LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation

by Bryan James

  “I love you,” I said simply, not letting my sarcasm out of its box for once.

  “I know,” she said, slamming her door behind her and blowing me a kiss through the window. Then, without further ado, she pulled the cord attached to the pin of a grenade lodged behind the thick crossbar on the gate, and we watched the end of the world come crashing through.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ya see me rollin', ya hatin' ...

  We hadn’t been able to locate the key to the lock that controlled the large steel bar keeping the gates so admirably closed during our time in the mill. So we had to improvise.

  The grenade was one of our last—a surprise saved for a special time from a remarkably successful foraging trip into a pepper’s cabin to the south. Placed high enough on the gate to blow the lock, we had hoped it would not damage the chain looped through both sides of the gates, so that when the time came to close the doors, we wouldn’t be disappointed.

  The explosion ripped through the mesh of steel and iron at the heart of the lock, blowing through the supports on either side, sending the bar flying into the air, and turning nearly twenty zeds to a pulpy red mist in the process.

  And then the gates flew open.

  Per the plan, we were to wait as the initial surge passed us by or congregated around our vehicles. We needed the herd to be a little thinner before I could hope to pass through.

  This seemed a much better idea from the safety of the mill than it did right now.

  The dead swarmed, stumbling forward with eyes on the building behind us, but with many finding interest in the two humans locked up in the large vehicles. They began to fill the gap between our machines, pressing against the sides of our vehicles like a rising tide. Even over the noise of the heavy engines, we could hear the desperate moaning of the hungry dead. Their mouths open and yawning in malice, their eyes dead and milky, tracking our movements.

  Around us, the tide surged forward, death personified in the entombed souls of the formerly human. The stench of the undead was putrid. Wafting through the cracks in the vehicles, it was a nearly solid wall of decay and bile.

  The coppery smell of old blood was only a tinge of the fetid scent of rot and ruin. I gagged as I drew breath, imaging as I did so that I was inhaling particles of the long-since deceased. That their essence was becoming my own, deep in my unseen lungs. Coursing through my veins, into my heart, out to my extremities.

  Time stood still as the waves of death passed over us. We had agreed that several hundred was the limit. It was the compromise between what I needed to move away to be able to move forward, and what we thought our improvised defenses could survive. I looked to Kate as the dead passed us by or stared at us in longing.

  It was time. Smiling once at her, I looked forward and inhaled deeply. Once more unto the breech, dear friends.

  The blade started to whirl, attracting more attention. The claws spread, motivating curiosity. The wheels turned, sparking interest.

  And I put Bessy into gear, bringing death.

  The huge rubber wheels barely registered the corpses as it crushed them beneath its girth. But for the difficulties in steering owing to the interesting traction of large wheels on decayed, bloody bodies, the ride was simply that of a tractor in a furrowed field.

  Passing the gates, I tried to assess whether they had been damaged in any way that would prevent them from holding when they were cinched shut behind me. But I couldn’t see through the crowd of the dead, and I needed to pay attention.

  Concentrating on staying on the path was difficult. While the machine made for a rough, if doable, ride, it was slippery to say the least. Blood and viscera coated the small connecting road that sloped gently downhill to the highway.

  As the claws caught any zeds in a path of seven feet or so in width, they funneled them directly to the saw. I had to move slowly to give the mechanism time to cut through each body, but we weren’t bogging down. I had to keep speed, or risk becoming trapped. Bessy was powerful, but if we stopped and got swamped, I was afraid that even she couldn’t get over a pile of undead six feet tall.

  As far as I could see, the dead swarmed and teemed. In the front of the ranks, those that had been most intent on entering the compound—those that could see and hear food—had passed through. Now, we were into the ranks of the lemmings—those that could see nothing, but followed those in front, or the sounds of what they assumed were food—but had not yet seen.

  It was time to close the doors, Kate.

  As I focused on making a slow turn to the south in my trundling machine of death, I heard her engine roar, and saw the chain slowly rise from the ground as she began a ponderous reversal.

  Nodding once to myself, I pressed on, looking back once as the gates started to slowly come closed, pressed against the tide of the dead.

  Now was the time.

  Britney, don’t fail me now.

  My left hand flew to the lights, and a myriad of colored and blinking absurdities suddenly sprang to life, lighting my way and giving the zeds pressed into the highway something new and exciting to think about.

  Then, the music started.

  I couldn’t help but to sing along. I didn’t think I was tempting fate too much to be asking to be hit one more time.

  And my new friends?

  Well, they just loved Ms. Spears.

  Almost as one, thousands of heads—from the front ranks to the rear, all the way to the tree line—turned on a dime. Milky dead eyes in ravaged faces turned to watch Bessy as she trundled her way south, saw blades whirling, claws extended, and Britney blasting.

  ***

  Kate watched Bessy wade into the maelstrom and exhaled slowly. If anyone in the world could survive a dumb stunt like this, it was Mike.

  She shook off the concern and concentrated. She needed to focus now, on what would get her closer to Liz. And right now, that was closing this gate. Securing this mill. Keeping the group safe so that tomorrow, when the dead were gone, they could leave.

