“Well, we tried to scavenge from the shopping center and found that there’s some sort of-- sound. It’s attracting this huge group of the dead and they’re basically packed in like sardines around this quarry. It’s like the world’s biggest concert.”
“So, that sounds good. Like we can sneak in with no danger. What’s the problem?” Kahn asked.
“The problem is whatever system runs that sound is solar-powered. If it ever had batteries, they don’t work. Which means as soon as the sun goes down--”
“The dead start to wander around again,” said Kimble.
“Right. And there are thousands of them. So we can’t get caught outside the gates of this neighborhood we’re headed, and we’ve got to make it before nightfall.” Everyone, even Captain Louis, looked at the van’s clock.
“Is that time right?” Louis asked. Nobody answered. A few minutes and several more stalled vehicles slowed their progress momentarily, but Jesse knew the route and easily sped through the gaps. The Humvee and both trucks followed in formation behind. They finally took an off ramp that had previously been cleared of abandoned vehicles and started winding toward the far north side of San Antonio using the frontage road and a few surface streets. Jesse drove confidently toward the spaghetti-like randomness of elevated highways in this populated suburban area. He started bouncing his legs excitedly as his passengers got more and more nervous before releasing a fast, relieved burst of laughter.
“Well,” he shouted. “I hope nobody is afraid of heights!”
Chapter 19
- Day Hike
Day Hike
“Why are we stopping?” Daisy asked. Deb chuckled a little, enjoying the moment of confusion that her new companion’s lack of knowledge brought. Not that she enjoyed other people being in fear, but she hadn’t quite warmed to the two groups’ union just yet. Leaving Daisy wondering in silence was just fine for the moment.
They hadn’t hit any rain since the small sunshower earlier in the day. It had taken them awhile to make it to their goal, driving conservatively and carefully around obstacles. It was fully midday, humidity weighing the air below a cloudy sky threatening thunderstorms.
Deb pulled the truck into the parking lot in the rear of the column. Jesse had led them into a little retail corner with a defunct coffee shop. By the time Deb drove the truck in a wide circle and backed into an open spot, the rest of the team was joining Jesse at the head of the Humvee. Deb threw the big truck in park and paused a moment as the cold air of the air
conditioning died. Ty approached the front of the truck and half-waved at Deb. She nodded in return.
“What’s he up to?”
“We always refuel before a mission, just in case. We have gas cans in the back,” Deb jerked a thumb over her shoulder and Daisy turned to watch the teenager jump onto the wheel and undo the bungee cord that held one of the big, red containers in place. Daisy looked back and waited meekly for the driver to move. She looked a little defeated and Deb suddenly felt bad about the other woman’s mood. Deb hadn’t said much after their conversation about the men, feeling guilty about loving a man that had a wife. She felt even worse about the part of her that felt fleeting hope that she and Jesse would now end up together. No! She hated herself for those thoughts. Her head shook back and forth as she dismissed the thought. Starting a new conversation would both distract her terrible notions and improve the other girl’s feelings, so she cleared her throat.
“I miss coffee,” Deb mumbled.
“What?”
“I miss coffee,” she said, pointing at the coffee shop looming over them. “Like, a full-fat mocha latte. Or freshly brewed dark roast with a little bit of cream in it.”
“Oh,” Daisy shrugged. “We have shitty Army coffee at the outpost. It’s watery and awful.” Both women laughed. After a moment, Daisy asked her question again. “Hey, what are we up to? Why’d we stop here?”
“We’ve staged here before,” Deb explained. “The time we tried to scavenge the super center for food. We left the vehicles here and walked. Come on, it looks like Jesse is explaining.”
Outside, each of the vehicles had been filled with fuel and ten members of the team had gathered in front of the Hummer with Jesse and Kahn. Deb and Daisy jumped out and were the last to join, just behind Ty. Deb realized what a sizable crowd they made now that there were twelve of them. They’d make a sizable target, too.
