Payload

by RW Krpoun

Shotgun ready, his flashlight clipped to the collar of his denim vest, Bear eased down the hallway, wondering how he had gone from running hot electronics to unpaid hero. He had always suspected he was not all that bright, but after this week he was sure of it. The weirdest thing was that even though he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get out of this brick armpit alive, he actually felt kind of good. Screwed up as this business was, it was real like nothing else he had done in his life had been real. He was starting to get why Marv did so many tours in Afghanistan.

  A zed lurched out of a recessed doorway and he put a load of shot into its skull, firing on instinct. It was getting to be like stepping on a scorpion, he realized as he worked the shotgun’s action. They weren’t Human, they were just…something you killed before it could hurt you.

  He shot another in the next set of opposing doorways and then paused to thumb two shells into the Mossburg. Behind him he could hear the residents assembling in the hallway, and he stepped off again, not rushing, moving steady, Addison’s Mac-10 pumping off three shots wringing a couple girlish shrieks from some of the old babes.

  The hallway ended in a sort of entry area with a couple decorative tables, a fire hose hanging in accordion-like folds in its red box, an extra-wide elevator like those used in hospitals, and two stairwell doors, one on either side of the elevator. The north stairwell door also had a blue sign with white letters that said ‘roof access’.

  And three zombies.

  The compression of metal around the knife had reached a point where the door was open three inches and the lower glass panel was starting to crack. Chip couldn’t remember trying harder at anything in his life, but still, millimeter by millimeter he was losing ground.

  Then JD was beside him, jamming the muzzle of his MP-5 into the narrow gap and opening fire, the three-round bursts showering hot brass across Chip’s head, the over-heated metal stinging like a spray of boiling water but the Gnome could care less. Sagging back from the door with a relived gasp, he ripped the knife from the jamb and closed it one-handed as he kicked the door open. Hauling the cut-down up on its strap he unloaded all five shells into the zombies.

  Dropping the empty weapon on its sling he drew his Glock, the M-1 having ridden around onto his back during the struggle with the door, and shot the cook square in the forehead as it struggled to regain its feet. He advanced into the hallway, shooting any intact head he saw.

  When all six zeds were put down, often with an extra round or two in the head, the big Gnome turned slowly around and shook his head. “You saved my bacon, dude.”

  “Glad to help,” JD loaded a fresh magazine and released the bolt. “I’ve got to cover the fire escape-you watch the hallway.”

  With trembling fingers Chip loaded a full magazine into his Glock and holstered it, tucking away the partial magazine. Loading the cut-down shotgun and releasing it to hang on its strap, he pulled the M-1 around to the front and tried to steady his breathing. “That was intense,” he said to no one in particular.

  The first to come at Bear was a gray-skinned zed, moving fast and sure. The biker clipped its shoulder with the first shot, got a solid chest shot that stopped it in its tracks, and blew a hole in its forehead with the third. The other two zombies, both battered women wearing hair stylists’ smocks, were slower, more unsteady, but he took no chances, knee-capping one to give him time to shoot the other in the head. Shooting the cripple in the head, he let the Mossburg drop onto its strap and drew his USP.

  “Clear,” He said over his shoulder to Dyson, who was halfway down the hall. As the Georgian moved up at the trot Bear headed to the north stairwell. “Watch the south stairwell.”

  Pulling open the door, he leaned over the railing and was startled to see Marv on the landing below, looking up at him. “We’re clear,” the Ranger said.

  “Good. Hold on a second.” Taking the stairs two at a time, Bear raced up to the next landing, where the roof door was held ajar by a battered coffee can painted red.

  Hitting the door with his shoulder, he kicked the can, sending a spray of sand and cigarette buts across a zombie in a bloody work shirt and jeans coming to investigate the shots. Shooting the zed twice in the chest to stop him, Bear steadied his aim and put the third round into the zombie’s forehead. “HEY! C’MERE!” he screamed at the infected crowding at the roof’s edge, following it up with five quick shots aimed at the crowd. As they turned and started for him he pulled the door shut, jerking up on the release bar to ensure it was locked. Swapping out a full magazine for the partial in his USP, he holstered the weapon as he bounded down the stairs. “Roof access is secure,” he advised Marv in passing.

