Outbreak (Book 1): Emerald City

by Jay K. Anthony

  “Incoming!” Tanner shouted from the road.

  Williams leaned out his window. “Let’s move!” he yelled and Tanner sprinted toward the Humvee. Tasha looked around. Where is he going to sit? she wondered. Suddenly Tanner jumped up onto the back of the vehicle and climbed into the turret where it was cut in the roof of the Humvee. Tasha could only see his legs which were down inside the vehicle beside her. Whatever works, she thought and looked over Williams’ shoulder. Through the front windshield, she saw a crowd of creepers reach the top of the road. Williams gave up on the radio and leaned out the window with his rifle.

  “Ortiz,” he said. “Get us moving.” Ortiz pushed a button on the dash and the Humvee started up. Just then, Williams started shooting and a moment later, Tanner started firing from the top of the Humvee. The first couple of creepers which had come running up the road were blown away in clouds of red gore. Tasha saw more creepers come up behind them and it scared her how they did not hesitate or stop, they just charged straight for the Humvee.

  “Hold on!” Ortiz shouted and stomped on the accelerator. The Humvee plowed forward and picked up speed just as it crashed into the wave of a dozen creepers. God, they’re everywhere! Tasha thought. It was as if they were drawn to the Humvee like moths to a flame. One creeper landed on the hood of the vehicle, its bloody face pressed against the windshield. It snarled and flailed at them, trying to get through.

  “Tanner!” Williams yelled. “Shoot this ugly bastard off of the hood!”

  “I can’t!” Tanner screamed back. “I can’t get the angle!”

  “Shit!” Williams yelled. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He leaned out his window and pointed his rifle at the creeper with one hand. The monster hissed at the weapon and bared its teeth. Williams pulled the trigger, the creeper’s face disappeared, and the body slid down off of the hood of the Humvee. Tasha felt the vehicle bounce over the body. Okay, that was disgusting, she thought.

  Ortiz turned hard on the steering wheel and as they took the first turn down the hill, Ortiz was driving too fast and nearly lost control of the Humvee as she tried to get around one of the cement barriers.

  “Shit! All the work we went through to put these in place and now they’re working against us,” Williams complained between shots as he hung out the window with his rifle. Tasha realized that everyone was shooting, even Ortiz as she drove, holding a pistol out the driver’s side window with her left hand, pulling the trigger as fast as she could. Should I be shooting? Tasha wondered. She was not sure and turned to ask Cleveland but he was busy shooting as well. Tasha looked at the rifle at her feet and decided to do what everyone else was doing. She picked the weapon up, made sure the safety was off, leaned out her window, and started firing.

  “Hold on!” Ortiz yelled. She rammed into a creeper and stomped on the brake before pulling a hard right on the steering wheel to avoid driving into another one of the cement barriers. The angle was too tight to make the turn so Ortiz had to try to stop. The tires squealed on the asphalt as she brought the Humvee to a halt and Tasha could smell the burnt rubber. Ortiz slammed the vehicle’s transmission into reverse, rolled the steering wheel all the way to the left, and backed up so hard she slammed into the embankment. Tasha’s head snapped back and she hit her helmet on the wall behind her seat.

  “Jesus Christ, Ortiz!” Tanner shouted from on top of the Humvee. “You trying to knock me off here?”

  “Don’t be a little bitch!” Ortiz shouted back. She shoved the transmission into drive and stomped on the gas. Tasha saw a swarm of creepers storming up the road and straight toward them. The creepers were bunched together, sprinting up the mountain as one. It was like some kind of nightmare, where all of the marathon runners were dead. Ortiz drove the Humvee around the barrier and had a straight shot at the mob as they were coming up the road. “Here we go!” Ortiz called out and floored the accelerator.

  Tasha braced herself. Surely they will move out of the way, she thought. Some semblance of human instinct will tell them to get out of the way ... but the creepers kept sprinting straight at the Humvee. Tasha sat in her seat behind Williams and held her breath. They were on a straight stretch of road and picked up speed as they barreled toward the creepers. Ortiz held the steering wheel straight with both hands and without hesitation, plowed straight into the mob. Bodies bounced and flew. One of the creepers was enormous and the Humvee rocked as it made impact. The windshield splintered and the breaking sound of something mechanical came from under the hood.

