“No, I just—”
“Well, Mike, you’ve stumbled upon the right group. We have guns, a car, and we had food, but I’m sure we can find some more. You can sleep with us in the van tonight, if you’d like, but you’ll have to lie in the front seat. Things are pretty full in the back.”
“Thanks you three, really,” Mike said. “I mean it—I really appreciate it. I won’t be a bother, I promise.”
22.
It rained hard that night—so hard that we couldn’t hear the slippery little fingers dragging along the outside of the van. The rain stopped well before dawn, and we awoke to the familiar sound of moaning.
“What’s that? Who’s there?” Mike asked while shifting about nervously in the front seat.
I recognized the sound and climbed immediately into the driver’s seat to have a look. The windows were completely fogged up, and I couldn’t see a thing.
“Hey, Alex, where’s the defrost on this thing?” I yelled to the back.
Alex turned on the defrost, and we sat and listened to the moaning and scraping while we waited for the windows to clear.
“I wonder if it’s the infected from the ship?” Mike asked. “You think they can swim?”
“We better pray it’s them, and the outbreak didn’t make it this far already. Otherwise, who knows how many are out there.”
The windows cleared, but it was too dark outside to see our visitors clearly.
“All right, Al, now how about the headlights?”
Alex reached around the steering column and turned the headlights on. A zombie child wearing red shorts and a matching red-collared shirt with a bright yellow neckerchief wandered in front. Every few moments, another child circled in front of the headlights. They were all wearing the same thing.
“What are they, Cub Scouts?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Alex explained. “They’re Imperial Apprentices. The Chinese make all kids go through it. You can imagine what they learn.”
“Man, I really don’t want to laser a bunch of kids. What do you say we move on?” Everyone was quick to agree. I put the van into gear and lurched forward, hitting the brakes as one of the boys stepped in front of the van.
“Don’t run him over!” Alex squawked.
“Ok, ok, relax. It’s not like a broken leg is going to keep him from earning a merit badge.” I hated being told what to do, but Alex had a point. So, I waited until the path in front of the van was clear, and I stomped on the gas. The tires spun wildly in place, and I pulled my foot off the gas but it was too late; I could feel the back of the van sinking lower into the mud as the tires decelerated. I tried going backward, but it was no use. We were stuck.
“Well, fuck!” I yelled.
“Try rocking her back and forth,” Mike suggested.
I looked at him incredulously. I’d been stuck in the mud and sand plenty of times on trips to Baja, and I knew there was only one way out of our predicament.
“Look, guys, I’m going to have to waste those kids.”
“No, you can’t,” Celeste said, “there’s got to be another way.”
“But I have to get something under our tires. They know we’re in here and I doubt their appetite is going to change anytime soon.”
“Let’s just wait it out,” Mike said. “I’m sure they’ll go away.”
We sat in silence. When dawn came, the zombies could see us inside the vehicle and that just riled them up more. Still, the top of the head of the tallest one barely cleared the bottom of the side window, so they couldn’t break into our sanctuary. We crawled into the back of the van, hoping that if they couldn’t see us they might calm down. It didn’t work.
“Where do you think their scout master is?” I asked, hoping to kill the time. “Did anyone see him?”
“I didn’t see him,” Mike said. “You think they ate him?”
“Probably off in the bushes somewhere, or perhaps back at their campsite,” Alex added.
By late morning, our stomachs were growling, and nobody had cracked, so I decided to be the bad guy. “Look, guys, they clearly aren’t going anywhere. It’s stupid for us to sit here just because we don’t want to kill some infected kids. They’re already dead so they’re going to outlast us. We, on the other hand, are going to be dead if we don’t get something to eat.”
No one responded. I took their silence for complicity and grabbed a gun. I climbed into the passenger seat and said, “I’ll just kill the ones I have to,” before unlatching the door and kicking it open with my foot.
