by Jake Bible
***
Billy skids to a halt as the night erupts with the sound of the collapsing warehouse. Santiago is up ahead a few feet and he stops as well. They both turn and look back as sparks from the barrel fires inside the warehouse lift up into the night.
“Come on,” Santiago says, jogging back to get Billy. “We have to get to the Stronghold.”
“I know,” Billy says. “It’s just…”
“Yeah, she knew what she was doing,” Santiago says. “We always remember.”
Chapter Five- Avenue Of Nightmares
The sound of a building being slowly crushed by the weight of hundreds of thousands of Zs is not something Val expects to ever forget. It isn’t a massive sound that happens all at once, but a slow build of glass shattering and concrete crashing to the ground.
The beginning is sporadic, the occasional groan of a five story structure stressed past a point it was designed to endure. The groans increase until a window pops then another and another. The glass hitting the ground below does not sound like a poetic tinkling, but like a headache-inducing stab of sharpness.
Then the weak points of the facade crumble. Hunks of old plaster, gutters, ledges weakened by a century of wear and tear without any maintenance. The impacts are sometimes loud cracks, like a gunshot; sometimes wet thunks as they hit the undead below and a skull explodes or shoulder is torn apart.
The images of the building falling apart, quickly eroding by a force of nature that has plagued the planet for over a hundred years, fill Val’s mind. She can see the shards of glass, the chunks of concrete, rain down on the herd that continues to push its way into Denver. She shakes her head and stands, stretching her tired and sore muscles as she walks over to Cole.
“How did there get to be so many?” Cole asks, binoculars pointed east as the sky behind him slowly lightens, turning a deep purple then bright pink. “We’re a century past Z-Day. How can all of these still be around? What the fuck have they been eating?”
“Everything,” Sister says, squatting in a corner of the roof, her leather pants around her ankles.
Cole glances over and doesn’t flinch. Watching a Team Mate drop trou to take a piss is not something unusual. Modesty goes out the window when your job is to kill anything that is a threat to the Stronghold.
“There can’t be that many people left,” Val says.
“Not anymore,” Sister says as she stands and pulls her pants up.
Val can’t help notice the woman has more radiation sores on her legs. Not to mention dozens of nasty looking scars. Sister catches her noticing, but Val doesn’t turn away.
The rest of DTA and DTB1 are stationed at various points on the building’s roof. Except for Alastair who is one floor down, keeping an eye on the wounded and sleeping Tiny D. As the sky continues to brighten, the landscape that is the Denver wasteland becomes more and more visible. As does the destruction that is occurring across the broken city.
“Smoke to the northeast, northwest, and due south,” Shep announces. “The northeast one matches up with the glow we saw last night.”
“The city is burning,” Stanford says, yawning from the spot where he’s crouched next to the roof’s edge. “We’ve had burns before, but this is gonna be too much.”
“If the Zs don’t get us then the fires will,” Diaz says. “It’s a race to the death. Ours.”
“Nice,” Carlotta scoffs. “Not a morning person, Diaz?”
“Not on mornings like this,” Diaz says, nodding his chin towards the dark masses of Zs that fill the Denver streets a few miles away. “Not with all those tourists fucking up our city.”
“Tour-whats?” Tommy Bombs asks.
“Tourists,” Diaz says. “I read about them in some book about those things that people used to go to. They had rides and costumes and shit.”
“Amusement parks,” Val says. “I read that book too. They looked like hell.”
“Yeah, well, people that went to them were tourists,” Diaz continues. “They’d come from all over andtour the parks.”
“Good for them,” Carlotta says. “People had too much time on their hands pre-Z.”
“They had too much everything,” Sister says. “They wasted it all. They wasted the world. Idiots didn’t know what they were doing.”
“She’s not much of a morning person either,” Carlotta says.
“Hey,” Lang says as she snaps her fingers and points to the West. “I’ve spotted another Team.”
“Stay put,” Cole says to the other Mates. “Let me check it out.”
“Me too,” Stanford says. “TL and all that shit.”
“Not a contest, kids,” Val says.
