Crusade (Eden Book 2)

by Tony Monchinski

  The AAVP-7A1 was capable of carrying 25 fully equipped combat troops in addition to three crew members. On the open road it could exceed 40 miles per hour, but Isaak kept it to nearly half this speed for most of the first day they were on the road. The roads would stretch for miles with nary a car or zombie in sight, and then they’d round a bend or crest a rise and there would be abandoned vehicles and dozens of the undead. The zombies got excited and made for the personnel carrier when they saw it.

  Tris told Chris to save ammunition and not fire on the undead, as who knew what awaited them down in the city. The temptation to unload on them was great, but Chris didn’t want to piss Tris off. The zombies unlucky enough to get in the way were mowed down under the treads. He looked with some satisfaction on their crushed, still writhing forms in the wake of the AAV.

  Bear noted that Tris’ crew was well disciplined. When she told Chris not to shoot, he didn’t. The AAV, camouflaged for the desert, stood out against the wintry landscape. They had foregone white fatigues in favor of cargo pants and jackets that would keep them warm but not impede movement. Tris had pointed out that once they were down in the city, it wouldn’t be white on white, so the snow camos were unnecessary.

  They carried an assortment of personnel weapons—Mickey had given Bear his USAS-12 gauge and the last two drum magazines he had for it—but each was armed with an identical M16-A2 assault rifle. Thirty-round magazines were taped together or joined with dual magazine connectors. Bandoliers of magazines hung from their persons and a couple cases of ammunition and pre-loaded magazines were housed inside the AAV. Some had underslung M-203 single shot grenade launchers attached to their M-16s, others had flashlights and laser mounts affixed to the carry handles.

  The AAV was capable of travel in water and they had considered the Hudson River. In the end the seven of them had decided they’d stick to the open road south for as long as feasible. The AAV was fully fueled when they’d left and they had extra fuel stored inside the transport.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m queer on you or nothin’.” Chris pulled one of his iPod earbuds out of his head and said to Bear. “It’s just, you really do look like one of them wrestling fellas to me.”

  Bear laughed. “No, I don’t take it the wrong way. You’re really into wrestling, huh?”

  “Hell yeah. Me and Daddy would sit and watch the Pay-Per-View specials, Wrestlemania, Summer Slam, Survivor Series, you name it.”

  “I was into it in the mid-80s,” he said. “The Road Warriors, British Bulldogs, Hercules Hernandez, Bobby the Brain, those were my guys. People used to say I looked like Bam Bam Bigelow.”

  “Nah man, he was kind of fat, man,” Chris said. “You ain’t heavy like that.”

  You should have seen me a few months ago, he thought. He wondered if Chris knew that wrestling was “fake.” That it was sports entertainment.

  “What are you listening to?” Bear asked.

  “Oh, I got me some Dokken, some Sabbath, Maiden—”

  Bear was impressed. “Maiden? You got Flight of Icarus on there?”

  “And Run to the Hills.”

  “I haven’t listened to Maiden in,” Bear thought about it, “in a long time.”

  “Yeah, well, later on you want to listen you can borrow this,” offered Chris. “Got some Ratt, Judas Priest, Europe—”

  “Europe?”

  “Europe,” he said. “Final Countdown.”

  “Well, with the exception maybe of that last one,” Bear smiled, “you got yourself some righteous music there brother.”

  Brent said, “Chris is a big 80s-hair guy if you ever—”

  A rock bounced off the side of the AAV and Chris immediately raised his M-16 to fire.

  “No,” Bear grabbed the barrel and jerked it upwards, “Look!”

  “Isaak, stop this tank!” Brent yelled.

  A little boy, no more than eight or nine, caked in dirt and in a patchwork of clothes sloppily stitched together, was staring at them from the trees. The kid held a sling shot. The band was drawn back with a stone in place.

  The AAV ground to a halt.

  Chris and Brent jumped off the AAV and Bear climbed down.

  “Hey, little fella,” Chris called out to the kid.

  “Look out, Chris. He’s gonna—”

  The kid fired a second stone, turned and ran. The rock thunked on the hull of the AAV, no threat to its 45 mm armor.

  “What the fuck was that?” Tris asked from atop the personnel carrier.

  “Wild child,” Brent said.

  Bear stared into the trees and snow but the kid was gone.

  “We gonna stop and look for him?” Chris asked.

  “And do what?” Tris asked. “Make him our pet? Get back up here and let’s go.”

  “Little fucker could have taken my eye out.” Chris took a few steps towards the tree line, the barrel of his M16 lowered. “Hey, little fella. Hey! Little boy!”

