The Dead Series (Book 4): Dead End

by Jon Schafer

  Pulling up to the opening, he called out to the guard, “What’s going on? I can’t get anyone on the radio.”

  “Standard operating procedure,” she replied. “If the channel you’re using is jammed with traffic, move up two channels. Commander Styles is the only one allowed to transmit on three, and he’s organizing our defenses right now. If you need to call something in, move down to channel two.”

  Turning to his driver, he asked with exasperation, “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “I’ve never heard it before,” she replied.

  The guard broke in, saying, “Only platoon and squad leaders have radios, so she probably didn’t know.”

  “So what’s happening?” Tick-Tock asked her. “Where are the dead?”

  Waving her hand to encompass the forest all around them, she replied, “From what I’ve heard, they’re everywhere. The dead that split off from the main group coming at us from the west are hitting the outer fence along the lake right now. There were more of them than we thought, and they’ve moved along it all the way to the east of the fort. We have a big herd coming from the southwest, and the main group from the west left the road and is coming at us cross-country now.”

  “How bad is it to the east?” Tick-Tock asked.

  “There aren’t many dead-asses in that direction yet,” the guard told him. “Right now we’re pulling troops from over there to reinforce some of the other sections of the fence. We’re keeping the gates open until the last minute to take in stragglers and the recon teams that are still out. You’re probably the last of the stragglers, though, because we just got a report that the Ds have made it to this road. If anyone else is out there, they’re cut off or dead.”

  Knowing that he still had a chance to get Denise and run, Tick-Tock told his driver, “Get to the fort as fast as you can.”

  Having heard that the dead were right behind her, she wasted no time in getting him there.

  As the Jeep skidded to a stop near the main gate, Tick-Tock jumped out and ran for the gate, slowing as he joined the steady flow of people going into Fort Redoubt. These were the very old, the infirm and young children. Outside of the fort, troops were preparing to board the last of the trucks and Jeeps that would take them to the perimeter. Watching as one by one they loaded up and pulled away, he looked around for his Jeep and driver. Seeing that it, too, was being piled with ammunition and readied to go out, he resolved that they would have to walk.

  Hearing gunfire from the far side of the fort, he was reassured that the defenses along the lake were still intact. Once he got Denise out of the fort, they could head to the east and make their breakout from there. He would deal with the landmines by lobbing heavy rocks onto them to set them off, and the wire could be cut with his K-bar knife after he disabled the electricity flowing through it.

  Thinking it through, he decided that if the guards were still there, more than likely they would join him in his escape. Everything was going to hell fast, and the Zs were on their way, so they probably didn’t want to hang around to be a main entrée. Who knows, he thought, maybe one of them even has a layout of the mines?

  Deep in the flow of refugees, Tick-Tock was carried into the chaos of the courtyard. In the waning light of the sun, hundreds of people crowded around, yelling to one another as they searched for loved ones or asking a million questions of the few troops stationed there. Moving slowly through the dense crowd toward the hospital, he stopped when he heard someone call his name. Turning in a circle, he finally spotted one of his people wending her way toward him through the swarm of people.

  “You saved me a trip coming to find you,” Tick-Tock called to her over the din. “I’m going to get Denise out of the hospital. I need you to get everyone else together and meet me outside the gate. One of you bring some wirecutters if you can find them.”

  Not wanting to be mobbed by people begging to go with them, he didn’t add that they were getting the hell out of Dodge.

  As he turned to go, she stopped him by saying, “Denise isn’t in the hospital. She checked herself out.”

  “Where is she?” Tick-Tock asked.

  Pointing to where the parapets on the inside of the walls were being hastily manned, the woman said, “She’s up there somewhere.”

  “I’ll find her, you go get the rest of the group,” Tick-Tock told her as he headed for the nearest ladder.

  Russellville, Arkansas:

  As Cage and an NCO passed him in the Major’s outer office, Steve could smell a burnt odor coming off them. Expecting to be kept waiting since they had the fire to deal with, he was surprised when Cage waved to him and said, “Come with me.”

