by J. L. Bourne
I checked the VW one last time and saw the gate control clipped to the sun visor.
Tossing it to Mitch, I said, “Might want this. It’ll make it easier getting in and out.”
After thanking me for remembering the opener, Mitch commented that he would be driving a tow truck and added, “Why not tow a good car behind me if the truck breaks down?”
He had an excellent idea, so we manipulated the hydraulic controls and loaded up the VW on the back of the tow truck. I shook Mitch’s hand and patted his children on the back. Mitch handed me a custom IFAK (individual first aid kit), telling me that it was tailor-made for the apocalypse. We both laughed, and he reminded me to stick to my schedule with the codeine.
“The pain is in your head. Your ankle is healing fine . . . just no five-hundred-yard sprints,” he said.
“Roger that, Doctor,” I said.
Loaded up, they started the tow truck and pulled the VW out of the vineyard parking lot, loaded up with summer sausage and bottles of wine. I waved at Mitch and honestly hoped I’d see him and his children again one day.
I loaded Goliath with spare provisions and tied the GARMR down before I fired up the diesel and rolled down the vineyard road myself. As I left the gate, I could see a creature milling about the irradiated lab coat corpses. It was the tow truck passenger. I veered Goliath’s wheel a few degrees to the right, slamming into the fucker and sending it thirty feet into the heavy foliage.
The radio crackled with Mitch’s voice, “We’re on the main road, hopefully headed to paradise. Probably out of range in an hour or so.”
I answered, again wishing him luck. Mitch knew to check his CB at the same time every day for contact. A team was being formed back at the Keys when I left. Its mission was to extract survivors from the mainland. A no-shit doctor would be high on their priorities list. Saien was to be the captain of one of the extraction teams. They offered me the job, but a baby will change your perspective on everything. Also, I don’t work very well on a team.
Ask my old unit, or the ghost of what’s left of them.
Day 23
1100
Mitch made last contact at around six this morning. He got to my first map landmark, an overturned feed truck. His signal was so weak that I could barely hear anything but managed to make out feed truck. He was making good time.
At about 0900, I saw a bridge in the distance. Bridges are bad, especially ones that are high over the water and long enough that you can’t back off them fast. I coasted to a stop and glassed the span with my binos. There were vehicles on the bridge, but I couldn’t see any undead or signs of a roadblock. Confident I wasn’t about to get the old okeydoke, I rolled onto the long bridge, stopping on its apex. The two-lane span was a quarter mile long. The sun was bright, so I decided to get out and have lunch on top of the cab. My fingers were soon greasy from summer sausage and my lips purple from warm red wine. I watched the river water rush under the span. The banks were littered with skeletons, both human and animal. I found it difficult to imagine what this might look like to someone from two years ago.
Panning the binos along the shore, I saw a lone figure standing on the bank a few hundred yards away. Adjusting the focus, I could see that the figure was missing an arm. The corpse stood there, waiting for something like me to come along.
Unable to resist the urge, I called out, my voice traveling over the water at the speed of a fighter jet. I looked through my binos, waiting for the sound to reach the creature. After a few dramatic seconds, it began to stir and turned its once dormant head toward the bridge. Unable to triangulate the sound, it began to walk to the bridge, searching for the source of food it had heard. I threw my empty wine bottle like a German World War II grenade, watching it arc up and then down to the large river boulders. It hit with a loud shattering sound, making the creature veer its course to where the bottle impacted. Two more emerged from the trees lining the riverbank in search of the source of the noise. I decided to pack it in before they started making their own noise, eventually causing a chain reaction of undead to appear on the banks below.
The Gates of Atlanta
2200
Troll
I had to make it through five different pileups and a pretty fucked-up situation to get where I am now. I spent most of the afternoon pulling cars apart so that I could squeeze Goliath through the openings. As I cleared the fifth wreck, I noted a sign peppered with shotgun blasts telling me that Atlanta was twenty-two miles ahead. Several miles behind, however, a large pillar of dust rose up above the trees. I’d seen this before and didn’t like what happened after.
