“Nevermind,” he says. “Don’t do that. You look like a psychopath.”
“Hey!” one of the guys on the truck spots us approaching and raises his rifle. “Stop right there!”
We stop walking in the middle of the road, and I raise a hand to acknowledge the man.
He squints his eyes at me and Mac.
“How’s it going?” I ask him.
“Who the hell are you guys?” he asks.
“Nobody special,” says Mac. “Just a couple guys out for a stroll.”
“What?” the guy asks. He continues to point his rifle at us with a confused look on his face. “Drop your guns. Both of you.”
“This isn’t working,” Mac mutters to me quietly out of the corner of his mouth.
“Just take it easy,” I say to the man. “We’re not looking for any trouble. I just thought I’d let you guys know we already cleaned out the houses on this street. Save you all a little time.”
“Rhodes!” the man calls.
“Shit,” I mumble.
Rhodes steps out of the house next door.
“What’s wrong, Davis?” Rhodes asks.
Davis points to me and Mac in the street. Rhodes blinks his eyes as he tries to place us. I can’t be positive what day it is anymore, but it’s been probably six weeks since we left Holloman. Both Mac and I have longer hair than before, and Mac has a beard now. I hold out hope he won’t recognize us until he looks down and notices my hand.
“You,” Rhodes says. “Holy shit. I can’t believe you’re still alive.”
“Most of our guys weren’t so lucky,” I say. Even though I attempt to hide my hostility, it probably still shows.
“So, it’s just you two?” he asks.
I decide not to answer him. Maybe it’s better to let him wonder if we have additional support.
“Well,” he finally says as he takes a few steps toward the street. “That’s how it goes now. The world ain’t the same as it was.”
“They said they cleaned out this block already,” says Davis.
“Is that right?” Rhodes asks.
I nod slightly when he looks at me.
“You guys must have a lot of shit then,” he says. I watch his hands as he shifts his grip on his rifle. “Don’t suppose you fellas would be willing to share the wealth.”
This guy has some fucking nerve. After everything, he shows up here trying to intimidate us into handing over our shit.
“Not a fucking chance,” I tell him.
“I had a feeling you might say that,” Rhodes says.
He turns his head to the side and spits in the dirt. I can tell this is going to get ugly. Even if they leave now, they will not just leave us alone. If anything, they will come at us with more guys and probably when we least expect it.
“I’ll get the guy in the truck,” I whisper to Mac as I pretend to swipe my sleeve across my face like I’m wiping away sweat.
“You sure you want to do this?” Mac mutters through clenched teeth.
“It’s going to happen either way,” I whisper. “You with me?”
“I’m with you,” Mac says.
“You know, I’d invite you gentleman to come back with us, but Jenson is still pretty pissed,” Rhodes says.
“Is that right?” I say.
Rhodes nods.
“Says your guys fucked up that whole operation,” Rhodes tells us. “Got a lot of innocent people killed.”
“That wasn’t on us,” I say.
Rhodes fixes his stare on me and Mac as he slightly adjusts his grip on the rifle. He tilts his head back without taking his eyes off us. I watch his every movement closely.
“Let’s go,” he calls to the rest of the team inside the house, but makes no move to head toward the truck. He just stares at us as he waits for the other men to exit the house.
I get the feeling Rhodes will make a move as soon as the numbers are in their favor.
I could be wrong. It’s possible they might just walk away and never come back.
Let bygones be bygones.
I’m not about to take my fucking chances on that happening.
“Kill,” I say to Mac and I raise my rifle and start firing.
The Honey Badger spits a round that hits Davis in the chest and knocks him back against the rear bumper of the truck. Mac takes shots at Rhodes as he tries to raise his rifle. A round tags Rhodes in the thigh and staggers him. He crashes to the dirt and starts crawling toward the house. The driver in the pickup opens the door and I hit him in the chest and the leg before he even makes it out of the truck.
“Get to cover,” I tell Mac as the hostiles in the house take aim at us from the front door and windows.
I put some suppressive fire on the building and sprint for the truck in the road. I slide to safety behind the rear tire and look back as Mac runs back towards the house. He fires while sidestepping up the driveway as he heads for cover on the front porch. Then a 5.56 mm round tears through his mid-section and sends him face-first into the dirt. He manages to drag himself a few feet as bullets punch the dirt around him. Finally, Claire runs out the front door and grabs his arm to pull him out of the line of fire.
Even though Mac has to be hurt bad, he grabs his rifle, adjusts his grip and gets ready to give these bastards some hell. For several seconds, nobody fires. Rhodes grunts in the dirt as he tries to drag his ass to safety. I could kill him right now, but I wait.
He is just a piece of bait to draw out the others.
When I hear the rest of his team coming out to help, I pivot around the back of the truck and open fire. Mac manages to lean around the side of the house and unloads his magazine at them before collapsing to the ground.
I step around the truck and scan the bodies on the ground. The only one still moving is Rhodes. He sits up, trying the get his rifle into a firing position, but I lift the Honey Badger and pop him in the shoulder, and he falls back again and writhes in the dirt.
