The fifth zombie toppled over the previous two and fell into Cobre’s legs. He tried to leap back, but just then the chain sprang taut and pulled his right foot out from beneath him. He fell and before he could get up, there was a sharp pain in his knee. “Mother-fucker!” The thing was biting him. Or at least it was trying to. Human teeth were poor weapons and made worse shears. It couldn’t get through his jeans.
Cobre kicked it away with his free foot and brought the shovel up…CHANG! CHANG! Thud. At the sound, he looked over and saw the Guatemalan standing over Jamal’s unmoving body. The Guat gave Cobre a semi-apologetic grin, showing off two yellowed teeth that looked oddly like fangs in his empty mouth. He grabbed the pickaxe.
“Go on,” Cobre told him. “Get us out of here.”
The skinny Hispanic was much more at home with the tool, and before Cobre could kill all the zombies in the squirreling mass in front of him, the two men were free. Cobre snatched the axe from the Guat. “Don’t even think about messing with me, you little shit. Do what I say and we’ll get out of this. Start with putting on your fuckin’ mask.” The moron was wearing it on the top of his head like he was some sort of Guat-Jew.
Cobre didn’t like Jews. His lawyer had been Jewish and for some reason Cobre had expected that one fact to make him a cut above the other lawyers. And maybe it had; Cobre knew nothing of civilized law. The only law he respected was the law of the jungle. The strong survived and fed on the weak. The concept was playing out all around him. The prisoners were fighting in spurts along a three-mile line; it was hard to tell who was winning or if anyone really was.
In a manner of speaking, the humans were fighting with as little strategic forethought as the zombies, and the battle waxed and waned, wholly dependent on the number of zombies that straggled up at any one time.
There were large gaps among the advancing dead that Cobre was sure he’d be able to exploit. “Let’s go,” he said to the Guat, and took off at a jog, leaving the other prisoners to their fate. Forward seemed like the wrong way to be going and the Guat yanked on his jacket and pointed back. “Go on if you want, you stupid Guat mother-fucker. If you go that way, you’ll get fuckin’ shot. This is the way to freedom.”
Cobre knew what he was about. He had listened. He had paid attention. He knew that their flank was up in the air, which meant that no one was guarding it. If he could run around the end of the line, he’d have a clear shot of running all the way to Canada.
But he couldn’t run straight across the line; the mother-fuckin’ guards would shoot him. He had to take a chance and go out into the unknown. A hundred yards forward and then a mile or so to the left.
He didn’t think that was very far even for a smoker who’d been caged up for the last three years. He hadn’t counted on so many zombies, however. The further he jogged forward, the more of them there were. So far, they had been coming in little gangs of eight or nine. Now there were twenty at a time. Cobre dodged these, trying to angle to the north, only more of the dead swerved in at them from every angle, cutting them off.
Soon the pair was going the wrong way, heading to the right instead of the left. They ran on, burning up their lungs and wasting what little energy they had.
Precious minutes passed before the Guat whined, “Ya vienen!” meaning: They’re coming!
Cobre knew this without looking back. He could feel the creatures pressing in closer and closer; their stench became a nasty cloud and their moans grew in eagerness. He couldn’t afford to look back. There were too many in front of them to worry about those coming from behind. They were everywhere and there seemed to be no end to them. The gaps between the groups became smaller and smaller until there was almost no room to slip by.
Then suddenly they were at the end of the field. In front of them was a ditch four-feet deep, and beyond that was a head-height wood fence, and a house set in among a little copse of fir trees. The wiry Guat was faster and was halfway over the fence before Cobre even crossed the ditch. Cobre was winded and flagging badly.
“Is it clear on the other side?”
The Guat squinted into the shadows beneath the trees. “Si nos apuramos…” If we hurry.
Hurrying was no longer an option. Cobre’s legs were wooden and his breath came out in burning gasps. He needed a way to slow the beasts down and there really was only one option. As the Guat was trying to lift a leg over the fence, Cobre grabbed him by the back of his coat and the seat of his pants, and lifted him bodily into the air. The Guat screamed high and piercing as he tried to twist around like a cat held over a bathtub filled with ice water.
