Thuy jabbed the gun again, this time into his chest. In a clear, calm voice she said: “Get out when the Jeep stops, or I will shoot. I want to impress upon you that I am serious. Do you believe that I am?”
They stared into each other’s eyes until the mayor looked away and said in a dry voice: “Yes.” For the first time he wore an honest expression. For the first time he wasn’t a snake of a politician. For the first time he was a real person in real pain.
Even Thuy softened. “We’ll find him a better spot to let him out,” she said.
Only, there wasn’t a better spot. Fires had begun in many buildings where people were out of ammo and desperate. Where there weren’t fires there were screams and gunshots, and the streets were filled with roving battalions of dead. With so few actual people left, the zombies were now suffering from ferocious hunger and their strength and speed seemed to have increased, something Thuy didn’t think was possible.
Deckard’s face was hot with sweat as he jerked them all over the road. “Does anyone have any ideas on how to get out of here? I can’t drive around all night.” He glanced into the rearview mirror at Thuy when he said this, knowing that if anyone had an idea of getting out of the city, it would be her.
“You’re going the right way,” she told him. “Keep on this road until you come to Scarborough Street. We’ll get out there.”
“Out?” Stephanie asked in a whisper. “I thought we were just talking about the mayor getting out. Y-you don’t mean all of us, right?” She certainly hoped that it would be just the mayor. With the setting sun, the streets had become a nightmare, and judging by the mass of shooting going on beyond the wall, the 82nd was still in place, holding back the hordes.
Thuy patted her leg, hoping to calm the woman. “Unfortunately, Ms. Glowitz, we can’t drive this vehicle out of the city. We will be killed if we do. However, there are ways out. I suspect these ways are still available to us unless the military is far more thorough than I have given them credit for.”
“But you know these secret ways?” Stephanie asked, trying to remember if Dr. Lee had been from Hartford. As far as she could remember, Dr. Lee had gone to school in New York City. “How can you possibly know any secrets about Hartford?”
“Simple. While I was trapped within the City Hall, I put my time to good use. There is a records room that contains detailed plans of the city and in the northeast of the city, near the University of Hartford, is the north branch of the Park River. As it routinely floods every decade or so, a series of drainage tunnels were built to conduct the overflow on towards the Connecticut River.”
Stephanie felt the fading hope within her begin to swell. There was only one problem. “How big are these tunnels? Are they pipes that we’ll have to crawl through? Or are they bigger?” Please say bigger, please say bigger! she begged internally.
“They have an aperture with a four foot diameter. It’s going to be a bit cramped but we will be able to walk.”
Just as Stephanie began to breathe a sigh of relief, the mayor said: “Those openings are barred. We’ll have to cut them in order to get through and that’ll take time, I mean like twenty or thirty minutes with a hacksaw.”
“Shit,” Stephanie said, spitting out the word in a whisper as hope died within her. They wouldn’t last five minutes out there.
Chuck reached back and put his hand on her knee. “It’ll be alright cuz I will be right next to you. ‘Sides, this flashy piece-a-crap don’t know dick. A gas-powered reciprocating saw can rip through a hunk of rebar in a minute.”
“But we don’t have a gas-powered reciprocating saw, do we?” the mayor asked, throwing his bloody hands in the air. “We don’t even have a normal saw. We’ll never get out that way.”
Thuy glared at him until he sat back. “Don’t make me regret not killing you, because I can remedy the mistake very quickly.” The mayor dropped his gaze and went back to gripping his bleeding leg. When Thuy saw he had been sufficiently cowed, she said: “We passed three hardware stores on the way here. We’ll get saws and flashlights in one of them.”
That was so much easier said than done. It wasn’t as if they could stroll up and down the aisles, picking out whatever they wanted. It was more of a mad scramble mixed with a panicked flight.
The front window of the first hardware store consisted of either jagged razors sticking up in the frame like teeth or thousands of particles that glittered across the pavement when the Jeep’s headlights swept over them. The moment they pulled up, all four doors of the Jeep sprang open. Thuy and Deckard ran for the store, glass crunching under foot, while Chuck went to the driver’s seat and Courtney ran around to bookend the mayor between her and Stephanie.
