by Hetzer, Paul
Sarah shook her head, staring out the window. “I’ve got a bad feeling about—”
Like a dam breaking, the swarm flooded into the street from around the building that was their refuge in a raging, unending flow. It hit the blockade of buildings on the other side of the road and backed up thickly before overflowing around the far ends of the long complex of auto shops. The avenue filled from end to end with bobbing heads on a sea of bodies as the swarm sought a clear path to follow on their mindless journey. Sarah and Jeremy were forced to duck down behind the garage door out of sight of the window as the logjam of creatures backed up into the door and were pressed tightly against it. The drone of their yowls and babblings sounded like a loud, pissed-off swarm of killer wasps, a sound Jeremy remembered all too well from Waynesboro.
Out in the office they heard a crash of a body falling though the broken glass of the entryway door. They stayed low as they saw more and more shadows moving beyond the bay’s service door in the office.
“They’re in,” Sarah said in a hoarse whisper.
Jeremy took her hand and led her at a crouch along the front of the shop to another bay where a white cargo van would sit for eternity waiting to be repaired. He reached up and tried the rear door. It opened with a clunk, causing both of them to duck down and glance over at the door on the far side of the shop. They could see shapes moving about in the dim light of the office, although none seemed to have heard the noise. Jeremy helped Sarah up into the back of the van then jumped in himself, closing the door behind him with a ‘thunk’.
The rear windows of the van were darkly tinted and in the darker interior they knew they would be invisible to anything looking in from the garage. They lay with their backs against the cold metal, their rifles on their laps, waiting for something to happen, good or bad. After a while, the pandemonium of noise from the swarm subsided and the boy and girl peeked out the nearest window. From what they could see, the street had cleared of the large mob. However, something still moved in the office.
“I guess we either do something about them or were going to be stuck in here,” Sarah sighed.
“Well, let’s go take care of them.”
They immediately ducked back down against the van’s wall when they saw the face of a young infected man press against the office window.
“Do you have an ideas? ’Cause I sure don’t want to make so much noise that that swarm doubles back on us!”
Jeremy wished he had his suppressed .22 with him. He could kick himself for leaving it back in his room at the armory.
“How many do you think are in there?” he asked.
Sarah looked out the window again. “I don’t think there’s a lot, although I can’t really tell.”
“When Shavers gets here he’ll look for us when he sees the Humvee sitting there empty.”
Sarah nodded her affirmation. “We don’t want them walking into an ambush of crazies though.”
“We wait here then,” Jeremy said firmly. “When we see them outside we get out and go take care of the Loonies in the office. Then, even if that swarm hears our shots, we’ll be on our way to the armory before they get back here.”
Sarah ruffled the thick, auburn hair of his head. “Sounds like a good plan to me, sport.”
Shavers was in a foul mood. Absolutely everything that could have gone wrong today, had. It was like Murphy’s Law on steroids. After the fiasco at the Kroger with the HEMTT being overrun, things had cascaded downhill rapidly. They had lost contact with the Sergeant and his squad in the Stryker and then the two kids out on their own for some reason, had crashed their Humvee and needed extraction. He had fired up the Ready Stryker and taken McCully and Murchison with him on a rescue mission, leaving Charlotte Pickeral to occupy the fort on her own. She had taken a portable radio comms set to the roof of the armory so she could watch for local trouble while keeping in contact with the rescue Stryker and to listen for any word from the others. The day was FUBARed. Two operations, two days in a row had fallen to pieces. The only bright spot in today’s debacle was that they had managed to secure the food supplies and get them back to the armory, so their objective for that day was at least met.
They had loaded up on ammunition before leaving, including the last of the 40 mm rounds. He longed for some frag grenades, however, they had used the last of that inventory up in sorties over a week ago.
Camilla sat quietly in the back of the command vehicle while Shavers drove and McCully manned the 50 at the commander’s station.
