by SP Durnin
A line of flame raced along in front of the inner gate, licking up six-feet high and running nearly the entire width of the bailey. Jake snatched up his mic, “George, stop! Stop!”
“What the fuck is this shit?” While Foster sounded pretty pissed over the radio, he slowed his baby down and brought it to a stop a few car-lengths before the flames. “Hell of a way ta’ say ‘Hello’! They knew we were comin’. Lemme bust that there gate up with the Mimi’s nose blade…”
“No!” Jake screamed into the handset. “Do not! Ram! The gate!”
“Fine! Fine. Let’s sit here like a bunch a’ morons an’ let them fella’s dump some more napalm around. Jesus H Christ on a flying, fucking mountain bike. I never should’a retired…”
“Give me a second here. Just let me think.” Jake released the mic to dangle on its cord and stared at the flames. As the minutes ticked by they didn’t seem to be lessening in any major way, which told him the blaze was being fed by some kind of reservoir. That belied some exceptional forethought and planning on the defenders’ part, not that it was at all surprising. Anyone who’d lasted this long in the zombie apocalypse had to be pretty sharp. “Alright people, ideas?”
“I’d rather not burn to death. As much as I like BBQ, I don’t want to end up as the main course in a Texas cookout. So, yeah. Rather not burn to death.” Leo was sweating visibly.
“Duly noted. Elle?”
The blonde was following her boyfriend’s gaze along the top of the inner wall. “They could dump a whole lot of crude oil on us from up there. If we couldn’t make it back outside—which doesn’t seem likely—we’d cook. Let’s try not do that.”
O’Connor sighed. “Oka-a-a-ay. Kat? It seems like our backseat drivers have gone bye-bye. What’ve you got left?”
“Um… Well… They’re not shooting at us. That’s something, right?” She raised her eyebrows. “I mean, it’s a sure bet they’ve got a freaking arsenal in there. And what, at least a few thousand or so people?”
Inhaling slowly, Jake nodded. “So Rae claims.”
“Okay, they outnumber us by a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. But they’re not making with the bang-bang-boom. They’re just sitting there behind the barricades, waiting.”
“Waiting for…?”
Cho looked up to the wall. “Best guess? For someone to come talk.”
“I just knew you were going to say that.” Jake grunted and grabbed the mic again. “George, I’m getting out. If things go bad, take the Mimi back through the outer gate and try to clear a path as best you can. Mooney and the others on Bus One will follow you and we’ll bring up the rear.”
Foster’s voice crackled back. “That is an absolute shit plan. I don’t like it. You can bet yer ass yer gonna’ be in someone’s crosshairs as soon as ya’ step out.”
“No help for it. Just be ready.” He pulled his dwindling pack of American Spirits from his combat harness and lit up. “Kat, if something happens, I want you to—”
“I’m coming with you.”
Jake shot her a firm gaze. “No, you’re not. You’re going to be ready to drive this—”
“Mmm-hmm. No. Not just no, hell no,” she told him, brightly. “If you’ll recall, I specifically told you ‘No more splitting up,’ didn’t I? If you’re going out there, so am I. Deal with it. It’s not like you can stop me.”
“Look, you need to be reasonable about this.”
“Oh, you poor man.” Kat laughed. “I have breasts. Nice ones, or so you tell me. I’ve got a lifetime Get Out Of Jail Free card when it comes to not being ‘reasonable.’”
Jake took a long drag on his cigarette. “There’s no safe way for me to reply to that which doesn’t entail physical violence or being cut off, is there.”
Cho just smiled wider.
“I just love my life.” He grumbled. “Leo, climb up here once I’m out. If crap hits the fan—like usual—we’ll run for the Hummer. Elle, try to give us cover if that happens.”
She leaned forward. “You want me in the turret now?”
“Hold off. That might look a little bit too aggressive.”
Elle didn’t look convinced. “It’s your ass.”
“Thanks ever so much. The fact Kat and I are about to walk out into a Doomsday shooting gallery doesn’t make me nervous enough to piss myself at all.” O’Connor sighed. “Alright. If we’re going to do something this crazy, let’s get on with it.”
