by Jack Hamlyn
“Well, if nobody knew we were here,” Diane said. “They know now.”
I shushed her because Tuck got very sensitive about things like that and he didn’t take criticism—even constructive—too well. This was not the time for an argument.
The front door was wide open and Tuck led the way in, securing things, as he always liked to secure things. Diane was right behind me and Sabelia was pressed up so close to me I could feel her body heat on my skin. It was not an unpleasant thing to feel.
“Okay,” Tuck said. “Pretty quiet. Where’s the arms locker?”
I took the lead with Sabelia. The armory itself appeared to be more or less untouched which was amazing to me, but then again the militias may not have known of its existence. The garage was empty of Strykers, but I imagined they had been commandeered in the final days to fight. It all went like clockwork. I found the arms locker. Tuck already had a shaped charge to blow it. He blew open the door and we went down into the bunker and to our delight found twelve boxes of .50 cal ammo, plus ammo crates of 5.56 ammo for the CAR-15s, several untouched boxes of frag and WP grenades, and a nice stockpile of C-4 and det cord that Tuck was glad to lay his hands on. We also grabbed six cases of MREs, flares, five LAW rockets, three more AT4s, and an even dozen Claymore mines. It took us a good hour to load it all.
Afterwards, we siphoned gas from the trucks out in the lot until the tanks of the Stryker and Jeep were full.
It went all so well it was amazing.
For the ride back, Sabelia jumped in the Jeep with me and Diane drove the Stryker. I was glad for the change of passenger, because I didn’t want to be hearing anymore mystical shit.
Sabelia had been quiet and I asked her why.
“You’d laugh if I told you so I will not tell you.”
“Go ahead,” I said as I pulled back out onto 228th. “I won’t laugh.”
My ego was expectant. It was supercharged. It was expecting to hear something flattering like that she was jealous of me being with Diane, but, sadly, it was deflated because she said, “I have a bad feeling. A bad feeling for you. A bad feeling for all us.”
And here I thought I was done with the mystical stuff.
“How so?”
She shook her head. “I can’t be specific. I really can’t. But I feel it inside.”
She was in one of her brooding moods and as I drove, I kept stealing looks at her. She was a beautiful lady, with the darkest eyes I had ever seen, which set off her equally dark choppy hair and olive skin to perfection. She had high cheekbones and full lips, was long-legged and almost feline in her movements. I think what made her dark beauty all that much more desirable was the thin knife scar on the bridge of her nose. Instead of marring it, it accentuated it. I was developing feelings for her, but I didn’t trust them. My wife had been dead…ten weeks? Eleven? And I was still hurting from that. When you’re grieving it’s all too easy to want to plug up those painful holes in your life. Sabelia had a thing for me. She was very loyal, very sexy, very desirable. However, I wanted to be fair to her and to myself. If we got together, I couldn’t honestly say it would have been love. I was afraid it might be lust combined with the need to get another woman in my life so I would not hurt so much.
And I liked Sabelia, I liked her a lot. I wasn’t about to have her reduced to the position of proxy. It wouldn’t be right.
“If you think I don’t know what you’re thinking, you’re wrong,” she said. “You’re being swayed toward me by your little head and your big head is afraid you’ll be making a big mistake.”
Painfully honest as always. “Yes,” I said. “It would be too damn easy to give into it.”
“So give into it.”
“I won’t use you.”
“Maybe we’ll use each other.”
It would have been interesting to know where that conversation might have went but fate had other things in mind, and they had nothing to do with matters of hormones and the human heart. By that point, we were back on Broadway heading north and making a pretty good clip. It was when we hit the intersection of West 233rd that things, which had been going so very good, started going really, really bad.
I slowed down.
“I don’t like this,” Sabelia said.
Neither did I. The road was closed ahead, a huge mound of mangled cars piled-up that had not been there before. I suppose there was always the remote chance that the rampart of burned autos had simply collapsed and filled the gap…but I wasn’t buying it. I didn’t think any rational person would. I felt the first stirrings of a nagging paranoia.
