“My boss would be very angry if I gave you my American rifle. We will give you a Kalishnikov and all of the bullets for it.” He took a second to ask Jimmy how many rounds there were in the two magazines. Jimmy told them there were forty nine.
“We will give you a Kalishnikov, fifty bullets, the Zil, and the gas.”
“Okay, American. Okay. Good trade.”
“Good trade.”
Dillon finally made a deal that two of the local kids would guide them to the railroad tracks that led to the Maadi Grand Mall in exchange for the AK. Dillon insisted on leaving the unloaded AK with the kids in the Wadi and not giving them the magazines until they reached the railroad tracks.
“Won’t the railroad tracks be exposed?” Jimmy asked.
“They shouldn’t be. They’re from the old British rail, and haven’t been used in a couple of decades. They’re pretty remote, running through back yards and mostly full of trash these days.”
“Fantastic.”
“And dogs, dad. Don’t forget the dogs.” Mikey said.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of street dogs back there, too.”
“I hate wild dogs.”
“Better than a horde of infected, right?”
“Barely.”
“Really, Jimmy?”
“Dogs bite harder.”
“I’ll protect you, tough guy.”
“Bite me.”
One of the kids, probably about ten years old, came over to them and said something in Arabic to Dillon.
“They’re ready. This is one of the kids that is taking us. His name is Hamid. The other is the taller kid over there, his name is Abdul.”
“Tasha rafna, Hamid wa Abdul. Ana ismi Mikey.” Mikey said, remembering just about all of the Arabic he had learned in school. The other two kids nodded and smiled. At that moment, Dillon couldn’t have been more proud.
Despite having wanted it before, Mikey didn’t want to carry his shield, so they left it behind with the ZIL. The initial awesomeness of fighting “zombies” with a sword and shield had worn off and the awareness of how heavy it would be to carry a shield around had dawned. They worked their way through parts of the suburb that Dillon had not even known existed, machetes at the ready in case they needed to defend themselves in the twisting alleys between the villas and apartment complexes. In Dillon’s estimation, there were too many concrete walls and too much chance of ricochet. They entered the rear garden of a villa through a back gate and then moved through a side gate to a small, trash filled alley. Then, moving quietly up to the street, they looked for infected. There were four, three scattered on the street and one in a car. Dillon looked at Jimmy and then at Mikey, Hamid, and Abdul.
“We’re going to try to sneak across, okay?”
“I think we should take our shots from here, including the one in the car, before they make too much noise and draw others or we get caught out in the open.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Dillon said. He didn’t like the idea of risking Mikey’s life. “Okay, but we move out of this alleyway to do it.”
“Alright.” Jimmy moved first, and Dillon was only a step behind him. Moving at a slow walk with their weapons at the ready, they easily downed the first two before they were even noticed. Jimmy killed the third while Dillon had to use two rounds to kill the one in the car. Three others had already showed up, drawn to the sound of the breaking glass. Jimmy fired a short burst at two as they ran towards him, then fired another short burst into them as they lay on the ground. Dillon fired two rounds into the third, both smacking into the chest.
Dillon stopped and checked his side of the street and knew that Jimmy was doing the same. Finally, he motioned to the kids to move up to him and Abdul took the lead again, moving along a weed-choked, rusty, iron-wrought fence that sat less than four feet from the side of a long-abandoned building until they came to an equally abandoned courtyard. There were a few date palms and sycamore in large concrete planters, and even an old lemon tree.
“This is the old international school. They closed it about a decade ago when they opened the CAS campus.” Dillon said, happy to recognize where he was.
“Yeah. Some of my classmates used to skateboard here, and they would get into fights with some of the local kids,” offered Mikey.
At a guess, Dillon was pretty sure he had two of those local kids with him. He scanned the courtyard, but it was empty. They moved through the courtyard and to a gap in the fence that you could have driven a motorcycle through. In the distance, a few dogs barked. The smell of garbage was appalling, and as they moved through the gap in the fence and through some bushes it became worse.
“Well, here we are.” he said, scanning left down the abandoned tracks as Jimmy scanned right. Dillon handed Abdul the two magazines of ammo and an MRE. He knew that the kids would need it more than him, and that they had weeks, if not months, of food waiting for them at the remaining apartment compound. “Shokran a mil, habibi. Shokran a mil.” he said, thanking the kids for their help. They smiled and waved before disappearing back the way they had came. Dillon took a moment to look south along the train tracks. They were barely visible under weeds and trash. He started walking, trying not to make too much noise as he moved.
“This is gross, dad,” said Mikey. Dillon nodded. He had tired of third world shit holes filled to the brim with trash. Now, he was wading knee-deep in it again, the sickening sweet smell of it burning his nostrils. Dillon shushed Mikey nonetheless. They moved south until the tracks started turning west towards the river. He knew that they would have to cross two major roads before they were within a block of the 611 complex. They came to the first one, Road 7, five minutes later. They all crouched for at least a half hour, listening to the sounds around them. There were definitely more than a few infected out there. It was about to get dicey again.