“Thanks for joining, ladies. I was just about to explain our next steps. If you look behind the building you’ll see that we are one exit away from the big interchange. Where we stand is basically at the twelve o’clock position if San Antonio was a clock. We’re also on the lip of the bowl that the land makes around here. You see how you can see the tops of the apartments through the highway exit there? That’s what most of this area is like, plus the elevated walls on the highways make it easy for the dead to fall in but hard for them to escape. Everyone follow so far?” Jesse powered through his speech, excited to execute the plan. Even Captain Louis seemed to be paying attention, forced to go along for this part of the ride. “Okay, good. There’s also another factor that keeps the dead here. Listen carefully and you should just be able to hear a noise. I heard it as soon as we turned the engines off. Quiet and listen, it’s like an alarm.”
Each member of the group seemed to tilt their head, listening for Jesse’s alarm. The wind was blowing slightly, but very faintly there was a warbling noise.
“I hear it,” Kahn said. Several others nodded in agreement.
“Good, that’s the alarm at the quarry. It’s about a mile from here, on this side of the highway. There is a huge grocery supercenter on the other side of the highway, and neighborhoods and roads in between. Your address is in that neighborhood.”
“How are we gonna get through if there’s thousands of those things?” Jones asked.
“The noise,” Jesse replied. “It keeps them pushing toward the quarry. The highway is cut into these sloped walls here, so we should be able to walk right over there. The bowl shape makes the highway into basically a big circle, a funnel, and they push shoulder to shoulder with each other as long as that noise is attracting them. The alarm only works when it’s daytime; we think it’s solar. A cloudy day like today is risky, but we don’t have time to wait. We’ve got to go today, and we’ve got to make it before dark.”
“How do we get from here to the neighborhood, over a bunch of hungry corpses?” Captain Louis said with a hint of smugness in his accent. Jesse’s group all reacted with various low laughs at the question.
“Well, that’s the part you guys might not like. See that onramp?” Jesse turned and pointed over his shoulder at the looming onramp that was located one exit farther up. Most answered in muttered affirmations. “You can’t tell from here, but just over the spot you can see, as it starts to turn south and pitch down toward the crossroad, it’s partially collapsed.”
“How does that help us?” Lars questioned.
“It seems really stable, as long as we’re on foot,” Deb clarified. “We’ve walked up before. We just don’t trust the weight of the vehicles. The first time we found it, we cleared the entire way and put the vehicles trapped into neutral so they coasted all the way to the bottom. It blocked the way from any walkers, and curious people wouldn’t think to hike all the way to the top.”
“Hike to the top, for what? If it’s collapsed,” Kimble grumbled, worried about the next steps.
“That’s really the best part,” Jesse continued. “We thought we could get down and make it across to all the loot that nobody touched. Turns out we couldn’t, but we made it into the neighborhoods below easy.”
“How?” Kahn asked.
“Yeah, how?” Kimble insisted. Jesse and Deb both looked uncomfortably at each other, particularly after the large-framed sergeant demanded an answer. Ty and Ice stood on the outskirts of the group, not volunteering their feelings on the subject, and Ricky and his brother seemed to be only barely paying attention. Jesse sig
hed and attempted a smile.
“Uh, well, we set something up. Genius really.”
“Genius,” Deb agreed.
“We anchored a system into the concrete walls up there. It secures a series of ropes that lower all the way down. There are connectors for the seats--”
“Seats?” Kimble growled. “Seats for what?”
“Swiss seats! They’re made of canvas straps. They’re amazing!” Deb practically sprang up in excitement.
“She was a mountain climber. Before,” Ice declared sarcastically.
“Yes, I mean, as a hobby. But I set up this system so a person could rappel down and then each person could be lowered safely to the ground. The harnesses keep you secure and just get pulled to the top for the next people. It’s really a shame we couldn’t cross the highway to the store because I even figured we could haul supplies up if we needed to.”
“Rappel? As in, connect to a rope and lower down?” Kimble asked. Deb and Jesse both nodded.
“Come on man, you did it in Basic Training, right? Finally, some excitement!” Jones laughed at the big sergeant’s trepidation.
