“Joseph, so good of you to join us. I do hope we aren’t interrupting your beauty rest,” McCoy snapped, folding his arms across his chest.
“C’mon Colonel, one of us has got to be pretty,” one of the other raiders said with a chuckle.
“Hey, don’t mind me. Carry on with the briefing,” Joseph said.
The sky was cloudless, and the mid-morning sun cooked the water on the ground, pushing up the humidity. The day would prove warmer than usual for early March. Joseph was grateful for the cool breeze that washed over his face and carried away the last of his drowsiness with it.
“As I was saying,” McCoy started and unfolded his arms, “Blazer crew, you’ll make noise and try to pull the deads north of the box. Keep moving. Joseph, do you have anything to tell them about the Blazer?”
“Yeah. She won’t run all day. Once you get her warmed up the radiator is likely to go. When you see the temp gauge spike, you got maybe three to five minutes before the engine locks up totally. In short, there’s a chance you may have to ditch her before it’s all said and done. So don’t stray too far.”
Jimenez and Wolflord turned white. They looked at each other then at the deathtrap they were about to trust their lives to.
“Don’t worry guys, we’ll make sure we’re done real quick like,” Mike said, trying to be reassuring.
“Make sure you do,” McCoy said. “Sniper team, go to your posts. Only fire to cover one of the ground teams, and then only if absolutely necessary.
“Alright people, let’s do this,” McCoy said.
***
The Blazer went out the main gate first. Jimenez immediately laid on the horn and didn’t let off. He drove east for a moment and started driving in a tight figure eight until the zombies between the box and the bus started toward the blazer. Still on the horn, he started crawling north.
“Lookout lead to bus team, you’re a go.”
Cadet Davis opened the door again, and Mike charged out with a shotgun at his shoulder. Joseph slid out right behind him with his pistol drawn. Cadet Jefferson was the last one out the door. He immediately brought up his M16-A2.
Mike swept his head from left to right. The zombies that hadn’t chased the Blazer didn’t notice them yet and weren’t in the path to the bus.
“Let’s roll, nice even trot,” Mike said and started off. He set the pace a little slower than he was used to and would have liked, but it let Joseph keep up.
They only made it about a third of the way down the four-lane street toward the bus before the closest zombies started turning toward them. Mike caught the motion out of the corner of his eye.
“Damn,” he muttered, but didn’t change his pace.
Mike stopped ten steps from the bus, brought the barrel of the shotgun up and swept a complete circle. None of the zombies were close enough to be a threat yet, so he kept his finger off the trigger.
“Move it, guys! We ain’t got all day,” he shouted.
Joseph ran past Mike and stopped with his back to the emergency exit to rest for a second. He holstered his pistol and pulled the hatchet from his belt as Jefferson joined him.
Mike looked at Joseph and nodded. Joseph stepped around the end of the bus. An overweight zombie with a severe limp from a chewed in half Achilles tendon struggled to reach Joseph.
It took two seconds. The zombie couldn’t pick up its foot properly and tripped itself. Joseph stepped in and swung the hatchet, cutting the zombie's ear in half. The hatchet split the skull like paper and stopped partially through the base of the skull.
The zombie slumped against the side of the bus and twitched. Joseph jerked the hatchet out of its head and hit it again, effectively quartering the zombie’s skull.
“Good kill,” Mike said as he reached under the bus for the door release.
The door popped open. Mike pushed it to the side. Joseph, hatchet ready, led the party aboard the bus. He stepped down the aisle to look between the seats while Mike and Jefferson backed aboard the bus and shut the door.
A zombie lying half under the second seat grabbed Joseph’s boot. Several vertebrae and its peeked from under a shroud of tattered muscle and skin. Joseph stepped calmly on the back of the zombie’s neck and buried the hatchet in the top of its head.
He didn’t find any more zombies, but he did find what was left of a body in the last seat. “Clear,” he shouted and started toward the driver’s seat.
“Joe, let’s go. Get this crate moving so we don’t get trapped,” Mike said, looking at approaching zombies through the windshield and door.
