by JE Gurley
“I doubt it’s a storm cellar,” Mace said.
He and Mace looked at each other and smiled at the same time. Jeb held his breath at the stench and helped Mace move the body parts deeper into the barn, covering them with straw to hide them. As Mace unlocked the padlock, the other three stood around expectantly.
“Help me with this door,” Mace said as he grabbed the handle and pulled.
Vince rushed to help lift the heavy steel door, revealing a dark cavity within the floor of the barn with a wooden ladder descending into the hole. Mace pulled a flashlight from his pocket and started down the ladder.
“Be careful,” Renda warned him.
Mace smiled at her and disappeared from view. He reappeared a minute later with a large rifle in his hands. He laid it on the ground in front of him and propped his arms on the edge of the hole.
“An M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle,” Vince said, smiling at Mace’s find. “7.62 mm.”
“There’s more,” Mace said. “Help me with some of it.” He climbed back down the ladder.
An hour later, they sat around a fire eating packaged MREs they had found in the underground locker admiring their discovery. Whoever the former owner had been, he had been more than a simple collector. He had been a survivalist. His cache of weapons, food and ammunition would have pleased a petty African dictator. Besides the BAR, they discovered several handguns, AK47s, M16s, two M7 LAWS anti-armor rocket launchers, ammo for all weapons and a case of hand grenades. They had also found a Geiger counter, cases of canned goods and a very complete first-aid kit.
“Too bad we can’t take all of it with us,” Vince lamented, kicking the BAR with his foot. “Some of this stuff could come in very handy where we’re headed.”
“Against zombies?” Renda questioned.
“And others,” Jeb added, remembering the Gray Man and his Hunter henchmen.
Mace lay on a pile of straw, his feet near the fire, his head propped up on one elbow, munching a protein bar. “What we can’t carry, we lock up and leave. We can always come back for it later.”
Jeb glanced at Mace and hoped he was right. To return would mean their journey was a success and that he and Karen would be together again.
“Hell, with the Humvee we can drive all the way to California. It sure will be easier on the legs,” Vince said, massaging his calves.
“Won’t the roads be blocked?” Renda asked.
“This baby can bulldoze through most barricades and go off-road around others.”
“Zombies will hear us coming for miles,” Jeb said.
Vince laughed. “So what? The M60 will clear a path for us. Hell, we’ve got LAWS rockets and grenades. We’re a small army.”
Too small, Jeb thought. “What if we run into the real army?”
Vince frowned, and then smiled. “The Humvee will do 55 miles per hour. We can always run.”
“He’s right,” Mace joined in. “The Humvee will make be easier and faster. On foot, we’re potential zombie chow. We’ve got three-hundred miles to go and can only carry food for four or five days in our packs and limited amount of ammunition.” He glanced at Jeb. “It’s been almost four months already. If we have to scavenge for food along the way, it might take another thirty days to get there. Do you think we can wait another month?”
Jeb swallowed hard at Mace’s harsh point. His thoughts had been turning more and more to Karen and to how long she could last. Finding her too late would be worse than not finding her at all.
“You’re right,” he conceded Mace’s point, nodding. “The Humvee’s safer.”
* * * *
The rain lasted two days. They used the time to rest, sort through their find to decide what to take and what to leave behind. Vince wanted almost everything that went bang. Mace preferred simpler weapons and more ammunition. When they finally decided, they packed the Humvee. Out back of the barn, they discovered two, fifty-five gallon drums of diesel and a stack of ten-gallon gas cans. They filled as many as they could fit into the Humvee and lashed two more to the roof. At five miles per gallon, they would need a lot of fuel to reach their destination.
As they readied to leave, Vince insisted on manning the M60 machine gun. “I need the fresh air,” he said smiling.
Jeb was glad for the Humvee’s high chassis clearance as they alternately bounced over dunes blown across the roads by the storm and ploughed through dips in the road with washes running two feet deep with muddy water. By the time, the summer Monsoon rains came and went, most of the roads in Arizona would be almost impassable. Following highway 95 south and then west to avoid Interstate 8 as long as possible, they ran into no real trouble until they reached the outskirts of Yuma.
