Road to Riches: Deadline: Book 1 (Zombie Road)

by Wesley R. Norris

  She pulled up parallel to the fence. The deck of the tractor was high enough to easily clear the top of the iron bars.

  “Grab your gear and let’s go.” I snatched up my pack and slung my M4 across my back.

  “Something’s wrong.” She said, her fingers flying over the Greenstar screen.

  “We don’t have time, just punch the damned autopilot and let’s go before they come back.”

  “It’s not working!” She screamed her frustration while she continued punched buttons on the navigation screen.

  A few dozen of the slower zombies were staggering back towards us, unable to keep up with the others. The majority of the horde was still chasing after Sean, but unlike them, he would tire eventually, and they would catch him.

  “What can I do to help?” I wasn’t familiar with how the system operated, so I was as useless as tits on a boar to assist her. Part of our escape plan was to lock the navigation system onto a course away from the compound and the MEPS, egress the tractor at the fence while Sean led the horde away, then hit the autopilot switch and give the zombies something to chase other than us. We still had to escape after the retrieve and if the place was surrounded, there’d be no way out. We needed the self driving tractor to draw them off. The fences looked strong enough to hold back a few hundred at least, but ten thousand would flatten them from their combined mass.

  “I’ve lost the GPS signal!” She twisted in the pilot’s chair and pointed. “Dammit, the antenna is broken!”

  I followed her finger and stared at the black cable torn loose from the top of the cab with its broken shark fin antennae dangling against the blood and gore smeared glass.

  “Screw it. We’ll take our chances without it.” We had to go. Time was running out. The big horde would find us within minutes, homed in on the noise of the John Deere’s engine.

  She shook her head. “No, I’ll buy you some time. It’s the only way or we’re both dead.”

  I swore. I cursed this shithole world and every undead bastard in it. I cursed Carter and the asshats who gave his orders but mostly I cursed myself. She was right and I fucking hated it.

  “Quit giving me that stupid look and go.” She shoved me in the chest with a freckled hand. “I got us this far, I can get myself out of this.”

  “No. I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself. Sean, I understand, but not you. No, hell no. No fucking way.” I blinked back the tears that threatened to spill from my eyes.

  “I don’t need a new daddy to tell me what to do. I had to put mine down by myself when he got infected and turned. I can handle this, just don’t forget about us. Haven needs you to get word to Lakota or all of us are dead. Now, please Rye, go, while you still can. I’ll be fine.”

  Ear piercing wails split the air. Part of the horde that chased Sean was coming back, drawn to the engine noise. The fastest ones from the first horde were bearing down on us from the opposite direction.

  “Good luck.” I kissed Madi Cole on her forehead. I handed her my backup pistol. She didn’t say anything, she knew what it was for. She’d made the decision to sacrifice herself for a chance to save her people and trying to change her mind would just get us both killed. I vowed that one way or another I would see her people rescued if I had to do it myself. I opened the door and climbed on the hood of the tractor then swung over the fence.

  25

  Nosebleed

  Jacksonville, FL

  I dropped to the ground, bent my achy knees to absorb the shock from the ten-foot drop and rolled to my feet, M4 stabbing the air in front of me, eyes seeking a target. Shit, I was too late, Shepard had beaten me here judging from the zombies in military uniforms that dotted the ground, each of them sporting a fresh bullet wound in the head. I’d suspected it when I’d seen the zombies clustered at the fence.

  Behind me the throaty roar of the tractor competed with the keening wails of the undead as Madi continued to bulldoze her way through the horde. I felt a deep pang of regret at her not coming along. The young lady had spunk and I wouldn’t forget her. I hoped her plan worked. It had to, I couldn’t bear the thought of her giving her life to help me.

  I ran across the overgrown lawn towards the building, eyes probing every shadowed corner, every bush that could hide an enemy. Nothing opposed me. Shepard had been thorough. I eased my way through the double glass doors into the lobby. Two more zombies were slumped against the wall, their putrid brains leaking from the holes in their skulls.