“Basic Training was 15 years and 100 pounds ago,” Kimble growled.
“Hey, it’s okay everybody. We did this before. Deb, Ice, Wiggs, and me. Even Ricky did it, right Ricky? You don’t have to worry, it’s all very secure,” Jesse said, trying to assuage the grumbles of the group.
Jones slapped his knuckles onto Ty’s arm and lifted his chin, asking the silent question. Jesse hadn’t mentioned the teenager’s name. Ty shook his head.
“No, I wasn’t with them yet. But this shit’s easy,” he huffed.
“It’s only about 40 or 50 feet down, it’s nothing. Takes, like, 30 seconds to get to the ground,” said Deb, just as reassuringly.
“So, we’re going to rest for a little bit before the walk to the top. It sucks. It’s steep and it’s hot out so we all need to eat a meal and drink some water. Okay? Any questions?” he paused for a moment before clapping his hands and dispersing the reluctant rappellers.
They carefully commandeered some of the chairs and tables from the interior and exterior of the coffee shop, setting them up in small spots of shade around the parking lot. They each argued over which MRE meal they wanted before settling down and enjoying whatever they ended with. They watched as a couple dark clouds moved through the sky, but no rain fell on them. The atmosphere was strange, almost electric, and Jones and Louis told the group it felt like a storm was coming. Each time the clouds covered the sun, the distant warble of the alarm faded from earshot.
After about an hour, Jesse declared it was time to go. The troupe put all the MRE scraps and trash in one of the coffee shop trash cans to cover their trail. Jesse declared Kahn’s group could have their weapons back so the rifles and ammunition were split back up. Kahn ended up with one of the 9mm pistols, and Jesse’s group checked their carbines and loaded up. They lined up and hiked through the grass to the frontage road, moving up the road toward the onramp.
It was exhausting, hot work. The clouds only added to the humidity and made the air thick and difficult to walk through. Jesse put Kimble in the front and let him set the pace, so the going was slow all the way to the vehicle-clogged entrance. Louis complained about being a prisoner of war forced on a death march and was mostly ignored. Nobody said much, just a few comments here and there. The summer heat was sobering and kept the twelve occupied with the pedestrian travel.
They climbed down and back up the grassy median between the frontage road and the main highway and approached the entryway to the elevated exit. By the time they got to the base of the steep ramp, everyone was panting and sweating. It was just as Jesse and Deb had described, each of the cars on the steep runway had crashed together at the base. It wasn’t a spot a person would naturally enter, considering the broken section of highway was now visible from the road. A twenty-foot section between two of the supporting pillars had fallen to the lanes below. The debris had crashed into the the north-south section of freeway that the onramp led to, collapsing the bridge between their current location and the next exit. There was no going forward.
Now, the warped sound of the speaker bounced among the concrete and steel of the highway and the abandoned cars scattered throughout. The alarm whined in a narrow pitch before crashing down and stuttering in a low tone. The frequency was unsteady and unnerving as it alternated between what sounded like screams and low moans.
They all took turns crawling between two cars onto the exit ramp. Kimble and the two Wiggins brothers had a difficult time squeezing their bulky frames through the narrow gap, but eventually all twelve stood on the other side looking up at the manmade hill. A moment and a few sips of water preceded Jesse and Kahn leading the next leg of the journey, slowly upward.
Chapter 20
- Quarry
Quarry
Months ago, just before Christmas, as the dead were spreading across the nation, the quarry foreman went to work with a pain in his chest. He was single so he had nobody to look after and nowhere else to go. He worried, of course, about reports he had seen and heard of attacks in various cities around the country. But most of his drivers had still been coming to work each morning, as did almost all of the quarry’s essential workers. He had a responsibility to the men and women who relied on his leadership to support their families, even without one of his own. It was a blessing for the foreman when the television stopped working. Without the distraction of bad news and presidential announcements he could focus on operations.
He did notice the increase in absences this morning, versus the last few weeks. Nothing to worry about, he thought. People will come back when this crisis blows over.
