Before the plague, if you had googled the population of Dixon, IL, you would have found out that approximately fifteen thousand people had lived there. A quaint arch with the town’s name in bold capital letters would welcome you should you visit. Now Dixon, like most cities and towns in the United States, was a ruin. It didn’t smolder anymore, the fires having died weeks ago, but something else odd had happened here. The main street through town had abandoned and wrecked vehicles as had the other towns that the survivors had visited, but the vehicles were pushed to the side, some into storefronts, some tipped over. Everything on the main street, from the destroyed vehicles, to the downed power poles, to the store front bricks was covered in a dry brown stuff to about three feet high. It may have been a liquid once, but it had dried, and now it was mostly just a stain. Not a single window remained in any standing building, and even the trees were dead, the smaller ones uprooted and knocked over, the larger ones wilted and droopy. Only a few bodies remained in the streets, also covered in the brown substance, and these were so badly broken as to be almost unrecognizable as human. Against anything solid, such as a wall, or one of the aforementioned vehicles, the brown material had accumulated in drifts of sludge, like someone had spackled the cars to the road with brown goo.
Nothing was alive in Dixon, but there didn’t seem to be any dead either. At least none moving. The team stopped mid-way down Main Street, and a very cautious Murray and Stenner got out of the Hummer and took a quick look around. Everyone was on high alert, but no one had detected any movement, and the thermals in the LAV weren’t displaying any out of the ordinary heat signatures.
Murray regarded the nearby sludge drifts and the stains. He inspected some vehicles and even got on one knee and examined something in the middle of the road while Stenner covered him. Murray pulled out his combat knife and pried something from the street. It was stiff and brown, and when he pulled it up, he wrinkled his nose and pulled his head back. He stood up puzzling for a moment, then looked around, and held his wrist in front of his mouth and retched. “It’s people,” he said into his radio and gagged again. “This brown shit used to be people.” He walked to one sludge pile. “You can see bits of bone and clothes, the rest is…pulp. Jesus. I, ah… I want to leave.”
Anna was skeptical. “What could do that to a human being?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” admitted Bourne. “We should keep moving.”
Two hours and six towns later, the group had gotten used to the sight of the brown stains. Wherever there was a tight spot, such as a road with buildings, or a traffic jam on the highway, or a bridge, the human pulp was present.
After more driving, the LAV and the Hummer crested a small hill and in the center of the road was a Blackhawk helicopter, the pilot taking a piss off the side of the road. Four men scrambled to get back in the bird, but the vehicles reached the helo before it could take off, and Seyfert popped his head out of the turret to tell them to power down. Although the weapon was already charged, he jacked the charging handle on the LMG and pointed it at them for emphasis. The men exited the helo with their hands raised.
Murray and Stenner got out of the Hummer and frisked the men as they were covered by Seyfert, confiscating sidearms and stowing them. Each man wore black camo with a gold III stitched over the left breast. Androwski came from behind the LAV. “Now what are you boys doing so far from home? Still looking for your missing colonel?”
The men gave sideways glances at each other, but no one answered. Several other questions were thrown at the Triumvirate soldiers, but they wouldn’t respond. Colonel Bourne strode out from behind the LAV, and upon seeing him, all four men stiffened and saluted.
They looked confused. “We thought you were captured, or dead, sir.”
“I’m neither, Captain, as you can plainly see. Why is your bird parked in the middle of the highway, and not in the air? Step forward, Captain, and report.”
The tallest man moved up and addressed Bourne. “Begging the colonel’s pardon, but we’re not supposed to divulge—”
“Dispense with that shit, Captain. Judging by the looks on your faces and the fact that you called me colonel, you know who I am. I’m giving you a direct order, answer my question: What are you doing out here?”
“Monitoring the swarm, sir.”
Bourne had no idea what the man was talking about. “Repeat that.”
