Apocalypse Atlanta (Book 4): Apocalypse Asylum

by Rogers, David

  Some of the bodies were ‘just’ dead humans, but even with months of decomposition they weren’t even close to being the worst. Zombies were scattered throughout the maelstrom of rubble. Trapped behind the wheels of cars that were overturned and crushed into a fraction of their usual size, caught beneath trucks that had tipped over and pinned the monsters to the ground, corralled within rings of detritus that had once been vehicles; the litany of horror went on and on. And all of them still eager to grab and eat, if anything with a pulse got close enough.

  “It’s not going to snow.” Whitley said.

  “How can you know that?” Smith demanded.

  “It’s freaking October. Way too early for snow.

  “It’ll be November in two days.”

  “Yeah, and we’re getting pretty far north.” Crawford added.

  “Maybe if we were north of the border I’d be worried, but in Missouri in October? Snow?” Whitley made a dismissive sound and flipped her hand casually. “Relax.”

  “We’re almost to Iowa.” Smith pointed out.

  “And we are north of the border.” Crawford said.

  “Canadian, not Mexican.” Whitley replied.

  “We’ll figure snow out if it comes up.” Peter said calmly. “And we’re in pretty good shape even if it does start coming down.”

  “This thing isn’t going to handle ice well.” Smith sighed.

  “It’s not going to snow.” Whitley said again.

  “Keep saying it, maybe it’ll come true.”

  “You’ve been a real downer lately, you know that Smith?”

  “Someone’s gotta counterbalance your fucking optimism.”

  “Ha-fucking-ha.” Whitley said. “Hey, Iowa . . . weren’t you due for an ass kicking when we got to Iowa?”

  “That was if I pissed Gunny off.”

  “What if I piss Gunny off and blame it on you?”

  “What if you piss me off?” Crawford asked. “Can I kick ass?”

  “No.” Smith said.

  “No.” Peter said at the same time.

  “Too bad.” Whitley sighed.

  “Why not?” Crawford demanded.

  “I hand out the ass kickings, when they’re needed, so everyone just relax.” Peter said.

  “You’re no fun.” Crawford said in a hurt tone.

  “Tell us again how you managed to nearly drown?” Smith asked, angling his gaze in the rearview mirror to look at Crawford.

  “You have a zombie nearly land on you after falling off a damned bridge and see how well you make out.” Crawford said in annoyed tone.

  “Did it actually fall on you?”

  “No, but if it’d missed me by any less I wouldn’t be here.”

  “So it didn’t fall on you.”

  “Don’t let Gunny know, but I’m so about to kick your ass.” she warned him.

  “So you got rattled by not being hit by a falling zombie, nearly drowned, dragged yourself out of the river, and slept naked in a hayloft?”

  Crawford leaned forward, and Peter put a hand out. “No.” he said in a annoyed tone of his own.

  “Just one smack.” Crawford said, glaring at Smith past Peter’s intervening arm.

  “No.” Peter said again. “Sit back. Teamwork.”

  “I’m a team player.” Crawford said in a voice that was suddenly bright.

  “Lies.” Smith said, sounding bored.

  “You’ll sleep sometime.” she said, still sounding like she was talking about sunshine and daisies.

  “Not until we’re to South Dakota.” Peter warned her.

  “Oh come on!” both Smith and Crawford said at the same time.

  “Hey, you could’ve knocked it off.” Whitley told Smith with a chuckle. “But no, you had to keep pushing.”

  “We’re in Iowa now?” Crawford asked.

  Peter eyed her one more time, lacing his gaze with warning, then checked the map. “Just about.” he said.

  “Let’s see, Iowa, then South Dakota.” she mused. “Okay, I can wait.”

  “Thanks a lot Gunny.” Smith said sourly.

  “Once we’re out of travel mode I don’t care if you guys bicker a little.” Peter said with a grin.

  “How long do you figure?” Whitley asked as Smith sulked behind the wheel.

