A long line of Humvees trailed behind the mobile lounge. From the air they must have looked like a long serpent slithering down Mount Washington to wreak havoc on the city. Dark storm clouds raced over the skyscrapers in downtown Pittsburgh, casting deep shadows across the remaining glass of the buildings.
“Close that up,” Lincoln said, looking down on him from his side. “We don’t need anyone sneaking a sniper round through you or me on our ride through the Steel City.”
Joseph let the flap clank back into place. He bent his head back down like so many of the soldiers around him were doing. They looked like they had already been through hell and back. A ragged band of men. The mover took a sharp turn.
“Fort Penn Bridge,” someone said under their breath. The intelligence passed up and down the mobile lounge. This meant they were closing in on downtown Pittsburgh. The tension rose throughout the cabin every second they got closer to the downtown area. An area they had spent weeks bombing.
He thought the mobile lounge was in the middle of the convoy, but there were just too many people between him and the front to see. Rain started to splatter the airport mobile lounge, small fingertips tapping on the roof and sides. The lounge zigged and zagged as it weaved across the bridge.
The mover slowly meandered through the path that had cleared the mass of cars on the bridge. The rain came quiet at first, sounding like the tinkling of water on an old tin roof. It was almost pleasant and Joseph dozed off for a few minutes. He had hardly slept the night before because of the camp breach. Many of the men around him dipped their heads as they were overcome with exhaustion. The press of bodies around him almost made him feel safe. A safe can of sardines. He let sleep take him away to happier times.
He awoke abruptly to shouting within the people mover. His glasses almost fell off his face, but he managed to keep them on. He felt out of place as if there was something wrong with his seat. The whole mobile lounge slouched to one side like an overburdened picnic table. Gunfire rattled outside the vehicle.
Soldiers stood, pushing open the steel flaps to see what was happening. He made eye contact with Mauser. Worry spread over his features.
“Feels like a flat,” Mauser said. “And it doesn’t sound good out there,” he added.
“Where are we?” he asked Mauser. Mauser shrugged.
“We had to take a detour because of a collapsed building covering the entire street. We’re somewhere in the middle of the city,” Mauser said. A couple of the bigger guns from atop of the Humvees started shooting.
Exactly where we don’t want to be, Joseph thought. He tried to get a view out the opened steel shutters, but he couldn’t see past the men. The sound of panic was rising rapidly, but it was snuffed out by a gruff voice from the front. Sergeant Yates, with red hair to match his temper.
“We are in the middle of fucking downtown Pittsburgh. We need to establish perimeter security around the lounge. The Humvees are moving up for support, but only so many can fit on the block. Let’s make this quick, you Nasty Girls. Move,” he shouted.
Hands were put on Joseph’s back and he was pushed ahead to the door. He climbed hand over hand down the rope ladder or risked being shoved out the door onto the road. He stepped onto the pavement and walked hesitantly down the street as soldiers ran past him.
A street sign said Liberty Avenue, and a giant building that looked like a castle loomed over them nearby. It had an omnibus yet elegant presence. Broken glass from its windows crackled beneath his feet as he walked.
“I’m not supposed to be out here,” he shouted at the men as they took up firing positions. They ignored his feeble call as if he didn’t even exist. Wait until you need someone to patch you up, then you will listen to me. Ungrateful wretches.
Mechanics dug out a spare from underneath the mobile lounge.
The mover looked like a wounded elephant that could only walk on its good three legs. Humvees screeched to a halt around the people mover. Gunfire burst from the fifty-caliber machine guns. Headlights from the Humvees shone down empty streets. Pale bodies emerged from buildings. Dead stood up from gutters. Other infected walked down the middle of the streets. They knew the soldiers were there, and the infected were coming for them.
Tall buildings loomed over the convoy, casting no shadows in the rain. They were dark dead shells of their former selves. A city of ghosts.
The rain grew heavy, pounding the living and dead alike. Big droplets slammed into Joseph’s head and clothes like he was being pummeled with water balloons thrown from above. The rain was cold and saturated his clothes with ease.
