Escape from the Damned (APEX Predator Book 2)

by Glyn Gardner

  Thirty minutes later, his little group was assembled. All of them had at least one gun and a knife. Shane carried an AR-15 style rifle and a large framed black pistol of some kind. SSgt Brown didn’t ask. Mrs. Hebert had a chrome and black semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster. They each had a rolled up blanket or sleeping bag. Inside, they each had a couple of pairs of socks, toothbrushes, and an extra shirt. Mrs. Hebert also had an extra sports bra.

  SSgt Brown let his mind dwell on that for a moment. Ms. Hebert was short, barely 5 feet tall, and her red hair that he knew to be about shoulder length and slightly curly, was pulled into a pony tail for this trip. Her breasts were the best he’d seen in at least a month. He was sure the bra she was wearing would have trouble holding them in place. He shook that thought from his head.

  Each person had at least 200 rounds of ammunition already loaded into magazines, except Theresa who had 50 rounds plus a few extra for her shotgun. He and Sgt Procell each had 360 rounds in their load bearing equipment. Shane and Sgt Procell each had a case of water to carry to the HMMWV and Theresa had a gym bag filled with food.

  The plan was simple. Next to the giant garage doors, there was a normal sized door. Three firemen in full bunker gear would pop through the door. The firemen had taken to wearing their bunker gear outside a week before. They had had several attacks, but the bunker gear had protected the wearers from the teeth of the zombies.

  The hose team would then turn the hose on full and sweep the area. This would immediately knock any zombies near the door off their feet. They would continue to clear the path to the HMMWV. Once in the vehicle, the firemen would retreat to the safety of the fire station and await rescue.

  The door burst open and the three firemen began knocking zombies down in a sweeping pattern. SSgt Brown could not believe how easily the zombies fell to the power of the water. Although they were getting up, they were now 30 or 40 feet away from where they fell.

  The firemen continued to advance through the door. As a group of zombies would begin to close in on the firemen, they would slowly turn the water hose on them and send them sliding backwards on their backs.

  When the third man in line on the hose turned and waved them on, the group ran at a full sprint to the HMMWV. SSgt Brown was amazed. He would have had to waste a ton of ammo, and surely lost people in order to cover the 25 meters to the HMMWV. Instead, he wouldn’t even have to point his weapon at a zombie, much less fire it.

  After the group was in and the firemen were back inside, SSgt Brown used the HMMWV in the pied piper role again and led the zombies away from the front of the fire station. He hoped this would at least help to guarantee safety for Jackson and the others.

  SSgt Brown remembered why he hated the rain. He’d been riding in the turret ring of the HMMWV for about an hour now. It had been raining the entire time. It was the first rain he’d seen in weeks and it was cold. The drops stung his face as they traveled. The sky was gray and there was a thick haze wherever he looked. He guessed that visibility was about 500 meters.

  They had been traveling on I-20 for about 3 hours. They had navigated traffic jams. None were occupied by either the living or the dead. SSgt Brown figured they were maybe an hour or so from the river.

  They would already be there by now, had it not been for Ms. Hebert. She was adamant about having them drive on the correct side of the road. She reminded them several times that the reason they were all in this predicament in the first place was because SSgt Brown had ordered them to drive on the wrong side of the road, thereby causing an accident with fatalities.

  SSgt Brown was beginning to understand why Captain Reynolds was so eager to accept his deal. She was turning out to be a real nag.

  “So Ms. Hebert,” Sgt Procell asked. “What’s your story?”

  “What do you mean my story?”

  “You know, what did you do before this all kicked off? Are you married? Do you have kids? You know the basics.”

  “Ah, so you want to get to know me?”

  “Ah, well I guess. I mean, sure,” the younger man stuttered.

  Shane was fighting back a laugh. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard this conversation.

  “Well, in that case, I’m a lawyer. I am not married and I have no children.”

  “Ah, ok. So, what kind of law did you practice?”