I’m not done with him yet.
I cross the lawn and stand over Rhodes on the ground. He reaches for his gun but I put a boot on his wrist.
“Fuck, man. It didn’t have to go this way,” Rhodes says.
“Where the fuck is Jenson?” I ask him.
“I don’t know,” Rhodes says. “We bailed on him weeks ago and never looked back.”
“You’re a full of shit,” I say.
“You think I’d lie to protect him?” Rhodes scoffs.
“Chase!” Claire yells.
“You’re even crazier than he is,” Rhodes smirks at me.
I bring the rifle up and fire a round into his head. The gunshot echoes off the houses as his body falls still in the dirt.
I run to where Claire is crouched beside Mac checking his gunshot wound. The bullet hit him above the hip, and he is already losing a lot of blood.
“Hang in there, Mac,” I tell him.
“How bad is it?” he asks me.
“It ain’t nothing man,” I tell him. “You’re gonna be fine.”
“You’re a shitty liar, Graves,” Mac coughs.
I check the street again and spot the dead up the road. No doubt all the gunfire will draw a lot more stiffs to this area soon. We will have to abandon our refuge.
“Help me get him inside,” I tell Claire.
She grabs his feet, and I pull him up by the shoulders to get him inside and onto the kitchen table. I check his back and see the exit wound near his spine. This is way beyond my training. I keep pressure on the wound and try to keep Mac still while I figure out what to do. The bullet probably tore through his intestines, but I can’t see anything with all the blood.
“Grab me some towels and water,” I tell Claire. “And there should be some morphine in my bag.”
She runs into the other room and returns a minute later.
“Soak one of the towels,” I tell her, as I keep my hand clamped on the wound.
She does, and I cover the wound with it. Mac cringes from the pain.
“T
ry to keep still,” I say to Mac.
“It fucking hurts like hell,” he curses, clutching the table.
I grab the morphine from Claire and inject it into his leg. Within a few seconds his body relaxes on the table.
“That’s better,” he says. “That’s a lot better.”
I check his pulse and it is still pretty strong, but there isn’t much else I can do for him here. He will at least need some fluids, antibiotics, and surgery unless by some miracle the bullet didn’t destroy any of his organs.
I collapse into the chair beside the table and try to think.
“What else can we do for him?” Claire says.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I don’t have anything here to even try and help him.”
“Well then where can we find what we need?” Claire says.
I think about it for several seconds.
“Holloman,” I say. “They have a hospital on base. We’d have to go back there.”
“What are you sitting around for then?” she says. “Let’s go.”
Twenty-four
I grab the keys to the pickup left in the garage by the previous owners. I pack enough food and water to last a couple days in a cardboard box and toss it on top of the tools in the bed of the pickup. Then we load Mac into the backseat of the truck. The thought hits me that maybe this is crazy. Even if we make it to the hospital, we might not be able to do anything to keep Mac from dying. There is a chance we might even run into Jenson there.
It still doesn’t make me think twice about it. The rest of my platoon is gone. Mac is all I have left. I don’t know if I can handle losing him, too.
Besides, we can’t afford to sit around. The dead are converging on the area and it’s just a matter of time before Jenson figures out that something happened to his team.
I don’t believe a word Rhodes said about abandoning his brothers. It had to be bullshit.
Jenson would eventually come looking for them either way, and my chances of facing them alone and coming out alive do not seem very good.
So, in spite of the sense of impending doom, I unlatch the garage door and lift it open. I hop in and shift to reverse and back out of the driveway. Several shambling dead bodies smash against the rear gate, and their bones crackle beneath the tires. I shift to drive and plow over a couple more as they rush the vehicle.
“Jesus,” Claire says. “You can drive around them, you know.”
I could, but I’m angry right now. No, I’m not angry. I’m fucking pissed. I’m pissed at Rhodes, at Jenson, at Claire, at the dead, and the whole fucked up world for being so fucked up all the time.
“Shut up,” I tell Claire.
The woman is cursed. Everything was going fine before, but then she showed up and my whole world immediately started going to shit.
“Chase,” she says.
“I said shut up,” I snap. “This is all your damn fault. If we didn’t have to help your sorry ass none of this would have ever happened.”
She leans back against the door, putting as much space between us as possible as though she is afraid I might try to hurt her. Maybe I’m an asshole, but it makes me feel better to see her react that way. It’s exactly what I want right now.
The truck speeds down the backroads, probably faster than it is safe to drive. I steer between the dead bodies on the road, but can’t help cutting it too close and hitting some of the dead as they approach the vehicle.
“Slow down,” Claire pleads with me.
My foot presses down on the gas pedal a little more.
“You’re going to get us all killed,” she says. “Is that what you want?”
I turn around the corner and head toward the highway. The dead flood the streets. There really is no alternative but to slow down to navigate through them. Unless I really do want to die, and I guess what I come to realize is that I am still not ready for that.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, even though I don’t feel all that sorry. Right now it feels like the weight of the world has been dumped on me while everything that matters has been methodically ripped away by forces beyond my control. Mostly, I tell her I’m sorry because I want her to forget everything and leave me alone.