  Although the couch he was half-lounging on was the most comfortable thing he had sat in for days, Steve wasted no time in jumping up and following the two men. Once inside Cage’s office, the Major waved him toward the chair in front of his desk and said, “Sorry about keeping you waiting. We’ve had a few problems.”

  “Fire in the radio room,” Steve commented as he sat down. Both men appeared grim, so he asked, “How bad was it?”

  “We won’t be ordering pizza anytime soon,” the NCO said.

  Cage gave the Staff Sergeant a dirty look as he said, “I’d like to introduce the newly demoted Private Fagan, my straight man.”

  After exchanging greetings, Steve said, “If there’s anything we can do to help while we’re staying here, just let us know.”

  Fagan gave a half-laugh and asked, “Can you fix a radio?”

  Steve smiled and said, “I can’t, but I have someone in my group that can.”

  Both men looked at him skeptically, so Steve told them about how he and Brain had been working at the radio station when the HWNW virus broke out, then gave them a synopsis of how his group had only managed to make it this far because of the technician’s knowledge.

  When he was finished, Cage looked at Fagan and said with raised eyebrows, “It won’t hurt to give him a shot at it.”

  Fagan shrugged and said, “I don’t see how he could do any more damage. It looked like everything was pretty much fried, sir. And if he does get it to work…” Fagan shrugged.

  This was enough for Cage. It would take two days to get a replacement radio to the base, and that was far too long to be out of contact. Standing, he said, “Then let’s do it.”

  Fort Redoubt:

  With her long brown hair tucked up in a black bandana and her face turned toward the rapidly darkening forest, Tick-Tock almost didn’t recognize Denise as he approached her. Stopping only because the woman seemed unsteady on her feet and was leaning too far backward, he reached out to keep her from falling off the parapet. When she turned at his touch, his heart leapt with joy when he saw her face. Changing his reach from a steadying hand to enveloping her in a hug, he said, “It’s me, Babe.”

  In disbelief, Denise said, “Tick-Tock?”

  “I just got back,” he explained. “What in the hell are you doing up here?”

  Clutching him tightly, she said, “They had so many people coming into the hospital that were so badly wounded that I felt guilty for being there just because I was a little dizzy. Rick came through looking for volunteers to man the walls, so I got up, got dressed and came out here.”

  Loosening his grip on her, Tick-Tock quickly grabbed her again when she started to fall over.

  “You shouldn’t be out here,” he told her sternly, his thoughts on how he would get them away from the fort.

  “I can stand if I lean against something,” she explained.

  “Can you walk?” he asked, his heart dropping at the reality of the situation.

  “I made it this far,” she told him.

  And it looks like just doing that wiped you out, Tick-Tock thought to himself.

  Trying to think of another way out of the fort besides on foot, he came up blank. There was no way Denise could make it as far as the gate, much less away from the dead that were swarming the area. Even with the help of his people, it would be im
possible.

  His thoughts were interrupted as Denise reached out to caress his shoulder and ask, “What are you doing back here, Honey? I thought you were out with the patrols?”

  Not wanting to tell her the about their now aborted escape, Tick-Tock smiled and said, “I came here to be with you, Babe.”

  ***

  His shoulder aching, Lieutenant Wilkes pulled the string on the bow back and let his arrow fly. Seeing it pierce the eye of one of the dead, he didn’t stop to congratulate himself on his aim as he drew another from his quiver. Feeling only three left, he pulled one out and nocked it as he looked around at the men and women in his command to assess how many arrows they had left. With an audible grunt of displeasure, he saw that most had the same or even less than he did. They had each started off with thirty apiece, but the dead coming at them down the road were so numerous that they had almost used them up in the first five minutes of contact.

  Not wanting anyone to use their firearms and attract more dead toward them, he called out, “Fall back to the outer wire. Fall back to the outer wire. We’ll rearm at the gate.”

