I silently watched as Nate, Cole, and Hamilton moved first away from us, then saw them climb one of the overhead passes of the intersection. The single lanes were split from each other, giving the entire intersection a futuristic feel—or the parts that were still standing. Two of the upward ramps lay in smashed hunks of concrete across the roads branching off from our highway, and the trio had to walk a good mile to get to an overpass that didn’t look ready to join the others. I still didn’t like having to watch and hope that I’d soon be a widow thanks to some static oversights. On the highest point, they stopped, partly hidden between yet more wrecks, and about a minute later I saw a speck zoom away toward the city, the drone doing its thing. The barely audible whine of its engine made my anxiety spike, but nothing around us burst from hiding spaces. I had no idea how fast that drone was flying, but sure didn’t mind getting a little more rest for every moment that it was underway. A good thirty minutes passed before it returned, landing right up there on that overpass. Nate waved at us, signaling us to join them where the ramp on the other side touched down on the ground once more, so up and forward it was.
Using the mud-splattered hood of a car to unfold a map of the city, Nate gestured the fireteam leaders to gather around him. I knew that technically meant Richards, but nobody protested when I joined them as well. Pitching his voice to barely above a whisper, Nate explained the situation. “We’re here,” he pointed at the intersection, “and the roads are more or less clear until Glencoe park, here.” He traced the thick line of our highway until close enough to downtown that my heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be that easy, right? Of course it wasn’t. “It’s only seven miles to our destination from there, but that will be one grueling stretch, even if we best it in the daylight and manage not to alert any squatters. We should start that stretch in the morning, as soon as the shamblers go underground, and hope for the best.”
That didn’t sound so bad—until I realized the implications. “You mean, tomorrow morning?” I whispered back, absolutely not liking a thing about this.
Nate briefly glanced at the others before giving a curt nod. “We can make it if we walk through the night.”
I was already shaking my head, although less in denial than pure exhaustion. “We’ll be too tired to run.”
Hamilton, of course, had to interject there. “If we need to run, we’re already dead.”
He had a point there. Still…
“What’s the rush?” I whispered. “We’ve been making good progress so far. A day won’t make a difference.”
Nate grimaced, but instead of answering he laced his fingers next to the car, nodding for me to let him boost me up onto the roof of the SUV. I hesitated but then accepted his offer, confused—until my focus fell on the stretch of road behind us. I’d missed it from where we had been squatting in the shade, but there was unmistakable movement behind us, enough to churn up dust. My immediate instinct was to jump down, but I accepted the binoculars that Nate handed me. Sure enough, a mass of zombies was drawing closer, stretched out across both the inbound and outbound lanes. They were still too far away to see details, but I didn’t need to count them to know trouble when I saw it.
Back on ground level, Nate leaned in, murmuring into my ear. “Not sure whether they can smell us, or whether that’s a pattern they follow on their own, but they are coming after us. We could hunker down in a building away from the road and hope it’s the latter, but if it’s the former, we’re in deep shit. Still think my suggestion to walk us all into the ground is a bad one?”
I shook my head, gnawing on my bottom lip to keep from giving a verbal answer that was absolutely unnecessary.
Nate gave me a moment, then turned to the others. “Get your people ready. We move out in five.”
Those five minutes felt more like five hours. It took a lot for me to try to remain calm and collected. Somehow, the knowledge that the only way now was forward, with likely no rest in sight until we had reached our destination—and cleaned it out, too—wasn’t exactly comforting. I knew I could do it; I had pretty much spent a week twiddling my thumbs and sitting on my ass, and my body had plenty of reserves to burn. But guessing we might not get much rest was a different ball game than knowing we’d be lucky if all we needed to do would be more walking through the entire night. I tried to do a quick calculation in my head—if we continued at this speed and nothing got in our way, we’d reach our destination by late morning tomorrow. Somehow, the sea of undead building up behind us made me doubt it would work quite like that. Considering we’d already walked the ungodly distance of a marathon today, I wasn’t even sure whether the shamblers would be the variable in this.
