Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution
Page 22
Sure enough, a group was starting to gather and move toward them from further ahead. The mob was just entering Carter’s high beam range and were still some distance away. It was mainly movement without form that they saw, but on occasion a face would flash into the light and then disappear again.
“Okay, hop in the back and get ready to repel boarders.” Carter had always wanted to say that. He had an interest in pirates and the age of piracy; one of the few holdovers from his childhood. He’d heard in some pirate movie long ago the captain say that just as the pirates grappled his ship.
There was a pause with everyone in the truck. Carter said again, “In the back, and ready yourselves to repel boarders. Now goddamnit! I’m not asking. We need to fight our way through this and we can’t do it from inside. You’ll be up high enough in the back of this truck to be out of reach. We’ll keep movin’ too, which will help keep them off of us. Use your guns or your clubs to fight them off. We don’t have all day. Now move!”
With visions of Oscar swinging above the highway in their heads, Carter’s four passengers got themselves into the back of the truck just as he started to move forward again. Lincoln pulsed his flashlight back at the vehicles following them, and the other drivers followed the example.
Lincoln and Kit, as well as Ilya and Michael who had joined them, checked the loads on their rifles and readied them for battle. Lincoln was the first to shoot, his shots going wild. The deafening roar from the firearm reverberated in the truck through its closed windows.
Fucking amateurs! Carter thought to himself. He lowered his window a bit and shouted, “Calm the fuck down! You’re wasting ammo!”
Lincoln gritted his teeth in frustration while Kit fired her rifle, a traditional looking bolt action hunting rifle. Her firearm had a much more piercing sound than Lincoln’s dull, low blasts from his shotgun. Peering intently down her rifle barrel, Kit’s round hit one of the approaching creature’s heads, removing its scalp. She worked the bolt on her rifle and pulled the trigger again. Her second shot hit its target. Two of the dozen or more skins, which were starting to invade the truck’s headlights like a virus spreading itself in a petri dish, fell beneath the others’ feet.
There was no room to maneuver and no choice but to push forward. Carter’s intuition was to speed up and plow through all of them, but he didn’t know how many were in front of him. There was always the danger of becoming entangled in overwhelming numbers of bodies.
He looked in his rearview mirror and was a little more comfortable to see headlights approaching from behind. If he got stuck, maybe the other truck could push him clear. He wished he knew the driver of the other truck, but there was no way of knowing for sure. It could be Devon, the old hockey player who walked with a limp but was still as big and mean as a tank. Or it could be Cortland, or Nelson, or... He was pretty sure that it wasn’t Colonel Bear. Since what the Colonel used to call The Fall had begun, Carter noticed that for all of Colonel Bear’s blustering, he rarely put himself in harm’s way. He tried to tell himself that it didn’t bother him, but he had noticed, which was problematic in and of itself. If the Colonel wasn’t the man Carter though he was, then he wondered if perhaps he himself wasn’t either. Thoughts like that made him angry and Carter didn’t like being angry. He didn’t like losing control of his emotions for any reason.
He preferred controlled moments of rage, directed and with purpose. That was what the Colonel had taught him. It was part of the warrior ethos, which had been impressed upon Carter from the moment he set foot on The Ranch.
He would just have to deal with his building resentment or whatever it was becoming another time. He had other things keeping him occupied at the moment.
When they hit the line of walking corpses, there were so many of them gathering in the headlights, Carter was forced to slow the truck and nearly come to a stop. It was like running into a living, pulsing wall. Hands, arms, and entire upper bodies splayed themselves across the hood of his truck in an effort to get to him. Carter hadn’t expected to be so nearly stopped in his tracks. He pressed the accelerator and urged the truck to regain its pace. It wasn’t working as he had hoped, though they did maintain a slow, steady pace forward.
