Thanks to the ongoing shooting it wasn’t hard to guess where we were headed, but I was happy to let Red take point, hanging back with Gita instead after Nate signaled me to lay low. He and Burns went right after Red, taking point after we crossed another intersection. I would have complained about being left out, but my thigh was hurting, and that damn pack seemed to be weighing half again as much as it had when we’d landed on the beach, so I didn’t protest. Besides, someone had to protect our rear as well; I didn’t miss the shadows moving behind closed windows all through the town.
The din from the rifles going off only increased as we drew closer, making me guess that they’d met with more shamblers than they’d expected, or they’d have avoided them altogether. Since stealth was no longer a necessity, I chose to use my assault rifle over the tomahawks, a decision my hands, in particular, were very happy with.
We were just outside of the hot zone when Nate stopped to fire down a side street, putting an end to our comfortable stroll. I flattened myself against the next wall, Gita beside me, her eyes darting around nervously. “Stay behind me,” I whispered to her. “Need someone to keep them off my back if we get surrounded.” Fat chance of that, but Tanner seemed relieved to be off babysitting duty for a while.
What had been a single disoriented shambler that Nate had gunned down quickly turned into a small mob, a good fifteen of them coming toward us. They were surprisingly silent, only the odd moan or grunt coming from them. While their clothes were reduced to rags, all of them looked decidedly healthy—as far as that could be said for the undead. I squeezed off a few rounds but held back, relying on Nate, Burns, and Red’s people to take out most of them. My aim was good if not stellar, and I didn’t like the answering twinges flaming up all over my body that the recoil of the weapon brought on. I’d do in a pinch, but I was a far cry from where I’d been last summer. Not good. So not good.
Red gave the signal to move on, all of us following in groups of twos and threes. Nate lingered a moment to check on the downed shamblers, using that as an excuse to plaster himself to my side. I didn’t need to see the look of concern crossing his face to know that I was projecting my misery outward at gigawatt strength, but there wasn’t much I could do. I gave him a quick thumbs-up before I ignored him. I didn’t need to tell him that the best he could do for me was clear the path up ahead so any shortcomings of mine wouldn’t come to bear. He and Burns quickly caught up with Red once more, leaving me trailing behind.
We only ran into one other, much smaller group of the undead before we reached the broad street that supposedly had served as the main route for the others, as evidenced by heaps of dead bodies, clustered together. At a glance, I estimated them at well over fifty, a lot more than the shots had indicated, making me guess that they’d only blown their cover of silence once the thick of the fray had become unmanageable otherwise. Two of Bucky’s people were waiting for us there, Rodriguez and Williams, seamlessly falling in with Red once he gave them the signal. Red split us into two groups, us and them, signaling for us to remain on the southern side while they took the northern sectors. Together, we advanced further west toward the town center. An eerie silence had fallen over the street, every creak of wood and rustling of leaves setting my teeth on edge. From how the beach and the lone house we’d checked had been empty, I’d presumed there weren’t a lot of the undead around, but that theory was obviously wrong.
A sequence of dull thuds coming from the other side of the street told me that Red’s people had made contact, presumably in another small street branching off to the side as Rodriguez, on the main street, was still moving forward at a cautious pace. Nate gave the others the signal to disperse, until it was only me and Gita who were mirroring her. Gita looked vaguely pissed at being left out, but one glance in my direction and she abandoned her apparent protest. Rodriguez hadn’t missed our silent exchange, smirking slightly, but a loud thud coming from up ahead had all three of us alert and ready.
