A mile down the road he pulled over and killed the engine. He went around back, opened the hatch and easily removed the woman’s limp body and placed it on the roadside. After closing the hatch he paused and considered the pale form at his feet. He had to admit, except for the goose egg on her head and the vivid purple bruising which encircled her neck, she was damn easy on the eyes. Why Christian offed his conquests when he was finished baffled the hell out of him. Under no circumstances would he kick this one from his bed. Especially now—because the last time he checked most of the females left were of the zombified variety. Fuckin lunatic, he thought, what a waste. But orders were orders; still, Bishop didn’t feel like taking the time or effort necessary to nail this woman to the cross. He picked her up and heaved her small body into the knee high grass on the other side of the barbed wire fence, then watched with grim satisfaction as her body bounced and then rolled, finally stopping at the base of the cross that was supposed to have been hers. He didn’t know if she was dead, seemed so, but the truth was he didn’t give a shit. If she wasn’t already dead, she soon would be. Bishop never acknowledged his part in dealing with the examples as anything but normal. They were no different in his mind than Iraqis or Afghans, he was just following orders in a manner that suited him—one that would ensure there would be a few less zombies traipsing the earth.
Chapter 26
Outbreak - Day 11
Nineteen miles Southwest of Schriever AFB
Fountain Valley, Colorado
The gunner atop the lead Humvee called out the walkers as he saw them. Mostly solo or clustered in small groups of twos and threes, the pathetic creatures standing in the road and those milling about the side streets posed no threat to the convoy as it snaked along Squirrel Creek Road, heading for the sleepy subdivisions and strip malls dominating the landscape southwest of Schriever.
Beyond the sprawling communities which had housed mostly military personnel lay their objective.
The Pershing business park consisted of blocks and blocks of two hundred thousand square foot warehouses and its location, east of I-25, had been chosen due to the close proximity to Colorado Springs to the north and I-25 connecting to Pueblo to the south. The sprawling complex, erected on six square miles of desert, received goods from all points on the compass and served as a distribution hub for the entire eastern side of the Rocky Mountain range.
The foraging caravan wove between the increasing amount of stalls and multi-car wrecks as they neared the interchange that would eventually take them south towards Fountain Valley.
The lead gun truck, a Humvee GMV (Ground Mobility Vehicle designed specifically for the Special Forces) stopped short of the entrance to the gated upscale community.
Next to the secure entrance, a vinyl banner sporting a crude hand painted warning flapped in the breeze. The kindergarten style lettering read: Go away. We are armed and will shoot looters on sight.
We shoot back, thought General Gaines as he cracked his first and probably last smile of the day. “Rogers, pop the gate.”
A man in full battle rattle leapt from the rear of the GMV and deftly placed breaching charges on the hinges and in the center between the wrought iron where the gates met. He unspooled a few feet of cord and ducked down near the wall, his back to the gate.
“Fire in the hole!” he said clearly, depressing the hand detonator. With a soft ‘karumph’ all three charges went off simultaneously. When the smoke cleared seconds later, the gate was still standing.
“Double the charges,” Gaines said to the dismount.
“Roger that,” came the reply.
Two minutes later the gate and portions of the wall it had been attached to were reduced to rubble.
After clearing a path through the wreckage, the military vehicles and moving trucks turned into the neighborhood dominated by earth-toned cookie cutter McMansions fronted with like-colored grass.
The first contact came barely three blocks into Fountain Valley Estates. A large group of walking corpses, mostly first turns and likely drawn to the explosions, crowded the thoroughfare ahead.
“Looks like we underestimated the amount of Z infestation, Sergeant Hill,” Gaines said casually to his new driver.
Compared to the zombie-infested streets in downtown Springs during the first days of the cleanup, this pusbag parade was nothing. Sergeant Howard Hill had been in the thick of that battle downtown. The twenty-nine-year-old Midwesterner was a trained SF sniper and loved being behind the gun, and most of all, above the reach of the dead. But as he had quickly learned about sniping Zs, he couldn’t have it both ways. As the saying went in Springs—you drill ‘em, you fill ‘em—referring to the oversized low-slung mining dump trucks the soldiers had taken to calling Dead Sleds.