  I moved slowly and silently, strained my ears to hear anything that signaled danger. Year old corpses and a mixture of undead bodies in lab coats and civilian clothing lay in the short hallway that lead deeper into the building. I had the building’s layout committed to memory. A right turn after the security checkpoint, through a set of double doors that lead to the waiting room where proud families of the recruits sat in anticipation of the swearing in ceremony. Another set of security doors that lead past the administrative offices towards the pair of elevators at the end of the hall. The right-hand elevator provided key card access to the subterranean lab beneath the station. There was no power, but once the doors were pried open, the maintenance ladder would get me to the lower level, if I wasn’t already too late. I didn’t want to kill Shepard if I could avoid it. He was just a man on a mission like me, but if it came down to it to save Caitlin, then I wouldn’t hesitate.

  I stepped towards the double doors, paused when I had it half opened and the hinges squeaked. The area beyond was the family waiting room. Nothing tried to bite my face off, so I pushed it the rest of the way open, M4 carbine shouldered and ready to spew death. The room was dimly lit, but I could see the disarray the room was in, hard backed chairs, and trash scattered everywhere, the armed services flags knocked from their perches and draped across the floor. A glass walled break room sat behind the rows of chairs, the dead vending machines silhouetted in the dim light. I couldn’t see into the deep shadows of the break room, but nothing was banging on the glass windows.

  Thousands of young men and women came through here year after year to serve their country, while their family and friends waited in this room to watch them take their oath, all oblivious to the experiments being conducted in the sublevels beneath their feet. It would have been chaos whenever the first victims turned and began attacking the unsuspecting families idly chatting about how proud they were of little Johnny and sweet Susie making the decision to serve their country.

  At the first screams, the MPs would have instituted a lockdown while the people under attack would have stampeded for the doors, anxious to escape the rending jaws of the undead. At the far side of the room I could see the doors that lead to the elevators. I focused on the shadows as I eased my way silently into the room, sidestepping the scattered chairs, one eye on the red dot of my scope and the other watching my peripheral. I guess that’s why I didn’t see the tripwire.

  I felt the taut fishing line strung across the floor at ankle height let go, heard the ping of a grenade spoon when the tripwire released the safety pin. I threw myself to the floor in a fetal position behind a concrete column a heartbeat before the explosion erupted, felt the disruption of the air around me when the ball bearings inside the fragmentation grenade flew in every direction, heard the pinging sounds of the lethal pellets as they shredded the plastic chairs and ricocheted around the room. I heard the shatter of glass as the break room windows turned into a billion flying shards, embedding themselves in everything around me. The pressure wave from the explosion knocked the air from my lungs, starred my vision and left my ears ringing. Perforated chunks of ceiling tile and shattered light bulbs rained down from the false ceiling like snowflakes.

  I heaved in a breath of the dusty air, scrambled backwards on my heels as the first one came at me. It was fast, the young woman in the Go Army t-shirt sprung half the distance between us in a single leap. I brought up my rifle and shot her through the eye before she could make the next leap that would have landed her in my lap. More of them spilled
through the opening from the darkened break room where they’d waited oblivious to my presence behind the soundproofing of the glass walls.