Three houses further down the road, an open door was creaking in the light breeze as it swung open and closed slowly. I tried to remember if I’d noticed it when we’d stepped out onto the street, but it was impossible to ignore now. Rodriguez paused, pointing first at herself, then at us. I gave her a quick nod, signaling Gita to hang back as I sprinted forward to check. There was no debris in the doorway so the door had been opened very recently. I inhaled deeply as I crept closer, trying to catch any lingering scents of decay that might alert me to the presence of the undead, but the entire street kind of reeked, so that didn’t give me anything. Pausing below a window a few feet away from the door, I eased myself up until I could try to peer inside, but only caught my reflection in the dirty window. Ducking, I crossed the distance to the door, making sure that the street was still clear before glancing inside. Furniture, in light disarray but without the omnipresent scat covering everything—one of the hallmarks of having stumbled into a zombie lair. Reaching for the door, I eased it closed, then signaled the others to proceed as I stepped toward the corner of the house.
I had a split second to notice movement at the very edge of my peripheral vision, then the zombie was on me. It had once been a slight girl, late teens, but it barreled into me with the force of a linebacker from where it had been crouching behind a stack of crates. Twisting, I managed to get my rifle up between us before it could snap its teeth at my face, but even though I braced myself, it forced me into the middle of the intersection. My instincts told me to wrench the weapon free and use the stock to bash its face in, but my grip wasn’t holding up well, and while I felt muscles in my arms and back ready for some action, I didn’t dare move my aching fingers even a little. Fuck awesome timing, really—
Rodriguez was there, coming up from my left, determination on her face. She pushed the muzzle of her assault rifle right into the zombie’s temple and pulled the trigger, a single shot all it took for the girl to go slack. I stepped away, letting the corpse drop to the ground, waiting for Rodriguez to admonish me—but all she did was look at my face to check that I was okay before she sprinted for cover. I kicked the shambler for good measure, then checked out its hidey-hole to make sure nothing else was waiting there for us. I’d seen a bunch of them pull sneaky moves, but usually, it was luck that let them get the drop on us, not active hiding maneuvers. The others must have passed through the intersection, and there was no way it could have snuck along from the other street where I saw a few more shapes run for cover. I filed that information away for later. At the very least, I would have to discuss this with Nate.
About fifty yards down the road, someone opened fire, making us pause just in time for a string of undead to come bursting through what remained of a glass door, tumbling into the street in their attempt to follow the gunshots. Rodriguez and I did a good job decimating them before they knew what was coming, with Gita getting a few well-aimed shots in between us. Tanner had done well prepping her for this, even though she still looked about as scared of her rifle as the undead we’d just reduced to a heap of rags and decayed flesh. The trip up to Colorado had taught her a lot, but I remembered all too well that it had taken me more than just a handful of encounters to feel at ease with my weapons.
Signaling Gita to secure the road, I followed Rodriguez into the house, quickly clearing the lower floor. There were signs of habitation here, but a lot less than the ten zombies we’d just mowed down would have produced had they been in here for more than a week. The frown clearly visible on Rodriguez’s face made me guess that she was about as happy as I was to realize that the shamblers had learned stealth tactics over here.
Back out on the street, I caught a first glimpse of the town square up ahead, maybe two hundred yards away. Even from here I could see the barricades erected of cars, furniture, and everything else that had been available. Someone had tried to make a last stand there and lost, if I had to take a guess. Rodriguez took point, but halted at the next house when more gunshots from the northern side kept going on for a good thirty seconds.
“LT, what is going on over there in your quadrant?” she asked into her com.
Nobody answered, until Nate’s voice came over the line. “Southern quadrant is cleared. We only found a handful. I’d say we move north and check what has the others pinned down.” Not quite an order, but the kind of suggestion that would make it easy for Rodriguez and the others to follow.
“Negative,” Rodriguez shot back, momentarily eyeing Gita and me. “Move on to the other side of the square. I’m taking Lewis north with me. If they need more backup than we can provide, we’ll radio in. Better to know you’ve cleared our fall back route if we have to rely on that.”
“Roger that,” Nate replied with sarcasm heavily lacing his voice. Rodriguez let out a silent sneer but jerked her chin toward the next intersection, taking point herself. I followed, but not before giving a scowling Gita a nudge with my elbow.
“We’re a package deal. Don’t mind them.”