The three scouts against the door flew back on the ground. Any tinge of guilt I had evaporated as soon as I saw their dead eyes and slobbering gray scowls. I turned on the laser and sliced off their legs so they couldn’t get back up to go after me. I turned and gave the thumbs up to the group watching from the window. Four more scouts stood near the back of the van. There were no windows there to expose my sins. I ran the laser right through their heads.
I stopped for a moment to survey the damage. The mud behind our rear tires was thick and deep. I was going to need something substantial to wedge in there and get us out. That’s when I heard growling behind me. I turned around. Another small zombie was running toward me. Much of his abdomen had been devoured, and his intestines hung loose and bounced around like sausages. At first I thought he was one of the children because he was small and wearing the same uniform, but as he came closer and I got a good look at his face I realized he was a tiny man—a little person.
I stood there in awe as he approached me, and after I ran the laser through the front of his head, I realized something—he was the perfect size to wedge behind our tire and get us out of the mud. I unleashed the bayonet and used it to clear some mud from behind the tire. Then I picked up the scout leader and stuffed him in the gap. I did the same with one of the kids on the other side of the van. I moved quickly to avoid the three crawling torsos still coming after me.
I knocked on the driver’s side window, and they let me in. I climbed into the seat and placed my hands gently onto the steering wheel.
“How’d it go?” Mike asked from the passenger seat.
“Oh, it went all right.”
“Did you find something to stick underneath the tires?” Celeste asked.
Now I was blushing. “Yes, yes, I did. Found their scout leader, too.”
“Was he eaten?”
“They’d snacked on him a bit, but he was up and about.”
“Really,” Mike pondered, “I wonder why we didn’t see him?”
“We did, we just didn’t know it.”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked.
“He was with the troop . . . right outside the van. We just didn’t notice because he was a little person.”
“A what?”
“You know, he was a . . . a little person. That’s what we called them anyway. That or, well, there’s another term, but it’s kind of derogatory. Is that what you use?”
“Use what?” Celeste asked, exasperated.
“Midget?”
“Oh, now I know what you mean. No, no, no, the preferred term is growth limited,” she explained.
“I like that better. Sounds sort of like a mutual fund. Seriously though, I always thought little people was kind of mean. Like they were somehow inferior to regular-sized people. Anyhoo, should we give it a try?”
“Yes, please. I’m hungry,” Mike said.
I put the van into reverse and backed up over the bodies onto firm ground. We were on our way.
23.
We headed back on the highway and traveled south along the outskirts of Baltimore, which had clearly been overrun. Buildings smoldered. The dead lumbered along the 95 in packs. I made a game of plowing through packs of them with the van, until everyone told me to stop so that I wouldn’t crash.
We drove to Silver Spring. Mike said there was a storage depot for rations. We figured it was better to stock up if we could, since we didn’t know how long we’d be able to stay in the woods w
ithout being overrun. The van would keep us moving if we could just find somewhere to go. As long as we had food and water, it seemed like the way to go.
The storage depot was a massive warehouse located at the rear of a business park near the city center. The parking lot surrounding the building was absolutely inundated with ghouls. Soldiers, civilians, and office workers roamed every inch of the grounds. We stopped and watched them from a safe distance.
“How do you suppose we get in?” I asked Mike.
“Well, the delivery doors are closed. That’s good and bad. Good because it keeps them out, but bad because a retina scanner is the only way inside the building.”
I scrutinized the building and its surroundings and thought for a moment. “I have an idea. I can get us in the personnel entrance right there.”
“You won’t be able to cut through that door with the laser,” Celeste said. “It’s designed to cut through flesh. It won’t go through metal that thick.”
“That’s all right. I have something else in mind.” I crawled into the back of the van and pulled the neutron grenade from the compartment I’d placed it in. I put the grenade in my pocket and zipped it shut. “Celeste and Mike, grab a gun. We’re going to have to fight our way in there.” They looked reluctant to follow my suggestion. “Look, you might as well get used to this. As long as this thing keeps spreading, fighting these freaks is the only way we’re going to stay alive. I know there’s a lot of them out there, but we have frickin’ laser beams for Chrissake.”
