Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3)

by S. P. Durnin

  On the other hand, if Hess and his men managed to destroy the oncoming pod of corpses, they’d be on the survivors’ heels as they fled for the safety of Pecos.

  That was something O’Connor couldn’t allow, and he felt the moment when his resolve firmed deep in his gut. The people he’d spent the past months with were important to him. As close as anyone in his life—with the possible exception of his absent long-time friend Allen Ryker—had become previously. All Jake had before the zombies rose up were painful memories, bad dreams, and some noteworthy scars. He had more of all those now too, but the little band of misfits crewing George Foster’s Screamin’ Mimi mattered to him. He couldn’t imagine what reality would be like if he didn’t wake up in the morning to George snoring away like a tornado full of chain-saws. If he didn’t hear the old man arguing with his niece Bee, Leo, and his female counterpart Rae, about how to best prepare MREs. As if there were a good way. If Henry, Gwen, and even Elle weren’t there with unwanted advice—and the occasional one-liner—when the situation called for it. If Kat didn’t do her level best to drive him stark-raving looney, one way or another, every single goddamn day...

  Jake realized right then and there he owed the zombies a debt. His life had become far better, since whatever it was that brought them into being occurred. He’d been alone—save for Allan—ever since his return from Great Britain.

  Laurel had more than filled the great, gaping hole within him all by herself, but she was gone now. Long gone. Taken from Jake’s grasp and blown to bits months ago, high upon the now-destroyed Purifier clubhouse sitting on the banks of the Ohio/Indiana border. Her death had pushed him right to the brink, and not just because he’d failed to protect her. He believed he’d loved her. And, if it was the very last thing he did, he wasn’t going to allow a pack of assholes—led by a power-hungry traitor—within a mile of anyone else he cared for.

  It was high time Jacob O’Connor took control of the situation, and he knew it.

  “Are you ready?” he turned his head to regard Kat.

  “What? Now?” Cho asked, quite surprised. “Ten out of ten for spontaneity, but I can’t say I’m sure about your timing. Pretty sure I could manage it mind you, but then we’d both get hungry—and you’d want to have a cigarette—and I don’t think all those buttheads out there shooting up the place would be willing to take five, you know?”

  Jake gave her a level gaze.

  “Oh! Right. Sorry.” Kat nodded. “I suppose. I mean, if we wait any longer, there’s a good chance—”

  That was when Foster’s voice crackled from the earbud into Jake’s ear.

  “O’Connor! Tell me you’re listening, boy! And not bumpin’ ugly with China Doll while the shit is hitting the fan!”

  “Just a second. Mr. Tact is calling.” Jake toggled his throat mike on the tactical radio he wore and looked back towards the center of Langley. “Kind of busy here, Chief. What’s up?”

  “Mooney got nervous when Rae kicked the party off, and he’s insisting on heading out! Says he doesn’t want anyone gettin’ dead from a stray round…You need ta’ pop the cork an’ move your ass! Right now!”

  That was bad. “Chief, we can’t! Half the horde is still inside the damn wall! If we try to get down the tower we’d never make it inside the Humvee. Tell Mooney to get a grip!”

  “I already tried!” Foster sounded furious. “He sounded near shit-house berserk! Kept sayin’ something I couldn’t make out about ghouls actin’ all weird. Shovin’ other zombies off the dam into the water an’ other crazy shit.”

  “What’s going on?” Cho demanded quietly, still watching the battle beyond the gate.

  Jake had a sinking feeling in his stomach. “I think we’re in trouble.”

  Then the minigun ran dry.

  While the M134’s six barrels continued to spin and they could make out the whine of its motor above the moans of the decomposing crowd flowing by the gun emplacement, no rounds were going downrange. The monster MATTOC was still mobile, even if its prow was seriously chewed up, and Hess’s men were already dropping creatures at an appalling rate. The dead were barely making it halfway along the dam before bullets ventilated their heads, sending them slumping messily to the pavement. A dozen of them double-timed it from the southern ditch and took up position in the center of the road, attempting to draw the dead into the fatal funnel created by their companions. As Jake and Kat watched, they could see the tactic was working.

  “Oh crap. We should leave. Yeah. Leaving sounds pretty good right now.” Cho was nudging Jake’s arm. “Race you to the bottom?”

  He used his hand not gripping his throat mike to take hold of her hand. “Sssh! Quiet! Something’s happening. Elle? Can you hear me?”

  The blonde sergeant’s hushed voice came back through his ear-bud. “Got you. I caught Foster’s message. What do you want us to do?”

  “Stay hidden.” Jake peeked over the lip of the tower. “Don’t do anything to attract attention until we see what... Oh. Oh shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t. Make. Any. Noise.” Jake whispered, half to Elle, half to Cho. “They’re here.”Kat didn’t feel like popping her head up, so she pulled a compact from a pouch on her belt, flicked it open, and eased it until she could view the street. What she saw made the blood in her veins run cold.