The Mates keep their posts, but shoot wary glances over at Cole, Stanford, and Lang as they stare out at the western part of Denver.
“Too hard to tell from here,” Cole says, putting his binoculars to his eyes then lowering them almost as quickly. “Maybe when the sun comes up more.”
“We going to the next pyre station?” Lang asks. “Or straight back to the Stronghold.”
“Straight back,” Stanford says. “The pyre stations are empty by now. Or they better be after we had that first one send the signal. Any of the sentries or Runners that wanted to stick around are on their own.”
“Runners better be fast,” Sister says, startling the three as she comes up behind them.
“Need to put a bell on you,” Stanford says.
Sister gives him a look that is a mix of sadness and amusement. “Yes. I’ve been told that before. Can’t sneak up on Zs and crazies with a bell on.”
“Can’t sneak up on exhausted Mates either,” Stanford replies and shrugs.
“We need to get moving again,” Cole says. “Whatever Team that is, they should have seen the pyre color to fall back to the Stronghold. Denver is lost and we have to regroup.”
“Maybe they’re cut off,” Lang suggests. She has Cole’s binoculars and is studying the area she saw the Team in. “I see barricades and small bits of smoke. Not big fires, but small burns. Someone is steering them and killing visibility at the ground level.”
“A hunt,” Sister says, almost giddy. “The cannies are hungry. All their food is gone. They got lucky a Team came by.”
“They got lucky?” Cole snaps, turning on the woman. “Those are our Mates down there! There is nothing lucky about a bunch of psycho cannies hunting them down!”
“Then we go help them,” Stanford says. “We get behind the cannies and kill all the fucking freaks.”
“We have to get back to the Stronghold,” Cole says. “That is the mission now. We take this crazy old chick back there then Commander Lee can tell us what our next op is.”
“So, we leave our people behind?” Stanford asks. “That’s cold, Cole.”
“Cold Cole,” Sister snickers.
“Ford just doesn’t want to deal with his mom,” Val says from her post. “That’s why he wants to delay heading home.”
“Exactly,” Cole says. “So we are going—”
“But he’s right,” Val continues. “Whatever Team it is, we have to go help them.” She looks at Sister. “What do you think? You think we can get there and save our friends before the herd hits us?”
“No,” Sister says. “But we should do it anyway. Never pass up a chance to save friends and kill cannies, I always say.”
“Is it? Is that what you always say?” Stanford asks, sneering.
“Yes,” Sister replies. “It is. I also say wipe front to back. You want to hear more sayings?”
“Nope,” Stanford says. “I’m good.”
“Cole?” Val asks.
“I’m thinking,” Cole says. He looks about the roof and sees all eyes on him. “Fine. We go help them.” He points a finger at Sister then one at Val. “But if things go sour, you get her up to the Stronghold. She may be full of shit like Ford says, but that’s not our call. Commander Lee can decide if she’s lying and put a bullet in her head herself.”
“Maura w
ouldn’t do that,” Sister laughs. “We go way back. Way, way back.”
“My condolences,” Stanford says. “So, are we doing this now, Cole? Or do you need us to get in a circle and hold hands for a pep talk? Come on DTA TL, oh mighty one, what’s the situation?”
“The situation is you are incapable of being anything but an asshole,” Cole says, “and we are moving out. Diaz? Go help Al get Tiny D down to the first floor. We’ll clear the street.”
“Roger,” Diaz says and takes off through the roof access door.
Cole turns and meets everyone’s eyes.
“We move hard and fast,” Cole says. “Don’t slow down because of Tiny D. We get there, kill some cannies, if that’s what’s there, rescue that Team, and then book it to the Stronghold. No more delays. I want us bunked down in the Team barracks tonight, not hiding in the foothills on the Turnpike. Am I clear?”
“Loud and clear,” Stanford says. “DTB1! What he said.”
“Let’s move,” Cole orders. “Now!”
***
The man is built like a gorilla. Nothing but muscles on muscles, thick hairy arms, short powerful legs, a chest like a barrel and a shout that can shatter eardrums. The man is busy using that shouting skill to get his Team in place and ready for the attack they all know is coming.
