I thought about that and soothed my ego. “I’m taller.”
Julia laughed out loud, causing Kayla and Jake to turn around. She covered her mouth with her hand and I just grinned and shrugged as if she was crazy. Jake scowled, but Kayla turned him back to the task at hand.
We entered the health facility and the receptionist brightened as Jake walked in. Her face turned down when Kayla appeared at Jake’s side, close enough to be a warning to any intruders.
“Can I help you?” she asked, keeping her eyes on Jake.
My brother nodded and put the vial of zombie goop on the counter. Samantha, the receptionist, reacted better this time. She sighed and picked up a phone.
“Jerry? Sam. Mr. Talon just dropped off anther vial. Yes, it’s contained. Okay, I will.” Sam hung up the phone and opened a drawer, pulling out a heavy plastic container. She used her pen to move the vial into the bin and sealed it with a lid. It was a bit of a letdown, since the last time we were here, they all freaked out on us.
Samantha turned to Jake. “Anything else?”
Jake shook his head, but I was curious about one thing. I stepped up to the counter beside Jake.
“Hey, Samantha? What’s in those vials we brought? Just curious,” I asked.
Sam smiled, happy to take her attention away from a non-responsive Jake and a glaring Kayla. “Couldn’t say, but Jerry should be able to fill you in on that one. I can say that when he figured it out, he spent about an hour debriefing the president about it.”
That sounded a little more serious. “Is Jerry coming up soon?” I asked.
Sam nodded. “He should be here any second.”
“All right. I’ll wait.” I looked over at Jake and he arched an eyebrow in my direction. I didn’t respond and he shrugged, moving outside with Kayla right behind. Julia looked at me and I nodded towards the door. She left with a curious glance backwards, but left it at that.
As soon as the outside door shut, Jerry arrived with another person in a long lab coat wearing heavy rubber gloves. The assistant picked up the container and walked back the way they had come. Jerry was about to leave with a small wave before I stopped him.
“Jerry? Aaron Talon. A moment, if you don’t mind,” I asked politely.
Jerry looked impatient, but since I made sure I looked like I was not about to be ignored, he decided it was better to talk and get it over with.
“Sure. What can I do for you?” He asked with forced patience.
“Only one question. What’s in those vials we keep finding?” I figured since I was risking my life to stop its spread that I ought to know what I was dealing with.
Jerry shook his head. “Probably the worst thing you could imagine. Those vials contain mutated Enillo virus. It’s worse than the original strain, and nearly airborne lethal. Someone went to a lot of trouble to put this together or they have a very fertile breeding ground for the virus.”
I was a little confused. “Are they just harvesting zombies? That would make my search a little easier.”
Jerry shook his head again. “No. What they are doing is taking healthy hosts, injecting them with the virus, and then pulling this out of their brain stems. The DNA we’ve looked at from the virus you’ve collected suggests the hosts are all about the same age, and the same gender.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that I wasn’t going to like the next thing I heard. “So, what are you saying? Everyone in that host pool was specifically chosen?”
Jerry looked at the ceiling, then directly into my eyes. “If I had to guess, Mr. Talon, I’d say if you found the source of this material, you would also find the whereabouts of our kidnap victims.”
Chapter 29
“Don’t be shy, I know you’re there.”
Shuffle shuffle moan.
“Come on, baby, it will be quick, I promise.”
Shuffle shuffle.
“Just give me something to work with, no reason to be afraid.”
Shuffle.
“There you go, that’s my girl. Was that so hard?”
Moan, moan. Bang!
I fired my rifle, sending a .30 caliber bullet hurtling towards the zombie I had been stalking for ten minutes. The heavy bullet passed through her as if she wasn’t there, but the shock wave blew her head apart like a popping balloon. One second it was there and the next it was gone. Pretty spectacular if you were just observing from the sidelines. I was observing through the scope, and it was just gross. Her body fell backwards and wedged itself between two cars, destined to rot away like so many others.
We’d been at this for the better part of the morning, and it was one big mess of misery. The highway of I-57 had been compromised, and it wasn’t a thrill to begin with. The zombies that had previously been contained in their cars had been loosed and they were wandering free along the road. Three barriers had been removed from exits, and to make the cake even sweeter, it looked like the barricade to the city had been compromised. A steady stream of very nasty looking zombies was headed our way.
I should say, my way. Jake had taken charge of the situation, sending Julia and Kayla to hunt down the free-range zombies while he took care of re-blocking the roadway and finding additional help to deal with roamers. I got the job of finishing off the zombies that were left on the road, and to close off the city, once more.
Jake made the job sound easy. “Just close the doors to the cars, kill the ones out on the road, and you’re good.”
I initially thought it was going to be easy, partially because I wanted to believe Jake, but mostly because I was an idiot. The first couple of miles were easy, just strolling down the center of the lanes, kicking or pushing doors shut, and shooting the occasional zombie. No worries, right?
