by Jack Wallen
At the armory, everyone but Echo and I grabbed guns. I had my pike in hand and I pulled out a bow and quiver of arrows for Echo. It seemed a bit cliché, but it made sense that a young girl would be less capable of killing a friendly with an arrow than a gun. Of course, I’ve seen the girl in action – there was probably little (if anything) to worry about.
We were ready to fight. All we had to do was make it to the truck alive.
Before we reached the door I asked Josh to make sure he had the keys. I wasn’t about to let plot convenience theatre smack us upside the head with an Oh shit, I can’t find the keys! moment.
We reached the door. Jamal hesitated, his hand on the handle. None of us were sure what was on the other side of the door. It could be freedom, it could be the end. Either way, we had to pull it open and go through, guns a blazin’ or not.
When Jamal threw the door open, the cold afternoon air bit into our exposed skin and the sunlight made pinholes of our eyes.
The undead were not in the immediate vicinity. Lady luck would get a big kiss on the face later.
“This way.” Josh whispered.
We took off after Josh. For a big guy, the man could haul ass. Of course it helped to light a fire under your feet when you knew there were hundreds of the undead coming your way. As we sprinted, our lungs were punished by the sharp, cold air and our ears were assaulted by the hate-filled sounds of the on-coming undead horde. Jamal was right – they knew exactly where we were and they were un-dead set on cracking open our skulls.
“There’s the truck!” Josh barked out.
And what a truck it was. Calling it a ‘truck’ was like calling a Hummer a car. This truck was an iron-clad, steel-belted, warrior machine with a large ZRT logo professionally painted on the doors. I was certain we’d all need step ladders to climb on board and the power of the Gods to get the beast moving.
We were a half-block away from the machine when the first wave of zombies came into view. As soon as they spotted us they each let loose a roar to rattle the timbers of the very city. Josh didn’t lose a step as he released a shot to drop the first of the monsters.
Monsters was the only way to describe what we were seeing. Stripped of their armor, these zombies looked naked, their skin a translucent pinkish-brown color. But in their nakedness, there wasn’t an ounce of vulnerability. There was only rage.
One of the beasts stopped to flex and roar. The muscles in the zombie’s neck stretched as tight as aircraft wire, the facial structure threatened to break and shatter under the vicious strain. As the beast was posing, Echo leaped on top of an upturned car, knocked an arrow, and sent it flying straight into the skull of the zombie. The girl didn’t even celebrate, she just hopped off the car and continued on toward the truck. Thanks to the apocalypse, even a tween could act professionally.
Josh was the first to the truck. He ran around opening all doors and finally jumped into the driver’s seat. Morgan was next to reach the truck, and next to fire off a few shots. Her first two rounds were off, but her third managed to drop the nearest zombie. Morgan then climbed up on top of the truck and sat down behind a large-caliber gun mounted on a swivel.
“Hurry! Get in!” Morgan screamed out as she swung the monstrous weapon around to take aim at the approaching horde.
“You better cover your ears! This bitch is about to get ugly!” Morgan shouted before she unleashed the loudest barrage of hate I’d heard in a long while. The gun was almost deafening. I dared a glance up to Morgan who looked like she was screaming as she fought to control the weapon. Her screams went unheard. The only sound was war and this time, war was the answer.
Echo, Jamal, and I quickly crawled into the back seat of the truck. Josh reached across the passenger seat and pulled the final door closed. He pounded his meaty fist on the roof of the vehicle, fired up the engine, and punched the gas. The continued blasting from up top assured us that Morgan managed to remain on the roof. Had that not convinced us, the dropping of the undead would have. Morgan was a dead-eye shot.
“Oh fuck me sore.” Josh’s deep bass of a voice growled.
