He had stopped and exited the van, leaving the door dinging and the engine running in the moonlight. He walked around the disabled tractor trailer. Both the cab and the rear of the trailer sat off the edge of the road on either side, leaving the flat road and resting precariously on the steep inclines. Kahn stepped lightly and listened for any movement or vocalizations that might indicate he wasn’t alone.
It was discovering the endless lines of cars beyond the trailer that made his heart sink. It looked like there were hundreds of abandoned vehicles that had been stopped and trapped by the truck accident. People who either ran out of gas and abandoned their trapped vehicles, adding to the mayhem, or people who eventually gave up and walked away. In any case, the highway to Boomstick was impassable.
He tried to pass through using every connected road that he could reach. But out on the rural border of the county line he found dead ends and circular routes leading through darkened neighborhoods of long abandoned ranch-like homes. His stubbornness outweighed his weariness and prevented him from stopping for some sleep. Each time he thought he was making progress, he ended up trapped or blocked. A washed out low water crossing stopped him and he once again exited the van in frustration.
Low moans greeted him and he braced, looking for the source of the noise. The growls seemed to originate below him, so he cautiously stepped forward to the edge of the broken asphalt. Dry mud flaked away from the road’s surface as he tiptoed to the edge.
Six dead bodies struggled in the dried clay. They were all buried in various states by the old wash that had swept them away. Three were underground to their necks and could do nothing but chomp at the air. The remaining ones had limbs free. The two nearest were both shirtless and sun damaged, one male and one female. Overweight in life and now just frighteningly large. Their exposed skin was raw and cracked and began to split as they struggled to free themselves from the concrete-like earth. Kahn watched in horror as they struggled so hard that they began to tear their own bodies apart. He knew in a few more moments they would rend their flesh enough to pull away from their own lower bodies and crawl toward him, desperate for a meal.
To his right was the only other one that was somewhat free. She was buried at an angle so one arm was deep underground. The one that was free was missing the hand so the corpse could do nothing to get loose from the mud. She flapped at the ground with her free arm and crunched her teeth together. But she was more subdued than the two bulky bodies working to tear themselves apart. Her long black hair was dull with dirt and plastered across her face so he was unable to see the details of anything above her chomping mouth. Watching her made Kahn sad. He felt sorry for her, dying and being washed away by a flood. Stuck for all eternity in the clay mud of this intersection in Shitville, Texas. It wasn’t fair for anybody to die this way, and he suddenly felt a compulsion to end her suffering.
Kahn took a few steps to the shoulder of the small road and armed himself with a broken piece of a metal fence. It was about three feet long and had sheared to a point on one end. He stepped off the road onto the packed dirt of the washout and took a step forward. The creature reached impotently with the stump and Kahn knelt next to her, ready to end her suffering quickly. Compulsively, he reached forward and brushed the hair carefully off her face.
Aisha!
He sprang back and fell onto his back. His wife’s face had peered back at him from behind the mud-stained hair. He only had a moment on his back before he realized the first of the bulging corpses was just over his shoulder and getting closer with each ripping thrust. He quickly jumped to his feet, grabbing the metal rod and spearing it through the eye of the fat dead woman. He pulled the sharp metal out as the body fell limp and he swung it around in an arc to strike the second. It embedded in the forehead with a crunching sound, slicing through to its ear. Kahn tore the weapon back, spilling brain matter and blackened blood onto the clay.
Quickly, he stepped over the rough dirt and stabbed the end of the jagged weapon into each of the three heads emerging from the ground. One-by-one they fell silent. Lastly, he turned back to the sixth trapped body. The hair had fallen back over the face, masking the sight that sent him into a panic a few moments ago. He walked carefully back to her and knelt again, letting the end of her missing hand brush against him as he reached again to verify her identity. He carefully reached forward and pushed the hair back a second time.
