Ghost Run

by J. L. Bourne

  I checked the washer and noticed that my clothes were done, so I strung them out to dry on the line in the backyard; I could have used the dryer, but I wasn’t sure how much strain the home’s grid could handle. Back inside the house, I flipped on the lights and went to the master bedroom on the ground level and set up temporary shop. Again I laid my pack out on the large floor and dumped it for reorganization and sorting. I recompressed my sleeping bag and put it on the bottom. My spare skivvies and socks would go next whenever they were dry, and my cooking supplies and first aid would go at the top of the bag along with a magazine that held seven rounds of subsonic ammunition. The last full mag of subs was in my carbine. I had thirty-five total rounds of subsonic remaining. Knowing how I shoot, any OPFOR of undead over thirty strong and I’d be full-time bayonet, straight-up World War I trench warfare.

  At least my pack was a lot lighter than when I started this journey eighteen days ago.

  I took the time to break down my gun and wipe the extreme carbon buildup off the bolt carrier assembly and bolt with paper towels and an old toothbrush I found in one of the master bath vanities. I always keep a bore snake in my kit, as they’re light and have multiple uses. I ran the snake through the barrel a few times, knocking out as much carbon as I could without a full-on cleaning. A suppressor throws a lot of shit back into the receiver, filling it with gunk pretty fast. Surprised I hadn’t had a malfunction yet, I reattached the upper to the lower and headed to the garage with my NOD on my head. Finding some two-cycle oil, I dabbed some into the holes on the bolt carrier, letting it seep down to the bolt, and then racked the action a few times before replacing the magazine and chambering a round.

  At seven pounds, my carbine could kill twenty-eight undead at or inside a hundred meters. Thirty-five if I could get to my last magazine. Even with few rounds remaining, it was deadlier than a Spartan blade or a quiver full of bolts. Back inside, I walked every room, checking every lock on every window and door. With my rifle next to me and my boots on the floor, I climbed into the bed and grabbed the GARMR tablet I had plugged into the home’s grid. I stood Checkers up and steered it around the property, looking for anything out of place. I clicked the audio on and listened to the machine walk down the path to Goliath.

  After checking that the gate was secure, I turned it left to walk down the perimeter. Same corpse facedown in the dry creek, same dent on the iron fence from a lawn mower. Slewing the GARMR’s sensor over to look at the house, I saw my own bedroom window glowing brightly in the machine’s night vision–capable sensor array. The moonlight reflected off the low-profile solar panels, causing the machine to auto-gate its night vision and compensate for the lumen fluctuations. Satisfied the area was clear, I activated the machine’s sentry mode and placed the tablet on top of my pack while it charged.

  Feeling tinges of pain returning, I forced my mind to shut down before I yearned for another dose of drugs to see me through the night.

  0600

  Bump in the Night

  At first, I wasn’t certain whether it was the drugs or for real. I kept hearing a thumping sound coming from somewhere in the house. I didn’t really know how long it had been going on, hidden by ambient noise. The air circulator had automatically shut off, blanketing the entire home in silence. There was no pattern to the sound; its low, methodical beat penetrated whatever barrier it passed through. I first noticed it at about midnight and immediately jumped out of my rack and began clearing rooms in my underwear with my carbine and NOD. The noise couldn’t be heard in any room but the master. I flipped on the LED overhead lighting and began putting my ear to the walls to try to triangulate the source. When I was about to take my knife to the drywall, I noticed that the carpet under the corners of the bed was disturbed, as if someone had rolled the bed on caster wheels.

  Reluctantly, I put my hip into the bedpost and gave it a nudge. It rolled nearly effortlessly, almost hitting the dresser. Concealed underneath the bed was a stainless steel hatch with the largest Torx hole I’d ever seen in the center of it. Must have been a T500, if they even made those before. I pushed the bed aside into the wall and pressed my ear to the cold stainless hatch. It was definitely louder. Running my fingers over the edges and contours of the large hatch, I knew it must have literally weighed a ton. Large, vault-like hinges were recessed into the two-inch-thick steel jamb, rendering the door almost impossible to attack with an angle grinder.

