Art smiled as the rounds impacted the horde. Burning pieces of the dead things were tossed into the air as the incendiary rounds tore into them. Barry cheered but Art pulled him back from the edge of the building. “Shut up!”
A huge swath of melted asphalt and disgusting pink goo interspersed with small fires made up what used to be Route Six next to Shuster’s Meats. It had to be two hundred yards long. Art’s smile vanished as the dead began to refill the opening in the street. He shook his head as he realized that the Warthogs would run out of ammo or fuel long before they put a dent in the amount of infected that made up the swarm.
The men could hear helicopters coming over the din of the dead. Barry pointed, smiling, but Art knew that these were attack birds, and couldn’t pick them up from the roof. They were far off, and before they got on station, the A10s would get in at least one more run. The nose cannons opened up once more and Barry fist-pumped the air. Art recognized the two large canisters which released from the wings of the first plane, the tubes spinning end over end as they tumbled toward the infected. He also realized that he and Barry were way too close to where the canisters would hit.
“Motherfu—” he began as the napalm hit the ground with a spectacular explosion. Flames shot into the sky in a half mile long twenty-meter wide line. Any infected in the flame zone were instantly liquefied, and flaming individuals just outside the zone stumbled off and collapsed. Art and Barry caught the blast wave and were also killed almost instantly. Shuster’s Meats was unrecognizable as a structure after the second A10 dropped her payload of high-explosive Rockeye cluster bombs.
The Apache helicopters arrived on station and began to fire their rockets and chain guns into the swarm. By the time they returned to base, more than sixty thousand undead had been destroyed.
Hardly a dent in the nine-hundred thousand strong horde on its way to Cornhusker Stadium.
The ice cream truck pulled off Route Six and into the open warehouse door of a landscape supply company. The driver had personally seen to the extermination of almost one hundred thousand infected in this area prior to his excursion to the east coast. On his return trip, he had brought almost ten times that number with him. He had known about the swarm moving west and had intercepted them when they had finished with Des Moines.
A Runner jumped up on the step of the truck, shrieking, and the driver slid open a gun port and shot it in the face. Couldn’t have its cries bringing a bunch of infected in and bogging him down now; he was almost finished with this portion of his plan. He thought of his former comrades. Colonel Bourne was dead, but that damnable preacher was still very much alive. Alive and in the way.
“One down, one to go,” Brooks said aloud.
He smiled at the thought of the aircraft raining second death down on the infected. If they had a hundred planes, they couldn’t do shit. They would need a nuke or a couple of Hades bombs, and only he knew where the codes for the nukes were. He’d get the codes eventually, but in the meantime, he would watch the stadium get overrun. He smiled again.
There was no means of escape for Recht, the preacher. Nothing could save him now, not even his God.
Three infected stumbled into the warehouse. Brooks harrumphed and grabbed his MP5. He exited the vehicle, the dead stumbling toward him. He folded his arms and waited. The dead reached him, but lost interest and moved on. Brooks moved to the warehouse roll-down door and closed it. He dealt with the undead quickly then surveyed his surroundings.
“This will do,” he said to himself. He smiled again. “Easy as pie.”
Unknown Road, Massachusetts
“Jesus…” Rick let the word hang as he passed a pair of binoculars to Dallas. Dallas used the glasses to peer at an elementary school with vast open fields next to it. Five white tents, perhaps forty feet long and ten feet tall at their centers, had been erected in one of the school’s parking lots. The aluminum skeleton of a sixth tent sat partially constructed. The tents were surrounded by a chain-link fence, which in turn was encompassed by the parking lot full of abandoned vehicles. Desert-colored military vehicles sat next to civilian cars and trucks of all types. A Blackhawk helicopter, its side panel open to the elements, was positioned further off in the overgrown elementary school field. A gleaming red fire truck, which still reflected the sun brightly despite a year’s lack of washing, blocked the entrance to the large lot full of cars.
Through the dingy windows of the school, Dallas could see figures moving about. Their numbers paled in comparison to the throng that shuffled back and forth between the cars and in and out of the tents. They stepped around, or stumbled over, the hundreds of white body bags neatly arranged in a row on one side of the small tent-town. Some of the bags moved, their occupants struggling to vacate their plastic prisons, but most remained stationary. More bags filled two dump trucks to capacity and a third was nearly three-quarters full.
From their vantage a few hundred feet away, Rick and his group could hear the horrible noises of the dead carried on the light breeze.
Seyfert lowered his own binoculars. “Looks like the remnants of a FEMA camp.” He shook his head. “Look at them all. I’m not the least bit shocked it was overrun.”
“Gotta be a thousand of them body bags,” Dallas added. The big Texan looked from side to side, stretching his gaze as far as he could in both directions. To the left was the town center, which consisted of many buildings, including a supermarket and a large library. Other businesses were connected via a mini-mall type structure. To the right sat an abandoned fairground, a fire station, and several more businesses, which dotted the road. The focal point was the school.
“How’re we gonna get around ‘em?”
“I vote we put a plow on you, Hillbilly, and you just run through.”
