Katelin had never dropped her guns. She swung around and shot the liquor store owner in the face with both guns.
He fell dead. His head was still smoking from the twin bullets holes while Ana got up and freed her hatchet. Katelin bent down and put his gun in her bag. When she rose, a woman about the same age as the dead man at her feet and a kid looking about first-grade age were standing in the aisle among the bottles of tequila, staring at them.
Everyone pointed guns, but the two were unarmed. Katelin had put the only firearm the family owned in her bag.
“Sorry.” Katelin said.
The women just glared. The boy standing in front of her started to cry.
“He was going to—” Katelin began to explain, but Donna grabbed her arm.
“Let’s go,” she said as she pulled her daughter towards the front door.
Ana looked at the mother and her young son. “I know this sounds bad considering, but if you want to live you should come with us.”
The kid continued crying while the mother continued to glare.
“We are still all team human,” she said as Donna let go of Katelin and came back to drag Ana toward the door as well.
After they had left the body, the kid ran to his dead father. The mother stayed still except for turning her head so she could continue to glare at them as they left the store.
CHAPTER 18
Urban Assault Wagon, Oceanside, CA
After he raised all the metal screens they had made to cover the windows, Deke used his time sitting in the SWARC Urban Assault Wagon to reload all his guns. Only after all his weapons were locked and loaded did he get around to putting back on his leg. Bashing in the head of the vampire rotter had made a mess of his boot, but otherwise his prosthesis was in perfect working order.
Hearing all the breaking glass made him glad he pulled up the screens. Otherwise, they would already be inside with him.
Deke was as well armed and as whole as he ever would be, but looking at the wall of infected pounding on the assault wagon, he wasn’t sure how much good it would do. He had been confident the modifications they had done to turn the used Chevy Suburban with over a hundred and fifty thousand miles on the odometer into a worthy vehicle for going into a hostile QZ, but as the infected pounded on the outside and the roof sagged as more amblers than he thought could even fit climbed up on top of the car, he was having doubts.
Even if they couldn’t get in, he wondered how long he could last. He had food and water, but once the area was sealed, no one was coming for him. As far as he knew, the infected just kept going. They would not get bored of pounding on the Assault Wagon, but he would grow tired of sitting in it. It had been less than hour, and he was already considering trying to fight his way through.
Deke felt they were going to lose this one because of a lack of intelligence. He and the other members of the South West Apocalypse Response Crew had done a piss-poor job calculating the sheer numbers of infected they would have to deal with. They did not realize they swarmed like this or that the vampire rotters would be so difficult to bring down.
He had seen missions go bad like this before. He had been part of a mission where people died because some asshole didn’t know what kind of shit storm he was sending people into. Problem here was the asshole was him as much as it was anyone else. Probably more—he was the one with experience. They all looked to him for advice, even Trey. If Deke had told them to do something different, they would have listened.
It was Deke who told them to wait at the hotel while he and Trey scouted the perimeter of the QZ. He had his doubts they survived. They should have made it to the Urban Assault Wagon a while ago.
Deke considered putting his pistol in his mouth. He picked it up off the passenger seat and chambered a round. He stared at it a long time before he decided he was not at the point of suicide quite yet.
Sometime while he was considering ending it all, the pounding stopped. Since he’d raised the steel covers, all he had were peepholes. Until a few seconds ago all of them were filled with the fingers of the infected as they sought something living to grab hold of. He looked out of the nearest peephole and saw they were all still out there.
While they still had him surrounded, all of them had taken a step back. Deke was confused by the whole thing. He wondered if they did actually get tired and bored. He also wondered if this was his best chance to fight his way out.
While he was thinking about it, something jumped on the hood. Deke went to the peephole at the front. A vampire rotter, dressed in the uniform Deke once wore proudly, was perched on the hood of the Assault Wagon. Deke did not want to, but he and the vamper locked eyes.
The rotter opened its mouth, thick milky drool ran down his greenish chin as he showed off a pair of long fangs.
It pointed at Deke and then turned his hand over and motioned for Deke to get out of the Assault Wagon. He was reaching for the door, feeling under control of this thing, much like the amblers who stopped their relentless assault to let him get a look at Deke.
He stopped himself. Deke was not about to let some rotter tell him what to do.
“Fuck you,” he said to the vamper as he brought his gun to the peephole. The vamper was gone before he could pull the trigger. He expected the pounding to start again, which it did. What he did not expect was for the Assault Wagon to go up in flames.
CHAPTER 19
Oceanside, CA
“I guess this explains why the road cleared out,” Lumpy said as they hid behind an abandoned sedan and watched the amblers swarming the South West Apocalypse Response Team Urban Assault Wagon. There were so many it was difficult to see the big SUV.
“You get any answer on the two-way?” Lumpy asked Ana. Since he still needed one hand to hold onto either Bar or the car they were leaning against, Ana had taken charge of radio duties.
“Nothing,” she told him.
