McCoy nodded and turned to his waiting humvee with the mounted SAW and gunner. Joseph and Mike turned and walked quickly back to the bus.
As soon as they were up the steps in the bus, Mike grabbed the padded rail at the top of the stairs and swung himself into the bench-style bus seat. His Winchester and a shotgun stood propped in the seat next to him. Joseph climbed the stairs and practically threw himself into the driver’s seat which bounced twice under his sudden weight. Joseph turned the key; the bus rumbled to life.
Joseph watched, surprising himself with how calm he was, as McCoy’s HummVee pulled in front of the two tractor trailers and two more HummVee’s. This was the signal to Wolflord and Grins to open the gate. Joseph felt for the two young men about to open the gate. At least a second hummer, crewed by Jimenez and Jefferson, waited to pick the men up as soon as the gate was open enough for the convoy to leave.
Wolflord pulled the gate bar back. As quickly as the bar cleared the catch, Grins and Wolflord backpedaled at full speed. The gates swung in. Opening the gate took all of ten seconds. It took less than another eight for the two men to sprint to their ride and be safely behind armor and bullet resistant glass.
Almost before Wolflord and Grins made it to their hummer, McCoy’s hummer rolled through the gate for the last time.
Joseph eased the bus forward and fell into line behind McCoy. The parking lot that ran along the north side of the dorms was mostly empty, despite all the noise they had made in the last four days. Joseph had no illusions that the rest of the trip would be so quiet.
McCoy led the convoy to the main road and turned right, heading south on Main Street, through the heart of Roswell to the interchange that would take them to Carlsbad. Once they cleared Roswell the hard part was done.
We just have to get that far.
Joseph made the right turn onto the main road. “Alright people, here’s where it gets interesting.”
Mike pulled the shotgun into his lap. He hoped he wouldn’t have to fire at all. If the cadets on the mounted SAW’s kept their heads, and Joseph drove like he always did, then there wouldn’t be any need for the shotgun. But Mike knew from experience, and kept pointing out to Joseph, things have a nasty habit of going to shit; thank you Mr. Murphy.
The main road and the immediate area on the east side of the campus was largely cleared during the raids. Not that it stopped more zombies from making their way to and through that area. During the early stages of the raids, when the group secured the two big rigs, they had cleared the center of the road in a two hour, terrifying operation that nearly got four people bitten. Still, the group agreed the operation had been worth it to clear the roads. Now Joseph was even more glad of it; it made for a smooth start to what was likely to turn into another trip like his flight from Dallas.
You’d think I’d be used to the idea by now.
Joseph shook his head and focused on driving. The convoy rolled down the main drag. A few hundred yards south of the parking lot, just south of the crossroad in front of NMMI, abandoned and wrecked vehicles began littering the road. The convoy simply snaked through, jumping the median with ease whenever it was necessary, and flattened the relative handful of zombies in the road, saving noise and ammo.
“Mike, I don’t like this,” Joseph said over his shoulder without taking his eyes off the road.
“What’s to like?” Mike asked, scanning both sides of the bus before standing up in the aisle to look out the windshield over Joseph’s shoulder.
In a city of sixty-thousand-plus people, only a few hundred zombies were walking the streets in the half-mile ahead of the convoy. A few small clusters surrounded the houses and businesses on the west side of the road.
“No way there’s that many hold outs. Where are they all?” Mike asked.
“I don’t really care, so long as they’re not in front of us,” Joseph said, turning up the volume on the CB radio mounted above his shoulder.
The radio was quiet. The drivers and gunners in the other four vehicles undoubtedly asked themselves the same questions. Eight city blocks fell behind them steadily. The only thing that slowed the convoy down was jumping the median some twenty times to avoid roadblocks. No one in the group fired a single shot. The rumble of the engines helped drown out the moans of the undead that had become a constant part of life for all survivors.
McCoy stopped the convoy in front of the Alien Museum at the corner of Main and 1st streets.
“What the hell is he doing?” Mike asked and grabbed the CB mic. “McCoy, not to rain on your parade, but we don’t have time for the tour.”
