by James Cook
Fuller turned and knelt down, letting the pressure wave from the blast roll over him, already loading another round into the launcher. He shifted his aim a bit to the left and fired again. Another explosion rocked the pawnshop, shaking the roof under our feet and sending sheaves of ice crashing to the ground. It had been a long time since I was that close to a grenade going off, and I had forgotten how powerful they were. There was an odd hollow feeling in my chest, and my ears rang despite having covered them up. I shook it off and reached for Hicks’ shoulder.
“Come on, time to move.”
Drawing my knife, I ran to the edge of the roof, dropped to my stomach, and lowered my legs over the precipice until I began to slide down. My blade bit into the ice and slowed my descent until I had gone as far as I could without falling. Raising the knife, I kicked away from the wall and dropped the remaining five feet to the ground. Even though I bent my knees to soften the landing, the impact jarred me all the way to my teeth. My knees let me know in no uncertain terms they didn’t appreciate this kind of abuse. A second later, Hicks dropped to the ground beside me. Quietly, of course.
“Let’s move,” I said. Hicks nodded once and followed me.
The carpet of dead flesh beneath our feet was so thick we couldn’t see the pavement, forcing us to step gingerly to keep from slipping and falling headlong into a mess of putrid meat and body fluids. Here and there, an arm or a leg moved weakly, still directed by infected brains not quite destroyed enough to shut down. We avoided them, not wanting to waste limited ammo putting them out of their misery.
It seemed to take forever to reach the end of the alley where we could put our feet back on solid ground. Beyond us, the dead had recovered from the blasts and were once again closing in. I turned and raised an arm, signaling Eric, Holland, and Sanchez to start laying down covering fire. They steadied their aim and went to work.
Now that his bullets were flying over my head, it occurred to me I may have dealt a bit too harshly with Holland a few minutes ago. All it would take was one slip of his aim, and I would be sporting a new orifice where it didn’t belong. I resolved to apologize for my behavior, assuming I lived through the next few minutes.
The horde was thinner where we emerged, but still numerous enough to overwhelm us if we didn’t move quickly. I set off at a dead run, Hicks following closely on my right. Without stopping, I raised my rifle and picked off a couple of ghouls who wandered into our path. Firing while running was a difficult skill I had mastered over a decade ago, and it had saved my life more times than I could count.
Hicks shifted his rifle to his back, drew a pistol from his tactical vest, and began firing one-handed. A walker hit the dirt with each squeeze of the trigger.
Impressive.
We kept at it for a few hundred meters, only firing when a walker got close enough to be a threat, and reloading on the run. The horde gradually grew thinner until we finally left the last cluster behind. When they were out of sight, I slowed to a steady jog, willing my heart rate and breathing to slow down. Hicks matched my pace, looking none the worse for wear.
“Let’s stop for a minute. I need to get my bearings.”
“Okay,” Hicks said.
In the short time since we left the pawnshop, the storm had worsened dramatically. Visibility had dropped to less than ten meters, and gale force winds sent streamers of snow howling along like the world’s biggest sandblaster. I put on my goggles and tied my scarf around my mouth. Hicks did the same.
“I think we’re close to the transport,” I said. “Let’s get on a rooftop and see what we can see.”
A restaurant nearby had a service ladder leading to the roof, but the bottom eight feet were covered by a security grate. Rather than waste time trying to break the lock, I put my back against the ladder and laced my fingers together. Hicks stepped into my hands, pushed up until he could plant one boot on my shoulder, then climbed the rest of the way to the roof. Once he was up, I backed off, took a couple of running steps, leapt for the lowest crossbar, and caught it on the first try. Brute strength got me up the next few rungs until I could get my feet high enough to climb properly. Above me, Hicks stayed low, eyes constantly moving.
Once I was up, I motioned to the false front facing the street. “Let’s take a look.”
Peering over the edge, I could barely see the other side of the highway. Everything was covered in a thick layer of white, but the shapes of the buildings were familiar.
