by D. J. Molles
Lee watched him for a moment, but the dog didn’t seem to react to anything. “I think it’s all clear for now.” He patted the side of the Humvee and the others stepped out.
The drivers stayed inside their Humvees.
They made their slow and cautious progress across the high school’s parking lot. The rain turned from a cloying mist to a drizzle, and then tapered off again. The Humvees followed behind and stopped short of the jumbled collection of abandoned military equipment. Lee and LaRouche jogged forward slightly, doing a quick sweep of the undercarriages and all around and behind the trucks before waving in the two Humvees.
The two LMTVs were desert tan in color, both equipped with cargo beds. Along either side of each bed were fold-down benches so the two-and-a-half-ton truck could serve as a troop transport or carry cargo and equipment in its hold. The cab was a two-seater with a little more room in the interior than the Humvees.
The HEMTT was of a similar construct but wider and longer, and painted olive drab. In place of the cargo bed, there was a long oval tank that extended the length of the machine from the cab on back. It was less than a commercial eighteen-wheeler would carry but still plenty of fuel.
They flipped the switch in the diesel vehicles and crossed their fingers as they waited for the ignition light to go off. Maybe they waited longer than normal, or maybe it was just that the wait seemed interminable, but they rejoiced in a stroke of good luck when the little orange lights went off and a press of a button brought the big machines to life. Further inspection of the gauges revealed that all three had more than half a tank of fuel, and that the HEMTT’s tanker still contained three quarters of its payload.
They fueled their two Humvees, which were both down to less than a quarter tank. Lee kept an eye on Deuce as the dog explored the area with a relaxed familiarity. Deuce trotted around the perimeter like a guard dog, constantly sniffing, his nose up high, testing the wind, then down low, searching the ground.
They split up their nine people into two-man teams—a driver and a gunner—with the odd man out being Jim, who volunteered to drive the HEMTT, stating he had some experience driving bigger vehicles. In the Humvees, the extra passenger would man the gun, and in the LMTVs he would simply ride shotgun with his rifle out the window. Lee would drive, and LaRouche would be on the gun. They would take point. Julia volunteered to drive the other Humvee, with Wilson in the turret. They would bring up the rear of the column. Jim in the HEMTT would be in the center of the convoy, with an LMTV and a Humvee behind him and in front of him.
It wasn’t ideal, but limited manpower demanded some sacrifices.
They loaded everyone up and managed to convince Deuce to get in Lee’s Humvee again. Then they formed into their column and made for the exit. They left the high school behind them without spotting a single infected or any other suspicious person who might have been gunning for Lee the previous day. The roads stretched before them, empty and abandoned, and apparently safe for passage.
In the rural area outside of Sanford, the scenery looked like every other country road in central North Carolina—two-lane blacktop that had been neglected even before the collapse, with potholes deepening and the painted lines fading and cracking. Now, with no traffic to keep them down, weeds had grown in the cracks, and the narrow grassy strip to either side had begun to encroach on the cement. Beyond that, the forest rose up in gray streaks of timber.
Eventually they came to a rural road, off of which a nondescript dirt road would lead them to the bunker. Here Lee found the familiar bucolic setting to be slightly different. The road stretched narrowly, the trees crowded in on either side, with no open fields to let them breathe. The shoulder was sharp and the culvert deep and marshy with overgrowth, leaving no room to turn around.
They turned right onto this road.
At the corner, a weathered street sign rose from coils of brown creeping vines, stalwart in its losing battle against the relentless advance of kudzu. The name of the narrow road, according to this sad signage, was DEVIL’S TRAMPING GROUND ROAD.
Lee grimaced at the road name and pressed down on the accelerator pedal, at which point several things happened at once.
The engine wound up, as though to accelerate as normal.
Then the hood of the Humvee very suddenly warped, changing shapes in front of his eyes.
The entire vehicle jolted violently and Lee felt it all the way through him like the crack of a baseball bat in his hands, felt the shockwave in his chest like getting the wind knocked out of him.
And then the engine lost power.