At Fort Benning he had been taught to sit still for hours at a time behind the gun waiting for a target—he hated sitting behind the controls of an armored bulldozer for even a minute. So in order to escape the sights and smells that went along with loading the mangled draining bodies into one of those Sleds, he instead volunteered to drive General Gaines’s Humvee.
Deftly wheeling the gun truck around the hungry walkers, Hill answered matter-of-factly, “Yes sir. Looks like a good number of the residents tried to shelter in place. But after we get through this subdivision there’s a good two or three mile buffer south that is totally devoid of residential. The dead should thin out the closer we get to the warehouse district... I think as long as they haven’t been migrating north from Pueblo we’ll be alright, Sir.”
“I concur. Thank you for the assessment Sergeant Hill.” Will they ever stop walking... stop hungering? Gaines asked himself. Then after a drawn out sigh, he went on, “If they are migrating or whatever you want to call it... when we get back to Schriever let’s start working on a viable cleanup strategy for the southern corridor from here down to Pueblo and implement it ASAP. We may need to build a temporary blockade out of shipping containers and Jersey Barriers like we did on I-25 north of downtown. A permanent barrier may be our only option if the Zs are moving this way in large numbers.”
“Roger that General,” said Hill.
The convoy wound up a long twisting hill, ending up in a part of the subdivision where the mansions were situated such that they all had panoramic views of the Rockies; as Gaines’ team neared the south entrance to the gated community, they encountered dozens of walking corpses.
“Stay frosty, Ick,” Gaines said into the comms, addressing his team leader who was riding shotgun in the MRAP bringing up the rear. “We have multiple contacts. Hold fire and do not stop—we’re going to push on through to the gate.”
“Copy that,” said Zack ‘Ick’ Lawson. The lanky, newly promoted, 10th Special Forces captain resembled Ichabod Crane and was a veteran of the Springs clean-up campaign. He grabbed the Motorola with one oversized hand, thumbing the talk button to address the civilians whom he had the undesirable task of running sheepdog over. And after he warned the civilian convoy of the walker situation, he reiterated the rules of engagement. He wanted to be thorough. The volunteers were all he had for this mission and he knew full well that it would only take one of them losing his or her shit to ruin his day.
***
In the Dakota truck at the rear of the convoy, Brook also noted the increasing numbers of zombies. She switched the M4 selector from safe to single shot, then, thinking to herself that the Kevlar heat trap would only slow her down, she undid the chinstrap and flung the sweat drenched brain bucket on the bench where it bounced around between her and Wilson. “Fuck it’s hot in here,” she bitched. Supposedly the truck’s air conditioning was running, but with only tepid air smelling of death blowing through the vents she finally relented and cracked her window an inch.
Wilson had found the going easy for the first fifteen blocks or so. It was the same as every so called pony ride his mom had taken him on as a kid—all he had to do was concentrate on following the ass end of the truck in front of him, purge the other realities
of his situation from his mind, and everything should be OK.
The first creature Wilson mowed down with the Dakota truck was a female first turn. He couldn’t avoid her. The ferocity of the impact and the sound her body made as it was slowly ground into hamburger trapped underneath the truck took him back to Castle Rock and Sam the butcher—the gigantic zombie that nearly ruined everyone’s day. Anticipating a geyser of water from the ruined radiator, his pulse quickened and he began to perspire profusely. Then his stomach clenched as his fight or flight instinct was aroused. PTSD, he thought to himself, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder... they’re only letters Wilson... relax.
The soldier’s warning that had just blared through the two-way set Brook’s nerves afire; she sat squared-up with her finger braced against the trigger guard, head constantly on the move as she tracked the rotting first turns futilely reaching and swatting at the lumbering U-Haul. “Watch your spacing kid!” she barked. “We cannot afford to stop here... no matter what.”