“Crumb! Watch our six! Fitzpatrick! You’re with me! Pickering, you have our three, and Gane, you have our nine! Nothing gets through!” Gary Hoffman, Denver Team Beta Three’s Team Leader, yells. “Fuck these crazy freaks! We hold this position and do not give them an inch!”
“Shadows on our six, TL!” Team Mate Peter Crumb shouts. Short and skinny, Crumb has had to fight hard to earn the respect of his Mates. The fact he’s a crack shot with a pistol certainly helps. “I count five!”
“Keep them off us, Crumb!” Hoffman yells.
“Roger that, TL!” Crumb replies. He holds his 9mm in his right hand with his left cupped underneath both, keeping the pistol steady. “Counting seven now!”
“Shit,” Hoffman mutters. “Fitz?”
“I don’t see a thing ahead of us, sir,” Team Mate Gina Fitzpatrick replies. “You want me back with Crumb?”
“Not yet,” Hoffman says. “They may be saving the big wave for us here and those back there are only distractions.” He glances over his shoulder at the other Mates of DTB3. “But be ready to fill any gaps if they come at us from the sides.”
“I can’t see shit through this smoke, TL,” Team Mate Basil Pickering says. “We’re sitting ducks here, sir.”
“I’m aware of that,” Hoffman barks. “But nothing we can do. These crazies set the trap and we walked right into it. Our only option is to fight our way out.”
“Then shouldn’t we be moving?” Team Mate Nian Gane asks. He looks at Hoffman and frowns at the sharp glare he receives. “With all due respect, sir.”
“You want to respect me? Then do your job and shut the fuck up,” Hoffman growls.
The growl is barely audible, but the words reach Gane nonetheless. He nods and turns back to face the left side of the group.
“TL, I think we should listen to Gane,” Fitzpatrick says.
The woman has long, muscular arms on an almost petite torso that sits upon two tree trunks for legs. Her bottom half looks like she could take on a hurricane and stay standing. She braces those legs as a scraping sound is heard from the smoke a few feet in front of her.
“You were saying?” Hoffman whispers. “Get ready.”
The members of DTB3 stand there, the tension in their bodies humming like live electricity, their senses on high alert. Five seconds ticks off, ten seconds. Twenty, thirty, fifty, a minute.
Then the first one comes screaming from out of the smoke on the right side. Team Mate Basil Pickering fires twice with his M-4, once in the head and once in the chest, and the figure drops to the ground, skidding a couple of feet before coming to rest just out of toe-nudging range. Pickering ignores the man’s corpse and keeps his eyes on the direction it came from.
A second shadow emerges from the smoke, a short woman without any hair or skin on the top of her head. The exposed flesh is streaked with black and green and oozing a yellow pus that drips down off her head, coating her ears and the side of her neck. Pickering gulps, but doesn’t hesitate, and fires. Two bullets in the forehead and the mutilated woman collapses onto the first corpse.
“Coming my way!” Gane yells before he opens fire on the four shadows that rush him.
He drops three before the fourth gets by his M-4’s rounds and launches himself into the air. The crazy man is screaming at the top of his lungs, both hands slashing wildly with rusty knives that look like they haven’t seen a sharp edge in years. That’s all the observation Gane gets before he’s rammed in the chest by the man and tumbles backwards hard onto the broken concrete.
“Gane’s down!” Fitzpatrick yells.
“Take his place!” Hoffman orders. “I got this position covered!”
Fitzpatrick rushes over to help Gane. She slams the butt of her carbine down onto the back of the attacker’s head, cracking the man’s skull and knocking him cold. He collapses onto Gane and the Mate looks up at Fitzpatrick, his eyes wide and full of pain.
“I caught one,” Gane whispers, coughing up a mouthful of blood.
“Shit,” Fitzpatrick hisses.
She starts to reach for the brained corpse to pull it off Gane, but footsteps get her attention and she whirls about, her M-4 up and firing the instant she sees the three women sprinting at her. The middle one falls, her chest ripped apart by the carbine’s slugs, but the other two get by and come at Fitzpatrick with long hunks of rotten wood in their hands.
