Androwski pressed the silver pedal on the old microphone. “Rock, this is Wanderer One. Come in, over? I say again, Rock, this is Wanderer One. Do you read, over?”
“Wanderer One, this is Rock, we read you. Rock Actual inbound to this position. ETA three mikes, over. SITREP?”
“Holy shit,” breathed Seyfert. The two SEALs looked at each other, broad smiles appearing on both faces.
“Get Crisp and Poole. The captain will want to speak with them.” Androwski put a hand on Seyfert’s arm as he stood. “Get Rick, too.”
“Rock, Wanderer. Have reached mission objective with most parties necessary. Parties currently working on special project in secure location. Have critical information on other players for Actual. Over.”
“Wanderer, Rock. Relay information now. Code is Panacea. Over.”
“Wanderer copies all. Elements of U.S. military and government in Nebraska have formed a cooperative. They have multiple resources, including aircraft and dozens of personnel. Also several thousand civilians on site. Group calls itself the Triumvirate, repeat Triumvirate. Group is covertly hostile.”
Androwski related what he could about the Triumvirate and also the fact that there was a massive swarm of undead on the move from east to west. Commander McInerney, captain of the USS Florida and Androwski’s commanding officer, arrived with detective Captain Michael Meara of the San Francisco police department some minutes later.
“Wanderer, this is Actual. Good to hear your voice, son.” Androwski smiled, instantly recognizing the man on the other end of the radio.
“Good to be heard, sir. I’ve just briefed Rock on our mission.”
“I see the notes. Tell me about the Triumvirate.”
“We began hearing them on the radio calling for people to come to Lincoln, Nebraska when we reached the mid-west. Then we encountered a heavily armed checkpoint. We met one of the founding members of the Triumvirate, Col. Bourne, who defected from that group and came with us all the way to Massachusetts. Sir, they knew about our mission. We were the second group contacted and briefed by Dr. Poole and her associates, not the first.”
“Where is the colonel now?”
“Dead, sir. He was killed by a Triumvirate spy that we took with us to this location from MIT. The spy was definitely Alphabet trained.”
“Wanderer, there are several personnel who wish to know how many of your original team are mission capable.”
“There were casualties, sir. Rick’s group is present and accounted for, minus two. We left Chris, the nerd, in Nebraska to assist with another group. Nerd’s whereabouts unknown as of now. Sniper Martinez was KIA.”
There was a slight pause as the information was assimilated. “And the tac-team?”
“Four casualties. Seyfert and I are vertical, but Seyfert is damaged. Not bitten,” he added quickly. “Wanderer has also absorbed several capable elements.”
“Actual copies all.”
Broadway, San Francisco
“Uhhh. No.”
Billy looked at Steve. “What?”
Steve held his hand above his eyes to block the bright sun and get a better look. “No goddamn way am I going down there.” He pointed into the dark, gaping maw of an underground parking garage beneath the American Securities Bank and Trust building. An abandoned military Humvee stood partially burned with its doors open. Bullet casings littered the asphalt and there were brown stains inside the vehicle. A rusty M4 rifle lay on the ground near the vehicle. “I choose to live.”
“Well, you won’t. You’ll end up in the stomachs of a bunch of zombies, or worse, like him.” Billy pointed at a dead soldier in digital camouflage staggering out of the darkness toward them. “Excuse me.” He strode toward the thing and stopped a few feet in front of it. The thing shuffled toward him and he pulled his machete. It reached for him and stopped, leaning, with hungry eyes, to the side to look at the small group of people. It tried to move past Billy, but he shifted positions to block it.
Steve raised his eyebrows. “Da fuck?”
The thing moved past Billy and he ended the soldier’s misery with his machete, wiped the blade on the corpse’s stained clothes, and moved back to the group. “We don’t have tons of time. Any noise at all in this dead city and they’re on you in a couple of minutes at most. Stay here and you’re all dead. At least down there, we get prizes.” Billy pointed into the garage.