The crush of reaching, grabbing arms and hands spread around the vehicles like quicksilver, like Carter’s truck was wading into a sea of death. The four people in the back of Carter’s truck and the five in the back of the bigger red GMC behind them were fighting for their lives. They were only occasionally shooting forward by then. The target rich environment all around them negated the need to take aim. They pointed their firearms into the crowd and pulled the trigger. They took care not to shoot too closely in the direction of any other vehicles, but the press of animated flesh would likely have absorbed any errant shots had they done so.
The air around them was abuzz with a chorus of ghoulish moans filling the air and threatening to drown the militia in its resonance. The deafening blasts from the discharging firearms were lost in the overwhelming cacophony of hungry otherworldly voices.
The stale stillness of the air had been forced away by the violence now filling it. A swirling, reeking stew of car exhaust, rotting flesh, and gunpowder hung in heavy clouds around the slowly proceeding trucks.
Kit had set her rifle aside and was swinging an ancient, rusty scythe back and forth, removing fingers, hands, and the tops of heads. Blood, thick and heavy as maple syrup, sprayed into the air in jets of dark globs. It splashed up Kit’s arms and onto her chest and neck. She screamed, swinging the yard tool with reckless abandon, looking like a crazed berserker of Norse folklore. She may have been shouting obscenities or reciting prayers; she couldn’t be sure. She was too focused on slashing and hacking, dealing out death with each wild swing of her weapon.
Lincoln fired all eight rounds in his pump-action shotgun and then leaned against the truck’s cab to reload. In his nervousness, he dropped a shell, which spun and rolled away in the dark truck bed. He knew he would eventually need it, so he leaned down to see if it was within easy reach.
It was a fatal mistake. Leaning away from the direction the truck was going, Lincoln lost his balance and fell into the truck bed. When he tried to regain his footing, he was too close to the low walls surrounding the bed. First a pair and then more hands grabbed hold of his hair and the collar of his down vest. He was pulled up and partially out of the truck. Mouths full of merciless, gnashing teeth latched onto his face and head, digging into his flesh like greedy parasites.
Lincoln shrieked in pain and fear. His ear, clutched between a set of grinding, yellow teeth, was shorn from his body and chewed greedily. With a scream and a Herculean effort, he was finally able to extricate himself from those trying to devour him. He tried to stand upright but his equilibrium was off. He stumbled again but this time steadied himself against the truck’s cab. Already his blood loss was affecting his balance and his senses.
His face was riddled with bites and other wounds, blood streaming down the bridge of his nose and cheeks in great gushing rivers of red. He touched the side of his head where his ear should have been and started to weep. He remembered all the men and women he’d seen with similar wounds and the fate they suffered. He thought of his mother, his father, and the friends that he met in the evenings and on the weekends to drink beer and dream of the lives that they wished they had. He saw all of their faces and knew that each had already preceded him to the afterlife.
He wished he had paid better attention when he used to go to church with his family. He might remember a prayer or a psalm or something else that might guide him or calm his fears. He already knew what he had to do and if he thought about it for too long he might talk himself out of doing it. He refused to turn.
Lincoln looked down between his feet and saw the shell. He reached down and picked it up, the tears in his eyes joining the blood coursing down from his forehead. He slipped the shell into the loading aperture on the bottom of the big gun and pumped it into firing position.
Ilya watched as Lincoln fell forward into the back of the truck. His body quivered and jerked for a moment and then was still. Confident about their chances until then, Ilya felt a sudden jolt of fear strike through him. He shouted, “Lincoln’s down. What should we do?”
Michael, standing on the same side as Kit, shouted back, “Kill ‘em all! Don’t stop!” Michael was damned near in a fit, boiling with rage and adrenaline. He was swinging his axe back and forth, hacking and slashing, completely rapt in his bloodlust. He didn’t notice when his axe blade sunk too deeply into a neck and didn’t come out cleanly. The vehicle’s forward momentum, much like with Lincoln, set him off balance as he pulled uselessly on the stuck axe.
