I winced. Bad question, John, I thought to myself.
“Well,” she began, venom injecting into her voice. “We would if we had enough ammunition. However, since our neighbors are hoarders, we have to get creative. Besides, we have two fences surrounding us.”
I rolled my eyes and turned my head to look out the window. I ignored her passive-aggressive jabs, as they were pointless. If Brinn had the most weapons and ammunitions, they’d want to keep it to themselves too. She couldn’t blame us. Besides, Jefferson Memorial was much closer to Dallas then Brinn, which meant more zombies. Of course, I didn’t argue with her, though. It would’ve been pointless, as I wouldn’t be able to change her mind, and thanks to my headache I didn’t feel like talking, much less arguing.
We continued driving, and the roads did get smoother like Mila said they would. I noticed more and more zombies wandering around the sides of the road, walking in the direction we were driving.
“Looks like they’re headed the same place we are,” Daniel said.
Mila took her eyes off the road, and looked at the zombies that we passed. She returned her attention to in front of her. She tightened her grip on the wheel. “It’s fine,” she said. Her eyes darted around the road. “It’s nothing we can’t handle.”
There were about twenty behind us who began to follow our car. I could see a couple every few hundred feet until I couldn’t see past the curve of the road.
“It looks as if their numbers are getting thicker,” Daniel said as he leaned into the front seat and pointed.
Mila said nothing. She pulled up the center console of the Range Rover and retrieved a large black walkie-talkie. “We should be in range by now,” she said as she took her hands off the wheel for a split second to turn it on. “Come in, Brinn Base, come in. This is M-Squared, copy, over.”
Static.
“Come in, Brinn Base, this is M-Squared, over,” she said again.
More static.
“Brinn Base, come in, over.” Fear crept into her voice.
“Are you sure we’re in range?” I asked, praying she’d say yes.
She nodded. “I’m sure, but Sean might not have his walkie on. He’s a bit all over the place,” she said with a nervous chuckle.
“Typical Sean,” John said with a sarcastic tone and an exaggerated eye roll. I appreciated his attempt at lightening the mood, but it didn’t do much.
We continued our drive in silence, everyone’s eyes peeled to the road, watching as the zombies numbers grew.
Mila turned on the radio again, and pushed the button to talk. “Brinn Base, this is M-Squared, please come in, over.”
Static.
And then it stopped. Someone on the other side pressed the button.
“He-hello?” the voice of a young boy said in a whisper so full of fear, it made me go cold.
Mila pressed the button. “Hello?!” she shouted. “Hello? Who is this? What’s going on?”
“Is this Mila?” the voice asked in a whisper.
“Paulo? Paulo, is that you?” Mila’s voice shook. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel tighter. She had just as bad of a feeling about this as I did.
“Mila,” Paulo said as quiet as he could be. He began to cry, but tried doing so without being heard. “I think they heard you.”
Static.
“Paulo?” Mila shouted. “PAULO!” She screamed as loud as she could.
Julia screamed from the backseat, Mila’s shouting having woken her. I turned in my seat to look at her. She had been sitting in the middle of the middle row.
“Guys?” she said, her voice groggy from having been so suddenly woken from her painkiller slumber. She raised her right hand and pointed out the windshield. “That’s a shit-ton of zombies.”
The car slammed to a halt, the tires screeching. I turned around quickly to see what was going on. About a mile away, I could see Brinn and its bunched-up buildings that once were the town-square of the small town of Horst.
And about a hundred zombies spread out that had brought down the first layer of their chain-link fence, and were working on the second.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“THERE’S a back entrance through an old newspaper building we can go through, but we’re going to have to be quiet,” Mila said.
“No shit,” I mumbled under my breath. She shot me a look, but I ignored it.
We sat in the vehicle, a little ways off the road, away from the zombies. The ones meandering down the road were too focused on the congregation building around Brinn to worry about a Range Rover sitting in an old church parking lot, watching the commotion.
“What about us?” Peter mumbled, but he sounded a little more sober than earlier. The mass of zombies caused him to come to his senses little by little, the pain meds wearing off.
I turned and look at Rachel. “You alright with staying here with Pete and Julia?”
“Leave me a gun and the keys in the ignition, and I will be,” she said.
“Of course,” I told her.
Mila inspected her pistol, making sure it was loaded. “Alright, we’ll get out and walk to the back. We just have to go up two blocks, then down three. There’s an old newspaper building that’s sealed up, but once we get in we’ll just have to walk out the front door and we’ll be inside Brinn.”
I nodded my head in recognition. I inspect my assault rifle, making sure its silencer was on tight. I turned to Daniel and John. “You two ready?”
Daniel nodded his head, and ran his fingers through his blond hair. “Ready.”
“Let’s do this,” John said.
I turned to Mila. “Lead the way, Captain.”
Mila ignored my comment and got out of the car. I did the same, being sure to shut the door as quietly as I could.
John got out and stood next to me. Rachel climbed into the driver’s seat, and Daniel leaned up to give her a kiss before he got out and joined us.
A pang of jealousy rushed through me, but I forced myself to ignore them. Now’s not the time, I told myself. But still, my mind couldn’t help but wander to Ashley.