A second after the rear door closed, Chuck went heavy on the gas, spinning the tires in reverse—already zombies were lurching in towards the store, attracted by the lights and the noise.
Deckard and Thuy stayed low, hiding behind the shelves. Not all of the creatures had given chase. Some were lingering, the sound of glass giving away the fact that they were drawing closer. “This way,” Deckard whispered, pulling her deeper into the store. As they went, they passed all sorts of interesting and necessary items that Thuy paused to grab: painter’s masks, latex gloves, lighters, 16-function hand-sized multi-tools, flashlights and lastly, the reciprocating saw.
It was a bulky thing and heavy. Deckard took it, accidentally knocking over a precariously balanced display of socket wrenches. They came down with a clatter that seemed to go on and on. In seconds, five zombies came charging and Deckard leapt out to meet them.
He had a rifle across his back, but he had less than twenty rounds left in it. As well, he knew it would be loud, only attracting more of the creatures. Besides, he found himself in a building filled with tools perfect for zombie killing. He snatched up a long-handled framing hammer and was ready to start swinging when Thuy stopped him.
“One moment,” she said as she reached up to slip a mask over his face. He wanted to stop for an even longer moment to kiss her, but they were out of time. The first of the creatures was on them. It was a woman…or it had been. Her breasts had been chewed off, along with half her face and most of her fingers. She’d been a big woman and her death had not been easy.
As a zombie she came on, grunting and licking the torn flesh around her mouth where her lips had been. Deckard timed his swing and sunk the head of the hammer an inch deep smack dab in the middle of her forehead. What would have killed any man wasn’t enough to put the zombie down. She wobbled slightly and came on again her fingerless hands stretched out for him, the ends of them ending in shards of bone as dangerous as any tooth.
Leaving the hammer sticking out of her head, Deckard reached for a larger weapon: a four-pound hand sledge. This was overkill and when her head blasted apart under the force of the blow, he was splattered with sloppy wet tissue, all of it squirming with disease.
“Son of a bitch!” he seethed, dropping the hammer, which made a solid clunk on the floor. He needed a weapon that was longer, but just as heavy. He gazed around the dark shop looking for something that would kill with one strike but would also keep him at a safe enough distance to keep him from getting zombie crud all over him.
Shovels hung from the far wall and he was just hurrying to grab one when Thuy presented him with a pick-axe she had found in the gardening section. It had been designed for home use and wasn’t exceptionally heavy and nor was it too long and unwieldy. He gave it a try on the next zombie that came up and was satisfied when the pick went three inches deep into the thing’s cranium with hardly any effort.
It got a little stuck on the way out, but over-all it was a fine weapon for the conditions. With it, he dispatched two more zombies, making a pile at the door over which others began to struggle.
“Hurry, take off your shirt,” Thuy commanded. As he did—going very slowly to keep from touching any of the ugly wads of brains that clung to his clothing—she took one of the shovels off the wall and jabbed it as hard as she could into the
chest of one of the struggling zombies. Then she set the butt of the shovel against one of the checkout stands. The zombie pushed harder and harder against the shovel until the metal had torn through its heart and both lungs. That finally slowed it down and gave them a few minutes of peace.
After spotting another item that would be needed, she hurried back to Deckard and said: “Close your eyes,” then, without waiting for more than a fraction of a second, she began spraying him in the face with an anti-microbial. The chemical smell was horrible and yet, he didn’t complain. In fact, he relished it, hoping the worse the smell, the more effective it was at killing the Com-cells.
When he was wet with the chemicals, she took a paper towel and wiped him down and just when he thought it was safe to breathe, she sprayed him again as an extra precaution.
“Ok…good…thanks,” Deckard said through a chain of coughs.
“I have to be thorough,” Thuy replied, taking his pickaxe and handing over a sweatshirt she had found on a shelf. It had some sort of sexual reference to hammering and nailing printed across the front. “You can’t die, Deck. I’m not going to let you. If you die, I die.”