Kat put one hand on her door handle. “You realize we just followed a gigantic, pink snowplow through what amounts to a Mardi Gras-sized pack of zombies, don’t you? Facing certain death via a poop-ton of hunting rifles is pure amateur hour.”
“Strangely enough? That doesn’t make me feel not one bit better.” Wishing his hands would stop shaking, Jake opened his door and stepped from their vehicle.
The outside air stank. That was expected. There was a great big, fuck-ton of walking corpses just a few hundred yards away. The dead and dammed could be heard as they moaned, beating their slowly deteriorating flesh against the unyielding steel container walls. The hellish sounds of that level of mindless hunger was unnerving. There was more in the air, however. The smell of sunbaked Texas earth. The scent of something dead dinosaur-based burning, that Jake took to be coming from the wall of flames which half-obscured the inner gate. The town seemed to use a petroleum derived fuel, fed by an underground delivery system, to provide one of its security layers. A faint aroma of cooking meat, which—despite the ever-present reek of the dead—caused his mouth to water.
It had been a long time since he or any of his companions had any un-preserved meat. Canned tuna, Spam, and MREs will keep you alive, but O’Connor challenged someone to do it for a month. By then, you would literally be ready to kill for a bacon-cheeseburger with some fresh lettuce, tomato, and onion.
Shaking thoughts of flame-broiled, bovine goodness from his mind, Jake inhaled another lungful of blessed nicotine and strode towards the head of their gore-coated little convoy. Cho walked beside him, seemingly unconcerned, humming quietly to herself and almost skipping along in the bright mid-morning sunlight as they passed Bus One. Even though the impromptu transport hadn’t actually mowed down creatures as the Mimi had, following in Fosters soupy wake had been enough to coat much of it with liquefied zombie schmutz. Jake noticed Mooney had the wipers running when he and Kat came abreast of the driver’s window.
After waving for the ex-restaurant owner to stay put, O’Connor sent up a silent prayer that he hadn’t just gotten them all killed. If it came down to a fight, shy of ramming the gates there was little they’d be able to do against the defenders.
As the two continued along the Mimi’s length, Cho laughed. “He looked stressed.”
“Can’t imagine why.” Jake shook his head. “Not a single burning building or government super-weapon in sight.”
“Except ours… You know what? We give George so much crap about the Mimi’s color, but she’s just keeps on saving our bacon time and again.”
His eyes dropped to look at the road below. Thirty-one different flavors of dead goop streamed down from the pink, painted steel, unable to cling to its frictionless skin, leaving the hull just as shiny and ugly as the day it had originally been coated. “You’re right. Guess we owe her big time.”
“Att’a girl.” Kat patted the hull before realizing what she’d done. After looking at her gore covered palm she pulled a face. “Hold on a sec.”
Stopping at her request, O’Connor watched as Cho bent over and ran her hand palm-in along the outside of his pants leg just below the knee, leaving a sizable bloody smear.
“Did you…just wipe your hand on my pants?”
Kat straightened while inspecting her palm. “I can’t very well clean it off on mine, can I? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that yuck out of leather?”
Wisely choosing not to reply to said comment, Jake sighed and continued on towards the fiery barrier.
Advancing as near the flame as was comfortable, t
he pair gazed up at the top of the container wall. Dozens of defenders, many of whom were armed in heavy and quite disturbing ways, lined its edge. Jake identified everything from M1 Garand rifles, to semi-automatic riot shotguns like Foster’s own SPAS 12 (which could fire up to four rounds per second) readied above them. There were even a couple of men toting what looked to be shoulder-fired RPG-7 rocket launchers, each on either side of the interior gate. While neither could damage the Mimi in the slightest, those weapons would have no difficulty turning Bus One or their Humvee into burning wreckage.
“Little overkill with those I’d say.” Jake pointing them out to Kat.
She snorted. “In the apocalypse? There’s no such thing. That’s like saying, ‘I have too much ammo’ in a firefight. Or ‘I have too much money’ after you win the lottery.”