  “Let’s go,” Brent said.

  “Kind of feel weird leaving him out here all by himself.”

  “Something tells me that kid’s okay.” Brent looked suspiciously from tree to tree. “He’s survived this long…”

  “Come on,” Bear said.

  Chris looked one last time into the trees, held his assault rifle aloft and screamed “Wolverines!” at the top of his lungs.

  “Fucking zombies,” Tris muttered, “fucking plague, fucking wolf children. How good does this shit get?”

  A decision was made to ford the river. Isaak drove the AAV into the ice and water, the cold wash flowing over the sides of the amphibious assault vehicle.

  Brent and Tris went below and traded places with Biden and Carrie. Bear sat cross legged on the hull of the AAV, watching the miles of dead trees and bleak wintry landscape pass them by at roughly eight miles per hour.

  “Spring will be here in the next week or so,” Carrie said.

  “About goddamn time,” Chris said. “I hate the winter.”

  “Look at that.” Carrie pointed.

  A cherry picker was stranded alongside the river, the bucket fully extended. In the bucket a zombie rasped down at them.

  “Fuckers too stupid to figure out how to get down.”

  “Wonder how he got up there in the first place?” Carrie said.

  Bear sat with his legs drawn up, his back to the hull of the AAV, the automatic shotgun across his thighs.

  “Tris, look at this,” Carrie called down into the hatch sometime later and Tris poked her afroed-head out.

  Carrie pointed up to the grey sky where a balloon floated past in the distance.

  “A fucking balloon,” Chris said. “What do you think is up there in it, Tris?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “It’s going the other way. Maybe they haven’t seen us.”

  “Maybe they’re dead,” Carrie said.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Hey, big man,” Tris called to Bear. “Your name really Jimmy?”

  He wondered where she had heard that. “Yeah.”

  “You don’t look like a Jimmy to me.”

  “What about you? Tris your real name?”

  “Tristan,” said the woman with the scar on her face. “Tristan Nicole Lee. My father had a thing for the Knights of the Round Table, even if it was a boy’s name.”

  “Hey Tris,” Chris asked. “Why your daddy give you three names?”

  “Because I’m so much goddamn woman I need three names.”

  Sometime later Isaak yelled from the driver’s hatch, where his head was visible, “Heads up back there.”

  “Shit,” Chris muttered.

  There were thousands of zombies standing on the shore nearest them as the AAV churned its way down the river. A collective moan and excited screams went up as the AAV drew close and started to pass the first of the undead.

  “Fucking look at them,” Chris said.

  “Good thing for us they can’t swim,” Carrie said.

  “Damn, I wish we could light
them up.” Chris gestured to the .50 cal.

  “Keep it cool,” Tris said

  “Yeah,” Bear said, looking out upon the ranks of the undead. “We’re gonna need it in the city.”

  “It’s gonna be bad down in the city, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah. It’s gonna be real bad.”

  “Gonna kick us some zombie ass.” Chris was all excited.

  The throng of zombies, in some places packed six or seven deep, stretched for a good three quarters of a mile then just ended. There was a bend in the river. When the AAV turned it the zombies were gone from view.

  The afternoon was ending when the AAV went back up on shore and pulled to a stop near a small brick municipal building. A gigantic Komatsu excavator was besides the building, its articulated arm drawn up. The AAV’s ramp opened and the men and women inside climbed down, stretching cramped limbs.

  “What are you listening to now?” Bear asked Chris, eyeing the terrain warily.

  “Dio.”

  “Righteous.”

  “I gotta take a shit,” Chris said, heading off to the building with a roll of toilet paper and his assault rifle.

  “Keep an eye open,” Tris said.

  “Gonna crack my brown eye open.” He laughed.

  “Your roommates spending way too much time with Steve,” Carrie said to Brent.

  “Did you see the little boy they’re talking about, Bear?” Biden asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d he look?”

  “He looked…rough.”

  “Poor kid. I guess it’s good to know there’s other people still alive though. Right?”

  Bear was going to answer but there was a loud curse and several three-round bursts from an M-16. Chris came stumbling out of the brick building—“Mother fuckers! Mother fuckers bit me”—bleeding profusely from the shoulder and arm. He stopped and turned, firing out his M-16 in short bursts into the doorway he’d just exited. He stumbled backwards a few steps, fumbling with the magazine and fell down on his back in the snow.

  “Chris!” Brent ran to the man and Bear followed, bringing the stock of Mickey’s USAS-12 to his shoulder. Tris reached Chris first.

