Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  “What is legal during a zombie apocalypse?” she asked. He smiled and shrugged. Another soldier ran up and saluted.

  “The squad is loading up, Colonel. Pad Seven,” he said, and pointed to a black helicopter, its rotors starting to turn.

  “Very good, Sergeant. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m taking some men to go look for the pilot of the gunship that saved us. The general said his staff will see to you and the people from the farmhouse.”

  “You’re going to run off and leave me here?”

  “Well,” he said and shrugged, “what am I supposed to do, take you with me?”

  “Actually, yes.” Cobb started to laugh, then stopped when he saw the look on her face. He took an unconscious step backward as she slowly put her hands on her hips and glared.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 25

  Tuesday, April 24, Afternoon

  The desert was quiet as the sun blazed down on them. Andrew perched on a badly rusted guardrail, trying to balance the pain in his ass from the metal he sat on with the pain from his foot and stump, which throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He couldn’t remember walking this much since his Academy days. As bad as he felt, his new friend Chris was worse off. The older man, a former three-gun champion, walked very little each day. He looked like he’d been ridden hard and put away wet.

  The two of them, though, looked like spring chickens next to the last member of their party. Wade was younger than either of them, but weighed about as much as the two of them put together. A self-proclaimed video game champion, he told them with every step that he’d now walked farther than he had in his entire life. The man had to be in worse physical shape than anyone Andrew had ever met.

  “Can…we…stop…yet?” Wade whined as he caught up with them.

  “For a few minutes,” Andrew said. Wade dropped down onto his ass with a meaty slapping sound. Chris leaned against the guardrail Andrew sat on.

  “They’re never going to give up,” Wade said, looking in the distance toward their pursuers. “Are they?”

  “I don’t think so,” Andrew agreed.

  Chris looked down the road and let his head hang, slowly shaking it from side to side. “How do they keep going?”

  “The virus…does something…to their metab…olism,” Wade huffed.

  “Better sit and breathe,” Andrew suggested. He checked his pack, verifying how much ammo they had left. He knew it was only a matter of time before they couldn’t go any further. It could be sooner rather than later for Wade; then they’d have to decide whether to stay and fight or leave him behind for the crazies.

  For all of Wade’s failings—and in the short time they’d spent together, Andrew knew there were many—Wade had come through when it counted. He’d manned the chief gunnery position on the AC-130. Without him they wouldn’t have saved those people in the farmhouse.

  Andrew cocked an ear and listened for a moment. Hearing none of the familiar sounds he’d come to associate with their pursuers, he pulled a water ration packet from his backpack, popped the release tab, took a drink, and passed it to Chris. Chris took a drink and passed it to Wade, who drained the container in several long, guzzling swallows. Chris and Andrew exchanged looks. Andrew shrugged and checked to see how many they had left. There were three; one and a half liters. Wade looked like he would chug it all, if allowed, so Andrew left the rest in the pack. The heat was already brutal, and they were sweating like pigs.

  A few precious minutes went by as they rested. Wade flopped out flat on the concrete, ignoring the oppressive heat, and slowly resumed something approximating normal breathing. As if on cue, the unmistakable sound of grunting came from down the road. Wade’s head came up, and he moaned out loud.

  “Let’s move,” Andrew said, hopping off the guardrail. His ass was grateful; his limbs were not.

  “I can’t, Wade said. He shook his head from side to side, and tears started to form. “Leave me.”

  “You want to get eaten alive?” Chris asked.

  “No,” Wade whined.

  “Then shoot yourself,” Andrew said.

  “What are you saying?” Chris asked.

  “I’m tired of listening to this fucker piss and moan! We’ve done everything we can to keep him alive and pull him on. He’s a drain on our resources.” Andrew walked over and bent down, snatching the pistol from the big man’s belt. He expertly checked the chamber, cocked it, and held it out. “There you go, gamer boy.”