“Really?” Fitzpatrick mutters as she ducks a swing from the first woman, drops to one knee, and jams the barrel of her carbine right into her belly. She pulls the trigger twice then rolls backwards as the second woman takes a swipe at her. Fitzpatrick comes up firing, shredding the second woman’s kneecaps. “Fuck you.”
The two women drop, screaming and crying, their hunks of rotten wood forgotten as their hands go to their wounds. The first woman sits on her ass, rocking back and forth as she struggles to push her intestines back into her midsection. The second woman just screams, her hands fumbling at what is left of her knees.
Fitzpatrick stands and puts a bullet in each of their heads, silencing the wails of agony. Gunfire erupts and she spins about to see Crumb emptying his 9 at the shadows that refuse to engage him and instead dodge back and forth in the cover of the thick smoke.
Thick smoke that is making it hard to breathe.
“Tighten up!” Hoffman orders. “We go back to back and try to push our way out!”
“Which way, TL?” Crumb asks as he ejects his spent magazine and slaps in a fresh one. “My way is not an option.”
“This way,” Hoffman says. “I don’t see them up ahead.”
“Gane isn’t going anywhere,” Fitzpatrick says as she pulls the corpse off her Team Mate.
The man’s eyes flutter open, but don’t focus. Fitzpatrick makes a hushing noise, telling him to relax and be quiet, as her eyes lock onto the hilt of the knife that is embedded in the man’s chest. Blood bubbles up around the part of the blade that’s visible.
“It’s in his lungs, sir,” Fitzpatrick says.
“Do it,” Gane whispers, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He coughs hard and the bubbles on his chest grow then burst. He slowly shakes his head. “Do it.”
“TL?” Fitzpatrick asks, her voice shaky.
“Do it,” Hoffman says, echoing Gane’s request. “We can’t take him with.”
“Everyone counts,” Fitzpatrick says, tears in her eyes as she stands and places the barrel of her M-4 to Gane’s forehead.
“We always—” Gane starts to say, but is cut off by the loud crack of Fitzpatrick’s carbine.
“Here they come again!” Pickering yells, opening fire.
“Mine too!” Crumb shouts, his 9mm barking as well.
“Fuck me!” Hoffman yells, his M-4 letting loose with a barrage of bullets as the open way before him is suddenly filled with screaming, running crazies. “Give them everything you’ve got!”
Fitzpatrick is able to get turned around just as four men rush at her. None of them have weapons, only long, nasty, pointy fingernails on the ends of gnarled hands. They flash their sharpened teeth and foamy spit drips from between their lips. Their snarls are more like wild animals than human beings.
That’s when Fitzpatrick notices something in the crazed men’s eyes. The complete lack of life. They aren’t men anymore.
“Zs!” Fitzpatrick yells. “Some of them are Zs!”
She backs up quickly, her M-4 unloading on the undead men. Knowing what she’s up against now, she takes the Zs out at the legs first, dropping them onto the other corpses that have started to pile up. Fitzpatrick winces as one of the Zs begins to rip into the still warm flesh of Gane’s corpse.
“No, you don’t,” Fitzpatrick says. “I don’t want to always remember that.”
She puts a bullet in the head of the Z trying to munch on Gane. The three others crawl towards her, fighting each other to get to her live body first. She stays just out of reach, enraging them.
“Fitz! Put them down!” Hoffman yells as he reloads. “Stop fucking—!”
His words are cut off as he screams in pain. A long spear made from a rusty metal pipe sharpened at one end sticks out from his chest and back. Blood pours from the hole in the pipe spear, falling to the ground behind Hoffman like a macabre version of those desktop bamboo fountains from pre-Z.
Not that Fitzpatrick has ever seen one of those bamboo fountains. She hasn’t seen a man impaled by a pipe spear either. What she has or hasn’t seen before are not thoughts that rush through her mind as she moves to her TL and reaches for the falling man.
Hoffman tumbles over backwards and blood geysers up out of the dull end of the pipe, shooting a good six feet in the air before coming down to coat him and Fitzpatrick as the woman skids to a stop and drops to her knees next to the dying man.