CHAPTER 21
In the Woods
From the cab of the LMTV directly behind Captain Harden’s Humvee, Wilson not only heard but felt what sounded like a hammer striking an anvil, except louder, more overpowering. Wilson wasn’t sure whether he had imagined it or whether somehow his eyes had zeroed in on just the right focal plane at just the right moment, but he would later swear that he saw the bullet that took out Captain Harden’s engine block, or at least the path of spatial distortion left in its wake.
To his right, his passenger, Zack, stared slack-jawed, his face more confused than scared.
Odd, intrusive thoughts collided in his brain in that half second as Captain Harden’s Humvee swerved wildly on the road and began to slow as it lost power to its drive. The thoughts were calm and meticulous, calculated and rational, and he thought this was very odd.
.50-BMG is one of the only bullets capable of reliably taking down an engine block.
7.62 and 5.56 just don’t cut it—not enough mass, not enough velocity.
But the average .50-BMG FMJ projectile is approximately 650 grains, delivered with over 13,000 foot-pounds of muzzle energy.
A single shot? Could be from a Barrett or a McMillan.
But you can also shoot a single shot from an M2.
Snipers in the Korean War would put telescopic sights on their M2s.
“What the fuck!” Zack wailed.
Zack’s scream snapped Wilson back into real time and he slammed on the brakes. The LMTV’s tires groaned and chirped across the asphalt and they came to a halt there in the middle of the road.
“Get out! Get out!” Wilson reached across and shoved Zack toward the passenger side, trying to get him to open his door and run.
A sudden, incredibly loud whine, almost simultaneous with a snap-clap-crunch sound.
Wilson felt a pressure in his hand and when he looked, the first thing he saw was that Zack’s head and neck were lolling, almost detached from his torso, exposed muscle fibers twitching about madly amid jutting bone. In the slopping mess of Zack’s avulsed upper torso, his own hand was shaking about, his ring finger and his little finger missing at the first knuckle.
Small-arms fire from ahead.
Wilson looked up, his mangled right hand still lying on Zack’s body. The Humvee was turned almost sideways in the left shoulder and Captain Harden and LaRouche were crouched at the front end, using the engine block for cover. LaRouche fired blindly over the hood of the Humvee while Captain Harden yelled at the rest of the convoy to get the fuck in the woods.
Wilson turned and grabbed Zack’s arm with his injured hand, and he took ahold of his rifle with the other. “I got you, buddy. Hang on.”
He kicked his door open and heaved himself backward. He felt the seat disappear underneath him and he fell to the ground, losing his grip on Zack’s arm. His head bounced off the concrete, bringing stars to his vision, but he clambered quickly to his feet, still holding his rifle.
Jim was suddenly there beside him, hauling him up. Wilson reached back into the cab, looking for some part of Zack to grab so he could haul him out of the truck.
Jim’s hands grabbed his shoulder, staying him. “Get into the woods!”
“I gotta get Zack!” Wilson shook Jim off and reached over the driver’s seat to where Zack’s body was collapsed in a strange contortion across the seats. “Where’s Julia? Maybe if we just stop the bleeding…”<
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Wilson felt himself being yanked out of the cab.
Jim was in his face. “Get into the woods!”
Wilson bellowed back, “I’ve gotta get Zack!”
“You let me get Zack!” And then Jim turned him roughly and shoved him hard in the back.
Wilson stumbled but recovered, and he continued into the woods. When he looked back, Jim was right behind him. He hadn’t rescued Zack at all. He’d lied to him!
Wilson stopped ten feet into the wood line and turned. “What the fuck are you doing?” he screamed at Jim and launched himself back toward the truck. Jim was having none of it, and he tackled Wilson straight to the forest floor.
“He’s dead! He’s dead!” Jim barked at him. “Now keep your head down!”
Wilson laid his head back into the leaves, and that was when the pain finally surfaced. It welled up so suddenly, he just started breathing rapidly and then finally pulled his hand in front of his face, could see the little white shards of bones sticking out of the meat, could see the tendons flicking back and forth as his hand trembled, and he screamed, “My fingers! My fingers are gone!”
