LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation

by Bryan James

  “Are you sure?” came the worried voice of Stacy, who had moved to the wall. “We’re safe in here. If we go out there again … there were so many,” her voice trailed off, and Kate continued to scan the room as the SUV backed all the way out of the warehouse and turned toward the courtyard. She was worried about Ky. Even the best drivers had trouble navigating through herds of these things, and she was just a teenager—years from her license.

  “I’m sure of two things, honey. Number one, is that I trust my friend to come back for us. Number two is that I’m never sure of anything, but that I will die trying to get you to safety. You can believe that because I’m here right now, right?”

  The herd below was milling about in confusion, many of them following the SUV out of the broken and mangled doors. Many more turning back to the room and ambling into one another again. But more than a few were looking up to the second floor as if seeking the source of the hushed tones. While they couldn’t see for shit, they could hone in on smell and sound quickly. They had to hurry.

  “Girls?”

  Annie’s head popped up from below Kate so quickly that she almost fell off the side of the dusty steel slope. Muttering in mild annoyance at the surprise, she held her hand out to the small girl and hoisted her up. Now that she could get a good look at her, she could see that she was skinny but healthy. Dirty blond hair framing a pretty face with a small button nose. Her feet were stained red with the wine from the vat, and her blue jeans and bright red shirt were filthy. Her voice was quiet and tenuous, eyes scanning the warehouse in fear.

  “Can they see us?” she said. The sound of Stacy’s footfalls on the rungs inside the vat echoed slightly as she made her way up.

  “No, but we have to stay quiet or they will. Do you see that walkway up there?” Kate asked, pointing at the narrow catwalk leading to the window. “I’m going to put you up there, higher and farther away from those things. Okay?”

  Annie nodded slowly as Stacy’s head peeked out from the vat. Stacy’s brown hair was plastered to her plain, wide face, her dark eyes instantly scanning the scene as she pulled herself out, dark cargo pants dripping wine on the steel surface. Kate put her finger to her lips to signal quiet, as several moans from the base of the vat drifted up to the trio.

  They had found them.

  More moans answered the those below them, and a crowd quickly began to form.

  Kate ignored the shambling monsters and grabbed Annie beneath the arms, lifting her easily above her head until the little girl was able to scramble up onto the metal surface. Next, she leaned forward for Stacy, whose eyes were glued on the herd below, many of whom had already joined their brethren at the bottom of the vat.

  Kate paused for a moment, watching the behavior. As more joined, they seemed to share a low moan that was repeated back through the crowd, drawing more in. Almost as if they were calling to their friends that food was near.

  Shit, she thought. If they were really learning some rudimentary communication technique, things were going to get interesting.

  Stacy followed Annie quickly, both stopping and waiting for Kate as she spared a final glance for the creatures below and leapt up, catching her chest on the lip of the walkway and grunting as the sharp metal caught below one of her breasts as she flipped her body onto the corrugated surface.

  She wondered vaguely what type of bra was recommended for the zombie apocalypse.

  Smiling wryly as she stood up, she guessed it wasn’t the black lacy number she had on—her wardrobe an unwilling consequence of the availability of properly sized clothing in their last foraging run. She really wished they hadn’t had to chuck those bags at the river, but she hoped they would help point Mike in the right direction, eventually.

  That is, if the bags hadn’t been stolen, eaten, washed away by a tsunami or buried in volcanic ash.

  Taking one girl’s hand in each of her own, she gave up on trying to stay silent. Dozens of the vile beasts had already gather below them, with more catching their sight and sound as they ran.

  The window ahead of them was narrow, and it was high, but Kate could reach the lever release from where she stood. As she leaned forward and opened the portal slightly, she heard the coughing sputter of the SUV pulling up outside, then the instant report of an M4 carbine. Ky’s M4 carbine, she was sure.

  Shit. They were late, and Ky needed to move.

  Suddenly, the roar of the engine beneath the window sputtered and died. The volleys from the M4 increased, and a scream split the air.

