by David Spell
Chuck smiled, following Beth into the house. “Excellent. I guess that’s it then. It was nice of the Mitchells to let us use their home for our very short honeymoon. Hopefully, it won’t be long before I can take you on a extended vacation.”
The young woman turned and put her arms around the big man’s neck, looking deep into his eyes. “That will be nice! Thank you for letting us stay the extra day. I know you had really wanted to leave yesterday but I’d have to say, lying in bed with you all day was one of the highlights of my life.”
McCain pulled her close and kissed her. “I would have to agree with you, Mrs. McCain. I look forward to a lifetime of those.”
Hartwell, Georgia, Wednesday, 0940 hours
The newlyweds stopped to say their good-byes to Pastor Ben and Angela Thompson. As the women were talking, Ben pulled McCain aside and shared some disturbing news.
“Chuck, I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not, but I turn on my ham radio anytime I fire up the generator. It’s a great way to get news about what’s going on in the outside world. Most of the time, there’s just static but this morning, someone was transmitting from down near Atlanta, saying that the city has fallen to a Mexican gang, a cartel or something.”
“What? That’s crazy!” said Chuck. “I know it fell to the zombies. I was in the middle of it, fighting them right after that car bomb and suicide bomber were detonated. Before we had a clue how bad it was, there were already thousands of Zs roaming the city. I lost one of my men and almost got killed myself.”
Ben nodded. “It does sound crazy. This guy transmits every now and then and sounds legit. He said a big Mexican group has set up shop in Buckhead. This cartel leader has supposedly hooked up with a couple of the other gangs in town and they’ve formed some kind of alliance. They’ve cleaned out a lot of the zombies and have a safe zone where they live. The worst of it, though, is that these Mexicans have managed to find a bunch of survivors in the area, but have killed the men and kept the women as slaves.”
Chuck shook his head. “Wow. I hope that’s all bogus. I’d hate to think that could be true.”
As they started their journey, Beth drove the big pickup with Chuck riding behind her in the backseat, cradling his M4, looking for threats. McCain chose the rear compartment so that he could fire out either side if they were attacked. Before the couple had left the technical college on Monday morning, Jake Nicholson, one of the faculty members, had some of the automotive students weld armor plating to the outside of the vehicle’s doors, hood, and engine compartment. They had also replaced the plastic front bumper with a heavy metal one to allow the vehicle to plow through packs of infected.
Elizabeth retraced their route back towards the small town of Hartwell until Chuck had her make a couple of turns to get onto Old Highway 29 heading south. They were able to bypass the downtown area, heading for Anderson Highway, a major five-lane thoroughfare. So far, the roads had been clear of both the living and the dead.
As they made their left turn onto the highway, Chuck saw a Walmart Super Center, a Home Depot, and several restaurants just up ahead on their right. After they got past these, they would be out of the city, heading northeast towards South Carolina. There was no other traffic on the road and only a few abandoned vehicles littering the street.
“Movement in the Walmart parking lot,” Chuck called out as they neared the store. “We’re good. They’re at least two hundred yards away.”
There were cars scattered over the large parking area. The doors of the huge store were standing open and the windows were smashed out, with a group of over twenty zombies congregating near the front entrance. The sound of the Tundra got their attention, however, and they began shuffling towards the street. Chuck used the optics on his rifle to scan the crowd as they drove past. It was a mixed group: men and women, black and white, the virus had played no favorites. These infected were all well into the decaying process, their skin gray and hanging off of their bloody bodies. The bio-terror virus was the only thing that kept them moving.
Another group, this one closer to the street, was loitering in the Home Depot lot. Like the ones at Walmart, however, these had been infected for a while, their bodies rotting away and keeping them from moving quickly in pursuit of their prey.
“More at the Home Depot,” Beth said, glancing to her right and shaking her head. “They look rough!”