Joseph threw himself behind the wheel and shoved the hatchet on the dash board. “Fuck.”
“What?” Mike asked.
“No keys.”
“That’s a problem?” Jefferson asked.
“Not really. Check those bodies back there. Mike, can you check the guy outside?”
“No. But I’ll cover you while you check him.” Mike stepped out the door with his shotgun ready for any zombie that got too close, which was going to start happening soon.
Joseph dropped to a knee by the zombie he killed only a moment before. With startling quickness, Joseph emptied the contents of the rear pants pockets. He grabbed the collar of its button-down shirt and pulled the curled body onto its back. In a single movement Joseph turned the front pockets inside out, dropping useless personal effects on the asphalt. He kept a large ring of keys that came out of the corpse’s right pocket. To be thorough, he checked the change pocket and shirt pocket before turning to jump on to the bus.
“Joe, we good?” Mike asked, shifting his feet. “Tell me we’re good.”
“Yeah, go,” Joseph shouted as he bounded up the stairs and behind the wheel.
Mike stepped back and felt something shift underfoot. He looked down and saw a torn and discolored tag attached to a badly bent key ring. Mike brought his eyes back up and quickly checked his flanks.
A female zombie with shoulder-length brunette hair in a ponytail stalked quickly around the front of the bus. The young woman had only recently come back, judging from the mostly clean appearance of her hair and skin. Blood glistened in the gaping wounds where her breasts should have been and soaked in to the remnants of her torn T-shirt that hadn’t fallen away yet.
Mike sighted and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun jumped against his shoulder, and the zombie’s head erupted like an over-inflated balloon. Mike hesitated just long enough to see the body fall backward; then he grabbed the key from under his boot and launched himself aboard the bus.
“Try this one,” he said, holding the dangling key out for Joseph as he shut the door.
The key turned smoothly and the engine started readily.
“Hang on, we’re live,” Joseph yelled and dropped the bus in gear. He scanned the gauges as he cranked the wheel over to complete the U-turn. “Mike,” Joseph said as the bus pulled around toward NMMI again, “We’ll need gas before we blow town, but otherwise, we pulled it off!”
Mike slapped Joseph in the back of the head. “Never say that shit until—”
“Lookout Lead to bus team,” the radio on Mike's shoulder crackled. “We need you to pick up the rabbits before you come home. They’re a quarter mile north of the box in a real bad spot.”
“Roger,” Mike growled. “Joe, get us to ‘em.”
Joseph plowed a zombie over as he slid the bus between an abandoned truck and a two-car wreck.
“Thank God the streets aren’t like that last hell hole,” Joseph muttered as he drove past the turn to get back to the box.
“What’s that?” Mike asked, leaning in but keeping his eyes on the road. “You aren’t saying you can’t handle this, are you?”
“Shit. No. Just noting this thing handles worse than—hang on,” Joseph worked the wheel over clockwise to swerve so a cluster of zombies would bounce off the fender instead of chancing the engine housing. “This lumbering,” Joseph gritted his teeth, “...behemoth handles like a World War Two tank.”
�
��Your idea,” Mike said with a smirk.
It wasn’t hard to spot the blazer. A steam geyser tainted with black smoke billowed from under the hood. It also was the only car on the road attracting the attention of nearly three-dozen rotten corpses. Jimenez finally let off the horn. The constant moaning of the zombies grew in volume by the second.
Mike opened the door to the bus as Joseph approached along the passenger side of the Blazer. It was dangerous and stupid, but Mike drew his pistol and hung out the door. He fired the whole magazine at the zombies crowding around the Blazer like stray cats around a can of tuna. The whole time, he would have sworn he could see Wolflord yelling at him to stop through the windshield.
As soon as the pistol was empty, Mike grabbed his shotgun from the top step. Joseph stopped along the passenger side of the crippled vehicle, leaving barely enough room for the blazer's door to open in the hope it might buy Wolflord an extra second.
“Tell the driver to stay put,” Joseph said.
“What?”