  Peter consulted the map again. “Well, that gas stop we pulled off a little while ago put us in pretty good shape.” The gas station had actually not been stripped clean, inside or underground; they’d pressed a number of soda bottles into service as temporary gas cans. It didn’t make him terribly happy to know there were twenty-five two-liter bottles full of gas in the trunk, but they only had to hold up for the next day or so without leaking or melting or something.

  The station had also yielded water — in soda form — to last them three days, and even some candy bars and other quick foods that offered cold calories without needing to be heated. And, arguably best of all for his piece of mind, he had state road maps for Arkansas and Missouri, as well as a Midwest map that showed the major roads for a big chunk of the region from Illinois to Nebraska along the east-west axis, and Missouri to Canada along the north-south.

  “Unless we have to do some serious backtracking I think we can make Ellsworth by morning; at least to South Dakota by then even allowing for some routine problems if we have any sort of luck.”

  “Are any problems routine anymore?” Whitley asked.

  “Maybe.” Peter shrugged. “What matters is we’re something like five, maybe six hundred miles away, and now that we’re past Kansas City we should be in the clear as far as major urban areas go. Cornfields and flatland might be boring to drive through, but it should be safe.”

  “Twelve gallons of gas will be enough?”

  “I thought it was thirteen.” Crawford said. “Something like half a gallon per two liter, right?”

  “Since when did you start doing math?”

  “Keep pushing Smith.” she told him. “South Dakota is on the horizon.”

  “Empty threats. And anyway, twelve or thirteen, this thing sucks in many ways, but a piss ant little four cylinder just doesn’t burn gas.” Smith pointed out. “What we’ve got in the trunk is a full tank just waiting to be poured in whenever we need it.”

  “It’ll be enough.” Peter said. “If we run into any major snags, we’ll top up and look to refill our backups again before continuing.”

  “I hope we don’t.” Crawford said calmly. “The quicker we get to South Dakota, the quicker it’ll be payback time.”

  “Do you, like, ever take a break?” Smith asked.

  “You’ll never know.” she told him sweetly.

  “You know I actually did really well in hand-to-hand in basic.”

  “You know I actually hold a belt in both Karate and Judo.”

  “What rank?” Whitley asked curiously.

  Crawford grinned and cracked her knuckles. “Ask Smith in five or six hundred miles.”

  Peter rolled his eyes. “Just spend the time between here and there apologizing.” he said, leaning over to Smith. “Maybe she’ll cut you some slack.”

  “I heard that.” Crawford said.

  “Good.” Peter shot back. “Fun and games is all fine, but remember where we are.”

  Crawford sighed. “You take a lot of the fun out of this.”

  Peter shrugged. “Bruises are one thing; but if either of you cripples the other I’m going to take the winner out.”

  “Yeah right.” Smith said.

  “Oh really?” Crawford said at the same time.

  “Believe it.” Peter said firmly. “I’m old, which means I fight to win, and I fight dirty.”

  Chapter Fifteen - Patience

  “Gunny. Gunny!”

  Peter started awake and grabbed for the M45 holstered at his side. With his hand on the grip, he blinked several times and managed to focus on Crawford, who was behind the wheel once more. “What is it?” he rasped before coughing to clear his throat.

  “Problem.” she
said, taking her hand off his shoulder and pointing through the windshield.

  Still blinking sleep from his eyes, Peter peered forward. “What time is it?” he asked as he tried to decipher what he was looking at.

  “I don’t know, like three or something. The time change has me screwed up.”

  Peter shook his head tiredly, pointedly ignoring whether or not things like time zones were even in effect. His eyes were picking details out of the moonlit darkness ahead of the car. It was an intersection, a T junction where this road ended against another going perpendicularly. Beyond the crossroad’s pavement, on the other side, was a collection of buildings — row houses or apartments he couldn’t tell which — that had clearly suffered from fire at some point. There were holes in the roofs, and some of the walls were collapsed as well. That wasn’t particularly notable, not these days; but the intersection itself was . . . a good bit more interesting.