  I sat there on top of the hatch, formulating what must be inside. The conclusion wasn’t hard to come to. The house had been unlocked when I found it and music was playing. The home’s local grid and water supply cistern told me that whoever owned the place had a lot of money and that they were hard-core preppers. The rhythmic pounding on the hatch door only slightly changed cadences, just enough to let me know that it was one of those things down there. If a living human was trapped inside and knew someone was above, they’d either make absolutely zero noise or they’d be pounding and screaming like crazy. The second round of long-interval thumps coming from inside was the undead.

  I’d never know for certain unless I somehow found a plasma torch and another power source, but it really wasn’t my place to know. Hell, any guess was as good as mine. Maybe that decomposing bag of bones I keep seeing on patrol outside, the one facedown in the riverbed, bit the owners. Maybe they didn’t know what the bite would do yet. Maybe a lot of them showed up at the gate, scaring them underground with an injured kid who was already infected thanks to taunting one of the creatures through the fence. Whatever it was, they went underground; one of them turned and took out the rest of them. I imagined some vast steel cavern loaded to the ceiling with ammunition and food.

  I slid the bed back over the tomb and moved all my shit into a guest room, where the sounds of the trapped undead couldn’t find my ears. They’d never make it through that steel lid in a million years, thumping their arms to bloody nubs. Even so, I slept with both eyes open, my back to the wall and a chair wedged under the doorknob of the guest room.

  As much as I wanted to go underground to have a peek, it would take a long damn time to break that door. Last night I dreamed of the riches below as dragons dreamed of gold.

  • • •

  After the unexpected discovery of the bunker, I was anxious to assess my medical situation and plan my next move. My hands were scabbed over pretty good, but the past couple days of fresh dressings and hot water had done wonders for the superficial ailments. After another hot shower, I cut bandages from clean T-shirts I’d found still folded in the drawers of the master bedroom. Hard Rock Cafe, Hong Kong, was on my right hand, Harley on my left. I rewrapped my ankle tightly with a clean bandage and got dressed. Before stepping out the door, I popped a half pill to take the edge off. Yeah, I know.

  On my way out to the garage, I noticed that I was limping less than the day before—a welcome sign of recovery. Still hesitant to put much weight on my foot, I tossed the cardboard boxes around instead of stacking them neatly. No need to pay too much attention to the noise: I was surrounded by a tall fence and I had a semitruck with a mostly full tank of fuel ready anytime I needed to jet.

  In the garage, I found two blue five-gallon water cans, which I promptly filled and placed in a Radio Flyer wagon. I also took some cordage sitting in a container on an industrial shelf opposite the Land Rover. I retrieved a few other odds and ends and stacked them in the wagon and wheeled that around to the front of the house under a shade tree.

  Turning around to go back inside, my eye caught something out of place in the tree. I thought it might be some sort of small black climbing rope, but after following the line all the way up, I determined that it was an antenna.

  Sneaky.

  Some HAM radio operators like to be covert and not broadcast to the world that they have expensive radio equipment inside and likely more. Whoever owned this place was in it for the long haul. I wished they weren’t walking around under the house undead. This was a fine setup and it was a damn shame that whoever
earned and paid for all this wasn’t alive to use it like it was intended. I couldn’t be sure without a shovel and a lot of sweat, but this antenna likely led underground inside the bunker below and into the shelter’s communications array. If the house was on geothermal, solar, and wind, it was a safe bet that the underground shelter was as well. If this was back when the shit first hit the fan and I didn’t have Tara or the baby, I’d be taking Goliath to the nearest town and commandeering the tools I’d need to break in, just out of pure curiosity.

  It was about noon when my pack was organized, my stomach was full, and I was completely hydrated. My silencer was off my gun and in a pouch on my belt. If I ran into anything a bayonet couldn’t handle, I’d either crank the can on the muzzle or I’d limp away fast. I couldn’t survive any Mogadishu moments with such a low ammo state.