“The swarm, sir, our orders are to follow at a distance of about fifty miles behind and report on any direction changes. We’re conserving fuel by hanging back and shutting down. It’s difficult to get fuel while—”
“Captain, what the hell are you talking about? What swarm? Fifty miles behind what?”
The man looked incredulous. “The swarm of Fallen, sir, the vanguard passed by this way a week ago. Actually, it takes them about a week to move the whole horde about two hundred miles.”
Bourne looked at Androwski, who shrugged, and the Triumvirate soldier to the left of the captain said, “He doesn’t know, Bill.”
The colonel stabbed his index finger at the man who had just spoken. “You be quiet,” - another stab at the captain - “What don’t I know, Bill?”
“Sir, there’s a massive swarm of Fallen moving west. It started in the northeast, and has been steadily moving westward at about one mile per hour. It turned south when it hit Lake Michigan, then west again when it got past the tip of the lake. It destroys everything in its path, and picks up more Fallen as it moves.”
“We haven’t seen any swarm, Captain, and how would you know about it anyway? Your HQ is a few hundred miles west of here.”
The man shifted nervously. “May I reach into my flight suit for a sat-scan image?”
“Slowly.”
The pilot pulled out a folded piece of paper and passed it to the colonel. “Brooks was looking for you. He was adamant that we find you, but your captors kept slipping through his fingers. He took a platoon of regular Army to a big facility in rural Missouri, I flew one of the Blackhawks. We lost thirty men to the Fallen, but Brooks said that we needed to get to a satellite terminal to scan for that,” he pointed at the LAV, “and that when we found it, we could get you back.”
The colonel looked at Androwski again and Anna, Chris, Dallas, and Rick, who had come out of the LAV and were listening too. “When he was looking for you with the satellite, he noticed the swarm.”
“How many undead are in this swarm?” demanded Rick.
“Almost eight hundred thousand, near as we can tell. I can’t believe you didn’t see them.”
30
The Blackhawk hovered at thirty six hundred feet of altitude, just short of three miles behind the swarm. The machine was high enough that the creatures on the ground couldn’t hear the engines or rotors. Bourne had commandeered the vehicle and its pilot so he could view the vast horde of dead. The pilot’s cohorts were back by the LAV, under close guard by Androwski and the others, while Bourne, Seyfert, and Rick hitched a ride to inspect the walking tide of death.
Rick pointed out the starboard window and spoke into his headset. “What the hell is that black cloud?”
“Insects,” Schellenger, the pilot, replied. “They follow the Fallen in droves, it’s disgusting, but you can see the cloud two miles out from the ground on a clear day with flat terrain. They’re a good early warning system, but it hasn’t helped anyone yet.”
“What does that mean, it hasn’t helped?” Bourne asked as he looked at the swarm through binoculars.
“Only one of the small encampments we’ve seen has tried to bug out when the Fallen approach, and that one got caught in it. It’s three miles wide and two deep.”
“Wait, you’ve seen encampments?”
“Yes, sir, the more easterly you go, the more live people you find. Of course, the opposite is also true, there are more Fallen. The Triumvirate has absorbed several small camps, and we have tabs on several more. Anyway, whenever the cloud appears on the horizon, people in the camps hunker down and t
ry to defend. Unfortunately, they have no idea the size of the swarm, and they inevitably get overrun.”
“Has Brooks tried to stop it?”
“There isn’t enough ordnance. We have the A10s, but we don’t have any more bombs. We tried strafing runs with the Warthog’s 30mm guns, but all that does is cut a line in the horde for a few seconds. There was a Hades bomb in an armory in South Dakota, but the men who went to get it never came back.”
“So what’s the plan, how are you going to stop them?”
“My guess is that we won’t. There have been plans to divert them, but each time we try, they end up just moving west again on the same path. It’s like they’re drawn west.”
The colonel turned to look at the pilot. “What is the track in relation to the stadium?”
“You mean in Lincoln? Dead on. They’ll reach HQ by the end of next week, and with the lack of any changes in direction, that’s where the brass thinks the Fallen are headed.”