“George is rubbing off on you. It’s worrisome.”
“Oh, I was like this long before the zombies.” Cho admitted. “Remember: I went clubbing a lot? That was pure survival of the fittest and proper previous planning. Surviving the maggot-heads is a cakewalk by way of comparison.”
Jake didn’t look convinced.
“We’ll discuss that later. Let’s see if we can get in without anyone punching any new holes in us.” Looking up at the containers, he called up. “Hello! Can we talk?”
“Go ahead. We’re listening.” Came back from above.
Not the friendliest welcome, Jake thought. “We’re the ones who’ve been calling?”
“Okay. And?”
“Well, we’ve been on the road a while now. We made it all the way from Ohio. Can we come in?”
“Oh, sure thing,” the voice replied. “Just get rid of your weapons and you’re welcome.”
“Not a chance.” Kat shook her head.
“Excuse me, miss?”
“We’re not giving up our weapons. That’s a big ol’ bag of nope.”
Jake began to sweat. “Please let me handle this.”
“Oh, sorry. Go ahead.” Cho sniffed.
“Thank you.” He turned the wall again. “No one said anything about that when we were radioing in. We were told nearly everyone here stayed armed at all times. What changed?”
“Oh, most all of us are armed. But we don’t let just anyone inside packing the kind of heat you folks seem to have there. Where’d you get that pink thing, and what the hell is it?”
“In Columbus. It belongs to our weapons-master.” Jake motioned at the flames. “Can we do this face to face? Minus the inferno? We fought really damn hard to reach Pecos and been through some messed up shit. There are bad people out there. Never mind the fact that ninety-five percent of the planet wants to scarf us like a fat kid would a box of Zingers.”
“If the situation were reversed would you trust us?”
“Honestly? If I’d just watched you mud-bog your way through that horde outside, and I had a pair of rocket launchers pointed at your face? I don’t think I’d be too concerned with whatever arms you might have. Besides, we both know you have over a thousand people. We’ve only got… What? Forty survivors, total?” Jake glanced at Cho and she nodded. “Look, if you think we’re a threat fine. We’ll get back in our vehicle, turn around, then try to out past the dead. But at least let the people on our bus inside. Their transport was never meant to withstand those things. If you send them back out there, they’re zombie chow for sure.”
“Not worried much about yourself?”
He looked at Cho and she smiled. Jake called back, “We’ve been through worse. Texas is only a temporary haven for us anyway. We’re planning to head over the Rockies. I’d like to stop for a while since we hear Pecos is safe, give us all a chance to recover and all. But if not? Well, it was nice to meet you, thanks for nothing, and fuck you very much. The dead won’t stop us. And we won’t give you a second thought when we’re fishing on the shore of the Pacific.”
In the silence that followed Kat leaned towards him. “Not bad. Could’ve maybe been a bit more diplomatic, but not bad.”
“Diplomatic? Like when you threatened to beat Nichole’s ass back in Foster’s safe-house? Then actually did when we dealt with the Purifiers? Then left her for dead?”
“That’s different,” she told him haughtily. “Nichole was a nasty, vindictive, self-centered, twat-waffle. And she deserved it. Hell, she deserved worse, but I settled for tossing her nasty ass to the zombies as an acceptable solution.”
Both jumped as the blaze before them abruptly cut out. Jake edged forwards to see evenly spaced nozzles, beneath lengths of steel grating that lined the area before the inner gate. He had no idea how the flambé pit was fueled, but the smell of burned petroleum was thick as he ogled the impressive setup. Someone with one hell of an engineering background had a hand in developing such a defense, and he wondered if there were members of the Army Engineering Corps holed up within. That thought was cut short when the sound of metal on metal—along with that of at least one large engine—echoed from beyond the gate, and the heavy barrier began sliding to the left.
“Well, what do you think?” Kat loosened her sword, “Is that the welcome wagon, or the ‘posse comin’ ta’ run us outta town’?”
