by Lundy, W. J.
“I don’t think we want to take the 400,” Ian said sarcastically. “Head back the way we came and take the dirt tracks we’ve been following.”
The dirt roads had served them well up to this point, with the exception of when they needed to find a bridge over an interstate or body of water. None of the interstates had looked like this, though. The closer they got to Atlanta, the worse it got. Ian was beginning to think there wasn’t going to be a way into the city, and none of them welcomed the thought of heading in on foot.
There were still a lot of survivors out there from what they could see, but they were stragglers, and their time was limited. You could see it on their faces, with their features stressed beyond fear. Desperation ruled their world, and the slim opportunity that they might grasp one more breath as a normal human being beckoned them like a lost song upon the edge of memory. Yet, they knew that their future would play a much different song, a dirge they’d already witnessed as their loved ones became infected and changed before their eyes. More than a few kept the last bullet for something other than infected, and more than a few used it.
Ian shook his head, grateful when they pulled away from the uninfected, who stayed silent, knowing what unwanted sound or movement brought. Less and less, they heard gunshots, especially from those on foot. Instead, people carried pikes and bats, as well as other assorted melee weapons. Gunshots attracted the infected, and if you wanted to survive on foot, you learned to be silent and stick to the shadows. The deeper the shadows, the better.
A subtle beep on the sat phone chimed.
“Yes?” Ian said, knowing that pleasantries were not acceptable with clients—especially new clients. “Yes, Dr. Sanjay, we were informed,” Ian said when the caller mentioned having bought the contract. Ian had actually expected to hear from him long before this.
“We’re trying to circumnavigate the blocked roads up by Perimeter Center right now and should be to your location at the university by tomorrow, I’d guess. The situation has escalated, and there seems to have been a mad rush both in and out of the city.”
Ian glanced out the window as he listened. After a moment, he replied, “El Paso?” This was followed by another moment of silence on Ian’s end. Then he responded, “Yes, sir. It’s a day’s drive in the old world, but it might take as much as two weeks now. We only seem to be making thirty to fifty miles a day, and we need supplies.”
More chatter from Dr. Sanjay. “No, sir,” Ian replied. “Only four of us in the Humvee, the rest headed back to DC with the deuces.”
Ian frowned at Kinsey as he took the brunt of the doctor’s wrath, and then turned back toward the window. “I didn’t have much say in it, and there weren’t any authorities to turn them in to. If you wish to cancel the contract, I understand—”
He stopped as if cut off, and when Ian pulled the phone away from his ear, obscenities screeched from the receiver for several seconds. When Dr. Sanjay calmed down, he asked about the courier bag. “Yes, we have the satchel.” Then Ian shook his head in frustration before saying, “As soon as we can, sir. We need a safe house for resupply. Are there any available?”
As Ian listened, he wrote on the windshield in black permanent marker. “Talladega and Shreveport, security code 31470 US SANJAY. Got it. Yes, sir, all capitals. Thank you, sir. I look forwards to meeting you—” The phone clicked dead.
“Well, isn’t that some shit?” Toby said from the back seat.
“Yeah, are you sure we want to keep this job?” Jose added.
“Let’s get resupplied in Talladega, and we’ll talk it out there. If we want to split up, then we can at least go on a full belly,” Ian said to the crew.
“I don’t think splitting up is a smart option. Not right now, anyway,” Kinsey said, throwing in her two cents. “Together, we have security, and the contract gives us a direction, so I say we keep going.”
Ian smiled as they moved out, sticking to the back roads.
“Talladega is about a hundred and fifty miles. We might have to find some diesel before then,” Kinsey stated, tapping the fuel gauge in the instrument cluster.
“With all of these semis left abandoned, we shouldn’t have a problem with that,” Jose said.
“Jose, open up your phone and lend me a Wi-Fi signal,” Toby said as he dragged a laptop out of his sack.