  Ortiz kept driving as they passed through the mob. She took the next corner too fast and was not ready for the barrier in the road. She hit the brakes and the tires squealed on the pavement but the vehicle still slid. Ortiz yanked the wheel to keep the Humvee from going off the road and out over the cliff to the right. The Humvee hit a bank of dirt on the left and went up the side of the mountain. It missed the barrier, but the right tires caught in concertina wire. Tasha held her breath and waited for the Humvee to roll over. The vehicle went near vertical on the side of the mountain, but did not tip.

  “Shit,” Ortiz said and turned to Williams. “Sorry.” She put the transmission into reverse and tried to back down the mountain but there was a horrible screech as the concertina wire came off of the barrier and was pulled up around the tires.

  “Shut it down,” Williams ordered and Ortiz put the transmission into park. “Tanner! Watch our backs!” he shouted and jumped out of the Humvee. He took off his mask and helmet and dropped them onto the front passenger seat.

  Tasha looked up and saw Tanner turn around in the turret so he was pointed backward and up the hill. The mob of creepers they had driven through, now much smaller, had turned around and was chasing them back down the road. Tanner’s machine gun roared as he opened fire. The creepers started to fall. Once again, Tasha did not know what she was supposed to do, so she got out with her rifle and stood next to Williams.

  “What do you think you are doing?” Williams yelled at her.

  “I have no idea!” she yelled back.

  Williams laughed. “No shit,” he said. “Neither do I. Watch downhill. Shoot any creeper you spot. I’ll see if I can do something about all this wire.” He slung his rifle over his shoulder and opened a compartment on the side of the Humvee. He dug through some tools, found a pair of plyers, threw them back, and kept looking.

  Tanner stopped firing. “How we looking?” he asked.

  Tasha was standing in the road next to one of the barriers. There were no creepers on the road that she could see. “All clear,” she replied. “I think.”

  “Cleveland!” Williams yelled. “Where the hell are the wire cutters?”

  “Back seat, on the floor,” Cleveland replied and dug around looking for them. “Here!”

  “Thanks,” Williams said and started snipping away chunks of the wire.

  Tasha watched down the road and saw movement. “Sergeant,” she said. “I think we have two more coming up.”

  She heard Cleveland get out of the Humvee. “I got them,” he said.

  “Hold up,” Tanner said from the turret on top of the Humvee. “Let Tasha.”

  Tasha knew she was being tested. Her last mistake with the rifle and the safety had put them all in jeopardy. Now she had to prove herself. She put the rifle stock into her shoulder and held the weapon like Cleveland had shown her earlier. She remembered to thumb the firing selector off of safety, aimed through the sights, and tried to line up the first of the two creepers as they came sprinting up the road. She pulled the trigger and the rifle fired. She immediately knew she missed because both of the creepers kept coming, not even breaking stride. She fired again and this time the creeper in the front stopped and looked over its shoulder like it saw the bullet go by. In its hesitation, the second creeper sprinted past the first. Tasha changed her aim and fired. She missed again. “Dammit!” she cried out.

  “Quit screwing around out there and kill the damn things,” Williams said from under the Humvee, where he was working to
cut away the wire.

  “Tasha,” Tanner said. “Remove your helmet and take a knee. It will help steady your aim. You don’t have to hit them in the head. Aim for the chest. Center mass. Take a deep breath, let it out, and fire.”

  The two creepers were getting close, only two barriers away. Tasha pulled off her helmet and set it on the road next to her. Her heart was slamming in her chest. She took a knee and aimed her rifle. The creepers ran past the last barrier, now only ten meters away. Tasha aimed and opened fire. She missed again. The creepers were almost on top of her. Suddenly gunfire erupted behind her and the two creepers were cut down.

  Tasha looked over her shoulder. Williams stood there with his rifle, smoke still drifting from the barrel. “Let’s go, kid,” he said.

  Tasha felt ashamed of herself. She had a chance to prove she could be part of the team and had blown it. What am I doing out here? she wondered as she picked up her helmet. She looked at it grimly. Pretending I’m some sort of soldier? I’ll be lucky if I don’t get us all killed. Suddenly, she just wanted to run away and hide in her food locker again.