  Ky.

  She was going to die there waiting for them.

  Kate’s mind exploded, her hands grappling for the window and body pulling herself toward the opening in her fury and sorrow.

  The M4 went silent and Kate’s tears began to fall on the dusty equipment below her. Her hands shook on the window sill as she pulled her face level with the opening.

  A new sound met her ears and she leaned forward, craning her head to watch as the convoy of trucks, led by a humvee spitting fifty caliber greetings into the crowd of undead surrounding Ky’s SUV, plowed through the side gate closest to the warehouse. The chain link entry shattered and spun to the side of the road as the heavy armored vehicle crushed a phalanx of undead beneath its knobby wheels and pulled up next to Ky. The nimble girl, who had made it to the roof of her SUV, wasted no time leaping across the three foot gap between her dead vehicle and the humvee.

  The gunner stopped firing, leaning forward as Ky spoke and gestured to the warehouse, then spoke into her microphone as the machine leapt forward again, now moving to the shattered door through which Ky had so recently retreated. The Rhino plowed forward behind the humvee, while the rest of the convoy pulled around outside the gate, preparing to leave after the extraction.

  Kate had to hand it to Starr, she was organized and competent. She knew not to spend any more time on station than necessary.

  Flying back from the wall, Kate met the two girls’ looks with a smile.

  “We’re going to leave a different way,” she said, grabbing their hands and pulling them back the way they had come. “The convoy is back, and we’re …” She drifted off as she felt the vibrations on the metal walkway and turned, knowing what she’d see.

  The creatures had found them.

  Dozens of them were pouring out of the office and onto the walkway. They had seen the humans from the other side of the warehouse, and had simply continued through the office onto the opposite side. Like lemmings, there were still zombies crawling up the stairwell outside, following the first batch of creatures that had chased Kate inside initially—a nearly continuous line of undead that was now starting out onto the precarious safety of the hanging walkway.

  From the front of the warehouse, the heavy report of the fifty cal began shattering bodies as they surged toward the new threat. The humvee drove slowly forward into the confined space, turret swiveling rapidly, keeping the creatures at a minimum safe distance. Behind the armored truck, the bus-like Rhino with several troops on the roof secured with ropes and tie-downs, kept the eager creatures at bay with concentrated fire. Ky was nowhere to be seen, but Kate correctly guessed that she had squirmed her way into the humvee through the gun turret.

  The gunner waved once as the hummer pulled close to the vats, and Kate turned to meet the zombies behind them. They were only forty feet away and closing. She had to move fast to lower the girls to the vat below, so they could make it to the flat roof of the Rhino.

  “Stacy, I need you to go first, so I can hand Annie down to you, okay? Can you be brave for me?”

  This was easier said than done, Stacy realized. Below them, the creatures were clustered four deep around the vats, and the hummer was raining lead into the assembled bodies with ferocity, sending bloody body parts pinwheeling into the air while the vehicles advanced into position. As Stacy was grabbing Kate’s hand, the Rhino maneuvered into position.

  “I’ll be down next, I promise,” said Kate, sparing another look for the zombies on
the walkway. She had to hurry.

  The dead were only twenty feet away now, and their footfalls were heavy on the thin metal. The wires and poles holding the walkway to the steel girders above them groaned with the added weight, and the thin perch began to sway precariously. Kate lowered Stacy quickly, watching until she saw the feet hit solid steel and the child gave her a thumbs up while looking around her nervously, as if expecting the creatures below to mount the slick sides of the vat.

  Kate turned and cursed loudly, reaching for her sidearm.

  Annie screamed as the first creature shambled to within five feet. Kate squeezed the trigger gently, sending a single round into the head of the closest ghoul. It cartwheeled to the ground as the walkway swayed violently again.

  She drilled the second one in the forehead, then the third in the temple. The fourth took two rounds—one in the throat and one in the eye—before she took out the fifth and sixth with clean shots to the nose and forehead.