Seyfert looked behind them into the thick forest they had come through. He really didn’t want to go back into those infested woods. It was miraculous that his group had successfully negotiated the trees with the amount of dead shuffling through them. Only a couple of times had they needed to battle undead and in both cases, the fight had been quick and quiet. He rubbed his side and made a face. He had survived eleven missions as a SEAL, torture at the hands of crazy militants, and crossing a United States beset by legions of undead, only to almost get cashed in by a rogue deer. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Anna, who was covering the rear and staring back into the trees, spoke up, “No chance we make it back through those woods without being bitten.”
“Agreed, but look at that.” Seyfert pointed at the host of former humans, shuffling through their existence, a few hundred feet away.
“I’m just as concerned with that,” Rick said and pointed at a woman who was repeatedly punching and scratching one of the dead. She threw her head back and howled, every undead head in earshot turning to look at her. Dozens began to make their way toward the sound, only to realize that there was no food to be had. The infected thing began to tear at the walking dead man, slashing and biting him. He didn’t seem to mind and kept trying to stand when she would knock him down. The thing picked another victim and did the same, focusing her efforts on this new challenge. One of the more industrious dead folk grabbed her by the back of the shirt and she whipped around, launching herself at it. They went down, her astride the dead thing and she ripped out its throat with her teeth while throwing haymakers and screaming. The noise brought more of the dead to her, but most ambled off when they realized she was tainted. Some stood around her, not comprehending why one of them could scream and move quickly, but they too eventually lumbered away.
“And that’s the one we can see,” Anna told them, staring back at the woods. “There might be another twenty of the speedy ones down there who aren’t having a cow.”
“Having a cow?” Seyfert repeated. All three men turned to look at her.
“Yeah, freaking out. I’ve seen the fast ones stand around, just like the dead ones until they see something that bothers them. Then they go ballistic.”
The guys, silently agreeing with Anna, turned back around to survey the school and that which surrounded it.
Her sharp intake of breath caused them to spin their heads back to her again. She didn’t say a word, so they followed her gaze.
Sitting on his haunches, his elbows resting on his knees, was a boy, maybe twelve, dressed in soiled shorts. He was barefoot with no shirt on, perhaps fifty feet from their position, with his head cocked to the right. He had scratches all over the front of him from running through the woods.
The team stared at the kid, the eyes staring back at them the deep crimson of ruptured capillaries. The lower portion of his young face was a different shade of red; the stains of blood, not wiped away.
“Contact…” Anna breathed almost silently, and the kid stood.
“Shoot it.” When Anna did not fire, Seyfert repeated his command more urgently, “Shoot it, Anna!”
“Suppressor is burned out…”
“Shit!” Seyfert aimed his suppressed weapon at the boy, but before he could fire, the infected flexed his fingers into claws and he shrieked. Answering shrieks came from the woods, the camp, and through a broken school window. The rasps and cries from the dead amped up in volume as well.
The boy broke into an instant sprint, straight at Anna, and Seyfert double-tapped him in the chest. His little frame collapsed mid-run and the survivors could discern the infected child coughing his life-blood away over the din of the oncoming horde of dead.
“We’re in it now,” Dallas told them and stood. A dead woman stumbled out of the woods, followed by a second, then a dead man. Seyfert twisted and brought his rifle up, aiming back toward the school. The M4 barked once and he stood next to Dallas, Rick following.
“Fast one is down! Follow me!” Taking charge of the situation, the SEAL began to lope to the right, parallel to the forest, with the school and its bounty of death on their left. The dead commenced their plodding, tireless pursuit, angling to intercept the survivors. Infected started to step from the woods in larger numbers in front and behind the fleeing friends. Seyfert had to angle away from the trees and the sheer number of hostiles, but too much angle would put them into the oncoming crowd from the school. They would get pinched and overrun in a minute or two if he didn’t do something fast.
A Runner burst from the trees. She sprinted straight at Rick, he being the closest to her. He fired, striking her in the right hip and knocking her down. He didn’t wait to see if she was getting up and continued his sprint.
The businesses on the left crawled with monsters and the woods were just as infested. In front of them were the fire station and the fairgrounds. The brick fire station was two levels, but both garage doors were open. The SEAL didn’t know if he could close the doors before the dead reached them, so it was the fair. He didn’t say a word to his friends as he ran for the eight-foot chain-link boundary to the carnival. The infected were close enough now that he could see individual wounds on them. We’re not going to make it, he thought as the frontline of the enemy began to close on them. The SEAL began to selectively fire into the crowd, dropping the closer ones. His friends followed suit, but they had to slow down to achieve any type of accuracy. The tactic seemed to work until the gap closed and the survivors were forced to go hand to hand.
Dallas fired his shotgun into the face of an emaciated woman who reached for him, her cranium ceasing to exist. Anna fired her pistol quickly, dispatching two but missing four more. Rick scored three headshots and his weapon clicked empty. He let it dangle on its single-point sling and drew his sidearm, dispatching two more infected before one grabbed his weapon hand and bit down on the suppressor. The thing’s teeth shattered from the bite, making it easier for Rick to extricate the weapon and shoot point-blank into the creature’s mouth. They had cleared a quick breach in the wall of death and the survivors surged forward.