“Jesus, all those people…”
“Are probably gonna die. Brooks and Recht are already prepared to leave with the capable fighters and most of the weaponry, but only the pilots and upper brass know. There simply aren’t enough vehicles to evac the civvies.”
“You son of a bitch,” fumed Seyfert. “How could you leave those people to die?”
Schellenger smirked. “I didn’t. I hand-picked my crew for this mission personally, and none of us have families back in Lincoln. Brooks and Recht would certainly kill any of our families should we desert. The point is, tomorrow at 0800, word is going to get out that there’s a swarm coming and that Recht is preparing to abandon his flock to the Fallen.” The pilot smiled wider. “That should go over like a shit sandwich.”
“What did you mean by desertion?” Bourne asked.
“Well, first off, Brooks came to me personally prior to lift off for this mission. He told me that you were a traitor, and if I found you I was to kill you immediately, you were not to be taken prisoner.” Bourne raised his eyebrows. “It’s true, sir. Most of the men suspect that Brooks is off his rocker, but that confirmed it for me. He ordered the assassination of the ranking military commander in the area,” Schellenger harrumphed, “as if. The men I picked for this mission are my friends and I trust them. I told them we would monitor the swarm until my guy in Lincoln spread the word about what was coming. He will also inform as many as he can about what Recht has been doing. Then we’re bugging out and heading north to Canada to fish and farm. None of that matters now.”
“Why not, soldier?”
“Because we’re out of gas.” Schellenger tapped the fuel indicator. “We’ve got enough for two hundred miles, and then this bird is six million bucks worth of scrap metal. Every airport and fuel depot within five hundred miles is either overrun, or has men loyal to Brooks guarding it. Not to mention that my crew and I seem to be prisoners. I guess what I’m saying is: Request permission to come aboard, sir?
“No room,” Seyfert said immediately.
“While I don’t share his enthusiasm, Captain, he’s right, we can’t fit you.”
Seyfert had his pistol in his lap. “Due respect, sir, I just don’t trust this Triumvirate douche.”
“Careful, sailor, I was a Triumvirate douche too.”
“Roger that, sir. Sorry, sir.”
Rick pointed out the window. “Is that the main body of it?”
“Negative, those are just stragglers.” The pilot pointed forward, about twenty degrees higher out the forward windscreen. “That’s the swarm.”
“Holy shit,” Seyfert and Rick whispered at the same time.
31
“You at least could have tried to get some folks out,” Seyfert told Schellenger as they packed a case of water and some MREs into the Blackhawk, “and fuck you for taking our food.”
“I didn’t take shit, your CO gave it to us. If you want to go back to Lincoln, I can get us most of the way in my bird, but then you get to deal with Brooks and his cronies. He’ll know what you’re about before you can ever spill the beans, and how is one man going to save ten thousand people? My helicopter will take ten at most, and that would be if I had any fuel, and if I don’t get shot on a whim, and if Brooks lets me take anyone. I’ve done plenty to redeem myself for working with those evil bastards.” Schellenger wiped his hands on his flight suit then folded his arms. “Fuck you and your insinuations that I could have helped. I did help. Go on, go back and get eaten. You’ll see how ridiculous your efforts are as the Fallen are chewing on you, or when you starve to death in a cell surrounded by them.”
Fifteen minutes later, Bourne was saluting the Blackhawk crew as they took off. To Seyfert’s amazement, the crew saluted back. The bird flew north, with two HK 416 battle rifles and two hundred rounds of ammunition in addition to the food and water. Before they left, the four men had been searched head to toe, and Stark and Androwski had disabled the helicopter’s radio.
“Too bad. Usin’ that chopper woulda gotten us ta Boston quicker if we had the gas.”
The colonel turned abruptly away from the departing aircraft. “Agreed Dallas, but it couldn’t carry us all and it was almost out of fuel. Saddle up, people, we leave in five.”
The group took a southerly track after they separated from the crew of the Blackhawk. Taking back roads and going overland as much as they could, there was still no way to avoid major populated areas after they turned north.