  “I was a personal injury attorney. My job, Sergeant, was to hold people accountable for their negligence. Like you and your Staff Sergeant’s little accident. I would have owned both of your asses had you pulled that little stunt before the fall.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Theresa. “Did you say the fall?”

  “You know this?” she waived her arm in front of her. “All of this, it’s the fall of humanity.” She raised her voice as she became more excited. “Twenty-six days ago, I was a successful lawyer; doing my job, working late, going home to my girlfriend, Kristie. Then it all changed. One morning, I went to work. When I came home, the woman I loved attacked me.”

  Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what was going on. I came home, just like every night. I opened the door and hung up my coat. But that night something was different. The furniture in the house was overturned. There was stuff everywhere.”

  She sobbed. “I called out for her. I called her name. She didn’t answer. I picked up the phone to call the police. Then I heard it. It sounded like steam escaping. Then it turned into something of a low growling sound. I could hear something sliding on along the hardwood floor. I peeked around the corner. I was so afraid of what I would find. What I found was so much worse.”

  Shane had stopped laughing. He had not heard this story. Oh, he had been there when some of the other firemen found out she was gay. But, as far as he knew, she had never told anyone this story.

  “There,” she continued. “On the floor was Kristie. She had a huge chunk taken out of her neck. Blood was everywhere. Her robe was soaked in it. She was crawling on the floor; her lower body flaccid. Her back must have been broken in the attack. Her blue eyes locked onto mine. Her crawling became more frantic. I wanted to help her. With all my heart I wanted to reach down and help her. But I knew, somehow I knew, she was already dead. Those beautiful blue eyes weren’t beautiful anymore. They were dead. Her eyes were dead.”

  She stopped talking and sobbed quietly. No one needed to ask what happened next. It didn’t matter. She was here and alive. She had not died at the hands of her lover. She was now one of them. Theresa thought of Davy, her brother. She threw her arms around the older woman. They cried together.

  No one spoke for some time. They all had a similar experience. They all had lost someone close. Sgt Procell thought he was lucky. He had been deployed to Shreveport soon after the world went to hell. He realized that at some point over the last few weeks he had come to realize that his family was probably dead.

  “Slow down,” SSgt Brown told Sgt Procell. There in front of them was a large herd of dead roaming around the highway. This was the largest he’d seen. It could have been hundreds. They were in both the east and west bound lanes. They seemed to be heading east, the same way he was going. Shit! Sgt Procell pulled over to the shoulder and stopped.

  “Where to now boss? You wanna just plow through ‘em?”

  SSgt Brown would like nothing more than to take this HMMWV and plow through this group of the dead, but he thought better of it. Once inside the herd, they wouldn’t be able to see. The last thing he wanted to do was to get in there and then slam into another vehicle. That would put an end to this rescue mission in a hurry. He thought about Jackson, Mike, and Jen.

  “No,” he answered. “We need to find a way around.” Shane handed him the map. He studied it for several minutes. Then he looked at the area around him. The terrain was pretty flat. There were several fields around them. Some were surrounded by barbed wire fences and some were not.

  “Can you get us north of the highway up there?” he pointed. “I don’t see a fence. If you can go
north through that field, then we should be able to hit Highway 80.”

  Sgt Procell turned the wheel to the left and eased the HMMWV off the highway into the grass. After several hundred yards, SSgt Brown was beginning to think this was a bad idea. This field was about 900 meters in length and was not as smooth and even as he thought it was, but it was about ten feet lower than the surrounding area. The ground was very soft. The HMMWV left a rooster tail and the back end fishtailed every time Sgt Procell turned the wheel.

  Suddenly Sgt Procell slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. The HMMWV slammed into a barbed wire fence that transected the field. The front axle rode up and over one of the fence pickets. Sgt Procell tried to back the vehicle up, but it didn’t work. The picket wedged itself under the deflector plate and caused the front wheels to come off of the ground.

