by C. Dulaney
“Back when this shit started,” I said, scratching absentmindedly behind Gus’ ear, “I remember hearing something on the news. Didn’t mean crap to me then, but now I’m wondering. The news chick said the National Guard had a safe zone set up down in the southern part of the state. She said where, but I wasn’t paying attention.”
I turned my head to look at Mia. “I’m wondering if maybe that safe zone was the CC.”
Her facial expression indicated that she clearly had not thought of that. I glanced over to Jonese, who was doing a lousy job of pretending not to watch us.
“You know anything about that?”
He waited half a beat before answering. “You’ll have to talk to the Captain.” He held my stare for another beat before reluctantly turning his attention back to the campfire.
My eyebrows lowered as I studied him. For the first time I truly realized how much he and his fellow Guardsmen must have seen since the beginning of all this. Sure, me and mine had been through the ringer plenty. But the Guard? I couldn’t imagine being thrown to the frontlines of this thing, seeing the horrors he must have seen, doing the things he must have had to do. I wondered if I had been misinterpreting the soldiers’ cold detachment from the rest of us. The only one who had really been involved with us had been Waters. And I think that was even forced to a degree. I imagined all I had gone through, and tried multiplying that feeling by ten, though that was probably a conservative number. Now that I was paying attention, it was almost painfully clear that these men only wanted one thing: for all of this to just stop.
I wasn’t aware that Mia was staring at me, or that Jake had sat up. I was totally focused on the kid across from me. He was a kid, maybe 19 at the most.
“Hey, Jonese,” I said quietly. I waited until he reacted, which took longer than it should have, making it plain that he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t say anything, only sat there looking up at me expectantly.
“Why don’t you get some sleep? We can watch the fire.” I was surprised at the difference in my tone. Evidently, so was he.
He slowly shook his head. “No, ma’am, I can’t. Got my orders.” He poked the fire as he talked.
“To hell with your orders. Get some shut eye. Captain says anything, I’ll take care of it.” I jerked my chin toward his bedroll. “Go on. I’ll make sure you’re awake at the next shift change. Before he gets back.”
That must have convinced him, because I saw the faintest of smiles on his lips. He shoved the stick over to my side of the fire and slid down into his sleeping bag. I picked up where he left off and slowly poked at the coals. Mia and Jake were still staring a hole into the back of my head, which I ignored. No doubt they were trying to figure me out. Why the sudden change in attitude? I didn’t want to bother explaining to them that I had a brother around the same age as Jonese, and my heart couldn’t stand it if he’d had to endure what this soldier had. I was seeing these men now as more than merely soldiers; they had been fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, all following orders that had gotten people killed.
And they had to live with that.
* * *
“Get the lead out, people. Daylight’s burning,” Waters said during his last minute inspections around the camp while we loaded up.
The night had passed uneventfully, we had not been engulfed in deadheads by morning, I had not turned into a rampaging cannibal, and having a soldier watch your back while you pissed behind a tree wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it might be. Gus was making his rounds around the camp as well, diligently patrolling with his nose to the ground, raising it every so often to sniff at the air. He was on edge, had been since the night before when Mia heard that noise. So far Waters’ aerial support hadn’t reported any activity in the area. I assumed what had my dog’s nerves riled up was nothing more than the usual critters.
After the door slammed on the last Humvee, Waters took one more look around before climbing in and giving the order over the radio to head out. Inside Willis’ vehicle, Jake was singing “On the Road Again” in his best Willy Nelson voice. After a verse of that, Gus joined in. That brought the singing to a halt.
“We should make it to the halfway mark today,” I remarked.
A map was spread out over my legs. The paper shifted and wrinkled with each jar of the Humvee. My body felt like it was falling apart, riding over back roads for as long as we had. My joints hurt, my ass hurt, my freaking fillings hurt. I tried convincing myself it was better than the alternative, tried convincing myself the Humvee was causing my aches and pains and not a possible z-virus coursing through my veins. I’d read Abby’s notebook, her account of “the change.” I was presenting none of those symptoms, though I was now paranoid over every little hurt.
“So that means we’ll lose the helicopter,” Mia said.
“Yeah.”
I traced out the road we were on. We’d have to make a turn off before coming to the end, unless Waters had a change of heart and decided he wanted to take the blacktop for a while. I doubted it, so my finger shifted and traced along the next shitty road. Our route seemed to shadow the main highways. After the next turnoff, it looked like we would be passing through Cherokee Caverns, which left me with a sick feeling in my gut. The deadheads would be worse in town and on the paved roads, like those which led directly through the tourist spot. We would be skirting its edge, traveling up a mountain and down the other side. There would no doubt be service roads spidering across the mountain, so if we had to, we could escape using one of those; they would all lead back to the main road sooner or later.
“Hey, why don’t you put that away for now?” Mia said. I jerked my head up and saw she was watching me.
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “I’m fine, damnit.”