  They would go north. They would make their way to her daughter’s home. And she would know.

  She wasn’t stupid. She knew the math. The probabilities and likelihoods of finding her daughter, much less finding her alive. But that was the thing about being a parent. Your children were always your babies—you had to try.

  As they had gotten closer—through Starr and the quakes and tsunami—she had never lost hope.

  Her anxiety had grown, wondering what she would find.

  Her hope had diminished, as the world had somehow gotten crazier.

  And her fear had widened, encompassing the dread of finding something, of not finding anything, of endangering her new family, of her not knowing simply continuing on until the end of time.

  But her dedication had not wavered.

  Today, she would get this done. Mike would do this part. They would be together again, they would do what they needed to do, and life would fucking well go on. That was all she could work toward.

  But it was enough.

  Throwing the machine into reverse, she stared at the rotting faces around her, several even having managed to climb onto the exposed treads next to her cab, thumping loudly on the glass windows.

  “Fuck this noise,” she said softly, and applied the gas.

  The treads instantly sprang to life, pulling the creatures on top beneath their massive steel weight, crushing them instantly beneath the Grinder as it reversed.

  In front of her, she watched the chain pull slowly taut, then straighten as it rose from the earth. The length of chain between the two sides of the gate suddenly jerked up and across the entrance, tripping a dozen creatures as they passed through. A great swath of bloody meat nearly seven feet wide marked where Mike’s devastating Bessy had passed through, and the creatures using that swath to approach the gate were finding no easy route to traction.

  This helped Kate as she accelerated, using the torque of the Grinder’s engine to slowly pull the chain tighter. The gates close
d slowly but consistently, funneling the creatures that were able to approach into a narrower cone, until the gates were barely a foot apart. She stopped as the chain began to resist, knowing that the laws of physics could no longer help her.

  The gates were as tightly bound now, with a slight inward bulge, as they could be. This left a gap of approximately one foot, through which several creatures were now trying to enter.

  Kate smiled as she listened to the music blaring from Mike’s machine, watching the lights flare into action and the collective attention of the herd follow the new and interesting activity.

  She looked at her watch. Now it was time to wait. They had to give Mike enough time to draw off the majority of the herd before they started to clear out the dangers within the fence.

  Drawing a deep breath, and hoping that her engine wouldn’t decide to play dead, she turned the Grinder off and leaned back in her seat, listening to the sound of the undead outside her cabin, moaning and clawing for her flesh.

  She smiled as she heard the next song on Mike’s playlist as he trundled away.

  Oops. They had, in fact, done it again.

  Hopefully they’d pull themselves through one more time.

  ***

  If I told you that something was about an hour and a half away, by car, would you think that was interminable?

  Would you groan in frustration, knowing the trip would be torturous?

  Or would you shrug in ambivalence, thinking nothing of the journey?

  What if I added in tens of thousands of zombies, a horrific sawing machine, decades-old pop music, and the nightmarish cast of Christmas lights on the dark, viscous blood of the undead, as they were crushed beneath your tires?

  Yeah, summer vacation it ain’t. I was ready to be done.

  The trip started off with a certain air of novelty. But by the time an hour and a half of careful driving and zombie-mulching had gone by, I was ready to pull over at the next rest stop and stretch my legs. And by that, I meant run away.

  It was slow going most of the way, as I had to watch for vehicle obstructions and other dangers—like fence posts or half-collapsed road signs—that could be hidden by the tide of undead. I weaved in between cars and trucks, trees, and bushes. As I moved closer to the rear of the herd, it thinned slightly, enough for me to get up to about ten miles an hour fairly consistently. But I still had to watch the saw blade, making sure I didn’t take too many at once.

  As I was seen and heard, I became the singular greatest attraction the world of the undead had ever encountered.

  I drew them from the trees like moths to a flame. I drew them along the road like the pied piper. I even drew them from inside cars and buildings—zeds that hadn’t even bothered to show as we passed along the day before were coming out to see the magnificent McKnight and his happy tractor of Britney-love.

  When I had reached the turnoff to the road that I would ultimately use to funnel the creatures eastward again—and where I would hop off the magical carpet ride of charnel house death—I thought the jig was up.

  A jackknifed package delivery truck blocked most of the road, leaving only a thin margin on the north side between the truck and a large tree through which I could pass. I would never fit. Staring at it as I throttled down to a slow approach, I took in the truck, and the single large tree. Nearly fifty feet tall, with a narrow umbrella of foliage, it wasn’t a huge tree, but it wasn’t small.

  But then I had remembered the alternative use to which my machine could actually be put. Smiling, I pulled forward slowly through a small thinning of the herd. I approached the tree and, using the claw manipulators to close the aperture of the grip until only a foot or so remained on either side, I pushed forward, taking the tree at the base with the saw, which seemed happy to finally be cutting into wood instead of rotten undead bone and flesh.

  I slowly tightened the claw as the saw moved forward, until Bessy lurched violently forward suddenly with the weight of the tree.

  Carefully backing up, I maneuvered over the fresh stump, watching nervously as the huge tree swayed above me, then passed clear of the overturned truck with my fifty foot antenna held high.