  A zombie shrieked at them, standing there gripping either side of the doorway. It had no nose. In the center of its face was a small hole surrounded by pieces of cartilage. Tris straight armed her 9mm and fired it-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-until the thing collapsed.

  Three more of the undead rushed from the building and Tris fired out her pistol, dropping two of them. She reached behind her and unsheathed the two hand held sickles she wore, bringing one up behind her head, the second in front of her face.

  The third zombie of the trio stopped a couple of feet from her. Chris was between Tris and the undead thing. It looked at the wounded man still trying to reload his assault rifle and the black woman with the enormous hairdo. The zombie raised its hand, pointed a finger at Tris and shrieked.

  “Your mother—” She brought the sickle above her head down. The pointing finger and the hand it was attached to dropped to the snow. The zombie raised its stump to its face and looked at it.

  Tris swung the second sickle and caught the beast through the neck, yanking it forward, towards her—

  “Come ‘ere motherfucker!”

  —bringing the first sickle up and back down—thunk—right through the top of the thing’s head. She yanked her sickles out of the monster as it fell.

  “Fuck!” Chris cursed on his back. “Goddamn it!”

  The empty windows of the building filled with the straining arms and leering faces of the undead as they sensed prey.

  Bear stopped and fired the automatic shotgun. Some of the arms disappeared backwards into the building. He emptied one drum magazine while Tris and Brent dragged Chris back towards the AAV.

  A lone zombie bumbled into view from behind the Komatsu digger. Topless, it wore cowboy boots and was missing its nipples.

  “Gat that fool!” Tris yelled. Bear turned at the hip and fired three rounds, tearing whole chunks out of the zombie, knocking it backwards and down.

  Carrie was in the gun turret and let rip with the .50, a stream of lead zipping into the building, pulverizing brick and mortar and the zombie flesh behind it. Brick dust and a bloody mist hazed the air. Carrie raked the entire lower level then did it again.

  “Motherfucker,” Chris said. “Man can’t even take a shit without—”

  “Christ,” Brent, said holding a hand up to his forehead.

  “Get him in the back of the AAV,” Bear said. “Let’s get out of here and patch him up.”

  Tris looked at him.

  “No,” he said. “We’re taking him with us.”

  “But you know—”

  He felt his anger rising. “It’s not your call.”

  “And what makes it yours?”

  Carrie sent another devastating hail of lead into the structure.

  “It’s Chris’ call,” Brent said. “It’s none of ours. Chris, what you want to—”

  “Like the big man said.” Chris grimaced through the pain. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  She gave Bear a look and the look wasn’t friendly. He ignored her and helped Brent carry Chris into the AAV.

  They stopped several miles down the road for the night. Bear had staunched the bleeding and bandaged Chris’ wounds.

  “You get some rest, brother,” he told him.

  “Thanks man, I knew you were alright the first moment I saw you,” Chris spoke slowly. “Hey man, do me a favor, hold onto this for me.” He pressed one of his hands into Bear’s and he took it with both of his. Chris opened his fist and passed something into his palms.

  He looked in his hand. It was Chris’ iPod, the cord for the ear buds wound around the device itself.

  Bear didn’t know what to say and he didn’t know if he could say it without breaking down. Somehow he managed a “Thanks brother.”

  Brent sat next to Chris and talked to the doomed man quietly, keeping him company. Biden sat across from them on another bench, looking distressed. Tris had gone topside. Isaak snored in the driver’s seat. Bear thought he would have a difficult time sleeping but he was out like a light within moments of stretching himself out on the floor of the AAV.

  His sleep was plagued by another nightmare, the worst. It was daytime and Buddy sat in a clearing in a forest. His hands and arms were soaked with blood and he was talking into his hands, crying. Several yards from the man lay a baby wrapped in a blanket, the blanket resting on Buddy’s saddle bags.

  He whimpered in his sleep. A mask of pure rage crossed Buddy’s face and he stood, cursing his hand, gibberish. He crossed to the child and looked down upon it and it didn’t look like Julie or Harris, it looked like…like Markowski. He picked the child up by its feet and he walked up to the nearest tree.

  Buddy.

  He drew back his arms and Bear whimpered again as he bashed the little bundle against the tree. A red wet spot appeared on the bark. He drew the limp blanket back once more, swung it. There was a crack as it connected—

  A single gunshot startled him awake.

  “Who-who?” He squinted his good eye.

  “It was time,” Brent said. He sat on the bench next to his friend Chris, a 9mm in his right hand. The only light came from the glow of the instrument panels.