How do I keep this day from getting any worse? That was foremost on the First Sergeants’ mind. If they ran into a situation with overwhelming enemy numbers that they couldn’t get out of then God help Virginia. Right now the splintered groups of the large swarm were roaming the city, their positions unknown.
If they had lost Heinlich and his squad, then this would be turning into the worst day since he had started building the 29th back up again. He didn’t believe in luck, but if he did, he would call that boy bad luck. Things had taken a turn for the worse since they rescued him yesterday.
A man makes his own luck though, he told himself. That boy is no more responsible for the situation today then some butterfly flapping its wings in Africa. React, adapt, and overcome. The mantra of the U.S. armed forces had been beat into his head since boot camp. God has put these obstacles before me to test my faith, he mused. We will overcome.
The downtown sector was now less than a klick away. They were circling in from the northeast and would soon be exiting onto Lee Highway, which would lead them directly to Greenville Avenue and hopefully the disabled Humvee and the kids.
The driver’s hatch of the Stryker was cranked open and the cool breeze of the autumn afternoon fanned his beard, cooling his temper while it also cooled the stuffy interior of the armored vehicle. Driving the vehicle helped clear his mind of the clutter of the day. He made a mental note to himself to get McCully checked out on the Strykers. They needed more trained drivers besides himself and Hernandez.
Within minutes they were maneuvering past stalled cars on Lee Highway. He called over the internal comms to Murchison to take a position through a hatch and be ready. He gave their position to Gypsy Hill base as he rolled onto Greenville Avenue. Immediately he saw the Humvee with its distorted front end parked in the center of the street. It appeared deserted. The Stryker rumbled up the road slowly as its occupants scouted for any signs of trouble. Several bodies littered the road past the disabled Humvee and Shavers prayed they weren’t either of the kids. He parked the big eight wheeler next to the smaller vehicle and left the engine idling.
“Do you see them anywhere?” he asked over the comm set.
McCully and Murchison both replied in the negative.
“Okay, let’s unass and search for them. We stay together as a fire team.”
They climbed out the top deck hatches and dropped to the ground. The First Sergeant motioned for them to follow and he set off across the street. From a building behind them they heard a multitude of rifle shots. They instinctively sought cover before Shavers corralled them back together and led them toward the building that the sound of the shots had emanated from. Before they could reach the gray cinderblock building, the glassless door flew open and Sarah and Jeremy rushed out. Shavers saw that both of their heads had large gauze bandages taped to them and their faces were smeared with dried blood.
“We need to get out of here. A large swarm passed by just before you got here,” Sarah told the First Sergeant anxiously.
Jeremy grinned at them. “Man, I’m glad to see you guys!” “Any idea where the other Stryker is?” the First Sergeant asked as he ushered them back to the waiting vehicle.
“No,” Sarah and Jeremy both replied.
Shavers helped them up onto the deck and into the Stryker while Murchison assumed a defensive position at the idling vehicle’s rear and McCully got back into the commander’s seat and on the fifty.
“Camilla, go get the ammo for the fifty out
of the Humvee.”
It took her two quick trips to remove the heavy ammo cans from the wreck and hand them up to Shavers, then she mounted up and the First Sergeant got the Stryker turned around and headed back out to Lee Highway. From there he changed direction south toward the annex. While he drove he queried the two as to how they wound up in the Humvee on their own. They explained to him how they ended up where they were, settling that question in his mind.
The Stryker veered off the highway and followed the same route that, unbeknownst to the First Sergeant, Heinlich had taken with the Humvee earlier that day. As they approached the OMS Annex, Shavers saw that something had happened there. The large military vehicle lot had two walls of fencing collapsed and there were a scattering of dead crazies about the building, most exhibiting the devastating signs of large diameter bullet strikes. Of the several Strykers that were in the OMS lots, none belonged to the missing squad. The gate was locked tight and as they circled the Stryker around the perimeter, the First Sergeant could see no indication the main fence had been breached.
