by D. J. Molles
Dorian looked crestfallen. It was Wilson’s understanding that Dorian and Gilmore had come to some words the previous day when they had taken Wilson for dead, and that it had come close to blows. Now it seemed that Wilson was taking Gilmore over Dorian, which he wasn’t, of course, but he didn’t have the time to explain or spare people’s feelings. Dorian would just have to get the fuck over it.
“Get the convoy packed up,” Wilson instructed him. “And get everybody the fuck out of here. Leave me and Gilmore one Humvee. We’re gonna blow this shit and then rally with you down the road. But there’s no reason for all you guys to be here.”
Dorian put a hand up on the tailgate of the LMTV. “Man, there’s no way…”
Wilson’s father had been a soft-spoken man, but when he had meant business his voice carried effortlessly and the timbre of it deepened like his chest had become a deep chamber for the sound of his voice to resonate. Wilson had always called it the “Voice of Authority,” and it brokered no arguments. What was said with the Voice of Authority was to be done immediately and without question or else the belt was coming out.
Like his father before him, Wilson did not often shout. But there was no time for argument.
“Dorian! Do what I told you to do!”
Jeriah! You get down from there or I’ll whoop that hide!
Dorian took his hand off the LMTV. He frowned for a half a second, but then turned without another word and took off to do what Wilson had instructed. There was no reason for any of them to be there. This was a quick, two-man op. Anyone else standing around was just inviting unnecessary injury, and probably just going to add to the confusion. He would explain all of this to Dorian later. Dorian would understand. He was a little hotheaded at times—he claimed it was the Italian in him. But he was a reasonable man—he claimed that was the southerner in him.
Wilson turned back to his business in a rush. He yanked open a wooden crate and delved in, removing a detonator from the dozens packed snugly inside.
“You got it?” Gilmore called, already making for the bridge.
“Go” was Wilson’s only response. He slid down off the tailgate and ran after Gilmore.
The bridge over the Roanoke River was a long one, and wide for its two lanes. Instead of the typical, narrow bridge for two lanes of traffic, this one also had a breakdown lane, or maybe it was a bike and pedestrian lane. Wilson wasn’t quite sure. All he knew is that it added three more I-beams to the usual five and so had increased their job by more than half. But no matter all of that now. They had two I-beams rigged, and that was all they were going to get off.
Beneath them, the river was wide and flat. A little rocky to the right and southern side of the bridge where it forked off and rejoined about a half mile down, creating a little island in the middle of it. To his left he could look out and see the steel monstrosity that made everything he was doing an exercise in futility.
A railroad bridge, about a quarter mile upstream.
The thing was raised for nearly a mile even after it was over land. They would have had to make their way into Weldon to be able to access the bridge, or they would have had to do some serious climbing. It would have been a bitch and taken a long time, but even now Wilson was staring at it, wishing that he had that time, no matter how hard it would have been. Because there was no way he was going to be able to blow it now. Even if a miracle happened, and the charges they laid out for the two I-beams managed to somehow blow a hole in the bridge big enough so that the infected could not cross, there was no way they would have been able to scale, rig, and demo the railway bridge before the infected found it and started making their way across.
Couple of helos from Colonel Staley would make pretty fucking quick work of that…
But he put the thought out of his mind. It wasn’t going to happen. Why dwell on impossibilities? It was a great way to become resentful and bitter.
Like LaRouche…
Gilmore reached the jumble of blue cordage that came up and over the side of the bridge. He began rolling out a length of det-cord. Wilson reached him and shoved the detonator in one of his pockets and took the end of the det-cord that Gilmore had unspooled. Then he took the leading piece of det-cord from under the bridge and began to marry the two together.
Behind him, the sound of diesel engines hiccupping, coughing, then whirling to life.
In front of him, the sound of millions of feet.
Gilmore started running with the spool of det-cord. Wilson was still trying to tie the two ends together properly, but his hands were shaking and his fingers unwieldy. He felt abruptly naked and exposed standing in the middle of the bridge with no vehicles, no cover, no friends to back him up. He dropped one of the ends of det-cord and stooped to snatch it off the ground.
