Ghost Run

by J. L. Bourne

  I recalled the machine, waiting until I heard the soft clicks of its synthetic hooves on the driveway outside the door. I could handle half a dozen of them. With no swarms in the vicinity, I stowed the GARMR and listened to Willie Nelson, the only CD I could find in the truck.

  2145

  The thing in the window kept rapping on the glass, trying to get out. I pulled the NOD from my pack, dialed my red dot down to the lowest setting, and rolled down the passenger window. The moon was reflecting its bright eight-minute-old light showdown, illuminating the area.

  Through my optic I could make out the female corpse standing there with a bandolier of something hung across her body. Possibly shotgun shells. She’d been dead a long time; her eyes were sunken and her lips shriveled, allowing the moonlight to shine from her jagged and broken teeth. I took aim with my SBR and squeezed the trigger. The round impacted the glass, shattering the pane instantaneously, sending the corpse to the floor with a thump. I couldn’t hear anything else coming from inside the house. I sat there in the cab with my NOD still on, watching the smoke slowly rise from the ejection port.

  Higher Education

  Day 7

  1100

  Last night I dreamed of alligators, hundreds of them chasing me all over God’s green earth. At some point, I thought I’d gotten up and checked the window again, seeing the curtain move as if something was inside. Now my back aches and I’m fatigued from tossing and turning. Something about the nearby house puts my hackles up.

  • • •

  At about 0700 I had put my boots on, stretched, and checked my surroundings in the morning light. Satisfied that nothing would grab me on the way out, I jumped down to the running board and to the driveway below. Without even thinking, I pressed the Follow button on the Simon and watched the empty lettuce boxes I’d stacked fall away from the sleeping GARMR. Its sensor spun up and its head tracked me as I began to walk, waiting until a space of ten feet was between us before its electrical and hydraulic servo motors sent it trotting after me. I don’t know why I told the machine to follow; I just did. It wasn’t a dog, but it was something that filled some primal void in my brain that didn’t like being completely alone. The machine was utterly efficient in its movements, rationing every joule expended. I’d only seen cheetahs walk like that on TV. With the African population being what it was before the dead walked, I doubted that any cheetahs remained. Perhaps they weren’t nuked and the corpses were all being picked apart by the sand and birds of the Sahara.

  I edged forward toward the large house. Its curtain-filled windows and disheveled appearance gave off an unsettling vibe. I walked past the front of the house as the GARMR clicked behind me down the vintage ribbon driveway. Nourished by the heavy rains, huge mushrooms sprouted in the center of the driveway between the ribbons that led to the garage up ahead. Reaching the driveway, I could see the tall grass waving beside the garage. Thinking of the wild pigs, I raised my carbine in defense.

  The GARMR advanced ahead of me onto the slab in front of the three closed garage bay doors. As it reached its spot, an extremely decomposed corpse emerged from beside the garage and began to come for me. The GARMR walked in front of the pseudo-skeleton, causing it to stumble. As it began to recover its balance, I studied the corpse. I could not see one square inch of skin remaining on its body. Sinew and tendons worked its limbs in plain view like a see-through grandfather clock. Its one milky white eye locked onto me. I could see the individual bones in its hands and even exposed ribs. I squeezed the trigger, impacting the thing at the top of the head. The rotting corpse nearly fell onto the GARMR as it hit the concrete driveway with a wet splat.

  Birds flew up and away from the brush in reaction to the gunshot. I reached down and tugged at the center garage bay door with no success. It was locked down pretty tight. With the other two doors also secure, I rounded the side of the garage between it and the screened-in area behind the house. There was a side door underneath a massive wisteria plant that wrapped around a pergola post like a python and covered the pergola’s roof. The unkempt wisteria trunk was in a black pot next to the pergola post, but it had long forced its roots through the bottom of the pot and deep into the ground. It had already dominated the pergola; it was slowly breaking the thinner boards on the roof and beginning to invade the garage soffit. In several years’ time, it would no doubt cover the garage and begin to wrench its way through the nooks and crannies, eventually compromising the roof.

