“But…”
“Tim! Are you thirsty buddy? Hungry yet? Did you not see the infected in the vent shaft? We stay, and we’re dead from thirst in a few days. That’s if those pus fuckers don’t get in here and tear us to pieces, and let’s face it, that grate wouldn’t stop a pissed-off hedgehog let alone a bunch of infected dead people.” I put on the MOLLE ammo pack, and looked at him. “Time to man up, pal. We were never staying here anyway.”
He nodded, wide-eyed, too terrified to say anything. I must admit, had I had a damn thing to drink in the past day, I just might have soiled my skivvies.
“Which way to that motor pool place we saw yesterday?”
I had forgotten Tim hadn’t been with Lynch and I when we had seen the trucks, but it was probably better this way because the place had been crawling with infected.
He thought for a second. “Out, left, twenty meters, right, and a quick left.”
We moved to the door, and I put my ear right up against it, reciting what he had just said to myself. I couldn’t hear shit, but that didn’t surprise me, this particular door may have actually stopped the Hulk in his tracks. It was a sliding door too, and when I put my hand on the handle, I heard Tim breathe, “Oh shit…” I had to agree. Hopefully the entire corridor wouldn’t be filled with dead cannibals. “Aim for the head. Take your time. Squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk it. Don’t miss. Above all, stay quiet.”
Listen to me. I sound just like Lynch.
I had the door open and was in the gray painted concrete hall in half a second. One of the lights was flickering, casting momentary shadows on the walls and down the corridor. There was Blood. Lots of blood. A corpse on the floor that was trying to move was slightly behind us, but it was so far consumed that it would never walk. One pus bag was sitting on the floor, its back to the wall. It turned and looked at us, standing immediately. Tim raised his gun, and I put my hand on his, pushing down slightly and nodding in the negative. The thing began to advance, and I pulled the big ass knife Lynch had given me from where I had fastened it on to the MOLLE pack. The thing closed on us, reaching. It growled that growl that they growl, and I moved toward it.
It was relatively fresh, in woodland camo with horrible wounds on its neck and face, and positively dripping with gore. Bloody eyes focused on me, it came rather quickly, but it wasn’t a Runner. It got to within three feet of me and hissed, turning into a cheetah and speeding up exponentially as it lunged. I was ready though and sidestepped. It missed and I stabbed it through the eye. Ceasing all sounds and forward movement, the thing dropped immediately.
“Holy shit that was awesome,” Tim whispered.
I scanned the rest of the hallway, and only Tim and I and Mr. Eaten were present and moving. I put my finger to my lips, shushing him. He got it and nodded. I stooped to check out the dead man. He had two magazines for a Beretta, but no weapon. He also had handcuffs, pepper spray, and a folding baton. I took them all as fast as I could, and gave the mags to Tim, demanding my Sig back. Tim loaded his M9 and we moved on.
We got to the first turn, and I held up my fist, having seen this countless times from all the military guys I had been hanging with (and every war movie ever made). We stopped and I took a quick glance down the intersecting corridors.
Empty.
Was it scarier to be surrounded by the things or not know where they were? I was pretty sure the hall to the left was where Lynch had bought it, which means that room was potentially full of pus bags. I mean, they did get into the vent somehow. We had to go right anyway. Oh, and I’m going with surrounded is more terrifying. I don’t want to get surrounded, and if they aren’t in sight that has to be better, because they aren’t trying to eat me. Not being eaten is way less scary than being eaten: Fact.
Another fact: the moment you think you’re in the clear is when you should be the most alert.
We went right, and just as Tim had said, there was a quick left. I could see the motor pool through a huge window. As I mentioned sometime before, it was a huge, hangar-like structure made of concrete, maybe sixty feet high, and a two hundred feet across. It was not as devoid of the living dead as I would have liked though. Fifteen, maybe eighteen of them were just doing what they do when there’s nothing living around. Kind of swaying like stoned, lighter-wielding hippies at a Grateful Dead concert. Others were sitting down on the floor, and still others were wandering aimlessly. Two of them caught my attention quickly though.