  Wade took the gun and looked at it. It appeared to weigh heavily in his hand.

  “What are you waiting for? You want to get eaten alive?” Wade gave a tiny shake of his head. “Then do it.” Wade looked back down at the gun. “Do it!” Andrew snapped, making Wade jump.

  “Fuck you,” Wade said and put the gun down on the blacktop.

  “What did you say?” Andrew asked.

  “I said go fuck yourself!”

  “That’s what I thought you said. So, you want to live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then get up.” Andrew looked at Chris, who looked shocked at the exchange he had just witnessed, and motioned with his head. Chris came over, and they took Wade’s arms, hauling his considerable bulk to his feet.

  “I got it,” Wade growled, and he shook them off when he was most of the way up. He started walking down the road without further prompting. Andrew bent down and picked up the pistol, flipping the safety, which de-cocked it.

  “Would you have let him shoot himself?” Chris asked. Andrew flipped the gun in his grip and pulled back the action, revealing an empty chamber. Chris grunted and looked back down the road. There was a very slight rise a couple hundred yards off. He could see a few dark spots cresting the ridge. “Pretty over-the-top way to handle that.”

  “Worked, didn’t it?”

  They walked a little more than an hour. Wade was just about at the end of his rope, and Andrew had to admit he was also feeling spent. They were barely keeping ahead of their pursuers, and their options were becoming limited.

  “We need to slow them down,” he said. “Let us catch our breaths.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Chris volunteered. Wade lay on the road again, breathing heavily.

  Andrew considered for a moment then shrugged. “Sure, give it a shot.”

  Chris took his M16 and lay down on the road in a classic prone position, legs splayed, and gun braced on his left elbow. “I don’t like these sights,” he grumbled as he tried several sight pictures before settling in. His thumb found the selector switch and flipped it from safe to single shot. A moment later the rifle cracked.

  Andrew had fished out the binoculars from his bag and saw one of the crazies jerk from a left shoulder hit.

  “Were you aiming at the guy with the Yankee’s shirt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Left shoulder. Far edge.”

  “I was aiming for his chest.” Chris turned the gun in his hands and examined how the elevation and windage worked. He gave the control knob a couple of clicks and went back on target. “Crack!”

  “Stomach,” Andrew said. The crazy staggered from the second shot. The binoculars weren’t the best, but he could see blood spreading from the two wounds. “Switch targets,” he suggested.

  “But the first one isn’t down yet,” Chris complained.

  “That isn’t entirely necessary,” Andrew said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that leaving them bleeding out and wounded might be a better option than dropping them.”

  “I didn’t think about that,” Chris admitted and switched targets. “Woman in the red dress.”

  Andrew moved the binoculars. Actually, she only wore half a red dress, the bottom part to be precise. She’d probably have been attractive without the blood splattered down her face and breasts. A moment later the gun barked, and a tiny hole appeared between those breasts. The woman fell like a ragdoll.


  “Square on target. But, about that wounding thing?”

  “Sure,” Chris said, picking another target. He shot one person in the leg with each of the next 15 rounds. One of the fifteen was still limping on, the other fourteen were on the ground. Andrew bit his lip and crossed his fingers as others came into view.

  “Come on,” Andrew whispered, “dinner is served you sick fuckers.”

  “What’s happening?” Wade asked. Chris explained as Andrew watched through the binoculars. The first of the next wave reached the woman Chris killed and stopped, considering her, but after a moment he walked on. “Damn it,” he spat, “they’re not stopping.” No sooner had he said that than the next one knelt and started tearing at the woman’s flesh. “Wait…” Several others joined the feast. The man Chris’d shot several times lay there, still moving. That excited them, and a dozen went for him.

  “Here we go,” Andrew said. Dozens and dozens of crazies began falling on the wounded and dead. In a minute, it became a slaughter. They even set upon a few of the injured, but not shot. “We’ve bought some time,” he said. “Can you walk, Wade?”