Cobre was too strong. His fingers were like iron and his arms were filled with desperate power. With a grunt, he heaved the Guat down into the ditch, which roiled with grey bodies, fighting and squirming to get to the other side. When the shrieking Guat dropped among them, there was a huge surge as every zombie in sight poured into the ditch to get at him.
“Mierda santa,” Cobre swore, as he tossed the pick-axe over the fence and mounted it, scraping his feet on the boards. There was no looking back for him. There was only Canada. From the top of the fence he could see a perfectly good 2002 Honda Accord sitting tucked up next to the house. He had stolen a half dozen of these in his younger years.
Three minutes later it was purring nicely as he ripped north, absolutely covered in zombie blood. It didn’t occur to him to wash his hands for another hour and by then he was ten miles from the border and looking for a way to cross.
Chapter 1
1- 12:06 a.m.
Boston, Massachusetts
Christopher Gore hurried up the steps of the Massachusetts State House, his breath panting in and out of him, his belly jello-ing up and out of his cinched-in belt. Although he’d only had three cups of the blackest coffee imaginable, his bladder was near to bursting. Normally, he could hold two quarts of urine before he felt like this—like he was about to wet himself.
“Make way,” he said to a crowd near the door. He had meant for it to come out as a command from a senior member of the Governor’s administration. In reality, it sounded like a blubbering whine and no one so much as glanced his way. The crowd was angry and was demanding answers.
Christopher waved his ID over their heads. “Excuse me! I work here. Soldiers, can you clear a lane. Thank you.”
With the help of four armed men, he was through in seconds and climbing more stairs, sweat dripping down from his thin hair. Inside the building, he was more his own man. He knew people and people knew him. Even the vultures in the press were somewhat reassuring. “Christopher! Christopher! Is it true that the President has ordered the arrest of the Governor?”
“Chris, can you tell us, is the front holding? Are we safe?”
“The rumor out of Worcester is that we won’t be able to hold the city. What will we do then?”
The real answer: Run for your lives, couldn’t be said out loud. The panic from such a statement would spell the doom of not just the state, but also of the five million people crammed into the city of Boston.
“No comment. Sorry. No comment,” he repeated as he hurried past them, heading for the Governor’s crowded suite of offices. Governor Clarren was in the main conference room at the far end of a long cherrywood table. It was so overflowing with charts and notes and maps that not an inch of wood was visible.
He didn’t look good. The circles around his now shockingly baggy eyes were so dark that they appeared practically purple. It looked as though he’d been punched—and he was about to be punched again.
Christopher gave his head a little shake when the Governor glanced up. That slight movement of negation caused Clarren to wilt in his chair. He sagged, his back hunched in defeat. After a moment, he took a heavy breath. “I’ll be right back,” he told the men and women working around him.
He crossed to the door that let into his personal office and Christopher followed him in, whispering, “It’s what we thought.”
Clarren waited until the door shut befor
e asking what he already knew was true, “The marines?”
“Yes sir. We think about eight hundred of them. For whatever reason, they decided to land down in Plymouth.”
A derisive snort escaped Clarren. “Oh, it’s obvious why. The President thinks he’s being clever. He thinks he’ll gain some sort of moral upper hand by landing at Plymouth Rock. All it does is give us time to come up with some sort of delaying strategy. Eight hundred men is not that many.”
“They are marines, sir.” Christopher started to stutter, “And, and, and they have t-tanks.” Clarren’s mouth formed the word tanks in something of a question; however, no sound came out. Christopher nodded. “Yes, and you know we don’t have anything that can stop them.”
Clarren knew perfectly well. When it came to bad news, he was very well informed. “And our offers?” he asked in a whisper.
“Rejected out of hand—all of them.” Clarren’s first offer was to make a public apology. His second was to retain his title but cede all executive power to the federal government. His third and final offer was to be given safe passage to Canada. “You are to be arrested and tried for treason. Along with…” Christopher choked before he could go on. “…Along with your cabinet, the lieutenant governor and others.”