As in Tucson, fires had raged out of control, sweeping through neighborhoods with no running water, no fire brigades, leveling block after block, creating what to Jeb looked like a battlefield. Arizona Western College, where Jeb had often guest lectured, sat sadly silent and empty, many of its buildings gutted. Of all the destruction he had seen, the sight of the abandoned college disturbed him the most. It spoke of a lost generation, of young adults flung headlong into a future for which their education had failed to prepare them. The heavy Humvee easily knocked aside cars blocking the street, as well as the occasional overly curious zombie. Vince refrained from employing the M60 so as not to attract too much attention. Jeb diligently scanned the houses they passed for any signs of life, but if the stories Vince had told them about the zombie horde were true, he expected to find none.
Their luck held until they reached the Yuma Palms Regional Center near I-8. Hundreds of cars, busses and trucks clogged the streets around the massive retail center. They stopped to survey the carnage.
“It looks like an evacuation route,” Renda said.
“Yeah, but they didn’t get far,” Vince added.
Windows in many of the vehicles were shattered. In spite of the recent rains, ominous dried smears of blood on trunks and sides of cars remained. Hundreds bodies also remained, now mostly skeletons picked clean by scavengers.
“They didn’t stand a chance,” Renda replied. “They waited too late.”
“They were afraid of the flu, so they hid inside. By the time the authorities realized the real danger . . .” He didn’t finish. The results were obvious.
Mace remained more focused on their predicament. To Jeb, he seemed strangely unaffected by the sight. “We’ll have to find a way around this,” he said.
Vince noticed the first zombies appearing as they backed up, searching for an alternate route. “Heads up!” he shouted.
Jeb grabbed one of the M16s and his pistol and rolled down his window. Renda did the same. Mace concentrated on driving. He backed the Humvee onto a sidewalk and turned around. By the time he had accomplished this, more zombies showed up, appearing from buildings and around corners. Within minutes, hundreds of them blocked their path.
“Too many to run down,” Mace warned.
At that moment, Vince cut loose with the M60. At 600 rounds per minute, the 7.62 mm bullets tore through the zombie ranks, felling them like a scythe. Hot shell casings rained down on Jeb’s head, but he ignored them. Those untouched by the barrage ignored their comrades’ deaths. Many of them, wounded severely enough to kill or cripple the living, simply disregarded their injuries and continued their advance. Jeb aimed more carefully for their heads, dropping several, but for each one killed, more took their place.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Mace shouted over the rattle of the machine gun. He pointed to the thinnest line of zombies. “Use a LAWS.”
Guessing Mace’s intent, Jeb dropped his rifle and picked up a M72E10 LAWS rocket. Vince had carefully instructed each of them in their use. He telescoped the 24” tube to its extended 35” length, flipped up the sight and leaned out the window, careful to keep the rear of the launcher and its 1400-degree cloud of ejected gases pointed away from the Humvee. He didn’t need to take careful aim. The 66 mm rocket was fragmentary. All he needed to
do was hit the street in front of the zombies. A deadly cloud of metal shrapnel would do the rest. He pulled the trigger. There was no recoil as the rocket arrowed toward the clueless zombies at 475 feet per second.
The rocket struck the street and exploded. The blast shook the Humvee and scattered zombies like bowling pins. Those who were still standing scattered from the noise.
“Hold on!” Mace yelled as he floored the accelerator and aimed for the newly created gap. A few zombies recovered quickly enough to lunge at the racing vehicle, one losing an arm, as it unwisely grabbed a mirror. The Humvee hit the still smoking crater and bounced into the air, landed on two tires and slewed to the right. Jeb dropped the useless single-shot LAWS rocket and held on. Mace corrected and jerked the wheel to the left. The Humvee dropped to all four tires and left the zombies behind.
“Woohoo!” Vince yelled from his perch in the gun turret. He ducked back inside the vehicle and smiled at Jeb. “That was cool.”