We paused at the intersection, but when nothing moved up ahead in the square, we took the turn right and headed north. Corpses littered the street, not all of them recent, and most eviscerated and dismembered. Several of the doors up ahead were open, with drag marks visible on the ground. A look inside the first revealed a heap of more recently deceased, making me guess that whoever had cleared the street minutes ago had disposed of the shamblers that way to keep the street somewhat clear.
Shots up ahead made us pause. Rodriguez tried hailing Red again, and this time, she got a response. “We ran into heavy opposition,” came the lieutenant’s response over the com, barely audible over the shots we heard both over the line and in real time. “Keep an exit route clear to the south!”
“Miller and Burns are already on it,” Rodriguez replied, not quite disobeying his order. “We’re joining your six in five.”
Part of me wanted to harp that there was no need for her to be exceptionally cryptic, but maybe she wasn’t. The meaning was obvious, and at her nod, I joined her sprinting toward the next good cover.
A broader road opened before us around the corner, and it became obvious why there was so much going on here. Whether they’d been hiding in the houses or not, the road up ahead ended at the northern part of the town square, where the sturdy barricades seemed to have held through the outbreak—but were severely overrun now. Corpses already littered the street and every available obstacle that had held them back, but still more were coming, getting decimated by the soldiers at a good rate, but not good enough to push back the tide. At least it looked like they had already lost ground and were still retreating, if at a slow pace. The barricades and layout of the street turned the mouth of it into a kill chute so it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but those were piranhas rather than cod. Parker was kneeling at a downed soldier’s side who had been dragged out of the thick of the fray, proving that we weren’t as impenetrable a force as most of us loved to think.
The three of us joined the fight without requiring extra orders, a couple of soldiers gladly ducking for cover to reload or catch their breaths as we took their places. To be fair, Gita was doing a slightly better job than me, particularly when it came to reloading, but I told myself—through gritted teeth—that a dead zombie was a dead zombie, whether it took me three shots or one to bring it down. Seeing as nobody else was concerned about conserving ammo, I chewed through three full magazines quickly before I ducked into one of the open doors, signaling Cole to take my place instead. Hill and Murdock were busy reloading inside, Hill obviously having abandoned his attempt to get the radio gear going. With something akin to awe, they watched me stow away the empty magazines that hadn’t made a real dent in what I had easily accessible outside of the pack on my back.
“My, someone’s a little paranoid,” Hill observed with a grin, then had the gall to laugh at his two extra spares.
Rolling my eyes, I threw two of my spare spares at him that he caught easily. “You’d be the first to complain. Besides, there was that one time where I almost died because I ran out of ammo because some shitheads ambushed us. That will never happen again.”
Murdoch didn’t look particularly happy about the reminder of what had happened at the factory—making me guess he had been a part of that—while Hill smirked.
“Well, it’s not like you didn’t pay us back for that,” he called across the room. “You didn’t have to mow scores of us down with that deathtrap on four wheels once you got there.”
“Actually, I did,” I shot back, making sure everything was secure and I had enough ammo at hand not to have to fumble for more any time soon. “And felt damn good, too.”
Hill laughed. “Yeah, guess we had that coming. Damn fine driving you did, considering you were high as a kite.” When he caught my frown, he gave me a superior smile. “We have a file on you, missy, that distinctively noted your performance rating. Good thinking, numbing yourself with the booster to stay alert until your system crashed. It’s decision making like this that made the brass take you seriously in the end. They wouldn’t have let Raynor take you apart and put you back together if they didn’t think you’d come in handy in a tight spot.”
I would have loved to wring his neck for more information, but Hill ducked outside, taking his former place at the crates once more. Murdock followed, running across the street to a post one house closer to the barricade. I allowed myself a few more seconds to relax, then did the same.
