Rolling Hunger (The Yard Gnome Action Team Book 2)

by RW Krpoun

  At the door Bear fished out one of Addison’s pipe bombs and carefully screwed in the fuse assembly. This one was spray painted green, meaning it was a concussion weapon. When they had picked up the industrial black powder in Georgia, or maybe it had been in Arkansas, he hadn’t been impressed; to him, black powder meant fireworks and guys in buckskins with muzzleloaders, but that was another point on which he had been proven wrong. This entire business was teaching him that there was a lot more to the world than he had ever dreamed.

  Holding up the bomb to warn Sauron, he carefully pulled the igniter and then pegged it in through the door, throwing low and hard. The instant it exploded he led the way through the door, stepping squarely on the dead man’s reindeer sweater as he hurtled through the portal, moving fast and breaking right, Sauron angling left.

  They found themselves a single room the width of the building, with a cinderblock wall painted white closing off the rest of the structure and a crude bathroom that looked like it had been recently added. The room was a laboratory of some sort, lots of stainless steel machines and racks of tiny test tubes closed with colored plastic stoppers.

  The too-familiar moaning wail brought him around, shotgun trained, but he eased it down when he realized that it was coming from the other side of the cinderblock wall. The door in that wall looked like it had come from a jail, heavy steel with a tiny viewing window made of bulletproof glass. Looking through it he saw a small cubical made of cinderblocks with a steel cage door opposite his door. Several zombies were pressed up against the bars of the opposite door.

  “I think the rest of the building is full of zombies,” he advised, stepping away from the door.

  “What the hell were they doing here, Chief?” Sauron asked, examining a catch pole he had taken from a rack of the devices.

  “Nothing good.” Bear noticed an exam table with straps that could have restrained the Incredible Hulk. “Lets go, Pen One is secure for our purposes.”

  Bear’s radio crackled. “Six to all, the other half are Evening’s Door, I say again Evening’s Door. They’re in black and gray camo, weapons free and hot, don’t take any chances. Break, Six to Base, message Two, I say again Message Two, variable is Evening’s Door, I say again Evening’s Door.”

  People trusting road maps always baffled Addison. They sold state maps and road atlases, and people accepted them as gospel, as if this inexpensive product on cheap paper was a gift from on High. They never questioned the data, never once asked themselves how it was that cities and towns were always a complete block of miles apart, never a fraction. They never looked for discrepancies, never considered how easy it would be to hide things in plain sight if you controlled the process of making maps. They ignored the fact that virtually all the mapping capability on the planet stemmed from government agencies. The USA was born of, and led by, surveyors for nearly its first fifty years, and its premier military institute, West Point, was originally founded to train officers as surveyors, and was still a highly-ranked engineering school. It should be no surprise that in North America the Army Corps of Engineers was the chief repository of surveying expertise. Someday, when he had some distance between himself and his mother’s dire ambitions Addison planned to investigate the matter and find out exactly what they were hiding.

  Currently the dark Gnome was leading JD’s patrol at a brisk trot through the trees, circling around to the south as the sounds of a firefight intensified. Addison was far outside his comfort zone, and to steady his nerves he returned to one of his favorite topics, mentally running through the quandary about maps and mapping as he moved ahead on autopilot.

  He had spent his entire life seeking solely to maintain the status quo: keeping his teeth out of his mother’s grasp. Just ensuring his own survival, the basic instinct common to all animals and several plants. When his mother had engineered the zombie outbreak the essential business of staying alive had necessitated engaging and defeating the infected. Even when they engaged FASA elements on the run across the South they were simply extensions of the ‘escape plan’ that had dominated his life since he was sixteen.

  Schmidt and company had also been a matter of survival, although he had never before acted against the assassins sent by his mother. This time, however, they were going straight in for a toe-to-toe confrontation with a FASA element, and given that FASA was simply a proxy organization for his mother’s murderous ambitions, that meant he was acting directly against her for the first time. It was unnerving.

