The North: A Zombie Novel

by Cummings, Sean

  “This one is still alive,” she said firmly.

  I nodded as I watched Mel and Doug checking the bodies of three other soldiers. “Is he conscious?” I asked.

  “Not for long,” said Cruze, as she stuck her finger in the man’s neck to check his pulse.

  The word had barely left her lips when a single shot rang out, hitting Cruze in the thigh. She made a gulping sound as she fell back, her carbine landing at her feet. What happened next was purely mechanical. I saw the wounded soldier clutching a Browning 9mm in his lap, the barrel still smoking – without even thinking, I raised my carbine and fired three quick shots into his chest. The gun dropped into the snow as he slumped forward.

  “Cruze!” I shouted as I raced to her. She was lying on her side, clutching her right leg. A large blood stain had soaked through her combat fatigues and into her camouflage snow pants. I quickly pulled a field dressing out of my pants pocket and tore open the wrapping. I could see Mel and Doug about to run over to offer first aid, and barked at them:

  “Check the rest of the bodies! I’ll tend to Cruze!”

  I pressed my hand against her leg, reaching underneath where the bullet had entered. I was surprised to feel an exit wound.

  “Shit! I should have seen that coming,” she cried out. “How bad?”

  The bullet hadn’t severed the artery, but it wasn’t good. I pressed the field dressing against the wound and wrapped it on so tight the jolt of pain brought tears to her eyes. “You’re not dead yet,” I said. “Where’s your field dressing?”

  “In my other pocket,” she said, wincing. “I’m really sorry about this, Dave.”

  “Don’t be,” I replied, as I ripped into her field dressing and placed the huge gauze pad against the exit wound. “That prick paid with his life.”

  Cruze reached for her carbine and grabbed it by the sling. She pulled it to her chest and clutched it tightly, like a child squeezing a Teddy bear. “You were right, this was too easy. I should have been more careful. I should have checked him for weapons.”

  I pulled the other field dressing tight around Cruze’s now swelling thigh, creating a tourniquet to control the bleeding. She didn’t cry out. Not freaking once.

  “I need you to provide covering fire if the shit starts flying, Cruze.”

  “My leg – is the bullet still in there?”

  I shook my head. “In and out – clean wound. Let’s see if you can get up.”

  Cruze held her carbine out in front of her chest and I grabbed onto it for leverage as I pulled her up to her feet. She bit her lip as she draped her arm around my shoulder. Ahead was the one remaining Coyote reconnaissance vehicle. The rear doors were wide open and I helped Cruze slide into the back. With a huge effort, she pulled herself across the jump seats and climbed into the turret. Her head popped up through the hatch and she spun the turret so that the barrel of the 25 millimeter chain gun was pointing toward the highway.

  “Don’t take all freaking day,” she groaned. “Let’s get those civvies and head the hell out of here!”

  “I’m on it,” I said as I doubled over toward Mel and Doug. They’d regrouped, and were lying in firing positions covering both sides of the river. I motioned for them to follow me and we carefully made our way towards the wire compound. The creeps struggled against the chain in a desperate attempt to reach us. Perhaps they’d caught a whiff from our mortar attack, or maybe all the commotion triggered their need to feed. It didn’t matter to me either way. I raised my carbine to my shoulder and fired a pair of shots into each creature’s head.

  Doug was the first to approach the wire compound but the moment he laid eyes on the civilians, he stopped dead in his tracks. He bristled, and then slowly raised his weapon to his shoulder.

  “What the hell are you doing, Doug?” Mel snapped. “Get the wire-cutters and let these people out of there.”

  Doug shook his head and made a pointing motion with the barrel of his carbine. His voice was shaking. “This abattoir is something way worse than anything we could have freaking imagined. Look at them.”

  I shone my flashlight onto the group of civilians. One of them took a tentative step forward – a skeletal-looking man, with hollow eyes and a hastily patched wound on his neck. His skin was pale and the whites of his eyes had turned yellow. He raised his hand and gestured for our group to stop.