  Pleased to see his men and women retreating in an orderly manner as they fired their remaining bolts before turning and running for the safety of the wire, Wilkes made sure that everyone was past him before he followed. Fatigued and winded from the ongoing battle he had been fighting for the past three hours, his feet felt like lead as he picked them up and dropped them in a faltering jog. Behind him, the mob of dead, indifferent to the feeling of being tired or the need to breath, only took seconds to cover the fifty feet to where he and his command had taken their stand.

  Looking ahead, Wilkes noticed that the men and women who had already made it to safety were taking up position behind the razor wire on either side of the gate and were switching from bows and arrows to automatic weapons. Seeing that their numbers were bolstered by two Jeeps with machine guns mounted on them, he started waving and shouting, “No gunfire, no gunfire.”

  In reply, they screamed for him to get down.

  Fear shot through Wilkes when he realized what was happening. The hours of listening to the constant whining of the dead had made him inured to their noise. This, coupled with his own labored breathing and the blood pounding in his ears, made him deaf to the sound of the dead only feet behind him.

  Turning his head slightly, Wilkes could see dirty hands reaching out to him from at least a dozen reanimated corpses. Feeling a surge of adrenalin, it lasted for only a second before turning into a sick feeling in his stomach. Fearing that he would be ripped apart by the dead before they were gunned down if he dropped to the ground, he also knew he would never make it the last twenty feet to the gate before the dead caught him.

  Opting for the long shot, he dropped down.

  Dozens of automatic rifles and two .50 caliber machine guns opened up, their bullets tearing into the wall of dead flesh surging down the road. Thick, black ochre sprayed out as the rounds impacted the reanimated corpses, covering the ground in a sheet. Those hit by the heavy machine guns literally flew apart while the rounds from the automatic weapons punched neat entry holes and ragged exit wounds through the bodies of the dead. Dancing and shuddering from bullets that hit their extremities and torsos, only the Zs hit in the brain or the spinal column fell in the first salvo.

  Seeing that they had literally obliterated the dead closing on Lieutenant Wilkes, the defenders of Fort Redoubt reloaded and switched from firing on full automatic to squeezing off short bursts into the craniums of their attackers. While most of them were more than proficient with the bow and arrow due to long hours spent practicing, the rationing of ammunition for their firearms showed in their marksmanship. By the time the last zombie dropped to the ground in a spray of bone, brain and black blood, they had fired off half their ammunition.

  Even after the firing stopped, it still took Wilkes a full minute to realize that the one-sided firefight was over. Lifting his head, he looked at the haze of gunpowder hanging in the air to his front before looking back at the lifeless bodies of the dead. From beyond the wire, a cheer rose up and calls of “We won” and “We beat them back” came to his ears.

  Standing, he looked down as he brushed the dirt and mud off his clothes so his people wouldn’t see the rage etched on his face. Trying to contain himself, he forced himself to be grateful that they had saved his life, while at the same time choking back a tirade at how badly they had fucked up.

  Don’t you see that this is only the tip of the iceberg? his mind screamed at them. You dumbasses blew your load for a few hundred dead. Now what the fuck happens when the rest of them come rolling toward us? That’s why we’ve been using the bows and arrows and spears. We need to save our ammunition for the main body, and we’ve got to maintain noise discipline.

  Finally getting control of himself, he raised his head and called for his radioman to report that the dead-asses had reached the outer fence on the south side of the fort.

  “But we wiped them out,” the man called back.

  Completely exhausted from his close call, Wilkes didn’t have the strength to put him in his place. In a quiet voice, he said, “Just call in the report.”

  Making his way through the gate, Wilkes heard the whine coming from behind him. From a distance, it sounded to him like a car with bad breaks coming to a long stop. The sound gradually rose in a crescendo until the first of the Ds appeared, staggering wildly down the road as they fought to move faster toward the food. The two-lane blacktop was quickly packed from one side to the other with the hungry dead as the trees on either side waved crazily with their passing.

  Attracted by the gunfire, they were coming at a run.

  As the dead rushed toward them, Wilkes found the strength to scream, “Prepare to be overrun.”