  “Slowly,” Wade said.

  “Good enough.” Andrew and Chris helped Wade to his feet, and they moved on.

  Andrew tried to figure out what road they were on. The threesome had stumbled across it an hour after they left the gunship crash. They’d been moving for almost seven hours, but Andrew guessed they’d gone less than ten miles. Many rural roads only had signs near intersecting byways.

  They finally saw a road sign in the distance. It took a few more minutes of walking for them to get close enough to read it. Highway 83. And just past that, a sign gave a more precise location. “Laredo, 12 miles.”

  “Wow,” Andrew said, “we were way off course when we crashed. Must have been just across the Rio Bravo.”

  “Is that bad?” Wade asked.

  “We’ve been heading north. I thought we were further east, and that this was Highway 16 into Hebbronville. It’s a much smaller town, maybe five thousand people. Laredo has a quarter million or so.”

  “That’s a lot of people,” Chris said, “more chances of getting help.”

  “Right,” Wade agreed. The road’s grade leveled out and headed down slightly, allowing the big gamer to feel a little better.

  “Not good,” Andrew said, shaking his head for emphasis. “If you’ve been keeping up with current events, you may remember we’re in the middle of a pandemic?”

  “Zombie apocalypse,” Wade corrected.

  “Whatever,” Andrew spat. “The point is, a large part of that horde following us came from big cities. You notice they’re not dressed like farmers?” Chris pursed his lips as he considered. “Do you really think this plague isn’t north of the border?” The other two men shook their heads.

  They stopped again as the afternoon slowly advanced. The sun was dipping toward the horizon, cooling things off fractionally. After a half hour’s rest, they were up again, but after walking only a few minutes, Andrew stopped in his tracks. Chris and Wade went several steps further before they realized he’d stopped. They looked back as he started pulling magazines out of his pack.

  “What?” Chris asked, then looked down the road in the direction they’d been heading. Only a few hundred yards away, people were walking toward them. “Are they…zombies?” Andrew stopped stuffing mags in his belt long enough to hand Chris the binoculars. The shooter put them to his eyes and adjusted them. “Zombies,” he said and handed the binoculars back.

  “Take some magazines,” Andrew said, handing over several. “Wade, here’s that handgun again.”

  “I’m not very comfortable shooting people,” the big man complained.

  “Do you have any idea how many you gunned down in that plane? Take the damned gun, okay?” Wade took it, and Andrew spent a second showing him how to use it. He finished by racking the slide and locking the safety. “Flip this, point, pull the trigger. Got it?”

  “Sure,” Wade said and gingerly put the gun in his pocket. “What now?”

  “We head east, no choice. The river is about five miles that way, but it won’t do us any good. It’s so shallow this time of year, you can walk across it.” Andrew pointed 50 yards in the direction they’d been heading. A dirt road went off to the east. “If we’re lucky, we’ll find some shelter before we get overrun.” With varying levels of effort, the three men moved up the road and turned down the dirt path, moving at a right angle to the two approaching groups.

  From 300 yards away, Andrew turned and lifted the binoculars, saying a silent prayer to a God he rarely addressed that the crazy fucks would keep going in opposite directions, or maybe come together in an apocalyptic killing frenzy. The two groups met about 75 yards south of their road’s cutoff.

  The two groups slowed as they approached each other, seemingly uncertain whether they were friend, foe, or food. Sure enough, there were some squabbles, though none went past the grabbing and biting phase.

  The crowd grew steadily as the two massive flows continued to run into each other and built, slowly overflowing the road on both sides. It reminded Andrew of bacteria swarming in a petri dish. So long as they had a direction and an indication of prey, they had no problem walking onward, almost forever. But now, they appeared confused, lacking direction or coordination. An endless number flowed into the ever-growing swarm.

  “There must be a million of them,” Wade said, watching, a hand up to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun.