  “Don’t come any closer,” he said weakly. “We’re dead already.”

  Mel shone her light into the compound. Together, we saw that each of the five people carried wounds we’d long ago become familiar with. They were the kinds of wounds that came from getting too close to the creeps.

  “We’re all infected,” he whispered, as he dropped to his knees. ”They put the living inside here with the creeps. It’s our punishment for fighting back … for trying to stop them taking over what’s left of our homes and families. When someone turns we’re forced to fight the monsters with our bare hands. The two you shot … those were once my sons.”

  “If you’re infected and close to turning … why chain up the creeps?” asked Mel. Her finger was on the trigger.

  A woman of about forty placed a bloody hand on the man’s shoulder in an attempt to offer comfort. He sobbed as she turned towards us, rolling up the sleeve of her sweater to show us the swollen bite wound on her left forearm.

  “For their amusement.”

  I blinked. “Come again?”

  “One of the soldiers took pity on us and tossed in a chain – the six foot pickets are all around us to hold the razor wire. There used to be more than a dozen of us. Jasper here probably has a couple of hours until he becomes one of those things. You need to get the hell out of here, boy. You need to tell everyone … tell them what they’re doing to us. Tell them Sunray is a madman and that he’s got to be stopped! It’s too late for us now. But you’re all armed, just like Sunray’s soldiers. Just do right by us before you leave. Do the right thing.”

  The man who’d been sobbing abruptly stopped. He raised his head and gazed at the three of us with a look of despair.

  “Carlsbad Farms – it’s across the border. That’s where you’ll find people who are willing to fight. They’re starting a resistance – they’re going to take back Eden. You need to get to Carlsbad Farms. It’s off the main highway past Alsask. It’s got running water and power. Sunray knows about it … he just don’t know where it is. It’s one of the reasons we’re in here … to make our families talk. You gotta stop him!”

  The other three gathered together and looked at us pleadingly. Each carried a wound, and each was counting down the hours and minutes until it was their turn to transform into the stuff of nightmares. I glanced at Doug and Mel for a short moment, and then said, “Cruze is in that Coyote. Scrounge as much fuel as you can and any supplies. Load it up, and get that pig started – we’re going back to the hide and we’re going to find this Carlsbad Farms.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Mel.

  I spun around and roared at her. “Just fucking do it!”

  She didn’t recoil at my outburst, and the look on her face told me that she understood. I spent the next few minutes learning as much as I could from the five infected until I heard the sound of the Coyote’s diesel engine rumbling to life.

  And I am going to hell for what I did next.

  I am so going to hell.

  29

  I sliced the tires on the two Cougar light tanks before we left. I’d have dropped explosives in their gun barrels but I didn’t have any with me, so immobilizing both was the best solution I could come up with. We picked up Sid Toomey and crossed the bridge. He helped Cruze out of the turret and took his place manning the main guns as we pulled off on the west bank of the river. We took a short detour while I accompanied Mel back to her firing position and gathered the mortar and ammunition – we were back inside the Coyote within 15 minutes, and I crew-commanded the eight-wheeled monster up the serpentine highway until we were well out of the coulee.

 
Doug and Mel had been able to scrounge another 5 Jerry cans of diesel, and they sloshed about in the rear of the carrier as we ploughed through drifts of snow. It was shortly past midnight and the flurries had stopped, but the temperature outside the vehicle was enough to freeze your eyelids together if you faced into the wind. I hid behind the crew commander’s hatch and scanned the horizon for signs of the enemy APC. I saw nothing.

  Where it disappeared to? They hadn’t come after us with their guns blazing, as I’d expected. Were they another one of Sunray’s roving patrols? I signaled for Sid to turn on the infra-red in the turret and scan the area. If we could cut off the patrol, we’d maybe gather some intelligence about Sunray, his strength and possible whereabouts.

