“Not sure,” Patel replies. “We’ve got three civilian vehicles and a school bus on the side of the road about four hundred yards ahead. There are people in the grass, and it looks like there may be injuries. I can definitely make out eight that appear to be administering first aid and possibly three or more injured, based on the way they’re grouped and the activity. I need the medic teams in trucks two and three to gather their gear and be ready to deploy and aid,” Patel answers.
“This is two. Roger that, truck one,” a different voice says over the radio.
“Truck three copies,” another chimes in.
“Are you assuming command, Corporal?” Brooks asks.
“No ma’am,” he replies, sitting up straighter in his seat. “I just thought…”
“Don’t,” Brooks says, cutting the corporal off. “Get us closer so I can survey the situation. Then I’ll decide if we deploy and assist,” Brooks says.
“Yes, Major,” Patel replies, dropping the vehicle into gear and motoring down the slope. He rolls forward, the rest of the military vehicles following in single file and brakes to a stop about fifty yards from the scene. He turns the engine off and the other trucks do the same, staying in formation.
As Brooks begins assessing the situation, four EMTs quickly exit from the back of truck two, their hands filled with their life-saving gear. They move with the skill and precision that comes from countless hours of practice and simulations. Brooks sees them pass under her window, rushing toward the injured people in the standard two by two formation. Four more soldiers follow right behind them in the same formation, flanking out to assist the medical personnel.
Snatching it from the cradle, Brooks shouts into the mic, “I gave no order to deploy! Medic teams! Return to your vehicles! All of you! Return to the trucks! That’s an order!”
“That’s the truck radio ma’am. They can’t hear you,” Patel says.
“Tell them to back up. Do not approach the victims or attempt to offer aid until I’ve given the order,” Brooks demands.
“I’m on it,” Patel says, reaching for the black band around his throat. His fingertips search for a split second before touching the small button on the band, switching the comm device to VOX at the same time he looks out the windshield. “Too late, ma’am. They’ve reached the civilians,” he tells her, momentarily forgetting he’s set the mic to activate on his voice.
The four support soldiers following the medics, hesitate mid-stride. In domino-type cadence, they each slip their fingertips under their helmets to adjust their earpieces and then to their throats to activate their mics.
“Say again. I did not receive,” one of the soldiers says into his mic. His head is turned toward the trucks, but he’s looking past them as if they’re invisible and he’s receiving commands from miles away, rather than the scant number of yards separating them
“Shit,” Patel says, sending another unintended transmission to the rescue team.
“Say again,” the soldier repeats.
“Tell them to pull back,” Brooks commands.
“Medic teams,” Patel says.
“What the fuck?” Nichols says, interrupting the corporal as he points out the windshield. Where did they come from?”
Pulling her attention from Patel’s incompetence, Brooks looks out the window to see people streaming out from the tree line. All of them are wearing clothing covered in a variety of stains and tears. The ones in the lead are coming at a full sprint, followed by the others moving at a high-speed shuffle, their running hindered by various limps and side stepping. Brooks and Nichols see others moving inside the tree line, apparently being the slowest. Brooks and Nichols put the pieces together in the same instance, but it takes Patel a little longer to connect the dots.
“What are they doing?” he asks absently, watching the newly formed crowd surging toward the soldiers.
“Say again,” the soldier on the ground repeats, still looking past the trucks instead at the fast approaching horde.
All of the support soldiers are focused on trying to decipher the cryptic orders coming through the headsets and the medics are preoccupied with systematically breaking out their gear in preparation for triage as their repetitive training simulations ingrained in them. None of them appear to even notice the group surging toward them. Even now the shamblers and runners are being followed by more than a dozen disheveled students staggering out from the trees. Their milky eyes are trained on the soldiers and their mouths move in chewing motions as they approach with their arms outstretched. They look like they’ve just returned from some Halloween party with a “go as gory as you can” theme. Many have savage looking bite marks on their faces and their limbs are covered in layers of dried blood.