* * *
Lee hit the woods with LaRouche close behind him. Deuce had made it out of the Humvee with them, but then he’d sprinted off into the woods and Lee couldn’t see him anymore. Another zip-snap-BOOM and a small sapling suddenly splintered into pieces to his right. The time between the impact and the report was negligible—the shooter was within a few hundred yards of them.
He didn’t stop until he could just barely see the road, and he hoped to God it meant that whoever was shooting at them wouldn’t be able to see him. Then he slid to the dirt and came up on his knees, his chest heaving and sweat beginning to break out over his face.
LaRouche leaned against a tree, gasping. “Fuck me! Was that a fifty?”
Lee nodded. To their right, he could see the others huddled maybe a few dozen yards from them but still far enough into the woods to be relatively safe. “Jim!” he shouted in that direction. “Jim!”
The tall man suddenly appeared from off the ground, seeming to emerge from an invisible hole. He scanned around and when he saw them, he ran over, hunched low, with his rifle in hand. He pulled to a stop in front of Lee.
“What the heck was that?”
“Fuckin’ ambush.” Lee gritted his teeth. “They must have realized we were gonna try to run through it—FUCK!” Lee put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “You and LaRouche need to get back up to the vehicles. Do not let them take out any more vehicles. I can’t stress that enough. Wherever they’re shooting from, they’re close, so if they can see us, we can see them. Keep them busy, try to see where the shots are coming from, and start laying into that position on the Ma Deuce.” Lee looked them both in the eyes. “Do not fucking get yourself killed. Do you understand me?”
They both nodded.
“Where you going?” LaRouche asked.
“You guys hold their attention; I’m gonna shoot them in the back.”
Lee didn’t wait for further discussion, because there was no time for it. He turned, facing perpendicular to the road, and sprinted deeper into the woods.
He slipped through the trees, just pumping blood and gulping air.
The sameness of the forest became soothing in its monotony, almost hypnotic like the lines on a highway. The ground dipped down now—that was good. It would cut off the line of sight even better. At the bottom, there was a stream. He headed for it, angling to his right a bit. He didn’t want to be in the stream, because it would be freezing and also because it was noisy. But the low point of the banks would keep him out of sight.
The earth was squishy beneath his boots as he ran along the banks. The extra power it took to keep up his pace made his thighs burn and his lungs stretch out for more oxygen. He had to balance speed and stealth. He wanted to come in from behind these guys, and his best guess was that they were in the woods, maybe two or three hundred yards out from where they had stopped their vehicles.
How many were there?
Only one person shooting at them with a .50-cal, it sounded like.
But he might have a buddy to watch his back.
Regardless, it was one of those shitty situations where it didn’t really matter. You had to do what you had to do, and if it turned out that you made the wrong choice, you were going to have to adapt and overcome. Even a wrong action is better than no action. Stasis is the enemy on a dynamic battlefield.
As he ran, he shucked a 40mm grenade from a pouch on his vest and slipped it into the launcher under his M4. In his mind, he pictured two men, lying side-by-side in a sniper’s hide, facing away from him as he crept silently up behind them and put a 40mm grenade right between them, ripping their bodies apart. He held onto the image, clutched it like a talisman.
He slowed to a jog, glancing up the steady incline in the direction of the road.
BOOM.
It almost halted him in his tracks for a moment. The attackers had fired out another round, and he hoped and prayed silently that it had not hit one of his people. Who the fuck were these guys? Were they just your average raiders who had stumbled across a .50-caliber rifle?
No…
They seemed to have discipline in their fire. The superb round placement when they took out his engine block. That was precision, to hit a moving vehicle right where you wanted it. Precision and discipline.
Lee waited for the sound of LaRouche and Jim returning fire on one of the M2s, but it didn’t come. Just the sporadic, random crack of the 5.56mm rifles, striking out ineffectively into the woods.
They had not yet pinpointed the sniper.