Mike and Celeste each grabbed a weapon. Alex just sat there. “Don’t worry, Al. You can drive on this one. We’re going to need you to get the van inside the building as soon as we can open that delivery door. You see those three doors? Not those. They’re for semis so they’re elevated. That fourth door over there, on the left, that’s you. After you drop us off, just keep moving so they don’t break your windows, and as soon as you see the door open, gun it so we don’t let too many of them inside. Got it?” Alex nodded. “Okay, now drive us up near the personnel entrance. Celeste, stick your laser out the window, and I’ll sneak up here behind Alex and stick mine out his window. Alex, you drive in circles near the doorway until we clear a space for us to get out safely.”
My plan worked beautifully. We cleared a large circle in the crowd and hopped out of the van. The zombies were quick to close the gap.
“Hey guys, cover me while I go and work on the door,” I said, running toward the doorway. While Mike and Celeste sliced into the approaching herd, I searched the crowd for what I was after. I saw a portion of him lying there on the pavement, a uniformed officer cut horizontally across the chest by the laser. His arms were useless nubs, so he was using his teeth to pull himself inch by inch along the ground toward Celeste. I ran up behind her, picked him up off the ground, carried him over to the door, and held him up in front of the retinal scanner.
An automated voice spoke in Chinese. The door slid open.
“Guys, come on!” I yelled to Mike and Celeste, who turned off their lasers and made a beeline for the door. Once inside, Mike quickly found the button that sealed the door shut, and the three of us stood there panting, relieved to be safe inside. The warehouse was stocked floor to ceiling with food all loaded neatly onto pallets. One section was boxes of canned fruit and vegetables, another fifty-pound bags of rice, and the other cases of meats sealed in odd metallic bags.
Infected workers roamed the warehouse’s towering aisles. We decided to split up and go looking for them. I went down an aisle loaded with rice on both sides. Two zombies at the other end charged. I decided I needed some practice shooting the gun so I fired at them as they charged me until I put bullets in their heads.
As I was about to turn the corner to the next aisle, a laser sliced through the bags stacked next to me and sent a cascade of rice spilling to the ground.
“Whoa, hey! Careful with that thing!” I yelled. I found Mike on the other side. He’d just disposed of an enemy and was fiddling with his gun, struggling to turn the laser off.
“Sorry about that. I’m still getting used to these things. I think that was the last one,” Mike said.
“Celeste!” I yelled. “We all clear?”
“All clear over here,” she answered.
“You’re gonna like this stuff,” Mike said, showing me a bag of meat that had fallen from a box. “You pull this cord right here, the chemicals kick off, and bam! It’s like you just pulled it out of the oven on Thanksgiving.”
24.
Celeste and I went to open the freight door while Mike had a look around. I rolled up my sleeves and pulled hard on the chain to crank the door open. As soon as the zombies wandering around outside saw us, they growled and shrieked and moved in our direction. Alex was right where he was supposed to be. He drove the van through the opening, knocking down some of the intruders in the process. I pulled hard on the chain to shut the door while Celeste took the laser to those who made it inside. A blood-curdling scream reverberated from the other end of the warehouse.
I dashed across the warehouse. Mike was near the wide-open doorway for the personnel entrance. Multiple ghouls were climbing on top of him as several more poured in. I sliced at the ghouls on top of Mike, and then focused on the doorway. The laser made quick work of those coming in, but a wall of bodies followed right behind. I charged into the doorway, hoping to clear enough room to get back inside and push the button to shut them out. That’s when my gun beeped. The laser retracted, and the bayonet thrust forward in its place. I was stuck in hand-to-hand combat with attackers coming at me from more directions than my weapon could handle. I pulled the trigger and sprayed bullets, but the only ones who fell were those who took bullets to the head. Hands grabbed me on all sides, and then a mouth clamped down on my right forearm. The shock of the bite pulled my hand from the trigger, and a zombie in front of me became impaled on the blade, pulling the gun from my hands.