It’s not her.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Aisha being out here would mean that she survived the fire and escaped only to die another way. As much as her murder at the hands of the Neighbors pained him, her survival would have meant he failed to save her twice. She and Daniel were at peace now, and didn’t have to live with Kahn in the nation of the undead.
He quickly killed the infected woman and climbed back up to his van. He’d try another way, and another, and another. Each way blocking him from reaching his destination.
By dawn, the Odyssey’s engine began knocking and sputtering from the near-empty gas tank. His attempts to reach the gun shop by car had failed, and it was all he could do to limp back to the jackknifed truck before his vehicle ran out of gas. With no choice, he readied himself for the several mile walk in the morning sunlight. He guzzled a few bottles of water and ate one of the MREs before stuffing several more of the plastic bottles into the cargo pockets of his coveralls. He searched the van and found nothing that could hold any supplies, so he began to walk, hoping to find anything he needed along the way or at the shop itself. He sipped on one bottle of water and slipped the van key into his pocket before taking the steps around the trailer into the mass of stopped cars. He had kept the jagged scrap of metal as a weapon and used it as a walking stick as he trekked along the inclined grass of the highway.
Fears that the undead would emerge from the line of cars turned out to be unfounded. Any of the dead that might have lingered here had long moved on, leaving simply dead cars. The sights of the traffic jam and how horrendous it must have been kept Kahn from walking between the cars. There was debris spread all over the road and shoulder along the route. Kahn saw trailers with TVs and couches that families had packed to escape the city left to rot in the weather after their escape failed. A box of photos had fallen out of one vehicle, left to turn to mush in the rain and sun. A destroyed dog kennel with bits of fur and flesh hanging from the bent wire frame showed Kahn that the dead had come through here during the evacuation. There must have been a panic and mass exodus into the woods nearby. How many survived? How many reunited with their families afterwards? He tried to shake the dark thoughts away, but the walk was like a tour of the damned that fed his imagination.
It also turned out that the heat of the Texas summer was the real enemy. After the first hour, he had only walked a little over two miles according to the mile markers he noted. He tried to remember and thought it was about a 10 minute drive, maybe 10 miles, from the spot the truck broke down to the front of his brother-in-law’s store.
He didn’t think he’d survive four hours in the sun, and he was already running low on water after a quarter of the distance. Despite the congestion, he tried moving into the road and looking into each vehicle for leftover supplies. That slowed him down even more so he returned to the shoulder, settling to peer inside the outer line of vehicles and those that had been driven or pushed into the grass.
Step after step sent shockwaves into his legs and up his spine to his neck. He staggered along, bouncing the metal weapon along the uneven ground, slowed by exhaustion and the heat of the day. He found some abandoned clothes spread out from a broken suitcase and fashioned a head and neck covering out of the bright green fabric of an old dress. The heat of his breath and pounding heartbeat matched the pace of his steps. It was all he could do to keep moving. He knew if he stopped to rest he’d be even more dehydrated and vulnerable to attack. He let his head pound and rationed the remainder of his limited water supply for as long as he could.
In a daze, he walked up the last incline to where he knew th
e entrance of the store to be. Gravity and heat exhaustion wore him down. Each movement was torture. The blistering August heat was clouding his thoughts as he crested the hill and saw the cinder block standalone building that was his goal. A burst of energy from seeing his destination propelled him forward into the gravel parking lot and toward the front door. Without thinking, he dropped the shard of metal and pushed open the glass door frame. He entered the building, crunching over broken glass. His feet shuffled through scattered debris and his nostrils burned with the stifling air.
He entered the hallway and pushed his way into the dark office. The big safe was untouched from the last time he was here. The last time Ash was here too. Staging their operation from the gun store had led them to get captured by the Neighbors, and led to Ash’s execution. Kahn collapsed into the smooth surface of the safe and fiddled for the buttons of the battery-powered keypad. His shaky fingers struggled to push the sunken buttons in and register the code, but a few beeps later the latch turned. Tunnel vision fast approached as he felt around the top shelf, trying to locate the license.