  “Time to go, honey,” she said to Annie, offering the child one arm while she continued firing with her right hand. “You hold on with both hands, and I’ll lower you to your sister, okay? Don’t look down and don’t let go. You’ll be fine.”

  The little girl looked up, her eyes full of fear and anxiety, lips pursed tightly and brow furrowed. But she nodded and stepped away from the ledge.

  Kate lined up her next shot, took the creature in the face and bought herself several seconds as the pile of bodies blocked the walkway. Moving quickly, she began to lower the child down.

  The groaning of the walkway suddenly intensified and the sharp sound of metal hitting metal echoed from somewhere above them all. The slender platform suddenly canted sharply to the side, unbalanced by the snapping support fifteen feet above. Several creatures plummeted to the ground below, falling amidst their brethren in a teeming mass of undead.

  The gunfire below intensified as Stacy screamed, watching her sister dangle from Kate’s hand. The pistol flew into the air as Kate grasped for purchase on the flailing perch, finding a loose length of chain attached to a jammed pulley. The metal groaned again as the next creature pushed its way forward merely ten feet distant.

  “Annie, you still with me?” Kate shouted down, the strain of holding both ends showing slightly in her voice. “You have to jump down to Stacy—it’s just a couple feet. Go now!”

  The child released her hand as the walkway shook violently under the collapsing metal frame. Annie fell awkwardly to the top of the steel vat.

  For a moment, it looked like she would make it.

  But as Kate looked on, the red t-shirt slipped over the side of the vat, with only the scream of her sister grasping for air to mark her disappearance.

  “Not today,” Kate whispered, refusing to surrender another life to the horde below.

  She yanked the length of chain toward her with all her strength, detaching it from its pulley, and sending the off-balance walkway plummeting to the ground.

  ***

  The walkway hit the ground in an explosion of bodies and dust, plunging the chaotic floor of the warehouse into an even thicker melee of violence.

  As she descended, Kate pulled her legs and arms into her body, and as she hit the ground, she sensed the impact and rolled forward, staying in motion and flying toward where Annie had slipped off the vat.

  The impact jarred her to her core, and she tasted blood in her mouth where she had gashed her lip with her own teeth. Her leg was bleeding as well—a cut from the jagged torn metal of the walkway, which had landed crookedly and bent into sharp angles among a dozen creatures, trapping several beneath its weight. Annie lay curled in the fetal position next to the sidewall of the vat, and several zombies were close enough to touch her. Kate barreled forward, putting a shoulder to each and grasping Annie’s arm with her left hand, yanking her to her feet.

  Circling around quickly, she placed the child’s back to the vat, and faced her enemies, the eight foot length of thick metal chain in her right hand with her left pulling the machete from its sheath.

  “Enough dicking around you rotten bitches. Come get me,” she muttered, before the chain came to life.

  The assembled creatures roared in hunger and surged forward.

  Huddled against Kate’s back, Annie screamed.

  Behind the creatures, the fifty cal opened up again, accompanied by screams from the gunner atop the humvee. But the powerful weapon could only open a gulf between the fifteen creatures closest to Kate and the ranks of zombies waiting behind. It couldn’t march its huge rounds closer to Kate for risk of hitting her.

  That was okay. Kate was doing fine on her own.

  The thick chain swept forward in her powerful arms, arcing twice around her head before lashing into the first rank of zombies that pressed in. The solid metal crushed heads and flung frail and rotten torsos to the side. Disoriented, the battered creatures stood and regrouped, surging forward again.

  Again, the chain circled her head and swept into the zombies, taking flesh and bone from their mangled corpses and spraying blood across the warehouse. The radius of nearly six feet was an arc of death in the arms of a desperate and protective mother. No zombie could approach. None would survive.

  Her eyes were steel and her face an unforgiving stone. Above the battered corpses she had just felled, she moved forward relentlessly, seeking more death and more retribution. Her arms burned with the exertion, her blood pulsing in her temples, urging her forward.

