She cleared thirty yards so quickly that she almost overran the corpse with the bandolier around its neck. She went into a baseball slide catching up the M16 with one hand while the other grabbed the bandolier. It hooked on Rogers’ shoulder and with her adrenaline pumping, she had him halfway hauled into a sitting position when he started to shudder, oddly.
For a moment she thought he was still alive somehow and she squeaked in fright and almost let go of the bandolier. Then something wet struck her in the face; it was a wet chunk of what had once been part of Rogers. Bullets had chased her to her present position and were now thudding into his corpse.
Again, without thinking, she hauled the body on top of her. It was the strangest feeling having a dead body shake and shudder as if it was trying to come back to life. This went on for a few seconds before she heard the rattle of Grey’s M4—he was once again exposing himself for her sake.
Sadie heaved the body off of her, and went through a series of motions as if she had been actually trained with the weapon in her hands. She grabbed a 40mm grenade from the bandolier and shoved it into the chamber slung under the M16; with only a split-second peek at her target, she elevated the weapon as Rogers had and then pulled the trigger.
Foomp.
The round sailed down range and went long, exploding well past the three trucks. Immediately, she began rolling to her right, knowing that to stay meant she would suffer the same fate as Rogers. There was a thumping noise behind her and the eerie whispering of the bullets passing along the tips of the grass. Five minutes before she would’ve been scared shitless by the sound, now she ignored it completely.
The moment she stopped her roll, her hands worked, selecting another grenade, sliding it home, elevating the weapon, half as much as it had been.
Foomp.
The explosion was short this time. “One more,” she said to herself as she rolled again. Who knew where she was in relation to everyone else and who knew if anyone other than Grey was still alive. Only his gun going in those pauses after she shot her weapon gave any evidence that he was.
Seven seconds of rolling and she was again working a round into the chamber. Her angles of firing had been too long and then too short—she needed it to go Goldilocks style now, just right. She popped up, chose an angle in the midrange and shot.
It was spot on. She knew it the second her finger had caressed the trigger. She knew, because it had to be. Her luck couldn’t hold out forever and neither could Grey’s, and if Morganstern was still alive he would need a miracle to remain so for another minute.
The foomp was followed by three seconds of waiting as the grenade sailed through the air. Against all wisdom, she lifted from her crouch, her eyes trying to follow the flight of the round. She lost track of it and was still squinting when everything in front of her went a skull-shocking white.
Her eyes crunched shut and still couldn’t hold back the brilliance as tons of high explosive erupted in a stilted blast. There was a chain reaction as one 155mm shell set off another and then another and then another. Three hundred of them went up in three seconds.
The air shimmered and the earth shook. Sadie threw herself onto the ground as it rippled like an ocean wave, but that wasn’t near enough to protect her from the amazing heat. When she breathed in, she felt as though she was breathing in the embers of a bonfire. The heat from the first set of explosions was tremendous but it was nothing compared to what came a second later as the other trucks erupted.
One was filled as the first with high explosives and that made Sadie’s eyes rattle in their sockets, however the next was filled with a combination of Napalm and white phosphorus. When it went up, it unleashed hell on earth. Even from a hundred and fifty yards away, the heat stretched the skin of her face tight against her cheek bones; it cracked her lips and she was sure her hair would ignite.
The very air was on fire; there was no way she could take a breath and there was no way that she wanted to. She rolled over and pressed her face into the cool dirt—a millisecond later that proved a pitiful shield against the unbearable heat. In an effort to keep her face from blistering into a puddle of pus, she grabbed handfuls of dirt and covered her exposed flesh.
There was no telling how long she remained in her partial burial plot before she realized that Captain Grey was probably being broiled alive; he probably couldn’t even roll over to shield himself from the heat. With a grit she didn’t know she possessed, she lurched to her feet. She was altogether unmindful of anyone shooting at her. There was no way anyone could have been. The intensity of the heat coming from what was left of the trucks made squinting down the barrel of a two hundred degree metal rifle impossible.
Sadie stood in a field engulfed in fire. Like a veteran, she slung the M16 across her shoulder and then staggered toward where she had last seen Grey, fearing what she would find.
Chapter 15
Deanna Russell
The artillery finally struck concrete. Neil, who had been yammering excuses about sending Grey and Sadie to their deaths, jumped and made a sound that was just shy of a girlish squeak as the cracked and groaning cement wall holding back the ghastly pool of zombie soup and the endless horde took three direct hits in as many seconds. The first two blasted out a crater so that when the third hit, it struck the wall itself fifteen feet up from the base.
Concrete blasted outward and for the space of a minute an ugly, brackish sludge poured through the hole, passing through to the west side of the wall and collecting in a hot spew at the base.
Deanna’s eyes fixated on the hole. She could look at nothing else. She saw it crumble at the edges as more shells thudded home; gradually the break widened until it took up too much of the remaining support and the entire center of the wall collapsed under the weight of the massed bodies and the parts of bodies and the terrific pounding it had taken.
