by Z. A. Recht
“In there?” Thomas asked, gesturing with his shotgun. “Shouldn’t be a big deal. The windows are painted black, so it’s not like they can see—”
He was cut off by a meaty thud. The scavenging team went silent again, and the sound repeated itself, this time more insistently.
It was joined by others.
“Bug out,” Sherman said.
The trio set off at a quick jog, sticking to the center of the wide and empty shopping center parking lot. A sharp crack urged them to greater speed, running carefully and placing their feet deliberately, doing their best to avoid the concrete blocks set in the middle of rows. Thomas, his gray head always swiveling from left to right and searching for threats, saw a single and lonely delivery truck sitting near the end of the shopping center building.
With an overwhelming crash, the storefront window came out of its frame and shattered on the asphalt. Unable to help himself, Mbutu stopped running to look back at what was coming out after them. From the look on his face, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of them.
Five former teens, now blind and drooling monsters, all stepped or fell out of the broken window, looking as if they were a part of the same unorthodox army: black shirts over black, baggy pants, festooned with silver chains and armbands. Heavy piercings fell from rotted flesh, the weight tearing through after a long period of inactivity.
“What are those?” he asked.
Thomas turned to look and almost laughed. “Punks. Just punks. In the days before Morningstar, I may or may not have prayed to Providence for an opportunity to show these emo losers what real pain was.”
“They know now,” Sherman said. “Come on, they’re in no shape to track us down.”
He and Mbutu turned and continued their jog. Thomas stood in the parking lot for a minute longer, looking back at the quintet of shamblers.
“I don’t even have the words,” he said, shaking his head and turning to catch up with his team.
Brewster shifted the heavy pack around on his shoulders and made a face. Trevor remembered a time when Ewan had said that typically, in Africa, his MOLLE pack weighed up to seventy-five pounds, but it had been different, then. The pack now only weighed forty pounds, but circumstances changed everything.
“I know you said only one, but this is a big goddamn bag. How come we couldn’t make this stop on the way back?”
“You know how it gets,” Trev said as he adjusted the straps on Brewster’s pack. “Sometimes we get milk runs, sometimes we have to lead a chase back. So far, this has been a milk run, and it would be a shame to waste this opportunity.”
“Meanwhile,” Brewster said as they walked back to the big roll-up door, “I carry an extra forty pounds of stuff we probably won’t need. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss IEDs and terrorists. Take them over these shambling fuckheads any day.”
Trev got down on the ground and pushed the door up an inch, looking around. It had only been seven months since the outbreak began, and Trev had seen all stages of the virus. He was no longer surprised by it, but every day that they ran across a sprinter made him wonder just what those things were living on, how they could survive. He knew that the demons were impervious to most forms of injury, and even if you did kill them they’d come back, but even with their unnatural, virus-fed vitality, the demons were still wearing human skins. How long could they live for?
Shaking his head, Trev dismissed that train of thought. It was enough that they existed, and he was there to kill them.
He was putting up with the former private’s bitching pretty easily today, and not only because he’d had the opportunity to dispatch a demon; in spite of his bitching, Brewster had gone along with Trev’s idea. It gave him hope for their future, immediate and long-term.
“All clear,” Trev said, pushing the gate the rest of the way open. “It’s not much farther to the next pharmacy.”
“You’re not the one carrying forty pounds of—”
Brewster’s comment as he stepped outside was cut off by the snarling impact of a sprinter, almost two hundred pounds of rabid, subhuman creature bowling him over. The thing’s lips were pulled back inhumanly far, revealing most of its teeth, and it made hungry, almost mewling sounds as it reached out for Brewster’s unprotected neck. In all its clawing, it hooked fingertips in the loops and straps of his body armor.
Frustrated, it pulled back its head and opened its mouth to howl, which would surely bring more of its kind.
The howl was cut off by the end of Trev’s ASP as he forced the head of the baton down the foul thing’s throat.