“Yeah, other than that one young Z I shot on our way into town on Monday, and a couple of the ones we killed this morning, these all look like they turned months ago,” Chuck commented. “This was a small town to begin with, maybe five thousand people, but with the few zombies we’ve seen, that tells me most of the residents were smart and got out of Dodge before it got bad.”
They were soon out of Hartwell, moving into rural east Georgia. Beth drove straddling the centerline. With no other traffic to contend with, staying in the middle of the road would give them more options for escape if they faced an emergency.
They passed homes set hundreds of feet off of the highway, a few businesses, and several churches, but there were no signs of life. Fifteen minutes later, McCain knew they were approaching the bridge that would lead into South Carolina. Rounding a bend in the roadway, the overpass was just a half-mile in front of them.
“Can you stop and let me scope out that bridge? This was one of the areas I was concerned about when I was looking at the maps. It’s a natural choke point and perfect for an ambush.”
Elizabeth stopped in the middle of the road and Chuck climbed up into the back of the pickup, leaning over the cab, studying the area in front of him with his binoculars. The bridge crossing the Savannah River was more than two hundred yards long with a dense forest leading up to the overpass and continuing into South Carolina. There on the left, he thought. Just past the bridge was a driveway or a parking lot. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see anything because the vegetation was too thick. That would be the spot if someone wanted to ambush unsuspecting motorists.
“What do you think?” Beth inquired as McCain got back into the pickup.
Chuck smiled, covering his anxiety. “I think I’m the luckiest man on the planet.”
Elizabeth smiled back. “You’re sweet. So, you want me to keep going?”
Chuck nodded. “After you cross the bridge, get into the right lane and floor it. There’s something just inside South Carolina on the left, maybe a driveway or a park, but it would be a good place for bad guys to hide.”
As they started forward, Chuck swung his rifle around so that he could shoot out of the left side of the vehicle, pushing the selector on the side of the gun to ‘Auto.’ The cold air blew through the open windows as Beth accelerated, her hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. McCain glanced over, seeing that their speed was at eighty-five miles an hour as they burst across the bridge. Chuck’s eyes scanned over the top of his rifle as he pointed it out the window, waiting to be attacked. Half way to the other side, the sun reflected off of something chrome hidden behind the trees in that parking area.
Chuck didn’t want to panic Beth and it was too late to turn around. The police officer tensed for contact, his finger on the trigger of the M4. As they raced past the potential ambush site, McCain saw that it was a recreation area where people could access the river. It was devoid of vehicles, except for one. He just got a glimpse of a wrecked silver Toyota 4Runner sitting inside the entrance as the Tundra sped by. There were no signs of people or of an attack.
The big man exhaled audibly in relief and after a half mile, Chuck tapped Elizabeth on the shoulder. “We’re good now, you can slow down. Good driving.”
She relaxed, backing off of the accelerator but kept their speed at around fifty miles an hour, continuing their journey towards finding her husband’s daughter. Elizabeth could see Chuck in her rear view mirror watching the forest on either side of them, determined not to be taken by surprise. He’s so handsome, she smiled to herself, remembering the morning after he had rescued her. Her head
had throbbed in pain from the beating she had taken at the hands’ of her attackers, but she still had thought that Mr. Chuck McCain was one good-looking man.
“What’s that up there?” she wondered out loud, movement ahead of them bringing her eyes and thoughts back to the road.
Another parking area was just ahead of them on the left, next to the lake. Suddenly, a black Cadillac Escalade burst out from the driveway into their path, blocking the road.
“Chuck! Look out!” Beth slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop just as a bullet struck the armored hood of their Tundra and ricocheted into the far edge of the passenger side of the windshield, cracking it. Another shot slammed into the front of the pickup.
“Duck down and cut the wheels to the left,” Chuck ordered.
She jerked the steering wheel in a counter-clockwise direction putting the Tundra length-wise to their attackers, the Cadillac SUV just a hundred and fifty feet away. Two black males were shooting at them with pistols and a third was firing a shotgun.