  While two-hundred zombies weren’t that scary—so long as you were nearly fifty feet off the ground and they didn’t possess the ability to climb—the sight of two-hundred running zombies was enough to cause anyone’s sphincter to clench so tightly that you couldn’t fit a strand of dental floss between their butt-cheeks. And Kat usually wore a two-piece bathing suit to the pool, or if she ever went to the beach in the summer, so she would know.

  At first glance, the creatures looked like your average, everyday zombie (if there were such a thing), but they sure as hell weren’t acting like them. For one, they were showing some real hostility towards the other creatures. Shoving them out of the way, striking them in the face with unfeeling hands. She even saw one of the things sweep the legs out from under another and perform a basic take-down. The strange ghoul kicked its fellow flesh-eater behind both knees, and its hapless victims feet went right out from under

  it.

  Literally.

  As Kat watched a pair of New Balance cross-trainers went skidding across the asphalt, still trailing a pair of calves that left smears of noxious fluid in their wake.

  Another thing that made this new group of nasty brain-nibblers stand out was they weren’t stumbling. Not even a little. The things weren’t quite sprinting, but they were definitely traveling a good bit faster than normal. Their movements resembled someone with a sore ankle trying to finish a marathon, kind of a loping jog.

  “That couldn’t be the same ones that took out Penny’s old group. Could it?”

  Jake shook his head. “No way. As far as we know, the things don’t have any kind of heightened tracking abilities. And we’ve traveled across nearly half the country here. There’s no way they could’ve followed us all such a distance. But when I think about it, that’s actually worse. This means there are probably a hell of a lot more of these ‘uber-ghouls’ out there.”

  The creatures headed for the gap as they two conferred, tearing at the other maggot-heads in their way until the lead ghouls began filtering out among the barrels. They took one look at the soldiers at the far end of the byway and screamed, adding their ragged voices to the already overwhelming symphony of the dammed. Their cries were immediately effected Hess’s men. While half continued to lay down enough fire to hold back the primary flood of bodies, the other half began targeting the new threat. What happened next caused Jake and Kat’s mouths to drop open in shock.

  The faster ghouls took cover.

  They used the lines of barrels stretching across the road as shields against rounds fired at them by the RUST forces,
crouching low and even crawling towards the distant humans as best they could in the press of gore-coated bodies.

  “You know, normally? I really enjoy being right. It’s a woman thing,” Cho whispered, “But, for the record, I’d like to say that this is not one of those times.”

  “What?” O’Connor’s eyes flicked over the battle, trying to determine exactly how many of the odd zombies still survived.

  Kat put her compact away and retrieved the Glock from her hip. She pointed it briefly over the lip of their hiding place, eyes wide.

  “Smart-ghouls.”

  “Yeah. I’d have to agree that pretty much describes those things down there.” Jake nodded reluctantly.

  They’d both witnessed such zombies before, if only once. While making their escape from a railroad grainery outside Wilmington, Ohio—and the group of nut-jobs Penny was once part of—the two had seen a pack of fifteen or so infected running for the grainery, at speed. Like now, the things hadn’t actually been ‘running’ per say, but they hadn’t moved at the shambling gait of an average zombie either. It had been more like watching, someone who had issues with their center of gravity—or were really, really drunk—attempting to jog. Some of the creatures had been weaving back and forth, stumbling over their own feet and having to correct course over and over, but moved damn fast. Jake hadn’t wanted to believe it at the time. Until then, none of their group had ever encountered the dead doing anything even close to what they’d seen that night.

  But now, there was no question about the subject.

  Smart-ghouls did exist.

  They were more coordinated than the average brain-eater. They possessed the ability to think, to reason, even act in concert with others of their ilk when the need arose. As if the horror of millions upon millions of zombies roaming about the world wasn’t enough, now they had what amounted to be somewhat intelligent cannibals—who physically didn’t have the ability for experience pain—to deal with. Creatures who could plan, that might even be able to use simple weaponry like clubs or rocks as weapons. At least, Jake hoped that was all they’d be capable of. Corpses wielding automatic rifles was too horrible an idea for him to consider.

  Motioning for Cho to wait for a moment, Jake toggled his throat mike. “Elle. I don’t want to risk attracting notice up here. How many are still inside?”

  “A lot,” her reply sent O’Connor’s stomach heading for China, by way of the center of the Earth, “I mean seriously a lot. George said he’d let us know when the tail end of the maggot-parade passed the western barrier, and he hasn’t radioed yet. That means this horde might very well be bigger than the one we out-foxed after dealing with the Purifiers.”

  That wasn’t what Jake wanted to hear at all. “Keep watching. I’ll try to figure out a way for us to get down unseen, then we’re out of here.”

  Elle’s reply was hesitant and very faint. “Fuck. Whatever you do, you better make it quick.”

  “What’s happening?” He mumbled.

  “Um... A couple of those fast-movers are messing with the dump truck.”

  Jake froze. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Wish I was. They got the door open… Now one of them just fumbled his way up into the cab… He’s just sitting there, looking at the steering wheel.”

  Cho was glaring at him inquisitively, so Jake filled her in and her eyes got wider. “Can I panic now? Because this seems like a good time to panic. God, I can feel one of my funny turns coming on.”