  But needful, he realized. His initial tactic of simply staying out of sight had worked, forcing his mother to take the drastic step of the 618 virus and a world-wide assault. His mother had changed tactics, and now it was incumbent upon him to change as well, just as he was ceasing to be a solitary man going through life alone. As dangerous as it was for all involved, it was time to take the battle to her. There was too much at stake to do otherwise.

  They crossed the gravel road that led to the farm and slowed to a careful walk as they came up on the rear of the small barn that had been converted into vehicle storage. JD’s force was intended to be a blocking element while the Gnomes led by Marv and Bear were to push the FASA elements into them, an effort that seemed much more neat and tidy when they were detailing it back at the trucks.

  He spotted red ahead through the trees and eased forward, moving quietly, his MAC-10 ready. Stepping around a tree he saw a slender white man in a heavy wool coat in red and black check holding a rifle peering north towards the farmhouse; a husky Hispanic woman holding a tactical radio in one hand and an Uzi in the other was a half-dozen steps behind him. Spotting Addison she dropped the radio and brought the submachinegun up, but he was quicker, stitching her from the left hip to the right shoulder with a long burst, the suppressor’s coughing seemingly unrelated to the line of holes erupting across the front of her fleece coat.

  Red Coat was surprisingly fast, spinning and firing in one smooth movement. Addison fired and missed as he hurled himself prone and rolled, and then more weapons were firing; when the dark Gnome came up on his belly Red Coat was down and dying.

  JD ran up to his position and slid gracefully in beside him as someone opened fire in their direction from the barn. “You OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think FASA is all that happy with us.”

  Marv’s voice sounded in both Gnomes’ ear sets: “Six to all, the other half are Evening’s Door, I say again Evening’s Door. They’re in black and gray camo, weapons free and hot, don’t take any chances. Break, Six to Base, message Two, I say again Message Two, variable is Evening’s Door, I say again Evening’s Door.”

  “Shit,” JD sighed as the rest of the patrol returned fire on the shooter in the converted barn. “It would have to be those nut-jobs.”

  “Look, you’re making a mistake,” Wade observed casually. “Those bumpkins are fine against zombies, but they’re dead meat heading into a FASA encampment.”

  “They took your team out,” Sylvia pointed out. “Not the first bunch, either. I saw them chop through two different groups of FASA goons last month.”

  “They caught us off guard,” Schmidt shrugged. “So they can handle a dirty fight.”

  “They aren’t going to fight nice at the farm.”

  “You could get rich. The ERF has money cached all around here.”

  “Yeah, like the stewardesses were about to hit pay dirt. Now shut up.”

  “Those guys are dead. I never laid a hand on the girls.”

  Sylvia pulled the knife and swiped at Wade’s face; the team leader ducked awkwardly, hindered by his bonds, and she was startled to see a line of red appear across his left cheek. Recovering quickly, she clumsily wiped the blade on his pants leg. “I said to shut up. Next time you’ll bleed for real.”

  He snarled wordlessly at her, but kept his peace.

  She managed to sheath the knife without it being obvious how much her hand was shaking. Wade scared her, there was no two ways around that, but she was try
ing hard not to let him see it. And being scared did not mean she wouldn’t shoot him-she had seen enough of the videos to be certain what would be her fate if either of the captives got loose. She hadn’t survived one bunch of rapists just to get caught by another group.

  The radio on the Styrofoam block next to her keyed up. “Six to all, the other half are Evening’s Door, I say again Evening’s Door. They’re in black and gray camo, weapons free and hot, don’t take any chances. Break, Six to Base, message Two, I say again Message Two, variable is Evening’s Door, I say again Evening’s Door.”

  Picking up the notepad, she flipped to the second page and wrote ‘Evening’s Door’ in the blank they had left. Keying up the CB clipped to her tactical vest she called for Anna. Moments later the girl appeared at the lowered tailgate. “Here, message Two. I added the name.”

  Anna examined the instructions and message. “Got it.”

  “Your new friends settled in yet?” Wade asked sourly.

  There was a thump behind him, and suddenly Bambi’s head and shoulders were visible above the truck’s side. Before Wade could react she slapped him hard, open-handed, squarely on his right ear; the ERF team leader bellowed in agony and thrashed against his bonds.