“What do you think the chances are he’s still alive?”
“Slim to none, and I fear slim left town.”
“Maybe we need a plan B. Looks like the Suburban is a no-go.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Donna said. “I think chances are good your friend is alive.”
“He would answer the radio.”
“Only if he had it,” Donna said.
“What makes you think he’s still among the living and rot free?” Bar asked.
“If he was dead or infected they wouldn’t care about getting inside the car.” Donna replied.
“Good point,” Lumpy said. Bar nodded in agreement as did Ana. Katelin did not seem to be paying attention.
“Between this and the alley, I feel like we’ve got every rotter in town covered,” Ana said.
“There’s a lot more people living here than that,” Donna said. “If the other evacuations went as well as ours, everyone is still around somewhere.”
“So you’re saying don’t use the guns unless we have to?” Katelin asked as she sat down at Donna’s feet.
“Yeah, last thing we need is them all coming our way from both sides.”
Katelin put down her pistols and began to cry. “If we aren’t going to use our guns what did I murder that man for?”
“You didn’t murder anyone,” Ana told her. “He had a gun to your head.”
“If we had given him our guns, he would have let us go,” Katelin said.
“Maybe,” Bar said. “Maybe not.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Ana told her. “Turn it around. We offered to let him join us. If he hadn’t chosen to rob us no one would have had to die either.”
“I don’t know...” Katelin began, but Donna knelt down so they were face to face and stopped her.
“I’m glad you find killing another human a bad thing, but it wasn’t your fault.” Donna leaned forward and hugged her daughter.
When she pulled away, Donna said, “I’m sorry that had to happen. I’m also sorry about what I’m about to say to you.”
Katelin looked to meet her mot
her’s eyes.
“We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves. You need to stand up and get your shit together,” Donna told her as she stood.
At first, Katelin looked offended, but after a second she wiped her eyes, picked up her pistols and stood up.
“Too bad your pal and your truck is under the pile,” Bar said. “Toss a couple Molotov Cocktails in there and we could roast most of them. I can see a few fires down the street and the infected don’t seem drawn to that like they are the gunshots.”
“The Urban Assault Wagon is steel-reinforced and covered with a state-of-the-art flame retardant,” Lumpy told them, “Chances are good if Deke is inside and locked down he will be okay.”
“That would be great if we actually had some Molotov Cocktails,” Ana said.
“I don’t know how you make a Molotov Cocktail, but when I make them I use gasoline, a rag, and a glass bottle.” Bar said as motioned to all the cars. “I think we’re a third of the way there. I’m guessing some bottles shouldn’t be too hard to find, and I’m only wearing this shirt because she asked me too.”
“He has a point,” Katelin said.
“Anyone have a hose to siphon the gas?” Donna asked.
“She has a point, too,” Lumpy said.
“Give me a minute to think,” Bar told them, “If Lump is right about the…what did he call it?...The Urban Assault vehicle, I think this is the way to go.”
Katelin pointed down the block. “How about we go to the gas station?”
Ana took a pair of binoculars out of her bag of gear and gave the service station down the street a closer look.
“Looks abandoned, and as an added bonus they have a cooler so we can get some bottles too.”
“Sure, but if there isn’t one there how are we going to get the gas?” Bar asked.
Donna produced a credit card. “We’ll pay at the pump.”
CHAPTER 20
TRMT Bunker, San Francisco, CA
Holiday had a healthy appetite. For a guy who’d slept on and off for the last two days, he was pretty spry after he got himself stretched out. When they questioned if he could make it across the bridge, he scoffed. “I hit my head. My legs are good.”
He was right. He'd suffered no damage during the attack to his legs, and he did indeed hit his head. He was wrong in not mentioning his other injuries. He had lost a good chunk of his left shoulder to a bite and had multiple contusions all over his upper body. When they’d gotten him back into the bunker, they’d figured the blood loss was what would do him in.
Ashley gave him one of the sticks and showed him what buttons did what, saying, “Mostly just hit stuff with it, just be sure to swing like you mean it. They can be slow, but they don’t scare off. You have to kill them.”
“I never noticed in my weeks stuck in the QZ, thanks,” he replied.
“Sorry,” Ashley told him as she gave him a handgun. “Are you going to be offended if I ask if you know how to use this?”
“No, because I really don’t. Guns were never my thing. Maybe you should keep it. Odds are good if I tried to use it I might hit Vance instead of any infected.”
“Take it anyway,” she said. “Just don’t use it unless Vance goes down.”
“I don’t know…”
She chambered a round and showed him where the safety was.
“It’s ready to go as soon as you take off the safety. I don’t have enough ammunition to give you a spare mag, so don’t worry about how to load it. Other than that, point and shoot.”
“That really all there is to it?”
“No, but it’s as good as we’re going to get with the time we have.”
The impatient look on Vance’s face told them both that the time to go was long past.
“You sure you want to do this?” Vance asked as they left the bunker.
