United States of the Dead - 04

by Joseph Talluto

  I shook my head at him. “Nate Coles was a man and he died well. You, you’re just going to die.” I shouldered my burden, picked up my rifle and walked away as Ken Thorton screamed at my back.

  “I’ll find you, Talon! You’ll never get this country back! You will fail! I’ll find you!” Thorton spat and cursed as he realized he was going to be alone in the dark.

  I made my way back to the Archives Shop to find Duncan and Tommy waiting for me. Tommy had a wound on his arm and Duncan had a bandage on his head, but they seemed well enough. Tommy noticed my arm and pulled out the first aid kit again, taking a moment to stitch me up and bandage my cut. Thorton’s blade had been sharp as hell.

  “Did you find the major?” Duncan asked, eyeballing my rifle.

  “I did, thanks for asking,” I said, looking around the shop. I needed a satchel or something to carry the documents with. The frames were rather bulky.

  “Did you kill him?” Tommy asked, wrapping up my arm and putting a bandage on my face.

  I could hear Thorton’s yelling and cursing still coming up from the stairwell.

  “Not yet,” I said, smiling at their curious scowls. “You’ll see.” I went over to a display of D.C.-themed shoulder bags and tried one out on the big frames. The documents went in, but it was a tight fit and there was a good portion still sticking out. I put my backpack on my front and was able to get my arms through the straps. The frame hung awkwardly, but I was able to walk and keep my arms free.

  Duncan and Tommy followed suit, with Duncan carrying two since he didn’t have a backpack. He looked like a guy wearing a sandwich sign. We moved with our burdens down to the tourist entrance area where there were still ghouls on the other side of the glass. We went over to the other side where the tourists normally exit. That way was clear, but probably wouldn’t be for long. Tommy cautiously looked out and signaled it was all clear for us to make a dash across the street, back into the sculpture garden. Duncan exited first and I brought up the rear. Just as I was about to leave, I pulled my rifle and fired three shots at the other entrance, shattering the glass and allowing the zombies to stumble inside. Several of them were young and they first came at us, but then heard something that caught their attention and went inside the building.

  It was awkward firing with a broken stock and I thought I felt something shift inside the gun. I’d have to look closer when I had the chance. I darted outside and closed the door behind me, following Tommy across the street.

  At his look, I smiled. “Now I’ve killed Thorton.”

  Tommy grinned and we joined Duncan back at the shed we had used just hours before. We unburdened ourselves and each one of us took a long look at the grey hatch in the corner. It was the best way to get across the mall, but none of us wanted to be the first to say it.

  Finally Duncan broke the silence. “You know, Nate would call us a bunch of sniveling fuckheads if he knew we didn’t want to take the path of least resistance because we were squeamish.”

  I chuckled and Tommy joined me. Duncan was right. What made Nate was gone and even though we might not like what we saw down the hatch, Nate wouldn’t want us to give a damn about him when it came to seeing this thing through.

  “You’re right. I’ll go first,” I said, pulling out my flashlight and SIG. I opened the hatch and made my way down, scanning both ways, looking and listening for anything unusual or undead.

  It was a while before I looked down at my dead friend and when I finally did, I was somewhat surprised. Nate had indeed managed to shoot himself in the head, but the wound was small. There was a lot of blood under his head, but it framed him almost like a halo. Sure got that one wrong, I thought. I motioned for the other two to follow and they dropped down the documents first, then themselves. Each one took a long look at Nate and Duncan said goodbye by placing a hand on Nate’s still chest.

  “Let’s go,” I said, hoping to get moving before we were discovered by things bigger than rats.

  We moved quickly back the way we came, keeping a sharp eye out for any more quick little ones, like the bastard that got Nate. We approached an intersection and I was past it when Tommy stopped me.

  “Whoa, hold on,” he said, taking off his sack and bringing up his rifle.

  I took off my sack and pulled my SIG, keeping my light off for the time being. Duncan gathered up the other sacks and moved them down the passage. In case we needed to run we didn’t want to lose seconds finding our prizes.