I folded the map up, making a hell of a mess of it, and stuffed it under my seat. She handed me a bottle of water and rubbed the top of Gus’ head. He was squeezed into the tiny space between the front seat and the middle of the back seat, staring out the windshield and panting. Jake glanced over his shoulder saying nothing. He had been distracted all morning after I’d caught him looking at pictures in the wallet he still carried. I didn’t have to ask who was in the pictures; he’d shown them to us shortly after Nancy died. It would have been easier to just carry the pictures in his pocket or backpack. It wasn’t like he’d ever need his driver’s license or debit card again. I think he was comforted by the old habit of waking up and feeling for the worn leather in his back pocket.
We were coming up on the turnoff when a voice came over the radio, informing us of an obstruction three miles ahead.
“Dead or natural?” Waters’ voice asked.
“Natural, sir. Looks like a fallen tree,” the helicopter voice said.
“Copy. The rest of you heard that?” Waters asked the convoy. Willis and the other driver gave their affirmative, and Waters began issuing a few orders.
“We’re kind of lucky. First tree down since we got started,” I said to Mia. She twitched her eyebrows in agreement.
The Humvees were winding their way toward the mountain road turnoff, though we’d been traveling on a gradual incline since leaving the pine thicket. The forest was getting thicker and the road was getting narrower. We had a steep drop off on our left side and densely covered banks on our right. The dirt road itself looked like it hadn’t been used in twenty years. It was enough to make me nervous, especially since I wasn’t the one in control of the vehicle.
“Where the hell’s the road?” Jake suddenly asked. Mia and I looked at each other before leaning up between the seats.
Brake lights lit up as the convoy came to a stop.
We could see nothing but more trees and out-of-control underbrush where the turnoff should have been. I yanked the map out from under my seat and tore it in my haste to open it up. Mia helped smooth it out as I cussed, and Willis talked back and forth with the others on the radio.
“It should be right there.” I jabbed my finger toward the spot Jake was staring a
t down the road.
“Is that the obstruction?” Mia asked.
“Can’t be,” Jake said. “They said there was a tree down. That’s not a fuckin’ tree down.”
“Quite, guys.” Willis leaned toward the radio. Once our attention was focused, we caught the tail end of Waters’ rant.
“─do you mean, a fallen tree?”
“Yes, sir. One mile from your location.”
“Son, I don’t know what you’re looking at, but I’m looking at a road that is no longer there. Forest where there shouldn’t be. Where the hell are you?”
Silence.
The four of us glanced around at each other. Gus, sensing the tension, stopped panting.
“Mister Collins, what is your location? Respond,” Waters said again. Chief Warrant Officer Collins was the Blackhawk pilot. Nice guy, though I’d only met him once, and only in passing.
Seconds stretched without a response. The only noise was a faint crackle popping from the radio. I took a breath and was about to ask Willis his opinion when Collins finally spoke.
“Uh…Sir?”
The uneasy confusion in his voice was more than unsettling. Apparently it affected Waters in the same way, because it took the span of several breaths before he answered.
“What do you have?” He sounded like someone who knew what sort of shitty news he was about to get.
“I’m not…well sir, we have cattle?”
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Jake snorted and threw a what-the-hell look in my direction. I’d been staring at the radio, but after that comment, I glanced ahead and saw doors opening on the middle and front Humvees. Michael, Jonah, Todd, and the two soldiers from Jonah’s vehicle came into view and grouped together on the right-banked side of the convoy. Why Todd was sticking his nose into it, I had no clue. He was such an asshole. The soldiers had their weapons at the ready, all five men sharply studying the hillside and beyond.
“Explain,” Waters ordered.
Jonah’s head was tilted and his eyes narrowed. I knew from experience he was listening to something. That man had ears like a damned fox and eyes like a hawk. Michael was trying to shut Todd up. I was hoping he’d hit him in the mouth.
“Cattle, sir. Maybe 150, 200 yards east of your location and closing fast. They’re stampeding, sir.”
“How many?”
Silence. Jonah’s head jerked and he turned his widened eyes to Michael.
“How many, Collins?!” Waters yelled.
“We count fifty-seven head, sir. And they’re being chased by Zacks. Between fifteen and twenty. It’s hard to get a count─” Collins’ voice was quivering, like he’d been out in single-digit temperatures for too long.
“Oh, shit,” Willis whined.
We turned our eyes to our right, staring in the same direction as Michael and the others. Jonah was talking emphatically, and the soldiers were setting their feet and squaring their shoulders, preparing to fire. Todd was darting his eyes and head like a chicken, clearly in panic mode.
“Get back in the fuckin’ Humvees,” Jake muttered. “Get in the Humvees!”
Willis opened his door. I wasn’t sure why, unless he thought an extra set of ears would be helpful. Turns out it was unnecessary. As soon as it was open, we could hear it. Screaming, screeching, and the thundering of hooves. Gus snorted and growled, and I think we all jumped.
“Can you take care of the situation?” Waters was still talking with Collins. I wondered if he was oblivious to the shitstorm that was nearly on top of us.
“No, sir. The trees are too thick. We’d risk hitting the convoy.”
Shit.
“Shut the door,” Jake said to Willis just as he opened his. Our driver did as he was told, though I think it was purely because of the shock he was in.
Shit.
