by SP Durnin
“That is going to cost you more than you can pay, Councilman!” Hess sounded pretty pissed, but then he had just lost half of his men. “I gave you the chance to join us, now you and your people will be treated as enemy combatants. I will personally see your leaders hung from the Pecos walls for treason!”
His MATTOC jerked and began moving slowly forward.
“Now!” Ted yelled into his radio.
The long, steel plates running across Route 285 for thirty yards before the gate swung up, levered forcibly away from the road on their hinges by small charges of RDX plastic explosive Sergeant Major Close had put in place under Foster’s watchful eye. There was no pavement beneath them. Only a wide trench sloping up towards the RUST army filled with billowing dust and flaming debris. The defenders of Pecos and Hess’s remaining men alike stared as a hum grew within the clouds, cycling up to what resembled the shriek of a great turbine on a commercial jetliner. The general’s driver brought his MATTOC to a stop and waited for orders.
Then the Screamin’ Mimi burst up the incline, went airborne for what seemed far longer than the second or two it hung there in space, and came down to a dead stop facing Hess’s now-stationary monster.
It was only the front ‘drive section’ sitting in the middle of the road, revving and spitting quick shots of earth and gravel from its eight combat grade tires as they spun briefly, like an angry bull pawing its hooves at the ground. While it’s mass was cut by over two thirds, Foster’s baby was still almost larger than one of the tour buses which had carried the citizens of Langley south. Granted, the general’s Rheinmetall-style hulk still outweighed her and was an imposing sight to boot; but the Mimi wasn’t designed to be only a weapon. More than a rock for single-minded cave-dwellers to beat their foes senseless with. More than a home, as she’d been to Jake and his friends on their long trek south. She was their defender. Their avenger. A titan; slow to anger, but fearsome when roused. Her pink, synthetic electron polymer skin—bright as any cheap lawn flamingo in a garden center—repelled zombie goop and dust alike, so even the four-foot portrait of an appealing brunette riding a falling bomb on its port hull was spotless. Her heart was a hydrogen-conversion cell, capable of fueling her for up to eighty-eight days, allowing time to traverse nearly any type of terrain. And the enormous vertical blade on her heavy prow—which dwarfed those hastily installed on the trucks Hess commandeered from the north—sat ready, aimed squarely at her monstrous foe. Waiting to challenge the lumbering beast of a machine Hess brought to bear against the ones under her protection.
The residents of Pecos.
Close’s battle-hardened marines.
The survivors of Langley.
And her crew of misfits whom she’d sheltered from the ghouls for so long.
They belonged… to her.
“Hey, Winston. Fancy meetin’ you here.” Foster’s voice pumped from speakers in the Mimi’s hull. “And here, I thought the zombies would’a ate you retarded ass fer sure. Just goes to show: Those dead fucks really are dumb as a box a’ rocks.”
“Who is this?”
“Come on Winston. I’ll give you a hint. Remember when I called you out in from of the admiralty? Told em you were too incompetent for command and nothin’ but a’ limp-dicked, rotten-crotched, butt-plug licker?”
“You! You should be dead!” The general’s voice hissed out. “You’re ‘Foster’? That’s the name you’re going by now? I wondered where you’d gone off to after the Ukraine. I spent years trying to hunt you down. Do you know what you cost our defense complex with that little piece of ‘clandestine problem solving’? It set our relations with Russia back twenty years!”
“What’s he talking about?” Rae asked.
George shrugged. “Come on. You’ve dealt with the logistical side a’ Special Ops. How many agents you ever meet that actually used their real names when they’re operatin’?”
“No. No-no.” She held up one finger. “I mean the whole ‘Ukraine’ thing.”
“Oh, that. I sabotaged a power plant. No big deal. Not like the place will be inhabitable or nothin. In about ten-thousand years or so…”
Rae’s mouth dropped open. “You caused Chernobyl? What in God’s name?”
“Later, yeah? Little busy here.” George focused out the windshield again.
Hess sounded livid. “How did you manage to avoid a court-martial? All those congressional hearings for that matter??? You know what? I don’t give a damn. You’re in my way, old man. Move. Start running now, and you might get far enough away that I won’t send out a platoon of my men to decimate that stupid-looking transport, and bring me your fucking head back in a fucking box.”