  The scream of the girl behind her brought her up short, and she turned away from the crowd that surged to pass the covering fire from the humvee. In one fell swoop, she scooped up the small child and bounded the fifteen feet to the bumper of the armored truck, sheltering in the swath of destruction laid down by the screaming fifty cal. Behind the humvee, the Rhino waited, idling beneath the popping semi-automatic fire of the soldiers on top.

  She quickly shifted Annie to her back and grabbed the child’s arms as she leapt onto the hood of the humvee in a single vertical leap, clearing the five foot elevation with ease. The gunner let up on the covering fire as she climbed the windshield, then passed the turret, making one more jump to the roof of the Rhino behind the truck before slamming her hand down twice on the top of the bus. She saw Stacy huddled safely between two women, a tie-down already attached to her arm, and she smiled at the child.

  But Stacy’s eyes were vacant and lost, and she simply stared ahead, gaze flickering to Annie with curiosity, then away again, lost in her own thoughts.

  Shit, Kate thought. The kid’s going to be traumatized by losing her sister like that—it’s not going to matter that she’s alive. For the rest of her life, she’ll remember watching that hand disappear over the edge of the vat. Kate knew. She had seen it before.

  The Rhino roared forward as the humvee pulled out, the warehouse floor now a swath of destruction—blood, gore, bone, wine, and chunks of twisted metal lay in equal parts across the cement floor. Spent shell casings gave the red floor a bit of holiday sparkle as their brass gleam shone up from the carnage.

  The two vehicles blasted back out into the courtyard, turning two sharp lefts before dodging the carcass of Ky’s SUV and making time for the side exit where the rest of the group waited.

  Inside the lead humvee, Captain Starr had witnessed it all.

  The strength as Kate held the walkway up with one hand and the child in the other.

  The bravery and skill as the woman wielded nothing but six foot length of chain and a machete against nearly a score of creatures.

  And the super-human athleticism that allowed her to jump to the hood of the lifted vehicle, and across a six foot chasm between the two armored trucks. The lithe movements. The confidence. The way her body became a precision instrument beneath a beautiful face.

  Starr was impressed.

  No, she was more than impressed. She was intrigued. This was no ordinary woman.

  Kate would make a valuable addition to their group, she thought, absently fingering her do
g-tags and smiling.

  Yes indeed. Once she had her priorities aligned, she would make a perfect soldier. But Starr knew she would need to be cautious. There was something about this woman that was dangerous. Whether it was her strength and speed, or that flicker of defiance in her eyes that she tried desperately to hide from Starr.

  She needed to be careful. But she suspected that the rewards could be substantial. This woman operated as if she weren’t afraid of the creatures’ teeth and nails. The was strong. Too strong.

  This was more than a coincidence.

  “Where to, Captain?” Specialist Fray asked as they reached the gate and the convoy pulled in line.

  “North,” said Starr, her voice slow and completive, her thoughts still on Kate.

  “Sir, we already hit the border, and those roads …”

  “North,” said Starr again, her voice now sharper, but eyes still on the town as they passed the city limits. A fire raged inside one of the smaller stores to their right—no doubt a ruptured gas line from the quake—and Starr stared at it as they passed.

  “Yes sir,” said Fray, knowing better than to push her luck with Starr.

  The Captain had made a decision.

  They would follow the route that their new friends had been taking and they’d see where it led. There was something going on there, and she wanted—no, she needed—to be part of it. To be part of Kate’s secret.

  That was their future. She was sure of it.

  Smiling softly to herself, she put her thick boot on the dash and leaned back, eyes closing as she replayed the scene from the warehouse in her mind.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Claustrophobia isn't just a state of mind...

  The city of Vancouver was no more.

  In the first quake, large buildings had crumbled. Others had toppled against their brethren, titanic clashes of cement and steel resounding through the narrow, corpse and trash-strewn streets. Glass had rained from the sky like razor sharp hail. Asphalt had buckled, sending geysers of water, sewage, and natural gas into the air. Flames had sprouted out of hundreds of ruptured gas lines. Electric wires fell. Water mains shattered.