The North: A Zombie Novel

by Cummings, Sean

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t stick my arms out of the firing holes.”

  “And rule number three?”

  She blinked. “What’s rule number three?”

  I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her bony shoulders. “Your brother is never going to leave you. Ever.” I whispered in her ear.

  She hugged me back and said, “That’s what big brothers are for, aren’t they?”

  9

  My idea for a smoke diversion worked surprisingly well. The three canisters landed on the river’s edge and nearly all of the creeps plodded down the riverbank and out of sight. Only a handful remained on the top of the ridge and we smashed through them like they were crash test dummies.

  Thank God zombies don’t have any reasoning ability. If they did we would never have made it past nightfall on Day Zero.

  We’d been gone from the armory for more than two hours. It wasn’t nearly as far as we’d have hoped and that presented a problem. The last thing we wanted to do was to fuel up the carriers with our Jerry cans while we were inside the city limits. Creeps were on our tail and the risk of winding up being overrun was too great if we stopped. But damn it, I’d told everyone we’d be clear of the worst of things within a couple of hours and clearly I’d called that one wrong. Both carriers crawled along at less than twenty clicks an hour and that was eating our fuel.

  The radio hissed. “We should have covered more ground, Dave.” said Cruze. “If we keep moving at this pace we’ll be fuelling up in a built-up area. We’ll be exposed.”

  “Don’t think that hasn’t been worrying me too,” I replied. “We’ll go hatches up. That way we can gun the engines and we’ll have all eyes providing security.”

  “Alright,” she answered. “I’ll get everyone ready.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea to go hatches up. We needed to air out the stench of diesel and motor oil from inside our carrier, and I’d be able to orientate my map to the ground without having to rely on the pale yellow lights inside my hatch and the restricted field of view through my periscope. Even though the sun hadn’t shone in months, daylight was still something we all craved. Terror lived in the darkness and night was when we’d had our most vicious skirmishes with the creatures.

  We’d made it as far as Edworthy Park on the southern tip of Sarcee Trail. To my left was what used to be the Trans-Canada Highway, heading west to Banff, and to my right was the entire northwest of the city. That meant suburbs full of walking corpses. The smartest thing to do was to avoid the entire area, but that meant that we’d have to ford the river again and hug the tree line along the eastern edge of the woodland that led up to Olympic Park. But even though it might have been a smart move, there was still an element of risk. The ground would be uneven, there were sharp culverts and of course any number of the monsters could come teeming out of the woods and swarm our carriers.

  I glanced down at the map and ran my finger along the river’s edge. We could simply drive along the river bank, but we’d be exposed to the southern tip of the community of Montgomery and that meant possible swarms, too. I dropped back down and lowered the hatch door over my head. Kate was carefully removing the gun tape from around the doors and gun ports while Jo held a small garbage bag.

  It was dumb luck that had allowed us to make it two-thirds of the way to the western edge and I decided when push came to shove, it probably didn’t really matter which route we took – there was always going to be an element of risk. I pressed the talk button on the radio. “Ark Two, we’re going to alter our route. Stay within twenty meters and keep your turret peeled to the right. The best way to go is along the forward slope of the Bow River, over!”

  “Roger, Ark Two,” Cruze replied. “Um … you do know we’re going to be exposed from the high ground.”

  “I know,” I said grimly. “And if we have to, we’ll gun the engines and race along the riverbank like we’re on a combat run. But the sooner we get to the western edge of the city, the better. Keep your weapons primed – we don’t know what we’re driving into.”

  “Will do, Dave,” said Cruze. “We’ll have an eye for creeps and obstacles, too.”

  I squatted on my crew seat and leaned into my periscope. “All right, Doug – keep along the bank,” I said into the intercom. “Sid, you’re our eyes on this again and you’re weapons free if shit hits the fan!”

  The engine groaned as we pushed through a tangle of broken trees and brush. I could hear the turret spinning left and right behind me as I swung my periscope to the right just in time to see a shopping plaza come into view.