I could feel the heat from Celeste’s laser as she decapitated my attackers from behind. Alex grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back inside, then waited patiently for Celeste to work her way back in. I looked over at Mike, who was screaming. He was bleeding profusely. I pulled my sleeve back to reveal the bite on my right arm. It looked like I’d been attacked by a dog. The bite was only a couple of inches across, but it covered the width of my forearm. I could make out the path of the top and bottom rows of teeth. The skin was broken all the way around. The bite wasn’t deep, and the muscle remained intact.
I ran over to Mike, who was going into shock. Alex and Celeste were still distracted by the chaos in the doorway. I pulled some fabric from Mike’s sleeve, tied it around my wound to stop the bleeding, and pulled my sleeve back down to hide it.
25.
Mike had chunks of flesh missing in several places. Both his thighs had hunks missing, but his right triceps was the worst. It looked like more than half of it was gone. I pulled more fabric from Mike’s clothing and tied a tourniquet around his right armpit to cut off the flow of blood to his arm. Having successfully sealed the doorway, Alex and Celeste joined us. Mike’s leg wounds looked less threatening, so we stuffed them with golf-ball-sized wads of fabric and tied fabric around the wounds to keep the wads in place.
Mike started coming to, and as always, he wanted to talk. “Thanks, guys, thanks. I don’t know what happened. I was digging through that shelf near the doorway, and those fuckers got the door open somehow. Oh man, oh man, I’m in bad—”
The automated voice spoke and the door slid open.
“Close it for me, Al.”
In one fell swoop, I grabbed Celeste’s weapon and kicked the leading intruder back into the others and out the door. I unloaded rounds into them as Alex shut the door.
“It’s that God-forsaken retina scanner. Those creeps are beating on the door looking for us, and every time a soldier is in front it opens the door for them.”
“Guys, guys, just leave me here,” Mike begged. “You gotta go. You know what’s g
oing to happen to me.”
“No, we don’t,” I barked. “We’re gonna load that van up with food, and then we’re gonna . . .” I looked around the room as I searched desperately for an answer, “we’re gonna take you to one of those research centers to see if they’ve found a cure.”
The personnel door opened again. Celeste and Alex took care of it.
“Royce, we’re not going anywhere if we can’t do something about that door,” Celeste said.
“I know, I know. Gimme a second. I gotta get another gun from the van. The laser on that other one crapped out on me.”
“The gun is fine,” she said. “You just used up the battery. Too much fishing.”
“How do we charge those things?”
“With a charger, of course.”
“Can we get one?”
“Not likely, unless we can get inside their barracks.”
“I know what to do about the door. We can take that forklift and block it with pallets,” Alex suggested.
“That might hold for a while, but there’s too many of them,” I said. “Remember, they don’t feel anything so they’ll just mash themselves into it until it falls over. We need more time than that to load the van. We won’t be able to finish.”
We stood there for a moment.
“I have an idea,” I said. “Celeste, Alex, watch the door. Just, um, don’t stand too close to it, okay? Unless they open it, of course.”
They looked at me like I was crazy, which I guess I was. A ladder on the wall behind us led to the roof. I climbed the ladder and walked over to the edge of the roof directly above the personnel entrance. The zombies below massed around the entrance, pushing and pawing at it because they knew what was inside.
I pulled the neutron grenade from my pocket.
The zombies moved back and forth across the spot where I wanted the grenade to land. I needed a bit of a clearing to throw it into, otherwise it might bounce off somebody and land too close to the door. I couldn’t help but notice that my predicament was a bit like playing a game at the county fair, except my friends would die if I messed up.
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