  I didn’t see anything, no glowing eyeballs or lights of any kind. It was dark as hell underground, yet I didn’t want to raise my light just yet.

  “What’s up?” I whispered very softly to Tommy.

  “I heard something I shouldn’t have heard down here,” he said cryptically.

  “Follow your gut, I’m behind you.” I turned to Duncan. “Get those documents to the Smithsonian and see about transportation. If Mike found a working bus, you have my permission to kiss him.”

  “He’ll need bigger tits before I do that,” came the murmured reply out of the dark, but I could hear the sounds of Duncan moving away.

  Tommy flicked his weapon light on and the narrow beam illuminated a thin patch of the hallway. He scanned up and down and we didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. We were about to leave when the sound came again, this time a little louder. We looked at each other and I nodded at Tommy. I had heard it this time too. It had been a while since I had heard a sound like that, but every father knows it.

  It was a muffled baby’s cry and it sure as hell didn’t belong in this darkness.

  “Could be coming from anywhere, especially in these tunnels,” Tommy said as he moved forward.

  “We’ve covered the area back and forward from this point and it didn’t come from behind. It’s ahead or we’re hearing things,” I said, flicking on my flashlight to help search. “We’ll go to the end of this path and if we don’t find it, we leave it.”

  Tommy looked hard at me and I ignored him. Sometimes tough choices had to be made, as much as I hated to make them. But we had a lot of people counting on us and chasing noises in the dark wasn’t getting anything accomplished, it only increased our chances of getting killed. For all we knew, it was a baby zombie and I had no desire to kill any more of those.

  Fifty yards down the tunnel, we came to another intersection. I flashed my light around a corner and leaped back, bumping into Tommy who stumbled backwards, catching himself on a utility pipe.

  “Shit!” I cursed, bringing up my gun. Several figures walked slowly around the corner and I was about to open fire when I realized something. They were shielding their eyes from my light. Zombies don’t do that.

  Tommy saw it as well and he aimed his light to center on the survivor’s chests. It kept them lit without blinding them, but allowed us to be mostly unseen.

  The first person stopped and I could see he was in a bad way. His clothes were threadbare but clean and he was thin from lack of proper nutrition. His eyes were sunken and his face was gaunt.

  “That’s far enough,” I said. “Who are you?”

  The man raised a weak hand. “Please help us. We’ve been out of food for days, maybe a week or more. We wouldn’t have left our sanctuary, but the kids are starving and we couldn’t stay.”

  I didn’t move. “Who are you and where are you coming from?”

  The man replied slowly. “I’m Brian Graf, my wife Irene is back there with the rest of the group. We took refuge in the Library of Congress when the city fell to the dead and we’ve been doing okay, but things took a turn for the worse. We saw the men come by the building earlier and we thought we could reach them, but they always seemed to be a step ahead. Once we were out of the library, we decided to try and make a run for our friends in the Smithsonian, but we got lost down here and by luck, you two came along.”

  I stepped around Brian and took a look at the frightened group hiding in the dark. A young mother was holding a wiggly baby and he let out another squawk that she tried to shus
h. I shook my head at her and smiled. “Your little one let us know you were down here. Otherwise we might have passed you by.” The mother looked at me and then at her baby and held him close, big tears coming out of her eyes.

  I stepped back and addressed the group. “I’m John Talon, this is Tommy Carter. We’re not going to hurt any of you; we’re going to get you out of here.”

  Excited murmurs started in the tunnel, but a single voice called out. “Once we get out of the tunnel, what then? We’ll be stuck in another building, just waiting to die or be eaten.”

  I looked back and said, “You misunderstand. I’m taking you all out of the city.”

  The voices got louder but the single voice spoke again above the din. “How?”

