern side of downtown. It was a laudable plan, one Peter couldn’t see anything wrong with. They just weren’t able to execute it. Instead they were being herded south and west, further into downtown.
Peter hadn’t seen any evidence of intelligence in the zombies yet. It didn’t seem to matter much though; the reactionary instincts they were driven by was serving well enough. See humans, pursue humans. And, once those two steps were completed, eat humans. He shuddered briefly.
Regardless of how the zombies were doing it, whether by design or accident, the result was the same. The unit was being herded further and further into downtown. At every hungry and eager roadblock they had to turn away from the chance to get out into the suburban areas that, presumably, would be less heavily infested.
They kept having to dodge deeper into the city, where Peter knew they’d run out of room to run. Sooner or later. And, unlike the map, Atlanta was a city of hills. Maybe not like San Francisco was, but still bad. There were few streets that were level. Every stretch tilted at some angle. You were constantly feeling the burn in your knees as you went down, or in your thighs as you went up.
It was killing them. Well, not true. The zombies were killing them. The running was just wearing them out.
“Shit.” Foreman said. He looked up to see Peter giving him a look that wasn’t quite a recrimination, but still with enough rebuke in it to be visible. “Right, I know.” he muttered more quietly as he stepped closer and moved around to stand next to Peter. Holding his phone up so they could both see the screen, Foreman pointed without touching the screen.
“Every time we try to go east of Piedmont we’re turned back.” he said softly, the frustration evident in his tone. “Maybe if we can get further south, but there’s no way to know for sure.”
“Honestly sir, I’m not sure how much longer we can keep everyone on their feet.” Peter said very quietly. “They’re just not used to this.”
“Hell, I’m not used to it.” Foreman agreed. “And I’ll bet you aren’t anymore either.”
Peter frowned, though not without a trace of humor. “Hoorah sir. Whatever it takes.”
“Right. That’s you and me, and maybe a handful of others. What’re we going to do, leave everyone else to fend for themselves?”
“Maybe we can rest up somewhere?”
Foreman sighed. “If I knew help was coming, no question. But you’ve seen what we’re dealing with out here.”
“They haven’t caught us yet.” Peter pointed out.
“No, but they’re persistent. I’m afraid if we hunker down we’ll be treed in and trapped. What do we do then?”
Peter suppressed a sigh and looked at the map. “Maybe we can split off a group of runners, try some misdirection to open a hole?”
Foreman shrugged. “If they get cut off they’ll have even less chance than all of us would in the same situation. Plus we probably won’t be able to cut them clear.”
Peter nodded unhappily. The unit looked like it was in decent shape, everyone dressed in BDUs and carrying a rifle. It was almost just costuming though. Some of the soldiers were down to their last magazine. If they shared out what was left Peter figured that might average it out to three magazines per soldier. With zombies ignoring all wounds that weren’t kills to the head, the unit effectively had enough ammunition for one stand up fight against a pack. A brief fight.
After that the rifles would be no better than clubs. Peter didn’t like to think about what would happen then. Still–
“Maybe we can find some improvised weapons, clubs, long ones. Something like that?” Peter suggested. “We could try to find a way east that doesn’t have an overwhelming number of zombies on it and beat our way through.”
“Contact rear.” a voice said loudly, not shouting, but sounding almost like one in the quiet. The city, normally alive with the engines and tires of vehicles whipping through on the Connector, more rolling through the streets, was now eerily quiet. The voice came from the back of the loose formation of Guardsmen, and heads turned.
While Foreman straightened and peered in that direction, Peter checked to make sure the soldiers who’d been assigned coverage duties didn’t get distracted from their areas. A few twitched and flinched like their instinct was to look at the contact report, but none actually did. Peter nodded approvingly with tired pride. They were learning.
Switching his attention, he looked toward the back of the group. Sure enough the pack they’d encountered one street and two corners back was now rounding on them again. There was a little swearing, some groans, but they lacked heat. Peter gave Foreman a shrug when the captain turned back to him.
“Whatever.” Foreman said, dismissing it. He held up his phone again. “Look, let’s see if we can get south of the Connector here.” His finger hovered over, but did not touch, the screen. The Connector cut southeast right as it entered the center of downtown, not curving back due south until it had gone almost a mile. “Maybe we can pick our way through to the south and break that way.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Peter said, though he wondered in the back of his head. That was in the direction of the heart of the hotel district. All these damned sports and science fiction fans had to have been staying somewhere. He just hoped that maybe the number of zombies the unit had been encountering meant the areas that had birthed most of them were less populated now, that the zombies had scattered out in search of something juicy to eat.
“Alright, we’re moving.” Peter said, just a touch louder than a normal speaking tone. “Try to keep up. South.” he added for the point’s benefit.
Johns was already on his feet and moving. He left the northern corner and crossed the street to the southern one, swinging around it to go in the indicated direction. The block was clear in that direction, except for the abandoned car about three-quarters of the way down. Then, just after the cross street, a double handful of zombies milled aimlessly. Several of these were already looking up, noticing the movement.
Peter watched as Johns gave the abandoned car a wide berth. The soldiers had learned the hard way one of the worst aspects of the zombies, apart from their desire to eat anyone they could lay teeth on and their irritating ability to be undeterred by nearly any amount of injury. Once you got past those details, you were left with a surprisingly big problem when dealing with the zombies.
They were damned quiet. They didn’t breathe, pant or gasp like humans would; and they certainly didn’t snarl, howl, or growl. Peter found that a bit annoying too; the movies always made sure monsters had distinctive sounds. Not so with the zombies. The process that converted, animated, whatever, them from humans into zombies stilled their hearts and lungs. No breathing, no air moving in and out, and thus there was no sound.
The only sound they did make was whatever their feet scraping or stumbling or stepping across the ground made. That could be enough, sometimes, but the zombies didn’t seem to have a uniform level of individual coordination. Oh they were all pretty bad compared to even a clumsy human, but s
ome of the zombies could walk a lot closer to normal than others. The slightly more able zombies made less noise when they staggered towards you, dragged their feet less.
It made them quieter, which made them more dangerous. Plus the zombies tended to stand around, or wander very slowly, moving more slowly than a person might crawl, when nothing had triggered their pursuit instinct. They had a number of wounded from, and had lost four dead, when a Guardsman rounded a corner or obstacle and found they were already within grabbing range of a hungry zombie.
As Johns went around the car, a Ford Taurus with a huge impact dent on its front end that looked suspiciously like it had hit someone, Peter stopped and turned. The zombies to their north, a pack of at least fifty, were moving this way, but he could see the last members of the unit just now making the turn. So long as you kept moving at a brisk walk you could stay ahead of a zombie.
But zombies didn’t get tired.
Satisfied the Guardsmen were still keeping up, Peter turned back front and followed. There were about ten soldiers ahead of him, Johns followed by another pair who were assigned to watch Johns’ flanks so he didn’t have to divide his attention, then a clump of soldiers who had passed Peter when he stopped. They moved cautiously, their rifles moving in concert with their heads as they swiveled and turned to look in all directions.
Peter glanced up after a couple of steps. The Westin Peachtree still burned, more visible now that they were closer to it. If they kept going in this direction, unlikely considering the runaround the zombies were giving them, they’d be near the hotel soon. Peter hoped they found a breakthrough to the east before they got that far; he didn’t want to get anywhere near the Westin. Word was it had been on fire since around sunset. He didn’t like the sound of that.
As that thought slid through the back of his mind, he heard the snap of gunfire. Instinctively he whirled, checking, but even as he turned he realized the fire was too distant to be anyone in the unit. He caught Foreman’s eye, and jogged back several yards to join him.