“You always did let your mouth write checks you ass couldn’t cash, shit-face. That’s the reason I’m really gonna like what happens next.”
“Do you actually believe you can stop me with that piñata you’re driving?”
“See? Now you went and insulted one of my girls. That’s your ass punk, cause I don’t put up with that kinda’ shit.” George kept his eyes locked on the Hess’s ride, but tilted his head towards Norris. “Hey, honey. Ya’ wanna give that prick a headache for me?”
Rae’s smile was scary. “One headache, coming right up.”
* * *
A speck appeared in the Texas sky, approaching at speed from the southwest. Some of the RUST soldiers observed it and called out, pointing at the horizon. A few of his squad leaders and lieutenants radioed the MATTOC, but General Hess was too occupied with the thought of tasting Foster’s blood to pay their radio chatter—stating what could possibly be a threat was approaching by air—any mind. If he’d bothered to listen, Hess would’ve realized they were partially correct.
Because it sure as hell wasn’t a possible threat.
Originally kept in Nevada, the “General Atomics MQ-9” had been revolutionary when it came to aerial reconnaissance and the long-range application of whoop-ass. Larger and heavier than the MQ-1 (or Predator Drone), it had a 950-horsepower turboprop engine, allowing it to carry fifteen times more ordnance and cruise at roughly three times the speed of its predecessor. The unmanned craft could remain aloft for a full twenty-three hours fully loaded. It’s pilot was only responsible for controlling the aircraft’s movement, and not it’s actual weaponry. Another member of the two-man flight team was tasked with acquiring—and obliterating—hostile forces. That meant its weapons specialist could launch four Hellfire missiles and two five hundred pound, laser-guided bombs, to pound a target into itty-bitty pieces, while the its pilot cruised fifty thousand feet up.
Which is why the drone carried the designation “Reaper.”
Its targets were dead before they knew it.
Inside the monster MATTOC, Elle grabbed Hess’s arm. “General!”
“Get your hand off me, sergeant!” He roughly shrugged away her grip and spun, mic in hand, to give Elle a dressing down. Instead turned his eyes back to follow where her arm was pointing, out through the vehicle’s front windscreen. He saw the oncoming speck, and his brows drew together in a frown.
As it winged closer, Hess realized it wasn’t a single speck.
While not rife with resources, the government west of the Rockies wanted to keep Pecos alive. It was the only southern enclave within reasonable distance of their borders for one, and would be an ideal forward base—if the airport could eventually be secured, too—to launch offensives to carve out territory in Arizona and New Mexico in the future. That meant the Safe Zone’s commander, a no-nonsense military man who took his oath to defend civilian lives very seriously, was willing to provide it with whatever he could spare. While infrequent, C130s made drops containing ammunition and even medical supplies (if not food) once the West Coast had been secured. The new president would’ve provided manpower as well, but there were simply none to send.
But Pecos wouldn’t fight Hess alone.
When the zombies rose, there had been fewer than thirty Reaper UAV’s at Creech Air Force Base, outside Las V
egas. The USAF 432nd Wing stationed there had maintained and managed to use them since, with a good amount of success, to aid those guarding the Safe Zone’s eastern border. Though it took away from the operational capabilities of some areas for a time, the President decided quickly that aiding the South Texas haven was worth the risk.
That was the reason General Hess felt the cold hand of fear clutch over his black heart at the sight of six fully-loaded Reapers bearing down towards Pecos, and his force outside. The half squadron of UAVs swayed into a flying “V” formation and dropped in altitude as Hess scrambled for his mic. He was about to order his men to fire upon them, even though none of the soldiers’ weaponry was capable of bringing one down, when the reapers launched their first barrage.
An AGM-114L—-or Longbow Hellfire Missile—is what experts term a “fire and forget” weapon. It possessed an eight thousand-meter range, and the shaped, twenty-pound, high-explosive warhead had been designed originally to kill tanks. That being the case, when twelve of them streaked into the arrayed RUST transports the resulting destruction was impressive. Hess lost half of the civilian vehicles outright, and five of his deuce-and-a-half’s.