  “OK, the path is clear,” he told Dyson. I’ll watch the south stairwell.”

  Thumbing shells into the Mossburg as the residents trudged past single file, the biker hoped they were getting close to being done-he was getting low on ammunition and even lower on nerve.

  “Take them all the way to the fourth floor fire escape landing,” Marv said as Dyson started down the stairwell. “Brick has the south stairwell, and I’ve got this one. Bear sealed off the roof. Once you’re there get JD to cover the third floor hallway and start ’em to the bus. You’ll need to cover the fourth floor landing from any coming down.”

  “Got it. Bear and Addison are covering the rear.”

  “Good.”

  Trotting ahead down the hallway, Dyson keyed up his CB as he reached the fire door. “Four to One, we’re at the fourth floor. Six advises to move back up to three and cover the hallway, I’ll cover from above.”

  “Got it, Four. On my way.”

  Hitting the push bar, the Georgian stepped out onto the fire escape landing. To his right a few dead infected littered the stairs, and JD was trotting up to the third floor. To his left was a stack of infected with shattered skulls, and above that was the fifth floor landing and its massive stack of dead.

  And a couple active zombies struggling over the corpses of their fellows. Bracing his Mini-14 against the open door which was pushed to its fullest extension, the Gnome carefully picked them off. “Come on!” he shouted down the hall. “We’re home free!”

  As the first resident reached him, a retired teacher named Miss Emily, he pointed downwards. “Take the fire escape down to the bus. Don’t worry about the bodies, or if you hear any shooting. It’s a clear shot now.”

  “Bless you,” she touched his face in passing, and Dyson felt absurdly grateful. Turning, he shot another zombie as it tumbled down onto the stack of bodies.

  “OK, our turn,” Bear advised Addison after checking on the progress in the stairwell. There were only fourteen residents from the fifth floor, but several had limited mobility and the process was taking a lot longer than he would like. Luckily, his distraction on the roof had stopped the zombies from jumping down for several minutes, and now those coming down were heading down the fire escape, not trying to get into the fifth floor.

  Miss Emily had reached the second floor landing, Dyson saw as he reloaded, and Chip was leaning out the doorway encouraging her on, but Doctor Johnson, the tail end resident, was just starting down the stairs to the third floor landing, clinging to the railing with one hand while he clutched his walker and a suitcase in the other.

  Marv emerged from the door with Brick, Bear, and Addison on his heels. “How’s it look out here?”

  “Could be a lot faster,” the Georgian advised. “I’m down to the mag in my weapon.”

  “Go help the last guy, I’ll cover here. The rest of you check on our truck.”

  “I’ll help him,” Bear volunteered. “Dyson has a CB.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Bear helped Doctor Johnson by simply picking him up and carrying him down the stairs like a groom carrying his bride across the threshold. It wasn’t fast, but it was faster than the retired English professor could have gone. Marv backed down the stairs, careful not to crowd the biker, picking off three more roof-jumping zeds.

  JD joined him on the thir
d floor landing. “That got a little hairy,” the promoter observed. “Who would have thought they could flank us?”

  “I didn’t. The first few shattered their legs landing, until there were enough corpses to soften the drop. We have to be a lot more careful in the future. But I’ll tell you one thing: this is a damned solid crew. Not many squads could hold up under what just developed, much less fight their way through.”

  “Damn straight,” JD leaned out over the rail, looking up. “Looks like they’re losing interest.”

  “Maybe we’re too far away to get them excited.”

  “The bulk of them climbed all the way up to the roof to get at us.”

  “Good point. Although that might have been more of an accident-they might have been probing for an unguarded avenue which led them to the roof, where they heard us talking on the top landing.”

  “Possible,” JD conceded. “Still, that’s a lot more cunning than I expected from zombies.”