  “Ten thousand or so at least,” Chris suggested. Andrew nodded. The tableau was deeply disturbing and strangely compelling. He wished he were watching from twenty thousand feet up, instead of a few hundred yards away.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here before they see us,” Wade suggested.

  “Just hold up a few,” Andrew said. “If we keep down and quiet, I think we’re safe. Besides, I want to see what happens.”

  The scene played out for almost half an hour. Wade didn’t complain as it gave him a much-needed breather. Now that the sun was low on the horizon, the temperature was dropping fast. The rest had a rejuvenating effect on him. Andrew absently fished out the second-to-last water ration, took a deep drink, and passed it out. He did it quickly, so he wouldn’t miss much.

  As the sun touched the horizon, the first few infected began wandering down the dirt road. Andrew couldn’t see the inbound flow from either direction abating in the least. As the first few wandered in their direction, more followed. In moments it was a concerted flow, then a river.

  “Time’s up,” Andrew said and slung the binoculars.

  “It was worth hoping for,” Chris commented.

  “I enjoyed the rest,” Wade said as he struggled to his feet.

  Andrew thought as they started down the dirt road. The location of the horde suggested they mostly came from Laredo. Was it just him, or did they appear less travel weary than the ones that had chased them from the crash site?

  * * *

  Turning was a mistake. The road went on for a mile before turning north. Before they’d turned, everyone could see the dust plume from another group heading south. They were probably more of the quarter million from Laredo.

  Chris and Wade stood and watched in opposite directions as the two groups approached them. The bank of the road was low, with no real ditch. All around them were scrub trees, dried brush, and cacti. There was no way they’d be able to hide, and both groups were close enough to see them now. They could already hear the closer of the two groups howling and growling, and picking up their pace. They weren’t trundling along any longer; now they moved in long, loping strides that chewed up the distance.

  “Look,” Chris said and pointed to the east.

  Andrew spun and looked. There was a speck in the distance. He brought up the binoculars and saw a structure of some kind. Maybe it was a farmhouse or factory? He let the glasses fall on their lanyard as he examined the turn. Sure enough, there was a mailbox and barely discernable ru
ts in the hard-packed dirt leading in that direction. Ruts meant a car, maybe.

  “What is it?” Chris asked.

  “A building; I can’t tell what kind.”

  “Jesus,” Wade cried. “They’re running!”

  “No choice, move it!” Andrew said and started jogging toward the distant building, the other two close behind.

  Wade quickly started to flag. Stopping was no longer an option. Andrew glanced back. The first group, the ones on the road they’d come from, were gaining at a disturbing rate. They were maybe 100 yards from the turn off. He glanced to the north. The others were cutting off the road and vectoring in on them like interceptor missiles! The infected were going to cut them off in the open!

  “Chris, pop a couple from that group!” Andrew said, gesturing at the ones to the north.

  “On it,” the champion shooter said.

  The targets were closer than before, and time was of the essence, so Chris adopted a braced shooter’s stance. In only a moment, the first shot rang out. Andrew flipped his M16 around on its sling and brought it to his shoulder. He wasn’t a champion shooter, but he’d qualified as a marksman with the M4 carbine, a shorter-barreled, more modern version of the M16. As Chris took his fifth shot and emptied his magazine, Andrew breathed out, and lowered the sights until the torso of a half-dressed businessman came into view. He raised his aim to the top of the man’s head and slowly squeezed the trigger. Crack!

  The sound of the rifle was like jamming icepicks into his ears. He reacquired his sight picture and saw the man staggering, blood pumping through a hole in the left breast of his suit jacket. Andrew clicked the windage one notch to adjust for drift, found another target, and repeated.

  Chris loaded a new magazine and fired five more rounds before the two men stopped. The results were less than satisfactory this time. Only a few slowed to take advantage of the new meal. It was almost as if this group were…better fed.

  “No joy,” Andrew proclaimed, slinging the rifle. “Come on.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Wade said.