  Ortiz fired up the Humvee. Williams, Cleveland, and Tasha climbed back into their respective seats. Tanner was still in the turret. Ortiz backed up and slowly navigated around the barrier. She pointed the Humvee down the road and hit the gas. Tanner reached down through the hole in the roof and gave Tasha a pinch on her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t sweat it.”

  Tasha wanted to smile up at him, to let him know she appreciated the gesture, but she felt horrible. She was upset and knew at any moment she was going to start crying. To distract herself, Tasha looked over at Cleveland. He held something on his lap. “Hey, what is that?” she asked.

  Cleveland was looking through a backpack. “I don’t know,” he said. “Someone’s backpack was in the wire.”

  Tasha grabbed it out of his lap. “That’s mine, you jerk.”

  Cleveland put his hands up. “What did I do?” he asked.

  LUKE

  Matt drove the tow truck through the front gate as they returned to the Bowman Shipyard. The headlights shined on the wet asphalt as Matt pulled to a stop behind an old four door sedan which had been shot to ruin and sat smoking and leaking oil in the center of Corridor Row. “I don’t remember that being here,” Matt said.

  What in the hell happened here? Luke wondered as he pulled a drag off the cigarette in his mouth. “Yeah, no shit,” he said. “Hang out. I’ll see what’s up.” Luke got out of the truck with his cigarette clenched between his teeth and his shotgun pointed ahead of him. He slowly approached the car and saw that the trunk was open and empty, but the back seat was full of blood and trash. Luke heard movement to his right and turned with the shotgun ready as Pete came running out of the warehouse, smiling from ear to ear.

  “Jesus, Pete!” Luke said. “Don’t come running up on me like that!”

  “Sorry, Luke,” Pete replied. “Look what we did!”

  Luke turned to Matt, who put the truck’s transmission into park and got out of the vehicle. “What happened?” he asked.

  Ted came strolling out of the warehouse and grinned stupidly at the two of them. Ugly bastard, Luke thought. “Just taking care of business,” Ted said, still grinning.

  Pete was so excited that he could hardly contain himself. “It was perfect,” he said and leaned against the sedan like it was some kind of trophy. “It went just like you said it would. This car, this little piece of shit, it went flying by on the freeway and went up the bridge. We thought maybe it would go driving off of the end, but about two minutes later, it came back down and they turned right in our gate. Just like you said they would!” He pointed at Ted. “He lit them up!”

  Luke watched Matt walk a slow lap around the sedan. Windows were blown out, tires were flat, and the engine was leaking. Blood and brain matter still ran down the inside of the windows. “UZI did all this?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Ted replied. “They was driving pretty fast, but I got lucky and hit the driver in the head.”

  Luke saw trails of blood in the tow truck's headlights. They ran from the car to the marina. “How many people?” he asked.

  “How many people … what?” Ted replied.

  Inbred idiot, Luke thought and spoke slowly. “How many people were in the car?” he asked. Ted frowned as if he was unsure if Luke was mocking him or not. Before the hillbilly could respond, Pete chimed in.

  “Two guys and a girl,” he said.

  “Any survivors?” Luke asked. The last thing he wanted to deal with was hostages. Luke could only imagine Ted having survivors tied up in the warehouse. He’d seen plenty of what the man liked to do to zombies. The idea of what he would do with a live person made Luke’s stomach twist in disgust.

  “Nope,” Ted replied. “All dead, man.”

  “What did you do with the bodies?” Matt asked.

  “We threw them in the water,” Pete said.

  “Good work,” Matt said and Pete beamed. “Any supplies?”

  “Some,” Ted said. “Come up and take a look.”

  They closed the boatyard gate behind the truck to keep zombies and any other cars from coming through and the four of them walked inside the warehouse. Ted led them past the rows of boats and up a set of wooden stairs to his hiding place in the balcony. There were a couple of boxes of miscellaneous canned goods, a camp stove, a small propane canister, a case of beer, and two large jugs of water. There was also a pair of sleeping bags and a tent. Almost everything had been shot to shit and had bullet holes in it.