As if in response to her admonition, the brake lights on the U-Haul in front of them flared solid red as the ungainly truck swerved left and its dually rear wheels spit forth chunks of rancid flesh and stuff her stomach didn’t appreciate her looking at. And then as if driven by a drunk, the truck inexplicably wheeled right, reversing course as it slewed to a stop blocking both lanes.
“Good God,” Wilson gasped. “What just happened?”
Brook had no answer. She peered into the side mirror so she could ascertain what action the armored MRAP was going to take. Suddenly out of nowhere, a gray palm slapped her window followed by the sneering creature’s peeled lips and rheumy milk-colored eyes. The vile image caused her to instantly flash back to her escape from the Ford dealership in Lumberton with Raven snug in the middle and her crazy brother behind the steering wheel trying to kill them. Running the gauntlet of living dead on foot and then in the souped-up orange truck en route to Fort Bragg had left indelible images in her brain that she wouldn’t soon forget.
“Back up,” Brook implored the novice driver. “Give ‘em some room.”
Duh, lady, I was about to do exactly that. “Then what? Sit here looking like an oversized Happy Meal to those things?” Wilson quipped as he threw the truck into reverse and backed away, bouncing over a fleshy speed bump in the process.
Once again forcing herself to ignore the whining she barked an order, “If the MRAP continues through... follow them!”
No sooner had the prophetic words left Brook’s lips than the motorized behemoth pushed around the stationary Dakota truck on the right side, and with springs protesting, jounced over the curb, its deep channel tires churning up mocha-colored sod.
To Brook’s amazement, the decaying nightmare next to her window disappeared under the MRAPs left front tire—its leering mug replaced by the driver’s distorted profile as he flashed by.
The MRAP stopped and the driver eased the monstrous bumper against the stranded U-Haul; then with a burst of power from the rig’s 9.3 liter power plant and a screech of crumpling sheet metal, the fourteen-ton armored vehicle spun the twenty-six foot moving truck like a toy.
The maneuver left the road temporarily impassable and both vehicles side by side.
Unable to go around or move forward, Wilson and Brook could do nothing but sit in the cab and wait.
Happy Meal, Wilson thought morbidly.
In a matter of seconds no less than twenty zombies approached from the right-hand side, jerkily lumbering across the brown lawns like some hellish welcoming party.
In no time, panicked voices started to filter through the civilian comms, each overriding the other—an unintelligible morass of terror.
“Drivers... I want you to push through. Do not slow. Do not stop for anything. Civilian gunners, safeties on... hold your fire,” Gaines ordered, bellowing to be heard over the frantic chatter on the civilian comms.
Easier said than done, Wilson mused as he tried to tune out the people and their foxhole prayers. He wanted desperately to get moving again—especially after seeing what the horde did to his neighbors and their friends in front of the Viscount Arms back in Denver—shredding them like barbecued pulled pork. He did not want to be left behind surrounded by the dead. He put on his mental blinders, pretending the monsters weren’t there, and struggled to purge the bloody images from his mind.
“Oh no,” Brook said in a low voice.
As if anything could be worse than the situation they were in. Wilson pried his eyes open and asked, “What now?”
“House on the right, there’s a little girl poking her head out of the door,” she said, directing Wilson’s gaze. “No honey, go back inside!” she implored the young girl who appeared to be no older than Raven. “Don’t let them see you sweetie. Go back, go back, go back!”
Wilson stated the obvious. “She can’t hear you.”
By now the Dakota truck was pressed with zombies and the two trucks to the fore still blocked the road.
Brook cranked her window down and leaned back in order to escape the reaching hands. “What the hell are you doing?” Wilson blurted.
She brought her rifle up and engaged the nearest walkers point blank. Ear-piercing reports bounced around in the cab as she fired controlled single shots into the pack. Then as she changed mags she noticed one of the abominations stalking up the pavestone walk towards the blonde girl, who had left the relative safety of the open front door and was now standing in plain sight in the center of the wide front porch like some kind of sacrificial offering.