Out came the entire pent-up sludge in a nauseating wave. “Oh, my God,” Neil whispered at the sight. He stood transfixed and slack-jawed. Deanna knew she had to appear equally dumbfounded. A ball of puke began pressing up her throat from the pit of her stomach. She swallowed it back down with a shudder.
For ten minutes they watched as the enemy artillery continued to pound the area, increasing the destruction of the wall until there was nothing left standing.
To Deanna, the only good news was that the zombies weren’t exactly roaring through the gap. They seemed confused by the violence more than anything and were milling around a few hundred yards away. Neil saw this and said, again, “Oh, my God.”
Before Deanna could question the exclamation, he went running for the wall of cars that Deanna had had built earlier that night. As if against her will, Deanna ran as well and didn’t know why. She jogged after him, unnerved, partly by the strange look in his eyes, but more so by the fact that the soldiers were abandoning the very wall the two of them were running towards.
Running away was the only thing that common sense dictated. If the tremendous and rock-solid concrete wall had succumbed to the destructive force of the artillery, then the much weaker wall of cars couldn’t possibly last nearly as long.
“What are you doing, Neil?” she asked as she caught up to him.
“The wall won’t last,” he said in a pant.
She gave him a look that said: No, fucking, duh! However, he didn’t see and so she had to say: “Exactly. So why are we running towards it? Shouldn’t we be running from it like everyone else?”
“You can if you want,” he said, and then they were at the wall. There were ladders leaning against it as if waiting for a group of white-spattered workmen to climb up and begin painting the structure. Neil went scampering up and for some reason Deanna felt compelled to climb up after him.
They climbed to a dizzying height, though it was not so dizzying as the climb she had undertaken a few weeks before when she and Neil had set the top of the River King’s bridge on fire. That act had cemented the trust between them; it allowed her to climb up onto the pile of sw
aying cars when nothing else could have.
Despite having only three fingers on his left hand, Neil zipped right up the ladder and reached the top before Deanna hit the three-quarter mark. She didn’t know what to expect from him, but she was shocked when he suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs: “Hey!” His voice bounced off the rocky walls of the canyon that the road was situated in and echoed back at them in faint waves. “Hey, you mother-fuckers!”
Deanna found herself shaking her head from side-to-side—what he was doing was well past crazy and so was their current perch. Deanna climbed up but didn’t stand; she was squatted down on the hood of a light blue Kia Sedona, the fingers of her left hand tight on a windshield wiper. Neil was fearless, standing to his full height with his arms flung.
“What are we doing up here?” she asked.
“Protecting the wall,” he answered and then yelled: “Come on, you stupid things! Come and get me!”
“Neil, what the hell are you doing?”
“Look at them,” he said, pointing at the zombies. “They’re just standing there. We need them to attack.”
Deanna felt her head spinning as the wall was buffeted by a gust of wind; it was surprisingly unstable. “You’re crazy!” she hissed, reaching for the ladder. The last thing anyone needed was for two hundred thousand zombies to launch themselves against the wall; it would fail, of that she was certain.
Just then an artillery shell whistled overhead. She spun, watching its progress and nearly lost her grip on the windshield wiper. The shell exploded against the rocky surface of the canyon wall behind them. It was the same wall protecting the third wall of cars that was even then in the process of being built.
Another shell exploded out to their right against a cliff face. For some reason this spurred Neil on and he shrieked curses louder than ever. He was starting to attract attention. Zombies, with their heads craned far back to look at the two of them, came charging through the hell that had been created by the artillery. Within a minute, thousands were surging toward them.
Neil screamed all the harder, sounding like a madman, and in the background were the whistling artillery shells that were being gradually dialed in to their position. Deanna shook her head, suddenly realizing that Neil really was crazy and that the man she loved was probably even then dying in a hail of gunfire, and that it was just plain stupid to still be up there with artillery getting closer and closer, and with thousands of zombies, even then crowding around the base of the make-shift wall.
It was crazy but in her mind there was nothing left to live for.
“Come on, you fuckers!” she yelled. Neil smiled at her.
“Exactly!” he cried. “It’s the only way to hold them back. We need the zombies to protect the wall from the artillery. How do think the last wall lasted so long?”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly understanding. The wall of cars wouldn’t last five minutes once the artillery was spotted properly unless there were mounds of bodies absorbing the greater part of each explosion. “Hey!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “Come and get us you stupid bitches.” Like Neil, she stood up…and then nearly pitched straight off the Sedona as the wall of cars swayed even more alarmingly.
Neil didn’t notice. He was still screaming and waving his arms. He stood with his legs wide apart like a sailor in a storm and for the next five minutes he seemed completely unfazed by the fact that his death could occur at any moment. In front, the zombies built up higher and higher as they climbed over themselves to get at the two, seemingly deranged humans, while all around them explosions crept nearer.
Then the wall shook from a direct strike. Sixty feet from them, glass and metal went flying in a fiery detonation. Neil started pin-wheeling his arms to keep from falling into the horde. Deanna simply dropped into a low crouch and hooked one hand around the edge of metal where the hood met the frame of the minivan. The other hand she held out to Neil, which he grabbed, eagerly.