  After one final sweep, I unplugged everything that wasn’t performing a vital function in the house and switched off the ceiling fans and lights, then turned the thermostat up to 72. This would ease the burden on the battery banks and wind turbine if it was set to auto shutdown when charging requirements were met. With the red Radio Flyer overflowing with food, water, and kit, Checkers and I very reluctantly left the house of plenty for Goliath and whatever road it would take us down.

  OtRA

  I kept Goliath moving at a comfortable speed down the abandoned highway. I’d see undead lurking in the trees and fields, but they were not concentrated in any numbers. As the miles slowly ticked by, I kept glancing at the digital clock on the stereo, waiting for enough time to pass so that I could take another half pill. My forehead would sweat, my skin would itch, and my hands would shake on the big-rig wheel, telling me it was time to partake. After about twenty minutes, the feeling of ice in my veins would overtake me as well as the pain in my ankle and hands.

  Day 20?

  1300

  Full disclosure. This. Is. The. Drugs. This account will never be shared, not after what happened when I got home from Hourglass. An entire year of my life encapsulated in my private journal was ripped from my quarters by a group representing what was left of the United States government. Any and all evidence of Hourglass was REDACTED forever, relegated to my mind alone. Almost all. Even now, as I write this on paper that will never be made again, I run my lead-stained finger across the imprinted words. I must be careful to keep my pencil sharp, as a fine point makes smaller words, taking up less space on the page. Flipping through the blanks that remain, I’ll need a new volume in less than a quarter inch of yellowed, water-damaged paper.

  Day 21

  2200

  I ran the rig hard yesterday, opening the distance from the mansion. I didn’t get far; I was somewhere outside of Forsyth when I nearly spit out the instant coffee I’d warmed up via the diesel engine over twenty miles ago. I’d been driving with my NOD, fully blacked out so as to not attract any kind of company, living or otherwise. Rigging tape covered the clock radio and other instruments that would white out my night vision optic. The CB was on, tuned to its original channel 19 setting. I’d never switched it to any other. With the RF spectrum clear, I hadn’t noticed that I’d turned the volume up damn near full blast. All I could hear up to this point was some noise just before sunset. When the CB suddenly blared, I jerked the wheel and took a sip of coffee down the wrong hole, making me cough as I brought Goliath to a stop.

  “Unknown rider, we can hear your engine. Please respond on channel 19.”

  I sat in the darkness listening to the first non-recorded human voice I’d heard in weeks. After another repeat of the message, I grabbed the mic and keyed the button on the side.

  “I’m here. I’m on the road. Who is this?”

  I was getting frustrated at the lack of response until I realized that I still had the mic keyed. I quickly released mid-transmission.

  “. . . trapped inside the air bridge. Just me and my two kids. Out of food; hasn’t rained in two days. Can you help, please, please help? It’s just me and my children.”

  “Where are you?” I said, this time releasing the key.

  “We’re on the air bridge between the two Sacred Heart Hospital buildings. Trapped on both sides. Please, mister.”

  The desperation in the father’s voice was palpable. That feeling I’d felt long ago when I heard William’s distress call was coming back, causing a lump in my throat. I have a kid back home; what about her? What if I die saving this father’s kids; what about mine? Those questions shot back and forth through my mind a thousand times in the span of a second before I keyed the transmitter.

  “How high up?” I asked.

  “Uh . . . I don’t know. Maybe fifty feet? I see four floors below us. Listen, we’re going to die up here. Just save my kids. I don’t care about myself. Just them, it’s all I ask,” the man said practically sobbing on the radio.

  I keyed the transmitter, “Save it; just tell me where you are: streets, landmarks, anything. I have a map.”

  The man told me that his name was Mitch and provided detailed directions to the skybridge where he and his children were. I sketched out the directions on paper and took Goliath off the highway in the direction of Sacred Heart.