  The side door was locked tight as well. With some hesitation, I placed the muzzle of my Saker suppressor up to the doorknob, trying to center the bore on the keyhole, and pulled the trigger. The 300 round hit the lock with a loud bang and blasted through, knocking the inner components through the other side into the garage. I again gripped the doorknob and forced it to turn, crunching what was left of the lock mechanism. After some elbow grease, the lock finally gave and the door creaked inward, revealing the pitch-black inside. I flipped on my gun light, blasting photons through the swirling dust. Quickly, I reached over my head and pulled the plastic handle on the end of a string, disengaging the garage door opener motor from the door. I tossed my rifle over onto my back as I raised the door.

  Before I got the door fully up, I knew I was in trouble. The smell arrived just before the shadow, and then the creature wrapped its arms around my chest, tackling me to the floor. The piercing pain of the gun’s receiver digging into my back took my breath away. I quickly grabbed the corpse by the neck, feeling its individual vertebrae wobble on cartilage between my fingers. I marveled for a millisecond at the coldness of the rotting meat as I instinctively squeezed its throat, as if somehow that would help. I reached for my automatic knife, as my fixed blade was on my belt behind my back. I wasn’t going to chance the pistol bringing an army down on me unless I had to.

  The creature snapped its maw open and shut like a factory press when I put the knife to its temple and pressed the fire button. I heard the thwack of the blade leave the handle, but the goddamned spring was too weak, causing the blade to hang fire. In a fit of panic, I flicked the knife with my wrist, throwing the blade out of the handle into its locked position. Just before the damned thing sank its teeth into my neck, I pushed my blade into its eye socket and twisted, turning out the lights. Immediately its muscles relaxed. I could feel the vertebrae loosen in my left hand and its jaw went slack. I pushed the creature off me and onto a dry spot of oil on the garage floor, and yanked my knife from its brain. The GARMR trotted up between the corpse and me, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, and then out the mostly open garage door.

  Breathing heavily, I retracted the blade, readying it for the next near-death experience. So many things I wouldn’t be telling Tara about when I got back. The humidity was creeping up along with the sun, and the mosquitoes were also out and about. I often wondered what would happen when they landed on a walking corpse, looking for a sip of blood. Serves the bastards right. Malaria was in the Keys right now, or was before I left.

  With the light beaming in through the open garage door, I noticed a car covered in the third bay. 25th Anniversary was embossed in silver letters on the white cover. I yanked the corner of it, scattering dust into the air. Underneath was the object of every Generation Xer’s fantasy: a red Lamborghini Countach. I was stunned by the beauty of the vehicle. I went over to the window and looked inside, admiring the hand-stitched leather seats but otherwise Spartan interior. This was a super-car, not a Cadillac. It was not designed for driver comfort, only pure speed and handling. I still remember the poster on a high school buddy’s wall stating boldly, “Justification for Higher Education,” depicting a five-car garage filled with sports cars, one of them being a Lambo like this one. If I could just find the keys, I thought before reminding myself where I was and what I was doing. It was a hard fall back to reality.

  I searched the garage, careful not to ding the Lambo. While dumping tubs and looking through the industrial shelves, I found some two-cycle gas, some pow
er tools, and a charger for the tool batteries. Exiting the garage with what I’d found, I noticed the array of solar panels at the south side of the house on the roof, concealed from the road. The rig needed diesel, so I pushed back the urge to clear the mansion and took what I’d found back to the truck. No need to hang out here any longer than necessary. Marking the house on my atlas, I started the rig and continued north down the desolate road.

  • • •

  I’d nearly been killed twice since leaving the mansion, both times because I couldn’t get my trailer around the abandoned cars and had to push or pull the land hulks out of my way. The undead homed in on the screeching metal sound as the rig wrenched on the obstacles, forcing me to either run them over or waste precious subsonic ammunition. After passing through a particularly sticky situation involving an overturned bus and me emptying a magazine, I came upon an industrial park off the beaten path and hopefully away from the undead.