When I looked between the front seats and out the windshield, my heart leaped into my throat and bile threatened to spill between my teeth. Less than fifty yards ahead of us was a mass of naked zombies, flexing and roaring. The sight and sound was unnerving. Josh stopped the truck, opened the door, and stood up on the door frame to speak to Morgan. What he said was a mystery and he certainly wasn’t about to take time to share with the rest of the class. Instead, he sat back down, closed the door, revved the engine a couple of times, and crushed the accelerator with his size twelve-ish shoe. As soon as the truck tires started spinning, the monster-truck gun started firing. One by one the zombies ahead of us dropped. It was a fairly simple calculation to conclude there would be no way Morgan could take out every one of the undead before the truck reached the crowd. That calculation could easily lend itself to the hypothesis that Josh planned on ramming the truck into (and hopefully through) the remaining zombies.
“Can Morgan hold on up there?” I shouted over the din of Hellfire.
Josh laughed. “Morgan’s grip is rated at seven Gs. She’ll be fine.” Josh again gunned the engine to send the beast of a truck lurching forward. The mass of zombies flexed their muscles almost to snapping and took off running toward us.
It all came down to a game of undead chicken. Either one of us would flinch and dive off the path or we’d collide with such force that someone would go down. If I were prone to prayer, I’d have dropped to my knees and let loose a litany to shame the Tibetan Monks.
The sound of the gun changed to a deeper, throatier thump. Seconds after the first shot, I realized why it changed – Morgan was unleashing Hellfire grenades from a launcher. One by one the walking dead went up in flames. By the time the truck reached the crowd of zombies, every piece of meat was pre-charred. The collision scattered the ashes of the burning undead to the four corners. One more rev of the engine sent us through the dead-rover line and into the land of the free.
Or so we thought. Once beyond the first wave, a second wave of the undead made itself known. This time the monsters were the more familiar moaners and screamers. At least with that came a certainly familiarity. Unfortunately that familiarity did us little good, considering the numbers.
“Holy fuck – there must be thousands of them!”
“And me without an Obliterator!”
Echo was right. And I was certain this rolling fortress didn’t carry enough ammunition to take down this undead army.
“What do we do now?“ I was surprised Jamal asked such a pedestrian question. Normally this was his time to shine – creating resolutions to situations where the odds seemed impossible. His brain worked in just that way. I had yet to see Jamal not rise up to the occasion of disproportionate odds. Certainly he was about to have an ‘ah ha’ moment wherein the resolution to our current oh shit would be forthcoming.
Nothing came. In fact, we all just stared ahead as the walking dead death machine inched closer and closer.
From the roof, Morgan began pounding. Apparently, Josh knew the precise pound as he scanned the cab of the truck with a red-light look.
“Hold on to your butts,” Josh said just before punching the accelerator. The truck lurched forward with a monstrous jerk and was at deadly speeds within a heartbeat.
“What’s the plan Josh?”
The man with the white-knuckle grip on the wheel didn’t even glance my way as he spoke. “It’s all Morgan. Three. Two. One.”
The sound of Josh’s voice was overtaken by the machine gun rattle from above. The fiery contrails of large-caliber bullets flew out from above as the truck of doom sped forward. The parade of death grew closer and closer.
“This is not happening. Seriously, this is not happening!” Jamal cried out, nearly covering his eyes.
“Fuck yeah this is happening! Those undead sons of bitches won’t know what hit them.” Josh whooped.
�
��Yeah, but we will.” Echo replied, her point understood very clearly.
Jamal pulled his hands away and started taking in the situation. “Josh, this won’t work.”
From the mouth of the driver came laughter. Laughter. I had no idea humor could be found in such a situation.
“No seriously Josh, this will only end badly. But I have a plan.”
Josh ignored Jamal’s pleas. “Sorry guy, time for plans is over. Now’s the time for action. Our action is to plow through the rank and file of the monsters in our way of freedom. If you don’t like that plan, feel free to hit the ejector button attached to your seat.” Josh laughed again. “I’m kidding! There are no ejector buttons.”