Then things began to change. The zombies that were still on the road were not the recently infected kind. They had been in hot and cold cars for over twenty years. They had evolved in that time and were smarter than your average convert was. They were weak as kittens, though, and their skulls were more brittle than the newer models, but they were still deadly for all that. Most of them were black with rot and mold, and several were missing fingers, hands, or even jaws. Those were my special, favorite nightmare.
For every one I killed, I thought of new and painful ways I was going to thank Jake for this lovely assignment. I just hoped Julia and Kayla were doing all right.
The last one I shot had actually moved in between the stacked cars and had been trying to wait for me to get closer so she could grab me. I had moved to the other side of the road and let her hunger get the better of her. When she looked out to see where I was, I blew her head apart.
I wasn’t shy about ammo, having been replenished by the capital recently. They had sent teams out once upon a time to find whatever they could, and other had gone to the ammo manufacturing plants. I could care less as long as they were giving it to me to use.
I walked on, with the rising sun filtering through the stacked cars and their windows, throwing weird light patterns all over the place. I passed through a small canyon of rust and death, with the light and shadows making it seem like I was underwater. Hidden in the crevasses were dark things and monsters.
Another five miles brought me seven more kills, and I stepped up to an overpass. I couldn’t see through the cars, and I wanted to look out, so I figured it would be a good idea to go climb to the top of the cars. I got the crazy notion I could do some long range sniping up there and save myself the trouble of dealing with the nasties closer up. I opened the door to the bottom car, wrenching it through the rust that had accumulated. Standing with one foot on the seat and the other on the door in the open window, I reached up and jerked on the handle to the door on the second car up. I thought to climb up and at least get on the hood of the car.
What I didn’t think about was having a zombie be attached to the door I jerked open. It fell past me with a barely audible groan and landed in a heap on the ground.
“Jesus!” I was startled enough that I let g
o of the door and tried to jump away from the ghoul beneath me that was slowly getting up. Unfortunately, the door I was standing on swung as doors are supposed to do, and my left foot moved way past comfortable and into painful, when I suddenly tried to figure out how far my legs could spread. I didn’t want to think about the zombie standing up and having its teeth level with my crotch, so I kicked off with my other foot and landed on my ass right in front of the zombie, one leg on either side of its widening maw.
I scrambled backwards, trying to get a weapon in front of me, but the zombie caught my attention in the most uncomfortable way. It reached out with a skeletal hand and grabbed the fly area of my pants.
“Gaaaahh!” I yelled, crabbing backwards and dragging a zombie with me. I had one chance to save myself, and I kept moving backwards to keep that chance. The zombie helped as an incentive, as it raised its blacked head and teeth in a grotesque feeding pose. I moved with one arm and two legs, trying to draw my pistol to kill this thing clamping on my crotch. Its grip was uncharacteristically strong, and I don’t think I have met a more determined dead thing.
I finally got my gun out, and as I brought the weapon to bear, the zombie snapped its head forward, chipping its teeth on the gun. That was the last thing it did in this world. The bullet blew its tonsils out the back of its head, and took a good chunk of its brain with it.
I lay there for a moment, just me, my gun, and a dead zombie with its hand still gripping my crotch. I reflected religiously for a moment, thanking God no one had seen what had just happened.
Chapter 30
I got up and shook my head at what might have been, breaking into a small sweat as I did so. I’m not sure what worried me more; having a zombie bite me in the groin or having Jake watch me deal with it and never letting me forget the incident for the rest of my life.
I looked back up at the pile of cars and decided it wasn’t worth it. My luck was done with that little adventure. I stayed on the ground and decided to walk the rest of the way to the main barrier, dealing with the zombies as they came. From my momentary vantage point, it didn’t look like there were too many left. Most of them had passed and they were being hunted down by Jake and the women.
As I walked forward, I closed car doors and truck doors, losing count as I passed one hundred. Someone was not playing fair by trying this nonsense. These zombies had a long time to smarten up, and they were much cleverer than a newer zombie, relatively speaking. It was like comparing a frog to a mouse. A frog just was, while a mouse had the ability to figure things out.
I shot a few with my rifle, the big gun’s blasts echoing in the small canyon of rust and rubber. I was using an M1A, like the one my dad used to good effect a long time ago. He left his in the Potomac in DC; I found mine on a trip south when we were collecting. It was powerful, reliable, accurate, and it held a lot of bullets. In zombie hunter language: perfect. I wasn’t worried about anything behind me, since I had killed everything, and I was trying to draw out the ones who were wandering about and put them down. A couple of them tried to play hide and seek, but the heavy bullets found them through fenders and doorframes.
About two miles up the road, and a few dozen dead zombies, I finally reached the barrier to the rest of the highway heading north. As I looked it over, I realized how simple a solution it was to a complicated problem. How do you keep potentially thousands of zombies from crashing free of their highway prison and seriously ruining your day? You use what’s on hand. Thankfully, at the time, Illinois highways were in a constant state of repair. As such, there were concrete barricades all over the place. Four strong men could easily lift one, and the little holes on the bottom made it simpler to stack using wooden poles to lift. Three of them made a barrier nine feet high. Stack them lengthwise on the highway, and they become a blockade of concrete six feet thick. The zombies weren’t getting through without help.