The December morning was cold. Wind blowing across the open-pit mine kept the foreman inside his office. He heard the chatter of the employees over the radios and tried to focus over the sharp tightness in his chest and back. Taking three ibuprofen didn’t help. Must have pulled a muscle while asleep, he thought. The pain was dull and aching, distracting him from any substantial work. He leaned far back in his chair, rubbing his arm and chest, and closed his eyes.
The wind gusted and cold, light rain started to fall. The low rumble of vehicles stripping base material vibrated through the flimsy building. Underground, engineers worked to extract limestone and bring it to the surface. Despite missing approximately half of the quarry’s workers, above- and underground work both continued. Throughout the morning, nobody noticed their foreman was absent as well.
When one of the radios charging on the nearby storage rack crackled to life around midday, the foreman’s body jerked and fell out of its chair. The chair clattered under the desk one direction while the bump cap on the foreman’s head hit the ground and flew the opposite direction. The radio uttered a burst of white noise and then cut out.
There was a pause before the quarry foreman rolled over onto his protruding belly and bent his knees, coming up on all fours. The ends of his steel toed boots scraped on the heavy tile as he slowly came forward and rose to his feet. Anyone watching would have been disturbed by the unnaturally slow way the man’s muscles moved to bring him to a standing position. He stood awkwardly close to the back wall of the office, unmoving for several minutes with only a gentle sway to indicate any semblance of life.
Outside, one of the side-by-side multipurpose utility vehicles that the workers used to travel around the large quarry zoomed to a stop. The driver stayed in place while the passenger stomped up the stairs and pulled open the office door, slamming it against the stopper on the small metal landing. The driver tried not to listen as the loadout engineer started to tear into the site foreman for the rampant absenteeism slowing their schedule. He reached back and slammed the door, drowning out the harsh words.
Only a few moments passed before the door flung wide open again, bouncing against the railing and swinging back to the frame in a fraction of a second. The side-by-side driver jumped out of his seat at the sight of the engineer spri
nting out of the office and tumbling madly down the short set of stairs. He landed on his side and kicked his feet to scramble away frantically. The driver ran and knelt beside the panicking man.
His shirt and jacket were covered in blood. He was shrieking in shock and scooting through the dirt on his back, trying to get away from the driver attempting to help. The engineer held one hand in the other, both slick with bright red blood. The driver struggled to grab the blood-slick wrists and pull the hands apart. When he did, he saw the first two fingers of the man’s right hand severed to the middle knuckle. He pulled a rag out of his back pocket and quickly tried to wrap the wound against the engineer’s continued struggle.
Neither man noticed the body stomping through the wet ground behind them. The corpse of the foreman lurched over and grabbed the driver by the shoulders. The shock of the attack caused him to spin and see his boss bearing down upon him. The man’s skin had turned from light brown to a terrible shade of gray, like a bruise was forming all over his body. The foreman was outside in short sleeves but hadn’t reacted at all to the biting wind. It only took a split second for the driver to absorb the unusual sight, and the crimson stain surrounding the foreman’s mouth.
The creature grabbed a handful of hair and threw itself forward onto the helpless worker. The engineer on the ground screamed and scrambled to his feet, cartoonishly kicking as he did so. The driver wailed as the foreman dove onto him, knocking him to the ground but not losing grip of his hair. It pulled and sank its teeth into the soft flesh of the driver’s cheek. The man tore away, thrashing and panicking like the engineer had. A thick clump of black hair ripped from his head as he kicked and spun to escape. He followed the engineer’s jagged path across the acreage of the work site, jogging while trying to stifle the bleeding from the bite on his face.
The foreman staggered their direction for a dozen or so steps before losing them in the gloomy distance. The visibility was poor and the rain seemed to be deciding if it was going to continue misting or develop into some real weather. The walking corpse walked in a spiral motion as it spun and stepped toward any noise it heard. It lurched around in the middle of the quarry for over an hour before randomly ending up close enough to the source of his next meal.
Nation Undead (Book 2): Collusion Page 14