He felt the plastic edges of the small card and pulled it out, holding it tightly to his chest as he staggered onto his feet. He could sense he was about to pass out, but instinctively tried to walk to a safe area where he could rest. He stumbled back into the hallway and crashed into the far wall, falling to his knees and blacking out. He heard faraway voices as he slipped unfeeling to the floor.
I heard something! He went in here!
Kahn couldn’t open his eyes but knew the voices were not friendly. They were coming to take him--I can’t see him--they were going to kill him. Gripping David Wither’s license in one hand, he reached with the other into the deep pocket of his coveralls. He found the 9mm pistol in his grip and aimed blindly at the clamoring noise of the people trying to attack him. He tried to hang onto consciousness as he rolled into the hallway, pointing the weapon toward the front entrance to the shop.
“Garcia, no!”
Chapter 14
- Cancellation
Cancellation
“What the fuck is that noise?” Captain Gilbert Louis exclaimed from his desk in the front of supply. He had been sitting in the front of the shop, waiting for the remedial training to start and listening to one of the few old tapes the teams had found while scavenging. He was speaking to himself, having effectively ignored the visitors in the other room awaiting their “training” at the hands of the supply orderly. Where the fuck is Garcia anyway? He stood, scraping his chair and slamming the front door open to investigate the sudden commotion.
“What the hell is going on?” Jones said as he, Lars, and Daisy walked from Kahn’s office into the main supply area. They caught the sound of the helicopter’s rotors as Louis exited the building. A pause in the music ended as they approached the empty front desk and a warbly female singer softly belted the first few lines of an old song.
Why... does the sun... go on shining?
Why... does the sea... rush to shore?
Don’t they know... it’s the end... of the--
“A helicopter--” Daisy interrupted over the tinny speaker.
“Maybe a liason from the Army, looking for us? Maybe somebody from up north?” Lars wondered. The three followed the captain out of the building, searching for the source of the distinctive noise.
Captain Louis stood shielding his eyes from the evening sun, trying to look through the tree cover at the aircraft hovering above the center of LOSTOP. The remedial group mimicked him as they filled in around him. Daisy’s short blonde hair whipped around as dust and leaves began to swim in the evening air. She wore the blue scrubs of the medical team, one of the few citizens of the outpost that didn’t wear a military uniform or tan coverall. Both Jones and Lars wore camouflage uniforms and crunched through the dry ground cover in boots.
“What’s going on?” Daisy asked. Captain Louis squinted down at her, seemingly trying to place her. He shrugged. Muffled speech was reverberating from the loudspeaker of the Black Hawk, but the group couldn’t hear any of the words at this distance.
“You know the same as me, little girl.” Both his accent and misogyny made Daisy cringe. She’d heard some about Garcia’s boss from him, but had never spoken to the man herself.
Her lip curled and she wished she could reply, It’s Doctor Patterson, not little girl. But the damn apocalypse began before she could earn that title. You’re still an asshole, she thought as she glared at the captain with crystal-like eyes.
“Does that say Border Patrol?” Lars asked.
“Think so, can’t see it from here,” Jones replied, both hands creating a shade over his eyes.
“Shut up, all of you, or go back inside,” Louis snapped. “Look!”
The group watched as the faraway chopper hovered and the whipping sound of the rotating blades beat against their eardrums. The supply building was southeast of the center of the outpost where the pilot seemed to be hovering, so they could see the vehicle above the buildings but not the crowds that had gathered in the open road. One after the other, two cube-shaped brown objects tumbled from the open door and disappeared behind the buildings blocking their view. Daisy gasped, and the four tensed.
“Why ain’t he landing? Can’t he see we’re military? What the fuck is he doing?” Jones spit angrily. “Motherfucker’s fucking with us. This ain’t a friendly visit.”