“Tell the driver to stay put. I’ll pull up on his side next,” Joseph yelled.
Mike blasted a zombie that turned toward him. He racked a round into the shotgun and blasted a bald zombie beating on the rear passenger window. Immediately he racked another round and shot a third zombie beating on Wolflord’s door.
Joseph looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Jefferson sitting stupidly near the back of the bus. “Jefferson! Help cover Wolflord,” Joseph yelled.
“I can't.”
“Cover them! Open a damn window! Anything,” Joseph yelled back.
Jefferson opened a window and shoved his head and shoulders out. He immediately shot at a zombie only a foot away, beating on the Blazer's windshield. It dropped like a marionette with the strings cut, leaving a bloody smear across the glass.
For all of the yelling, gunfire, and moans of the undead, Jefferson didn't notice Jimenez trying to warn him about the zombie right below him. An old woman with stringy gray hair grabbed his arm and pulled him into biting range. Another zombie grabbed his shirt and started pulling him further out of the window.
Joseph could see Jefferson was in trouble, but Wolflord was nearly aboard, and they were going to have to move fast. There was just no way he could go save Jefferson and still get the rest of the team out in one piece.
Who made me the Angel of Death? The same asshole that made all of us angels of death. Save who you can, have mercy for the rest.
When Wolflord saw zombie heads splatter against the windows, he opened his door and jumped out. Jimenez started to climb across the seats to follow him. Mike looked at the zombies clustering around the bus and jamming into the narrow space between the two vehicles.
"No! Tell Jimenez to wait and close your door!"
Wolflord turned his head and told Jimenez to sit tight. A zombie grabbed him as he shut the door. He shoved his knee into the zombie’s belly. The zombie bit at his hands, forcing him to keep his hands moving while trying to push the undead away from him.
Jefferson elbowed the rotters. Something cracked and gave and their hands slid off his arms. He hastily fire a round at the zombie on Wolflord, planning to duck back in the bus once his buddy was clear. Bone and blood splattered against the blazer, the pavement, and Wolflord's face. The body fell into a pile at his feet, then he staggered toward the bus door. As Jefferson started to pull himself back inside the bus, the three zombies that he shook off grabbed him again.
Mike grabbed the blinded cadet by the shirt front and pulled him through the door. Wolflord landed on the stairs and twisted at the hips, scrambling to crawl up the stairs so the doors could close.
"Go, Go, GO!" Mike yelled.
Jefferson's hips slammed into the window frame as the bus took off. One of the zombies lost its grip on him, but two others didn't. His ankle dislocated when his foot caught on the frame briefly, and his knee broke when it slammed into the asphalt. The zombies holding him, couldn't support his weight and dropped him face first. He howled in agony. Several more zombies near the Blazer shouldered their way into the frenzy. Jefferson spent his last moments straining to reach the barrel of the rifle that he'd dropped on his way out the window.
Mike pulled Wolflord to his feet then worked his way to the backdoor. A group of rotters continued to beat against the driver's side of the Blazer, rocking the top-heavy SUV on its suspension.
“Joe, better make this U-ie quick, or they’re gonna roll it,” Mike said.
“Curb check,” Joseph yelled. The bus jumped as he ran over the median and jumped again when the bus came off the curb on the other side. Immediately he cut the wheel back to the right to jump the curb again.
Wolflord finished wiping the bulk of the gore from his face with his sleeves and joined Mike by the back door.
“Hang on,” Joseph yelled. He plowed through the zombies on the driver’s side of the blazer, scraping against the side of the blazer in the process. The jolt of hitting the zombies and Joseph applying the brakes took nearly took Mike and Wolflord off their feet. Mike threw the emergency door open so Jimenez could jump in.
Jimenez didn’t hesitate. As soon as the bus scraped past his door he shouldered it open and jumped out. He covered the twenty feet in seven furious strides and jumped, grabbing at the door frame as soon as his fingers reached it.
Mike grabbed his wrist and hauled him in. Jimenez only had one foot in the door when Mike hollered for Joseph to take off again. Wolflord helped pull Jimenez in before the emergency exit banged shut behind him.