Jeb wasn’t sure if it was cool, but it was exciting. They located an entrance ramp to the interstate and left the city streets. The westbound lane was a continuation of the miles long traffic jam, so they used the deserted eastbound lane. Then they saw the reason for the backup. The bridge across the Colorado River was gone.
“Bastards blew up the bridge,” Vince growled.
“For what reason?” Renda asked.
“In an insane attempt to quarantine the virus,” he replied. “They just made feeding time easier for the zombies.”
Renda’s face blanched. Vince noticed and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”
She shook her head. “No need. You didn’t do it.”
They backtracked to another exit and drove west past the Yuma Regional Medical Center, looking like a prison surrounded by a ten-foot high wire fence and razor wire barricades, now mostly fallen. A few zombies looked up as they passed, but did not pursue them. They crossed the river over the Winterhaven Drive Bridge, after first using the Humvee’s winch to remove an overturned truck. Vince detonated a hand grenade to blast away a section of the railing, so that they could push the truck over the side into the river. They encountered a few more zombies, who Vince insisted on shooting in retaliation for the slaughter at the Yuma Palms Regional Center.
Jeb did not protest Vince’s enthusiasm, but he was growing sick of killing zombies. They might be animals, but they still looked like people. Whatever devilish hunger drove them, resided in a part of the brain they shared with all humans, with him. He found it difficult to believe that man, in spite of millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization, was just a few lost neurons away from his beastly ancestors. He had worked with phobias, fears and diseases of the brain, but the rise of the zombies would add another chapter to the textbooks on psychology.
If they had been creatures of the movies, risen from the dead as bloodless, brainless monsters with only one desire – brains – he might feel differently. One could not condemn killing a soulless parody of a human being. However, he was uncertain if these reanimated, breathing creatures were without souls, if the souls that had resided in the bodies had fled upon death, leaving an animal, or if the soul remained trapped within the corrupted flesh. He was certain that the portions of the brain no longer in use would quickly atrophy, eliminating any possibility of recovery. Zombies were animals.
As their newly acquired Humvee dodged abandoned and wrecked autos, carrying them closer to California, Jeb wondered if he would show the same hesitation in killing the human beings responsible for his wife’s capture.
22
The zombies below their mountain perch did not leave. Instead, they preyed on the weakest members of their number and remained inside the base. For two months, the small group of survivors huddled in their cabin, enduring harsh winter blizzards and agonizingly close quarters. Tempers flared often, resulting in a few fistfights. Erin had not revealed Cuthbert’s secret that, they had all received only temporary immunity from the zombie virus. She shared the constant horror that she read in his eyes that one of their number would develop the flu and turn into a zombie.
Even Susan, usually so pert and perky, became sullen and morose, refusing to brush her hair or eat regularly from their rapidly dwindling food supply, rereading the same magazine each day, as if expecting the words to miraculously change. Erin had resisted the impulse to rip it from her hands and toss it in the fireplace. At one point, almost two months into their forced incarceration, she had pulled Samuels aside and confided her fears that the group would not make it through the winter.
“They’re stronger than you think,” he had replied. “They just need a way to vent their frustration and anger. I’ll make sure everyone stands a couple of hours guard duty outside each day and send teams into the woods for firewood. They can focus their wrath on me.”
His smile had made her ashamed of the way she had treated him. True to his word, they had all grown to hate him, but did not refuse to participate in the daily chores. Because of his selflessness, Erin began to spend more time with Samuels, at least as much time as they could spend in a two-room cabin with seven other people constantly present. One day in early March, while she and Charles Bemis, one of the technicians chopped wood, the distant sound of helicopters and gunfire from below sent them racing back to the cabin. The others were waiting outside. Samuels had a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes.
“What is it?” she asked breathlessly.
At first, he did not reply; then he lowered the glasses and looked at her. “It looks like they finally came to rescue us.”