  That sneaky bastard, Shepard had left me a welcoming gift. If the grenade trap didn’t take me out, the zombies trapped in the break room would. I scrambled to my feet, fired off more suppressed rounds at the approaching mob. The grenade had gotten some of them, but only maimed the rest enough to slow them down, not put them down for good. I dropped a couple of more as I retreated back the way I’d come. There were five or six still standing and a few more crawling through the maze of chairs. A couple of more steps and I could put the double security doors between us, but that wouldn’t get me into the basement, I had to move forward, neutralize the threats. I slammed another mag home and hit the bolt release. I slipped into the zone, that place where every step was automatic, no thought, just reflex and pure muscle memory. Eye on the red dot, acquire the target, squeeze the trigger, acquire, squeeze, and repeat the drill until all but one of the charging creatures were down. He sprang in my direction, I snapped off a round at him but missed the brain. The bullet punched a hole through the side of his face and blew off an ear. He landed right in front of me. One of his arms was missing below the elbow, three-inch shards of jagged radius and ulna bones protruding from the stump, the flesh obliterated from the ball bearings packed inside the frag grenade. I got the chance to get a close look at the damaged arm when he thrust it at my face. He was inside my reach, too close for the M4 and I couldn’t back away, my back was against the wall. I hit him across the face with the butt of the M4 before letting it drop on its sling while I shoved him away with my left hand, I punched him hard with my right. The blow staggered him and gave me room to move. I’m no slouch in a fight and Pancho had shown me a few moves from his professional fighting days, so I put them to good use. I ducked the wicked shards of bone he swung at me and slipped behind him, used his head to punch a hole in the dry wall. I wrenched the ruined arm behind him and upward until I heard the satisfying pop of the collapsing shoulder joint in my still ringing ears. I twisted the dislocated stump until it was pointed at his head, then punched him the temple with his own shattered arm bones until they were buried in his skull. I let the body drop and turned to deal with the crawlers. I could have just used my pistol, but it wasn’t suppressed. If Shepard was still in the labs, I didn’t want to give away the fact that I’d survived the grenade trap. I finished off the ones still crawling towards me with shots to the head from the M4 before moving into the hallway between the admin offices. The doors on the right-side elevator were already open. I activated the flashlight on my M4, swept the darkened hallway for any more tripwires or surprises and moved rapidly towards the elevator doors.

  A careful inspection of the maintenance ladder running inside the elevator shaft didn’t show any signs of booby traps. At the bottom of the shaft, I could see the faint green light of a glow stick. I knew I had to be cautious, but I also had to hurry. If Shepard and crew had already made the retrieve, they were getting further away by the minute. I grabbed the closest rung and swung out onto the ladder, gripped the outside rail with my feet and hands and slid down until I reached the bottom of the shaft. It was claustrophobic in the narrow hallway. Dark, and foreboding. Plenty of places for an ambush or a zombie to lurk. I felt a twinge of fear, this was a bad place. I don’t know what kind of experiments went on down here, but even the stale air felt wrong, evil. I centered myself, tucked the fear away. I forced my feet to move, ran through the procedures my muscles knew automatically. Gun up in the ready position, activate the flashlight, one eye on the reticle, the other scanning for threats, easy peasy. Whatever happened down here was a remnant, a memory of a dead world. You’ve done this a thousand times, I reminded myself. Finish the mission, get the hell out of Florida.

  Glow sticks were dropped every few feet along the hallway leading off to the left, so I went left. Windowed rooms with thick steel doors were staggered along the hall to my left and right, blacker on the inside than a jilted ex-lover’s heart. My flashlight revealed signs for the different labs. Genetics, Analysis, Testing. Innocuous names that didn’t give a clue about what was being developed down here or what happened in the hermetically sealed rooms. I shined the light into each of them as I passed. Dead computer monitors, centrifuges and lab machines I couldn’t identify covered the stainless steel workstations. Glass faced cabinets holding racks of test tubes were spaced along the back walls.

  No undead banged on the glass or came hauling ass around the branching corridors. The room labeled Genetics had a pair of autopsy tables in its center. Surgical instruments rusted on trays next to each table. A shriveled cadaver lay on each table, chests laid open, ribs removed for easy access to the internal organs.

  I watched for tripwires, moved slowly past another door marked Restricted Access with a biohazard warning label affixed to it. There were no windows in this room. I checked the heavy steel door, it was secure, and moved on. I took another left at the end of the hallway, following the soft green light of the glow sticks through a set of solid steel security doors, propped open with a chair into a server room. Zombie bodies were scattered across the floor. There was the slow hiss of compressed gas leaking from a damaged cylinder somewhere ahead in the darkness. I sniffed the air, didn’t smell the stink of a flammable gas or the pungent aroma of toxicity. Probably halon for the fire suppression system, not lethal. Maybe.