It backed off Brewster immediately, yanking the ASP out of Trev’s hand as it stood. The sprinter’s head was forced back at an unnatural angle by the sudden sword-swallowing act it had become a part of. Strangled screams coughed out of the sprinter’s mouth as it tried to force a howl around the protrusion.
“Foreign object,” Brewster muttered as he got to his feet. Trev helped him check himself. They found no rips or tears in his clothing or skin, and Ewan looked up at the feverish sprinter and, for just a moment, his face reddened.
Trev knew the feeling, when the mad rage overcame him.
A low rumble started in Ewan’s gut and he threw himself at the creature.
Grabbing the handle of the ASP, Brewster yanked down and drew his knee up, shattering the thing’s teeth on the metal tube lodged in its throat. The sprinter fell, and Brewster stomped on its hands, breaking bones with each footfall, until they were little more than sacks of meat.
He fell back, spitting and wiping his mouth. “Foul fucking thing,” he finally had the breath to say.
Trev, who had been watching all this with curious detachment, retrieved his ASP and finished off the creature.
“Now you see how I see them.”
The scavenging teams filtered in back at the base, disgorging the contents of their packs onto the table in the executive meeting room, the largest flat surface in the entirety of the Fac. Brewster had a flush to his face and neck as he emptied his pack.
“What is this?” Juni asked, pulling at one corner of the generic wrapping of the large sack. “And why is it so heavy?” With a grunt, she put her weight into it and flipped the forty-pound bag.
Denton snorted a laugh at her expression.
“Dog food, Brewster? You brought dog food? What I look like to you? Scheissekopf!”
“Fine, fine,” Brewster said, his blush deepening as he looked over at Trev, who was clearly enjoying the entire exchange. “We’ll get rid of it. Whatever. Feed it to the captive assholes or something.”
He snatched the bag up and headed out of the room, almost running headlong into Thomas.
“Slow your roll, asshat,” Thomas growled at Brewster in the hallway. “What’s that? Dog food?”
“Yes,” Brewster sighed.
A glint came into Thomas’s eyes. “Well, shit on me. I thought you’d never do anything right, Brewster. Let me guess, they didn’t like it?” He indicated the group in the conference room.
Brewster nodded.
“Well, in times like this, there’s an old saying that always comforts me,” Thomas said, laying a hand on Brewster’s shoulder. “And that’s ‘Fuck ’em.’ Put it in the back, where the civvies don’t look. When the food runs low, we’ll feed it to ’em on the sly. Good thinking, PFC.”
Ewan Brewster watched Thomas’s retreating back as he legged his own pack into the conference room, a smile growing on his face.
Lexington, NE
28 June 2007
1643 hrs_
“I DO NOT LIKE this,” said Rico. “I do not like this one bit.”
Stiles nodded in agreement.
They were standing in front of a gently sloping road. Abandoned cars littered the pavement, some with windows broken out. Several had smashed into one another, as if the drivers were frantically attempting to get away from quickly approaching doom. Hoods and trunks were smashed in, and stains marred the pavement, old oil mixed with old blo
od.
Yet it wasn’t the vehicles that made Stiles nervous. It was the bridge that lay beyond them. It was a congested swarm of smashed auto bodies and several freight trucks, one of which was tipped up on its side, blocking nearly all of the bridge. It had probably started the trouble, trapping the vehicles fleeing Lexington behind it. Everyone would have had to run for it on foot. Five months before, when sprinters were everywhere, it would have been a hellish scene. Even from the bank looking out, the small group could see dried bloodstains in the windows of the wrecked cars, and a similar dark rivulet had stained the side of the bridge a rusty color where it had run out to drip into the Platte River.
“If there were any other way around, man—” started Allen, but he was cut off by Harris.
“There isn’t. We went over this with Keaton while you lot were drinking. This is the only way across the river for miles. Unless you want to try to swim across in full clothing with sixty pounds of gear on your back, of course.”
Hillyard scowled, but said nothing. The commander was right. The bridge was the only choice.