  As we cruised down the highway, the slight resistance our patrol had met still tugged at me. I’d have liked to say it was dumb luck we’d only taken one casualty, rained death down on Sunray’s troops, gathered valuable intelligence about why the abattoir existed and learned that a resistance movement was taking shape at a place called Carlsbad Farms.

  But it was almost as if … Sunray wanted us to find out the truth about the abattoir.

  I crawled back down into the Coyote and gestured for Mel Dixon. She scurried across the jump seat until she was within earshot.

  “Take us back to the hide. You’re in charge – I’m going to check on Cruze.”

  “Roger that,” said Mel. I pressed myself against the engine panel to make room.

  The inside of the Coyote was similar to our carriers, which made sense. They were effectively the same vehicles, save for the fact that the Coyote was newer and had eight wheels, whereas Ark One and Ark Two had six wheels each. There were modern radio sets, as well as more comfortable seating in the rear. Cruze was seated on the far jump seat, her wounded leg stretched out in front of her.

  “We’re going to have to do some painful medicine on that leg, Cruze,” I said, peeking underneath the gauze field dressing. “It’s still bleeding and we need to cauterize the bullet hole. There aren’t any doctors out here.”

  “No kidding,” she said, grimacing. “Just do it.”

  “When we get back to the hide. I’ll need one of the mountain stoves to heat something metal.”

  It was going to hurt like hell, and there was still the very real possibility that the wound might get infected. If that happened, Cruze’s leg would swell up like a balloon and eventually turn gangrenous. We’d seen gangrene happen with another survivor back at Mewata. He didn’t live through the trauma of having his leg amputated.

  “We’ve got antibiotics in the medical kits – we grabbed a bunch from the armory before we left. When we get back, you’ll start taking them.”

  Cruze nodded. “Fine … whatever. In the meantime, what happened back there with those civilians … you didn’t have a choice, Dave.”

  I clenched my jaw. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She gave me a slight shove. “Well, maybe you should. Maybe you need to actually say that you shot all those people. They were infected, David. You were doing them a favor.”

  I grated my teeth as I changed the field dressings on Cruze’s leg, binding both fresh dressings tightly. “There’s a resistance,” I said, changing the subject. “Some place called Carlsbad Farms – across the border. They’ve got running water and power – maybe they have a doc, and we can get your leg properly tended to.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Resistance, huh? Sounds like occupied France during World War Two. Well … the border is a couple of hundred kilometers away, if we stay on the main highway heading east. We could probably make it there by midday if we’re extra stealthy. We’d need to ditch one of the carriers, though. We need every drop of fuel we can spare.”

  Suddenly, the carrier lurched sharply to the right, and then started bouncing cross-country. Cruze braced herself against the rear door and howled in pain. “Slow the fuck down!” she shrieked.

  Doug Manybears must have heard her, because the Coyote slowed to a crawl.

  “We’ve got slight advantage,” I said, pointing to the radios. “We can listen in on Sunray – we’ve got two day’s worth of his frequencies.”

  “And that might help us avoid him while we head east,” Cruze said, finishing my sentence. “We should all load into this rig and disable the other carriers.”

  I nodded. “Yeah – that sounds about right. It’ll take us a couple of hours to siphon the fuel from both APC’s. Not to mention transferring all of our kit and stuff.”

  I slid back on the jump seat and listened to the rumble of the engine. The interior heating system of the Coyote was much more effective than the ones in our own carriers, and the warm air circulating inside wasn’t tainted with the stench of diesel and motor oil. I exhaled heavily as I gazed at Pam Cruze. We’d made it through our fighting patrol relatively unscathed, Sid Toomey and I had made peace with each other, and we’d learned that other survivors out there were ready to band together to fight Sunray. Maybe there was a light at the end of the tunnel after all. Maybe we could take back Eden and somehow start over. It wasn’t Sanctuary Base, but it was something. We were still fighting for our lives, but at least there was the prospect of fighting alongside people who wanted to rebuild this world and not rule it. The creeps would still linger, but if we were careful, if we took steps to defend ourselves in an organized way, maybe we’d somehow scrape by. Maybe Jo would get to grow up after all.