Nate hadn’t explained to the others what was amassing behind us, but I was certain that by the time we set out, everyone knew exactly what was going on. He still had us leave in a staggered procession, but no longer were we spread out over more than a mile—more like a few hundred yards. The sun was in rapid decline now, sending long shadows onto the road ahead of us as the sky turned all shades of yellow and red. With maybe two hours until sunset left, and every fiber of my being screaming for a longer rest, even adrenaline wasn’t quite enough to keep me alert and moving at a brisk pace. It wasn’t long until I felt a new rush of energy flood through my body as the damn serum did its thing, mobilizing reserves I absolutely needed. Before Hamilton’s big reveal I would have welcomed the rush; now, it made me fidgety, and not just because of my possible demise coming from that very sensation. If any of the others happened to turn now, a few guttural screams would likely be enough to send the entire resident population running for us. Gee, just what I needed.
I didn’t protest when Nate signaled Richards that we would be group two, with Blake taking point. Scott remained our taillight, but a little bit of rest seemed to have been all his guy needed to not become a true liability. The first mile or two, it was hard to keep myself to an even pace as all I wanted to do was run. Every time I looked back, I thought I could see movement with the naked eye, but knew that was impossible—unless a different group had found our trail. With my body gearing up for a fight—or a long night of playing hide-and-seek with the undead—I dug into my pack and forced myself to wolf down some of the provisions I was carrying. With luck, it would be an hour or more until I’d have a reason for more adrenaline to leak into my bloodstream, either from fight or flight, and I wanted some extra energy available by then—and me not ready to puke it all up from exhaustion. I couldn’t exactly claim that I’d grown accustomed to the stench or that it had lessened in any way, but survival proved to be a great motivator. I wasn’t the only one going for that option, and while the odd grimace appeared on a sweat-soaked face, nobody complained out loud. We were heading almost true south now with the sun disappearing to the west, the temperatures dropping a momentary relief—but not exactly welcome.
There was still the need to squint when looking to the right into the setting sun when the first growls and howls echoed through the dusk, reminding me awfully of the time we’d spent in Sioux Falls, way back when Bates was still alive and my skin had been pristine without a single tattooed mark on it. Only that city had been small enough to walk from one end to the other in hours, and we had been safe up on top of the hospital building. We’d also been stupid enough to catch super-juiced zombies to find out how to best kill them—not some of my proudest moments. Apparently, similar patterns were going on here with the zombies keeping a nocturnal lifestyle.
Just how much that was true was proven at our next waypoint up ahead—the junction of US-75 with US-635, a good six miles after our longest rest. We reached it around twenty minutes after sunset, only a few of the highest lanes far above our road still illuminated. I had no trouble seeing in the lengthening shadows—and that included what was lurking in said shadows, coming stumbling, crawling, and running into the lanes from the surrounding urban sprawl. I didn’t need Red’s warning signal to duck behind the next barrier, a small car so rusted that its previous paint job was impossible t
o guess at. Hill squeezed in behind me, with Richards, Gallager, and Cole disappearing behind a slightly larger limousine. The impulse to stay hidden was strong, but I forced myself to creep alongside the car to get a better view, and then skip on ahead to the next vehicle, and the next. While most of my body enjoyed the momentary stop-and-go, the soles of my feet didn’t, and my mind wasn’t too happy about the reason, either. As we kept inching forward, more and more shamblers came flooding in from all sides, making one thing obvious: if we waited much longer on this side of the intersection, it was anyone’s guess how long we’d get bogged down. The next two groups were already catching up to us, our stragglers not far behind them, and Nate did exactly what I would have gone for: he gave us the signal to move forward, if need be on our own, without waiting for the rest of our team. I had no intention of abandoning Richards and his men, but signaled Red to spread out further. That way, a one-in-two chance of getting caught easily turned into one-in-five, or even one-in-twenty-five, if I considered all the others as well. Somehow I doubted Hamilton would run into a sudden lack of luck and be that one, but a girl could hope.