The bridge trembled.
He had felt this same feeling before. It was the feeling when you were walking across a bridge and an overloaded semi hit it going ten miles over the speed limit, sending tremors through it and up his feet. The uneasy feeling that the bridge was not as sturdy as you thought it was.
But Wilson knew there was no semi going across this bridge.
He raised his head, his fingers still working furiously to tie the knot.
Almost there…
At the foot of the bridge on the far bank, a mass of pale grayness, like rushing, filthy water, flowing onto the bridge, filling it from guardrail to guardrail. A thousand screams suddenly filled the air and it was like the water was suddenly being tilted into a downhill run. The center of the thick, shoulder-to-shoulder column broke into a run, spearing out from the main body.
“Shit,” was the only thing that Wilson could get out of his mouth.
Finally, the knot was tied. He cinched it down with a quick yank and then ran. Ahead of him, the other vehicles in the convoy were rolling away and it was just his Humvee there at the base of the bridge. Gilmore was almost there, hobbling backward on tired legs as he let the spool roll out behind him. When he reached the Humvee, he threw the spool into the truck and cut the cord with a swift move of his knife.
Wilson stumbled to a stop behind him, his booted feet slapping concrete. He grabbed the end of the det-cord and fished the detonator out of his pocket. Neither of the two men said anything to each other. Gilmore just stared at Wilson’s shaking hands while they worked, both of them breathing hard, the air in front of them turning to a loose cloud with the chill of their breath. Gilmore seemed to want to put his fingers in to help Wilson, but it would only cost valuable seconds. He dared not even to speak.
Wilson got the cord into the detonator. He pulled the plunger up, arming the explosives.
“We should get behind something,” Gilmore said.
Wilson looked over his shoulder. He saw the infected reaching the halfway point of the bridge where he and Gilmore had been standing just moments ago. Wilson couldn’t wait to press that plunger. He couldn’t do it, because each second that he wasted, another hundred of them would cross out of the kill zone, and if even fifty of them got across unharmed, then Wilson and Gilmore were going to die. They would not be able to fight that many of them off.
Maybe we’ll be able to drive away…
BLOW THAT SHIT!
Wilson saw and understood and made his decision in less than a second. Gilmore was still working his way to the other side of the car. Wilson just dropped into a crouch, shoulders shrugging up to his ears, teeth bared, eyes squinting almost shut. One great cringe. Then he pressed the plunger.
The center of the bridge was suddenly just a rapidly expanding cloud of dust. Like the entire cement and steel structure had suddenly gone supernova. Wilson watched in awe as the shock wave advanced toward him across the bridge, all in a microsecond, dust and gravel and debris that Wilson had not even been aware of stirred in its perfectly circular path and then it slapped him full in the face and punched him hard in the chest. He saw the infected that had been running toward him and they broke apart almost instantly and their bodies were engul
fed in a cloud of dust and out of it the limbs and pieces of them came flying, a hundred different broken bits and parts. The lower part of a leg tumbled into the guardrail just a few yards in front of him, the meat so suddenly ripped that it had barely even begun to bleed yet.
Wilson stared at the leg.
We got ’em. We got ’em. Maybe the whole bridge blew…
He heard something whistling through the air and then things were black.
When he opened his eyes everything was red and gray. He could tell he was staring at the underside of the Humvee. The detonator was still in his hands. There was an unspecified pain that seemed too big for his nerves to comprehend and it seemed to engulf his entire upper body. It was one of those pains that doesn’t hurt very bad at first, but which you know is going to grow to be monstrous in only seconds. He was choking. He couldn’t breathe. He tasted blood. Something was wrong with his face. He tried to call out to Gilmore, but only made a rasping, gurgling sound that at first confused him because he did not think the sound was coming from him. All his perceptions seemed to have been shattered.