“Others?”
Christopher dropped his eyes. “They weren’t specified, though I think some of…us your, your staff will be charged. And the military people, too.”
Did “others” also mean his wife and kids? What about his brother? What about Christopher’s wife? Clarren lost the strength to speak properly and could only summon more whispers: “How do we fight this?”
“There’s no way to fight it,” Christopher said. “Colonel Randolph was tipped off by one of his old contacts that the Navy is moving in a cruiser to provide support with their missiles. He says they’ve got hundreds of them on board and they don’t ever miss. I think…I think the only thing we can do is try to slip out of the city.”
Clarren didn’t have the heart to laugh at the idea. He was being watched night and day by journalists, reporting on his ever move. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there were drones constantly overhead. The President probably had spies in the building as well; after all, almost everyone in the legislative branch was politically aligned with him and at least half of them were weaselly enough to sell their souls for a presidential pardon. Clarren knew he’d never be able to leave, and if he stayed he would be tried and executed.
A weak, mad laugh bubbled up out of him. He was being screwed for trying to do the right thing, for trying to be a real leader. The laugh ended in something of a growl, which made Christopher even more uncomfortable. He was about to excuse himself to call his wife, so he could tell her that it was time to run, when the Governor slammed a fist down on the table, making him jump.
“Alright,” Clarren hissed, his eyes focused on a small potted plant that had been a gift from an elementary school out on the cape. “Our backs are to the wall. We can either fight like men or run like cowards.”
“There’s no fighting tanks and missiles,” Christopher moaned. He could feel the sweat right through his shirt. “It’ll be a waste of manpower. Randolph said so.”
Clarren stood up straight and cinched his tie down tight. “I’m not talking about fighting the marines. I’m talking about fighting the dead. If I’m going to die, I want to go down swinging. I want to take a few of them with us.”
“Us?” Christopher asked. “Sir, I have a wife and kids. And…”
“So do I! So do a lot of people. We’ll send them north. I’ll call Adams and see if he’ll open the border for them. In the mean time, I want you to call a meeting. I want the entire cabinet there, the Lieutenant Governor, as well as everyone who has been backing me. The President is going to come down on us hard and no one is going to be safe. That bastard’s going to use us as an example to the rest of the country.”
Christopher was starting to go numb. The only thing he could feel was the growing, terribly urgent need to pee. “But fighting the dead? We’ve seen the p-pictures, sir. We know what they can do.” He took a deep gulping breath, ready to take a stand against taking a stand. “Sir, please. I’m old, okay? I’m not a fighter. I’ll just be in the way.”
“Then stay here and be executed. Those are the only options left to us.”
2-12:17 a.m.
South of Pittsburgh
The exquisite, pounding headache had ripened to a point that took Elizabeth Seatter beyond fear. Two hours before, it had made her nervous because it was common knowledge that headaches were the first sign of the zombie disease. But she had told herself it was also a sign of dehydration, of having a hangover, or the flu.
“Hell, it could be cancer,” she had whispered and then took another hit from the joint that was being passed around. She had lost count of the number of joints she had sucked on. There seemed to be no end to them and the haze of smoke made seeing from one end of the minivan to the other difficult. They also didn’t help the appalling stench clogging up her nostrils. The interior of the minivan stank of armpits, old socks and weed. No one cared, least of all Elizabeth.
As long as she was high, nothing mattered—that had been the mindset which had carried her this far.
There were nine of them in an eight-seat Toyota Sienna, and so far, other than her headache, they had been lucky. Elizabeth had begun her trek almost forty hours before in Trenton, New Jersey. She had escaped that hellhole by the skin of her teeth, driving through fires, smashing through roadblocks, and running down zombies. Except they hadn’t been all zombies; she just told herself they were.
Elizabeth had been, and still was, in survival mode. She had started off alone; her husband Milt had never come home from a stupid and pointless trip to check on his sister and her kids. It was a two-hour trip there and back, but he never showed. She paced and packed, and paced and repacked for six long, frightening hours as terror began to grip the city.