“Go back into the house!” Brook screamed through the open window.
In reaction to Brook’s voice the girl whipped her head around and locked eyes with her.
“Go honey!” Brook yelled, making a shooing motion with her hand.
Inexplicably the girl stayed in place as the lone zombie trudged up the steps towards her.
Brook slammed the fresh magazine home and chambered a round. Then she kicked her door open, knocking the nearest walker to the ground. From her seated position in the cab she put a bullet in its brain, then tracked the short barreled carbine up and around firing rapidly. Hot shell casings pinged around inside the cab as brains exploded from the walkers outside.
“Close the effing door!” Wilson wailed, his voice nearly drowned out by the gunfire and moaning ghouls.
“I have to save the girl!” Brook cried. Dropping another spent magazine from the smoking carbine, she pulled a fresh one from her MOLLE rig.
“We are supposed to stay inside of the truck,” Wilson argued.
She was already crunching up the sloped dried out lawn, firing as she went; his words never reached her ears.
***
“Reverse now,” Icky ordered his driver. The impact had opened the U-Haul’s right side like a tuna can, entangling the MRAP’s armored window covers and side mirror in the torn sheet metal.
In the Dakota, Wilson scanned the windows and doors of the darkened houses as he listened to the action on the two-way radio.
Out of the blue someone in one of the other vehicles began praying on an open channel—a civilian no doubt. The muffled gunfire picked up in the background by the two-way sounded far away and of no consequence—Wilson knew different.
“Get off the radio… unless you need... help... emergencies only,” a soldier’s garbled voice ordered.
The praying ceased.
From somewhere up front a series of heavy concussions rolled like thunder over the convoy, causing the picture windows of the McMansions on his left to flex and vibrate as if made from cellophane.
The steadfast birds that hadn’t already taken flight when the noisy procession invaded their sanctuary filled the air at once.
Hurry up lady, Wilson thought as he felt his chest tighten, the first sign of a looming anxiety attack.
The radio crackled again. “Stay in your vehicles and stay off of our comms. We will be on the move soon!” General Gaines bellowed.
This pushed Wilson over the edge
into a full blown panic attack. To him it seemed like the imposing figure was sitting on his chest and screaming directly into his face. Stars danced before his eyes as he labored to draw a breath.
***
To Brook the world seemingly slowed down around her as she sprinted up the walk. The explosions, gunfire, and moans of the dead dissipated and her vision sharpened—side effects of the adrenaline surging through her body.
“Hey monster, here I am,” she cried out, trying to get the zombie’s attention, but before she had gotten halfway up the stairs a shrill scream pierced the air.
Fear constricting her throat, she stopped short of the landing and shouldered the M4. Her finger tensed on the trigger as the ghoul came up with a bloody hunk of flesh in its maw.
The girl’s screaming ceased.
The rifle pummeled Brook’s shoulder as she fired round after round into the monster until it slumped atop the child. Hot gun oil assailed her nose. She adjusted her aim and put her last two rounds into the twitching kid’s head, then froze momentarily, her eyes straining to detect any movement from the entangled bodies.
Nothing.
She scaled the stairs and stepped around the corpses and made her way to the open front door. “Anyone inside!” she shouted.
Silence.
She patted her body armor searching for a fresh magazine.
Nothing.
A cold chill arced up her spine when she realized the M4 was empty and her remaining spare mags were fifteen yards away in the U-Haul truck. A lot of good they’ll do you there, rookie, she scolded herself.
A horn blared.
She turned and counted the dead. Eight. “Fuck.”
The horn again.
Brook jumped from the stairs, swinging her rifle like a club. The creature blocking her way crumpled hard to the walk, gray matter spilling from its split temple. She swept the barrel up, poking another zombie out of her way, then ran full tilt across the brittle lawn dodging the remaining walkers. Carefully she picked her way through the bullet-riddled corpses splayed out in the street, and exhausted and short of breath, slid in next to the ashen-faced Wilson.
A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 17