  I smiled unseen in the dark. “Damned if I know. I make this shit up as I go along. Follow me.” I led the way back down the tunnel with a procession of about thirty people following slowly. Tommy brought up the rear and I could hear each person thanking him as they passed. It was funny, because this actually saved me the trouble of having to figure out how in the hell I was going to get to the Library of Congress and rescue these people. I didn’t often catch a break, but I was grateful for this one.

  We moved well through the tunnel and I had the chance to talk with Brian and get the story. He and his wife had been visiting relatives and were caught inside the city when martial law was declared and no one was allowed in or out. Things got ugly fast and people started to fortify the buildings when the army was overrun. He said there had been people in the American History Museum and Natural History Museum, but they hadn’t had any contact for months. The only ones left it seemed to them was the group at the Smithsonian Castle. The hotels and buildings that had people trying to survive were eventually overrun or the people gave up and left, to be eaten by the dead. They had followed the destruction of city after city while they still had power and internet access, but when that went down they were truly on their own. They had rescued a few people here and there, but Brian assured me he was no fighter like me.

  I laughed. “Like me? Hell, I was a school principal before the Upheaval. Circumstances make us and I’d say you did just fine.” We reached the end of the tunnel and I knocked on the heavy door.

  “John?” came a voice.

  “Yes. Open up,” I said.

  “What’s the password?”

  “Open the goddamn door or I’m going to start shooting through it.”

  “Correct!” The door opened and light flooded the tunnel. Duncan grinned at me, but his smile faded when he saw all the people behind me. “Holy—”

  “Yeah,” I said, stepping into the basement. “Get Jason and Rita and Katie and tell them we have the people from the Library. They are in bad need of supplies. Go.”

  I helped the people through the door, noting how thin and pale most of them were. I directed them to the stairs to go up and they all thanked me as they passed. I gently disengaged the ones that hugged me and gave reassuring pats on the head to the little ones too shy to say anything.

  Tommy was the last one through the door and he closed it with finality. He turned to me and asked, “Now what?”

  I sighed. “Now we figure out how in heaven we’re going to get these people out of here.”

  “Never ends, does it?”

  “Not on this trip, it seems.”

  Chapter 20

  We spent the rest of the day retrieving our supplies from the RV which was still sitting in the garden. I had half a hope that the silly thing might actually start, but Duncan reminded me that Nate had the keys, so I dropped that notion. Tommy, Duncan and I went over half a dozen maps, trying to figure out the best way to get out of the city. Once we had a route planned, we would go to one of the towers and see what kind of obstacles we faced. Increasingly, it was looking like we were not going to be able to make a run with a bus. We would be able to get only so far and then abandoned cars and dead people would stop us.

  More and more I was looking at the river, wondering how bad it would be to just stick to the water. A river journey would take a month or more and I wasn’t looking to stay out that much. I was getting homesick something fierce and I knew Tommy was fidgeting about Angela. We needed to make a decision and we needed to do it now.

  Interestingly, it was Duncan that came up with the best idea. Tommy and I were arguing about rivers when Duncan poked his head in and said, “Something wrong with going south?”

  I stopped arguing long enough to look at the map and I realized we were going in the wrong direction. If we headed for the coast and simply sailed south, we could cruise around Florida and pick up the Mississippi without too much difficulty. It would take about the same amount of time, but we’d not have to worry about locks and Niagara Falls and irritating things like that. Plus, there would be no worries about zombies.

  I started to say good idea, but Tommy stopped me.

  “Don’t compliment him. It will just make things worse. Trust me,” he said.

  I thought about it and decided it was probably for the best.

  With half a plan, we decided we needed to find a boat or several boats. Tommy suggested the Navy Yard, but I didn’t think a warship was the answer. We needed river boats that could survive a short ocean jaunt. We also needed to get there alive. Mike had produced a bus, but the windows were all broken out and the door was busted off. It ran, but at the first mess of trouble it would be a coffin. We’d have to make a fast push then evacuate in a hurry.