  I idled down the two-lane roads until they expanded to four lanes, and I then went left, accidentally using my turn signal, illuminating the entire block through my NOD, along with the ghostly faces of dozens of reaching undead. As I left the mob of creatures, I could see lights clicking on and off on a walkway that spanned two fifteen-story buildings. The walkway was just as described, about forty feet or so off the road below. The road was thick with undead, but I wasn’t sure why. Mitch and his kids were high enough up as to not be noticed by the creatures unless they intentionally made noise, attracting them. As I pulled onto the street that led to the skybridge, I understood why the undead were there.

  The smell of human feces and urine was overwhelming. The smell of the living always attracted the undead. The family had to go somewhere and that meant off the skybridge into the street below. The dead now walked in human shit, looking for the living asses that dropped it. I sat at idle until the thumps on the side of the rig indicated that the creatures had found me in the darkness, attracted by the heat coming off the engine. I strung my carbine across my chest and rolled the window down on the driver’s side.

  “Is that you?” the CB boomed, causing the undead to moan an opera of the damned for all to enjoy. I reached down and ripped the rigging tape from the CB controls, bathing the cabin with artificial light and washing out my NOD. I turned the volume down to a 2 and replaced the tape quickly to get green eyes back.

  “Yes, it’s fucking me,” I said angrily back over the radio.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . Well, what is the plan?” Mitch responded.

  “The plan is I’m going to throw a cargo strap up to you. You rig it to something up there and climb down onto the top of my rig,” I said.

  “Then what?” Mitch asked.

  “Then we get the hell out of here, that’s what,” I said, obviously annoyed by the shitstorm I was currently caught in.

  I pulled the rig forward to outpace the crowd that was starting to form around Goliath. Quickly exiting the cab, I ran back and released the GARMR, commanding it to the skybridge to await further instructions. Hearing the click of its synthetic feet, I barely had enough time to climb the steps back to the cabin before the undead were on me again, smelling warm flesh, growling for sustenance that wasn’t.

  I watched Checkers through my NOD, its LIDAR mapping terrain in real time in 270-degree swaths around the machine. The thing literally had eyes in the back of its head. After reaching its objective, it stood there below the skybridge among a crowd of undead, waiting.

  I began to count the creatures under the bridge, wondering if I could take them out with the small number of rounds remaining in my carbine’s magazine. I stopped counting the creatures at forty-eight, deciding my blaster would run out before they did. There would be no easy day.

&nbs
p; I wound the yellow towing strap around my torso like a bandolier and edged Goliath closer to the skybridge, inside the detection zone of the undead that waited for meat to drop from the sky.

  At about ten feet from the bridge, I keyed the mic and told Mitch to get ready to catch the steel hook from the tow strap that would be coming his way soon. I parked Goliath, leaving the engine running, and climbed through the open window, not bothering to open the door; the undead were much too close for that. Placing my carbine on the roof first, I climbed out onto the top of Goliath and surveyed my situation.

  The rumble and heat from Goliath’s diesel were attracting more of them from side streets and alleys. Glass shattered on either side of the skybridge and the undead spilled from high floors down onto the ground with sickening thumps. One of the corpses landed smack dab on top of the skybridge, shattering through its thick glass down into the walkway with the three survivors.

  “Fuck, it’s inside!” I could hear Mitch yell from above.

  I couldn’t respond, as the CB was bolted under the dash. If I yelled out, it would only bring everything down on top of me. I took of my rifle and slung it around the GPS antenna on the roof and unwound the tow strap from my upper body. I began to swing it in an upward arc like an old-school sling. I let the heavy steel hook go at what I thought was the perfect time to get it up to the bridge.

  I missed.

  My end was secured to my rigger’s belt, and the other end sailed through the air under the bridge, landing smack dab in the middle of a crowd of undead. One of them curiously grasped the bright yellow strap and began to walk and tug, sending me off the roof onto the hood and then rolling off that onto the hard, piss-covered concrete. I landed square on my back, seeing stars, the sterile smell of urine coursing through my nostrils.