“Hurry up, now. You want to be Zulu food?” Sergeant Yates shouted at the mechanics. They worked a giant jack that took two men to racket it up. They made slow progress in the war to elevate the mover into a position to change its tire.
Joseph wiped his glasses off on his shirt, but it was of no use. The water had drenched everything. He put his glasses back on his face, settling for a hazy fogged-up vision.
A man stood on the back of a Humvee near the front of the convoy, exposed and erect. Is he infected? No. A blurry Colonel Jackson looked through binoculars down Liberty Avenue.
He turned back to the men beneath him, pointing wildly down the avenue. His men rushed to back him. A cannonade kicked off around Jackson. That’s when Sergeant Yates found Joseph.
“Nerd boy. Cover this way,” Yates said. He waved his hand like an air traffic controller down a side road.
“With what?” Joseph asked.
The burly sergeant smiled at him. “With Betty here.” He pressed a M4 into Joseph’s shaking hands. “You see those things walking toward you? You better shoot them before they get to you. ’Cause if you don’t kill them, I will, and then I will kill you, again. Do you read, egghead?” Sergeant Yates screamed at him.
Was that spit or rain? Joseph hugged his rifle close to his body. What can I possibly do?
STEELE
Monongahela River, Pittsburgh, PA
The motor eked along the muddy brown waters of the Monongahela River. Rain pelted Steele and his small team as they rode in a small gray inflatable boat. It had a small outboard motor that struggled at best under their weight. It uncomfortably fit the three men and their hundreds of pounds of gear.
“We’re riding a bit low,” Steele said. The water edged up on the sides of the boat inches away from flowing over and into it.
“Not to worry, boy. Soon enough we will offload plenty of ordnance. Just, huh, don’t let any of that water touch your skin.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.” Steele eyed the filthy-looking water.
“Fishing was just getting better around here. Now, the only thing you can catch are bodies.” Barnes laughed.
“Look at all of them,” Ahmed said. He pointed out with his good arm, keeping his injured shoulder in tight with his makeshift sling. Steele had reset his shoulder by yanking it back into place until it popped back in. It had helped restore some of its functionality.
Bodies floated facedown in the water. They were human buoys bobbing up and down. Some wore clothes that wavered underneath the surface, and others were only pale formless things comprised of water-logged flesh.
“We’re going to have to go slow so they don’t get caught up in our propeller. Then we would really be up shit creek without a paddle.”
Steele and Ahmed shared a nervous laugh with Barnes. Steele knew exactly who would be doing most of the paddling in the shit creek.
“You two will have to push them off the sides,” Barnes said. Hundreds of bodies floated around them.
“I’m ready for them,” Steele said, gripping his oar tight. They drifted closer to the bodies.
The dead were bloated and swollen like filled up helium balloons. Their flesh had been gnawed upon, and at this point the men couldn’t tell if it was by fish or the dead. Steele dipped his oar in the water, and Barnes cut the engine to a mere idle, using their momentum to glide in the water.
“Better get that oa
r under them just right, or the bastards will burst, and trust me we don’t want that,” Barnes hollered.
“You could pick up an oar and help us,” Steele answered.
“Uh yeah, someone has to steer this thing,” Barnes said. The EOD specialist laughed at the other men as they performed their grunt work.
Steele waved an oar at a couple of seagulls perched atop a body. They flapped lazily around the corpse, reluctant to give up their feast. With red beaks and blood-stained bodies, they were no longer gray and white, but various shades of pink and red.
“Get out of here, you,” Steele hollered at them. After a couple of close encounters with Steele’s oar, the birds surrendered their prize, gliding, albeit low gliding, to their next floating buffet.
He wanted to yell at them, “Have a little respect for the dead.” But he didn’t. They couldn’t afford to draw any more attention to themselves than they already were.
He pushed at a pale white man with long dark hair. Or is it a woman? He stuck his oar in the crux of the person’s armpit. The body dipped and rolled in the water and he shoved off on it. The momentum of the push took the body away. He covered his nose with his arm, trying not to gag.
