Surviving the Dead (Book 7): The Killing Line

by James N. Cook

  The raiders had given us more time than I would have hoped for. They had tracked us slowly, several of them scanning the periphery of the road to make sure we had not split up. Finding no such sign, they had remained in formation and were now coming fully into view. True to Eric’s assessment, they were armed with a motley collection of Kalashnikovs, M-4s, and civilian AR-15-pattern rifles. One man had a long hunting rifle and another carried an RPG launcher, rocket affixed, across his lap. Their demeanor was confident, determined, the swagger of men who believe they are in charge. If the fight with Spike’s caravan had been tough on them they gave no sign. I saw no injuries, no pained faces, no slumped shoulders or hands clutching bandages to bloody wounds. What I saw were grins, predatory eyes, the perverse anticipation of human animals on the hunt for others of their kind. None of this boded well for Spike and his people, or the fortune in cargo I had abandoned to their care.

  Damn you and your arrogance, Spike. You should have listened.

  I pushed the doomed caravan out of my head and thought about the wagon a hundred and fifty yards up the road. I thought of the explosives I had brought from Hollow Rock, hidden in our food supplies, wrapped in bundles surrounded by grain, beans, and dried peas. I thought about one of the wagon’s wheels, how it had been deliberately removed, the oxen loosed from their yokes and contentedly chewing dry grass along the edges of the highway. I thought of the bundles of cargo still in the back of the wagon, easy pickings. I thought how all this might look to a raider: They got spooked, cut their losses, took off on horseback. Probably scattered. Doesn’t matter. We got the numbers on our side. We’ll track them down.

  It would have been a logical assumption regarding most people. But as I had once told my daughter, I am not most people. Nor, for that matter, are Caleb and Eric.

  I kept my breathing under control and positioned the reticle where I needed it. The riders were headed toward the trip wires. I had positioned the explosives to blast a semicircle straight back the way we had come. If the raiders hit the wires, that part of the job was done. If they did not, it was my responsibility to remote-detonate the claymores as soon as the wires were recognized.

  And now, even though every instinct was howling for me to start carving some proverbial notches, I forced myself to wait. This attack needed to be perfect. We could afford no survivors. For this reason, Red waited around the back of the house tethered to a pine tree. If anyone rode off I would jump on my horse and give pursuit. That said, I sincerely did not want to jump on my horse and give pursuit. I wanted to do this quickly and efficiently and get back on the road to a more defensible position and use my satellite phone to call for assistance.

  But that was later. Right now, I needed to focus on the threat at hand.

  My earpiece crackled as I hit the transmit key. “Stand by. They’re moving into position. Wait for the signal.”

  Two quick static chirps from each of my companions came by way of acknowledgment. The raiders drew to within fifty yards of the tripwires. A quick tug on the bolt of my rifle showed me there was a round loaded and seated. A twist of my hand confirmed the suppressor was on tightly. I listened to my heartbeat and slowed my breathing. The pulsing in my ears slowed with it. I leaned over the rifle, pulled it into firing position, and felt the old sense of calm descend.

  Back in my Marine Corps days, I had once told my old friend Rocco that there were only two times in life I felt truly alive. When he asked what they were, I said, “When I’m in bed with a hot girl, and when I’m pulling the trigger.”

  At the time, he thought I was joking. I was not.

  The two thrills, however, come from very different places within me and produce completely dissimilar effects. The rush I get from pulling the trigger is not sexual. It has no carnal implications. Rather, I feel as if I’m in an altered state of awareness, of calmness, like I’m reaching across some great abyss within myself and touching something at the center of who I am. It is quiet there. It is tranquil. And in this place, I feel nothing. I am a void.

  And now, with the stench of moldering fabric in my nose and the rough texture of the trigger under my finger, the echoes of the void were heartbeats, its walls the parallax of the scope in front of my right eye. I sighted in on the man with the RPG. He was not tall, not particularly savage looking. He had long brown hair tied back with a piece of shoelace. His beard was reddish-brown with streaks of gray. I guessed his age at thirty-five to forty. Regardless of the day’s outcome, he would not see another sunrise. I wondered if he had known that this morning would be the last he would ever see, what would he have done differently? Not that it mattered. It was almost time.