“Jake,” Mia began, but couldn’t finish because he had jumped out and was yelling at Michael and Jonah.
Shit!
“Get in the goddamn Humvees, NOW!”
As they turned their heads in Jake’s direction, the first wave of the stampede crashed through the trees at the highest point of the hillside to our right, and Waters was shouting an order over the radio.
“Move out! Now!”
Our eyes shot from the hillside, to the radio, then to Jake in the span of seconds.
“Waters said go, now! Go, go, go!” Jake relayed the order, since all the dipshits in Jonah’s vehicle were standing outside, no one manning the radio. Immediately the group split up; Michael running back to Waters’ Humvee, and Jonah and the two soldiers tearing ass back to theirs.
“Jake!” Mia and I both shouted.
Willis fired the engine and jerked it into gear. Jake jumped in and slammed his door as the panic-maddened cows barreled down the hillside and began crashing into the narrow dirt road, directly into our vehicles and the spaces in between.
“Change of plans. Everyone stay put and hold tight,” Waters said.
That’s when I happened to notice that Todd was still outside.
* * *
The radio was alive with chatter, drivers speaking in short and clipped voices back and forth with Waters and Collins. Our Humvee shook violently with each bovine body that slammed into it. Blurs of black, brown, and white. Sometimes a head would slap its wet nose against the door glass, streaking snot as it slid out of view, the grating chorus of their mooing, rising and falling in pitch. Their tough, leathery hides scraped along the sides of the Humvee as their shoulders would pass the windows. Those able to get to their feet would turn and slam right back into the vehicle. I supposed it was caused by a blind hysteria due to stampeding.
Todd, by some half-miracle, had managed to climb onto the roof of the middle Humvee, where he was being jerked left and right, clawing at anything he could grab to hold himself down. Inside our vehicle, Gus was growling and whining while the three of us bit back a string of profanities and braced ourselves against the seats and doors.
“This is the most ridiculous damn thing I think I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“Even more ridiculous than the zombie midgets?” Mia asked, which forced a strained laugh from Jake.
“Well,” I said, “you got me there.”
One time back in college, after finals week, a group of us had gone to the local watering hole to unwind. The place had a mechanical bull in the back, and every Friday night that back room would be full of drunken 20-somethings, placing bets on who could keep their ass on the bull the longest. I always turned my friends down. That night after finals, though, I climbed onto the bull and took it for a spin. It turned out, though, that it actually took me for a spin, and sitting inside the Humvee while a frenzied herd of cattle plowed into it felt exactly the same way.
It was almost easy to forget that Hell was riding in behind the cattle. From what I could tell, they were all basically uninjured and turning down the road, running the way from which we’d come. I was reminded of our problem, however, when Jake broke the silence with a choked gasp.
“Oh…crap…”
Hell had arrived.
Chapter Ten
November 23rd
Sophia had only one thought, a singular notion that repeated itself through her savage mind like elevator music: Kill. She had only one objective, written into her DNA like a computer program: Destroy the Evil Ones. The backdrop to these orders was this: Go home. It was a lethal combination, thrown together in a petri dish and inserted into the body of a weapon. Into Sophia’s brain.
Her memories were gone save one. Her dad, mom, brother, and sister had never existed. Her friends, old birthday parties, first kiss, all gone. Her last known residence, however, was burning bright in her mind.
Go home.
She had fought and killed many of the enemy on her journey. Her brothers and sisters had also been successful, and between the ten of them, they’d been able to clear a swath through the undead wasteland on their way home.
Destroy every Evil One in
your path.
She had many brothers-in-arms. Hundreds of them. All spreading out and sweeping the land, wiping the slate clean.
Kill.
She had come into contact with several Good Ones. Sophia and her brothers were not permitted to destroy these. It was difficult for her to turn away from them, they smelled so very good. In the end she couldn’t fight her synthetic instincts. She couldn’t fight what she had been created to do.
As branches slapped and scratched at her flesh, the wind whipping through her long hair, she ran alongside her brothers, pursuing a group of Evil Ones through the trees. The steep slope of the forest made it difficult for her to stay on her feet, but her new genetic makeup drove her forward. Bellowing beasts announced their chase; her enemy hunting the herd for many miles.
The hunters had become the hunted.
She cared little for the prey; her brain registered them as Good Ones. She cared little for the large hunks of steel barring the Good Ones’ path. She cared little for the Good Ones’ scent that wafted from the steel boxes. Her only care was focused on the enemy in front of her, the Evil Ones which were about to overtake the Good Ones up ahead.
* * *
“Hold on to something!” I shouted seconds before the first runner mowed into the right side of the Humvee.
Time seemed to stop. Radio traffic ceased. We held our collective breath. Time began moving again as runner after runner slammed into the Humvees, rabidly attacking the cows that had yet to struggle to their feet and escape. Todd screamed like the stupid asshole that he was, drawing the attention of more of the runners cascading down the hillside. Three leapt into the air and slammed into him, wrapping him up in a death ball. Our eyes followed them, over the Humvee and straight down into the deep hollow to our left.
“We have to do somethin’!” Jake snapped around so his eyes could plead with me.