  Dozens of charred bodies and skeletons lay strewn about the sidewalk. The only proof that it was ever a plaza was the Safeway grocery sign at the entrance to the parking lot. I decided that survivors must have barricaded themselves inside the store – that’s where the food was. Judging from the scorched shell of the building, they’d either been overrun or fought a pitched battle against other survivors to get at the goods. In the end it didn’t matter because there was nothing left.

  We edged along the uneven ground at a decent clip as I surveyed the now dead community. Burned houses dotted the landscape, their foundations poking through the blackened ground like gravestones. Bowness Road, once a main artery into the city core, was filled with debris and abandoned cars. I spotted small clusters of the monsters turning their heads toward us as our two APC’s passed by.

  “Ark One, they’ve caught wind of us,” said Cruze into her radio. “I don’t know if you can see them, but there’s creeps coming out of houses and burned-out shops. Want me to open up on them?”

  “Hold fire for now,” I said into the radio. “The ones behind us aren’t a threat. If there’s a few hundred in front of us, then we’re in the shit. Keep going straight, Doug!”

  The APC crawled over deadwood and debris along the riverbank. I tapped the fuel gauge with my index finger, noticing that we’d burned half of a tank of diesel.

  Damn. We should be out of the city by now.

  The temperature gauge showed we weren’t putting any major strain on the engine, but this was just the first day. What about tomorrow? What about when we’d eventually break down or when our Jerry cans were empty?

  The cool breeze brushed against my face and the air carried the stench of death and smoke. I glanced to my right and nodded to Cruze who was standing in her crew commander’s hatch with her weapon at the ready.

  “What are you seeing up ahead, Sid?” I shouted

  “Hang on,” he shouted back as he gazed into a pair of binoculars “Dave, you gotta see this!”

  I motioned for Sid to climb down. He slipped off his helmet – his face was practically gray.

  I pointed to the crew commander’s hatch and Sid handed me the binoculars. He grimaced as he made room for me to climb up into the turret. In seconds I was poking my head up through the hatch and gazing through the binoculars.

  “What the hell?” I whispered.

  It wasn’t the hundreds of creeps now stumbling and tripping along the riverbank behind Cruze that had worried Sid. It was the small front-end loader on an overpass about a thousand meters in front of us that was pushing smashed-up vehicles and human remains over the railing and directly into our path. I spun the turret left and right and saw the loader had built a wall of smashed up cars and trucks on the east side of the overpass.

  Then things went from bad to worse.

  Cruze’s panicked voice on the radio filled my ears. “Ark Two contact, over!”

  I whipped the turret to the reverse position, just in time to hear the sharp clang of bullets ricocheting off the hull. Then Sid’s voice filled my headset.

  Sid’s head appeared through the crew commander’s hatch. “Holy mother, Dave! – They’re trying to create obstacles for us – they want to slow us down!”

  “That’s not the only thing they’re doing,” I shouted. “We’re taking fire!”

  I spun around to see Ark Two being chased by a rigged-up Brinks armored car with
a ten-foot-long spiked I-beam welded to the front bumper. The makeshift tank barreled through the wall of creeps behind Cruze smashing them to grease under its wheels. A male figure dressed in coveralls and a hockey helmet with a face cage popped up from a hatch in the roof and hurled a flaming Molotov cocktail at Cruze’s vehicle, narrowly missing the rear end by a few feet. It exploded in a burst of orange light, spilling liquid fire across the tinder dry grass.

  “Cruze!” I shouted into the radio. “You’ve got someone on your tail.”

  The radio hissed loudly. “No shit, Sherlock! If we get hit with one of those fire bombs we’re screwed!”

  “Roger that!” I replied as I spun the turret around and cocked the .50 Caliber machine gun. “Hit the brakes and hold fast, Doug! We’ll give supporting fire to Cruze!”

  A series of well-aimed shots, like large hailstones hitting a tin roof, bounced off the lid of the turret and only thing on my mind besides providing support to Cruze was protecting the Jerry cans of diesel lashed onto the hull of our APC.

  I dove out of the turret and into the back of the carrier. Jo had awoken from her nap and gave me a worried look, but I didn’t have time to offer any reassurance.