  My right hand rested lightly around the grip of my rifle while my left hand cupped the remote detonator, thumb poised over the switch. The raiders continued riding toward the wagon. The tripwire was now less than thirty feet in front of them.

  And then a voice rose from the highway.

  I could not make out what it said, but the effect was clear—the raiders halted. A man near the middle of the formation held up a hand, eyes fixed on the road ahead. His body language told me he was suspicious, the careful type, and had caught wind of something he did not like.

  I heard static over the radio. “Gabe,” Hicks said. “I got eyes on the leader.”

  “Copy. Maintaining visual on the RPG. Eric, you still on the long gun?”

  “Got him. Just give the signal.”

  “Earplugs in?”

  A round of affirmatives. I pulled out the small plastic radio earpiece and shoved a plug into my right ear, then keyed the radio.

  “Stand by.”

  I watched the leader lower his hand. His eyes narrowed and swept the highway from left to right, pausing to examine the tangles of grass at the edges. For a moment, his gaze lingered on exactly the spot where I had placed a claymore and I felt my stomach clench. Then he turned his head and began speaking to the man beside him. The men around him were all watching him now, hands easing reins to one side or the other. They were going to split up.

  I pressed the detonator switch.

  The explosion was incredible. Two claymores went off simultaneously, hurling hundreds of little metal balls into the line of raiders at incredible speed. The eight men in the center virtually disintegrated in front of my eyes, limbs and heads and fractions of torso spinning madly through the air. Their horses fared no better and collapsed into barely recognizable lumps of shredded meat.

  The four men on the periphery, however, were mostly unscathed. The breath had been knocked out of them and their ears were most certainly ringing, but they were alive. The skirmish line had been wide, and at the distance I had triggered the explosives, I knew would not get all of them. Worse, the RPG and the long gun were among the survivors. Two muted cracks rang out from Eric’s side of the road and I watched twin blossoms of red mist explode from the long gunner’s back. He slid from the saddle and was still.

  Nice shot.

  RPG was still on his horse, but disoriented. I let out half a breath, put the reticle center of mass, and fired. The rocket launcher fell from limp fingers as the man carrying it fell over sideways. His horse, spooked by the commotion, ran off to the north, its rider’s leg stuck in the stirrup, body bouncing limply along the bumpy highway.

  The last two men must have been well trained. They recovered from their shock and began firing in the general direction of Eric and the house where I was hidden. Bullets pocked through the wall to my left, forcing me to drop down and take cover. Another shot rang out and I heard a scream. Hicks had gotten one of them.

  I risked a peek over the window sill and peered through the scope. No one there.

  “Hicks, you got eyes on the last guy?”

  Static. “He’s riding away. I don’t have a shot. Repeat, I don’t have a shot.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I was up from the floor and bounding down the stairs in seconds, rifle slung over my back. Red was still tethered to the tree in the back yard, he
ad high and tail twitching. He had been around enough gunfire to know something was amiss. Rather than waste time untying him, I cut the lead rope with my Bowie knife, climbed into the saddle, and kicked his haunches.

  “Come on, Red. Let’s go.”

  The big horse pushed off the ground with a tremendous snort and barreled full-tilt toward the highway. I kept my head low, hands loose on the reins, thinking how grateful I was I had trimmed Red’s mane before leaving Wichita. If I had not, it would have been whipping me in the face.

  I caught sight of the rider as soon as Red cleared the last building in Wellsford and eased the big fella to the right. Now we were in line with the fleeing raider, directly behind him. Red caught the gist of what we were doing and picked up speed, his long legs stretching out to catch the pavement in front of him, iron-shod hooves knocking up loose bits of asphalt. The rider ahead of me glanced over his shoulder, drew a pistol, and started squeezing off shots in my general direction. I could tell by the way he was holding the weapon he would not hit us, but that did not make getting chopped away at any more fun. I drew my own pistol, stood up a bit in the stirrups, and fired one handed. I knew I was unlikely to hit him at this range, but returning fire is almost always a better option than not doing so.