The mission team picked up a young guy named Bill in a dead town in southern Pennsylvania. He had been hiding in a food distribution warehouse, but was caught outside by a few dozen creatures when he made a break for a dentist’s office to pull one of his own teeth. The team had saved him just in the nick of time, and had almost shot him as he showed up disheveled with a bloody mouth after pulling a broken and rotten tooth. The reward for saving him was extreme, with all the food and water they could carry in the LAV and the Hummer. They were now pulling a small landscape trailer laden with all kinds of sustenance. Ramen noodles, packages of snack food, and boxes of juice drinks were now crammed against the inside hull of the LAV as they rumbled northeast.
They assisted an armed encampment under siege by the dead in Hillsdale, New York. The zombies had easily been destroyed using the LAV’s wheels, and Bourne had insisted that some of the food they were carrying on the trailer be left for the folks there. Bill had also decided to stay and help, as he wanted no part of travelling any further east after the folks in Hillsdale told them what they were in for. Anna asked Bill if he would take her new dog Joe with him. When everybody looked at her, she looked away. “Where we are going is no place for a puppy.”
Anna looked at the rear of the LAV as they drove away without Joe.
The dead were extremely prevalent as they got closer to their destination. The towns in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had fared no better than any other state they had come through, but these towns were full of homes jam packed together. Although many of the states the survivors had travelled through were larger in population, they were also significantly larger in area, which in turn would mean that the undead were spread out, or concentrated in the cities. Before the plague, Massachusetts was ranked twelfth in population, but forty-fifth in area, meaning that the potential for six million undead, all concentrated in a small locale was significant.
What really slowed the LAV down, though, was the traffic. There were tens of thousands of vehicles abandoned everywhere. It looked as if the entire state had tried to escape west, but were turned back by the same military type checkpoints the team had seen along the way. The citizens were turned back and died by the thousands, only to re-animate and come back to the blockades as dead people who made more dead people. Dead people who were still in the area.
It was decided that they would travel south, and hook north to avoid the majority of the populated suburbs west of Boston. South of Boston was less populated but still had the potential for huge numbers of walking dead inhabitants. They saw plenty. The roads wer
e packed with abandoned vehicles, many with struggling forms inside. Many more had windows broken in and blood marks on the upholstery.
As the survivors got closer to the coast, the going got tougher. The LAV was able to negotiate areas that not many other vehicles could, but the Hummer was having real trouble. The vehicle was hampered by terrain and obstacles that the LAV could skirt, wade, or crush easily, and when they reached Braintree Massachusetts on Route Three, they had to abandon the Hummer. The numbers of dead were too significant to keep leaving the safety of the armored vehicles to move abandoned or wrecked cars. Anna was almost bitten when the group was shifting supplies from the trailer and the Hummer to the LAV, and half a dead woman pulled herself from under an abandoned tow truck. Now eleven rode in a vehicle designed for significantly fewer personnel.
The crew took back roads to Quincy Harbor, where they quickly appropriated a Sea Ray Sundancer 610 that had forty one hours of total usage on the engine display. The keys were in the ignition, and when Murray started it up, the fuel tanks were full. Brilliance was the name on the stern. Stenner limped into the living room and stared around in amazement. “This thing is better than any house I’ve ever been in.” The back door had been open and several cases of water were on the deck but they appeared to have had been there a while. There was no sign of anyone living, but the dead showed up in droves shortly after loading the boat with the remaining supplies they were carrying. The Sundancer started on the first turn of the key, and they cast off before the dead could get even moderately close.
The original team from Alcatraz stayed on the LAV except Seyfert and Dallas, who elected to join Bourne’s group of five on the boat. Stark drove the LAV down a boat ramp into Quincy Bay, chasing the Sea Ray. “I had no idea there were so many islands in Boston Harbor,” commented Stark as the LAV chugged slowly through the water.
Run (Book 2): The Crossing Page 20