“Okay. They’re not here,” he said into the mic. “The last we saw of them was on Statler Avenue. We’ll head there next.”
He had hoped to find them at the Annex, holed up and okay. If the team had had a problem, the Annex was where they would have headed. Now the mystery was deepening. He hoped that on Statler he would find a trail of breadcrumbs consisting of dead crazies that would point him in the direction that the Stryker had traveled after they had drawn the remaining mob off of the HEMTT. They drove around to the shopping center, encountering a handful of straggling crazies that Shavers immediately dispatched with the big crushing tires of the armored troop carrier. He turned onto Statler Boulevard and at once saw the missing Stryker sitting four hundred meters up the road. He felt his stomach drop as they got closer, and McCully called down that the deck hatches were open. The bodies of the crazies were so thick on the road that he was sure his wheels never touched pavement. They rolled past the Kroger and approached the abandoned eight-wheeler. The Stryker crunched over the dead bodies and pulled up adjacent to its sister vehicle.
“Murchison, check it out.”
The pretty, long-legged woman easily jumped between the two decks and with her rifle shouldered and ready, she looked in each open hatch. After checking each opening she promptly dropped from view through the last hatch into the abandoned Stryker.
“It’s empty,” her voice came across the radio before her head appeared above the deck again. It looked like they had got out in a hurry. However, the lack of blood or bodies indicated that they had indeed escaped the vehicle. She swiped a strand of her auburn hair out of her eyes and examined the carnage around the Stryker. She didn’t see any Army ACU uniforms on the mostly naked bodies packed around the troop carrier’s chassis. They had to have escaped. She glanced over at McCully on the other Stryker and shrugged her shoulders, pulled herself up onto the deck, searching further out from the two vehicles, and saw two trails of dead bodies. Up Statler the bodies lay like scattered toothpicks until they were lost from sight around the far bend. To the east a scattering of bodies blazed a trail to a large building that looked like it had once been a Walmart or Lowes. The setting sun reflected off of something yellow blocking the shattered double-doors on the front of the building, and she could see a mound of bodies piled in front of and around it.
As effortlessly as a deer bounding over a stream, Murchison leaped back onto her Stryker.
“Over there,” she said to McCully, pointing toward the building. McCully squinted his eyes in that direction, then nodded his head.
“Look at our two o’clock,” she said over the radio.
“Roger. I see it,” Shavers responded. “Looks like they fortressed up.” They all could hear the relief in his voice.
Sarah and Jeremy poked their heads out of the rear hatches while the First Sergeant steered the vehicle toward the building. Murchison sat down on the deck next to the big machine gun and smiled at McCully.
“It looks like we might be able to salvage today after all,” she said to him in her silky voice.
McCully smiled back at the older woman. “I’ll have to show you my appreciation for spotting them later.”
She smiled back at him and winked.
Shavers pulled the Stryker up to the front of the long, single story building facing the blocked opening. A yellow industrial-sized diesel forklift had been parked across the opening from the inside. Bodies littered the ground around it; their blood had spread into large, drying pools beneath them.
He again left the engine idling and vacated his seat, climbed out of the front hatch, and surveyed the barricade. There was plenty of room to scramble over the top of the machine, which meant that the crazies had probably made it inside.
“Ferguson, are you well enough to join me on a Sunday walk?” he asked Sarah when her bandaged head again popped up through an open hatch.
She nodded.
“Okay. Ferguson and Murchison on me. McCully, stay with the fifty.”
“I’m going too,” Jeremy announced.
Shavers shook his head. “I need you here guarding our backs.”
“I’m going with Sarah,” Jeremy said, preparing to follow her out the hatch.
“Boy, you’re staying here. That’s an order!” the big First Sergeant growled. He had no time for insubordination from this kid.
Jeremy glared defiantly at the man, however, he made no move to follow. Shavers climbed down from the Stryker after the two women.