Ian watched him over the back seat until Toby suddenly smiled.
“Quit with the porn, Toby. Next thing I know, you’ll be jerking it in front of all of us,” Ian said half-joking while secretly hoping he hadn’t tapped into Pornhub or xHamster.
“Better than porn, sir. What is straighter than an interstate and has virtually no traffic?” Toby asked with a smile. Jose looked over his shoulder at the screen and shrugged as if he didn’t see what Toby was so excited about.
“I don’t know, Toby. Just spit it out,” Ian said, not having the tolerance for games at the moment.
“Utility access,” he said, handing his boss the laptop displaying Google Earth. He pointed to a solid, straight line through the woods and hills that was unmarred by a road’s surface. A body slammed into the side of the truck, almost causing Ian to lose grip on the laptop, followed by two more.
“Sorry, they sprang out of the ditch.”
“I didn’t know these fuckers could hide,” Ian shouted, but calmed quickly as he noticed the vehicle hadn’t taken any damage.
“There will be spots like rivers and cliffs or whatever,” Toby said, unfazed by the interruption. “We’ll have to work around those, but then there are miles in between those points that look like easy travel.” He pointed at a route that was wide and clear by Google Map standards and straighter than Interstate 20, which it mirrored.
“It’s all off road, though,” Ian protested.
“I would take off road any day over that interstate we just looked at, especially in this beast,” Kinsey said.
“No shit,” Jose huffed, probably just so he could say that he added something to the conversation.
“I’m game if you are. Where do I pick it up?” Kinsey asked, still driving toward the dirt roads per Ian’s last instructions.
He didn’t want to get into to the whole switching drivers thing. She was the professional, and her observation skills had saved them many times already, so he figured it was best to keep her focused on it. When she got tired, they rested, but she seemed to be solid for at least twelve-hour stretches, and during one particularly hairy stretch, she drove for eighteen hours until they found a safe spot to crash for a few hours.
Unlike the rest of society, Ian’s crew had a saving grace. They had established safe houses to resupply. The stores and malls that carried noteworthy goods were always swarmed with infected. They had accidentally driven too close to one, causing the people trapped inside to think that they had a chance, if they could only get to the Humvee. It didn’t work.
They all remembered the two men who’d burst out of the door, clearing the way for three women and a child. And the mass of loosely packed, wandering bodies turned into a focused mob. One of the men had a shotgun, and he started putting rounds in the chests of the closest ones. It only slowed the infected down, which made Ian think he was shooting birdshot; without a headshot, the man was unlikely to stop the things.
“Hold your fire,” Ian had said to Toby, who’d started to aim toward the horde. “It’s too late.” The horde tore into them. Kinsey stared at the scene with steel in her eyes, no emotion. She couldn’t allow herself to feel anything for those people; none of them could.
The powerline tower access clearings appeared ahead and roused Ian from his melancholic memories. The utility access paths turned out to be a clear run for most of the way and brought them through uninhabited areas, where the infection level was currently at a minimum. Others had the same idea, and they passed cars that had pulled off along the sides of the clearing as people rested, most setting out some sort of guard. This wasn’t like the highways or towns, where predators awaited around ever
y corner. These were the workers of the world, the linemen who knew the routes, and truckers or highway workers who saw them and remembered. Ian saw a lot of AR-15s, as well as beautifully designed—yet very serviceable—lever-actions. They seemed to prefer to display them as a deterrent as opposed to using them on anyone.
They came up toward a ridge where trucks and SUVs waited in line to take a goat path down and into the next stretch, so they followed suit. Ian got out and walked, unarmed, to the pickup in front of them. It was a four-door with all the seats full and gear piled haphazardly in the bed. The two windows on the passenger side rolled down and rifle barrels were displayed.
Ian held his hands out to placate and caught up to the rear window, where a large man with a full beard looked at him with humorless eyes.