  I allowed myself the luxury of a smile. My lips arched up into a grin, and I started to giggle. Naturally Cruze looked at me like I’d just lost my freaking mind, and made a point of telling me so.

  “What the hell are you laughing about, you moron?”

  I raised a hand. “Nothing and everything, Pam.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You need to have some forced rest – you’re getting all bat shit crazy.”

  Our bodies pitched to the left as the Coyote made a sharp turn, and then the vehicle abruptly stopped, sending us sliding forward and pushing Cruze off her jump seat. She landed on the floor with an almighty yelp.

  I crawled forward and tapped Mel’s leg. She didn’t respond, so I tapped her again and she dropped down from the hatch to stare at me wide-eyed, her face a ghastly shade of grey.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Why are we stopping?”

  “Holy shit,” shouted Sid from the turret, cocking one of the guns.

  I scrambled to the rear of the carrier and grabbed my carbine. I was just about to open the rear door when Mel made her way to the rear and threw her arms around me. She pulled me close and squeezed me, starting to sob.

  “I am so sorry, Dave,” Mel sniffled. “Just stay in the carrier … okay?”

  I placed both hands on Mel’s chest and gave her a shove. “What the hell are you talking about? Why are you freaking apologizing? You didn’t do anything!”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but Sid beat her to it. He dropped down out of the turret. “The hide. Sunray found the hide!”

  I stared at Sid in disbelief as a tidal wave of nausea hit me with the force of sledgehammer.

  “Jo …”

  I flung open the rear door and jumped out of the carrier. Dozens of tire tracks meandered off in all directions. I raced around to the front of the APC, carbine in hand.

  “Get back inside!” Mel shouted. “The area isn’t secure!”

  Ignoring her, I sprinted ahead of the Coyote, my feet plowing through the snow. Thick black smoke billowed up from inside the tree line – the air smelled of cordite and burning rubber. Empty shell casings lay scattered in the snow alongside dozens of footprints, leading over a small ridge and into the wooded area where we’d camouflaged both our carriers. I stopped dead in my tracks as I saw what was left of Arks One and Two.

  Ark Two was nothing more than a charred husk of blackened, smoldering metal. There was a basketball-sized hole just underneath the turret, from which oily smoke was wafting out, high into the air. It had been hit with an anti-tank weapon and br
ewed up. Ark One was nowhere to be seen. I followed its tire tracks deep into the woods until I spotted the carrier lying on its side in the bottom of a gulley. The hatches were wide open, and the bodies of three enemy soldiers lay face down in the snow – they’d been mown down from behind. I placed my weapon firmly in my shoulder as the Coyote caught up with me. Sid hopped out of the turret, carbine in hand and raced up to me.

  He pointed to an obvious firing position, about 50m to my right: a thick stand of deadwood overlooking the gulley where the carrier had flipped over.

  “Kenny wasn’t stupid,” he said. “Sunray must have sent in his armored recce, but Kenny got his carrier the hell out of there once the shooting started – I think he rolled it in that gulley as a diversion.”

  “I’ll go down and check the carrier,” I said, trying like crazy not to call out Jo’s name in case the enemy was still within earshot.

  Sid shook his head. “No, you won’t – just sit tight. I’ll check it out.”

  I was about to protest, but Sid didn’t give me enough time. He sprinted down the forward slope into the gulley, and then slowly circled the carrier. He poked his head in the open rear hatch and reappeared seconds later, shaking his head. I walked down to the first dead soldier and dropped to one knee, eyeing the deadwood stand. Sid was right – the bullet holes in his back lined up perfectly with a firing position hidden inside the broken, rotting timber. I scanned the area for signs of movement as Sid made his way back to me.