  It was a jammed tangle of abandoned and wrecked vehicles. The motionless mass of metal completely blocked the roadway, the shoulders, and even a lot of the overgrown grass on all sides. It stretched for at least dozens of yards in either direction along the intersecting street, and comprised . . . he wasn’t even sure. Hundreds of vehicles, at least.

  Even that wasn’t all that strange, again, not these days. But first of all, a good portion of the vehicles were military or medical. Over two-thirds that weren’t civilian were Humvees or marked ambulances, with the rest mixed between fire trucks, military five-ton trucks, and even an armored Bradley on the far side of the intersection, near the buildings. And second, there were a lot of zombies milling about the scene.

  Peter gaped at the collection of wrecks and monsters for several seconds, making sure he’d fully registered what he was looking at, then cleared his throat again. “Okay, so what’s the problem?” he asked, keeping his annoyance at having been woken up for something this routine from his voice only with the long practice of a career senior NCO. “Just detour; turn us around.”

  “This is my third reroute.” Crawford said in a voice that was clearly forced into semi-respectful patience. “And did you notice the activity beyond the road?”

  “Zombies?”

  “No, people.” she corrected, pointing again; this time leaning over like she was trying to indicate a certain star in the sky for him. He looked along her arm and extended finger, and felt his gaze inevitably narrow some. It was dark, hours before dawn still. The car’s headlights were the main source of illumination, that and the moon above; but the area was mostly layered shadows and pools of inky blackness only vaguely threatened by light.

  Nearer the buildings though, near the distinctive shape of the APV, he saw what could only be the bobbing motion of handheld flashlights. Nothing but people carrying a light source produced that distinctive movement and jitter of the beams as they walked about and directed the lights around themselves. Some figures were illuminated, fleeting shadows as the beams swung about and the backscatter off buildings caught them sometimes; definitely humanoid in size and shape.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh.” Crawford said dryly.

  Peter fumbled for the binoculars, removing the lens caps. “Anything sneaking up on us?”

  “Not so far.” she said.

  “Well, back us up, slow, and keep an eye out. Let’s not have something jump out of the night at us.”

  “We’re good.”

  “Just do it.” Peter ordered as he lifted the binoculars. “My rule about what I’ll do if you or anyone else driving gets us eaten by a zombie still stands.”

  “Whatever.” she shrugged, putting the Neon’s transmission in reverse. As she started the little sedan slowly backing up, Peter focused the binoculars and found the area near the buildings.

  Even with the magnification, there wasn’t much he could make out. His binoculars weren’t a light gathering or night vision model, so all he got was a closer view of what was still shadow shrouded darkness. But whoever it was, they were definitely carrying flashlights and moving around the rubbled buildings. It looked like they might be going in and out of the buildings, and he saw others standing on the Bradley shining their flashlights around in security sweeps to make sure nothing hungry was sneaking up on them.

  “Well?” Crawford asked.

  “It’s either people, or a whole bunch of zombies who have flashlights taped to their hands or something.” Peter said slowly.

  “What people would be running around in the middle of the night, that close to a zombie horde, in armored vehicles?”

  “Are they using the APV?” Peter asked absently.

  “Well, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know. It looks like it’s just parked.” he said, studying the Bradley.

  “Well, even if they did drive the Bradley out here, how is it they’re still that close and not having problems with the horde?”

  “That’s a good question.” he thought in surprise. Looking through the binoculars again, he studied the wrecks and intersection more carefully. Now that he was properly paying attention, he saw the zombies amid the abandoned and smashed vehicles seemed to be trying to press inward against the accident sites. “The zombies are all interested in the intersection.” he said slowly.

  “How did they manage that?”

  “Something’s drawing their attention.”

  “No, Gunny; the flashlight brigade.” Crawford said in an annoyed tone. “How’d they distract the zombies?”