An attractive blonde woman in the front seat spoke. “There ain’t nothin for us to talk about, mister. We all knows the score, so you go your way and we’ll go ours.”
The bearded man in the back lined his sights up on Ian’s chest.
“All right, I can take a hint,” Ian said, and the man relaxed the grip on his rifle.
“Sorry, it’s just how it is now,” the bearded man said.
“Don’t you try to follow us, neither,” the blonde threw in for good measure.
“I won’t. Good luck,” Ian said. They didn’t reply; instead, they powered up their windows and sped up a bit to get away.
“Nobody wants to talk,” he stated when he got back to the Hummer.
“I don’t know why you wanted to fuggin’ talk to them, anyways,” Toby said.
“Intel, dude, intel.”
“We got all the intel we’re going to get or need. El Paso or bust,” Kinsey said.
The ridge felt like they were driving off the end of a cliff until the Humvee got over the lip. Then they could see the meandering trail that switch-backed down the slope until it broke into multiple goat tracks to where it flattened out below.
Ian could see the interstate off to the south for the first few minutes of the downward trek, but it disappeared behind the trees quickly. It wasn’t soon enough to avoid seeing all of the infected roving the asphalt. It was a huge horde, and it was starting to flow toward the sound of all the trucks on the access trail. There were two vehicles behind them and more ahead of them in the distance, including the truck he’d tried to talk to.
“Toby, head up top and scan the flats to see where we gotta go,” Ian directed, pointing at the portal to the machine gunner nest. Being a civilian company, they didn’t have access to a 30mm machine gun, but they did have a Barret .50 if they needed. It was designed for single-shot precision distance work, and they were set up with the SCARs, which were more than adequate, considering the enemy wouldn’t be shooting back.
“We have a large mass coming from the south at eleven o’clock, followed by another mob at ten and nine-thirty,” Toby yelled down through the hole. “This path comes to a three-way split a half mile up. I strongly recommend that you take the right-hand split. A red Durango is getting swarmed five trucks up on the left split and another just fucked himself by trying to go around. Holy shit!” Toby exclaimed and paused just long enough to make Ian want to punch him in the nuts.
“The woods are starting to bleed with infected.” He plopped back into his seat. “Stay right and get across these flats ASAP, or we are screwed. I’m not kidding. There’s a whole city of people about to cut us off. About a mile and a half ahead, we hit steep grade that will bring us up into clear fields for a ways. It’s going to be tight, though, and the last half mile is going to be touch and go.”
“Okay, you two decide which one is going up top fully loaded,” Ian said. They were all smart enough to know that there would be very little shooting from inside the cab. The reports were too damaging, and their aim too inaccurate to be effective. Jose decided to take the portal, so Toby would hand him magazines and switch his rifle when Jose’s got too hot. Ian approved of their decision. Toby was the bruiser who could shoot well, but Jose was a shooter through-and-through. He would kill more with fewer rounds, and his target choices would be more beneficial.
They hit the flats and Kinsey took the far-right trail with the four-door pickup ahead. Ian could see the bearded man glaring at them for not following their instructions about following them. They had no choice; infected were already starting to bleed into the lane ahead. The truck in front took an impact on their unprotected grill, and Ian saw one of their headlight shields shatter, skewing the halogen bulb and causing it to shine off at an odd angle. Jose started to fire rapidly at the ones coming in from the south.
The things were running now, charging at a full sprint, screaming with a delighted howl that sent shivers down Ian’s spine. These were not the undead. These weren’t sluggish zombies stumbling toward them with rotted flesh and bones that you saw in the movies. These were living, breathing people who maintained all their flexibility and strength, but whose minds were gone. They lived to spread their disease, their ability to pursue their prey and tenacity was relentless.
“I got to get around this truck or we’re going to get swarmed when they break down,” Kinsey said.