He kept going.
It seemed like he had been running a while, but he knew how adrenaline could distort your sense of time. The last rifle shot he’d heard seemed omnidirectional, with no real way to triangulate where it had been coming from. He had to make sure he was past the sniper before he cut back in toward the road. If he didn’t run far enough, he ran the risk of walking right up on them and giving away his advantage.
Go for thirty more seconds.
Lee kept count as evenly as he could, and when the thirty seconds were up, he knelt down next to the creek bed and shouldered his rifle. To his left, the creek was petering out into a muddy, rock-filled hole. A faded can of Budweiser was half submerged in the silt. To his right, the slope was shallower.
He’d already passed the highest point of the hill.
That was where the sniper would be.
BOOM.
Lee’s head snapped to his right. This time the rifle report had a definite direction.
More muffled chatter of return fire echoed through the woods, suddenly bolstered by the much louder sound of one of Lee’s M2s spitting out rounds. Lee heard the rounds snapping branches way over his head and saw one of the tracers burn through the woods.
“Yes,” he whispered, hunching low. “Light ’em up…”
Low to the ground now, Lee moved quietly up the side of the slope toward the sound of the last rifle report. As he gained ground, he sank lower, to the point where he was on his hands and knees, scooting forward a few yards at a time. Tension stretched his eyes wide and caused his bladder to tighten. He kept moving.
Close to the top now, he heard voices, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Another rake of fire from the M2, and this time one of the rounds hit a tree so close to Lee that he could feel the splinters of wood tickle the back of his neck.
The voices ahead of him cried out in alarm.
Then there was the sound of running feet.
Shit! Lee’s heart squirmed into his gullet. He rose up on one knee, pulling his rifle in tight and sighting down at the crest of the hillock. The red dot of his Aimpoint hovered there just above the carpet of leaves.
Two shapes suddenly appeared, sprinting to get over the hill. One of them carried an M4 at the ready, with what looked like a scoped bolt-action rifle strapped to his back, and the other c
arried a Barrett M82 by its carrying handle, the bipod still extended out like he’d simply grabbed it and run.
They both wore ACUs.
There was a moment when the man with the M4 saw Lee kneeling there on the ground, and they made eye contact. There was hesitation. Just looking at him, the way he wore the uniform, the way he carried his rifle, he was a copy of every soldier Lee had ever known.
He didn’t want to pull that trigger.
The man shouted, “It’s him!” and raised his rifle.
Lee squeezed off two shots, striking the man once in the head and once in the chest, and spinning him backward to the ground. As the man fell back, Lee swung on the other and began aggressing on him, shouting, “Drop that weapon! Drop it!”
The giant Barrett rifle clattered to the ground, but this man had no intention of sticking around. He turned and threw himself down the hill with all the speed and desperation of a rabbit running from a coyote. Lee tracked him with his rifle, the red dot leading him just slightly as he plunged down the hill.
Lee intentionally aimed low and fired a quick burst of rounds. He wasn’t sure how many of them connected or where they hit, but the running man jerked and tripped and then tumbled all the way down the hill until he rolled into a tree. The man groaned and grabbed his ass, his legs grinding out grooves in the wet forest floor that showed black underneath the ochre leaves.
Lee turned quickly to address the first man he’d shot. He lay flat on his back with his head tilted up and his mouth open. Red bubbles were still gurgling out of his nose, and everything above his nostrils was coated in it so that Lee could not see his eyes, nor where the bullet had entered his skull. He was positive the man was dead, even if his heart would still be pumping blood for the next few seconds. He’d seen that type of bleeding before, and it only occurred when there wasn’t much left but pulp between the ears.
The rifle strapped to the man’s back was a Remington 700.
Probably the rifle that had killed Jake.
Lee lowered his M4 and turned back to the man who still writhed at the bottom of the hill. The rain began to fall harder, its patter across the leaves of the forest floor drowning out the murmurs and curses. It would also cover the sound of approaching infected. With all the gunfire, it was just a matter of time before they showed up to investigate.