The last hints of light in the sky died as I reached the first lane splitting to the right which seemed to be the start of the zombie thoroughfare. Cars were crammed bumper to bumper everywhere, a lot of them closer as they’d turned into joint scrap-metal sculptures, but that didn’t slow the shamblers down at all. The stench increased the closer I got, making me guess they loved to mark their favorite routes by defecating all over them—or maybe that just happened after years and years of following the same tracks. I felt myself gag and it took a lot not to start retching for real. To regain complete control over my body and senses, I paused, letting Gallager overtake me—which turned out to be a wrong move. For him.
I had just about time to tense when I caught motion from the side as Gallager stepped out of hiding behind one car to move to the next. Then, he suddenly wasn’t there anymore. Growls and a cut-off gurgle came from farther to my left, mercifully out of sight. My mind screamed for me to back away and disappear, but instead I inched forward to where the zombies had tackled the young soldier. Sure enough, there was an empty patch of pavement, created by a truck slamming into several cars and pushing them aside, the gridlock around them preventing others from moving in. Roughly in the middle of it lay Gallager, back bent grotesquely over his pack, with one shambler tearing into his face, the other his neck. Already, three more were coming in, vaulting over the cars. Gallager’s body was shaking but I doubted that he was still alive. The scent of blood that hit me was strong enough to be noticeable over the stench. The newcomers reached the site of slaughter and joined right in, effectively tearing the fresh corpse apart. More and more came, pushing through the group that had already found their hunk of fresh meat. In less than twenty seconds, there wasn’t enough left that could have reanimated and fought, independent of whether Gallager had been inoculated with the serum or not.
Horror didn’t quite cut it. The only thing worse for me would have been if something inside of me had started responding to that gore and blood with anything but revulsion, but at least I was spared that.
With the body rent asunder, the shamblers that continued to stream forward now started attacking those that were gorging themselves on the remains, either fighting for scraps or going for less-fresh but still edible substance. I realized that if I didn’t want to get dragged right into that feeding frenzy, I had to move away, and quick. Forcing myself to turn my back on what was going on was hard—also because it was the most likely threat angle. Before long, I dropped down onto all fours to be less visible for the shamblers hurtling in the opposite direction. That brought me way too close to what the ground was littered in, but then the scarf was as good a splash guard as I could hope for. Being able to see even in the pitch black underneath the cars helped me pick out areas too crowded by cars for the zombies to choose—which worked well until I had to get up and climb over them in order to escape.
Glancing around me, I tried to gauge if the area ahead was clear, making me feel terribly exposed. That got even worse when I found no snapping jaws coming for me, and scrambled up and over the hood of first one car, then a second, immediately dropping into a crouch on the other side. The stupidity of that move became apparent when I had just a split-second to realize that the metal groaning behind me wasn’t caused by me, and then the shambler was on me. Swinging with the ax in my left hand, I managed to bury the weapon between its opening jaws, forcing it to a halt, but the impact in turn sent me staggering back. The blade of the ax became unstuck as I keeled over backward, sending me into a fall. Rather than try to break it, I trusted that I’d survive and my pack would cushion some of it, and instead hacked at the zombie with my right hand. As predicted, it came right for me, ignoring the ax—which sheered right across its gangly, exposed neck, severing the head with one perfect swoop. The shambler went slack, but I had no time to notice it as that was the moment I crashed into the ground, the corpse landing right on top of me. Fowl liquid oozed onto me, hitting my shoulder and upper torso before I managed to wrench us both to the side, using the momentum to get up. Revulsion hit me but I cut down on the impulse to clean myself, instead dashing for the gap between two cars, and around the next. Behind me, I heard another commotion forming, but I didn’t allow myself to look back, instead continuing forward. That shambler had been barely more than parchment stretched over bone, but still it seemed like a perfect source of food to others. I wouldn’t have been able to push a strong, fleshy one off me like that—and those that had come after Gallager had definitely been more massive.