  On the other side of the truck, the road was clear but the zeds were thick again, moving slowly to the east, which was perfect. Accelerating slightly, I thought I could see a clear space in the distance, perhaps half a mile on. In front of me, a cluster was forming, and I realized my saw was occupied.

  I could fix that.

  I retracted the claw and applied the brakes suddenly, watching as the huge tree I had been carrying flew forward and tumbled heavily onto the herd of zeds in front of me, trunk and limbs crushing creatures beneath its immense girth. Navigating around the edges, I widened the claws again, and woke up Bessy’s circular kiss as we accelerated, eager to reach the tip of the zombie spear and find the front edge of the slow-moving herd.

  I didn’t have to wait long. Another fifteen minutes of driving through the waxing and waning press of bodies found me in front of the creatures by the length of a football field. Looking around, I assessed that this was the best I could do. Solid trees to my left and right, with a few isolated farm houses scattered through the area. A feed and grain store was the only building within view, with a half-collapsed roof and the evidence of a recent fire, charred black wood reaching into the air like broken teeth.

  I stopped quickly and grabbed my canvas sheet and my carbine. I was traveling light. No pack, only one extra magazine (because frankly, if I had to start shooting, I would be dead within minutes anyway), and my trusty machete.

  I shoved the door open, grimacing as a severed hand fell from the roof, having apparently been thrown free of the saw and claw attachment. Wincing at the loud music that was directly in my ear—she was doing it again … for the fiftieth time—I dropped down to the ground and made my way to the front of the claw, draping the ragged sheet over everything, including my arms. Then I pulled a pair of yellow cleaning gloves from my cargo pocket and approached the front of Bessy.

  Gore and bloody body parts draped the small enclosure. A leg was jammed underneath the left hand claw; a head was impaled on one of the large steel spines. Another held the remnants of a full torso, complete with hanging entrails and, oddly, a single strip of bloody leather belt that still clung to the remains of a pair of jeans dragging from the bottom of the torso.

  Reaching forward, I grabbed the loosest and bloodiest of the gore and began to smear it on my canvas, taking care to drench the fabric copiously. Large chunks were best, and I gagged as I pulled entire pieces of human being against myself, rubbing it on my chest and legs and arms like a bloody luffa.

  Finally, as I began to hear the moans approaching from behind the parked machine, I finished the gruesome work. Over the blaring music of Britney’s finest tunes, I rose from where I had been crouched, now fully visible in front of a horde of tens of thousands of undead.

  Closing my eyes and taking a breath, I stepped into the road, and lurched awkwardly in place, pawing at the machine as if it contained filet mignon. I had to be one of them briefly, until there were more clustered here. Then, I planned to slowly fall back and to the left until I was at the edges of the herd, then to turn and double back to the mill. It would take me at least an hour at a full run—assuming my cardio would hold up—and I need every minute.

  I listened as the first footsteps began to gain on me, the raspy voice of the approaching undead mixing oddly with the blaring music. I risked a sideways glance, head down and lolling lazily, as if mounted on silly putty.

  Bessy was covered in ghouls within seconds, hundreds of them clambering to scale her metal hide, hands and faces searching for the human that they knew was there, faces snarled in hunger.

  The remainder of the group, having been pulled along by the herd mentality, and not being able to comprehend what the other hundreds were doing inside the writhing mass in the center of the road, continued forward, intent on continuing in their trek, searching for more food some
where in the distance.

  It was working.

  I dared not look back as I slowly moved away from the machine, running into creatures clustered tight around me. Their arms brushed me, their stench overpowered me. I flinched with each breathy, hungry moan. But I continued to move away, as if confused and looking for food somewhere else.

  I was with them and they with me. Mouths agape, hands twitching. Eyes casting back and forth, none locking on me as I faded in speed, falling behind and amidst the dead.

  They jostled me from behind and from the side. Dead arms and hips sending me to the sides; dead hands grasping stupidly; dead heads hanging limply from weary necks. The stench took me again, as it had in the cabin of the truck, nearly knocking me over.

  I began my tilt to the left, slowing even more and veering ever so slowly to the north side of the road, where the woods—still thick with zombies—offered refuge from the naked vulnerability of the road.

  It was the cracked asphalt that betrayed me.

  My left foot caught the edge of a slightly raised piece of cement that had been pushed up by the quakes. In the press of flesh around me, I couldn’t see it and dared not stare too hard at the ground as I maneuvered to the left in a desperate attempt to break from the herd and begin my return.

  So I fell.

  On my face.

  Hard.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad, really. If it had been a simple fall, I could have played it off as a clumsy-zombie moment. An “I’ve zombie-fallen and I can’t zombie-get up” kinda thing.

  But you see, I hadn’t just fallen. I had fallen on my face. And unable to catch my fall sufficiently, I did something that zombies who fell down did not do.

  I started to bleed.

  My nose, crushed against the pavement at an odd angle, instantly started to spit blood down my face. This wasn’t hotel elevators full of the thick crimson stuff, but it was enough.

  Instantly, noses began to wrinkle and moans began to change in pitch. The creatures closest to me slowed, then stopped. Those behind me sped up.