“There’s a mob of them at the back door,” Tony objected. “You’ll get munched.”
One of the soldiers lifted her machine gun and patted the magazine. “I think we’ll be all right.”
They hustled up the stairs and through the doors we’d left open.
“God help ’em.” Tony pulled me along again, dodging around the civilians that seemed to have lost the ability to do anything besides run around screaming. “People are going apeshit. You really didn’t hear anything?”
“No, those walls are damned thick…three hours?”
“At least.” He let go of my bicep and clapped his arm around me. “Aren’t you glad I came to rescue you?”
“Not really.”
He pulled me to the right, past a blazing, stumbling thing that might have been alive or dead. I lifted the pistol, only to be jerked away through the makeshift gate that separated the medical plaza from Sector Seven. “Hammond’s got the science building locked down. I’ll drop you there.”
That made sense; the place had a cafeteria and food stores, along with a separate generator. I assumed it was stout enough to hold up through a protracted siege. “And then what?”
“Then you hang out behind cement walls and big guns, and I go find out what the fuck happened to Hastings. Hopefully it’s just busted equipment.” His grip on my shoulder tightened enough to cut off the circulation, making my elbow tingle. “We’re gonna need a shitload of help after this.”
Elderwood didn’t have any sort of evacuation plan, and its layout had grown increasingly jumbled as Hammond took in more and more survivors. Sector Seven had once been a courtyard of some sort, and save a few tents, it was largely bereft of any signs of human habitation. Tony switched on a flashlight and navigated through the maze, and I did my best to ignore the screams from behind us—Sector Five, I thought. Where we kept the families.
We passed into Sector Fourteen, my particular tent city. “Wait,” I said, trying to sprint off to the left. “I want my gun.”
“You have a gun.”
“I want my big gun.” Before we’d bugged out of Astra, I’d inadvertently shot a member of the Ventra gang with what Tony told me was a restored assault rifle from World War II. I had clung to the old gun since then, even taking it with me when processing split up our sad little trio. I couldn’t bring it into the medical facility with me on a daily basis, but I for damn sure wasn’t going to leave it in my tent while the undead rampaged through camp.
Tony swore and changed direction, following me through smoke and floating bits of debris. The air quality in the Midlands Cluster was crappy on a good day; how we hadn’t all keeled over from lung disease or simple suffocation remained a mystery to everyone. The fires made it all the worse, and I breathed shallowly, trying not to wheeze.
Two tents down, we came across a corpse feasting on a motionless body. Tony let go of my hand long enough to lean over it. “Shit, that’s Luh. He was on gate duty when I left.”
And now Luh was a zombie. Things change fast these days.
Tony sighed. “Go get your gun. I’ll take care of him.”
After stuffing my pistol into its holster, I fumbled through the blackness of my tent, yelping as I banged my knees on the side of my bed. I grabbed the frame and felt underneath it. My hands closed around the stock, and I slid the heavy gun out. Thank God.
Something moved behind me.
I froze. It was probably too much to hope it was my roommate.
“Gussie?”
Something heavy smashed into my back, and I let out an inadvertent screech as I toppled forward onto the bed. Cold fingers plucked at my hair, jerking my head back to expose my neck and shirt. I heard the distinctive snap sound of a ghoul’s jaw shutting. My shirt collar briefly tightened around my neck, then tore away.
I dove to the left, waiting for pain that never came. No blood. Did it get me? No blood. Zombie in my tent. Freakin’ A.
The ghoul batted at me, long fingers grazing my cheekbone. I couldn’t see much in the poor light; just a dim shape outlined by long, ragged hair. Shit. “Augusta?”
She made chewing noises. Was she chewing on a chunk of my shirt? I shifted the rifle to my right hand and felt along my neck with the left. No bites, no blood. Phew. A little bit of luck.
Granted, I was still standing in the darkness with a ravenous fiend from some hitherto unknown layer of hell, but I was pretty sure I could deal with that.