“Does the river usually smell this bad?” Ahmed complained, wielding an oar with one hand.
“Can’t say I remember, but it sure stings the nostrils, huh?” Barnes replied. He revved the motor for a second and angled them away from a pack of dead bodies clustered in the water.
“Ahmed, at your eleven o’clock,” Barnes called out.
“I got it.” Ahmed one-handedly swung his oar at a bobber. The oar slapped the water and the body sprang to life. Its arms flailed wildly, splashing water as it grasped for anything to get to them.
“Get him away from the sides,” Barnes screamed.
Ahmed swung his oar in an awkward manner. The one-handed swings dinged off the infected, which only seemed to antagonize the creature. The infected grabbed ahold of the watercraft and submerged one side. Water surged aboard, eager for the new space to invade. Steele leaned backward, trying to counterbalance the small craft. He drew his sidearm and the water exploded behind the infected. It was silent again. The gunshot echoed across the water and traveled up the river. The men sat in the partially submerged craft breathing hard. Steele holstered his sidearm.
Other bodies around them flapped noisily in the water.
“Note to self, seagulls mean they are dead-dead. All the other ones be careful around,” Steele said.
Ahmed leaned over the side and got sick. They spent the next ten minutes relieving the raft of most of the unwanted water. They repeated their thankless task down the river, and a nameless bridge grew larger and larger as they navigated the watery human minefield.
Thick stone pillars supporting the bridge disappeared under the water. Long T-shaped steel girders lined the bridge, keeping it upright. Curved yellow metal rounded each arch spanning the double-decker bridge.
Barnes let out a whistle. “The Fort Penn Bridge is gonna be a tough one,” he said softly, staring at a map.
“What do you mean a tough one? This is our first bridge, Barnes,” Steele said, looking back at Barnes.
Barnes pointed up at the bridge. “You see all those reinforced crisscrossing steel beams? That’s a lot of extra support because it’s a double decker.”
They drifted near the base concrete pillars.
“Each of those arches have to be at least three feet thick,” Ahmed said, pointing at them.
“It has an upper and lower highway, and reinforced beams, so what?” Steele said.
“In this case, we are goin’ to have to get up there and blow each highway at the same time. It may be structurally sound enough to withstand the collapse of either highway. You see there and there,” Barnes said, pointing at the pillars holding the bridge up.
“Why can’t we just take out one of the pillars and call it a day?” Steele asked.
“Haha, clever, kid, but look at how close those are to land. If the bridge falls the wrong way, then it’s just like a ramp. The only way to be sure is to blow the bridge right down the middle,” Barnes said. They continued to drift closer and closer to the bridge.
“How are we going to get up there?” Steele asked.
Barnes began rummaging through his pack until he found what he was searching for. He held up a harness and rope.
“With these,” he said.
Steele’s stomach tightened. Heights were not a pleasant topic for him. “Great,” Steele muttered.
“I wonder how many infected are on the bridge?” Ahmed said, gazing upward. “Heads up!” Ahmed shouted.
The water erupted next to the boat, sending it rocking up and down in the suddenly volatile river. Water exploded on the other side of the boat. Bodies splashed around them followed by another … and another.
Steele hefted his M4 carbine, looking to the sky. “They’re jumping off the bridge,” he shouted. Infected launched themselves off the bridge and reached blindly for the boat before clipping the water in terrible poses.
“Hot damn,” Barnes shouted, looking fearfully upward. He pulled wildly on the engine throttle. The engine sputtered out. Another body blurred past them and flopped into the water nearby. A hand reached the rope lining the craft and wrapped a hand around it. Another reached onboard, grasping for Steele. Steele point-blanked the fiend in the face.
“Paddle. Hurry,” Barnes shouted.
Steele slung his carbine and grabbed an oar. Digging the paddle deep into the water, he pulled hard, straining the muscles in his back. He glanced at Ahmed paddling awkwardly away with one hand.