She smiled up at him, still pretty after three days of fighting. He was certain he looked as sorry as he felt but it was dark and she was leaning closer and closer. He bent down into her and kissed her deeply until she started coughing, waving a hand beneath her nose.
“It’s not you. It’s the chemicals. The fumes are…” She stopped in mid-sentence, her head cocked. The rumble of the Jeep could be heard growing louder. “We are going to finish that kiss, I promise, but survival comes first.”
With a last touch of his arm, she hurried, not toward an exit, but to the far wall, where she took down a new and unbloodied pickaxe and handed it over to him. He took it with a sigh. “I suppose as a consolation prize it could be worse.”
Hitching it over his right shoulder, he led her to the back door just as the Jeep returned, this time running without lights, trying not to arouse so much attention. Stephanie, who wasn’t expecting Thuy and Deckard to come from around the side of the building, almost shot them when they came rushing up grabbing for the doors with blue gloved hands.
Unperturbed by a gun pointed her way, Thuy calmly shoved it away, saying: “It’s just us and we have the saw and more.” Deckard had carried the saw and the pickaxe, while Thuy had lugged two baskets of goods. For a few minutes, the mood in the Jeep was lightened as the group eagerly coated themselves with the anti-microbial spray and munched away on the dozen candy bars Thuy had grabbed.
Everyone received a flashlight, a pair of gloves and a mask. There was even a first aid kit which had very little in it that was much help with the mayor’s wound. Still, the two rolls of gauze and the small stack of 4x4 absorbent pads was better than nothing.
The mood was still running high when they saw the dry ditch that ran to one of the many entrances to the drainage system. Although there were a few of the more dreadfully maimed zombies trapped within the ditch, there wasn’t a single one near the barred entrance.
“A good omen,” Thuy said, despite the fact that she didn’t believe in fortune telling, omens, clairvoyance, or superstition of any sort. Then again, she didn’t believe in the phenomena of zombies, but no matter how many times she called them “infected persons” they were still zombies.
To make a go at the bars, the group decided to change the order of attack: Courtney would drive while Chuck and Deckard went down into the ditch with the saw and the pickaxe. Stephanie and the mayor would conserve their strength in the back of the Jeep, while Thuy would hold one of the M4s trained on the mayor. She didn’t trust him, no matter how pale and listless he had become—earlier, she had aimed the weapon with precision and the wound in his leg, though painful had only gone through muscle and not much muscle at that.
They ghosted up, went through what kids called a “Chinese Fire drill” with everyone switching places. Courtney barely waited for Thuy to get in the front seat before she drove off in a screech of tires and flashing lights. What followed next was harrowing for all of them.
The creatures went for the Jeep. It was shocking to see how many there were. Hundreds just popped up out of nowhere. They came draining out of buildings and crawling from beneath cars. Two minutes before there had only been a handful, now it was a mob scene of the dead.
Seeing them sent a chill up Deckard’s spine and the saw was suddenly slick with sweat. Chuck lifted his head just up over the height of the grass and let out a low whistle. “That’s a shit-ton of zombies. Least ways that Courtney can drive.”
Courtney was banking the Jeep all over the place, doing her best to draw the zombies away without getting cornered and that meant she had to take the Jeep off the smooth streets. Too late, everyone scrambled for their seat belts. In seconds, they were being bounced around so much that Thuy cracked her head on the roof, biting her tongue.
The Jeep drew further and further away, until at last it disappeared. Chuck pointed at Deckard. “It’s now. I’ll keep them off y’all.”
Deckard pushed himself into a squat and hurried forward, bent over at the waist until he reached the opening. Luck seemed to be with them: the bars were spaced eight inches apart; he would have to remove only one. The engine of the saw was loud and the action of the blade on the metal, a howling screech, was even louder.
The zombies heard this and the ones that had been left behind came on in a rush. Deckard could hear their moans even above the saw.