A girl who must have been a cheerleader, given the sweater and short skirt she’s wearing that were once some high school’s team colors, emerges from the brush, hesitating to decide which dinner table she’d like to be seated at. A ragged and stained pom-pom still clutched in her left hand. One side of her face has been ravaged to the point it resembles hamburger laid over bone. Where the eye on that side of her face used to be, there’s now a hollow socket with a few bloody cords running from it to the deflated eyeball on the end. It looks like a shriveled plum as it clings to the chewed meat that was once her cheek. The fluid from the collapsed eye coats the dried blood and runs down her face and neck, giving the ruined flesh a glossy, wet sheen. Apparently having made her dining decision, the cheerleader drops her pom-pom and rushes toward one of the pockets of carnage in the grass.
“Tell them to pull back,” Brooks orders as the first of the survivors reach the soldiers. He slams into the closest of the preoccupied soldiers, driving him to the ground in a tangle of limbs before disappearing in the tall grass. Two more are brought down in the same fashion, their shouts of surprise quickly replaced by screams of pain.
“Medic teams,” Patel shouts. “Pull back! Repeat. Pull back!”
But the teams are unable to follow the orders. The medic closest to the tree line, a woman named Margaret Anderson is the first to be pulled down into the tall grass, maybe by one of the supposedly wounded or possibly by one of the good Samaritans attending to the injured. She struggles, a look of shock and panic on her face as she pushes away, fighting to separate herself from whatever is desperately trying to pull her down again. Margaret scrambles for her sidearm, clawing at the grip of the pistol as the wave of people crashes into her from behind, driving her down into the grass. The soldier disappears from view as the ghouls that drove her down thrash above her. A thick spray of blood shoots into the air in an arc and then the struggling in that small corner of hell subsides. Another medic is brought down in the same manner by the leaping cheerleader. The third medic violently disappears into the heavy foliage. The fourth tries climbing to his feet but is tangled in the limbs trying to pull him down. Crusted fingers tear at his camos as snarling teeth snap at any exposed skin, occasionally catching a bit between their teeth and tearing it free in long, crimson strips. Not one of the soldiers who’d rushed out to aid the injured got off a single shot before being torn asunder.
For a few brief seconds, the collective screaming can be heard, amplified by the com devices at their throats, broadcasting their gruesome ends to the soldiers. But the screams are quickly replaced by the wet, smacking sounds of raw meat being pulled from bone and the crunching of cartilage. More soldiers jump from the backs of the trucks, attempting to free their fallen brothers and sisters from the gruesome scene.
“Give me that!” Brooks shouts as she mercilessly wraps her fingers around the strap encircling Patel’s throat and rips it free. The coiled wire leading to the earpiece is pulled taut before coming free and snapping Brooks in the shoulder. She fastens the comms device around her own neck and tucks the earpiece in place.
“All squads. Hold your positions. Repeat. Hold your positions,” she orders.
“Major. Our team is getting their asses kicked out there” a voice come
s over the com to state the obvious.
“Who is this?” Brooks spits.
“Sergeant Nate Matthews, ma’am,” the voice answers.
“Sergeant. If another soldier exits one of those vehicles without my direct order, I’m holding you directly responsible,” Brooks says, knowing every soldier in their convoy can hear her orders.
“But ma’am,” Matthews begins.
“Sergeant Matthews,” the major interrupts. “Get your shit together, or have you forgotten this is a military operation? I’m aware of the shit happening in front of me and I don’t need you, or any other swinging dick under my command assessing the situation for me. I want everyone back in the trucks, right fucking now. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Major,” Matthews replies, his tone taking on the icy, emotionless steel Brooks was hoping for.
“Get it done, Sergeant,” she adds, before switching the comms device from VOX.
Through the earpiece, Brooks can still hear the rending of flesh from bone mingled with grunts of effort from a particularly stringy tendon or thick piece of muscle. She knows every single soldier with her, other than Nichols and Patel, are having this sound piped directly into their ears.