The suddenness of his words caught her by surprise. She wasn’t sure how she felt about rescue. The first month had been difficult and they had all yearned for someone to come after them. Their forced solitude had changed her. She was no longer anxious to resume her former role of group leader. Nor, knowing the source of the serum they had used was she anxious to go back to work looking for a vaccine. Her seclusion with the others had forced her to look her fear of commitment in the face and rejoin the human race, what little of it remained. She wasn’t sure about the others, but she did not think she continue her work under those circumstances. That made them a liability, expendable.
She fought against the instinct to run. There was nowhere to go, no place to hide. Instead, she sat on a boulder and waited.
Two hours later, a large helicopter landed in a clearing half a mile from the cabin. An army officer and three uniformed men with weapons approached the cabin and the group standing in front of it. He eyed Samuels. The three men fanned out to surround the group.
“My name is Captain Hurley. Are you the doctors from the facility?”
“I’m Elliot Samuels, FEMA liaison. We’re all that’s left.” He indicated the small group with a wave of his hand.
Having already made his assessment of the group, the captain now ignored them. “How did it happen?”
Erin held her breath, but Samuels replied without hesitation, “Someone got careless with the test subjects. We managed to escape.”
The captain waited as if expecting more. Finally, he said, “Gather your things and get on the chopper.”
“Are we going back to the base?” Erin asked.
“No, it’s compromised. We’re heading for a medical facility in San Diego.”
“San Diego?” Samuels questioned. “I thought they bombed San Diego.”
“Not the city. We’ve secured the Naval Air Station on Coronado Peninsula in Mission Bay.”
The captain’s men edged closer, making it clear that his suggestion to pack up and leave was not to be ignored. Within fifteen minutes, they were all loaded onboard the helicopter. Erin found herself somehow reluctant to abandon the cabin. It had become as much her home as her destroyed condo in Atlanta.
Once aboard, Samuels turned to the captain. “This is a Russian Mi-17 chopper. Where did it come from?”
The captain smiled. “NATO. Some of our people got out before Europe collapsed.”
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Samuels nodded. “I see. Just a few?”
“A very select few,” the captain replied smugly, suggesting that he was one of them. As if to brag on the point of his importance, he added, “We passed over London on the way out. There had been storm out of the North Sea. When the Thames Flood barrier failed, twenty feet of water covered the city.”
Erin thought of Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square underwater, the House of Parliament and St. Peters Cathedral as miniature versions of the island nation and forced back a tear. Begun as a small Roman outpost two thousand years earlier, London had endured the Plague, the Great Fire and the Blitz and then finally fell to a combination of the forces of nature and the folly of man. So much history and so many people: She doubted the city would ever again rise to the magnificence it once boasted.
A soldier wearing a medic armband crouched beside her. In his hand, he held an injector gun attached to a vial filled with a bright blue liquid.
“Roll up your sleeve, please,” he ordered.
She glared at the medic and did not comply. “What is this?” she asked the captain.
“It’s an immunity booster shot,” he answered. “Frankly, I’m surprised you made it this long without turning zom.”
Erin remained steadfast. “I will not take it. I disapprove of your methods.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed and his lips compressed tightly. “Doctor Kostner, you and your team will comply. I will toss anyone who refuses out the door. This is not a request.”
As the two continued their battle of stares, Samuels spoke up. “For God’s sake, take the shot Erin. You’re no good to anybody dead. Think of your team.”
She glanced into the fear-filled eyes of Susan and Cuthbert, silently pleading with her. Saying nothing, she rolled up her sleeve. A sharp sting followed the hiss of the injector gun. She rubbed her arm. She preferred the oral dosage with orange juice. The medic injected each of them, except Samuels, who was immune to the virus.
Below them, the landscape slowly changed from mountainous to desert. She dozed once or twice in spite of the roar of the engines. As night fell, she got her first sight of the new America. Mile after mile of endless blackness met her gaze, no flicker of city lights, no headlights on highways and no blazing stadium lights. It was a sea of darkness. She wondered how many people still lived. She did a rapid mental calculation. With a 70% mortality rate and 365 million people, that left about 12 million survivors. Between accidental and normal deaths, and death by zombie attack, probably less than three million remained. That number probably dropped over the winter through freezing and starvation, and would decrease more as time progressed.