Michael pitched forward into the dark. His tortured, agonizing screams assured everyone that he was still there for those moments before his live and kicking body was harvested and gutted like a prey animal by a pack of hunters.
Kit hadn’t stopped swinging her scythe. She held the roll bar atop the truck with one hand and swung the tool with the other, maintaining her balance and the pace of her attacks as well.
Ilya shifted slowly to the front and followed Kit’s lead. He grabbed hold of the roll bar and started swinging his machete in the same fashion as the woman on the other side of the truck. He swung indiscriminately, hitting whatever fell into his blade’s path.
Sitting alone in the truck, Carter, who was rarely rattled, was starting to feel boxed in and vulnerable. His side window was streaked with bloody handprints and the front windshield had a new crack, which ran its length from a body that somehow ended up on the truck’s hood before rolling harmlessly off to the side. With all the bangs and knocks on the side of his truck, Carter felt like he was sitting inside a very hardworking gearbox inside a vintage tractor. He was finding it difficult to control his jumpy reactions to the growing volume and frequency of the impacts.
The revolver sitting on the seat next to him gave him a little bit of reassurance, but he couldn’t help but be reminded that his pistol only carried six rounds in it and there were dozens of angry fists pounding on the sides of his and the other vehicles in their convoy.
Carter started to doubt whether they would make it through or not. His worry was that he would get to a point at which he could no longer move forward and the vehicles behind him would not be able to go back. He would be trapped and doomed. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw the several pairs of headlights following closely behind.
Panic lurked and threatened from the periphery. That, above all else, angered him. He didn’t like to be threatened, even if it was coming from his own mind. He reached to the volume button on the truck’s stereo and turned up the volume. The CD in the machine was from the band Tool, a fitting soundtrack to their current situation. The reverberating drums and deep bass echoed around him from the multiple speakers hidden throughout the cab. He punched his fist onto the steering wheel in time with the music and held the fear at bay. Across his face spread the familiar diabolical grin so many people had grown accustomed to seeing on him.
Carter didn’t know that two of his four passengers had already fallen and that his final two were struggling to fight off the horde. Their arms were growing more and more fatigued as they fought what would likely be an ultimately doomed battle. There were just too many of the undead closing all around them.
When Kit’s scythe lodged too deeply in the chest of one of her targets, she shouted over to Ilya to warn him. He screamed back at her to find Lincoln’s shotgun on the truck bed. After looking down she saw the gun under Lincoln’s motionless body.
The gun was empty but Kit found some shells in Lincoln’s bulging pockets. Sitting and loading the shotgun, she looked around. They appeared to be getting through the majority of the things, as the herd was thinning somewhat. Carter must have sensed it as well because the truck gained speed as more pavement showed in its headlights.
The trucks and SUVs behind them continued along the path Carter’s truck had blazed. The gun was loaded and lying across Kit’s lap when she rightly decided that the heavy lifting of going first was done. They were through.
The fight wasn’t won; not by a long shot. They were just nearing the end of the oppressive darkness. It felt like a second sunrise for the day and Kit was appreciative of both.
Chapter 39
Colonel Bear’s Humvee was an original production model which Governor Schwarzenegger had heartily endorsed once upon a time, a virtual tank of an automobile. The Colonel had three other trucks between his vehicle and Carter’s truck in the lead, and an equal number behind him. From this distance, he heard and saw more of the fighting than he was experiencing. It was a matter of practicality. The Colonel’s Humvee was not the best configuration for this kind of fight.
The Colonel was decidedly not a coward and having to be anywhere than in the thick of the fight was frustrating for him. The men in his big SUV were all brawlers as well. When the trickle of creatures swelled around those vehicles in front of theirs, they shouted a grateful war yawp to one another.
The vehicles this far back from the front line were moving at a walking pace, so the Colonel’s passengers piled out with weapons ready. They started with guns, firing them feverishly into the thinning packs of demons as they appeared from the darkness.