The plan had been made earlier that morning. They would drive to the American Securities building and pilfer two armored trucks. The trucks Billy had seen in the basement garage when he had to hide from some of the New Society. They were heavy and as the name said, armored. Zombie-proof. The only problem was the abandoned Hummer. It was parked crossways across the entrance ramp. Armored itself, the F250 might be able to move it, but not far enough and certainly not quickly. The decibel level of moving the vehicle would be high and then the group could get overwhelmed by a crowd of slavering cannibals while in the process.
The armored trucks were twelve thousand pounds of diesel-powered currency transporters. They could push the busted military car out of the way without the crew ever having to leave the safety of the vehicle. The glass and tires were bullet resistant, as were the undercarriage and all five other sides. The doors were three-inch-thick steel and the diesel fuel in each one would still be good. They were the perfect vehicles for an excursion through hostile territory and they didn’t need to go far.
The problem was where they were located. The group was filled with apprehension as they stared into the foreboding darkness. There were two gates that normally would have blocked the entrance to the underground garage, but they were wide open and from the looks of them, had been for some time.
Tony said what everyone else was thinking, “There could be a hundred of them in there.”
“Going to be a thousand up here in twenty minutes,” Billy promised. “The bank trucks will make it through a crowd. It’s probably already too late to get out safely with your Ford anyway. Look.”
He pointed down the road and they could see a small crowd shuffling in their direction.
Tony looked at the sky. “He’s right. We’re committed now. We’re here. We get those trucks or we’re dead.” He snapped his flashlight on and moved down the ramp toward the garage. The rest of the group followed.
“Hang on there, Anthony, let me go first. Give me ten seconds then follow.”
Billy, machete in hand, strolled down the ramp like it was any normal summer day. He disappeared into the gloom and the cluster of friends followed soon after. Billy didn’t use a light, so he couldn’t be seen, but the rest of the group all switched lights on. Everyone was terrified. “Keep quiet and check those corners,” Abbey told them. Two corpses, one headless, were on the concrete in front of them, another further up. The lights cut into the darkness and evidence of violence was everywhere. Broken car windows, bullet brass, most of a human skeleton, brown stains.
“Stay in the center of the lane,” whispered Tony. “Don’t go near the cars or the support columns.” A dead man in the rags of a blue uniform staggered out from behind one of the columns Tony had wanted to avoid. It saw them and began immediately coming toward them. “Get in tight together!” The creature moaned loudly, the sound echoing throughout the structure. A chorus of other moans followed, filling the survivors with the most common dread on the planet.
Tony moved forward and the uniformed thing hissed at him. The living human used his bat and thumped the dead one on the head. It collapsed and Tony shook out his hand. “Every time.”
Scraping and shuffling were coming from all directions.
“Get in tight! Make a circle and don’t shoot unless we’re getting overrun! Push ‘em back and cave their friggin’ roofs in!”
Dave hefted his fire axe and Tony his bat. Abbey and Derek also had bats, but they were wooden. Steve checked the action on his AR15, preferring to wield that as opposed to the tonfa baton at his hip. Tony unsheathed a katana and pointed it toward two w
hite vans. “Here they come.”
Moaning turned to hissing and growling as three of the dead came from between the vans and noticed their prey. They surged forward on rotten legs, stumbling faster in anticipation of a meal to come. Tony moved forward and met them, slashing with his sword. The top of the head of a woman in blue scrubs landed on the windshield of one of the vans. Before she hit the ground, Tony had impaled another creature through the eye. He yanked the blade out and spun to meet the third creature, but Dave beat him to it and crushed its skull with his axe.
“Dave, stay with me,” Tony chastised. “Tony, don’t stray out too far. Where the hell is Billy?”
Sliding footsteps from the rear alerted them to more of the things. They were coming up a ramp from deeper in the garage and as their heads cleared the concrete dividers, they growled and sped up slightly as their counterparts had. The sunlight that filtered in through the open garage walls illuminated many.