Their next volley took out another nine vehicles and a large portion of his ground unit. Men were literally vaporized by the dozens, blown into nothing but a fine red mist floating in the humid air by the concussive force of the blasts. Several of the general’s more competent lieutenants bellowed orders at their men, yelling for them to abandon their positions at the rear of the MATTOC (as if the soldiers required any such urging) and take cover in the piled rubble on their flanks. That split the strength of Hess’s now-ragged army further and the Pecos defenders along the wall opened up on them. Rounds from quite a few bolt-action hunting rifles found their mark, sending running men to the turf.
* * *
Bee lay beside Leo on the wall, and was in heaven. Thanks to years of training from her uncle, she dropped a few herself with the long arm. One with a well-placed headshot, the Second caught one just below the ribs that passed clean through the other side of his torso, and she damn near blew the Third’s leg off below his hip. The last screamed, writhing in pain until one of the other defenders put a shot into his temple.
“Show off!” Bee called to the unknown marksman above the din, and scanned for her next target.
* * *
A high whistle grew over the battle as six UAVs, depleted of their Hellfires, soared past and dropped their final round of ordinance. GBU-12 Paveway IIs. Normally Reapers could carry two of these but, what with a shortage of munitions after the dead rising, they’d only been outfitted with only one each. Those were five-hundred pound, laser-guided bombs referred to as the ‘Big Bangs’, and they showed everyone exactly why that was the case. The final strike proved sufficient. Most of the RUST vehicles either disappeared entirely, or had gone flying through the air with all the aerodynamic performance of a brick. Two of the school buses made it through nearly unscathed, but only one Deuce and a handful of F250’s remained operational.
Foster grinned behind his steering wheel and gunned the Mimi’s engine again. She’d been hit with a lot of shrapnel thrown out by the blasts—as had the northern wall of Pecos—but unlike the town’s containers which displayed numerous chunks of hot steel sticking through their outer surface, her SEP-skin hull remained undamaged.
“Take positions, people!” He nodded to Rae and she detonated the second round of small explosives. The ones embedded in the underside of the steel plates that had concealed the Screamin’ Mimi in the ditch. One by one plates flipped back over the gap forming a—if somewhat scorched and dented—reasonably level surface. As the last slammed to the earth, the town’s northern gate swung ponderously open and the armored cavalry of Pecos rode through. Jake and Kat led the convoy over the plates in their Hummer, and pulled up just behind Foster’s rear-most starboard tire.
But it was the rolling buzzsaw Allan—who, to Maggie’s repeated and quite vocal protests against the idea—maneuvered into position on the Mimi’s left that stole the show.
The slim mechanic had been busy outfitting the colony’s dump trucks to withstand the dead since their arrival months prior, but—being fully aware of O’Connor’s luck—he’d also reasoned they’d eventually need an ace in the hole. Whether that would be for zombies or whoever pursued his best friend southward, he hadn’t known, but Al was determined to come up with something on the off-chance the Mimi was out of action. So he’d modified a Caterpillar wheel-loader. The 409hp engine on the 986H normally powered hydraulics to operate its five-meter scoop, capable raising twelve tons of material, but it didn’t have a front scoop any longer. It had taken him weeks to construct; but Ryker had come up with a way to replace the bucket with a pair of thick, circular disc-blades from a ‘trench digger’ horizontally in the front. He’d also enclosed the wheel-loader’s cab in rebar welded over steel security doors, leaving only narrow, four-inch slits by which to see while driving. While it wasn’t nearly impervious like the Screamin’ Mimi, unless somebody took a cutting torch to it —or maybe the “jaws of life”—neither rifle fire nor zombie teeth were getting anywhere near Allan.
He hit a quartet of switches, sending power to the hydraulics, and pushed the blade throttle forward. They began to rotate, turning faster and faster, until the heavy teeth spinning outward from center along their edges were nothing but a blur.
“Call it, chief!” He radioed.