  “You hit someone flat on the ear, it really rings their ear drum,” the tall girl advised Sylvia.

  She realized the thump must have been Bambi jumping up onto the tires to reach Wade. “OK.”

  “I was coming over to tell you to turn down the radio, its too loud.” The blond girl jumped down, vanishing from sight.

  Anna was still standing at the tailgate clutching the notebook. “You better go send the message,” Sylvia advised her. “The DSR needs to know what is going on.”

  “Does it mean that they are losing?” Anna jerked her head in the direction of the distant gunfire, which was picking up.

  “No, it just means they know who else is involved.”

  “OK.” Anna hesitated, then hurried off.

  Irene hurled the smoke grenade as five technicians burst out of the south door of Pen Two and raced for the farm house. “What?” the security chief gasped at their sudden appearance. “C’mon-they’re perfect!”

  As he leapt off the porch and raced behind the burning truck the director ran though the numbers in his mind: six technical staff in Pen Two, with five now heading this way. Four admin staff in the farm house, now likely dead, and two lab assistants in Pen One. Six security staff, two of whom were dead, one with him, and three hopefully at the vehicle barn or nearby.

  The numbers were not too terrible, and once Schmidt showed up with his team they could certainly retake the place. If not, the NSA might be able to access his two laptops, but anyone with less ability would simply fry the hard drives.

  With a sickening lurch in his stomach the director realized that while he had two complete back-ups to his research data, both were on his person. He hadn’t done a data pass to the French in ten days-things had been very hectic lately, and while he had gotten a lot of promising work done he hadn’t bothered to forward it.

  “Pen One is clear of people,” Bear advised Brick and Chip. “Although most of it is full of zombies.”

  Even as he was speaking there was a long, ripping noise like someone fired off a string of very loud firecrackers inside a trunk. Out of the corner of his eye the biker saw craters erupting from the very top and bottom of the galvanized tin siding on Pen One, and a part of his brain wondered how an automatic weapon was firing at that angle, and for what reason.

  Then a thirty foot length of the tin siding, the inner side still coated in insulation and trailing electrical wires, fell away, exposing the building’s metal studs and the room within.

  Explosives, Chip realized: someone had fitted explosives to cut the tin siding from the studs, opening up the building. “Zombies!” he yelled, bringing up his carbine and shooting the nearest half-seen silhouette in the head as the moaning wail erupted.

  Kneeling, he pounded away as fast as he could fire, but a lot of these zeds seemed a bit more spry and motivated than usual, and he often needed two or three tries to get a solid head shot. The Gnomes around him were firing as well, a solid wall of gunfire that tore the lead rank of infected apart.

  The thought occurred to him that he should be panicking as he reloaded: they were surrounded by FASA terrorists and now a mob of zombies were loose, but he wasn’t that Chip anymore. Sure, he still had a pouch on his vest filled with Milky Way bars, but he was different man than he had been just weeks ago. A tougher man, more like Brick or JD. Not nearly to Bear’s class, or Marv’s, but he was solid.

  “Fall back to the trees!” Bear bellowed as he reloaded. “Brick, cover.”

  Chip hung around for a couple seconds to add his fire to Brick and Bear’s, and then trotted back, replacing the partial magazine with a full one as he moved, his hands performing the familiar task automatically while he watched the flanks and checked ahead. Sliding in behind a too-narrow tree, he braced his carbine against the trunk and opened fire as Brick and Bear raced back to join them.

  “Spread out,” Bear called as he reached the tree line. “Ten feet in between; Scarface, go north fifteen yards and watch our flanks and rear. We’ll hold here for now.”

  That was fine by Chip, all the more so because nearly half the zombies had headed south, out of the narrow alley between the pens, which meant that they could pop up unexpectedly later on. It bothered him that the infected were behaving like that, but he really didn’t have the time to ponder it right now.

  White smoke was fountaining from the ground, a smoke grenade Dyson realized, and then suddenly there were people coming from the south end of Pen Two heading to the porch and people from the porch rushing to put the burning truck between themselves and the tree line.