She kept chewing on the bit of fabric. I reached down beside the bed and found my flashlight, then flicked it on.
Augusta cringed away from the light in one of those freakishly human motions the doctors hadn’t figured out. No one was sure whether there was still some vague pupil reaction we just couldn’t see, or if the ghouls held on to some sort of memory that prompted the flinch.
“Augusta,” I whispered. Fuck. This isn’t fair. I liked Augusta. We’d always talked about getting nachos once this whole apocalypse finally wound down. “Oh, Augusta…”
I stuck the butt of the flashlight under my arm, keeping it trained on her face. Move. Move. Move before you freeze up. There’s no time to process things when you’re faced with someone you knew—that’s when they get you, while you’re standing there mourning.
I switched off the rifle’s safety and lined her up, my elbows starting to quiver. I had to do this fast, before I lost my nerve. “Gussie, I’m so damn sorry about this,” I whispered, trying not to see the woman I’d known. “I’m sorry the boys kept crashing in here. No manners.”
She lurched forward, hands outstretched.
I unloaded a round into her head.
Tony burst in, pistol at the ready. “What happened?”
“I took care of it.” I stared down at her, trying to figure out how she’d died in the first place. Her thermal shirt and trousers had a fair amount of blood on them, but it could have belonged to anyone. “Hammond shouldn’t have sent her to the fence. She couldn’t shoot for shit…”
My eyes stung. I wiped my face against my sleeve.
Tony squeezed my shoulder. “C’mon, Vibby.”
There really isn’t a good time to cry once the dead get up and walk. I picked up my backpack and began shoving in my belongings, which really only amounted to a second thermal shirt, a tank top, clean socks, pistol magazines, gas mask, and a handful of granola bars. I threw on my leather riding jacket, then reached under my pillow for the two boxes of ammo Tony had procured for my rifle.
We hustled out of my tent and got back on the narrow walkway that led between the camp sectors. I felt a hell of a lot better with my big, heavy assault rifle clenched in my hands, though I jumped when anything raced past me. Running is good. Running means they’re alive…I think. Soldiers shouted into walkie-talkies, and civilians who still had their heads on straight were fanning out, taking down what they could.
The overhead lighting flickered. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared up at the military-issued lamps that had kept the lights on during the increasingly cold nights. Tony looked up as well, and his grip on my wrist tightened when the lights dimmed again. “Shit. I hope those stay on.”
Fighting the undead when you can see them is one thing. Fighting them in the darkness is a whole new kind of hell. “Me too,” I said. “Let’s go.”
THREE
We found Hammond and at least two hundred of his soldiers gathered outside what had once been the school science building. The doctors had holed up in here to study the plague, the ash, and everything else in our unsettling new world, leaving nurses and former EMTs like me to function as the primary caregivers. I’d never actually been inside the building; for all I knew, they’d given up on pinpointing treatments and were boozing it up while they still could. I wouldn’t put it past Doctor Long, the lone gynecologist on staff.
“McKnight, what the hell are you doing here?” Hammond shouted over the steady roar of machine guns. “Get your ass to Hastings!”
“Just came here to drop off the little miss,
sir.”
The general turned to me. I’d been hoping for a reassuring smile, but with blood smeared down the front of his uniform and hundreds of spent shells scattered around the area, he looked more like an extra in a bad zombie movie than an authoritative officer.
Oh, wait. We were living the bad zombie movie.
The general beckoned to me. “Vibeke, you get inside. We’re laying down fire, and in the morning we’re going to—” The lights dimmed dramatically, and we all looked up.
The lights flared back on, illuminating a crescent-shaped gash along the general’s neck. Oh, shit. All other thoughts flew out of my head, and I reached for him. “General, you’re bit—”
He struck my hand aside. “I’m aware. I’ll slap some Neosporin on it once we clean this up.”
Neosporin’s effectiveness is greatly diminished when the wound in question is a jagged chunk of missing flesh, but he already knew that. “Better make that hydrogen peroxide,” I said.