“We’re going to have to move and move fast,” said Jimmy. They were whispering, all huddled within an inch of each other as they looked in opposite directions to maintain 360 degrees of over watch.
“I don’t know, Jimmy. We’ve seen at least a half dozen and heard more out there. There’s a small, wooden kiosk to the left of the opening that used to sell cigarettes and sodas. After that, we’re looking at a large town square with a mall on the other side of it. There could be hundreds out there.”
“It’s only 30 meters. We can be across in five seconds. Then, we move along the right side. See the path through the garbage? Once we get about a hundred yards the tracks curve right enough that we can lose them if they chase us.”
“They won’t stop chasing us, and I have Mikey.”
“The longer we wait here the greater chance we have of being spotted. Then we’ll have to run AWAY from the direction we’re headed instead of towards it.”
“I know. Damn it. I know.”
“Come on, Dad, we can do this,” Mikey offered, trying to be helpful.
Every bit of Dillon’s military training was telling him to move forward, towards the objective. Every ounce of his parental instinct told him to not risk it. Mikey couldn’t run as fast as an adult, and Dillon couldn’t run as fast if he carried him. That would mean that they would have to run a hundred yards and then stop to take care of any infected that had decided to follow them. Dillon weighed the situation carefully, noting the terrain meant the infected could only attack from two directions. They would have to take out any infected in front of them once they crossed the road before they turned to kill any pursuers, but it was the best, the only, course of action.
“All right. We don’t need to go one at a time, this isn’t a gunfight. We all go at once, we take out any zombies in front of us, then we switch to take care of the ones that follow us down the tracks.”
“Copy,” said Jimmy.
“Copy,” imitated Mikey.
They waited a few more minutes for a group of three infected to sniff around the roadside before moving on, then they ran, staying as a group, across the road and along the path someone had made thr
ough the garbage. The way ahead, at least until the curve, looked clear, but Dillon looked back and noted perhaps a dozen infected following them. The infected were not quite smart enough to use the path, and they stumbled as much as they ran.
Jimmy was in the lead with Dillon bringing up the rear and Mikey in the center. As they rounded the corner, Jimmy slowed to a fast walk and brought up his submachine gun, rapidly putting single shots on multiple targets. Dillon stepped forward and to the right so he could see. In front were two dozen infected, the white robes suggesting that they had leaked out of a nearby mosque after seeking shelter. They looked like bloody ghosts, and Dillon flipped his weapon off of safe and started firing well-aimed shots into bodies as fast as he could. After a few shots, he spun around and began firing at the infected that were chasing them. There were at least a dozen close by, and it sounded like the sound of the infected stumbling through the garbage had attracted even more.
Hundreds more.
“Shit. Move! We gotta move!” Dillon said, a little louder than he would have wished. Dillon flipped the selector switch to automatic and dumped the rest of his magazine into the closest group, then rapidly reloaded and did it again. Jimmy was still engaging targets, making forward progress at about the pace of a fast walk. Still, the pack was coming at them a bit faster, and it wouldn’t be long until they were buried under a mob of biting and clawing zombies.
“Dad! Over here!” Mikey called. Mikey had moved over to the fencing and managed to get through an opening in the chain link fence. The fence itself was tangled with weeds, but it looked to be a construction site on the other side. Dillon started moving towards it, loading a third magazine and firing as fast as he could.
“Jimmy, let’s go! This way!”
Jimmy halted his forward movement a second, took a quick glance behind him, and then immediately ran for the gap in the chain link fence. Dillon was already half way through. Once through, Dillon fired through the fence as best as he could to give Jimmy some more time. Jimmy managed to get through the fence just before the first of a dozen or more zombies hit the fence, their teeth snapping angrily.
They all ran away from the fence, towards the shell of the building being constructed of formed concrete and brick. There was a ladder leading to the second story, and Dillon stopped to fire at the zombies pushing at the rusty fence as Jimmy and Mikey climbed. There were at least fifty, maybe more, and the fence lasted mere seconds under their combined weight. Dillon heard Jimmy start firing and moved up the latter as fast as he could. He was almost to the second floor when the ladder was knocked out from under him by the onrush of infected. One second he was almost safe, and then the next he was wildly clawing at the air for something, anything, to hold on to that would keep him from pitching into the crowd.
The Infected Land of the Dead © 2016 Cian Campbell
All Rights Reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are creations of the author’s imagination.
Cian Campbell is a U.S. Army veteran and current U.S. government employee who has worked in a number of the world’s roughest hot spots.
Land of the Dead (Book 1): Infected Page 11