Finally, she had made the decision to leave, and not a moment too soon. Although it was only four miles to the border and into Pennsylvania, it took her over five hours, and just as she crossed the Delaware River, the army had closed the border behind her.
That had been her first stroke of luck. Her second came when traffic snarled to a stop a few miles later and she found herself idling next to a tank-sized truck with a flat tire; the tire was huge, half as tall as she was.
The owners did not have a spare and were just about shitting bricks. Elizabeth offered to let them tag along with her if they gave her half of their gas, which turned out to be many, many gallons. Beneath a scrum of suitcases, boxes and bags filled with odd items, the entire bed of their truck was lined with twenty-gallon gas cans.
“I guess it depends on where you’re going,” the husband replied.
“West,” was her vague answer. The plan had been to head to Oklahoma and stay with Milt’s mom. One little problem, though: Milt’s mom hated her. Elizabeth could easily picture herself showing up at her motherfucker-in-law’s door and having it slammed in her face.
West was good enough for the Crenshaws and, after loading up the Sienna with just about everything from the truck, they took off at a snail’s pace. It seemed that half the population of the east coast had either become a refugee or a zombie, and the roads were bumper to bumper.
It got so bad that before long, every other car ran out of gas, which, of course only made things that much worse. To save fuel, one group of men simply pushed their car along, jumping in whenever the gridlock inexplicably opened up for a stretch of a mile or two.
Worried that the traffic would remain this bad all the way to the Mississippi, the three of them tried to push the Sienna on flat ground or on downhill slopes. It was dangerous getting out of the minivan. People eyed the gas-cans strapped to the top with undisguised hunger and more than a few demanded that they “share.” Things became tense in the slow-moving caravan, but luck was with Elizabeth again.
They crawled past
a battered, more rust than not, Jeep Wrangler. Inside was a worn, rawboned, greying old man sporting a dirty VFW hat and worn fatigues. He offered to buy some gas off them.
“Fifty dollars a gallon,” he suggested. This was laughed off and although he went as high as a hundred and twenty a gallon, it still didn’t seem like enough. “I got guns,” he whispered, tipping them a wink.
“Meaning what?” Elizabeth demanded. “You think you can rob us?”
The notion made the old man contemptuous. “No. I figured a trade. Or better yet, I can ride along with you guys. You know, for mutual benefit. There’s safety in numbers.”
His name was Grizz Johnson and he had two shotguns, three pistols and a black gun that frightened Elizabeth just looking at it. She thought that only the military were allowed to have those sorts of guns. The arrangement was agreed to and after some haggling, the Crenshaws agreed to jettison some of their less essential gear and Grizz moved in, taking up the third row.
A day passed and their pace was so slow that they could hear the battle for Philadelphia raging southeast of them. As the hours ticked by, the battle spread, enveloping the oddly named city of King of Prussia, then Pottstown, and Reading. The crowded Sienna seemed always just an hour or two ahead of the wave of undead.
At some point, they picked up a loose bag of pale flesh with overly large bones named Darren Sproul. He’d been walking along the side of the road, begging for a ride, lugging two suitcases. One suitcase overflowed with marijuana and the other was one-third filled with bricks of twenties, one-third filled with clothes, and the last third filled with beef jerky. Elizabeth allowed him in, taking the cash in exchange for a ride as far as they could go.
After that everything was something of a haze. They picked up a little speed after Harrisburg and somewhere along the way, three other people found their way into the Sienna. Elizabeth had no idea where they had come from, and with the ganja smoke sifting out the windows at a constant rate, she didn’t much care, until the headache started thumping in her temples. She wasn’t nervous at first. A man on the radio had listed the signs to look out for: a sudden, almost debilitating headache was the initial symptom. Vicious, inexplicable anger was the second—it was an encouraging sign that she was not really angry at all, at least not while she was high, and she made sure to keep a joint in her hand whenever possible.
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 2