“We either go across, or we spend a week trying to find another crossing,” said Wendell. The petty officer looked resigned. “And we might not even find one. Bridges could be out, like I-80’s. Even if we did find one, it might be too late to get Stiles to Omaha. The infected could’ve overrun the Doc and her friends by then, for all we know.”
“Across it is,” said Harris, holding his MP-5 at the ready. “Stay sharp. It might be bright and sunny out here, but some of those trucks look nice and shady. Lots of places to hide.”
The thought made the group shuffle. They started out, glancing back at the truck they would have to leave behind; there was no way they’d get it through the snarl of bent and burned cars that were blocking most of the lanes on the bridge.
Hal and Stiles stuck close to Rico and Wendell. Hal held out his pistol defensively, and Stiles was glad for the crutch in his armpit, even still grimacing at the pain in his leg. He levered a round into the Winchester and held the rifle out in front of himself, ready for anything.
“All right, gentlemen, here we go,” said Harris.
The group wound through the wreckage of the cars and onto the baking tan surface of the concrete bridge.
“Maybe we should just run for it,” whispered Brown. “The infected hate the sun, right? It’s hot as hell out here. If there are any still around, maybe they’d rather just stay put.”
“They’ll follow us,” said Stiles. “You and I both know that. They only stay in the dark if they can’t find us.”
“Shut up!” whispered Wendell. “Keep quiet! And stay close together. Watch each other’s backs!”
The group moved farther onto the bridge.
The long, narrow span was jammed full of vehicles, bumper to bumper. Here and there a trail of blood led away from the cars, and a splash of gore on the guardrails spoke of violence long since past. Several corpses were scattered about. A few lay on the pavement, some still sat in their cars. Most were missing limbs and had large caverns in their midsections where they’d been gutted and eaten.
The backup of trucks was near the middle of the bridge. The one that had tipped over had blocked all but a few feet of open space. Several corpses lay in the space, stacked atop one another, and scores of bullet holes pockmarked the hood of the overturned truck and the pavement around the open space. Stiles had the scene all worked out in his head, now: The truck had lost control, blocking the highway. Behind it, thousands of people had all been trying to flee Lexington at once, and, finding traffic halted, had all come running across. The first few dozen probably made it through with time to spare.
But then the infected would have caught up. It appeared as if a few intrepid folks had made a stand near the overturned truck, holding the small pass with whatever weapons they had, until at last they were overrun themselves. The corpses they had already passed must have been the last defenders. With a little luck, their lives had bought enough time for their fellow refugees to flee to safety.
“Up and over, people,” said Harris, pointing at the overturned truck. The group gave the corpses a wide berth. Chances were good the virus was as dead as they were, but there was no use in risking contact with anything potentially infected. They climbed, one by one, over the truck’s engine block and cab.
On the other side, more bodies greeted them. They all, Stiles noted, lay facing the tiny gap between the truck and the bridge’s edge. Infected, then, gunned down as they tried to get through.
They continued along silently, more than halfway across now.
“Something big went down here,” whispered Allen, leaning in close to the side of a maroon Chevrolet, a corpse still buckled into the front seat. A rusting revolver lay on its lap, exposed for months to the elements by the sedan’s shattered windows. “Wonder how this guy checked out.”
“Shut up!” Harris said.
Rico turned, and his boot caught a slick of oil that had run out from under a battered Ford pickup. He slipped, falling hard on his rear. His weapon discharged once, making the group jump. The surrounding vehicles bounced the sound back and forth and amplified it, and the trees along the riverbank caught it and sent it back, echoing for what seemed like forever.
“Oh, fuck me,” whispered a wide-eyed Rico, looking up from the ground.
The response was immediate: from out of one of the trucks behind them came the sound of a dozen low-pitched moans.
“Shamblers!” cried Harris. “Back to back! Keep moving toward the far end! Move, people, move!”
The sailors formed up, each scanning a field of fire.