“Okay, I know where we are,” I said. “The cross street over there is Reedy Creek Road. We passed the transport a couple of blocks back.”
Hicks squinted through his goggles, trying to read the road signs through the driving snow. “You sure about that? I can’t make heads or tails of this place. Everything looks the same.”
“Trust me, I’m positive. We need to head east on 79. The transport is only about a hundred yards from here, we just can’t see it.”
“You’re the boss.”
We climbed back down and followed the highway along one of the ditches flanking it. The wind blew directly in our faces, forcing us to lean forward and constantly scrape snow from our goggles. The drifts at our feet were already halfway to our knees and getting deeper. I began to worry how I was going to drive off the horde and get the others to safety. We were already in near-whiteout conditions, and things were only going to get worse as the day went on. Driving the transport away from town with little to no visibility was going to be damned tricky. But there was nothing for it. It was either that or freeze to death.
Ahead of us, the boxy outline of the transport began to resolve itself through the swirl of powdery white. Movement caught my eye near the driver’s door, and I reached out a hand for Hicks’ shoulder. A shift in the air brought a snippet of voice past my ear.
“…the fuck you start this…”
And then it was gone, replaced by the howling gale. Hicks heard it too, and we both hit the ground at the same time. I tapped his shoulder, forked my fingers at my eyes, and then pointed to the drainage ditch on our right. He nodded and began crawling toward it. Once over the edge, he worked his way forward to get a better angle on whoever it was checking out our wheels.
I backed off slowly, being careful to stay low and avoid sudden movements. Movement draws the eye, and the last thing I wanted was to be spotted out in the open with no cover. When I could no longer see the transport, I changed direction and belly-crawled to the other side of the highway before standing up and circling behind the closely packed buildings.
A block away, there was a narrow gap between Dixon and Lawry Insurance Agency LLC: Your Local State Farm Representatives, and Kelly’s Konsignment Boutique. Both buildings were in surprisingly good shape, and probably contained a small fortune in salvage. The insurance agency undoubtedly had reams of paper packaged conveniently in nice big boxes, not to mention office supplies and computers. All of which were valuable, especially the paper. Then there were the clothes in the consignment boutique, most of which were probably women’s fashions and children’s wear, which would be in high demand come springtime. A busy little corner of my mind started tallying up how much bacon, wheat, chicken jerky, and whiskey I could trade all those items for, and what price they would fetch at one of the many trading posts along the Mississippi River.
The rest of my brain—the part actually engaged in living long enough to see my dreams of prosperity come to fruition—noticed the alley ahead was in the lee of the wind, making it much quieter than the highway beyond.
If I stayed low and moved slowly, the person by the transport would not be able to see or hear me, but I could see and hear him. Still, it was risky. I wished like hell I had brought my winter-pattern ghillie suit with me, but it was on the transport along with the rest of my gear where it wasn’t doing me a damned bit of good.
Oh well. Safety third.
I slung my rifle back, drew my pistol, and dropped to my belly. The snow beneath me was deep, so I wiggled down until my chest hit the t
hick layer of ice at the bottom. Now I had a nice twelve inches of camouflage to hide in. I couldn’t see anyone ahead of me, so I took a chance and tossed a few handfuls of snow over my head, coating my back. More snow joined it from the sky, slowly forming a concealing blanket.
The cold wasn’t strong enough to muscle past my thick winter jacket, but it was only a matter of time. The longer I laid there, the more my body heat would melt the snow around me, and when that happened, the shivers would follow along in a hurry. Then there was Hicks to think about, hiding on the other side of the highway in much the same condition. I got moving.
Most people have no concept of how slow you have to move to avoid detection, how much patience you need to do it right. Growing up, my uncle—who raised me as his own after my father died—took me hunting every fall. He had the patience of a glacier, that man. He could move with geological slowness, his breathing under strict control, fully aware of every scrape of fabric and rustle of leaves beneath his feet. Sometimes, he would click the safety on his rifle, and I could swear my eardrums shattered.