“Y’all better hurry, Deck!” Chuck hissed before he raised the pickaxe and swung at the first of the beasts charging down on him. There were a dozen of them coming at him and if it hadn’t been for the drainage ditch funneling them into a line he would have been overwhelmed and overrun. He swung the axe over and over again. His leathery hands felt the bite of the axe, but they were used to the feel of hard labor, it was his lungs that began to fail him. It wasn’t long before he was gasping for breath.
Deckard glanced once behind him, cursed loudly and then turned back to the saw. He could not cut any faster for fear of snapping the blade. A steady rise of smoke was already coming from it and he knew that if he pressed too hard the blade would break and although he had extras, they would take time to replace.
“Slow and fucking steady,” he said. But he couldn’t go too slowly. Already the Jeep’s horn had gone quiet—Courtney was coming back.
The blade finally ate its way through the upper cut a minute later. By then Chuck was swaying with each swing of the axe and the Jeep was just down the block and finding the street still surprisingly full of zombies.
Without rest, Deckard started making his second cut on the bar as low as he could go. Again, smoke drifted up. The heat generated by the friction of metal on metal slowly warped the blade and Deckard’s fear of breaking the slim metal became reality when the top third of it made a twunk noise and went whirring off into the darkness when he still had a quarter inch to go.
Chapter 21
1— 8:44 p.m.
The Hartford Quarantine Zone
For a good three seconds, Deckard stared in disbelief at the saw before Thuy said softly into his ear: “I have another blade.” He hadn’t known she was there and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Shaken, he glanced back to see the mayor a few feet away, standing on one leg, supported by Stephanie, while further up the ditch Courtney stood just a few feet higher up from Chuck. She had an M4 at her shoulder and was aiming it at the flocking zombies. When she pulled the trigger, it seemed tremendously loud.
There were still hundreds of zombies in the area and at the sound of the gun they came charging even faster, zeroing in on the ditch.
“There’s no time to replace it,” Deckard said, dropping the saw and grabbing the bar with both of his blue-gloved hands. He heaved back, using all the strength in his back, legs, and arms.
“That’ll never wor…” Thuy began, but stopped as the bar began to bend. The heat of the blade had softened the metal. St
ill, it took all of Deckard’s prodigious strength to bend it.
When it was bent, pointing straight at Deckard’s chest, he called to the others: “We’re clear! Pull back.”
They gathered at the entrance, ready and desperately eager to go in. Thuy stood in front of the small opening, blocking it. “I will go first into the tunnel,” she told them. “Try to keep up because I’m not going to slow down. Ms. Glowitz, if the mayor becomes too much for you to handle, leave him behind. Also, you may shoot him if he asks you to or if he becomes a danger.”
The mayor began to splutter noises of indignation, but Thuy didn’t have time for what she considered nonsense. “Chuck, carry the saw and go next. Courtney, I want you after him. Deckard, I want you to take up the rear. Any questions?”
Besides more bluster from the mayor there were none and so Thuy placed the two baskets she had hauled from the Jeep just inside the entrance to the tunnel. She grabbed one of the flashlights and one can of disinfectant, before hurrying down into the pressing dark.
Behind her, Stephanie and the mayor moved awkwardly along because of his wound and her draining strength. To make matters worse, they were both tall and had to walk with a pronounced hunch, which slowed them down even more. In half a minute, Thuy was far ahead, while behind them, practically stepping on their heels were Courtney and Chuck, hissing for them to hurry. At the very rear was Deckard who was stood at the bars shooting into the mass of grey flesh that filled the entrance of the tunnel and crushed up against the remaining bars.
He had no idea what he was shooting at. The creatures blotted out the little light there was from the outside world. The tunnel was black except for the flash of his gun. From its meager source, he saw the last flashlight in the baskets. He snatched it up and beamed it into the mass and was so shocked he took a step back.
Like a sausage grinder, the zombies were being pressed through the bars. Sometimes their heads exploded from the pressure, sending up a geyser of black brains, but a scary percentage came through with their heads elongated or misshapen, but otherwise unaffected.
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 32