  “Nobody panic.” Jake insisted, trying to radiate calm even though his own insides were shaking like Jell-o. “Okay. So they opened a door. That doesn’t mean they’d remember how to drive a car, let alone a dump truck. I don’t know if even I could drive a dump truck right off the bat, and I’m not a half-rotted corpse. It doesn’t matter if these new zombies are a little more together than the rest, they—”

  And, of course, that was when they all heard the distinctive sound of a dump truck starting up.

  Kat turned towards him. “Hanashi o yameru! Stop talking! Gods below, you can’t say things like that out loud and not expect the universe to make them happen, just to screw with you!”

  “Elle! What’s it doing?” he called into the mike.

  “I think—Leo! Stop cringing, sweetie. They can’t see us in here. I think old General Hess is about to get a real surprise.” The blonde soldier replied. “You’re going to want to see this...”

  * * *

  When the dump truck rumbled through the gap, grinding and jerking haphazardly as it scraped against the plate-steel covered trucks comprising Langley’s impromptu zombie barrier, the soldiers outside didn’t know what to make of it. At first, some few believed the survivors within were ineptly trying to block the gate and seal the mass of dead outside. That didn’t make any sense though, since there were yet more creatures behind it. Not as many as currently staggered ravenously towards them, but still a large number none the less. A few of them could see the driver within vaguely. It seemed as if the operator was having a great deal of trouble remembering how to work the shifter, and nearly stalled the large vehicle several times as they fought for the correct gear.

  As they continued battling the siege however, the truck managed to finally clear the blockade and began chugging its way towards them. It pushed aside a good number of barrels, and even rolled over quite a few of the witless dead as it slowly approached, but there seemed to be quite a number of the creatures massing behind it. Almost as if they were sheltering behind the truck in an attempt to avoid catching a bullet in the brain. But that couldn’t be the case. Zombies didn’t possess that much intelligence. They weren’t even self-aware, let alone have the tactical presence of mind to form complex strategies.

  At least, that’s what the invaders believed until the truck had covered nearly half of the distance between the wall and their position.

  The driver was most assuredly one of the dead. That would have been evident from the greyish tone of his hands, neck, and face alone. The clincher was the fact that—as the truck drew closer and began to build momentum—many of Hess’s men saw half of the creature’s face had been chewed away. The thing’s nasal cavity gaped horribly beside its single, milky eye. The other socket held nothing but a writhing mass of blowfly larvae, determinedly trying to find some small bit of nourishing matter amidst the poisonous wreckage that comprised the left side of the zombie’s face. Upper and lower teeth were displayed starkly in the gaping hole that was once its cheek, given access to the light of day thanks to the skin being torn away when the man was killed by one of the dead long prior as well. No, there was no doubt about it: the dump truck’s operator was a zombie.

  Such a revelation passed through the assembled RUST forces like a Godzilla sized ice bucket challenge. Grown men, battle-hardened soldiers who’d been fighting zombies for months without blinking an eye, felt terror clench icily in their guts. If ever there were a reason for a person’s sanity to go swooping away with the swallows, being attacked by corpses with cognitive abilities was surely quite high on the list.

  None of them ran in the face of that horror, because there was simply nowhere to run to. After the last battle at Fort Leonard Wood, a large number of defenders had to be euthanized. So many were lost during that long fight. So very many. Fully a third of General Hess’s soldiers had become infected by even the smallest bite. It wasn’t necessary for one of the creatures to take a chunk out of you. Breaking through the skin was enough. Luckily only bites, and not scratches, seemed to begin the transformation from human to—as one of the base doctors had termed it—Mortuis Erectus. Quite literally “the upright dead”. It was very possible to die from some kind of bacteria from a mere scratch though. Zombies didn’t practice infection control, or even feel the need to wash their hands, for that matter, and common microbes weren’t able to get a foothold in their flesh. They wouldn’t have cared if one did anyway. If their hand
s were coated in long-congealed blood, body fluids, dried bits of organs, or even feces, what did it matter? They were dead.

  Rounds began peppering the windshield as the attackers attempted to halt the big truck by taking out its driver. Bullets blew through into the cab, turning the creature’s torso into a wet nest of ball ammunition and runny flesh, but it drove on. None of the rounds scored a head-shot, and there was nothing else that would put a zombie down for good, so on the truck came.

  “Damn!” Jake exclaimed as the truck closed on the line of men firing at it, and its followers. “It’s actually going to reach them! I thought for sure that thing would’ve driven off the dam before now. Or at least into the retaining wall.”

  Kat was watching the spectacle with a broad smile. “Hey, every one of those douche-bags the zombies chomp is one less we might have to fight! I agree, I hate to be root for one of those things, but go you stinky bastard! Go! Go! G—”

  Then the enormous cannon riding on the monster MATTOC’s back fired.

  It was almost comical the way the dump truck seemed to jump into the air as a 105mm shell impacted against its engine block, and then exploded. Most of the cab was reduced to so many bits of flying scrap metal. Some quite large, as Jake learned, because one easily eighteen-inches wide and over thirty long, speared through the tower’s lip to stick vibrating in the barrier between his and Kat’s surprised faces.