By the time the good folks at Quantico got their hands on me, I was already an old hand at stalking, and I could out-shoot half the instructors. Naturally, I soon became the subject of much envy among my fellow sniper candidates. Even the instructors, who were supposed to be neutral third parties, had a bit of a love-hate relationship with me. It didn’t help that on my last stalk I got within a hundred yards of the observation post before firing my two shots and reading the card. One of the instructors had a walker—the living kind, mind you, not one of the undead—running around in circles, insistently telling him ‘sniper at your feet’ and getting negatives until he was fuming, spitting mad. The poor guy almost fell off his stool when I stood up.
The snow piled on my back as I inched toward the mouth of the alley. Even without my ghillie suit, the man at the transport would have had to dig through the snow to see me. I kept my head down and timed my movements with the gusting of the wind. It took me about ten minutes to get where I wanted to be, and I was willing to bet the guys back at the pawnshop were getting worried. I hoped Thompson didn’t do anything stupid, like send someone after me. If he tried, I hoped Sanchez could talk him out of it.
Slowly, gradually, I raised my head out of the snow, just enough so I could see over the drift in front of me. I had a good view of the transport and of the man looking it over. He squatted next to one of the fuel tanks, ear pressed to the metal, rapping on it with a knuckle. I shifted just a bit and looked up into the driver’s compartment. Sure enough, there was another man, bundled up in rags, rifle standing next to him on the bench seat. He was hunched over, one hand moving around on the console from one switch to another, obviously trying to figure out which one started the big machine. The start button was purposefully not labeled because of situations like this. And even if the would-be thieves did find it, the engine wouldn’t turn over without the key currently residing on a string around my neck.
The thieves’ confusion was understandable, as the transport didn’t look like a car, or a truck, or any other standard vehicle. It looked as if a farm tractor and a Yamaha Rhino had a baby, fed it steroids, injected it with growth hormones, and then hitched a trailer to its ass. The driver’s compartment seated two, the passenger compartment behind it seated twelve with standing room for six more, and the trailer attached to the rear frame was big enough to haul two full-sized pickup trucks loaded single file. Its twin fuel tanks, currently three-quarters full of JP8 jet fuel, held fifty gallons each.
The Facilitator the Army dropped off with it had boasted its multi-fuel versatility was unmatched, and in a pinch, it could even run on a barrel of whiskey. I told him that was impossible, as no self-respecting Outbreak survivor would dare waste that much valuable whiskey on something as stupid as driving.
Pushing these thoughts aside, I shuffled back down into the snow and rested my head on the ground, eyes closed.
Decision time.
It would be easy to simply kill these guys and get back to the others, but that would leave unanswered questions. I don’t like unanswered questions. I wanted to know who these men were, where they had come from, and what they were doing here. None of my men had found any signs of recent habitation during our initial sweep of the town, so we weren’t dealing with locals. Meaning they either followed us, or arrived at the same time by coincidence.
It was possible they were just fleeing the horde, spotted the transport, and saw it as an easy escape. In their place, depending on how desperate I was, I might have done the same thing. Bearing that in mind, it would be wrong to simply kill them outright without giving them a chance to explain themselves.
Maybe they needed help. Maybe they were lost and starving. Maybe they knew where to find other survivors. Maybe their group was low on food or medical supplies and sent them foraging. Maybe they had families waiting on them, anticipating their return. In this age of desolation, stealing doesn’t necessarily make a person evil. It just means they’re in trouble and want to live. Maybe that was the case here. Maybe I could help them.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. I hate maybes. Time to get some answers.
Peering over the snow again, I waited until the one closest to me finished checking the fuel tank and walked back around to the driver’s side. A few seconds passed. The man in the cab leaned down to talk to his partner.
Move now!
I popped up and walked quickly toward the transport, staying low, pistol aimed at the man in the cab. He didn’t turn around. I circled to the back of the trailer and knelt, making sure to stay back so they wouldn’t see me in the mirrors on the door. Their voices were clear now.