Steve swallowed hard. “Holy shit, I knew this was a bad idea.”
Something crawled out from under a Honda Civic and moved toward them. Three former humans staggered toward them from behind a yellow SUV. Two came from the shadows to the left, more materialized from the right.
Dave put his axe on the ground and Tony looked at him with incredulity. Dave smiled. “Not giving up just yet.” He pulled something from his back pocket, attaching it to his arm. Dave immediately pulled back on something, aimed, and let go. The front teeth of a dead businessman shattered and he stumbled back. Tony turned to look at Dave, but not before he saw the businessman’s crimson iris explode, the creature dropping to the ground. Tony stared at Dave. “Wrist rocket. My brother gave it to me for my birthday.” He drew the rubber tubes back again and let go, the steel ball smashing into the nose of a dead woman closing from the gloom. She didn’t fall, but kept on coming with a small hole in her face.
Steve’s voice was on the edge of panic and he raised his rifle. “Jesus Christ! There’s a hundred of them and we’re fighting them off with sling-shots! We’re gonna die!”
“Not today!” Billy strode from the shadows as the zombies had, but he was behind them. “Nine oh one! Nine oh two! Three! Four! Gonna make a grand today!” Each number he spoke ended with a destroyed creature.
The main body of the small horde had rounded the corner of the ramp and begun to soldier on toward their breakfast. “This-a-way,” Billy shouted as he decapitated a dead woman. “I got them all cleared out this way, follow me!” He turned and ran back into the darkness the way he had come.
Tony slashed once more and they all ran after Billy, lights bobbing with the dead in pursuit. They arrived at a guard station next to an elevator with the number 1 on the wall in large, yellow block print. Three white trucks with American Securities printed on the side in red, white, and blue letters sat parked in a row, noses out. Bloody handprints and smears covered the first truck and bullet casings were on the ground near the driver’s side. A thump caused Abbey to whip around and look at the cab. A dead man in a blue uniform tried to get at the survivors through the bullet-resistant glass.
Billy tried to reassure his friends. “The other two trucks are empty, I looked. The keys are in the guard house. That’s empty too.”
Tony and Derek ran into the small room; the door, also covered in blood marks, had been pushed in from the outside. The room was not totally empty as Billy had indicated. What was left of yet another man in a blue uniform was slumped in a chair. A hole in his head and a Glock nineteen pistol on the floor near him indicated he didn’t wait for the things that had trapped him to get in. His co-worker in the armored vehicle had apparently held out for help until he starved or died of a bite. Tony would never know as he had no intentions of opening the door to the vehicle.
Derek grabbed two sets of keys with 8081 and 8082 on each respective yellow tag. He tossed one set to Tony and they moved back to the trucks. Each man checking the cab of his vehicle, they both moved to the back doors. The cries and moans of the dead grew louder as Tony called for everyone to get behind the trucks. “Alright, if there’s any dead ones in the back, shoot them fast and get them out!” He put the key in the lock on the back door and turned it. The door was much heavier than he had thought it would be as he yanked it open. The rear of the vehicle was devoid of anything alive or dead.
Derek did the same with his door and everyone shone their lights into the back as he pulled the heavy steel open. Six tall locked bags sat between the panels in the back of this vehicle.
“Dave, Abbey, Billy with me; you three in the other truck. Screw the back, everybody up front!” They closed and locked the doors and each person ran to get in the cab of their assigned vehicle. It was a squeeze, but four fit in one cab and three fit comfortably on the bench seat of the other truck. Tony jammed his foot on the clutch and put the key in the ignition. The truck started on the first turn. The other truck started up immediately as well. The growing horde of dead began to appear out of the shadows, all wanting the living people just beyond reach.