One had been an older man, perhaps in his late fifties. He was wearing all kinds of those little bar and medal thingies on his torn and bloody uniform. It was the colonel that had picked me up from Atlantis. He was in his dress best, and he was shaking and looking at his fingers, which were constantly flexing into claws. A Runner for sure. The other was a female dressed in tattered and filthy street clothes. This one looked every which way. She would grab one of the shamblers and scream at it, then look under a truck and move on to another shambler, repeating the screaming thing. She put her hands in her hair and pulled, screaming at the ceiling and shaking her head. Her hands came away with some of her brown hair, and that seemed to piss her off even more. She launched herself at the nearest pus bag and began scratching and tearing at it.
At first it couldn’t care less, but then she raked her broken nails across its left eye, and it pushed her away. She took the hint and did the hair pulling thing again.
I studied the place and ducked back before any of them could see me.
It was right then, watching her totally out of control, that I consigned myself to staying alive as Lynch had demanded. This poor woman and the colonel in the room with her were infected. They were not evil, the thing that had invaded their brains was. Whatever this thing is, virus, bacteria, voodoo magic, or a pissed-off god, I was going to beat it. I was going to stop this damn plague, and save humanity. I suddenly felt a deep and mourning sorrow for the two poor souls in front of me.
Don’t get me wrong they still had to effing die. They were in my way. Can’t save the planet if I’m dead, right?
Eight vehicles were in the big room. One was a tractor trailer; it looked like a cattle truck. Three Humvees, two had fifty cals in their turrets. One staff vehicle, a sedan. One green Chevy Blazer. The last one was an MRAP, and it was my baby. That is what I was going to steal. I had learned how to drive these in Mississippi at Keesler AFB. An MRAP is like a beefed-up, six-wheel truck, although this one only had four. MRAP stands for Mine Resistant something, I don’t remember. It was less than a tank but more than a truck, and unless the living dead had suddenly procured anti-tank weapons, they weren’t getting us once we were inside. We weren’t dying today.
Unless they got us before we got in.
Or if there was a platoon of them already in it.
Or if it was out of gas.
The driver’s side door was ever so slightly ajar, and the only thing between it and the extremely open giant doors at the end of the tunnel was the Blazer. Oh, and a bunch of zombies. Can’t forget the zombies. Critical importance here.
I looked at Tim. “We’re taking the MRAP. We open the door and you shoot the colonel.” I peeked through the big window again and pointed. “I don’t care if you use all your ammo, he’s a Runner, and you don’t have to pop his dome, just get him to not run at us. Legs or center mass, anything to stop him. I’m going to take the woman and anything else that gets in our way. We solid?”
He nodded, and I realized I was about to step into yet another shit storm. Staying here was not an option though, and I heard movement down the hall behind us. Couldn’t see anything around the corner, but I had no illusions about what was back there.
I opened the door to the motor pool and stepped out on to a concrete landing. Six steps down and we were on the floor. We had progressed five feet from the landing when the first one spotted us. It was sitting and leaning against the tire of one of the Hummers. It didn’t growl, it just stood up and started moving our way. That was enough for some of the ones near it, an
d they looked in our direction. They all friggin moaned, and it was on.
I fired the HK at the woman on full auto, a quick burst, but it was insanely loud. I didn’t score a head shot, but I stitched three holes across her back and she fell forward. I moved the barrel of the weapon to my forward position and shot a pus bag that had turned to face us. I heard Tim’s M9 bark twice, and we started running for the MRAP. I didn’t look back. Several other dead bastards got put down on the way to the truck as well. Just before we got to it, a bloated, rotting thing started crawling out from underneath our vehicle, and I blasted it before it could get out. I heard Tim’s pistol fire again, and we were at the truck.
“Get in! Crawl over and I’ll cover, I’m driving! For fuck’s sake, check the back!”