“Don’t you hear that?” McCoy answered.
Mike tapped Joseph on the shoulder. Joseph slid the driver’s window open so they could listen for whatever McCoy heard. The duo ignored the steady moans of the undead. There, just for an instant was the faint pop of a M-16. Three more shots followed. Then a second weapon joined in. Each shot was a nail in someone’s coffin. Even if every shot hit a zombie, it almost guaranteed attracting three more.
“Who do you think it is?” Mike asked into the mic. “Can’t be a rescue station. They would have long since been overrun.”
“No telling,” McCoy said. “They’re definitely in front of us though.”
“Fuckin’ figures,” Mike said to Joseph.
“I say we stay with the plan. Not like there’s any going back.”
“All we can do is press on,” Mike said to McCoy.
In response, McCoy’s brake lights dimmed, and the hummer started forward again. Joseph and the rest of the convoy followed suit.
Mike kept his head on a swivel, looking out both side windows frequently. The zombies along the road were shuffling as fast as their rotting, half eaten, and mangled legs could carry them toward the source of the gun shots. The good news, so far as Mike was concerned, the zombies were content to ignore the convoy in favor of the gunshots.
Every block the convoy coasted through, the gunshots grew louder and more frantic. Joseph put everything together first.
“Mike, whoever’s doing all the shooting is headed right at us. And with our luck, they have a good sized group of rotters chasing a moving buffet.”
“McCoy, can you see who’s making all the noise or if we’re going to have a problem?”
“Not yet, but I’m pretty sure we’re gonna have a problem.”
It took another three blocks before anyone saw the people making all the noise. A ragged team of five people in ACU’s, armed with M-4’s tried to retreat up the street. Every few hundred feet, the team had to stop and shoot a few zombies that closed in behind them. Unfortunately, every time they stopped to cover themselves, more zombies closed in from the front and sides as well. It didn’t take a tactical genius to figure out the five soldiers would be overwhelmed and eaten soon, even if their ammo didn’t run out.
Two rounds missed the heads of the zombies they were meant for and slammed into the bullet resistant glass in front of McCoy.
“Mike, we found a team of soldiers on the run from a decent sized hoard of zombies. We’ll be able to push through the hoard. Can you pick up the soldiers and we’ll take them off your truck down the road.”
Mike swore. “Yeah. We’ll make one attempt to get them. After that they’re on their own. We can’t risk our own on this one.”
“Good point. We’ll give you a little cover when you open the door.”
McCoy’s truck turned wide and pulled around to the trapped soldiers’ back side. The team clearly saw the convoy and understood what was getting ready to happen. Joseph watched the team collapse down so all of the members stood within arm’s reach of one another in the middle of the road. They stayed standing so they could move as soon as any of the convoy stopped. All Joseph had to do was pull up alongside the team. The driver’s side of the bus would slow down any zombies coming from that side. McCoy’s gunner just had to mow down the zombies marching along the road. The rear guard of the soldiers had the most dangerous job, shoot zombies coming
from the north and west without hitting any of the convoy vehicles.
Joseph had the door open before he had the bus completely stopped. The first soldier jumped aboard immediately. The next two soldiers were a couple seconds behind the first.
Joseph had just enough time to notice the group of freshly turned zombies crossing in front of the bus at a sprint before they tackled the last two soldiers. He didn’t hesitate. Joseph simply closed the door and started rolling toward McCoy’s truck.
“We got the ones we could. Press on,” Mike radioed.
The last soldier to get aboard turned and beat on the door, demanding to go back for his comrades. The soldier next to Joseph pulled his pistol and ordered Joseph to turn around.
“Fuck you. This is my bus, and your buddies are dead. We can’t do anything but get ourselves out of here before we die too,” Joseph said, still driving forward through the swath cleared by McCoy’s gunner.
“Turn around before I shoot you, goddamnit.”
Mike didn’t say anything; he just put his shotgun to the soldier’s temple. Walter didn’t wait for the first soldier to draw on Mike. He leveled his shotgun on the tired soldier’s chest and waited.