  Peter swept the scene again. “I can’t tell what the zombies are going for, but they want to get into the middle of the intersection.”

  “Are there people trapped in one of the cars?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s fucking dark.” he said, annoyance leaking into his own voice to match hers.

  “Okay, okay, my bad.” she said after a moment. “So, we’ve got scavengers who aren’t afraid of the dark, and a zombie horde who isn’t trying to eat them.”

  “Yeah, we should check it out.”

  “How?”

  Peter frowned. The Dodge was definitely not an off-road vehicle; he wouldn’t even really want to trust it very far on gravel, much less full on grass and dirt. And the pavement ahead was well and truly blocked off; there might have been a partial path through on the right, but it would involve negotiating part of the curb and dealing with a couple dozen zombies who were directly along that path. And he knew that whatever was distracting the zombies, it was far too much to ask that they’d ignore a car full of four juicy humans motoring unevenly along that close.

  “What’s wrong?” Smith asked abruptly.

  “We’re trying to figure that out.” Peter said.

  “Yeah, go back to sleep.” Crawford added. “Unless you want to get started on your ass kicking.”

  “Are we there yet?” Smith replied.

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Yeah right.”

  “You’ll be sure too after I thump you upside the head a few times.”

  “Concussions are off the table.” Peter said warningly. “I told you, bruises are fun and games but real damage will piss me off.”

  “Would I do that?”

  “Yes.” Peter said.

  “Try it.” Smith said at the same time.

  “Fun it is.” Crawford chuckled.

  “What the hell is that?” Smith said, leaning forward between the front seats, pointing through the windshield.

  “We call those zombies, short for flesh eating undead monster.” Crawford said, swatting at him.

  Smith’s left hand smacked outward in her direction, blocking her swipe at him. “No fucktard, that.” He pointed with his right.

  Peter returned his attention fully forward, and saw a set of lights moving in midair. Red and green, two of each arranged in a four point pattern; plus a fifth one that blinked steady yellow and white between and below the other four. They were moving straight for the Dodge, at least twenty or thirt
y feet up in the air.

  “Uh . . .” Crawford said.

  “Is that a missile or something?” Smith asked.

  “Whitley, wake up.” Peter said loudly, resisting the urge to draw his pistol. “It’s not a missile.”

  “It’s coming right for us.” Crawford said.

  “Too slow. Stop the car.”

  “Huh?” Whitley said in a sleep-thick voice. “Whazzit?”

  “Incoming UFO.” Crawford laughed as she braked. “Perfect.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not a UFO either.” Peter said, glancing around his side of the car as he started rolling down his window.

  “There’s only so many things it can be.” Smith said, clicking the safety off his shotgun.

  “Wait, what’s that sound?” Whitley demanded.

  “What sound?” Crawford asked.

  “Shut the fuck up and listen.” Peter said, straining his ears. His hearing had taken a beating over the years, from engines and loud music and gunfire and combat, and the Neon’s own engine noise wasn’t helping at all either, but he thought he could make out a sort of humming sound.

  “Is that a drone?” Whitley said, cranking the handle to lower her own window.

  “A drone?” Smith demanded. “How could it be a drone?”

  “Oh sure, like that’s going to be the strangest fucking thing we’ve run into since zombies showed up.”

  Peter looked around the car again, then opened his door and got out. Now he did draw his pistol, and his flashlight as well. Crossing his wrists to align light with weapon, he panned around quickly to sweep the area immediately to the right of the vehicle to make sure he wasn’t missing something hungry lurking nearby. Nothing was nearby, but he made himself take a second pass with the light along ground level to check for crawlers.

  Reasonably reassured he had a bit of breathing room, he swiveled forward and pointed his light at the approaching noise. The little tactical light wasn’t all that great for anything at a distance, but the flying object was getting closer and dropping both speed and altitude. It was catching and reflecting a good amount of what light the flashlight was putting on it, courtesy of the thing’s white color.

  “It’s a drone.” Smith said from inside the car.”