He swung the door open and stepped up, climbing in. Firing twice more at two that got close, I dropped the 416 so that it hung on the single point sling, and hauled myself into the cab, slamming the door and engaging the lock. I quickly checked the back. It was empty and the door was locked. The top turret hatch was closed too.
Two seconds later, the first thump of dead hands slapped against the side of our new toy. Many more thumps and slaps followed. One industrious pus bag pulled itself up onto the second step and looked at me, trying to bite through the steel-louvered, bullet-proof glass. OK, bullet resistant, but zombie-proof for sure.
I put my middle finger against the window, “Fuck you, douche-canoe.” I looked at Tim and we both smiled. Then my smile turned into a frown. He caught it immediately and looked scared, “Keys,” I whispered, “I don’t have the keys!”
I’m not going to tell you he shit himself, but there may have been some leakage. I grinned evilly, pushing the start button. “Don’t need keys chief.”
His mouth formed a giant O, and his eyebrows shot to the sky. “You dick!”
The MRAP came to life with a throaty diesel growl, and I chucked her into first gear. With thirty thousand pounds of mass, the Blazer in front of us was an afterthought, and I nosed it out of the way, backing up and moving around it. I drove slowly, anything dead in front of me quickly being smooshed into strawberry (in some cases blackberry) jam, and in moments we were out in the sunlight.
Course, the dead bastard that had climbed up the side of the truck was still hanging on, wrecking the view of the mountains to the side.
Pricks just never let me enjoy anything.
The MRAP rolled forward, thumping a few of the things that were outside in the sun. Some of them flew off to the side, others crunched beneath the vehicle’s massive tires as we drove out the mouth of the mountain.
Six more cattle trucks were outside, one on its side, empty with the top broken open, two others had their back doors open and were also empty. Three were full. They did not have cows in them.
Dead arms reached through the slots in the trailers. We could hear the moans over the growl of the MRAP. The vehicle had its own air filtration system, so we couldn’t smell them, but the smell must have been atrocious out here in the sun as they were. Dozens of them were wandering the fields in front of the facility.
I had seen this type of stupidity before. It was on a container ship in the Gulf of Mexico. It had been a total cluster-fuck there as well as here. Our provisional government must have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that study of the creatures was of the utmost importance. While I tended to agree, I didn’t think that bringing a thousand of the things into what was probably the most secure facility on the continent was a well thought out strategy. Even one of those things inside could have ended it all.
As it turns out, they had procured more than one.
We drove by some military vehicles, badass types like tanks and Bradleys and LAVs and stuff. All just sitting there, surrounded by zombies who wanted nothing more than to eat me. I knew that prior to inviting a thousand or so undead to the area, there hadn’t been that many around, which cemented my position on our government: idiots.
They had a great thing going here, and this could have been a base to help take back the country someday. I’m just a schlep from Boston with no real military experience, but I can honestly say I thought the folks in that mountain behind me had what it took to get the job done.
Fuck ‘em. They’re all dead now.
“So, which way?”
“South, Tim ole pal, south.”
“What’s south?”
“The Gulf of Mexico and the biggest damn human being you’ll ever see.”
“That’s a long way.”
“Then we best keep moving.”
South of Baldy
We drove for about an hour at maybe forty miles per hour, so my advanced math told me we were about forty miles south of the facility, which Tim had called simply; Baldy. It would be getting dark in a few hours. An older house, complete with barn, up a long paved driveway appeared off the road. After the day we had, I really wanted some quality rack time, and this looked like as good a place as any. I pulled off the road and drove up to the house. The driveway circled around and lead back in on itself, and there was a track to the barn.
The barn doors were closed, but the door to the house was wide open. Didn’t bode well for the owners unless they were airing out the place during a zombie apocalypse.
Tim read my mind, not that it was overly difficult at the moment, “Uh… I don’t really want to go in there.”
“Me neither, but I’m still thirsty, and we’re shit out of rations in here. We might have a quality ride, but without food and water, all it is is a metal coffin.”
He nodded. “Damn.”
“And then some.”
I parked the behemoth, and shut off the engine. I immediately started it again to make sure it would start later, and began to formulate a plan.