“We saved you. We can let you out right here and let you go back to be eaten by your friends, but we are leaving town. Put your gun down right now. Only warning,” Mike said deliberately.
The first soldier to board the bus stood up. “Templeton! Holster that fucking weapon.”
“But what about Jamison and Blaylock?”
“They’re dead, and you know it. Now, holster the damn weapon, private.”
Templeton let his arm drop to his side and sat on the steps. Mike rested the shotgun on his hip and sat down to keep an eye on the two soldiers at the front of the bus. Walter took one more look at the obvious leader of the fire team and sat back down facing Stacy.
Joseph pulled the cord of the CB mic so he could pick it up without taking his right hand off the wheel. Even with the pedal to the floor the bus was losing speed from plowing through a swarm of zombies. Between running over the bodies and the zombies beating on the bus as it passed, they were in greater danger of being rolled. Ahead, McCoy’s hummer wasn’t faring much better.
“McCoy, we already have their attention. Have the gunners open up or we won’t make it to the junction let alone out of town.” Joseph nearly dropped the mic when he cut the bus to the left sharply to avoid a large cluster of zombies.
“Truck one to truck five. Get up here and help make a hole for us. Gunners fire at will,” McCoy ordered over the radio.
Joseph kept the bus rolling in the straightest line possible to preserve their momentum as zombies bounced off the fender and fell under the tires. Each hit robbed them of precious speed. If they came to a complete stop, Joseph knew, it would be nearly impossible to get going again and they would eventually get rolled.
It took a minute but the rear guard finally passed the bus. The gunner threw steady bursts at the zombies in front of the hummer, being careful not to put rounds too close to the lead vehicle. McCoy’s gunner finally started throwing more lead, less worried about conserving ammo and more focused on getting everyone out of the forsaken city.
The SAW gunners blew through two hundred rounds each inside of forty seconds. They spaced the bursts just long enough apart that the barrels wouldn’t overheat before they cut a path in the wall of zombies blocking the convoy. The zombie shuffled along about twenty deep in their shield-less phalanx. Each rank the SAW gunners cut through got filled in from the rear and the sides.
The hummers pulled parallel with each other and pressed into the wall of undeads with the SAW’s blazing. Joseph and the big rigs pulled in behind the hummers and crept steadily forward. The bus bumped up and down like a four-wheel-drive truck out mudding. It was all the bus could do to creep up over the bodies and make a couple miles an hour.
“Joseph, why are we slowing down?” Mike asked calmly.
“The bodies. It’s all I can do to keep us from getting stuck.”
Mike grabbed the radio mic. “Truck three, we need you in front of the bus so we don’t get stuck.”
“Truck three to truck four, you’re in a better position to build up speed and get in front.”
Joseph couldn’t take his eyes off the road to watch the big rig at the rear of the convoy slow down to let the convoy get a little ahead. The driver of the truck floored it and floated the gears as quickly as he could. The light load in the trailer let the truck take off quicker than normal. The driver didn’t have to hit highway speeds, just get rolling fast enough that the truck would crush what it didn’t plow aside. He passed the truck in front of him and the bus with relative ease.
As soon as the trailer cleared Joseph’s front end, he pulled the bus in line behind the truck. The bus’s engine quit whining and started pushing the bus back up to a safer speed.
“We’re clear,” McCoy reported. “Things thin out some behind that big group. All vehicles form back up as soon as you’re clear.”
Chapter 12
Lost in the Sauce
Isaac Preston leaned against the floor-to-ceiling window with his left shoulder. He stared, vacantly, at something somewhere beyond the elevated, Green-line tracks a story below. Soundproof safety-glass let him watch in silence as the sun rose higher and broke above the buildings of East Chicago. The ultra-modern, five-story, Illinois Institute of Technology dormitory was designed with the constant passing of trains in mind. He squinted against the morning rays. Soon enough the shared patios of the apartments two stories above would block the light.