“Josh, listen to me!” Again, Jamal appealed to the reason we all hoped Josh was capable of. “This is all about geometry…sort of.”
Jamal’s statement had all our curiosities piqued.
“If you approach that line perpendicularly, and near the center, if the rank and file is more than one deep, you run the risk of getting engulfed once you run through the first line of defense. If, however, you approach at an angle, toward the outside of the line and away from the center, you’ll break through and not have to worry about what’s behind door number three.”
Before Josh could utter a word, he jerked the wheel to the left, changing the course to a near perfect forty-five degree angle. And with what might have been one of the most wicked grins I had ever seen, Josh gave me a glance.
“No, seriously, hold on to your butts!”
As soon as Josh flipped a switch, something happened and the car jerked forward again, this time doing so with quite a bit of force. The engine wound up and the machine gun above ripped the air asunder with violence.
“This is still not an intelligent plan of action!” Jamal shouted above the voice of war around us as he grabbed his seat belt with all his might.
When the truck collided with the wall of zombies it felt as if a nuclear bomb detonated under us. The initial shock nearly snapped my neck in half and slammed the wind from my lungs. But to my shock, the truck continued moving. Jamal’s theory was dead on. The trajectory was nearly perfect and we broke through the death march as if it weren’t twenty deep. Jamal’s theory, of course, didn’t account for the flood of thick, lumpy, brown viscera. When the mass of undead were unsealed the truck was awash in their disgusting oil. The smell was far worse than the site. Zombie stench wormed its way into your system and rarely left. You could blow your nose and hose your sinuses down with every nettie pot in sight – death remained.
The collision didn’t stop the zombies. Screamers peeled off the million zombie march and, with a scream to shame Jamie Lee Curtis, tore off in our direction.
From the roof, Machine Gun Morgan again slammed her foot down, indicating to Josh to haul ass. This time the hate-filled tattoo of machine gun fire ripped across the horizon behind us, tagging the undead – and every so often nailing them in the undead off button between their eyes. But their numbers continued after us. Even with the monster truck redlining, the screamers weren’t falling behind. Both Morgan and the trucks pistons continued firing full bore.
But then, something just short of miraculous happened. The screamers behind us began thinning out their own heard in a maddening display of pure rage. When a screamer would go down, another would pounce to tear the fallen to shreds, and then attempt to return to the chase. But before the attacker could gain any speed they were taken down by yet another member of the undead sprint to dinner. One by one the fallen fell. This nightmare would work in our favor. With a quick calculation, based on how quickly the zombie numbers were dwindling, and the relative speed of the truck, I realized all we’d have to do is remain just outside of the zombie’s reach for about ten more miles, at which point the screamers would be little more than rotting chunks of half-eaten flesh.
“Oh fuck!” Josh glanced into his rear view and shouted. “One of those sons a bitches made it to us. The fucker is climbing up the back of the truck. Morgan can’t use the gun at that range. She’s not safe!”
As much as I hated it, that was Echo’s cue. I gave her the nod and she pulled out her bow. I swallowed a melon-sized lump back down into my esophagus and she opened the door and carefully swung her leg out. My hand reached to her pant leg and grabbed tight. Echo looked down at me and smiled.
“I live for this stuff,” was all the girl said before she pulled herself out of the car and onto the roof.
I wanted to stand up through the window of the back door and watch; or at least give Echo a hand with a bullet through the face of the attacking zombie. That would be a mistake and I knew it. Echo was in full-on Ninja mode. If I surprised her and she fell to her death, it’d be Susan all over again. I couldn’t lose another young girl. Susan was a broken promise to a dead lover. I made a promise to Echo and had the same heart-breaking need to protect her that I had with that young girl I pulled from the clutches of the mad man that started this wacky apocalypse. There was no way in hell I could look on to see Echo fall to the ground at sixty-plus miles per hour. She and I had this strange, unspoken bond. After surviving the horrors of the apocalypse together, it was easy to feel a closeness with another human being you might not have felt pre-Mengele.