  That wasn’t the worst of it. Some of the barbed wire had become tangled in the right wheel. As the wheel spun, it wrapped more and more of the wire around the axle. After several seconds, some of the thick wire snapped and wrapped itself hopelessly around the inside of the wheel.

  “Shit!” the young engineer said in his North Carolina drawl. The wire was not only keeping the wheel from spinning freely now, but it was wound tight enough to jam the wheel’s ability to turn left and right. He climbed out of the driver’s seat, grabbing a pair of leather gloves from his cargo pocket.

  He began trying to untangle the wire from around the inside of the wheel. He soon realized that this was not going to be an easy task. If he had a pair of wire cutters, it would go faster. But, all he had was his own hands.

  He began franticly trying to loosen the wire. It was as if the Satin himself had tied this knot. After several minutes, he thought he might be making some headway.

  “C’mon,” he pleaded with the wire. “Let go.”

  He realized someone was standing over him. It was SSgt Brown. “How’s it going?”

  “I think I’m getting it,” he answered. “Couple of more minutes maybe.”

  “Well,” the big NCO said in a calm voice. “You might want to hurry. We seem to have attracted some unwanted attention.”

  Sgt Procell looked back towards the road. His heart skipped a beat. It looked like the whole herd was coming for them. The closest zombie was only about 300 meters away. He knew he didn’t have enough time. He still had to get the truck off of the picket.

  “Not enough time,” he announced.

  “Get out,” SSgt Brown barked. “Get your gear and move north! Rally at the road! Go, NOW!”

  They did. The closest zombies were within 100 meters of the HMMWV when SSgt Brown trotted away. He was the last in line. Sgt Procell was in the front. He cut hard to the right along the fence. He was hoping to draw the crowd of zombies into the fence and slow them down.

  He continued running that way for about 200 meters. It was working. The zombies were getting stuck in the barbed wire and the group was opening the distance. But, it wouldn’t last long. The fence would quickly fall and those zombies not caught in the wire itself would pour through the void in a tsunami of dead flesh and gnashing teeth.

  He turned left and sprinted up the small rise to the road. A quick scan told him the road was devoid of all life. There were also no cars on this road. It was empty, wet, and desolate. He looked back to the rest of the group. He could see the three adults clumped in a group a hundred yards behind him. Theresa was only a few yards behind him. She was in relatively good shape. The civilian adults, however, were not.

  They reached the road. Shane and Ms. Hebert were breathing much deeper and faster than he and SSgt Brown. It was obvious that the two civilians were not nearly in as good of shape as the two soldiers. Ms. Hebert had her hands behind her head and Shane was bent at the waist with his hands on his knees. The zombies were several hundred yards behind them in the field. They did not seem to be tired at all. If anything they seemed more animated than usual.

  “We have to keep moving guys,” the young NCO told them. With that, he spun on his heels and began walking quickly east. The others followed.

  After walking for a couple of miles, they had opened the distance to nearly 500 meter. The mass of flesh was almost invisible in the rain and haze. The group stopped for a water break and to catch their collective breaths.

  Shane was already beginning to limp some. He told them that he had a condition called plantar fasciitis. The longer he walked, the more he was going to hurt. SSgt Brown told him they had about 8 hours of walking to get to the river. He asked if the young paramedic could make it. Shane answered in the affirmative.

  The fire station

  “No, damnit!” Cpt. Reynolds was losing his patience with the two women.

  “Look, Captain,” Jen continued. “If we don’t find some antibiotics for that kid’s wound, he’s going to die. I can squeeze puss out of that abscess until the cows come home. He’s running fever. That tells me it’s in his blood.”

  “I can’t help that!”

  “Yes you can,” Indira interjected. “All you have to do is let us go out and find some.”

  “Jesus Christ! Where the hell are you going to go?”

  “Are you telling me there isn’t a hospital, doctor’s office, pharmacy, vet clinic anywhere? Jesus, I’ll even take a cow or horse farm. They may even have some antibiotics.”