He rolled onto his stomach. He felt thick liquid pouring out of his mouth. The gravity of facing the ground made something on his face dangle. It felt strange and it terrified him. He stared down at the liquid he was spilling and found that it was red and dotted with the little white bits of his broken teeth. He coughed and more blood came out. Panic struck him. Sick panic. He tried to call out again but his mouth would not form words. He only made a strange, animal moan.
“Wilson? Wilson!”
He tried to look to where Gilmore was calling him. He felt the dangling thing on his face shift again, and this time it hurt. The pain seemed to be radiating inward now, finding its center. It was his face. His face was broken.
Wilson curled onto his side and saw many things at once.
The world around him was a shifting, shimmering unreality. It seemed like everything was engulfed in a roiling mirage, but he knew it was too cold for that. He felt the thing on his face dangling and realized that it was his jaw. That was why his teeth were missing and why he couldn’t seem to move his mouth. His jaw was hanging off him, ripped out of place. And the culprit sat on the cement beside him, a chunk of concrete the size of his fist that had not been there a moment ago. Then he felt hands grab him up and he feared that they were the hands of the infected, but when he looked out at the bridge, he could see them. They were pouring through the smoke, seemingly undeterred. Many of them were on the ground, dead and dismembered, though many of them were only injured or stunned, crawling along.
But there were still hundreds of them. So close, and getting closer. The bridge had not blown all the way and they had made it across and were still coming, they were still coming, so fucking many of them that for a moment Wilson was just positive that this was not real. It could not be real. He had horrible luck, but not this bad.
Gotta run…
Run run run!
He tried to rise to his feet, but his legs were like pillars of stone—useless and immovable and numb. He turned his head, the pain in his face spiking around his jaw. He could see Gilmore there, trying to get him to his feet while he simultaneously looked over his own shoulder and his eyes widened in terror. Wilson looked out and saw that the infected had closed to within a hundred yards of them.
Too close. They’re too close.
Where’s my rifle?
Gilmore struggled with the door, but he could not hold Wilson upright and get the door open all at once. Wilson kept jagging his eyes this way and that, his mind scrambling in growing fear as he tried to find himself a way out, some path that would show itself to him.
Dear God, please, don’t let me die out here! I don’t wanna die like this!
Wilson scrambled at the door with Gilmore and managed to unlatch it and pull it open.
They were so close now that Wilson could hear their shivering shrieks on his skin.
Gilmore shoved him into the open door. Wilson’s top half hit the first seat, his face brushing up against the seat back and nearly blinding him in pain. His legs still dangled out and he tried to scramble up inside, but nothing seemed to be working right. Except for his hands. His hands could feel everything in oddly exquisite detail. And his eyes. They were crisp and clear and strangely overfocused in a way that he had never experienced before.
“Get in the fucking truck!” Gilmore bellowed.
Wilson tried to tell him that he was trying, but only that weird moan came out again. He tried to pull himself with his arms and had little success. It seemed like his arms were weak. He looked over his shoulder again and saw Gilmore, turning away. The Marine was standing in the open doorway now, with his back to Wilson, and he was bringing his rifle up and around from where he had slung it onto his back. Beyond the Marine, sunlight was shooting through the thick cloud of smoke in dazzling rays and the screeching creatures were pouring out of it like some hell-mist and they were within fifty yards now.
As Gilmore’s rifle began to crack-crack-crack, Wilson kept struggling to get himself into the seat, even though he knew it wasn’t going to happen. But his eyes traveled up and they stared into the sky, brown with the pulverized concrete that high explosive had plumed into the air, shot through with beams of light from a yellow dawning sun. He looked to the sky, perhaps waiting for helicopters that he knew would never come, or perhaps waiting for some divine intervention.
Anytime a door closes, look for an open window.
But this time Wilson found himself in a room with no windows and no doors.
A dead end, so to speak.