An infected corpse loomed up from the shade behind a wrecked SUV, a rotting hand grasping at the trunk. It pulled itself up to a standing position. Wendell took aim and fired. The round caught the shambler in the forehead, and it dropped back down to the ground, unmoving.
“They’re coming from behind!” Jones called out. Undead things had begun to emerge from their hiding places under the wrecked trucks, lured by the sounds of gunfire and the macabre moans of their shambling brethren.
Rico’s MP-5 chattered on semiauto, but many of his rounds missed, striking the creatures in the chest and neck. Two more went down, but the odds were swiftly turning in the shamblers’ favor. More were coming.
The large, empty trailers behind the trucks were as inviting to the infected as a bed was to an exhausted soldier. They didn’t seem to mind the heat. It was the darkness that comforted them.
Their figures, merely silhouettes in the back of the open trucks at first, became more distinct as they stumbled into the light. Most appeared to be from the vehicle wrecks, and they sported open and dry wounds to the head. Two were missing limbs, and one had blood caked around its mouth, dried into a grotesque beard.
“We’re surrounded!” said Smith.
Stiles’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked from the imminent threat toward the far end of the bridge. Shamblers were now approaching from both directions. From the Lexington side of the bridge, infected were pulling themselves from piled wrecks. The survivors moved closer together, firing at will. Shamblers dropped left and right, but for each one that fell, a pair seemed to appear and take its place, the virus’s version of a stumbling Hydra.
Worse, from what Stiles could see, there were small neighborhoods on either side of their destination. He could see even more doddering figures emerging from side streets to reinforce their undead companions.
“This is very, very bad,” said Rico in a trembling voice.
“Thank you!” Stiles shouted, not having to keep quiet anymore. He levered another round into his Winchester and dropped a shambler with a well-aimed shot. “It’s always nice to know when things have gotten somehow worse. I swear to God”—he shot another dead thing dead again—“if we get out of this, I’m going to feed you that fucking gun.”
A scream cut through the gunfire. A shambler, crawling under a car, had grabbed Brown by the leg and was pullin
g him down. He fell hard and his breath was knocked out of him in a whoof of pain. Brown twisted his weapon around and fired at the prone shambler. The shot might have worked—but Brown’s own foot was in the way. The round tore through his boot, ripped through his flesh, and exited the sole of his boot. The sailor screamed in pain and reached out his free hand to Jones and Smith.
Smith grabbed at Brown’s arm, trying to pull him free, but the shambler had a firm grip.
“Don’t let go, man!” Brown cried. “Don’t let go!”
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you!” Smith yelled. “Hold on!”
Brown’s reply was cut off as the shambler sank its teeth into the sailor’s leg. Blood poured from the wound.
“Brown!” Smith shouted. “Don’t let go!”
Despite his strong grip, Smith felt Brown’s hands slipping away. With a final effort, Smith attempted to pull the wounded sailor free as Jones opened fire on the dead man. His hands came loose, and Brown, screaming in agony, vanished under the car, dragged violently by the shambler. Wet, sloshing noises drowned out the sailor’s wails. Smith recoiled, horrified. Brown, out of sight under the vehicle, was being eaten alive. Brown’s screams abated, and fell away into silence.
“He’s gone! Focus fire on the shamblers!” Harris said, all business. There would be time to mourn for Brown later. “Rico! Hillyard! Cover our backs! Everyone else, focus fire front! Clear us a goddamn path!”
The shamblers were looming up as if by magic, appearing from behind the remnants of cars and pulling themselves up from the shady confines of half-open trunks. What had once been a half-dozen were now well into the twenties, drawn by the gunfire and frantic shouts of the survivors.
“Gangway, motherfuckers!” Allen shouted, flipping the selector switch of his MP-5 to three-round burst.
Stiles watched Harris follow suit, sending rounds downrange as fast as he could manage. He didn’t even seem to be trying for head shots anymore. The inertia of the lead was enough to cause the shamblers to stumble and fall, giving the survivors a chance to move past them without fear of being grappled and bitten.