We make it out of Alamogordo and drive along the short stretch of desert highway to Holloman. The corpses are more dispersed outside of town, but hundreds of them wander along the entire ten miles of road that leads to the Air Force base. The closer we get, the more the dead crowd the highway. When we finally reach White Sands Road, I pause at the intersection and stare at the sight of tens of thousands of corpses wandering the road up to the entrance of the base.
Claire looks at me. Her eyes are filled with terror as she shakes her head. Right now, I think she is mostly afraid that I might just be irrational enough to try and drive us through that nightmare.
“There has to be some other way in,” I say. I take my foot off the brake and keep driving. I speed down the highway another mile or so until I reach the road for White Sands National Park. I make the right turn into the entrance and roll up the empty lane into the parking lot outside of the derelict visitor center.
“Where are we going?” Claire asks me.
“Going to see if I can follow one of these trails and get a look at the back of the base,” I say. “I don’t know what else to try.”
“You saw how many of those things there are,” she says. “We can’t possibly go in there.”
“I have to,” I tell her. “Unless you can come up with some better idea.”
“We can drive to the next town or something,” Claire says.
“The next town is fifty miles from here,” I tell her. “Mac ain’t going to make it. We don’t have a choice.”
I follow the road through the mounds of brilliant white sand beneath the mid-day sun. We circle around to the first trail and I steer the truck off the sandy streets. There isn’t any road to get where we need to go from here.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” says Claire.
I ignore the irritating questions and keep driving north along the dunes at the edge of the park and scan the eastern horizon until I get a glimpse of the base in the distance. We’re still at least half a mile away.
“I have to get us closer,” I say.
I steer the truck through fields packed with creosote and cacti. Eventually, the remains of the chainlink fence surrounding the base comes into view, and in the distance, I can see the back of the complex. I park the truck and get out to recon the area. When I look through the scope of my rifle, I make out the shapes of the hangars along the runway, and the dark specks of the dead wandering all over the area. The place is completely overrun.
Claire gets out of the truck and shields her eyes from the sun to try and see as well.
“We can’t go in there, Chase,” Claire says.
I leave her surveying the base and walk around to the other side of the truck to open the rear door and check on Mac. I reach down to check his pulse, but I can’t find it.
“Mac,” I say. I shake him gently, his body is completely limp. His eyes stare up at the clouds drifting across the blue sky above us, but he can’t see anything now.
I could try to resuscitate him, but it seems pointless. Nothing I can do will ever be able to keep him alive at this point.
“Chase, there are too many of them,” Claire repeats.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say. “He’s already gone.”
Claire hurries around the truck, and cups her hands over her mouth when she sees Mac lying there lifeless. I slide my arms beneath him and hook them under his shoulders.
“Let me help you,” Claire says.
I ignore her and haul him out alone, his weight carries both of us to the ground. Claire bends down to help me up, but I shrug my arm away from her. After I pick myself up from the dirt, I crouch down to check him for a pulse one more time.
I have to be sure.
Looking down at his lifeless body still doesn’t seem real. I
keep expecting his eyes to move, and then he would laugh at me for buying that he could really be dead.
Finally, I give up and get back to my feet again. I grab my rifle from the front of the truck and then I stand over Mac and shoot him so he doesn’t come back.
Claire turns her back so she doesn’t have to see him anymore and lets out a sob. My head starts to spin as I drop my rifle and take a knee beside him.
“Chase!” Claire says when she sees me drop to the ground with my hand clutching my face. She goes inside the truck and starts digging around in the supplies.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I plead. I’m done, I think. Everyone is dead. It’s just a matter of time for us now, too.
“Here,” she says. “Drink some water.”
I take the water from her, but I just hold it in my hand for a while before I calm myself down enough to pour some back into my parched mouth. As hard as it is, I turn my head and look at the body of my brother in arms on the ground beside me. The desert sun already feels like it is burning my skin, but I know what I need to do next. I can’t just leave Mac sitting out here.
I get to my feet and walk over to the truck and grab a small shovel in the pile of supplies. Then I turn and trudge back toward the desert until I find a softer patch of sand and begin to dig. I toss shovel after shovel of white sand aside as Claire watches me from the truck.
It seems like it takes forever to get a couple feet down; then I look down and decide I can’t do anymore. I sit down on the edge of the grave and take another gulp of water. Claire notices how tired I am and she walks over. I stand up and pick up the shovel as she approaches me.
“I’ll give you a hand,” she says.
“I got it,” I say as I throw another shovel of sand aside.
“I cared about him, too, Chase,” she says.
I pause for a moment and look at her. I can tell she is broken up over this, but that’s what happens when you start caring about people.
“I know,” I tell her. Then I bend down and scoop up another shovel of sand.
“At least take a break,” she says. “You’re going to kill yourself.”
“I’m fine,” I insist.
She sighs and turns to the side and looks across the vast empty desert.
ROTD (Book 3): Rage of the Dead Page 15