  “I agree.” The pair started down to the second floor landing.

  “Four to Six, truck looks good. We’re going to get loaded.”

  “Six, received.”

  Bear was handing off the Doctor to the helpers on the bus roof as Marv and JD joined Chip on the second floor landing. “Looks like you had your own war down here,” Marv eyed the damaged door and the crumpled bodies.

  “He was holding the door against a herd of zeds; he looked like Hercules pulling down the temple,” JD grinned.

  “That was Samson, not Hercules,” Bear said as he trudged up to join them. “What? I’ve read the Bible.”

  Below them the hatch on the bus’ roof slammed shut and the vehicle shifted into gear. “That’s our cue,” Marv slapped Chip on the shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Brother, I’ve been to two rodeos and a State Fair, and I’ve never seen anything like you boys,” Sid pumped Marv’s hand. “Not so much a scratch on any of the fifty-one, and word is you thinned the herd pretty drastically as well.”

  “Probably over a hundred,” Marv nodded tiredly. “But if you don’t mind, Sid, I would like to settle up and get rolling. We’ve got at least one more fight before our day is done. Sooner started, sooner finished.”

  “Damn, son, I don’t know how you manage. The fuel is in that truck, the green one, and this is Carlos, he’s with the satellite company, he’ll fix you right up.”

  “What I’ll do, I’ll put one of our mobile mini-dishes up there and give you a company account.” Carlos was a husky young Hispanic man with a pony tail and a nose which had been broken and poorly reset sometime in the distant past. “Won’t take ten minutes. You got your owner’s manual handy?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Carlos was as good as his word; by the time they topped off Gnomehome’s tank, the fuel cans, and the dually’s tank he had the dish in place and had briefed Addison on the specifics of the system.

  “OK, can they track us?” Marv asked Addison as JD pulled the RV out onto the road.

  “Nope. I disabled Doc’s system myself,” the dark Gnome mumbled. “I can bring it back on line if we need it in the future, though.”

  “Five minute showers,” Dyson announced. “Gimme the names.”

  “I’ll get some burgers going if anyone’s hungry,” Chip offered, receiving a chorus of assents.

  “I’m going to check in,” Marv tossed the bag containing the dismantled Chinese cell phone to Bear. “If they’re good, you’re up next.”

  “Too bad the girls are back in the truck,” Bear mused. “We need to sort that out.”

  “When FASA isn’t breathing down our neck,” Dyson shrugged. “Today’s the last day of this run in any case.”

  “What are you planning to do starting tomorrow?” The biker asked, contemplating a cold beer he had taken from the fridge and then replacing it, unopened, and choosing a Pepsi instead.

  “Living that long. I’ll worry about the long term when the long term is actually an option.”

  Chip brought a hamburger wrapped in a paper towel and a paper bowl of homemade fries to JD in the driver’s seat. “Here you go.” He hesitated. “Look, you saved my life, dude. That door was about to give.”

  The promoter shrugged. “You still had your guns, Chip, and I’ve seen you in action-you could have gotten clear. Anyway, you would do the same for me, so don’t get all gay about it.”

  “Bite me.”

  “There ya go.”

  “That was some hairy business back there,” Dyson observed.

  “Very close thing,” Brick nodded. “Covering the hallway alone very creepy. I hear things, get worried, hear more things.”

  “It was rough,” Addison agreed, emerging from the bedroom after finishing his shower. Brick immediately headed back for his turn.

  “The plan would have worked great if they hadn’t come off the roof,” Chip observed. “That’s where it got bad.”

  “Next time, we stick with the stairwells,” the Georgian suggested. “It would have been a little tougher at the start if we had done it this time, but the roof stunt wouldn’t have worked.”

  “They would have tried something else,” JD said from the driver’s seat. “What we need is some way to break a mass assault by zombies.”

  “That’s true.”

  Marv came back into the main area. “OK, they came through with the data.” He picked up the worn road atlas and started thumbing through the pages. “A small town completely over-run with zeds, not too far from an airstrip.” He studied the map, checking notes on a paper towel. “OK, here you go, Bear. Once we get a good look at the place and formulate a plan, you’ll get your girlfriend on the phone and line up a date.”