We walked up the street, the warm summer wind kicking up leaves as it blew against our faces. The street was empty of cars, and the buildings lining it that were once quaint Mom and Pop stores or laundromats or other things such as that, were now boarded-up structures, nothing more than four walls and a roof.
We stayed close to the building, and walked in a bunched-up group. I could hear the zombies moaning and the fence rattling in the distance, but there were none in sight. I could definitely smell them, though. The stench of hot, rotting flesh filled my nostrils. It was a smell that I was very familiar with, but never could quite get used to it. The worst part about it probably wasn’t the smell itself, but just knowing where it was coming from. The fact that creatures that were once everyday human beings were now the source of such an awful stench made me feel nauseous more than anything.
When we reached the end of one of the blocks, Mila turned left down an alleyway almost wide enough to be its own street. We continued sneaking; I tightened the grip on my gun as the zombie moans seemed to get louder.
We passed by gap in the two buildings that had a long alleyway that led to the part of the town that was re-purposed as Brinn. I looked through the double chain-link fence that sat bolted to the buildings on either side in the middle of the alleyway, and to the fence on the far side, where the zombies stood. A few of them pushed on it, determined to get in. Most of them wandered around the alley between the two fences, however, searching for any sign of a human to devour.
After a bit more walking, Mila stopped at a tall trash dumpster that sat in front of a three-story brown brick building that I assumed was the old newspaper headquarters. The cement between the bricks were cracked, and the windows spread throughout the outside were all boarded up.
“Help me push this,” Mila said barely above a whisper.
John, Daniel, and myself all got next to Mila and together w
e pushed the dumpster with ease. It made a large scraping noise as we pushed it across the concrete. I winced at how heavy? it was. I looked over my shoulder, making sure nothing heard it, but the alleyway was empty, save for us and the twisting leaves.
Once the dumpster was out of the way, I could see that it had been concealing a green wooden door. Mila reached into her pocket and pulled out a set of keys with slight shaking hands. After missing the keyhole a couple of times, she finally got the key in there, turned it, and twisted the knob, pushing the squeaking door open.
We entered the building. I closed the door behind me when I came in, as I was last. The room was small and dark, and Mila was already exiting it through a door to her left. She turned to the right, down the hallway, and we all followed. We walked down a short hallway, and into a large open room that I figured once housed many desks behind which reporters would write their stories.
Now, however, the room was empty. The sunlight that filtered through the large windows in the front reflected off the thick, black pools of liquid that covered most of the cement floor.
“What is that?” I asked Mila, hoping this was some sort of trap that her people had set up.
She didn’t respond. Her mouth hung open, a reply dangling from her tongue, but she couldn’t speak. I took that as a I have no idea.
She took a step forward, but jumped back when her foot stepped on something. I looked to see what it was, and saw that it was a broken walkie-talkie, identical to the one she’d used earlier.
She bent down to pick it up, the strange black substance sticking to the device.
“Be careful,” I told her. If she didn’t know what the black stuff was, it was probably best to not be handling it without any protection.
She inspected the walkie-talkie. “Danny,” she said.
“Who?”
“Danny.” She walked over to me and showed me the name Danny engraved into the side of the walkie-talkie. “This is his.”
“Okay,” I began. “So where is he then?”
“Yeah, where is everybody? Are they hiding in some other buildings?”
Mila looked around for a sign of anybody. “I-I don’t know. They should all be in here. If there’s ever a lot of zombies, we’re supposed to hide in here out of sight, and they’ll usually leave after a while. That away if something were to happen, they can escape out the back door if we get overwhelmed.”
“So maybe that’s what happened,” Daniel said. “Maybe they’ll all got out.”
“Maybe,” Mila said. Her eyes looked upon the floor. “But the dumpster was blocking the door, and the window next to it was still boarded. Someone would’ve had to climb out and unblock the door if everybody were to escape.”
“So what are you trying to say?” I asked.
“That we need to find someone and figure out what’s going on. I have a bad feeling about all of this.” Mila put Danny’s walkie-talkie in her pants, next to her own. “Come on, let’s go search some of the other buildings before the zombies get in.” She began to walk across the floor, stepping into the black, sticky substance that coated it.
I cautiously took a step forward. The black stuff felt sticky beneath my boots, but didn’t melt through them or anything, so it seemed to be harmless. I took another step, and then another, until finally, I was on the other side.
I turned and saw Daniel and John crossing it with ease, although they had the same worried look on their faces that I imagined I had on my own.
I turned to face Mila, who pushed opened the front door to the building. The sounds of moaning zombies and rattling fences filled my ears, and the stench of death bombarded my nose.
“Try not to draw any attention to yourself,” Mila said. “Don’t want to agitate the zombies.”
“Yeah, I know. This isn’t my first rodeo,” I said, taking slight offense.
Mila rolled her eyes and exited the building. I followed close behind and stepped onto the streets of Brinn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I RAISED my hands up to block the sun from my eyes as they slowly adjusted to the sunlight.
“Hey, get your hand out of your face and get your gun up,” Mila said.