“What do you make of that?” Tuck said over the box.
“I’m not liking it much,” I said.
“It’s a fucking barricade. Somebody sealed us off.”
I sighed. “We’ll just have to divert and take our chances.”
We really had no other choice. Broadway was blocked so we had to go around. I couldn’t hang a right on 233rd and cut over to Bailey because that way was blocked, too. My only option was to hang a left, get over to Kingsbridge, and follow it north until it merged with Broadway. When I was in the Army over in Iraq, one of the cardinal rules they shoved down your throat over there was to pay attention to your surroundings. Keep an eye out, scope out possible ambush sites and traps the enemy would lead you into. I got very good at doing just that. And it seemed that, after awhile, I knew every inch of the terrain on my way in to an op so that if anything had changed on the way out I’d spot it immediately.
So as I cut onto West 233rd, I was very disappointed in myself because I realized I hadn’t paid a real lot of attention. I think my head was in the clouds as I sorted out our future prospects up in the Catskills. I mean, we had come straight down Broadway on the way in so I knew it hadn’t been blocked…but as to whether 233rd had been blocked on one side, I just couldn’t remember.
As I drove, scoping out the situation ahead for the architects of the Broadway barricade, I knew we were in the shit. The barricade was designed to divert us in the very direction we were going. We were being played, but there was really no choice in the matter, and I didn’t like that. There had to be option. The idea of willingly driving into an ambush was simply suicidal. I was thinking we could cut left on West 234th and make for Tibbet or Irwin Ave, slip north that way.
No dice.
When the intersection of West 234th came into view, I saw that it had been blocked, too. There was no way north but the way we were going unless we turned around and went south. They couldn’t have blocked every street. There were plenty of cars to do it with, but it would have been a hell of an operation and I imagined they had just managed to get Broadway, 233rd, and 234th taken care of before we returned.
“We’re in a trap,” Sabelia said.
“We sure are.”
I decided to push a little farther.
We hadn’t even gone a block when I saw activity up ahead of us. I rolled the Jeep to a stop, slid back the gun port Tuck had cut in the roof and popped out of it for a peak with my binoculars.
Oh boy.
The activity was a marauding mob of zombies, what looked to be hundreds pushing south on Kingsbridge. They were coming right at us and I didn’t believe it was by accident. And I was certain of it when I saw just behind them, maybe a city block beyond, an armored cavalry unit rolling down the street. Mostly Hummers, but they were armed with .50 cals and recoilless rifles. It had to be ARM. They must have watched us come in, and this was their chance for payback for the trouble that we had caused them. But why weren’t the zombies turning on them and attacking? It was like the dead were being herded at us, directed at us, compelled to attack us.
Phil said ARM had no such technology, but I no longer believed that.
I got back inside and got on the box, telling Tuck what I’d seen. “Our best bet,” I said, “is to head south and backtrack. Maybe cut west on 232nd or 231st, make for an avenue to cut west on.”
“Lets shoot for Riverdale,” Tuck said.
It was a plan. Tuck got the Stryker turned around and heading south and I followed him with the zombies on my tail. But it wasn’t going to be that easy and I soon saw way: heading from the other direction was another armored cavalry unit and this one was all business.
“We’re in the shit now,” Tuck said over the box
Popping up through the gun port again, I got my binoculars on this new group. Jesus. They were loaded for bear. They had Guardian ASVs, Armored Security Vehicles, with grenade launchers and mounted M2 .50 cals. Rolling with them were Desert Warrior armored vehicles armed with 7.62mm guns, 30mm cannons, and TOW anti-tank missiles. We were most definitely in the shit. The Stryker was no match for a close-in punch-up with these boys. We were sandwiched in-between an army of zombies, backed-up by ARM shitheads, and this fierce steel machine.
I had a feeling this new group was not ARM.