“We need to get under the bridge, where they can’t see us,” Steele yelled, working his oar.
Steele dug his oar into the water as if each stroke had the possibility of discovering gold, but the bogged-down boat moved sluggishly in the water. Bodies continued to drop all around them.
Painfully, the bridge shadowed above them as if they would never truly make it. A face blurred by Steele’s, its head and shoulders smacking the side of the inflatable boat. Like a seesaw, Steele was launched overboard.
The cool murky water rushed over his body, and enveloped him within its grasp. Sound muffled as he sank beneath the surface. Disoriented, he opened his eyes, trying to determine which way was up. He couldn’t penetrate the brown turbid water.
Things moved around him. Things out of view. Things that he did not want to identify. A ghostly white body crossed in front of him. A quick shove sent it floating away to the netherworld. He kicked with his legs to drive himself closer to the lighter milk-chocolate-colored water above.
The shadow of the bottom of the boat teased him. He breast-stroked with all his might, planning on grabbing the side and pulling himself into the boat. Everything would be okay. A moment later, an icy hand seized his ankle, latching onto his leg. He kicked hard, but it yanked him down deeper under the surface.
MAUSER
Downtown Pittsburgh, PA
Mauser didn’t know which was worse. Having an elevated view of the legions of death that marched for them, or being on the ground hoping to survive. He pushed open a steel flap wider and propped it open with a lever. He threw his damaged leg up on the seat, twisting his body into an L-position. He pointed the SCAR heavy out the window.
“Gwen. Grab a gun if there’s one lying around,” he shouted behind him. He needed some help. The clank of metal hitting the window pane next to him surprised him. She sighted in her M4, stock to her shoulder.
“Don’t forget those are different than the ARs; keep it off of three if you want to hit anything,” he commanded.
“I know,” she said from the side of her mouth. “Did Yates give the go ahead to shoot?” she asked, ready to go.
“Not yet.”
Thousands of former Pittsburghers marched upon the pathetic little convoy through the downtown buildings. They traversed rubble-filled craters put there by artillery shells. To the men on the ground it must l
ook like a crowd, but from Mauser and Gwen’s elevated position the crowds stretched for city blocks, a St. Patrick’s Day parade of the dead. It was as if someone rang a giant dinner bell over their heads. Jesus Christ. From every direction, they came. Even from the Fort Penn Bridge they came bloodied, battered, and seeking their flesh.
Steele’s team was supposed to blow that behind us.
There was no time to worry about him now.
“What should I do?” Eddie asked. The older man wrung his hands in front of his body. He kept his head low as if the shooting outside might be at him.
“Can you shoot?”
“I’m okay, but I don’t see too well,” Eddie said, running a hand over his bald head.
“There is no point in a show of force against them. Keep our mags loaded.”
“I can do that,” Eddie said with a weak smile.
“Good man.” Nothing matters unless we get the mover up and running again. He voiced his thoughts: “We’re surrounded. If we don’t get this mover going, we will be trapped and overrun.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Gwen asked. Her voice was a bit higher than normal, nerves showing through.
“Just hold until Yates gives the command,” Mauser said. She would most likely miss from this range due to no fault of her own. Just not enough time downrange. The majority of the infected were still over two hundred yards away and she had to get a headshot for it to count.
“Fuck it,” she said. Peering down her sights, she pulled the trigger. Her M4 barked out loud. No infected fell, but she shot again and again in rapid succession until they did. Soon other cracks echoed from below combining with the rumble strip gunshots of mounted fifty-caliber machine guns.
Mauser nodded. “Copy that, Gwen.” Might as well get after it.
He zeroed in his optics, a short fat cross with a red dot that lined the circle optic. The infected were disgusting. Gray skin that had once been anything but. Limbs were missing. Clothes missing where they had been torn off as they met their grisly ends. Blood had blackened onto their faces and bodies. Others had fresh red running down their lips. Some recent unlucky sap whom they had caught, no doubt.
The End Time Saga Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 59