George smiled at his stunning companion and Rae pushed a button on the dash. External speakers recessed into the Mimi’s hull came online, blaring out the sound of an electric guitar being molested within an inch of its life. With the steaming craters, smoking bodies (and body parts), and flaming wreckage of more than dozens of vehicles, the two-block stretch above the town’s gates closely resembled Lucifer’s very own happy place. The fact zombies now walked about aside, it was just such sights which woke grown men screaming from sleep each night, covered in a sheen of their own cold sweat and shaking uncontrollably in terror. That being the case, while the old soldier wasn’t a fan of many younger musicians of the modern era, he’d felt something a bit more “metal” was only fitting for the circumstances. Then he dropped his baby into gear and mashed her throttle to the floor with his boot.
The Mimi’s armored tires sent up geysers of earth and rock as they reached full speed, and the pink transport shot forward. Allan’s trencher followed slowly in her left wake while Jake’s Humvee and five modified dump trucks chased Foster’s tail at greater speed. Three veered off to strafe the port barrier, sending RUST soldiers diving for better cover. The other two—along with Jake driving their Hummer and Kat in the turret—proceeded to rip up the starboard barrier with 7.62x51mm NATO rounds, fired from M240 machine guns they’d borrowed from Close and mounted to their roofs. This kept Hess’s men occupied as George made a bee-line for his monster-MATTOC.
The general’s driver felt his bowels loosen as the Mimi’s prow-blade grew before his windshield, and he threw the machine in reverse. While Hess yelled commands, he managed to angle its nose a bit away so the blade just caught the right edge. The entire vehicle rang like the biggest bell on Earth and, when the half-deafened driver opened his eyes again, he saw a large chunk of its front ram-plate had been sheered away. The “piñata” as Hess had called it, had cut it off at a ragged angle as it rocketed by.
Then Allan got his teeth into them.
Hess’s transport had weight on its side, but the spinning blades—meant for cutting through earth, rock, even asphalt and concrete—started chewing away at its left side. The driver reflexively cringed away as great plumes of sparks began surging out from where blades met armor. Given time, those could open up even the MATTOC’s thick hull, and he began backing away from Al’s construct in a near panic.
“Where do you think you’re going? I thought you were all big and bad! What? Don’t like it when the little guy can fight back?” Ryker laughed in his cab of steel and followed, tearing at it as
the driver tried to put distance between them. “Pppf! ‘I’m General Hess! I’m here to take your stuff, and your town! And send out all your women too, or I’ll huff-and-puff-and… Oh, shit!’ I am gonna fuck that bitch-mobile of yours all up!”
Al kept pace with his target, digging the trencher’s blades in again and again, harassing the transport as it attempted retreat.
Cho had quickly emptied her machine gun, and was using Jake’s M-4 rifle to take pot-shots at their attackers wherever she saw one of their foes. The guns on the dump trucks still thundered, but they had people in their beds to reload them while she and O’Connor were flying solo. The modified Humvee raced in and out of the fray, drawing a little small-arms fire in the process, but tough enough to withstand what little Hess’s army could throw at them.
The defenders on the wall had taken casualties. Some few fell victim to enemy fire but the majority still rained death down upon any RUST soldier stupid enough to pop their head up from cover. Their friends did what they could, but getting the injured medical aid had to wait until Pecos repelled Hess once and for all. It was a hard choice, but when it came to a “win or die” situation, that was necessary to survive.
Bee and Leo picked their targets carefully, while some unleashed entire magazines. Willow and Ted put rounds of their own through heads, limbs, even a couple of unwary ass-cheeks when they weren’t low enough. The dump trucks M240s continued their deadly barrage, alternating fire to allow one-another time to reload while keeping the pressure on. The Screamin’ Mimi off-roaded through the edge of the fight, taking out another pair of Deuces along with four more civilian trucks in the process, insuring if there were any survivors amongst their attackers that they’d have a tough time packing into escape vehicles.
Then Foster brought his baby about.
Jake marveled at how maneuverable the Mimi was without her two rear sections. He was reminded of the mud-bogging tractor races he’d seen sometimes on television at one bar or another prior to the zombie outbreak, as he watched her “drift” to one side as she turned. When her wheels found traction again, George put the hammer down and blew by their Hummer, showering it with plumes of earth on the fly. Knowing what was about to occur, O’Connor brought them to a halt with a bootlegger turn and Cho dropped back in from the turret to brace herself around the back of his seat.