  Russellville, Arkansas:

  Brain took a long look at the burned out interior of the radio room to get his bearings, then got to work. Pulling out a screwdriver, he took the front panel off the main receiver and studied it. After removing two more and peering at their interior, he said, “I know what the problem is. If you have an electrician, you need to get him in here.”

  Not entirely trusting the young technician, Fagan asked, “You figured out what’s wrong with it that fast?”

  Annoyed at his skills being questioned, Brain told him, “Yeah, you need a new Flux capacitor.”

  Seeing the Staff Sergeant ball his fists, Cage intervened by stepping in front of him and asking, “So you think you can fix it?”

  Brain gave him a withering look and said, “I don’t think I can fix it, I know I can fix it. It’s going to take a little while, though.”

  Slightly annoyed at Brain’s arrogant manner, Major Cage asked, “How long is a little while?”

  Feeling like he had asserted his dominance enough, Brain told him, “If you can get your electrician in here to restring the burned out crap, I should have you up and running in about thirty minutes or so.” Patting the side of the receiver, he added, “This is the military version of the same stuff I used to put together from kits when I was a kid. Being the military version, its casing is built to be resistant to water, shock and fire. It doesn’t look like any of the insides were damaged, but I won’t know for sure until I power them up. Even if some of the electronics got fried, I should be able to cannibalize the other equipment for parts.”

  Having surveyed the damage for themselves, Cage and Fagan looked at him in shock that it would be so easy.

  Seeing their hesitation, Brain raised one eyebrow and gestured toward the door as he said in a trying voice, “An electrician, please.”

  Annoyed by the insolence in Brain’s tone, Fagan let it out as he called through the door, “I need the electrician on duty in here A.S.A.P. If he’s eating, I want you to wipe his mouth and drag him in here. If he’s on the shitter, I want you to wipe his ass, pull his pants up and drag him in here. If he’s fucking someone, I want you to pull him out, pull his pants up and drag him in here.”


  His command was met by a flurry of movement in the outer office as the men and women on duty scurried to do the Staff Sergeant’s bidding.

  Satisfied, Fagan turned to Brain and said, “I’m going to station a runner outside the door. If you need anything, you tell them to get it. As soon as you have the radio fixed, I want you to send them to get us.”

  Brain gave a half-salute and said, “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Reminding himself that the technician was a civilian, Fagan held his temper at the man’s disrespect as he led Cage and Steve through the door. When they were outside the building, he said, “He’s an arrogant little fucker, isn’t he?”

  Steve laughed and said, “You should have met him before all this.”

  Seeing the Staff Sergeant’s face grow red as he dwelled on Brain, Cage changed the subject by saying, “We should go up to the farmhouse and see how Doctor Connors is doing.”

  “If she’s available,” Steve said. “She was deep in some tests or something when we dropped Cindy and Heather off.”

  Cage stopped in his tracks. Looking worriedly at Steve, he asked, “You didn’t turn the girl over to Connors?”

  Anxious at the Major’s reaction, Steve hesitantly said, “She was busy, so her assistant met us. He and a Sergeant took them into the house.”

  From behind him, Fagan said ominously, “Connors doesn’t have an assistant.”

  Leaning forward, Cage asked, “What was the name of the man that met you up at the farmhouse?”

  “Some guy named Hawkins,” Steve told him, his blood running cold with fear at the reaction this brought from Cage and Fagan.

  Both men said, “Shit,” at the same time and started running for the farmhouse.

  Not knowing what was going on, but deciding it wasn’t good, Steve followed right behind them, quickly catching up with Cage.

  Men and women stopped to stare at their commanding officer, his chief NCO and a civilian racing through the camp. Those in their path found they had to jump out of the way or get forced out of the way by Fagan, who had taken the lead. He was going from point A to point B, and anything in front of him moved to the side or got bowled over. As they ran, Cage filled Steve in on the basics of Hawkins and the Malectron. He got as far as telling him about the strange disappearance of Lieutenant Randal when he noticed that Fagan had stopped by the side of a shipping container and was peeking around its corner.