  “Even if they do, you don’t know where they are.”

  “But, I’ll bet some of your people know.”

  “It doesn’t matter what my people know. Most of those places you want to go are overrun by zombies. Read my lips ladies. I will not send any of my people out there for you. Period! End of story!”

  Jen was sick of this selfish asshole. She stormed off in a huff, followed by Indira.

  Mike and Kerry were startled by the door to the room flying open. Mike had been napping and Kerry was cleaning her gun when Jen and Indira burst through the door.

  “Pack your shit, Mike. We’re going out!” she ordered.

  “What?” Still foggy from his nap, he wasn’t sure he heard her right.

  “I said, get up and grab your stuff. We are going out.”

  “Why?” he asked. He was starting to believe he heard her right and didn’t like what he was hearing.

  “What’s wrong, Mrs. Jen?” Kerry asked.

  “Jackson needs antibiotics and that tool of a Captain won’t let any of his people go. So, we’re going. Now get up!”

  He had seen his wife like this before. When she gets mad her face turns beet red. Right now it was positively glowing. Even the little Indian girl had a scowl on her face. He looked to her and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Jackson’s wound is infecting his whole body. He needs to get antibiotics, but we don’t have any here. Captain Reynolds doesn’t want to do anything about it. If we don’t do something he could die.” She paused to let that sink in. In the few days she had been with the group, she had learned that Jackson was held in high regard. She had heard about all the times when he and Theresa had saved their lives or found them safety when things seemed at their worst. “I agree with Jen. We need to do something.”

  Mike also knew that arguing with her when she was like this was an exercise in futility. That’s the problem with ER nurses, he thought, such strong personalities. He looked at Kerry. “I guess we better go. They sound determined.”

  He looked to the two middle school kids and Mrs. Arrington. He knew the teacher would be worse than useless. She was barely able to feed herself, or put one foot in front of the other. Mike thought the two kids would be lucky if she didn’t let them starve to death.

  “Wait here,” he told them and left the room. When he returned, the girl who Theresa had held hostage and her mother entered the room, followed by another man. The girl and her mother strode directly to the other side of the room, sat down, and began talking with the kids.

  The man introduced himself as Frank. He told them he had overheard Mike talking to the two women and agreed to help them find the needed me
dicines. He said he knew of a few places that weren’t too bad off the last time he had checked and they might have something. Jen asked if Sam was aware of Frank’s intentions. Frank assured them it was ok and held up a set of keys. They left it at that.

  Frank led the group out the back door into a large fenced in area. It was completely covered in concrete. Frank explained that this was where they conducted maintenance on the station’s equipment. There were very few zombies within sight. The back side of the fence butted up against a privacy fence. Frank told them that the owner of the house got tired of his wife and teen-aged daughter sitting on the back porch ogling the firemen.

  There were several vehicles parked there. One was a red SUV with yellow representation of a heartbeat on it. Frank opened the passenger door. “Ladies,” he motioned them in. He then walked to the opposite side of the building. Mike could not see what he was doing, but in a few seconds he heard a faint ringing. Like the bell on a cat’s collar. What few zombies were in sight, all turned suddenly and walked in front of the building towards the sound, and out of sight.

  “OK,” Frank ordered. “Open the gate, and close it back when we’re through.”

  Highway 80 20 miles west of the Mississippi River

  SSgt Brown was beginning to realize just how much trouble they were really in. They’d been running from this particular horde of zombies for the better part of three hours. They were able to outpace the slow moving dead. That wasn’t the trouble. The problem was with the civilians.

  It seemed that every time they would get a good lead, one of the civilians would need to stop. Shane had the toughest time keeping up. He was not in good shape by any stretch of the imagination. He was fairly young, maybe early thirties. To SSgt Brown, he didn’t appear to be too overweight. The man obviously carried a few extra pounds, but he wasn’t even close to being obese. The man was constantly whining for them to slow down or take a break.