Swarm.
I let off the gas and let Goliath rumble down a large hill into a valley cut by a strong-flowing river. I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention: When Goliath ramped up onto the middle of the bridge, my head nearly hit the top of the cab. I slammed on the brakes, and the rig’s large tires skidded to a stop ten feet before a three-foot gap in the road.
A goddamned drawbridge.
There were three cars sitting on the side of the road at the start of the bridge, so I used them to form a vehicle wall behind me so I could work the problem.
I grabbed my kit and headed to the bridge operator’s box on the opposite side. Of course, it couldn’t be easy. I made the jump across the steel span. The drawbridge portion was constructed of steel grates. The side I was on wasn’t raised up very much, maybe a foot. It was the other side, Goliath’s side, that was the problem. I began to analyze the situation, watching the dust cloud approach from the direction I’d just driven.
I hoped Mitch and his kids were doing okay, or at least better than I was right now.
I reached into my pocket and glanced at the wean-off plan Mitch had written down for me. It would be hours before I could have another quarter pill of codeine. The sadistic bastard had me on a tight schedule. With the shakes in full force, I threw open the door to the bridge operator’s console room and began manipulating levers, hoping that the machine would work like the window washer lift did on the building in Tallahassee.
With the mechanical locks disengaged, Goliath’s side of the bridge maybe dropped an inch before vibrating like a tuning fork and silently settling.
Reluctantly, I placed my feet on the rungs of the ladder leading from the operator’s console down below the bridge. The catwalk was small, affording no room for mistakes. The waters were high and could sweep me a mile downstream before I found the shore, if I didn’t get a chunk of my leg removed by the lurking dead that no doubt waited for me in the murky waters. I used my carbine as a balance pole before making it to the door leading inside the drawbridge motor room.
Cursing myself that I’d forgotten my drill, I reached down for the knob, expecting to find the steel door solidly locked. But the knob turned and then the door flew open toward me from the force of the undead that pushed behind it. Sunlight touched the face of these creatures for the first time in ages, and I nearly fell into the water along with the first one. The only thing that prevented my fall was a fire extinguisher box that jutted from the wall on my side of the door. I held it tightly with my right hand, bringing my carbine up to the ready.
Intimidated by the specter of low-ammo at the forefront of my mind, I kept myself from firing, kicking the second one off its feet and sending it tumbling into the brown waters. For a split second, I couldn’t help but watch the two corpses bob and drift rapidly downstream fifty yards or so apart. They flailed and turned about unnaturally in the water. At a glance, they appeared human but drifted down the river like tsunami debris, uncoordinated and chaotic.
Then, as a third came out of the dark room, I forced open the rusted metal and glass box containing the extinguisher and pulled it from its clips. The inspection tag hung soggily from the flexible firing hose and the needle in the circle gauge pointed to green when I pulled the pin and squeezed the handle down all the way to my fingertips. I blasted the bloated, slimy creature in the face, filling its gaping mouth and eye
sockets with Purple-K dust. Wildly confused by what had just happened, it stepped itself off the platform into the water as well, bobbing and flailing like the others, but surrounded by a powdery circle as it followed its friends downstream. The wind blew some of the acrid dust back into my face, causing my eyes to water. The taste in my mouth almost made me want to wash it out in the river water below. Almost.
I led with my gun blasting its 500-lumen light into the dark room, under a bridge for which I was now the resident troll. The walls of the motor room as well as the motors themselves were covered with slime. The dead had been cooking inside here for two summers, coating everything with shit. Ugh. It was a new kind of nasty. Should have brought my mask.