  I panned the room with my light and discovered a man missing several fingers from one hand lying face down several feet in front of me. His clothing was similar to mine, tactical vest and gear loaded down with weapons and magazines. He hadn’t been dead long. Brain matter and blood oozed from the cavernous hole where the top of his head used to be, tissue and bone fragments embedded in the ceiling tiles above. A Desert Eagle pistol was still clutched in his undamaged hand. I wondered if he was Shepard. Whoever he was, he took the quick way out before he turned. The bodies of the undead scattered around him were dressed in white lab coats worn over polo shirts and slacks, a mixture of tennis shoes and loafers on their feet. Researchers and lab techs who’d been trapped down here after the outbreak until Shepard unsealed their tomb.

  I swiveled to my left when I heard a cough followed by a pain filled moan, two and a half pounds of pressure into a three-pound trigger pull when I locked my red dot right between his eyes.

  He pointed a suppressed pistol at me, his arm shaking from the exertion of holding its weight up. The slide was locked back, he was out of ammo. A huge flap of skin hung loose on his neck, blood soaked his clothes and saturated the carpeted floor beneath him. At that point there was more of his blood on the outside than the inside. He didn’t have long before he joined the ranks of the undead army. He let the empty pistol drop to his lap.

  “Shepard?” I asked. I didn’t lower my weapon. Never underestimate the other guy if he’s still drawing breath.

  “Yeah, didn’t your daddy tell you it’s not nice to point guns at people? I’m not in any shape to kill you right now anyway. Maybe later.” He managed with a weak smile. His voice was barely audible. I kept my rifle on him and stepped closer.

  “Fucking ninety pound nerd wearing birth control glasses did this.” He groaned in agony. His skin was already turning pale, his veins turning dark beneath the skin of his face. I eyed the briefcase sitting next to him. He saw where I was looking. “Take it. It won’t do me any good. Should have known better than to take this shit job.”

  That could have been me dying there had things played out differently. That’s all it comes down to more often than not, dumb luck.

  “Where’s the rest of your team? I found one back that way, finished himself off before he could turn.” I needed to know if he had any buddies I would need to look out for.

  “All dead, just us two left.” He said. His pupils were dilating and the flow of blood from his neck had almost stopped. “You got anything to drink? I’m dying of thirst.”

  I lowered my rifle, sl
ipped the pack from my shoulder and dug out the bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, pulled the cork and handed him the bottle.

  He took a deep drink. “Damn, that’s smooth.” He offered the bottle back to me.

  “Keep it.” I didn’t want the bottle back, not after his infected lips had been on it.

  He took another drink, coughed and set the bottle by his side. “I’ll finish it off when I’m in the halls of Valhalla with my teammates. We’ll toast to your success. Do me a favor Rye, I don’t want to be one of them. I’d do it myself, but I’m fresh out of bullets.”

  “You have anyone back home that I need to get word to?” I raised my rifle again and pointed it between his eyes. I would do him the courtesy of ending him before he became one of the undead and let his loved ones know what happened to him. I would expect no less if the roles were reversed.

  “Not anymore. All gone.” He whispered. “Got a fast boat in the river, 513 Front Street, straight east of here. Electric dirt bikes parked behind the building, use them. Good luck, Retriever. I’m ready now.” He closed his eyes.

  “See you in Valhalla, soldier.” I shot him through the skull and grabbed the briefcase, checked the contents against the list in my pocket. The serial numbers on the hard drives all matched, the manuals appeared to be all intact. Gift wrapped for me in a nice leather briefcase, now all I had to do was make it back and get paid. I spared the brave retriever one last look and headed for the elevators, eager to put this damnable place behind me.

  26

  Bluff

  Military Enlistment Processing Station Jacksonville, FL

  Getting out of the MEPS was a lot easier than getting in. I headed for one of the fire exits at the back of the building. The fences were clear, but I could hear the wails of the undead clustered at the front entrance. A pair of olive drab dirt bikes sat hidden in the bushes on the other side of the ten-foot fence. I pushed the briefcase through the gap in the bars and scaled the fence.