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get on inside. I’ve got one bird we managed to clean up enough to get off the ground. If we clear the area we should be able to dump some napalm on ’em and call it a night.”
“Bad idea,” Tony said. “You saw what came out of Astra. You dump napalm on them and they’ll just be…well, zombies on fire.”
“Something came out of Astra?” I asked. This was all news to me. “What came out of Astra?”
“Not asking for your opinion, McKnight,” Hammond said, ignoring my question. “Drop off the lady and get to Hastings. Odds are any brigands you’d run into are already here. Might clear the way for you.”
The grim expression on his face belied the hopeful tone of his voice.
Tony started hauling me toward the building.
The ground rocked, and red fire seared the air in front of us. I flailed around, nearly falling over. Tony wrenched me backward, and I wound up pinned to the ground underneath him. Crumbled asphalt ground into my cheek.
“Hold position!” Hammond bellowed at his soldiers. “Hold fucking position before—”
Scarlet light flooded the steps of the science center. “Stay down,” Tony barked in my ear. “Stay down!”
I flung my left arm up, trying to shield my face and eyes from the heat. Red fire. Red fire. What does that mean? The earth bucked underneath me. We’d all gotten used to relatively frequent tremors after the meteors came calling, but this felt more like a full-on quake than the muted complaints of the planet.
I lifted my head and squinted through the smoking, burning haze. “Shit,” I croaked. “What was that?”
“No!” Hammond bellowed into a walkie-talkie. “No, I said Sector Eight is infested, this we have under control, you’re shooting at us, dammit!”
Something shrieked by overhead, and the science building shuddered, spewing a jet of cement and rebar our way. I yelped when little chunks nailed my hands, burning my skin. Tony gasped and cringed against me. Shit. He must have been taking the brunt of it.
“Cease fire!” Hammond shouted through the uproar. “I said cease fire!”
I tried to scoot backward, but Tony’s weight held me in place. Building’s under fire…that means I need to get out of here. No way was I hanging around while they decided to demolish the place.
SHOOM! Another rocket soared by overhead, embedding itself in the front doors. I flung my head back down as fractured glass fountained over the perimeter, drawing shrieks from some of the unfortunate sorts it skewered. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Sharp pain jabbed through my left hand, and my eyes popped back open. I lifted my head long enough to make out a bloody cut along the back of my hand, but not much else. Well, that’s not good.
“Ashton’s not responding,” Hammond shouted at his soldiers. “I don’t know who’s in that damn tank. Swarm it, knock it out, protect that building—”
Hundreds of booted feet moved out, crunching over bits of broken construction material and stepping around wounded comrades. Tony was still half on top of me, coughing violently. I felt around and grabbed his sleeve. “Tony. Tony, the tank’s shooting at us. Time to go.”
He rolled off me and rose slowly to his knees, looking utterly ghastly in the red light. “Bikers don’t know how to use tanks,” he said.
“Apparently these do!” I made myself get to my knees, ignoring the eruptions of pain along my back and legs. I grabbed Tony’s shoulder and shook him roughly, my blood spilling onto his leather jacket. “We gotta go. Come on. Don’t make me carry you.”
“You couldn’t carry me if your life depended on it.”
“Suck it. I carried bigger men than you in college.” Actually, I hadn’t, but I’d faked courage for too long to quit now. “Get up!”
We scrambled away from the science building, away from the overturned humvees and sprawled bodies. One of them reached out, and old habit forced me to stop and kneel down next to the soldier. “Where are you hurt?” I asked, pretending not to see the sucking chest wound.
The soldier leaned toward me and opened his mouth as if to whisper…and then his jaws snapped shut on my bicep.
Holy shit, I really am getting stupid. My heavy jacket dulled the immediate punch, but I felt the pressure around my muscle. I fumbled for the rifle, for my pistol, oh shit not now—
The ghoul’s head snapped back as a bullet discharged, and I immediately jerked away, checking my arm for punctures. The jacket had held, although I’m sure it would have given way if he’d kept gnawing on me.