The big white and green RV in front of them was spattered with oozing red stains when the men’s bullets pierced the suffering flesh of their attackers. Foreheads, chests, arms, abdomens, and upper legs bloomed with dark crimson flowers of necrotic blood. Some of the wounds were fatal to even the undead but many produced showers of gore.
The Colonel decided to use his Humvee as a weapon and plowed through groups of the beasts. His vehicle’s wide frame sent broken bodies hurtling through the air and forced others under its heavy, nubby tires, crunching bones in the process. Those devils not killed outright were maimed and broken beyond being a threat. A few were dispatched with quick jabs from machetes or large hunting knives, and others suffered skulls stomped nearly flat with boot heels.
In a short while, the Colonel and his men came upon the piles of lifeless corpses created by Carter’s crew and those others around him. Marching like GIs through the streets of Paris in 1944, the Colonel’s men strutted confidently through the mayhem. They nonchalantly dispatched the few skins they encountered but it was much more like a casual hunt than the final actions of a battle.
When one of the big men, a burly guy named Chance, unknowingly stepped into a knot of bodies, one of the creatures still harboring some life bit his lower leg. The bite immediately produced a streak of blood on his light colored pants and a surprised, angry shout. Stabbing suddenly and violently downward, Chance plunged his blade repeatedly into the head of the biter, scrambling brain matter. The creature released the man’s leg and fell limp.
Chance, looking at the blood running down his leg, blurted out, “Goddamnit!” before one of the other men shot him in the head. The others kept going forward pretending nothing had happened, just another excursion into the wilderness. None of them would dare let on that he was anything other than comfortable strolling through the dark with death waiting to pounce all around. None of the men would have protested if the Colonel were to recall them to the security of his Humvee either. Seeing how easily and randomly Chance was assaulted reminded all of them the hazards and dangers which awaited their every step.
When the Colonel’s window did come down, they hoped that perhaps he was going to do just that. Instead, he shouted, “Keep your goddamn guard up! Who was that? Who got bit?”
“Chance,” came an anonymous voice in answer.
There was a slight pause and then, “Damned shame. Don’t
let it happen to you.”
All of them, to a man, agreed with that order. None of them wanted that, including the Colonel, realizing he couldn’t afford to lose too many of his loyal men before getting into Whittier. He needed every fighter he could get if he planned on putting the hurt on those responsible for Sullivan’s death and the destruction of their home.
Colonel Bear wasn’t sure which thing made him angrier. The school had been a great location for them. It was relatively safe, solid, well stocked, and in a great location. It was off the beaten path while also sitting alongside a major highway. The school sat just outside of town with a river and a bridge separating them but was also within quick access when needs arose. It was also a place where those random survivors still out on the road might take themselves in hopes of finding help.
Sullivan was more than just the Colonel’s right hand. Sullivan was the most loyal man he had ever encountered. No matter the task assigned to him, Sullivan always got the job done for the Colonel. He neither hesitated nor asked questions. He was also occasionally and very comfortably cruel.
In the Colonel’s estimation, Sullivan was the perfect man for him. Sullivan had also gone a long way in training Carter to step up and do the same. Carter was a bit different though. He was every bit as loyal and willing as Sullivan had been to do the Colonel’s bidding, but he was also smarter. In many ways, Colonel Bear could envision Carter surpassing Sullivan’s capabilities. Until Sullivan’s untimely death, the only thing separating the two was experience.
Now Carter would just have to gain those valuable nuggets of wisdom that only time could deliver. He no longer had Sullivan to guide his training.
*
It was Carter, standing atop the roof of his truck, who first greeted the Colonel with a wave of his hat above his head. They were in the dying light of the late afternoon. The slow slog getting into and through the tunnel had cost them another entire day. The only question now was whether to try and find a place to stay the night out of the cold or tighten their perimeter and make their current position more secure.