  Lonnietown Tool Factory looked to be a hundred thousand square feet and two stories. I pulled the rig into the factory’s shadow and rifled through the glove box. I had to get rid of the trailer or risk a repeat of what I’d just gone through. The wind was blowing in great gusts, hitting the trailer broadside and causing it to shake.

  I knew that one of the steps was to release the fifth-wheel lock from the driver’s side. I’d seen it done once before. Everything after that was trial and error. Paranoid, I checked all around the rig, making sure that I was alone. I reached under the trailer, grasping the greasy metal ring, and gave it a solid pull. The lock released with ease. So far, so good.

  I knew I’d need to crank the landing gear down on the trailer so I could drive away from it, but doing so would mean I was committed. If the gear was down on the trailer and I was attacked, I’d be on foot.

  I began to crank.

  I turned it over and over, making little progress on the gear until I accidentally pushed the bar a certain way, changing the gear ratio. From then on, the gear dropped rather quickly. When the foot pads were on the ground, I switched back to the low gear and torqued it a few turns, listening to the creaking steel. As I turned to jump up into the rig to move forward, I noticed the two air hoses and the electrical connector attached to the trailer. I pulled those as well and attached them to the back of the cab.

  Back in the rig, I put it in gear and edged forward.

  The landing gear made a horrific screech as it scraped forward, gouging the parking lot concrete.

  Creatures began to pound the metal walls inside the factory, sending out great drumroll rounds of noise across the parking lot and into the industrial park all around me.

  What the fuck am I doing wrong? I thought.

  I looked at the panel of switches in front of me and flipped the one labeled Air Suspension.

  I could feel the truck tilt slowly, lowering the back. Jumping out of the cab, I heard air rush from underneath and saw the back end creep downward, away from the trailer. As soon as I saw the kingpin clear the fifth wheel, I scrambled back in the cab and cringed as I put it in gear and edged forward.

  I was clear of the trailer.

  I couldn’t see them, I couldn’t hear them, but I knew they were coming.

  I then sprinted to the back of the trailer, my gun painfully hitting my side, and pulled the ramp.

  “Checkers, follow!” I shouted.

  The machine stood and began lumbering down the aluminum ramp onto the concrete. I hurried back to the cab and the machine trotted after me. With its ten-foot human standoff protocol in place, I had to grab it by its chassis and guide it up the steps behind the cab. As I tied the GARMR down for travel, the first of them broke through the tall grass across the parking lot. I nearly bugged out and left, but I remembered the fuel cans and hose in the back of the trailer. I retrieved them, dropping the red plastic gas cans twice along the way. This sound caused the undead to move forward with even more determination. They knew something living was nearby, something warm and good. I tossed everything into the cab and climbed up inside as the first group entered the parking lot.

  I put the rig into a wide arc, as if still pulling a trailer, and turned out onto the access that led back to the main road. Leaving the tool factory, I watched the abandoned trailer get smaller in my side mirrors as the dead overwhelmed the area, and felt the difference in acceleration. If I had a welder and some power, I’d turn this beast of a rig into something Mad Max would be proud to drive.

  • • •

  I came upon the outskirts of a town as the sun threatened to dip behind the trees. Driving slowly, I passed by a small gas station. The inside didn’t interest me; it was more than likely looted down to the last bag of black licorice (the worst candy remaining on the planet, before, during, and after the dead returned). I turned the rig widely into the station, still adjusting for the trailer that wasn’t there. I left it running when I jumped down.

  The gas hoses were all lying on the ground around the pumps. I managed to get one of the lids off the diesel tank access and put my nose down to it. There was fuel inside, but I didn’t know how far in it was and didn’t have a pump to get the precious fuel aboveground.

  A crashing sound pierced the droning of the rig’s engine, causing me to bring my carbine around. It was trapped behind the shatterproof gas station doors. I wouldn’t be getting diesel here.

  I was back in my seat and rolling north as the sun threatened to touch the tops of the trees ahead of me. I was about to stop for the night when I neared another rig jackknifed on the road, blocking one side of the path ahead.