Good thing the girl was always full of surprises. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I could certainly hear. There was no pre-teen scream, no ear-splitting roar of victory from the undead. As soon as the machine gun ceased firing, and the zombie thumped off the back of the truck, an arrow protruding from its forehead, I knew Echo had succeeded. Next thing I knew, her Chuck Taylors descended from the roof and she lowered herself back into the seat with a grin to shame the Grinch.
“I am so bad ass. One shot and that bast…er…screamer, was toast.”
Echo was right, she was bad ass and I’d make sure she never forgot it.
Morgan fired up the machine gun again and littered the road behind us with blistering shells. Her aim was erratic, which was odd considering Morgan had already proved herself an incredible shot. Even though the woman was sexy (in a nerd-tinted, fairy kinda way) she would still crush a man’s nuts while batting her eyes and not breaking a sweat. I quickly realized the issue at hand was the pothole-filled road and not a wounded or otherwise fucked up Morgan.
The bumping, jumping, and ill-fired shots went on for a few miles. Eventually the zombies managed to snack their way to thinner numbers and the road below us grew smooth enough for Morgan to finish off the job. As soon as her shots starting hitting home, the undead army began to dwindle enough to assure us we would survive yet another day.
I watched out the window. Three. Two. One.
The last of the screamers went down.
We made it.
Our tiny collection of survivors managed to pull out of what could have been the same nightmare I’d lived through too many times since this apocalypse said ‘hello’. Granted we did enjoy the help of an undead civil war. Had it not been for the rage-fueled infighting among the monsters, we never would have made it.
Josh brought the truck to a slow stop. After he slammed the transmission into park he flung the door open, leaped out, and screamed Morgan’s name. From up top Morgan squealed and laughed before she jumped down and wrapped her arms around Josh’s thick neck.
And then… they kissed. It was one of the sweetest visions I’d laid eyes on in a while. Their kiss reminded me that humanity hadn’t dried up and died away. Life still existed. Humanity remained. No matter how hard the Zero Day Collective punched us in the gut, we’d rebound and swing our own mighty blow.
But even with this tiny victory, there was still a war to wage. The Zero Day Collective had Jacob and I wouldn’t rest until he was wrapped up tight in my embrace. I had a new group of survivors along for the ride; and although they weren’t special-ops soldiers or molecular biologists, they were warriors to the core. Together we would march our way across the country until we could reach our fingers deep into the chest of the ZDC and ri
p out its still-beating heart.
Chapter 31
November 27, 2016 9:00 AM
Unknown location
The baby cooed and grinned, even as the twenty-five millimeter needle was pulled from its tiny arm. The tests had all been run. Now it was time to get enough blood samples to begin synthesizing what would eventually become the cure for the Mengele Virus.
Commander Faddig rushed through the double doors of the mobile surgical cube.
“Commander! This is a sterile environment. You can’t…”
“Don’t fucking tell me what I can and can’t do. That baby was resistant to everything you threw at it. A little germ here and there isn’t going to do a God damn thing.”
Tension mounted in the room. Doctor Kinkaid’s jaw flexed in and out as he glared at the commanding officer.
“Are the results complete?” Faddig demanded.
Kinkaid continued staring.
“I asked you a simple question. Either you can answer it, or I’ll have those same tests run on you. I’ll pose the question one more time. Are the results complete?”
“Yes. The baby is immune to all strains of the Mengele virus. I have injected him with every mutation we have. None have managed to have any adverse effects. The child is exactly as you hoped.”
Commander Faddig stood over the acrylic bassinet and smiled. The grin on the commander’s face wasn’t something reserved for a child, but a subject – a project. And baby Jacob certainly was the project to end all projects.
The savior.
The messiah.
The second coming of mankind
“How much longer before you can begin mass production of the anti-viral?”