I worked quickly, searching for the motor that controlled Goliath’s side of the bridge, eventually tracing the wires to what I thought was the correct motor. With the grid perma-down, I pulled the wires from the electrical box and scavenged the cord from a nearby work lamp that hung over the motors. With the motor wired up to a 110-volt plug, I made my way back up to the bridge. The creatures I’d put in the river had disappeared downstream, hopefully skewered forever on a fallen tree somewhere. As I climbed the ladder to bridge level, I noticed the swarm’s dust cloud had gotten noticeably bigger.
I had to make a choice: cut my losses and bring the GARMR and the rest of my kit to the other side and abandon Goliath . . . or lower the bridge, keep Goliath, but potentially build a pathway for whatever evil approached.
The cumbersome generator was strapped tightly to my back as I made the three-foot skip across the bridge opening. I felt a pang in my ankle as I landed. The generator’s fuel sloshed around inside its small one-gallon tank and I could smell the fumes of gasoline coming off the small 2-kilowatt Honda power plant. On Goliath’s side of the bridge, I couldn’t see individual corpses yet, but there was a plasma-like mirage line of mayhem at the base of the dust cloud.
I hurried down the ladder and shimmied across the catwalk to the motor room, leaving the generator outside to vent its deadly gases in the open air. I started the machine, leaving it in full-power mode, and pulled the power cord I’d rigged over to the generator. After a moment of hesitation and repositioning myself near the door, I plugged it into the generator.
Son of a bitch, it was working. The bridge motor began to run, turning the massive manhole-sized gears very slowly. The 110-volt generator was obviously having trouble supplying enough juice to the motor, but it was going anyway. I could see the large gear catch the next cog.
I inspected the gears and removed a bit of torn clothing from the teeth, not wanting to think where that came from. It took four minutes for one complete turn of the main gear. I had no idea what that might equate to the topside on the bridge. I left the generator to do its work, and climbed the ladder to check the progress. The bridge moved like the minute hand on a clock: only perceptible if you compared it to what was behind it. In my case, I watched Goliath’s horizontal chrome grille sections appear one by one as the bridge slowly dropped.
I went again onto Goliath’s side and my heart skipped a beat as individual corpses came into view a thousand yards distant. I ran for Goliath and tossed my kit in the passenger seat before starting the rig, positioning the front bumper over the slowly falling edge. I thought the rig’s weight might ease the strain on the spinning motor below.
I left the rig running and grabbed the heavy RPK and two extra magazines. Knocking out the window glass, I set up a pillbox in the bridge operator’s station with a clear field of fire to Goliath’s side of the bridge.
The familiar chorus of moans rasping from undead tracheas reached my ears as the distinct but unsettling noise engulfed the bridge. This was the only artery across the river for these creatures, and they moved in unison as if they knew it. Just like water, they flowed down the path of least resistance, consuming everything with a heartbeat.
I checked my Rolex, something that used to be valuable but nowadays you could pick up anytime you wanted one. With the second hand at twelve o’clock, I began to watch the bridge. The hum of the generator competed with the penetrating barrage of undead noises.
One minute elapsed. Six inches lower on the bridge.
I’d need ten minutes to get the bridge low enough to drive Goliath across the gap.
Eight hundred yards . . . maybe. Maybe less.
The mega-horde kicked up dust and debris as it pressed forward, unstoppable. I could hear the screech of protesting metal as the river of corpses wrenched a vehicle aside somewhere under that dust cloud. That kind of force doesn’t come from just hundreds.
My adrenaline began to flow as I put the RPK machine gun into battery and became acquainted with the sight picture. I didn’t dare yet fire, as the sound would laser-focus the creatures to me. Right now they simply moved like a school of fish following each other down the road, reactive to one another’s movements.
The road the undead traveled was covered on all sides by thick foliage. Those I could see were only the faster-moving tip of the iceberg. As I looked down the long sight picture of the machine gun, I noticed the raider’s inscription in the wood stock: BITCHKILLA.
In addition to the rifle’s name, there were dozens of tick marks, no doubt representing the number of lives the poorly named weapon had taken.