The freshman, engineering student stared out the window while the coffee automatically started brewing. It could have been a perfectly normal Tuesday. Except it wasn’t. Of course, in the last few days, “perfectly normal” had taken on a new meaning.
Eddy Torquin and Sam Geerson woke up a few minutes after the coffee finished brewing. They still held to their habit of being up by 7 or 8 a.m. for class. Just because they weren’t going to class anymore didn’t change their internal alarm clocks.
“Hey, Isaac, what you lookin’ at man?” Eddy asked after pouring his cup of coffee.
“End of the world. Same as yesterday,” Isaac said without looking away from the window. “I can’t keep sitting here like this. News hasn’t changed since a day or two after all this started. I mean,” he turned to look at Eddy, “I just can’t keep sitting here waiting like this.”
Eddy poured a second cup and went to look out the window with Isaac. “Here,” he said as he handed his friend the second mug.
“Thanks. How’s Sam?”
Eddy swallowed his slurped coffee. “She’s fine. She even beat me to the bathroom.”
Isaac took a drink from his mug and mock gagged. “Gah. I forgot you drink the cheap stuff.” Isaac chuckled. “Kidding. Sam being attacked like that though is more reason we shouldn’t stay here.”
Sam joined them with a mug of steaming coffee in her hands. “Mornin’, guys. Plotting how to take over the world or hack our grades?”
“You don’t need us to hack your grades, Sam,” Isaac said.
“Yeah,” Eddy quipped, “You already did ‘cause nobody gets an A in Object Oriented Programming.”
Sam punched Eddy in the shoulder. Eddy did his best not to react.
The three friends stared out the window in silence for a moment. Outside, the world carried on with ending: the undead wandered the streets, eating the living; cars burned where they crashed; buildings burned where people got desperate; stocks crashed, if anyone cared; people looted what they wanted and needed; and people died. Some died at the hands of other people, and in accidents in their frenzied flight. Others killed themselves to escape; still others wished they could have killed themselves as zombies ate them alive. Some people ran; some dug in, and some survived.
“Oh my god,” Eddy said. Issac and Sam started looking for whatever Eddy saw. “I just realized I owe the zombies big. They got me out of a tes
t in physics that I totally would have bombed.”
Sam punched Eddy’s shoulder again.
“Damn,” he said, rubbing his shoulder, “Your aim’s getting better; hit the same spot twice.”
“Keep it up. I’ll hit the same spot again.”
Isaac looked at his friends. He smiled for a second before glancing back out the window. “So do we even want to bother turning on the TV today?”
“Not unless it’s to play Xbox or watch a movie,” Sam said over the brim or her mug. Eddy jumped toward the TV to grab the Xbox controller first.
“Guys,” Isaac spoke up, “I think it’s about time for us to be getting out of here.”
“To where?” Eddy asked, stopping short of turning on the console. “Can’t go anywhere. We can’t even get out the front door.”
“Who said anything about the front door?” Isaac asked putting his back to the window.
“Issac, No. Whatever you’re thinking is crazy and dangerous, and NO,” Sam said.
“And this becomes a problem—how?”
Sam dropped onto the couch, facing Isaac. Eddy slid into the chair left of the couch. They stared at Isaac with the “you-need-to-forget-this-stupid-idea” look that they’d perfected since meeting Isaac their junior year of High School.
“We’re safe here. Why leave?” Sam asked, maintaining the look.
“Because we know they’re inside. Because in another few days, we’ll be out of food, and I doubt the cafeteria’s open this week. Because rescue ain’t coming. Take your pick.” Isaac killed the rest of his coffee and went to the kitchen for more, leaving Sam and Eddy to think.
“How do we get out,” Sam asked after a few minutes.
“Roof or window. We use the Green-line tracks to stay out of harms way.”
“Great. I love this plan! I'm excited to be a part of it! Let’s do it!” Eddy said, sitting forward on his chair. Sam threw a pillow at his head. “Hey what was that for?”
“If you don’t stop quoting movies every five seconds,” Sam raised another pillow over her head.
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