  “You’re kidding me,” Matt said when he got done looking over the stuff. “You blew the crap out of all of it!”

  Ted shrugged. “Hard to control the Uzi. I just lit up the car!”

  Matt shook his head. “Whatever,” he said. “I think we need to come up with a better plan.”

  “Were there any cigarettes?” Luke asked. “Tell me there was.”

  “Oh, hey man, yeah,” Ted said. “I almost forgot.” He reached into the pile of goods and pulled out a half full carton of smokes. Luke felt himself suddenly choked up. Cigarettes. He grabbed the box and looked inside. Only a couple packs had been obliterated by Ted’s hail of gunfire. Four usable packs. Twenty smokes in a pack. Eighty cigarettes. No more menthols! It’s like Christmas, he thought. He quickly ripped open a pack and pulled out a white stick of tobacco. In seconds he had it lit and was sucking down the smoke.

  Matt started to go through the supplies and stacked the cans that did not have holes in them.

  “Ted said we had to wait,” Pete complained. “I’m hungry, though. Can we eat?”

  Luke looked over the supplies as he finished his cigarette and realized how hungry he was. It was a lot of food.

  “Yeah,” Matt said. “Luke, cook us up some chow!”

  Luke went to work. He was the designated cook back in the hotel. While he began setting up the stove, he wondered if the reason Pete and Ted had not eaten already was out of respect for Matt or if it was simply because they were too damn lazy to cook it. Or just too stupid to figure out how to get the stove started, he thought, working the dials. He had it lit in a few seconds. It was a good stove and in just a couple of minutes, Luke had a large pot of chili coming to a boil. It was a simple meal, but they had been eating on strict rations lately as their supplies had run low. Something hot and with flavor would be a welcome change. Luke’s mouth watered while he stirred the pot. “We are hot,” Luke said when the food was ready. “Nothing fancy.”

  “Good enough for me,” Ted said and looked at Matt for permission to grab a spoon. There were plenty of spoons, but only two bowls. Luke filled the bowls, gave one to Matt and kept the other for himself. For all he cared, Ted and Pete could eat out of the pot. Apparently they did not care either and everyone went to work on the hot food. Luke finished his bowl and it felt good to have a full stomach. He pulled out a fresh cigarette, lit up, and reconsidered his view on taking hostages. It would have been nice to know where the
people in the car had gotten the supplies and where they were taking them.

  “Maybe try to not kill everyone next time,” he said.

  Ted looked over at Luke, his spoon in his mouth. “Excuse me?” he mumbled and chewed down his mouthful. “Why would I do that?”

  Luke held up his smoke. “Where did they get these?” he asked. He pointed at the box of canned goods. “And all of that. Can’t question a corpse.”

  Ted’s face flushed with color. “You ungrateful little punk. You really think you could do better?“

  “Calm down,” Matt interrupted. “Luke’s right. We can gain information from people who we trap. We just need to make a better ambush.”

  “They came through too fast,” Pete offered and quickly spooned more chili into his mouth.

  Luke set his empty bowl down and smoked thoughtfully for a moment. “So, how do we slow them down?” he asked.

  “Spike strip,” Pete mumbled.

  “What?” Matt asked.

  “A spike strip,” Pete repeated. “That’s how the cops did it to me in video games.” Pete paused and looked distant for a moment. “Damn, I miss stuff like that.”

  Luke knew how he felt. Not so much about video games, but just life like it was before the outbreak. Back then, things had been nice and simple. No wife, no kids, not even a dog. He had an easy, good paying job, a couple friends to go have a beer with now and then and zero real responsibilities. And now … he thought. Now I live with men who see nothing wrong with murdering three strangers for a bowl of chili. Luke had to get away from these people, at least for a little while. “I’m going to go for a walk around,” he announced.

  “Why don’t you check out the garage,” Matt said. “We need to know if there is anything we can use.”

  Luke made sure he had a fresh pack of smokes and picked up his shotgun. “You got it,” he said and walked along the balcony and down the stairs. He walked past the rows of boats and out through the door to Corridor Row.

  “Hey,” Ted called from the window above him. “I could kill you right now.”