“Stay low and be ready to get us out of here,” McCain said, diving out of his door and going prone on the pavement, aiming his rifle underneath the pickup.
He placed the red cross in his EOTech site on the leg of an attacker who was standing on the opposite side of the Escalade, firing a pistol at them through the open windows. McCain’s 5.56mm round hit the thug in the center of his right shin, shattering it and sending the man screaming to the pavement.
Chuck quickly moved to the front of the Tundra and crouched, waiting until he saw a head poke around the back of the Cadillac. The gunman saw McCain at the same time, triggering his shotgun. Chuck heard a few pellets sing as they hit the armor plating on the side of the truck. The big man instinctively placed the site of his rifle scope over the young man’s face and pulled the trigger. A red mist hung in the air as the dead shooter joined his wounded companion on the ground.
The Escalade started rolling forward, the third gunman having had enough after seeing his two friends bleeding on the pavement. He’d jumped into the driver’s seat of the SUV, attempting to make a fast getaway. McCain was already on the move to the rear of the Tundra, never staying in one shooting position for too long.
He was startled by the explosion of three unsuppressed gunshots from inside their vehicle. McCain swiveled his head to see Elizabeth with her AR-15 braced against the open passenger window, looking through her Aimpoint optics. When he looked back up the street, the Cadillac lurched across the road and slammed into the guardrail. Beth turned and made eye contact with Chuck, bursting out in a huge grin.
“I got him!” she exclaimed.
The gunman that Chuck had shot in the leg was still writhing in the roadway, now exposed to view. The second shooter wasn’t moving, lying facedown on the pavement. The Cadillac SUV sat motionless against the guardrail, the driver slumped over the steering wheel.
“Okay, let’s pull up and secure the scene,” McCain said, getting into the truck. “Stop in the middle of the road about twenty feet from the wounded one. I just put a bullet through his leg so he’s still a threat. When we get out, your job is to watch behind us and watch our sides. Let me deal with the bad guys and then we’ll see what they have.”
“Got it,” Beth nodded, her expression tense, driving them up the road.
Chuck’s door was open and he was out of the vehicle before she could put it in park. His rifle was up as he slowly walked towards the wounded man. When McCain was ten feet away, the groaning gunman opened his eyes and saw the man in black approaching him. The thug still held his Hi-Point 9mm pistol in his left hand, his right clasped around his bleeding, shattered shin. The pistol started to swing towards Chuck, but the suppressed rifle barked twice, one 5.56mm bullet slamming into his chest, the second round hitting him in the forehead. The pistol fell from the would-be ambusher’s hand and he lay still, blood pooling around his head.
“Watch the Escalade while I check this guy,” Chuck told Elizabeth.
She covered the vehicle as McCain slowly approached the second man lying facedown in the roadway. His shotgun lay a few feet away. Chuck used his foot to roll him over, observing that the bullet had struck him just below the right eye. McCain could see that, like his companion, he wasn’t going anywhere.
Chuck slowly eased over to the Escalade, his rifle up, finger on the trigger. Elizabeth was trailing him now, watching behind them. The driver was a very young black male, maybe sixteen, the CDC officer realized. One of Beth’s shots had caught him behind the right ear, killing him instantly. A second bullet had passed through the top of the driver’s seat, hitting the young criminal in the right shoulder.
“That was really good shooting, Beth. I’m impressed,” Chuck commented.
As the adrenaline started to wear off and as she was able to see the results of her marksmanship, she didn’t look so sure of herself. McCain opened the driver’s door of the Cadillac and yanked the body out, dropping it unceremoniously to the pavement. Chuck searched the corpse for anything useful that he might have been carrying.
“Maybe I should’ve let him go,” Elizabeth said, softly, uncertainty in her voice. “He’s just a kid and he was running away. I didn’t have to kill him.”
Chuck glanced at his wife. “We’ll talk about it later. Please keep watch while I go through the car.”
The young woman turned away from the dead body lying at her feet and stepped to the rear of the SUV, scanning their surroundings, holding her AR-15 in a low ready stance. Should I have killed him? she asked herself. A wave of remorse washed over her.