O’Connor put a slow hand to his Hammer repeater riding the Serpa holster at his hip and attempted to appear relaxed.
“Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” he mumbled to himself.
A squad of men decked out in full Marine Corps battle gear: body armor, tactical harnesses, the works, hastened into the impromptu parking lot and Jake’s stomach fell. There was no way he and Kat, as proficient as they were at dealing with zombies, could take on a fully armed and armored group of battle-hardened marines. Those guys lived to kill things and break hostile combatants. It turned out he needn’t have worried. The squad of devil-dogs flowed smoothly around them, passing O’Connor and Cho with nary a glance before moving to the far side of the holding area to insure the outer gate was secure. Jake watched as one of them dealt with a zombie head that had been lopped off by the gate. The trooper didn’t even waste a round, but simply stomped down with authority, pulping its still snapping teeth forever.
“Well… Ya’ all coming in or what?”
-CHAPTER FIVE-
Pecos was alive.
There were so many people. On the interior wall, making their ways along the streets on foot, bicycles, even a few on skateboards, stopping to stare at the Mimi as it came to a halt beside Mooney’s Bus One. They were everywhere. Two blocks farther in, O’Connor saw a pair of F150s pass from right to left at an intersection and nearly did a double-take. It had been so long since he seen traffic.
While the fact so many of the living had managed survive gave him a hopeful rush, Jake looked about with a measure of discomfort. It had been some time since he’d been in an honest to goodness crowd—at least one that didn’t want to chew his face off—and was finding the experience to bit nerve-wracking. He was on edge, even though once inside the walls, proper Texans seemed to take them in with open arms. A small group of soldiers were helping offload Mooney and his people, handing them bottles of water. A number of resident nurses were busy running their new arrivals one-by-one through a brief, but thorough, exam in a field hospital next to the inner gate. They had to insure no one had any bites. Once they learned Dr. Robert Barker was one of the new survivors they couldn’t clear him fast enough. Evidently, they only had a few physicians in Pecos, and his arrival was most welcome. Barker was hustled off towards the primary medical center almost before he had time to wave goodbye after showing his credentials, to go through some kind of orientation and begin treating patients. Judging from the huge smile on his face he looked happy enough about it, and he was a grown man besides, so Jake didn’t object to his departure. They’d look in on Barker once things got settled.
“You guys are from where?” This came from a trim drink of water by the name of Ryan Szimanski, the leader of one of the Pecos security teams.
Jake lit another smoke. “Pretty much the whole bu
s there is from Langley, Oklahoma, but some of us originally are from Ohio. Just eight now, really. We lost some on the way.”
“Holy fuck. That’s one hell of a trip! You’re all either really good or totally nuts.”
Glancing at Cho from the corner of his eye, Jake saw she was distracted talking with one of the nurses. “You have no idea.”
“I’ve gotta ask. How bad is it back east?” Szimanski handed him a bottled water. “I’m from Maryland. Up Dundalk way, so…”
Jake half-guzzled the liquid. It was warm, but he didn’t care. “I’m sure we’ll be asked that a lot for a few days. I wish the news was better. Everything’s gone. The major population centers are either burned-out by fires no one was there to fight, or full of the dead. Or both. We avoided large cities altogether on the way here, and we still ran into hordes of zombies. They’re everywhere.”
“Damn.” Ryan slung his 1911 A1, pulled off his Mighty Ducks cap and scratched at his short-trimmed beard. “Kind of thought that was the case. Kari, she’s my girlfriend, and I were road-tripping to visit my uncle in Austin when it happened. We’ve been trying to stay positive about our families back home, but… Damn.”
Seeking to change the subject, Jake asked, “What did you do before the zombies?”
“Huh? Oh. I worked restoring historic ships.”
Of all the possible answers: mailman, IT specialist, interpretive dance instructor, Jake never would’ve guessed that one. “Really?”
“Yep. Was a lot of fun. Most days, anyway. Like building the whole “ship in a bottle” thing, but on a larger scale. I loved it.” He pulled his hat back on. “Not much use for a ship builder in the middle of the Texas badlands though.”