I gritted my teeth and pulled my assault rifle up to my shoulder, but kept the barrel pointing toward the ground. I looked around Brinn, and besides the zombies banging on the fence, all seemed normal. In the middle of the settlement was the town courthouse. Five stories tall with Roman pillars holding up a large porch roof that covered a set of steep stairs, the courthouse looked incongruous in the small town. It was surrounded on all sides by different stores and service centers, with a two-lane road surrounding it that snaked to the rest of the town. The fences of Brinn just blocked off the roads leading in and out of the town square.
We walked toward the courthouse, which, from the little information on Brinn I knew, was the main hub of the small settlement. We crossed the parking lot to the courthouse where a couple of cars, SUVs, and trucks sat parked. I scanned the area, looking for any sign of life. But all I could see—and smell—was the dead.
“Mila?” a voice to my left said as I walked by a black pick-up.
I jumped back and pulled my gun up, the voice having startled me.
“Put your damn guns down!” Mila shouted at us.
I turned and saw that Daniel had his up too, while John had his up halfway. I nodded my head and we lowered our guns. The person was obviously a citizen of Brinn.
“What’s happening, Sean?” Mila asked.
The guy climbed out of the back of the truck, and wiped some sweat off his buzzed head. “It was crazy,” he said as he leaned against the side of the truck. His eyes staring into space, his face filled with fear. “These…things. Monsters, something. They were black. Blacker than black. They were…” he looked at Mila, shaking his head. “I don’t even know. Everybody went to the newspaper, and they were in there, waiting.”
Mila motioned for him to continue. “Come on, Sean. Talk to me.” She put a hand on his shoulder, and looked into his eyes. Her expression was warm and inviting. “What happened?”
He shook his head. “They came out of nowhere, and…enveloped everybody. They all just…” He struggled to find the words, but when he did, my insides went icy. “They melted. Turned into black ink stuff.” Sean’s voice cracked and he fought back the tears. “I was running behind, and watched it all happen through the windows.” He couldn’t hold back any longer. He let a torrent of tears begin to flow. “I couldn’t stop them! I couldn’t save them!”
Mila wrapped him in her arms, and pulled him close. “Shh,” she said. “Shh, it’ll be okay.” She comforted him, stroking his hair. “You would’ve ended up like the rest of them; it’s not your fault.
I turned and looked back at the newspaper building, where the massacre happened. It had to have been the atras. There wasn’t much else it could be. My thoughts went back to the first and last time I encountered the monstrous creatures. I remembered they couldn’t survive in the sunlight, so I was comforted by the sun beating down on us.
Then I remembered what happened the last time. Pike was gunned down, and I was forced to kill those people. My stomach twisted at the memory, and I tried to push it away. It wouldn’t leave, though. The image of Pike’s face with its empty, dead eyes engraved itself into my mind and wouldn’t go.
“Do you know where they are now?” I heard Daniel ask. I turned back to the group.
Sean pointed a shaky finger toward the courthouse. “There’s three of them, from what I could tell,” he said in a weak voice. “They only traveled in the shadows, though. I’m not sure why.”
“If they’re in the sunlight, they’ll die,” I told him.
“You’ve seen these creatures before?” Mila asked, looking at me with accusing eyes.
“Yeah,” I told her. “I ran into them for the first time just a few days ago. It was a lot more then three of them, too. They got into the sunlight and turned into bubbling liquid.” I left out the
part about going back and seeing the Xenomortis and zombies go into where the atras had been. I figured now wasn’t the time to start giving her the lowdown. We needed to get out of there first, and fast.
“So then, we’re safe right here?” Mila asked. “You’re sure they’re sensitive to the sun.”
I nodded. “Pretty sure. Still, we’re not exactly safe. We need to get out of here before either the zombies break down the last fence, or the atras discover we’re here. They may not be able to get us while we’re in the sunlight, but we don’t know what all they can do. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
“Okay,” Mila said as she nodded her head. “I agree. We need to get out of here as fast as possible.” She turned to Sean. “Will you be okay?”
He nodded his head.
“You sure you’re—” she stopped herself. Her voice quivered but she cleared her throat, trying to cover it up. “You’re the only…”
Sean nodded his head again. “I was the only one. I just…I was just running behind and—”
“Hey,” Mila said. She leaned down so she could look Sean in the eyes. “It’ll be okay. Everything will be alright.”
Sean nodded his head. I stood there, amazed. I couldn’t believe how well Mila was appearing to take this all. The only explanation was that she was trying to be strong for Sean, and I admired her greatly for that.
Mila turned to look at us. “There’s an alley we can run down that should have sunlight. We’ll have to hop the fences and then sneak around the back to go back the way we came,” she said.
“Then what?” John asked.
Mila opened her mouth but didn’t answer.
“Then we’ll go back to the car dealership and figure it out from there,” I said, giving John a sideways look that told him now was not the time.
“Let me grab my bag,” Sean said, wiping snot from his face. He walked around to the back of the truck, and climbed into the bed.
“Which alleyway are we going down?” I asked Mila.
She raised a finger to point, but before she could speak, there was a loud banging noise.
The Mortis Desolation (Book 1): Mortis Page 7