McCain found another 9mm Hi-Point pistol laying on the passenger seat. This one was jammed, an empty casing sticking out of the ejection port. No surprise there, he thought, ejecting the magazine and checking the ammo. The 9mm bullets were full metal jacket and not Chuck’s preferred hollow points, but the rounds looked to be new so he slipped the mag into his pocket. With ammo having become a limited commodity, he wasn’t about to throw bullets away.
As a police officer, McCain had always been amazed at the number of criminals who chose the Hi-Point for their illegal activities. The guns were inexpensive but also bulky, ugly, and more importantly, quick to jam in a firefight. Maybe they were a step up from the proverbial ’Saturday night special’ but not by much.
The effective range of most handguns is twenty-five yards and closer. These dead thugs, whose only firearms training had probably come from playing video games, had engaged him and Elizabeth at twice that distance, only managing a couple of hits on the Toyota Tundra.
There was nothing of use on the body of the driver or inside the car. As Beth continued to watch their surroundings, Chuck searched the other two corpses. The one whom he had initially shot in the leg had nothing in his pockets. Surprisingly, his Hi-Point had not malfunctioned, but McCain still didn’t want it. He removed the magazine of ammo and flung the pistol to the side of the road.
A Mossberg Maverick .12 gauge shotgun lay near the last attacker. The gun had a black polymer stock and forearm and looked to be in good shape. The dead man had eight extra shotgun shells in his pocket and another Hi-Point pistol tucked into his waistband. Chuck pocketed the shotgun shells, kept the loaded magazine of 9mm rounds, flung the pistol aside, and picked up the shotgun.
“See anything?” he asked Elizabeth.
“No, should we go check over there?” She nodded across the street to where the Escalade had made its appearance.
It was a small park that jutted out onto Lake Hartwell. A single driveway provided access, circling an island of trees in the middle of a parking lot. Since it was still winter, they could see past the stark vegetation to a small pavilion containing several picnic tables and brick grills scattered around the area. The parking lot continued past the picnic area, the back side of the recreation area concealed behind the island of trees.
Chuck shrugged. “Might as well. Maybe these clowns have a campsite back there we can scope out. Let’s check the Tundra for damage first.”
The armor had done its job. A round had impacted the metal bumper on the front of the truck, barely putting a dent in it. A bullet had ricocheted off the hood, leaving a crack in the windshield but not shattering it. They found a few other dings where 9mm bullets or .12 gauge 00 pellets had bounced off the side armor.
Before they got back into the Toyota, Chuck showed Beth how to swap out the mag in her rifle for a full one. He did the same with his M4 even though he had only fired four rounds. One of the things that the Green Berets had taught him was to use a lull in the fighting to make sure your weapon was fully loaded.
Elizabeth drove slowly into the park. With the leaves down, they could see almost the entire picnic area in the middle of the parking lot. As they pulled behind it however, they saw two vehicles sitting side-by-side against the curb, facing the lake.
A white Chevrolet Silverado pickup and a gray Ford Fusion both appeared unoccupied but they would need to check to be certain. Chuck had Beth stop ten feet behind the Chevrolet. He approached cautiously, his rifle up and ready, Elizabeth standing in the doorway of their truck covering him with her AR.
He started on the driver’s side, visually clearing the bed of the pickup and then the passenger compartment. Empty. His nose, however, alerted him that there was something dead nearby. He glanced at Beth and touched his nose. She sniffed the air and nodded at him, bringing her rifle to eye level as she scanned the area for zombies. Her husband had taught her that that smell usually meant there were infected close by.
A quick check confirmed that the Fusion was also unoccupied. A flat grassy area to the right contained two tents, thirty yards away. McCain pointed at the tents and motioned for Elizabeth to follow him, the lake now to their left. The smell of death got stronger as they got closer to the camping area. Were there Zs in the tents? he wondered.