A green and white sign on the fair-grounds fence read: 148th Annual Marshfield Fair! Join us for… the rest of the sign had been torn away. The gate to the grounds was closed, but it was two hundred feet to the left and the dead were already between the gate and the living people.
Seyfert impacted the chain-link fence and began to climb immediately. He was up and over in no time, dropping to the other side and gasping from the pain which exploded in his left side. It was suddenly very hard to breathe. He ejected the magazine on his weapon and slammed another home. His three friends were scaling the fence, but Dallas was heavy and it was taking him a bit longer. It was Rick who had the most trouble though, as he was in a tug-of-war with a deceased man in the tattered remains of a hospital johnny. Both of them wanted Rick’s right leg and they were struggling so much, Seyfert couldn’t get a shot. He poked his rifle through one of the links in the fence, striking the creature in the throat. He fired and the thing’s Adam’s apple exploded, but it didn’t let go. Rick kicked at the same time Seyfert adjusted his aim and fired again. Rick was finally free and climbed the rest of the fence. Anna and Dallas jumped down on the safe side of the barrier, Dallas taking a tumble. Dozens of infected impacted the chain-link before Rick could jump down and he lost his balance, falling on the twisted spikes at the top of the chain link. He grunted and tossed himself over, landing hard. Seyfert went to help him up, but a new level of agony lanced through his side and he knew his ribs were broken. He reached a hand down anyway, but Rick saw the rictus of anguish on his friend’s face and declined the assistance, pushing himself up.
Dozens of dead were now just on the other side of the barrier pushing to get in, with hundreds more behind them. The ones in the front were being shredded between the ones behind them and the metal of the fence, chunks flaying off and dropping to the grass.
“We need to get out of sight!” Anna told them.
Rick was bleeding profusely from his abdomen and chest, but he helped Dallas up and Anna helped an ashen-faced Seyfert move.
“There!” The SEAL nodded and they raced as fast as they could up a hill to a green and white structure. A sliding wooden door barred their way and it was padlocked, but Dallas made short work of the hasp with the butt of his weapon and in seconds they were inside. Anna slid the heavy door closed, spinning back to clear the immediate area.
The survivors now stood in an open, two-story, hexagonal lobby area with framed old photos and paintings of the town they were in. Natural light filtered into the room through dusty windows, but that light seemed to be losing a struggle with dark shadows. Several rooms extended from the main lobby and an ancient set of wide wooden stairs rose to the second floor. The place was dusty with a musty smell instead of the reek of the dead.
“Anybody home?” Anna asked in a raised voice.
The quartet waited patiently for an influx of infected from the rooms or upstairs, but nothing came.
Seyfert evaluated their hideout quickly. “Can we shore up in here? That fence will be down in minutes. They didn’t see us come in here, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come looking.”
“I’ll clear the rooms,” Anna told them, “and check upstairs.”
“Not alone,” Seyfert said through clenched teeth. “Rick?”
Rick nodded, placing his ammo pack on the dusty wooden floor. He silently moved toward the lower rooms with Anna, who dropped her med pouch. Rick screwed a new suppressor onto his weapon. They pulled shades in two rooms and old wooden blinds in another to block the view from outside. Both looked up the stairs and then back at each other. The first step creaked incredibly loudly when Rick put pressure on it and he winced. The other steps weren’t silent, but didn’t compare to the sound of the first one. The top floor was identical in look to the bottom. They traded off who went in which room first, keeping their suppressed weapons at the ready, not that Anna’s suppressor would function properly. The top floor was cleared very quickly. Each of the five rooms held nothing that would help them and more importantly, no infected. Anna leaned over the brown hexagonal wooden railing to see the SEAL and Dallas both sitting in chairs.
Seyfert was leaning back, taking shallow breaths and Dallas was attempting to get his boot off.
“Clear up here,” she told them.
“Not so much out there though,” Rick said and pointed out the second-floor window. The dead were spread out much more than they had been at the abandoned FEMA camp down the street, but there were still hundreds of them. They meandered in and out of forgotten carnival rides, several stepping up on a carousel. Dozens more filtered into the wide-open green and white 4H barn and even more had made it to an overgrown horse track. A young woman sprinted past The Kiddie-Coaster, followed by two men and then a third. All four of them stopped together, frantically searching for something. Us, Rick thought.
One of the men screamed at another and they began to fight, tearing at each other and screaming until something made them whip their heads around. All four of them raced off out of sight to see what the something was.
“Shit, did we just trap ourselves in here?”
“Yeah,” answered Anna, “but we weren’t getting anywhere fast with Dallas’s leg and the jarhead’s ribs. I knew that deer kicked his ass. Must have cracked the bones and when he went over the fence, they broke.”
“Must have,” Rick agreed, as he felt his chest. He had said it with a pained voice and Anna caught on to it immediately. His hand came away bloody.
“Oh shit… Are you bitten?”
“No. No, it was the fence. Those little barbs on the top got me.”
“Shirt off. Let me see.”
He nodded and began to remove his tactical webbing and black camouflage T-shirt.
“Jesus…” Anna breathed when he had the shirt over his head.
Run_Book 3_Long Road Home Page 14