  “He’s gaining on me!” Cruze’s panicked voice blared through my headset. “Give me the word, Dave, and I’ll open up the turret guns!”

  “Hold your fire!” I replied, as I climbed back into the crew commander’s hatch and peered through my periscope.

  “Holy shit!” Doug choked as a blinding flash filled my entire field of vision. The ground shook beneath us and the APC pitched sharply to the right as the blast from an exploding car swept over us like a rogue wave. I ground my knuckles into my eyes and within seconds my vision returned. I gazed up to see three men with hunting rifles in the kneeling position, their weapons aimed straight at us.

  “Dave, if they knock out our tires, we’re going to be SOL!” Doug shouted into the intercom.

  “They’re shooting at me, Dave!” Cruze barked. “And they’re going to try to ram us if they get enough speed going!”

  I looked over my shoulder at Jo, who was just about to peer out of the rear viewing port, and made my decision.

  “Weapons free!” I roared.

  10

  A series of explosions ripped through the air. Shock waves smashed our carrier one after the other, rocking us inside like marbles in an empty tin can. I squinted through my periscope to see the three figures on the overpass tossing homemade bombs. One landed no more than ten feet from the nose of the APC and exploded, sending fragments of high-velocity shrapnel into the hull of our machine.

  “Sid!” I shouted into my microphone. “Two hundred meters, overpass, watch and shoot!”

  “On it!” Sid answered as the turret spun to the twelve o’clock position.

  A pair of loud pops filled the carrier with the stench of cordite. I watched two single tracer rounds tear across my field of view like laser beams. I spotted a bright red spray of arterial blood splatter across the side of the front-end loader, and a body slumped over the edge of the cement barrier.

  “One down, two to go!”

  “Roger,” I replied. “One of them ran behind the loader, but I can’t see the other guy. Ark Two, how are you holding up?”

  The radio hissed loudly. “Just pulling in beside you,” said Cruze. “The Brinks truck from hell decided to stop.”

  “Keep your guns trained on him while we take out the two remaining shooters on the bridge,” I said, eyeballing the overpass.

  The .50 caliber machine gun fired off another series of single shots and I watched as a second man fell over the edge, slamming into the ground.

  “That’s two,” said Sid. There was an edge of anticipation in his voice.

  It was only a matter of time before Sid took out the third shooter. I wondered for half a second whether the guy would actually try to surrender. I hoped not – we weren’t in any position to take prisoners.

  “Holy shitbirds!” shouted Sid. “He’s got four creeps bearing down on him – where the hell did they come from?”

  “Probably one of the vehicles they used to barricade themselves on the overpass!”

  The intercom hissed for a few seconds and then Sid said, “Christ … they’re all over the guy. Poor bugger.”

  “Is he still in your field of view? If you can see the guy, shoot him … you’ll be doing him a favor.”

  “Yeah … I guess you’re right,” Sid replied grimly.

  A few seconds later I heard one loud pop from the machine gun and Sid informed me that it had been taken care of. I peered into my periscope to see a small army of monsters stumbling and plodding across Bowness Road, no more than six hundred meters from our position.

  I was just about to order that we press on, ignoring the Brinks truck, when a flash of light to my left temporarily blinded me. The radio squawked, a sharp, piercing screech followed by Cruze’s panicked voice.

  “More Molotov cocktails, Dave!” she roared. “Two guys just popped up through a hole in the roof and they’ve got some kind of big-ass jerry-rigged slingshot!”

  “Back your carrier the hell away from here, Cruze!” I shouted. “Have an eye on the creeps but don’t start shooting unless they get within one hundred meters of your position. We’re going to take out that Brinks truck!”

  “Roger, Dave!” Cruze replied. I spun my crew commander seat until it faced the rear of the carrier.

  “Dawson!” I barked. “How many M72s do you have packed away?”

  She quickly poked her head underneath the large olive drab tarp that covered the floor. “A dozen.”

  “Get one primed and ready. As soon as it’s cocked get your butt topside and take down the target – it’s about two hundred meters directly behind us.”