  He hesitated at the sudden surplus of targets, and then homed in on a person in a green sweater who was firing a pistol in his general direction, the rounds passing a dozen feet high and to the left and right; switching to semi he fired rapidly, cursing the MP-5’s short barrel-Green Sweater was a good forty yards away. He got lucky: the figure staggered and fell just short of the porch.

  “Some from the farmhouse heading south, and some from Pen Two heading into the farmhouse,” he called to Marv.

  “Got it,” the Ranger called back. Either he or Bad Dog had just picked off a Door cultist with a shotgun who had been at the farmhouse’s northeast corner.

  The Door team appeared confused, uncertain who was behind them, torn between finishing their initial mission and dealing with the sudden newcomers. Marv’s instincts were to close with the farm house and clear it, but he knew he couldn’t, not with just two guys who were damned good for irregulars but in no way ready for that kind of close quarters combat. Most of the FASA types here were support personnel, surprised and lightly armed, but the Evening’s Door were hardcore, an entirely different proposition.

  “Four to Six, we’ve got zeds loose, we’ve pulled back to the tree line.”

  “Six to Four, the zombies are loose?”

  “Four to Six, affirmative, they had some sort of explosive charge in place, opened up the building itself. At least fifty in total, maybe twenty headed south away from us.”

  Marv swore-now they had zombies loose, and the bastards were acting weird again. “Six to Four, hold your position, we’re coming to you.”

  “Four to Six, Roger.”

  “Six to Five, sitrep.”

  “Five to Six, two Tangoes down, third in the vehicle barn getting sorted out.”

  “Six to Five, press east, be aware of zeds and Evening’s Door.”

  “Five to Six, roger.”

  “Bad Dog, come on.” Marv ducked from cover to cover to the dead Door cultists. Hastily patting down all three, he took four flash bangs and a satellite phone from the bodies.

  “There’s some sort of tube lying over there,” Dyson advised as he reloaded.

  “AT-4 missile, single shot, you fire and discard,” Marv ch
ecked all sides. “OK, we’re moving west and hooking up with Bear’s group.”

  “How are we doing?” Dyson asked as he grabbed up the two loaded magazines he had laid out.

  “Better than these three.” The Ranger tossed the radio he had taken from the Door cultist to Bad Dog. “Keep an ear on this, I’ve got too many radios.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Shit! The zombies are loose!” Irene swore as the two ran.

  “That was the diversion,” Franklin gasped, unzipping his coat. “Det cord along…the siding. Create…chaos.”

  The pair slid to a halt between two pickups parked on the east side of the converted barn. “Should we…take a vehicle?” Hodges asked, trying to catch his breath.

  “No,” Irene shook her head. “There’s only one road and they’ll have it bottled up, you can count on that.” She spoke quietly and urgently into her headset. “Nothing,” she advised the director. “Best to write off the rest of the security team.” She eyed his go-bag. “If you can dump any weight, now would be a good time.”

  He transferred two bottles of water and a fistful of energy bars to his coat pockets, slid the blue nylon wallet containing the jump drives which housed his research back-up files into a shirt pocket, and then discarded the bag. “I’m ready.”

  ‘”OK, when we go, we keep going until we’re clear of the enemy. Stay behind me, and keep moving no matter what. On three, one, two, three!”

  The shooter in the vehicle barn was hardcore-although heavily outnumbered, he stood his ground. JD had Gunner and Addison lay down covering fire while George worked his way to a clear shot.

  That was what he was now, a guy crouching behind a tree in central Minnesota in desert camouflage, carrying an assault rifle and issuing orders that put his own men at risk, all for the sole purpose of killing a complete stranger.

  Admittedly the stranger was shooting at them and was a member of a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of the United States of America and possibly the Human race as well, but the fact remained that five weeks ago he had been a married man, a father, a pro wrestling promoter in Italian leather shoes sitting behind the wheel of his one-year-old Cadillac, and now he was no better than a Marine. Even the Navy hadn’t screwed him over this badly.