I began to make out the different colors in the approaching horde, and estimated that the leading edge was at about five hundred yards and closing. The smell began to defy the winds, reaching my nostrils as more loud bellows from the mass shook the air all around me.
The bridge was nearly low enough to cross as the creatures began to reach the vehicle barricade I’d made just before. Leaving the RPK in the makeshift pillbox, I hopped over the guardrail and the narrowing gap before putting Goliath in gear and giving it the gas. The front wheels cleared the gap and I upshifted, putting the pedal to the floor. The rig’s frame shuddered and creaked as it became nearly high centered on the bridge. As soon as I felt my back wheels clear, I skidded to a stop, grabbed the extra RPK mags, and sprinted to the pillbox and down into the motor room.
Working as fast as I possibly could with my multitool and electrical tape, I switched the polarity on the motor input and plugged the jerry-rigged connection back into the generator. The motor began to spin in the opposite direction, turning the massive gears slowly along with it. I hoped the generator had sufficient fuel to keep up the fight as I stepped back out onto the catwalk and up the ladder to the pillbox.
Tired of getting my ears blown out with automatic weapons, I remembered to pack some foamies in my cargo pocket. I rolled the plugs into my ears as I opened fire on the dozens of walking corpses that now managed to clear the barrier. I fired the RPK in controlled bursts, trying to do as much damage per magazine as possible. Shell casings flew around the bridge control box, bouncing off the ceiling and walls, some finding their way down my collar, of course.
The machine-gun noise caused a frenzy in the horde. I could see the mass of a hundred thousand bodies move like a stadium wave at my small barricade. I kept firing and firing as the first barricade vehicle succumbed to the immense pressure of the horde.
Crushed and pulverized bodies spilled onto the road, their still-animated replacements using them as floor mats as they advanced onto the rising metal drawbridge.
I changed mags again. I could smell burning oil and lacquer coming off the gun, and the barrel smoked underneath its hand guard. Even the left bipod arm I used as a grip was warm from the heat transfer coming off the barrel.
I just needed to keep them back for two more minutes; that was it.
Two more mags remaining.
I slapped in a new mag and laid waste to thirty more creatures with it, spraying the tops of their heads as judiciously as possible. The remaining barricade cars were being pushed inward. I’ll never forget seeing all the scalps I’d shot off sitting on top of the barricade cars along with pieces of brain and skull fragments.
The swarm again surged forward, bucklin
g the cars, using their own numbers as rams. The frontline undead were crushed to a pulp and again the ones behind them slogged forward. The creatures seemed to go on forever in the distance, and the dust in the air was starting to be a problem.
Last mag.
I squeezed the trigger, giving the advancing wave what for, arcing the weapon back and forth until the last round left a searing-hot, cherry-red barrel.
The creatures were looking at me. They approached hungrily, with their arms out front, stepping blindly until the first group came to the gap. One of them moved across the opening and actually touched my side before tumbling into the current. I pulled my Glock and pressed out to the line, waiting for one of them to make it over the void.
The next thing I knew, I was being shoved into the river side of the operator console. On my back looking up, I saw the wretched creature start to bend down to take a bite. I put two rounds of 9mm into its switch box, turning the lights out. With all the excitement on the drawbridge, I forgot one of the most important survival rules.
Look behind you.
On my side of the road, a dozen undead had wandered out of the woods, attracted by the noise of gunfire. Another creature was attempting to leg over to the walkway leading to me in the operator station. The thing was frail, nearly down to bone and tendon. I gave it a swift kick, sending it over the side into the drink to join the growing flotilla of corpses.
The drawbridge was getting high enough that the undead horde wouldn’t be able to make it to the edge. With little time to spare, I cut the genny and hauled ass back up to Goliath, dodging corpses down the path to my air-conditioned biosphere. Safely inside the truck, I began running down the remaining creatures on my side of the bridge, eventually clearing it out and making another barricade. That was too close.