  Her eyes narrowed for a short moment and she gave me an uneasy look. Dawson wasn’t stupid. She knew that as soon as she popped her head through her hatch she’d be exposed to everything from a sniper to a creep that we might not have been able to see through the periscope. I felt a gnawing sense of unease about taking down yet more survivors, but I reminded myself that they attacked us and not the other way around. They could have chosen to simply let our two carriers pass without firing a single shot.

  I gave Dawson a firm nod to show her I had confidence in what she was about to do, so she clenched her jaw tightly and nodded back as she reached beneath the tarp and pulled out the rocket.

  My eyes moved to Jo, who was fighting a losing battle against her helmet. I threw her a half-smile and motioned for her to come up to the crew commander hatch, so she threw off the helmet and scrambled across the back of the carrier like a mouse in an obstacle course.

  “We bein’ attacked, huh?”

  “Yeah, squirt … and it’s about to end, in less than two minutes.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “Survivors like us? Trying to get us?”

  I sighed heavily. There wasn’t any time to get into an age-appropriate discussion about survivalist nut jobs bent on killing us and taking our supplies. Instead I decided to deflect the discussion.

  “Look, Jo, you get to be in charge for a few minutes, okay?” I asked.

  She beamed at me as I picked her up by the armpits and placed her in my crew commander seat. “Does that mean I get to tell Doug where to go?”

  Doug Manybears cocked his head back and said, “I got something better for you – I want you to keep an eye on the engine gauges, Jo. Can you do that?”

  She nodded as I put a hand on Doug’s shoulder. “Thanks, brother,” I said. He understood that I didn’t want Jo looking outside of the carrier.

  I gave my baby sister a thumbs-up as I crawled to the rear of the carrier, grabbing my carbine off the stowage rack. I pulled back the cocking lever and then positioned myself beside Dawson, who now had the M72 fully extended and ready to fire.

  “You didn’t think I was going to let you do this alone, did you, Kate?” I said as I disengaged the combat lock on the hatch door. “I
’d fire off that rocket, but you hit every target at the anti-tank range in Suffield last year. I can’t hit the broadside of a barn with one of those things. Don’t worry – I’ve got your back.”

  She grasped the hatch lever tightly and nodded. “Just make sure you whack anything that isn’t breathing and eats meat.”

  “Count on it,” I said, exhaling nervously. “You ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “On three then … one … two … three!”

  We popped up from our hatches like a pair of gophers poking their heads out of the ground. I quickly oriented myself and caught a glimpse of the small army of creeps shambling along about a hundred meters to our rear. I did a quick scan of Cruze’s APC to see that she hadn’t taken any damage from either creeps or homemade explosives and then I followed Dawson into a firing position behind our turret. A flash of movement out of the corner of my eye immediately sent a wave of panic through my stomach as I glimpsed at a creep tangled up in our tow cable on the right side of the carrier. Its sunken eyes gazed up at us and then it flung its one good arm up onto the top of the hull, narrowly missing my combat boots. I stomped on its blackened fingers, crushing the bones beneath the heel of my boot as I lined up the barrel of my carbine with the creature’s forehead. I squeezed off a single shot and the monster’s head snapped back violently, sending a spray of bone and brain matter splattering onto the grass. It slumped back, sliding off the top of the hull, and I spun around to cover Dawson, who was lining up the sight on her M72 with the Brinks truck.

  I could see two figures readying another volley of Molotov cocktails in their slingshot. “Don’t waste any time, Kate! Hit those pricks now!”

  “I’m on it!” she shouted, as her fingers dug into the trigger bar. There was a flash of light, followed quickly by an intense wave of heat, as the sixty-six-millimeter rocket jetted across the open field. It hit the Brinks truck right through the improvised armor-plating covering the driver’s windshield and the vehicle lit up in a ball of fire. To my horror, the pair of figures standing through the hatch in the roof simply disappeared; their bodies vaporized in a mixture of blood and gore and burning metal that shot fifty feet into the air. We scrambled across the roof of the carrier and dropped back down through the rear hatches. We slammed down the hatch doors with a deafening clank and hit the combat locks.