Tony stooped down to pry the dead man’s pistol and some clips out of his belt. “These might come in handy,” he said. “Thanks, Private.”
He didn’t mention my near-fatal gaffe. I decided that meant he was either worried about something else, or else distracted by as-yet-undisclosed wounds.
I almost hoped for the latter if it would shut him up for a little bit.
The roar of a third—or was it fourth?—shell sounded overhead, and the bright streak of light shot past the science building. It detonated somewhere in the back, shooting flames and debris a good seventy feet into the air. Hot air blasted my face, and I was pretty sure blood was trickling down my nose. I wiped it aside in a hurry, watching the fire stretching toward the heavens. “Hammond said they were shooting at the building,” I said, just in case Tony had missed that part of the conversation. “He went to stop them…”
Tony nodded, similarly transfixed. He shook himself free, though, and stuffed the pistol and its ammo into his backpack. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Hastings.”
I don’t know how I got my legs to even move, much less run. But you learn certain things in the course of trying to stay alive—you learn how to ignore pain and fatigue, or at least funnel them away to deal with later. I held onto my rifle and pounded after Tony, willing to let him pick a path through the twisting, flame-lit confines of Elderwood Refugee Camp.
We passed burning tents and melee combat, men and women fighting with the undead or each other—it got hard to tell in this sort of lighting. We wound through living quarters and exercise areas, crunching over shell casings, broken bits of belongings, and military equipment. A toy robot’s head rolled off when I stumbled over it, disappearing into a partially collapsed outhouse.
By the time we’d left Astra, the city was largely abandoned. We didn’t have to see what happened when the revenants came across hundreds of living people, didn’t have to see what happened when order broke down into utter chaos.
The universe, of course, couldn’t let that stand. I couldn’t blame this on the meteors or general human asshattery; this was all on the zombies.
Sector Twelve housed the single men, and like the military areas, it seemed largely abandoned. Tony picked his way through the tents, swinging around at every noise. “All right, let’s just head this way. Processing was under lockdown, maybe it’s safer there…”
“Wait!” Dax’s shout was a welcome sound, though I realized he was s
printing toward us from the direction of processing. A small, panting golden retriever was hot on his heels.
“Processing’s gone,” he said. My heart twisted—or maybe that was my lungs, struggling to get some air that wasn’t coated with ash and heat. “I just came from there. They tried to set up a blockade…”
Considering the fact that he was carrying his backpack and was all the way over here, the blockade probably hadn’t been terribly effective. I reached a hand out to the dog. “Hey, Evie,” I said, holding out a hand to her.
She whined and tucked her tail between her hind legs.
Tony looked around, then focused his attention on Dax. “There’s no way through?”
Dax shook his head. “I was heading to the science building. Lieutenant Reyes said we were supposed to retreat there…” He stared nervously over our shoulders at the inferno we’d left behind. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Tony said. “Hammond wanted to barbecue.”
Dax looked at me.
“Brigands got the tank,” I said. “They’re shelling the science building. We were just there.”
“Well,” Tony amended, “we’re assuming they’re brigands. If the zombies have figured out how to use heavy artillery, we might as well give up.”
Dax looked between the two of us, his blue eyes enormous. “Then what the hell are you doing?”
I looked at Tony. What were we doing?
“I need to get to Hastings, and I’m not leaving you two here to be zombie chow.” Tony jerked his head toward the darkness outside Sector Twelve. “Back gate’s that way.”
Dax’s mouth fell open. “We can’t just leave in the middle of—”
Another concussion made the air shake, and huge flames leaped upward from the center of camp. The flickering overhead lamps switched off at once, and for a few seconds, everything grew quiet.
Then the screams began.
“I’m going to Hastings,” Tony barked, “and if they’re still around, they’re going to send soldiers, because we’re going to be lucky if half of ours haven’t been turned into a midnight snack. You can come along, unless you’d rather hang out here with the fences down and a horde after you.”
Death and Biker Gangs (Grave New World) Page 4