In my attempt to lose any tail I might still have, I kept weaving around cars until it got a little more quiet again. It was only then that I realized I had no fucking clue in which direction I was heading.
Fuck.
The lanes above should have been a clear giveaway, and my addled brain took a few moments of panic to realize that, but even so that only helped me so much. I was sure that my rough-and-tumble moment had turned me around to a certain degree. Finding a sign post might help, I told myself. I’d ended up farther away from the central part of the intersection, somewhere toward the shoulders of our highway, wherever they were visible now. The sky was dark, the moon and stars out now, not much help with directions. Asking on the coms was out of the question with any noise easily becoming a death sentence—and it wasn’t like anyone else could help me since they didn’t know where I was. The upside was that I seemed to be out of the worst of the zombie incursion, at least for the moment.
I tried my best to keep moving forward in silence, but progress was insanely slow. Five minutes, then ten passed, and still nothing. I finally caved, and after squatting next to a pickup truck for twenty seconds and not hearing anything close to me, I pulled myself onto the truck bed, shimmying toward the cabin to try not to turn myself into a broadly visible silhouette. Easing myself into a crouch with my hands on the roof of the cabin, I tried to get a better look around.
Bingo—somewhat off course but still up ahead I found the familiar outline of one of the buildings I’d noticed when we’d gotten closer to the intersection. I was a good four hundred yards away from where the highway disappeared into the city, and the ground between me and there was relatively undisturbed at the moment. The center of the intersection had turned into one writhing mass of bodies, not unlike a crowd at a concert. It was impossible to make out if there were people moving away from there as the streams still swelling inbound were too distracting—and I doubted any of my compatriots would be stupid enough to be seen at a distance. It was too dark now to see what was happening with the shamblers that had been coming up behind us, but the incredible din from the intersection was likely ringing the dinner bell for them as well. Except for unlucky Gallager, this might even turn out to be a blessing rather than a curse.
With a general direction now fresh in my mind, I made my way down from the truck and set out once more, pausing every few steps to
listen. My progress was painfully slow, but I knew I’d still be faster than if I got eaten. That tended to get in the way of reaching destinations more than being cautious. It took way more energy to proceed like that—and do my very best to remain as alert as possible—than trundling along the highway, and my body was starting to show it. Despite what common sense might have dictated, I forced myself to slow down even more, including taking a break once to gulp down some water. More than once I paused just in time to see a shambler move past where I would have been had I moved on—and damn, those sneaky assholes were quiet. Like the one that had tackled me, all of them were emaciated to the point of not being able to fluently move any longer, but move they still did. I realized that they must have been the underdogs, usually hiding where they wouldn’t become a meal themselves, now called forward by the promise of scraps. Even years in, I had no fucking clue how long it took for them to starve to death, or become too weak to be a menace for anything except carrion eaters. It was easy to guess that the strong ones were those smart enough to kill worthwhile prey, but what about the weak? Were they smart enough to eat vermin and bugs? That idea alarmed me to no end, because it would explain why they were still around—and would massively extend the lifespan of the entire undead population of the world. We could, technically, subsist on bugs only, so why not them?
And sheesh, now was really not the time to contemplate shit like that, but exhaustion, dehydration, and hunger—even if I couldn’t feel it—will do that to the best of us.
An endless eternity later, I finally made it over the last access ramp and back onto US-75, and even found a sign telling me I was heading in the right direction. Behind me, carnage was still going strong, but what had sounded like battle or rallying cries had subsided. Did that mean that there was nothing left of the fresh meat they had found? Or had they realized we were slipping through the cracks? I had no intention of finding out, and slowly continued to make my way toward downtown Dallas, hoping I would find someone alive before the dead found me.
Retribution: Green Fields #11 Page 16