  “What’s this word?” The biker pointed on the towel.

  Marv frowned. “Ah…’crossroads’.”

  “OK, I got it.”

  “Which way, Marv?” JD asked.

  The Ranger moved up to the driver’s seat. “Looks like we’ll turn north fairly soon…”

  The little plane had brought Sophia and one bodyguard to a dingy municipal airport in southeast Oklahoma that had been secured by a District 13 team.

  The bodyguard she had chosen was Dennis Mabry, a skilled operator who had been back at headquarters after having been lightly wounded carrying out disruption operations. Sophia chose Mabry both for his skills set and for the fact that he had no political interests in FASA’s operations. Mabry, like herself, was simply interested in destruction and victimization for the sake of the act, although unlike her his interests were intensely personal-Dennis preferred to hack people to death in a particularly gruesome fashion. A former member of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, Dennis was highly trained and well-suited for FASA operations, having done very good work in Atlanta at the early onset of FASA operations.

  Her sat phone rang. The number that came up was from a FASA-assigned series; pulling up the list on her tablet she found it as having been assigned to a District 12 feeder team that had been off the grid for some time. “Prime.”

  “Hey, babe,” she recognized Bear’s voice. “You miss me?”

  “How did you get that phone?”

  “Took it off some dead guys. You FASA types ain’t as tough as you think.”

  She scowled-the phone was from a team had been listed as MIA, but the fact was they were operating in the likely transit corridor of the Gnomes. “I thought you said we wouldn’t have voice communications.”

  “Even after all we have meant to each other, I still am a man of mystery; you might want to keep that in mind.”

  “Bear,” Sophia said sweetly. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Not so much. You in good old OK?”

  “I am, and ready to meet face-to-face. This is like online dating.”

  “Good. We’ve adjusted our personnel roster, and we’re heading for a town called Cross Plains, its in Curry County. Just a wide spot in the road, but there’s a private airstrip about five miles away.”

  “Ok,” Soph
ia scribbled rapidly. “Let me call you back in five minutes.” Waving the pilot over, she showed him her notes. “See if we can use an air strip near Cross Plains, Curry County, and get me a travel time.”

  Mabry slid his laptop around with a Google Earth image forming on its screen. Pulling up the state map on her tablet, she studied the FASA dispositions. “Not bad, we can have a team at the airstrip in less than an hour.” She looked at the laptop screen. “What do you think?”

  Dennis tapped the screen, a man of complete averages: average height, average weight for a man who was extremely fit, nondescript facial features, mundane hair, and unremarkable voice. Only his eyes stood out: they seemed to glow with a sick intensity, a mad dog’s eyes. She thought they were his most attractive feature. “Not much there. A small grocery store, Dairy Queen, looks like an agriculture store of some sort, maybe a repair place here. Nine hundred people.”

  “What about tactically-speaking?”

  “If it is over run, it’s a good choice-with only four of us any shooting will bring down more trouble than we can handle, and the area around it is too open to infiltrate an additional team given the time constraints we have.”

  “What about an ambush?”

  “They have to be just as quiet as we are, and for the same reason. The THOR system we brought will prevent them from using an IED by remote control, and the RQ-16 HAWK mini-drone will spot any manually-controlled devices. If we force them to show themselves so we can get a count, they don’t have a lot of options.”

  “Twenty to thirty minutes,” the pilot advised her.

  “Get the nearest team moving,” she told Mabry as she dialed.

  “Talk to me,” Bear said.

  “Two hours.”

  “Try one.”

  “Ninety minutes, we have to refuel, and we have to drive from the airstrip.”

  “OK, but the clock starts running the second I hang up.”

  “OK.” She scrawled LOAD UP-GOING on her notepad and held it for the others to see; Dennis grabbed her tablet and walked out of earshot. “We’re bringing a small drone for safety’s sake.”