“I’m not one of his soldiers to order around,” he said out loud to no one.
“Little man,” McCully said, “when you volunteer for a mission with the big man you’ll do well to understand that for all intents and purposes that he is God and his word is law.”
Jeremy climbed up through the hatch onto the deck and sat down with his rifle across his lap, facing the building’s opening to watch the group’s approach. “I can fight as good as either of those girls.”
The private laughed. “Yeah, but you also still got a lot to learn, son.”
The trio quietly approached the blocked doors of the warehouse from the side, avoiding the piles of bodies leading up to it. There was no getting around the large, heavy vehicle, and trying to get over the top of it would leave them vulnerable to an attack from the inside, not to mention having to crawl across the infected pools of blood that covered the machine. Shavers climbed carefully up on the pile of stiff, dead bodies that were heaped practically to the door of the forklift, nearly losing his balance as his boots slipped on the slick, blood-soaked naked corpses. He pulled the latch on the machine’s Plexiglas covered door and was rewarded with the latch releasing and the door pulling open.
He climbed up into the cab of the forklift, leaning across the seat with his rifle pointed out into the building’s interior. Whoever had parked the machine had left in a hurry, leaving the port-side door wide open. The building was dark and quiet. He signaled for the two women to follow him and crawled across the seat, silently dropping down the other side onto the cool concrete floor. He assumed a knee and had his rifle ready and shouldered when Ferguson and Murchison dropped through the open door beside him.
They moved into an isosceles formation with the First Sergeant on point, and headed deeper into the building. Every step they took echoed loudly through the vast space, inviting trouble from anyone or anything that heard them.
“Radio check,” Shavers whispered, keying his mic.
“Five by five, First Sergeant,” McCully replied in his earpiece.
He had hoped that if Heinlich or any of his squad were within range he would have received a reply from one of them.
Somewhere in the depths of the rows of stacked merchandise they detected a murmuring sound, almost like low voices in a never-ending conversation. It was a sound all three had heard before—the babbling gibberish of the crazies.
This wasn’t a sound the First Sergeant had wanted to hear. If his
men were alive and well in the building, the only crazies in here should be dead crazies.
The sound seemed to be emanating from somewhere to the rear of the building, which stretched easily another one hundred meters ahead of them. He led them deeper along the dimly lit and cluttered rows. The concrete floor was covered with a thick layering of dirty discarded clothing and blankets. They cautiously moved between the tall rows of shelves, until the First Sergeant signaled a stop. Up ahead a bright light illuminated the back of the warehouse, allowing them to see a small group of crazies pacing around the far wall, as if searching for something. Shavers made sure the two women had eyes on the tangoes before proceeding.
The light was from an open loading dock door and the crazies were meandering in and out of it. He signaled another halt thirty yards short of the creatures and they all assumed a knee on the floor amongst the piles of cloth that they could see had been formed into piles of bedding. This was where the swarm of crazies slept.
Behind him Ferguson let out a muffled gasp. She nudged at a small bundle with the muzzle of her rifle. At first he thought he was looking at the naked form of a discarded plastic doll, and then he saw the blood soaking its skull and realized he was staring at a dead baby. A dead crazy baby.
He’d seen enough. His men weren’t here.
Shavers signaled a retreat and the three hurried from the aisle undetected. They climbed back through the forklift and into the late afternoon sunshine.
Ferguson broke formation and ran back to the Stryker, tears coursing down her cheeks.
“Why are there dead babies in there?” she cried when Shavers and Murchison caught up to her.
“It’s their offspring,” Camilla remarked coldly. “Someone did us a service by killing them.”
“Are you okay?” Jeremy called down from the Stryker, concern evident in his voice when he saw the distressed look on Sarah’s face.
Sarah nodded without looking up at him. “How do we know that the babies are crazy like the adults?” she asked.
“It wouldn’t be too hard to tell,” Shavers answered, then climbed aboard the Stryker.