“All they have is a factory grill, and it ain’t going to hold up long against so many,” Ian observed and unlatched the weapon’s port in the up-armored Humvee’s window. He stuck his hand through, making hand signals that clearly said he wanted the truck to pull over. To his surprise, they did almost immediately, and Kinsey hit the hole on their driver side, wiping out two infected on the way. And then they were in front, the road ahead becoming darker with running bodies every second.
Jose had been thinning the herd with his 7.62 rounds, grateful that he only had three-round burst action or he would have been tempted to spray and pray. After his third magazine, the horde was getting too close for the smaller bore rifle, and he dropped it down to Toby, who instantly tried to pass a fully loaded rifle up to him.
Jose ignored the rifle. What he needed was a little bit less precise but held more impact.
A large man and two women latched onto the truck, and Jose pulled the Mossberg 500 off his left shoulder like an old-school stagecoach guard and blasted one woman’s face apart with a three-inch round of 12-gauge, double-aught buckshot. He aimed at the man, knowing that his next load was a critical defense round, containing a slug and four 30mm BBs, specifically designed to permanently stop a threat.
Having had to swing his trajectory in a complete one-eighty, he barely got the barrel up high enough for a low gut shot, or so he thought. His motion must have put too much pressure on the trigger—a rookie mistake—because the one place he didn’t want to think about erupted in a mass of blood and bile, folding the man in half and slamming his face onto the roof of the Humvee, spreading whatever was in his guts and intestines all over the driver’s side hood. With a quick shove from Jose, the man slid off the side, clearing Kinsey’s vision, who was slowing with everybody that she hit due to trying to look around the infected legs and torsos.
Jose got the shotgun across himself in time before a forty- or fifty-year-old woman wearing a motorcycle helmet fell on him. She gripped the shotgun, fiercely attempting to tug it from his grip while trying to bite him. The solid chin guard of her helmet hit his hands and face shield. Jose kept his arms tight, watching where her teeth and nails were and trusting his equipment to keep him safe, for now.
He pulled the gun closer and pushed out as he twisted it, forcing the infected’s arms to cross. This would’ve been the perfect time to try to wrest it from her grasp, but instead he let the barrel fall almost casually down and under her chin. The thumb on his right hand pulled the trigger. The hollow of his hip took the recoil, but it was his face that felt the muzzle flash.
He flinched back as the tactical round went up under her chin, severing the back of her tongue and breaking her jawbone on both sides. The barrel, having been at least six inches from her chin, made this a dangerous shot for Jose. Any spray getting into his orifices or
a BB hitting him after passing through the infected, and it was game over. Worse, the barrel could have strayed off course, blowing his own head off by accident.
Through his face shield, he watched as the woman’s head started expanding to an additional quarter of its original size before settling down to a sagging version of what was once a human face. The helmet showed stress fractures in a spider webbed pattern, suffering the brunt of the twelve-gauge’s blast. Blood trickled from her ears, nose, and lips as well as under the lower rim of her helmet in a solid sheet of red. Jose wondered what a scrambled mess her brain must be with all of that lead bouncing around inside.
All Ian could see of Jose was his lower half as he stood in the cupola, but it looked like things were pretty heated up there. If anyone could handle it, Jose could. He dropped his rifle inside and Ian was tempted to grab hold and drag the man in, but then he heard the telltale booms of Jose’s beloved Mossberg as he started to clear the deck.
“Jose, goddammit! Get back inside and let our beefcake clean house!” Ian shouted, hoping it wasn’t too late.
41
Mountain Grove, Missouri
March 31st
Driving for hours, the group passed plenty of homes and abandoned cars. Some houses looked as pristine as they would any other day of the week, while others were burnt out and hardly recognizable as a dwelling. Clay’s mind wandered as he watched a doublewide trailer from his passenger window. It was new with bushes and flowers planted along a step-stone walkway. “What if they’re alive inside?” he whispered to himself. “Or maybe it’s just another infected cage, full of the dead, or another body hanging from a noose.”