Tony released his emergency brake, let his foot slowly off the clutch, and the truck began to move forward. They hit the first wave of dead, thumping sounding on all sides of the vehicle before Tony realized the other truck wasn’t with them. The horn sounded on the other truck and the headlights flashed. “Jesus, really?” Tony demanded and jammed on the brakes. He threw the shift in reverse and backed up to the other armored car. “What the hell are you doing?” he screamed at Derek. Derek made unintelligible hand signals and then Billy moved Dave off his lap on to Abbey’s and rolled his window down.
“So, um, can we go now?”
Derek rolled his window partly down as well. “The damn thing won’t move! I’m giving it gas but it’s like the wheels are locked!”
Tony yelled across the other three in his cab, “Release the fuckin’ emergency brake, you goddamn idiot!” The three men in Derek’s truck began frantically looking around and Tony rolled his eyes. “The stick next to the driver! Left side!”
Derek stretched down and suddenly truck 8082 lurched forward, straight into the group of dead that had just reached them. Several creatures flew backward, but more were there to take their place. Fifty or so creatures were crowding the trucks, hammering on the sides. Billy rolled up his window, but Derek just tried to push his way through the crowd. One of the things grabbed the large chrome side mirror and pulled itself up, slapping its dead hand on Derek’s partially open window. The man let out a short scream and rolled his window up, but not before the dead man got his fingers inside. Derek closed the window on the creature’s hand, its four fingers on the inside of the truck. Although uncoordinated and slow, the creature possessed a sturdy tenacity and hung on to the window and the mirror as it tried to bite through the bullet-resistant glass.
Truck 8082 began to plod forward, with 8081 behind. “This is not how I pictured this in my head when we were planning it,” fretted Billy. “We should be in front so I can get us back to the school.”
The two armored vehicles moved up the ramp toward daylight with fists thumping on the sides. Several undead moved into the paths of the vehicles only to go down, crushed beneath the weighty tires.
Suddenly, the front truck slammed on the brakes, only to have it lurch forward again almost immediately. The truck did this a few times in rapid succession. Tony squinted at the back of 8082. “What the hell is he doin’?”
Billy pointed. “Betcha he’s trying to shake his hitchhiker.” The dead man was still clinging to the mirror of the first truck.
“Dave, call those dumbasses!” Tony pointed to a CB radio attached to the dash. Dave grabbed the mic and keyed it. “Hey, what are you guys doing up there? Hello?” He looked back at Tony helplessly.
The first truck sped out of the garage at approximately thirty miles per hour, headed toward the abandoned Hummer. Tony slowed down considerably and looked on, incredulous. “What…what is he doin’?”
Billy raised his eyebrows. “Ramming speed?�
�
The truck hit the military vehicle with the sound of rending metal. The Hummer spun off to the side, impacting the wall of the garage ramp with exploding glass. The American Securities vehicle lurched to the right and sideswiped the other side of the concrete ramp wall, but Derek must have regained control and they kept moving. Tony followed and as truck 8081 crested the ramp, a phantom hand clamped down on Tony’s testicles. The street in front of them was wall to wall dead people, all heading toward the trucks.
Tony stopped, but Derek opted to drive through the mob. Abbey put a hand to her mouth. “They’ll never make it.”
“Neither will we if we sit here,” Billy told them and pointed south. “Turn here and go that way.”
Dave looked at Tony. “But what about—?”
Tony slammed his hands into the steering wheel. “Damn it, I don’t know! Follow the friggin’ plan is all he had to do!” The truck in front of them mowed down dozens of infected, but it was slowing by the moment, the sheer numbers of undead impeding the progress of the truck.
“They were scared is all,” Abbey lamented softly.
Tony turned left and drove south. “So am I.”
Vantel Parking Lot, Marshfield, Massachusetts
Five shadowy figures slunk between forgotten vehicles under the starry New England sky, a sliver of shimmering moon the only illumination. Clouds moved across the moon, their voluminous masses confiscating what little light there was. On the near side of the parking lot, the SUVs and vans glinted with the intermittent light from that same moon shining off their bumpers and mirrors. One hundred or so meters away, the vehicles were charred and skeletal, the result of previous sustained firepower from an attack helicopter.
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