“Yeah, you got me across the bridge before when I was in worse shape than this.”
Vance nodded, remembering how he carried Holiday while Ashley fought. If one of them went down this time, there would be no one to carry the other.
The road up to the bunker was clear enough to navigate. The day they battled their way across the bridge, Vance had picked up an abandoned sedan and driven up to the bunker. They took the same sedan back down the twisty, narrow road back to the bridge.
“Just stay with me,” Vance said as they got out of the sedan. The mass of totaled and abandoned steel and glass made only passage by foot possible.
He put on his headset so he could communicate with Ashley. TMRT protocol was he wear a helmet and a full face cover when engaging possible infected, but he didn’t bother. Considering the orders he was defying by leaving the bunker, breaking regulations on the helmet would not matter much either way.
“How’s it look?” he asked her.
“Average, no vampire rotters as far as I can tell.”
He did not answer. There was no need; she could see what they were doing.
They started weaving through the cars. The sidewalk was just as much of a mess as the roads and had more amblers, so they went more or less down the middle.
They avoided the infected; the maze of wrecked vehicles made it impossible for the few who noticed them to get to them. The infected moved in straight lines for the most part. Making one have go around something was often enough. Energy used to engage if they did not have to was a waste.
Vance moved fast; Holiday was able to keep up, but they weren’t even halfway across when Vance noticed he was breathing heavy.
He turned without slowing down.
“I’m good. Keep going,” Holiday said. “Pick up the pace if you want.”
Vance was going to, but when he turned around he saw a tusked vampire rotter perched upon a van and stopped.
It looked right at them just before Ashley put a bullet in its ear.
“He must have been staying low, where I can’t see,” Ashley said in his earpiece. “I didn’t see him until he came up on the van.”
“Good shot,” was all Vance said as they kept moving. It occurred to him their nightly hunting may have taught the vampire rotters to stay low as they crossed the bridge. What seemed like a good way to pass the time may have made what he had do much more difficult.
They kept moving. Vance tried to watch for anything hunched between the vehicles, but he knew by the time he spotted one, it might be too late.
They weaved into a clearing and found three amblers in their path. There was no way around them.
“Save your bullets,” Vance told Ashley. He turned to Holiday. “Watch my back.”
Vance stepped forward, holding the stick in two hands. He released both the spikes and the blade. He crushed the skull of the one on his right with a short, quick swing of the mace end, and speared the one on his left through the throat with the knife end. He pulled the weapon free and spun it once. As the Sick Slaying Stick made an arc, the blade removed the head of the next one.
He turned to see Holiday swing his stick like a baseball bat and take out one who had worked her way through the maze to reach them.
“Look out,” Vance said as a vampire rotter came up out the wreckage to their right and leaped at Holiday.
He turned just in time to see Ashley shoot it out of the air. It was still alive when it hit the ground, but not for long as Vance stepped up and crushed its face with a blow from the stick.
“Thanks,” he said into the headset.
“I’d say any argument over who is the better shot is over.”
“I did have to finish him for you,” Vance said as they kept moving.
“That’s the jealousy talking,” she told him, before saying, “Stop. I’ve got one waiting for you.”
They didn’t hear the shot or see it go down, but after about thirty seconds Vance heard her say “All clear, or at least as clear as this place is going to get.”
They kept moving. Having to swing the stick seemed to wear Holiday out even more, but when Vance looked at him, he insisted they n
ot stop. They reached the end of the bridge without further incident.
“That was easier than I thought,” Holiday said as Vance stopped at the south end of the bridge and scanned the streets.
“Me too. I don’t know if that’s good thing.”
“You think they’re setting up an ambush?”
“Could be. The transport is about a block away. Problem is we won’t have any cover.”
“Then we need to move fast.”
Vance pointed out what he thought was the best route and they started moving, half jogging as they made their way through the street.
One ambler stumbled into their path. It never looked at them until just before Vance crushed its skull with his stick.
The transport was a large armored vehicle. It had a steel plow and could move some stuff out of it’s way. However, it couldn’t move the cement barrier dividing the south- and northbound lanes and had become stuck there.
It was in worse shape than Vance remembered. He hadn’t had time to examine the extent of the damage at the time. The driver, his commander, had told them to get out and run and they did. So did he, but not nearly as far.
“You thought you were going to take that thing?” Holiday asked.
“Might have been wishful thinking,” Vance said as he climbed inside.
Holiday followed, shutting the door. Vance put the stick aside and drew a small tool kit from his pack. He found a screwdriver and quickly used it to undo a steel box under the dash.
The steel box was connected by multiple wires to something inside the dashboard. Vance drew his knife and sawed through them.
“Will it work when it’s disconnected?” Holiday asked.
“It has a battery back-up which should last a week at least.”
“I was out what, two days?”
“This is day three.”
“Four days to get down the coast, snag your family and get on the right side of the Quarantine Zone?”
“Pretty much. Maybe more.”
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