“I think we have reached the point where bravery outshines prudence,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
With the threat of a violent and sudden death upon her, she fairly flew down the ladder, but only beat Neil down by a second; he nearly landed on her as he leapt the final five feet. She paused for a heartbeat as the wall let out a strange metallic groan that made it seem alive and in pain, then Neil was pulling her away from the wall and, hand-in-hand, they went sprinting for the meager safety of the next wall.
Even with their efforts to swarm zombies to the second wall, Deanna knew it wouldn’t remain standing for long. The weight of the zombies alone would collapse it and with the artillery pounding it, it was just a matter of time. The next wall would have to be braced better—if there was even going to be another wall, that is.
It seemed ludicrous to bother completing it. The reality of their situation was that the third wall would fail no matter what she did...unless, that is, Captain Grey could manage the impossible and blow up the enemy guns in the next few minutes.
Everyone on the other side of the barely begun third wall was cowering and casting glances back toward the valley, the one direction that offered an escape. This included the soldiers as well as the volunteers; they didn’t think a miracle was possible. Only Neil was absolutely resolute.
“Everyone up!” he cried. “This wall’s not going to build itself.”
No one moved, not even Deanna. She knew that the wall couldn’t last and that Grey couldn’t take out the guns singlehandedly—they were doomed. She hesitated for a second until she realized that if she ran and Grey somehow lived, she would be abandoning him. He would be coming home expecting a hero’s welcome and all he would find is a valley overrun by the dead. What would he think of her if that happened? She would forever be a coward in his eyes.
“You heard the man,” Deanna yelled, suddenly, striding forward. “Let’s get moving. I’m going to need three times as many cars for this wall. I want it to be so sturdy nothing will be able to knock it down. Now, let’s get moving!”
The people went to work, slowly at first and then gradually quicker as they got used to the explosions from the shells detonating so close. The hill that the roadway curved around protected them from the accidental miss, but each knew that once the second wall came down, they’d be in the crosshairs next. It made them eager to rush their cars into position and then hurry back down to the valley.
The first wall of cars had taken two hours to build, but lasted only twenty-two minutes under the fire of the artillery. It came crashing down with glass flying and a sound like thunder. The zombies surged on through the chaos of twisted iron and the artillery sending deadly shards of metal in all directions.
For a few minutes, the artillery blasted everything in sight killing hundreds of zombies and keeping the horde from advancing. Then, like a switch, the artillery stopped. Everyone stared fearfully up to the skies, awaiting the next storm of metal from the howitzers. A minute passed and there was nothing.
Neil jumped up. “Keep working!” he yelled. “Get those cars in place.” The first team in line shoved their car, a snow-white Lexus with California plates, into position beneath the jaws of the crane just as the eager zombies struck the last barrier between them and a couple of hundred humans. The wall of cars was only two high at this point and the entire thing shook from the impact of the beasts.
“Soldiers to the line!” Neil ordered.
Reluctantly the men went forward with their odd assortment of weapons at the ready. “Cheer up,” Deanna told them. “Maybe Captain Grey has taken out their guns.”
A grizzled sergeant shook his head. “I think we would have known. What’s more likely is that whoever’s spotting for them probably can’t see us. I’d bet they’re moving to a better spot.”
“Or they don’t think this wall will last,” another soldier said, gloomily.
Deanna had every confidence that the wall would last if it wasn’t destroyed by artillery, that is. She was making it double wide with the second r
ow of cars perpendicular to the first for added strength. Strong or not, artillery would take it right down.
The artillery recommenced ten minutes later. The first few shots struck the hill in front of them—and the people cheered, thinking that they were out of reach. The next few landed on the hill itself, sending debris raining down—and the people fled. They ran with the wall half completed and the zombies beginning to pile up.
This was the end, Deanna knew. The crane had been abandoned. The cars left to roll off the edge of the road and into the trees. Even the military retreated. They double-timed it a few hundred yards down the road, leaving only Deanna and Neil standing on the hood of some banged up teal sedan.
Neil hopped down from the wall and put a hand out to her. “Come on. We can’t stay. We...” He winced and ducked as a shell landed on their side of the wall. “We have to leave!” he yelled above the din as the artillery increased in fury. “We have to evacuate the valley.”
She understood. There would be no chance to get another wall built when this one failed. The valley would then flood with the undead. There would be no fighting them: they didn’t have the man power or the ammo. Their only choice was to give up or run.
Deanna was tired of running. She’d been running ever since the apocalypse started a year before and every place she had run from had been worse than the place before, right up until she had met Captain Grey, that is. It had not been an auspicious beginning to a relationship: he’d had a gun against her head and a forearm that was like flesh-covered steel thrown across her throat.
And now he was most certainly dead. Sadie, too...and Emily...and Eve...and Jillybean and all the rest. All dead.
She shook her head and pulled out her Beretta. “I think I’ll slow them down for you. You better...” Another explosion on the wrong side of the wall had her head ringing like a bell. There was smoke and dust covering the area. Squinting into the pall, she saw that the crane had been hit; part of its tread was flung out behind it like a tongue.
The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7 Page 15