“This is Major Brooks,” she says after pressing the button to manually activate the mic on the throat comms. “Everyone, switch comms to channel two.” Releasing the mic button, Carolyn taps the one next to it to switch to channel two. She takes in a deep breath, thankful the sounds of the eight soldiers under her command being eaten, have been silenced.
“You’re my expert,” she says, turning to Sergeant Nichols. “Any suggestions?”
“They’re fucked,” he replies, pointing toward the horror taking place in the grass. “And we’re going to be if we don’t get moving soon,” he adds, adjusting the direction of his finger to the flesh-eaters exiting the trees. This group, apparently deciding to pass on the buffet in the grass in favor of the four canned meals-on-wheels sitting in the road, start veering their direction. A few of the ones from the first wave, lift their heads and turn toward their comrades and then turn to their intended destination, marking their next meal’s location.
“Are you saying, we just leave them?” Patel asks, referring to the downed soldiers.
“The other choice is joining them, Corporal,” Nichols replies.
The first of their diners exit the grass and start shuffling up the shoulder toward them, with others following. A few of the late arrivals to the original feast, abandon the outer edges of the feeding piles and peel away to join their brethren on the road. Brooks can see none of them are setting any speed records getting to them, and she could order the entire battalion to exit the vehicles and probably escape at a quick march. But the sheer hatred in the creatures’ milky glare, who’d once been moms, dads, and high school students, make Carolyn think of one word. Relentless. She didn’t know for certain if the zombies would ever tire or lose their scent. Would they track them indefinitely? Day and night? No matter how strict the training and conditioning, everyone had to sleep at some point. While no human had ever been forced to prove it, it’s completely plausible to die from a lack of sleep. The lab tests done on rats showed after thirty-two days of forced, sleep deprivation, every single subject died. The longest a human being has ever been documented to go without sleep is eleven days. A normal person can last three days on average before communication becomes difficult and hallucinations begin. Military conditioning had pushed the envelope to four, but sooner or later the mind will force a shutdown.
The cab of the truck rocks as the first zombie crashes into it. Patel had been tracking the slow-moving guy dressed in a shredded button-down and slacks covering one leg, from the edge of the grass all the way to the outside of his door. And still, he let out a stifled shriek when the creature hit his door, jolting Carolyn from her thoughts. She looks out her window and into the mirror to see several more leaving the trees and aiming for the trucks behind them.
“Let’s get rolling, Corporal,” she tells Patel.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, having looked in his own mirror to see a couple dozen ravaged high school football players shambling from the trees on the other side of the divided highway and heading toward the median and the convoy he’s currently leading. Shifting the MTV into gear, he stomps the brakes after a few feet when he looks out onto the road. In front of them are at least twenty of the walking monstrosities. The sudden movement of the lead vehicle seems to have increased their sense of urgency and the speed of their shuffling finds another gear.
“Drive over them,” Brooks orders.
“Yes, Major,” Patel replies. Swallowing hard, he picks up the mic to the other drivers from its cradle and says, “We’re rolling through.”
“Roger that,” comes through the radio and is repeated two more times before the trucks begin rolling.
The first zombie to make contact with the grill is dragged down, his legs unable to shift to the opposite direction in the short time allowed by the moving truck. His crusty hands slap at the hood as his fingernails are peeled back in search of something to snag before being sucked over the edge. Thumps and the sound of snapping bones echo from the floorboards as the body is twisted and chewed before being spit out behind the MTV, only to have the process repeated three more times by the trailing vehicles.