He felt Gilmore pressing backward into his shocked legs. They were beginning to recover some feeling, but he still didn’t seem to be able to command them. Gilmore was yelling. Wilson thought maybe he was yelling, too, but it was all swallowed up and lost in the great screaming horde that rushed at them. Gilmore’s shots were well placed, but he only had so many of them, and there were always more infected.
Not like this! Not like this!
The daylight around Gilmore was suddenly dark. The Marine struck out with the buttstock of his rifle and reached for the knife he kept strapped to his belt but then he was swallowed into darkness and he went kicking and shouting curses and stabbing and slashing at everything within reach of his blade. They consumed him like some collective mouth and then Wilson could feel their hands on him, cold and hard as iron.
The bridge the bridge the bridge.
They’re crossing the bridge and there’s no one to stop them.
They didn’t pull him out of the truck, but rather went in after him. He fought them with fumbling hands and fingers and they bit at him, yapping like dogs. If he could have reached his rifle, he would have fired twenty-nine rounds and then swallowed the thirtieth, but it was strapped to his back and he was pinned down on top of it.
He was full of hatred. He hated God for not rescuing him, and he hated his father for being dead when he needed him, and he hated Dorian for falling asleep on watch, and he hated Colonel Staley for not helping. But he also hated himself for not seeking cover, for not being faster, for fumbling with the cord and the detonator and they’re crossing now, they’ve made a breach and nothing is going to stop them, you’re not here to stop them, you didn’t stop them, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, and that was the thought that his mind decided to circle like a murder of crows until one of the infected mounted him, its whole body shuddering with excitement as it clamped its jaws over his face, covering his mouth and nose so that he could not breathe.
And then he just thought, not like this, not like this…
TWENTY-TWO
TECHNIQUES
ABE WAS HALF AWAKE when the door to the cell opened. Fully awake when the cold water hit him. He thrashed in the cold wetness, like it was something trying to smother him. But he knew that would come later. He knew the drill just like his captors knew it.
They kept him wet and cold. He had only just managed to sto
p shivering long enough to fall asleep when the door to the cell had opened to another rude awakening. Was it even a cell? It could have been a damn broom closet for all he knew. Whatever it was, it had a cement floor with a drain in the center. A small room. A door with no handle on the inside. It was cell enough for him to call it one.
He blinked and swiped water out of his eyes, air sucking into his lungs with the shock of the cold water seeping through his shirt—they’d taken his vest and his jacket and left him only his undershirt. Outside of his dark cell there was bright light, but he could tell that it was artificial. It had all been artificial. They were someplace without windows. In here there was no concept of time. He could have been there for hours or days. There was no way to tell.
Captain Lucas Wright and Major Abe Darabie had been taken in the dead of night. Lucas had been on watch at the time, while Abe caught a few hours of sleep before they moved on again. Abe had no idea how Lucas had been taken, or whether he was even still alive. His eyes had come open at the sound of something thrashing—he believed now that it had been Lucas—but when he had tried to look up, a black burlap sack that smelled of piss and shit had been wrapped around his face so tight that the soiled fabric had pressed into his mouth and cinched down on his neck, choking off anything he might have said. He had groped for a weapon and gotten a hard kick in the ribs and what felt like the buttstock of a rifle into his face, which had stunned him long enough for his arms to be yanked behind his back. Through his own ringing ears and the taste of blood in his mouth he felt the heavy plastic straps and heard the zzzzzzip sound of flex cuffs tightening.
He heard a single voice, strained and tight and on the verge of panic: “Abe?”
And that was the last thing he had heard from Lucas.
Is he dead?
Why would they kill him and keep me?
He had no concept of how to answer these questions. He had been carried for a long time—at least two men carrying him, he thought. After maybe an hour’s hiking without a break, they threw him into something that rumbled and rolled and sounded like a diesel pickup truck to Abe, but there was no way to be sure. Once he was laid down against cold metal, someone sat on his chest and never said a word to him. He thought about speaking or shouting, but he knew it would do him no good. Probably earn a rifle butt upside his head again, this time probably taking some teeth with it.