  The rider fired three more times, then pulled the trigger on an empty magazine. He showed his discipline by holstering the weapon, seizing the reins with both hands, and urging more speed from his horse.

  A few seconds later, Red had noticeably cut the distance between us. I was not surprised. Not only is my trusty steed big, strong, and fast, he was also fresh. The other horse had been on the road a long time, probably running sprints around Spike’s caravan during the assault. I doubted the rider had let his mount take a drink or eat anything for a while. Red, on the other hand, had enjoyed a bucket of water and a few handfuls of oats while Caleb and Eric were helping me set up the ambush. With horses, such things greatly affect athletic performance. Humans too, for that matter.

  The horse ahead of me ducked its head as it ran, froth flying from its mouth. I could tell by its body language it was exhausted. Red plowed steadily ahead, the two great bellows that were his lungs steadily pumping oxygen into his blood. When we were close to overtaking them, I aimed my pistol with one hand, breathed out slowly, held my shoulder loose like a gyroscope, and fired twice. The first round caught the edge of one of the raider’s shoulders and ripped away a chunk of blood and fabric. As he shouted in pain and surprise, the second shot took him center of mass in the back. He went instantly limp and fell bonelessly to the ground.

  Red overshot him, his attention on pursuing the horse, not the rider. I hauled on the reins and turned him around and stopped beside the fallen raider. To my surprise, he was still alive. I climbed down and stood over him to get a closer look. He lay on his back, eyes open wide, face bright with confusion and fear, lungs laboring, blood spraying from pale lips as he coughed, a bleeding exit wound in his centerline just below the sternum.

  “Can’t…can’t feel my legs.”

  I fired a round into his thigh. He flinched, but his leg remained limp. His face registered no sign of pain.

  “Must have got you through the spine. Can you feel your arms?”

  “N…no.”

  “Then you’ve got a choice to make. You can lie here and wait to die, or I can end it quick and clean. What’s it gonna be?”

  “What…what do you want?”

  “The raiders you’re with. How many are there?”

  His face split into a grin and he began to laugh. “Too many…for you...dead man.”

  I aimed the pistol at his head. “Quick or slow. Your choice. How many?”

  “Doesn’t…matter. They’ll find you. Then you’ll…know…when they kill you.”

  There was nothing more for me to do. I couldn’t hurt him. Literally. The spinal injury took care of that. And if I left him alive, he might get a chance to tell his friends something to help them find me. I centered my aim and looked the dying man in the eye.

  “You first.”

  NINETEEN

  We rode east along the highway for as long as we dared, while Caleb and Eric hung back and took turns keeping an eye on our six. They saw no more pursuers. We covered twelve miles by nightfall and pushed on a few miles farther past the town of Cullison.

  The plain was crisscrossed every mile or so by narrow service roads, most of them still more or less paved. This worked in our favor. Not only would traveling over pavement make us harder to track, assuming we cleaned up after the animals, but since there were so many roads we could have chosen, the raiders behind us would have to split their forces to attempt an effective search.

  The path we chose took us over gently sloping terrain that rose up for close to a mile before sweeping sharply back down. When I figured we were close to the bottom of the shallow valley, I switched on my IR scope and looked behind us. I could not see over the ridge, which meant the raiders would not be able to see us from the road even in daylight. Another point in our favor.

  Just after midnight I spotted the unmistakable cylindrical shape of grain elevators pointing toward the sky. I had the group halt and wait off the path while I rode ahead and reconned the area. It was quickly obvious the place was abandoned. Nothing had been disturbed for a long time, possibly since the Outbreak.