“Man, Joe, you weren’t kidding about that radiator,” Jimenez said, cracking an uneasy smile. “I was beginning to think you guys weren’t never gonna get to the bus.”
Chapter 8
Hansel Hanse
Hanse considered himself well prepared for any contingency, where most people who knew him considered him out and out paranoid. His ranch, or “Devil’s Resort” as he now lovingly referred to it, sat nearly thirty miles west and a little north of Apo, a wide spot in the road that had a gas station and grocery store. He’d bought the land for relatively cheap using the proceeds from one of his profitable scams. The house and cellar he gave in and financed only because he didn’t have the time to build them himself; and Moto-man Transport had paid most of it off already. Hanse and Or Ze’ev had taken the summer before Mike got out of the Marines to repair and extend the barbed wire fence.
The storm/fruit cellar fifty feet behind the main house held food; distilled and bottled water; assorted rifles and small arms; drums of gasoline; and boxes of 5.56 mm, 7.62mm, 9mm and .45 ammunition; and anything else a private army might need to wage World War III. Hanse kept the extra provisions on hand in case he and his delivery crew ever had to lay low, teach a client some manners, or repel a land invasion. Prepared for anything is prepared for everything.
Inside the house, he kept at least three weapons in every room. His computers and cell phones still had a good charge, and the hot water still flowed thanks to the generators and solar panels. A solar powered pump pulled water from a technically-illegal private well that tapped into a clean aquifer. “Technically illegal” were two words that Hanse flirted with often in his business dealings and home preparations; of course, as far as he was concerned, “legal” only came into the question if the wrong sort started asking questions, and right now there weren’t too many of them around.
Hanse, Or, and three other drivers from Moto-man Transport lived in the spacious five-bedroom, three-bathroom house. Each day the five men patrolled the perimeter and repaired any damage from wind and animals. Almost two weeks after the Zom-pocalypse began, they had encountered and killed just two zombies on Hanse’s Devil’s Resort.
Despite being armed to the gills more than a hundred miles from a significant population center, and therefore zombies, Hanse wore unease like a T-shirt. He hadn’t heard from Mike since the day after Or had taken him out of Dallas. Mike had said he’d be late to rendezvous, but more than a week late meant things really went
to shit.
Hanse stood on his second story roof with a pair of binoculars, which gave him a commanding view for miles in any direction. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Certainly he wasn’t looking for Mike’s Blazer to come in to view.
“Damnit, Mike. Where the fuck are you?”
He pulled out his cell phone and punched the speed dial for the phone he’d supplied Mike. It rang one. Twice. Three times. Four times and clicked over to voice mail, again.
Fuming, Hanse snapped the phone closed and briefly considered throwing it to the ground and grinding it to dust under foot. He turned and paced along the roof and back again.
Bad things happen to good people all over. You did what you could to keep him breathing. Really would’ve been nice to keep him breathing through this …
The phone in his hand rang a second time. Hanse stared at it for a moment as if someone had spoken to him and he was deaf. The phone rang a third time before his brain processed the fact. He popped the phone open to answer the call.
“Hanse, you never did have a good sense of timing,” a familiar voice said somewhere between serious and playful mocking. “I mean it’s almost like you wanted that zombie to try for me.”
“Christ Mike. What the fuck is up with leaving me thinking you’d bit it during, during, during fucking rapture!” Hanse’s yelled, his breathing speeding up.
“Bit it, now that’s a Hanse line,” Mike chuckled. “More like a friggin miracle rapture ain’t bit me.”
Hanse sat down on the roof, one leg on each side of the ridge.
“Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t called,” Mike said, “Things got interesting last week and even more interesting yesterday.” He told Hanse about the incident with the NNMI cadets at the military surplus store, being laid out for three days, and four days of raiding Roswell for anything that wasn’t bolted down.
“So wait,” Hanse interrupted, “Why are you picking all this shit up, and how the fuck is the Blazer going to cart all of it plus the four of you, if I understood that part correctly?”
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