“OK, so we just put about two days between the dead at Baldy and us. That doesn’t account for anything that’s already here, or heard us a mile or so off. We go up to the door, bang on it and make some noise, then wait it out. If nothing comes, we go in and see what’s in there.” Tim nodded, and I continued, “We grab what we can, bring it in here, put the truck in the barn, and sleep in the truck on the seats in the back.”
“We’re not sleeping in the beds in the house?”
“Fuck that noise. I don’t want to get trapped in the house if we get swarmed, especially seeing as how we have what basically amounts to a tank at our disposal right here. Not to mention the house doesn’t move, and this does.” I patted the steering wheel of the MRAP.
He nodded again. “OK, let’s do it.”
So we did it. It went like clockwork. I pounded the door frame with my fist and we waited a solid ten minutes. I did it again, adding a couple of yells, and we got nothing so we entered, closing the door behind us.
Other than some dust and a single leaf on the floor, nothing seemed out of place. No blood, no boarded or broken windows, and no signs of struggle. These folks just up and left, or worse, they were still here.
We were greeted with quaint wooden furniture. A couch that my mom would have called a sofa. Fireplace complete with giant wooden mantle upon which sat photos of a younger man and woman with two small boys. Photos on the wall, the images of those boys grown, and more images of the couple older and retired. The guy liked to fish, and there were stuffed fish all over the place, and more pictures of him with fish and him fishing. The woman liked to crochet or knit, I dunno which is which (because I happen to possess a penis), but there were shitloads of doilies and afghans and pillow covers and shit. There was needlepoint of a guy fishing.
It was nice. After a year on the run, living on an oil rig, and then my time at Baldy, this was a slice of pretty. We moved to the kitchen and it looked like any grandma’s kitchen. The only thing out of place was the moldy bread in an open bread box, rotten fruit in a bowl on the counter, and dead flowers in a skinny vase on the round kitchen table. Everything else looked as if the owners just needed to wake up and get on with the day.
We cleared the room, m
aking sure the door to the basement and out the back were locked. Tim was about to open a cabinet, and I nodded no. We moved out of the kitchen and checked the other two rooms down the hall. Only dust welcomed us. Taking the stairs, we cleared the upstairs bathroom, and two bedrooms. Beds made, more dust. We checked every square inch of that house, including closets, but I wasn’t opening the pull-down attic stairs, and F that basement, whatever was down there was staying there.
It was weird. Almost as if the owners were the victims of alien abduction. The nearest town was a half hour away, and I had no idea where the nearest homestead was. Not close, that’s for sure. I wondered how many other houses across the country looked just like this.
Going back to the kitchen, on a whim I opened the fridge. It was nasty, and I closed it quickly. The cabinets were stocked. I mean totally full, like someone had just done the grocery shopping, except for the dust. There was dust on almost everything, but the cans and packaged goods were placed neatly.
Suddenly, I didn’t want to be in this house anymore. What the hell happened to the people who lived here? They were in a better location than most to ride out the plague a little longer. No people nearby, secluded location. This was Montana, so it was probably some town ordinance that the folks who lived here had to possess guns, but unless they were in the attic or the basement, we missed them. There was a huge overgrown garden out back too, so where had the couple gone? To find their boys?
No kid would want to stay here; it was the middle of nowhere. They boys had probably found women at college and moved away.
“I don’t like this place,” Tim suddenly stated, mimicking my thoughts.
“Yeah, let’s grab the food and book.” No, Dear Reader, not the Bible on the end table, I’m from New England, “book” means leave, remember? Don’t even get me started on accents either.
There were no bags or crates, and I wasn’t going in the basement even if someone promised boobs and video games, so I grabbed a blanket off the couch, stuffing it full of vittles. We took everything. We dragged it out in two trips, then as an afterthought grabbed pillows and more blankets from the bedrooms. I was taking out two five gallon bottles of water for the water cooler when Tim called to me from the side of the MRAP.
Conspiracy Theory (The Zombie Theories Book 2) Page 5