Even with twelve people already in place, the addition of the three of us had made a difference. Within the next ten minutes, the stream of undead turned into a trickle, allowing us to make it over the barricade and into the northern end of the square. As we disposed of the last remaining shamblers, Bucky so happened to wander into my sight, in perfect timing turning around to look squarely at me. I would have been lying if I’d claimed that my trigger finger wasn’t itching like hell, but I lowered my M16 a little and concentrated on checking the broadening perimeter that was quickly established. Shooting him was too easy; way, way too easy. Besides, all joking aside, I was sure that Hill wouldn’t have a single qualm executing me if I tried. Well, the perfect time and place would come, I was sure of that.
As we secured the square, Nate and the others joined us, making us fall back into the previous small groups. We were set to guarding the southern exit while Bucky, Red, and three others busted down the door to what must have been the town’s bank. Their behavior downright puzzled me until they emerged ten minutes later, Red stowing something away in his pack while Bucky walked over to Aimes, who had a portable sat nav unit ready. I was surprised that still worked, but then we’d had a lot of satellites up there and apparently not all had become space junk yet. Bucky prattled off an address that he double-checked from a piece of paper in his hand, making me guess that they’d retrieved it from a safety deposit box inside. Why it had been there—and how they’d known about it, and gotten to it, no less—I had no clue, and as before, our esteemed leader wasn’t about to divulge any extra intel to us grunts. Nate was quick to take the address down and check the map he must have liberated from one of the houses, showing the location to me. It was a good fifty miles inland, somewhere to the northwest of Paris.
“Three to four days, if things don’t get worse than they were here,” he noted grimly.
I nodded absently, instead trying to discern what Hill was reporting in, now that he had had time to get his gear up and running. The wind was picking up, finally chasing the fog away, but also making it impossible to hear what was going on over there as Bucky discussed it in hushed tones. My gaze skipped over the houses nearby, snagging on some words spray-painted there in faded red, accompanied by arrows and other signs.
“Directions,” Gita noted as she joined us. “It says that they are rallying near Ajou. Whoever still has a pulse is welcome.”
I gave her a sidelong glance. “You speak French?”
She gave a half-hearted shrug, but I would have had to be blind not to see the pride shining behind her eyes. “Four years in school, plus
had a thing for a Canadian guy who joined my class junior year. Did you know that the French have over a hundred vegetable-related words for dick?”
“I’m sure that piece of information will help us immensely,” I enthused, but gave her a pat on the back. “Good job.”
I waited for Nate to offer any additional comment, but when he was still busy staring balefully in Bucky’s direction, I decided it would fall to me to break the good news—and keep the part about how to possibly enhance my vocabulary to myself.
Bucky shut up as I got close enough to legit eavesdrop on them, for once passing up the chance to tear me down. No fun at all when he was acting professional.
“I take it that Ajou is our next stop, after we’ve picked up whatever you need to get at that location you just retrieved from inside the bank?”
A look of surprise crossed Bucky’s face, making me want to applaud myself. Ha! It was gone after a moment, replaced by a scowl. He opened his mouth, but before he could bark at me, Hill interrupted him, looking excited.
“Where did you get that from? I just managed to find a frequency with an automated recording on repeat, mentioning that village over and over again.”
I was tempted to screw with him, but if Bucky was acting professional, I couldn’t very well behave like an ass.
“See those scrawls on the wall? Says that the resistance is meeting in Ajou. Or was, when whoever left the directions gave up on their last stand and fled.”
Red gave a small nod. “I’ve seen similar markings all over town. Just couldn’t translate them.” He turned to me. “You speak French?”
Bucky looked ready to give me a cause to try to beat his face to a bloody pulp, so I quickly forestalled him. “Doesn’t take a genius to decipher it. It’s the only word in caps in that sentence. Just look it up on the maps.”
Hiding the small, triumphant smile that wanted to creep onto my face, I left them standing there, returning to Nate’s side. Bucky looked ready to chew through steel, and Nate’s answering glower wasn’t much better. Red, as usual, saved the situation as he turned to the assembled soldiers.
Catharsis Page 18