  A fuel truck.

  I could clearly see the diesel markings on the side. I screamed a triumphant “Fuck yeah!” in the cab as I got closer. But my excitement was cut short when I noticed the string of bullet holes that tore through the fuel trailer from top to bottom. I rode up to the wreck, cursing at my bad luck, and parked on the other side of the unintentional roadblock.

  I headed straight for the fuel trailer. I had no idea how old the bullet holes were, but the sound attenuation from hitting it with my gun told me it was dry. The fuel was robbed by evaporation, probably even before I escaped San Antonio a lifetime ago. A corpse decayed inside the cab, killed by multiple gunshots puncturing its face, neck, and shoulder. The holes were bigger than 5.56 and the impact pattern suggested automatic.

  A crew-served machine gun.

  Whoever Swiss-cheesed this trucker and his cargo were either military or someone bad enough to take an MRAP or other armor from them. Three matted-hair-covered skulls surrounded by a jigsaw puzzle of bones were scattered near the driver’s door. Two of the skulls had bullet holes in them.

  I pulled the handle on the trucker’s door; the weight of the corpse inside flung it open, spilling what was left of the trucker onto the asphalt. Gripped tightly in the trucker’s bony right hand was a small snub-nosed revolver. The glass pattern on the driver’s window suggested that a lot of rounds had come in, and some had come out. Whoever this guy was, he was returning automatic machine-gun fire with a fucking revolver. Hard-core.

  The guy still had skin left on his forearms, revealing an Airborne infantry tattoo. I couldn’t let him get eaten by coyotes like the rest of the poor bastards at my feet, so I tied some cordage to the corpse and dragged it to a nearby pickup truck, placing it inside. The trucker’s semi interior was covered with nasty dead-body shit from months in the elements. Maggots squirmed on the seat, hungry for what was left of the trucker. There was nothing useful remaining inside, and I was about to give up and get back in my rig, when I decided to check the fuel truck’s regular tanks. I had to put some torque into getting the cap off, but the effort was worth it: There was half a tank waiting for me.

  I rushed back to the semi to recover the gas cans and hose; as I rounded the front of the rig, I saw a mass of corpses moving south across a distant bridge, and heading in my direction. At any moment, they’d be within hearing range of the humming diesel engine. I got low, nearly to a crawl, and headed fo
r my rig’s passenger door opposite the horde’s line of sight. Opening it slowly, I crawled in and closed the passenger door with a single click. I quickly cut the engine and checked the locks before getting back into the sleeper compartment and drawing the curtains, cutting me off from the nightmare that approached in lockstep with the darkness.

  I frantically checked my gear, getting any noise that needed to be made out of the way before they were upon me. I pocketed two magazines and made sure the one in my gun was topped off. I was running low on suppressed 300 and didn’t stand a chance of surviving if my engine didn’t start and I was surrounded. In a final act of preparation, I placed my pack on the passenger seat and sat on the bed with the curtains parted just enough to see the sun dip below a nearby billboard.

  The creatures were already here.

  The lesser of the decomposed led the mass of what must have been thousands. As the river of corpses flowed around on both sides, I could not help but notice their interest in the rig.

  I could feel the cab move slightly from side to side as they nudged the truck.

  As I sat back in the sleeper, looking through the curtain opening, I saw a head pop up into view on the driver’s side and then fall away into the crowd.

  One of them actually made it up the step.

  I looked behind the cab: I saw the creatures keep marching south, disinterested in the fifth-wheel portion of the truck. Up front, they clumsily hit the hood and grille and tried to embrace the shielded exhaust pipes.

  Heat.

  The bastards were somehow attracted to the heat, to anything warm that might be alive.

  The rig shook harder as thousands of them gathered around, distracted by the warmth radiating from the engine and exhaust. Risking a peek through the right curtain, I saw the other semi. I’d left the door wide open. The things were not paying that much attention, probably because it hadn’t run hot in a while. Jan was right: These things could see heat up close. The horrifying experiment playing out before me proved just that.