Another of the flesh-eaters fares far worse, or better depending on your perspective, getting pulled directly under the front wheel rather than from the grill. The truck raises and drops as the run-flat tires crush the creature’s legs, rolling up and being supported by the pelvic bones before they collapse under the weight of the transport. Blood, organs, and entrails spray out in front of the truck like a tube of some horrible toothpaste being struck with a hammer. The remaining contents of the flesh tube squirt out with less pressure as the truck rolls forward, crushing the ribs and pulverizing the lungs and heart. It’s when they reach the skull that the truck’s rear tire spins for just a second, losing traction in the viscera coating the tires with the jaw acting like a temporary tire chock. But it too gives when the tires catch traction. The cab rocks slightly as gray and black brain-matter jets onto the shoulder of the road. A small circle of skull plate rolls away from them, wobbling down the pavement before vibrating to a circular stop, like a recently flipped coin.
Truck one rolls on, plowing over and through the horde as the other MTVs fan out in a V-pattern behind the leader, efficiently clearing the narrow west-bound lanes of any of the infected. The trucks grind their rancid flesh into a paste, slathering a thick layer on the pavement under their wheels.
Chapter Two
“… the fuck?” Dave gasps as the air is forced from his body by the carpeted floor.
The body that hit him from behind in his in-laws’ living room lands on top of him. Arms wrap around his legs and he feels hands grab hungrily, clawing at his legs. The denim offering the only defense from his flesh being peeled away in long strings. He can feel the heat from her mottled skin rolling off her in waves. Dave struggles to draw some precious air into his lungs, but his muscles betray him, allowing only the tiniest bit of life-giving oxygen inside. The muscles controlling his legs spasm into overdrive, kicking frantically beneath the creature attempting to climb them in search of an easier-to-chew-through entry point. He glares at the shotgun resting near the front door. He’d leaned it there to be certain he wouldn’t leave it behind when they left his in-laws’ home. The fifteen feet separating him from the firearm silently mocks him.
“Betty! No!” his mother-in-law, Lynn Foster, yells.
Dave continues to scramble pathetically across the floor, his feet trapped under Betty the mail carrier. Finally managing to pull one sneaker-clad foot free, he drives his heel into Betty’s face. He feels the satisfying vibration of her nose crunching under his rubberized sole. The postal carrier pauses, her tongue pushing out broken front teeth onto Dave’s jeans as she licks the air. He slams his heel into her nose again, remembering this could kill s
omeone if you can drive the cartilage up into the brain. Apparently, he didn’t possess this survival skill because Betty looked at him with more irritation than injury as she continued her climb to his fleshy bits. Maybe he needed to use the base of his palm like they did in some of the old Kung-Fu movies he used to watch. But he was certain he’d seen Chuck Norris do it wearing combat boots. The name of the movie snapped into his head. Missing in Action, starring Chuck Norris as a take-no-prisoners veteran, ironically returning to free the other prisoners he left behind during his escape from a Vietnamese P.O.W. camp years earlier. Not to be confused with Missing in Action: The Beginning, which was the choppy, out-of-sequence sequel to the first movie that chronicled Colonel James Braddock’s, Norris’s torturous stay at said P.O.W. camp and his subsequent, action-packed and explosion-filled escape.
It begins to dawn on Dave that shit may only work in the movies as Betty captures his free leg and adjusts her position to cover it. She keeps one arm wrapped around his legs to trap the limbs under her weight while clawing and scratching her way upward. Betty locks her smooth gums onto his trapped leg. They’re covered in heavy denim, so he’s relieved he’s not in any danger of her breaking the skin with her toothless bite. Her ragged nails are going to be another matter if she gets much higher. An image forms in his head of Betty tearing a small hole in his belly and slurping his intestines out like she’s sucking down pasta in a heavy plasma sauce. The image is quickly shattered by a blast of pain from his leg where the bitch has clamped on. Her mouth feels like a vise with a vicious sideways motion thrown in for cruelty, crushing and gnawing the flesh it captures. He watches in horror as the mail carrier releases her oral hold and continues to scale his legs knowing when she gets to his junk and inevitably manages to get a hold on it with her gaping maw, he’d rather cut the shit off than allow Betty to mangle Big Dave and the twins into putty.
The F*cked Series (Book 2): Proper Page 2