As I approached the barrier, I saw that these particular zombies had received exactly that. The far left side had been shifted, not far enough to allow more than one zombie through at a time, thankfully, but I could see where men had worked on making a passageway. I was going to have a time trying to fix this myself.
However, that would have to wait a minute. Right now, a very horrid looking zombie was making his way through the opening, leaving long dark streaks on either side as he oozed his way closer. His single eye was focused on me and no little thing like stonework was going to stop him. I was about to shoot him when I realized I ran the risk of a ricochet coming back and messing up my pristine person. That would never do. I put my rifle down on the hood of a car that looked like it might have been expensive in its day and turned my attention back to my squeezing, struggling friend. He was about free of the barrier and reached out with a skeletal hand to make a grab at me.
I knocked away his hand and rewarded all of his hard work with a spike to his head. He fell down and wedged himself firmly between the barricades, blocking the passage until another managed to figure out how to climb over his body. As I watched, that was immediately happening. Another zombie, a female this time, was sliding through the barriers, keeping her eyes on me as she groaned slightly and started to claw her way over her dead companion. Behind her, I could see a small group of dead gathering to take their turn at the newly opened pathway.
“Not today, sweetheart,” I said as I planted my tomahawk between her eyebrows. She fell on top of the first and another was making its way to join the other two. I started to think I could be here for a long time unless I managed to have a more permanent solution that didn’t involve me dying.
I killed a third and a fourth, and the corpse barrier made a good blockade for a short amount of time, but I needed something solid they couldn’t climb. I knew I couldn’t lift a concrete barricade on my own, but I knew I could leverage one if I could get up on top. I went to the other side of the barrier and climbed up, straddling two of them as I looked out towards the city. The highway was a mass jumble of cars, zombies, and skeletons. Just a little way ahead of me was the city wall, the only thing keeping back a few million zombies still roaming the city limits of Chicago. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like in the early days of the Upheaval, with everyone trying to escape the carnage behind them, only to find it travelling the road with them. How many souls had been lost just on the highways God alone knew.
I went over to the moved barricades and pushed on the top one. It moved slightly, so I wedged myself between it and the one next to it. It was heavy, but with a good deal of pushing and a whole lot of cursing, I pushed it over to fall on the zombies below. Four dead zombies were no match for three hundred pounds of falling concrete, and zombie goo squirted out across the road as the stone fell. I got up and went to the next barricade, pushing it over with new and invented curse words. The added weight and height stopped all zombie traffic, and I think a few zombie organs blew out across the highway to add to the mess I had made.
The activity drew the attention of hundreds of zombies, and there was a drift in my direction. I waited to see if the new barricade would hold, and when it did, I just shook my head at the crowd. Some of them looked back at me with what seemed to be some kind of emotion, and it was a little unsettling. I knew they could evolve and become problem solvers, and the little ones were deadly if left alone for too long. However, I got the feeling that some of these zombies were disappointed they couldn’t step and be killed.
I shook the feeling off and took a minute to wipe my tomahawk. Then I shouldered my rifle and headed back the way I came. I had a good walk ahead of me, since Jake had taken the truck and went off to the south somewhere to kill zombies. I found it a little ironic that I was surrounded by cars yet I still needed a ride.
Chapter 31
I passed my crotch grabbing nemesis after a time and shuddered again at the thought of what might have been. I wondered what people did in the old days when there were literally thousands of zombies grabbing at you and trying to bite off whatever they could reach. Pr
obably, they just died and went to go grab someone for themselves.
Three miles down the road, I reached the spot where I had joined the fun. Jake had relocked the gate and I considered getting off the road when I decided to keep going a little further down. If they job was done here, then I had a better chance of finding them south of here.
At the next exit, I left the highway and walked steadily. I hoped to find someone who could point me in the direction of the capital, but as I read the faded signs off the highway, I realized where I was and how much farther I had to go. I also began to harbor the sneaking suspicion that Jake had given me the rotten job on purpose and left me as some sort of lesson. I figured I’d settle his ass soon enough.
South of my exit took me into some run-down areas, and I kept my rifle ready and my eyes on the lookout. The houses were close together, although I doubted anyone lived here. The homes were all of the same type, two story brick and built barely three feet from its neighbors. Open doors and broken windows told the tale as clearly as a sign, and I didn’t bother to look into any of them. I was a little surprised they were still standing, as my father had normally destroyed useless or zombie occupied buildings. However, as I stood on a little hill and looked out over the community, I realized how many homes there were and how impossible the job would have been.
Back in the day, there must have been a lot of humans around.
The sun was approaching noon, and I kept moving south. I knew that I would eventually reach the canal, and that could get me to the capital in relative comfort if I could find a boat or canoe. Once there, I could easily await the return of my companions. The more I thought about it, the more appealing it became. I would get another hotel room, order up some good food, and await my battered and bruised crew. After a comforting shower with Julia, we could settle down and enjoy each other’s company all night long.
Generation Dead Book 2: What You Fear Page 10