  “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll take the bus as far as we can and ditch it when we reach water. We’ll have to scavenge for boats, but we haven’t got much choice. Once we leave the city proper, we can find better transportation.” I was gambling like hell that we could find anything that floats, but it was better than swimming. We’d do that only if we had to.

  Tommy agreed and we decided to leave first thing in the morning, right before the sun came up. Experience taught us that zombies had trouble seeing in the dawn and dusk hours, mostly because their eyes had a hard time adjusting to the light of the sky and the dark of the ground.

  We packed up everyone onto the bus in the morning and with as many people as we had, it was extremely crowded. I had talked to the groups the night before, explaining that any fighting or shooting was to be done by myself, Tommy or Duncan. When Mike asked us what happened to Nate, Duncan just stared at him until he shut up.

  We moved out quickly, following the path of destruction the RV had created in getting to the castle. But it became apparent that we were going to have to take a divergent path, when we discovered the huge throngs of zombies that had converged on the mall. We reached the Washington monument, but had to veer south. The zombies were too thick even for this bus and we had already sustained a good deal of damage from plowing into several groups. The only good news was we were using a tour bus, which put the windows higher than normal and the engine was in the back, so we could take a good deal of damage before we had to stop.

  The bus tore through the brush and trees, eliciting a few gasps and small screams from the group. The kids looked like they were enjoying themselves, probably this was the first time they had been out in a long time.

  We lurched over a larger than normal speed bump and I thought I heard something snap as we landed. About fifteen feet later, the front of the bus tilted sharply and skewed to the left.

  Tommy jumped out of the driver’s seat and I joined him to check the damage. The front axle had broken. We were done with this bus.

  I looked around at the zombies that had taken an interest in us and calculated the odds of making a stand. In short, we were dead.

  “Everyone out! Go! Go! Go! Follow Tommy! Go!” I yelled, pulling out my pickaxe and advancing on two zombies that were much too close. “Duncan, take the side, get to the river!”

  “Which way is the damn river?” Duncan asked, helping a woman out of the bus.

  “That way!” I pointed south with my pick then swung high to crush the skull of
a suited zombie. Probably a lobbyist, I thought as I lined up the second one. This one was a woman in a pantsuit, at least it was a woman once. Her neck was a ruined mess and her left hand was chewed to the bone. Probably tried to defend herself with that hand and got it eaten for the trouble. I buried the point of the pick in her temple and jerked it loose once she was on the ground.

  Just as I freed it, ten more zombies came around the rear of the bus. Later for this. I turned and ran after the group, slipping between two zombies who gave a grab in my direction but were too slow by half. I caught up to the group and took a position at the rear. Tommy lead the way and we kept up a hurried pace. Duncan was kept busy on his side, knocking over zombies which I would finish off as I reached them. It was a decent system, but we were running out of luck.

  Suddenly, everyone stopped. I ran to the front, worried about the rear because we were being chased by a growing number of zombies. It was like the call had gone out and they were converging from all over.

  “Why have we stopped?” I asked Tommy, who was staring down his rifle barrel at a grove of trees.

  “There’s a group of about forty in those trees, cutting us off,” he said grimly.

  I looked and sure enough, the vegetation was alive with zombies. “Come on,” I said, “We have to keep moving. The basin is right over here.” I moved slightly east, followed by a large group of increasingly anxious people. I needed to find a place to make a stand, somewhere we could hold off a horde.

  As I moved south again, I saw what looked like a rooftop sitting out on the water. Curious, I hurried to the side to clear my line of sight and I saw a building sitting on the water, with a narrow walkway leading to it. Perfect. As I led the people over that way, I saw some curious white things on the docks. As we got closer I saw what they were and laughed out loud.

  “What the hell?” Tommy panted, coming up alongside me.

  I didn’t answer, I just pointed to the building and kept moving. A shot rang out, then another. I spun around and saw Mike had shot two zombies that were getting close to the group. The heavy report echoed across the lawns and through the buildings. Everything was still for a second, then it seemed like the entire city moaned at once.