Just a feeling, but I was sure of it when I saw the ARM A-holes scattering. They were turning around and fleeing as this new force got closer. The zombies, however, did not stop with their forward march, but then I didn’t expect them to. Once they were moving in the direction of prey there wasn’t much that would deter them.
“I’m open to suggestions, Booky,” Tuck said over the box. “We’re in range of those big guns so we better do something.”
“I don’t think we’re the target,” I said. “I think they’re going after ARM and the dead.”
“And we’re going to be the stain caught in the middle.”
He was right on that. There really was only once choice and we took it. We brought the vehicles around, the Stryker leading and went right at the dead. Tuck opened up with the .50 cal, cutting the zombies down in masses and following through with salvos from the grenade launcher. Zombies were pulverized, exploding like bags of meat, their corpses, whether in part or whole, filling the streets in a great stew of carrion. Tuck cut down the first few waves; just enough to buy us some time. More zombies rushed in. Many stopped to feed on the dismembered remains of their fellows, but most kept right on coming in our direction.
Diane drove the Stryker right through them, rolling over bodies and smashing them beneath the wheels. We followed through the path she had created, the dead throwing themselves at us and bouncing off the Ram bumpers. The Jeep was rocking as we rolled over the corpses spread in every direction, but I saw what Diane was doing: there was an alley just ahead and she was making for it before the next wave of the dead closed in on us.
I saw the Stryker cut to the left into the alley and as I made to follow suit, a few straggling zombies came at the Jeep. I knocked them aside, rolling over their bodies, and when I came back down onto the pavement I saw a pothole right in front of us that just didn’t seem to belong.
Instinct made me spin the wheel to the left and that was probably the only thing that saved our lives. Because just as I did that, there was an explosion and the Jeep was tossed through the air. Sabelia and I were belted in, but the impact threw us in every direction as the belts cut into us, holding us in place. The Jeep hit the street rolling. I don’t know if it went over two times or three or four. I hit my head on the wheel and went unconscious for a few moments.
When I came to, Sabelia was reaching down through the gun port, trying to unhook my safety belt. The Jeep was trashed, lying on its side, but I could still hear Tuck trying to raise us. I knew what had happened. That pothole had looked suspicious and how right I was. Somebody had planted a radio-controlled IED in there and detonated it. If we had been over it when it went…well, that would have been it.
I had survived a couple of IEDs in Iraq. The idea that I would die in Kingsbridge in the Bronx from one was just simply absurd.
I helped Sabelia get my seatbelt loose and I took her hands, still dizzy and sluggish. My limbs didn’t seem to want to work right. When I got up through the gun port, I saw that the street was filled with zombies and they were coming for us. Sabelia kept pulling my hands…then she lost her grip and fell off the Jeep into the street. At that moment, the Stryker backed down the alley and the rear ramp went down.
Tuck came out firing, putting down zombies in every direction, splashing storefronts with blood and brains. But they were everywhere.
“STEVE!” Sabelia shouted. “C’MON, STEVE!”
I climbed back up through the gun port and got myself out and by then I saw that Tuck was leading Sabelia back to the Stryker ramp. She was fighting him and going wild, screaming my name, but he had no real choice: the dead were converging from every direction.
I dropped down to the pavement, my whole body bruised and aching.
I heard the report of a CAR-15 as Tuck dropped three zombies that came after me. I didn’t have my carbine. I had nothing but my Sig-Sauer 9 mil and my combat knife and those just weren’t going to do it.
I couldn’t make it to the Stryker there were so damn many zombies around and Tuck and Sabelia couldn’t make it to me. Waves of the dead cut me off from them. I pulled out my 9mil and dropped three of them, but it was like throwing peas at an elephant: there were hundreds of them, a great raging and ravenous machine of the dead.
I ran backwards, cut to the right, dropped two more, knocked a third and fourth out of my way and went through the shattered display window of a furniture outlet. A dozen of them came through the window after me, their white eyes fixed on me, drool hanging from their graying lips.