“You don’t know that, Teddy. They’re just being careful. You never know who people are nowadays,” Lars responded. All four thought about his statement. You never know…
“You never know,” Daisy mumbled, watching warily. The group watched in impatient agony as the doors slid closed momentarily, and then slipped open again. No details of the single person in the door could be gleaned. They watched as he fiddled with what looked like racks in the rear before tossing another larger object toward the ground.
It was a body, tumbling quickly toward the earth.
“Oh my god,” Daisy said. “What is going on?” The chopper descended toward the ground and a second body was thrown from the chopper. The supply group heard screams of bystanders piercing over the rotors. Sudden rifle fire started from the far north and each of the four watchers flinched against the sound. The chopper rose and flew away slowly, sound fading as the group stood together waiting for someone to take charge.
“C’mon, man. Inside!” Jones yelled, grabbing Daisy around the shoulders and dragging her back toward the entrance to the building. All four skidded around the corner, running for the double doors.
A deafening, grinding noise rang out from around the building. The scream of metal on metal pierced over the clamor of the civilians and the rifle fire from the faraway towers. Jones led the group and gestured with his hands to keep them at the corner before he ventured beyond, treading on Kahn’s golf cart charging pad.
Two strange men were standing outside the fence, both wearing gas mask-like coverings on their faces. One wielded a handheld cutting wheel and was in the process of cutting a vertical line through the chain link fence. The other held a submachine gun and scanned back and forth as his partner cut. As the cutter reached as high as he could, he changed directions and began to slice a horizontal line as tall as he could.
“Hey!” Louis yelled from the corner of the stucco-covered wall. “Stop that! What do you think you’re doing?” Both men reacted by visibly jumping back in surprise. The second raised his gun and squeezed the trigger, spraying bullets at the LOSTOP group. Jones scrambled and backtracked around the corner. Another rapid burst splattered against the corner as the four jumped to safety.
“What the fuck was that?” Louis yelled, panicked.
“Shut up, man. They breaking in,” Jones snapped. “You got a gun or what?” Captain Louis’ face was pale and he rapidly shook it side-to-side.
“N-n-no. Everything’s locked up.”
“You got the key, unlock it!”
Lars took Daisy by the hand and stomped through the landscape b
ack to the front door. As he pulled the thumb latch and swung the metal door open, Louis ran by him struggling to identify the right key to open the cage that contained the weapons and ammunition for the post.
Jones, prone, peeked carefully around the edge of the building. His dark skin blended into the shadows and he was able to observe the intruders at work. The horizontal cut opened the fence in a jagged line as the cutter continued along the bottom, splitting the fence in a large rectangular hole. Submachine gun guy was jumpy and kept looking back over his shoulder toward the tree line before looking back to the building. He tried to tap the shoulder of his partner but was shaken off.
Once both horizontal lines were cut, the fence hung in big squares left and right of the vertical opening. Jones watched the first drop the grind wheel and pull a handful of long cable ties from his cargo pocket. He ripped and pulled one side of the fence through the grass, taut the opposite direction of the opening before carefully looping the ties through the cut and whole portions of the barrier. He did it again a second, third, and fourth time to secure the fence back in an open loop.
“C’mon, c’mon, where are you?” Jones tucked his head into his chest carefully and tried to look toward the supply entrance. Seeing nothing, he peeked back and watched the cutter secure the other side of the fence open with the cable ties.
They had created a tall opening large enough for six or seven people to walk through shoulder-to-shoulder. The armed guard got more frantic, grabbing the cutter from the ground and shoving it into his partner’s chest as the man finished the last tie. Jones watched as they argued without being able to hear any of the words.
He jumped as a heavy body hit his legs.
“Q! Fuck, man! You scared the shit outta me,” Jones panted, wide-eyed, at the big mechanic. Lars turned and handed the other soldier an M9 pistol.
“It’s loaded,” Lars said, sweat dripping into his eyes. “The captain is trying to get the rifles unlocked. They keep the ammo separate. It’s a lot of keys.” Lars knelt in the dirt, holding an identical pistol.
Nation Undead (Book 2): Collusion Page 10