  The grain elevators were still structurally stable, as were the ladders and catwalks leading to their peaks. There was a long cinder-block storage building at the elevators’ base that was perfect for hiding the livestock and wagon. A little further down the road was a farmhouse and a barn. The roof of the house was half torn away, probably the victim of a high-plains twister, but the barn was intact. I thought about news reports of tornadoes back in the old days, of people describing how a funnel cloud would rip apart an entire town, and in the midst of it all, one house would be left standing unscathed. I had a feeling I was looking at the aftermath of just such an event. Then I had another thought and looked around the periphery of the house, and sure enough, I found the twin doors of a storm shelter.

  The doors were padlocked, but a pair of bolt cutters has long been a staple of my survival kit. I cut the lock, activated the tactical light on my M-4, and opened one of the doors. The white beam cut deep into the darkness below, revealing a set of damp, green-tinted wooden stairs. A quick test with my foot determined the stairs were intact enough to hold my weight. I had a moment’s indecision about how to proceed and decided it was best not to take unnecessary risks. I radioed for Eric to join me.

  Static. “On my way.”

  When I heard the approach of hooves on soft grass I waved my tac-light in his direction. He saw it, dismounted, and tied his gelding to the same low maple branch I had tied Red.

  “Whatcha got?”

  I pointed down the stairs with my rifle. “Storm shelter. Stairs are in good shape.”

  “Let’s clear it.”

  Eric switched to his pistol. I stuck with my rifle. We both took a moment to make sure rounds were chambered, suppressors were secured, and safeties were off. I went down first, leading with my rifle. The beam swept left, right, up and down. I saw no movement. The room smelled like mildew and old motor oil. To my right was a set of metal shelves with a collection of assorted engine parts, cans of bolts and screws, cracked radiator hoses, and other lumps of plastic and metal junk I could not immediately identify. To my left the space opened out to a bare concrete floor, cinder-block walls, and a metal door. Eric followed me down.

  “Clear so far,” I said.

  “I’ll take point in the next room.”

  “Yep.”

  Eric stacked up right, I took left. I gripped the door handle and turned it slowly. It was unlocked. I looked at Eric. He nodded. I pulled the door open wide, let him through, and followed close behind.

  Eric’s light tracked over one side of the room while mine shone on the other. On my side was a dust-covered couch, coffee table, and in the far corner of the room, a
recliner with a table and lamp on one side. Next to me I heard Eric curse softly and I swiveled on my heels to see his side of the room. Where his light pointed, three ghouls were rising to their feet, still identifiable as the people they once were. One was a woman in a floral print dress, another a man in denim overalls and a blue pocket tee, and the last was a young boy in jeans and a short sleeved button-down shirt. Their skin was pale grey, eyes red in the glaring light.

  Eric did not hesitate. He put two bullets in the head of the boy before he had even risen to his feet. It was a sound tactical decision, as ghoul children are significantly faster than their adult counterparts. As Eric fired, I canted my rifle, aimed through the back-up iron sights mounted forty-five degrees from my scope, and triggered two rounds. Both split the skull of the woman and painted the wall behind her with twin spots of crimson. Last was the man. He was lurching toward us by the time Eric drew down on him and fired. A single round took off most of the top of his skull. He collapsed, twitched twice, and was still. The entire incident took maybe five seconds.

  We listened in silence, lights scanning the room. Other than the dead bodies, we were alone. I walked over and kicked the boy and the man over onto their backs. The boy had a small bite on his arm but no other injuries. The man and woman were covered in bites on their faces and arms, and much of their lower torsos had been ripped away. The boys mouth was a rictus of old, dried blood and black teeth. The other two showed no indication of ever having fed. From the corner of my eye, I saw a revolver lying on the coffee table. To my right, a small stairway led up to a heavy wooden door which I could tell was locked by the position of the deadbolt latch.

  I lowered my rifle. “Not too hard to read this one.”

  “The kid gets bit,” Eric said, “And the dad shoots the thing that bit him. I bet if you check that pistol there’s rounds missing.”

  I did, and he was right. There were only three rounds in the cylinder. “And after he shoots the boy’s attacker, they hunker down here.” I pointed to the locked door. “Came in from inside the house, locked the door behind them.”