I heard the Stryker pull away and I knew I was on my own.
BETWEEN THE DEAD AND UNBURIED
I was deep in the shit, as Tuck says, and could rely on no one else to get me out of it. I raced through the store as hordes of the dead rushed into the display room. The only advantage I had on them was that they were slow and I was fast, but they were determined. Oh, how determined they were. They flipped over dining room sets, knocked aside sofas and loveseats, upended recliners, and sent display hutches filled with dishes crashing to the floor. They were going to have me and they could accept nothing less.
Furniture stores are amazing places when you want to avoid someone.
Just think about it. Bedroom sets and dining rooms and living rooms and dens, all those displays made up to lure in the buyer. I led the dead on a merry chase, trying to confuse them but they never seemed to lose my scent, though many of them got turned around and mixed-up in their flight. I was trying not to use the 9 mil if I didn’t have to.
As the dead tore their way through the store, filling it with their awful stink, I zigzagged my way toward the back where I figured the offices would be and hopefully, a storeroom and a loading dock I could slip out of. I found a service desk. Behind it was a door marked PRIVATE. Nothing behind it but an office. I scrambled down a little hallway. Restrooms. More offices. I found a little factory shop where they apparently did custom jobs and upholstering. No good. There had to be a backdoor somewhere. As I searched for it, the dead came down the hallway.
No time.
I saw some elevators…dead, of course.
Then a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
There was a little lunchroom, but as I entered it and saw the EXIT sign, the zombies came through a door on the other side of the room, cutting me off from it. Back in the hallway, I dropkicked a woman whose face looked like crawling pulp and knocked aside a man who was brandishing a severed arm. I found another door and went through it. If it was a dead end then I was done.
It was a stairway.
Panting, I climbed up and through the door at the top. There was a lock on it and I threw it. I knew it wouldn’t hold them for long but it would buy me some time. There were more offices and storage up there. I kept looking for a fire escape but I couldn’t find one. The armored cavalry outside were firing nonstop, putting down the zombies in great numbers. The building shook as cannon fire and grenades erupted in the street. I found a little cubby with a ladder leading to the roof and climbed up there, pushing through the trapdoor into the daylight. There was smoke everywhere. It rolled from the streets in twisting black plumes. It was n
auseating with the stench of the burning dead.
Machine guns clattered down there.
Shells exploded.
The building shook.
I saw my way out easily enough. The building directly behind the furniture store butted up to it. I would go roof hopping and make my way down to the street, head west.
I still had my little Motorola walkie-talkie. I tried to raise the Stryker again and again. About the time I had given up, Tuck said, “What the fuck you doing alive, Booky?”
If I hadn’t been so tired and wrung-out, I might have laughed.
“I’m sitting on a rooftop just kicking back. Where are you?”
“Tibbet Avenue, heading north. Getting the fuck out of Dodge. Coming up on 238th and the college. But we’ll swing back for you.”
“No,” I said. “The Army or whoever the hell that is down there are tearing the neighborhood apart. Don’t even come back here. Wait at the college and I’ll try and make my way to you.”
Tuck said, “How will I know you?”
“I’ll be the guy with fifty zombies on his ass.”
“Okay, Booky. Watch your topknot. Keep us posted.”
I was about to come back with some witty reply, but that’s when I heard something else…only this wasn’t in the street, it was in the air. Sure as hell, coming out of the sky was an Apache gunship looking like a hunting wasp in search of prey. I crawled to safety and hid behind some heating ducts as it passed overhead. I was glad the Stryker was far away now. The Apache was armed with chain guns, Hellfire missiles, and Hydra rockets. I knew the kind of damage they could do to enemy forces and ground columns. I figured it was coming down on a fire-support mission to clean out something just ahead of the armored cavalry unit.
I had no doubt by this point that these boys were regular Army or Marines.