“…there’s no start button like a semi, and I don’t see a keyhole anywhere.”
“Well, it’s got an ignition system, that’s for sure. Let’s pop the hood and see if we can bypass it.”
“You think you can do that?”
“Maybe. It’s worth a shot. Watch my back, those soldiers might come back any minute.”
“You got it.”
Footsteps crunched in the snow, moving around the transport’s front end. I heard the creak and rattle of the ladder. Door slamming. More crunching. More rattling as they loosed the retaining lugs on the hood. I waited until I heard the squealing of large hinges before moving.
The man from the cab had his back to me, facing the direction of the horde. I moved up quickly, gun trained on his back. When I was ten feet from him, I stopped.
“Don’t move!”
He jumped and turned around, fumbling under his long, heavy coat.
“I said don’t move!”
The one tinkering with the engine leapt down, but before he could run, Hicks burst up through the snow and fired two rounds just behind his feet.
“Shit!” he shouted, raising his hands. The man facing me was still trying to get under his coat. I put a round in the dirt in front of him, spraying his legs with stinging ice and asphalt. “Do you want to die?” I shouted.
He bolted for the other side of the street. I tracked him, finger tightening on the trigger. He finally got his hands on what he was rooting around for, spun quickly, and brought it up.
AK-47.
Game over, buddy. I double tapped him in the chest. He stumbled and fell backward with a howl, then, to my surprise, gripped his rifle, sat up, and tried to level it at me again. I aimed my next shot at his forehead, but it struck low, smashing through his teeth and blowing his brain stem out the back of his neck. The rifle clattered to the ground.
Swinging to my right, I trained my gun on engine-guy. “You want to join him?”
“N-no sir.”
“Then keep your hands where I can see them. Hicks, cuff this asshole.”
Hicks switched to his pistol and moved in. “You try anything, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do. Y’hear?”
The man nodded. “Yes sir.”
Hicks searched him, took his weapons and gear, applied the riot cuffs, and ord
ered the man to go flat on his stomach while he secured a set of zip ties around his ankles. Satisfied our prisoner wasn’t going anywhere, I approached the dead man and picked up his rifle, looking for the manufacturers stamp. It was on the bottom, slightly forward of the trigger guard, spidery writing etched cleanly.
Chinese. Just like the Free Legion.
“Son of a bitch.”
I searched the dead man’s pockets, pulled off his boots, cut open the lining of his jacket. No hidden items, papers, or maps. Nothing to tell me where he came from, what group he was with, or what he was doing here. Aside from his clothes, all he had was a tactical vest. MOLLE, just like mine. Attached were six spare mags for the AK, a small first aid kit, flashlight, a couple of glow sticks, small roll of paracord, and a fire steel. Two pouches for water bladders were mounted to the back. One held water, and the other had a pair of black plastic handles protruding from the top. It yielded a pair of bolt cutters, a scavenger’s best friend.
Underneath his shirt, I saw the distinctive U-shaped outline of body armor. I cut it off and looked it over. Two mushroomed .45 slugs less than an inch apart in the chest directly over the ceramic trauma plate. A testament to both my marksmanship and the quality of the armor.
Well armed, and well equipped, but no food. Just weapons, water, and a few essentials. Looking the body over, it didn’t look starved. He had been strong, well fed, in good physical condition.
Observe. Remember. Don’t jump to conclusions.
I left the body on the ground, but gathered up his weapons and kit. A Kalashnikov and seven full magazines could buy a horse, or feed a family for a month. No sense in letting them go to waste. After stowing them in one of the storage compartments under a passenger bench, I grabbed a roll of duct tape and walked back around the transport. The prisoner was still lying on his stomach with Hicks’ rifle pointed at the back of his head. I grabbed him and rolled him over, looking into eyes wide with fear. He tried to speak, but I stopped him with an upraised index finger.
