He could smell them, a moist odor of decay curdling the air, and within several minutes the scent was joined by the acrid bite of quicklime. Halsey’s mass grave. He was heading in the right direction, the Black Hawk waiting midway between the cabin and the lime pit.
Suddenly something was underfoot and he tripped, falling forward, losing the flashlight as he hit the snowy ground. In an instant there was a weight on his legs and he twisted, trying to break free. The flashlight had fallen at such an angle that the beam pointed back toward him, and in the light he saw a dead woman—a torso with arms and gnashing teeth, spinal column trailing behind her—lying across his lower legs and gripping his right boot with both hands. Teeth sank into the leather.
Vlad grunted and kicked with his other boot, kicked again, aiming for the creature’s head but hitting ribs and shoulder. The dead woman seemed to realize her teeth could not penetrate the boot, so she scrabbled up his leg and gripped his shin, jaws wide.
The crack of Vladimir’s Browning split the night and he screamed, pain racing up his leg. He dragged himself clear of the corpse’s weight, the limp body rolling off and landing on its back. The bullet had entered just above its ear on one side and blown out a chunk of skull and corrupted gray matter on the other.
Vlad tried to swallow the pain as he crawled to his feet, retrieving the flashlight and shining it back toward the cabin. The line of corpses had turned to follow him, and now stretched out as a barrier between him and his friend. The pilot turned and got going again, limping badly, searching with the flashlight. The Black Hawk was still nowhere in sight.
Behind him, Vladimir was leaving a blood trail.
• • •
Titan and Braga throttled up the stone-paved driveway, now buckled in places and sagging in others from the quake. Their headlights illuminated a gentle rise as they drove along a curved drive through lawns once immaculately landscaped, now gone shaggy and brown with clusters of dead hedges. A rich man’s place, they thought. Behind them, the three pickups added their headlights as they followed the Harleys.
The driveway curved back to the right, passing a dirt road that cut away over a hill, coming to a halt at a large paved circle in front of a burned mansion and charred garages. The pickups spread out behind them as the two bikers sat on their hogs, headlights shining on collapsed stone and a skeleton of blackened timbers. The quake had collapsed the structure further, creating a maze of debris. Engines switched off.
“What’s up with this?” Braga said. “Zombies don’t set fires.”
Titan lit a joint. “We’ve seen burned shit before.” He shrugged. “Gas leak, lightning maybe.”
“Maybe,” said Braga. He climbed off his bike and stretched, then yelled back at the people in the trucks. “Spread out and look around.” A dozen men and women jumped down and started into the ruins, flashlights and weapons raised.
Braga looked around at the destruction. “No place to land a helicopter up here. The map said it was a ranch.”
Titan passed the joint. “Don’t know what to tell you.”
Braga watched Little Emer’s militia move slowly through the ruins, kicking up clouds of ash, lights jumping through fallen beams. He doubted anyone would be hiding in there, but their leader would want him to be thorough. He held the smoke and passed the joint back to his friend. The goddamned helicopter was probably hundreds of miles away by now. Why would anyone want to land out here in the sticks?
“You see that dirt road we passed?” Braga said. “Just off the driveway?”
Titan nodded. “So what?”
“I think we should see where it goes.”
The red tip of the joint flared. “Brother, we’re wasting our time. Let’s just tell him we didn’t find anything.”
Braga snorted. “Sure, let’s do that, and when the fucking chopper does show up because we didn’t find it, you can tell the man why.”
The other biker made a disgusted sound and crushed the butt of the joint under a boot. “Fine, we’ll check the road. But I’m telling you—”
A single, distant gunshot came from beyond the burned mansion. Titan and Braga looked at one another, then grinned and started yelling for the others to get back in the trucks.
• • •
Halsey’s Stampede followed through the woods and out onto the Skyway, tracking on the distant rumble of engines. Stiff legs marched across the pavement, bodies bumping against one another as two thousand corpses trudged in the same direction. A river of rot flowing around abandoned vehicles.
The creatures at the head of the Stampede had drawn even with the driveway entrance to Pepper’s Broken Arrow Ranch when a pistol shot echoed in the distance. Heads lifted, turning toward the sound. A moment later there was a new rumbling of engines.
The dead began to moan, and flowed up the driveway.
• • •
Fuck me!” Braga said, bringing his hog to a sliding stop, Titan doing the same, the brake lights of the trucks following an instant later. A tattered, hobbling corpse wearing scrubs and a doctor’s coat stumbled into the road not twenty feet away.
Both bikers pulled their shotguns and blasted off a trio of shells each, cutting the creature down. Then they motored forward to inspect their kill.
“Damn, it stinks!” said Titan.
“That scare you, bro?” Braga said, grinning as he reloaded his shotgun.
“Hell yes,” said Titan, feeding shells into his own weapon.
Braga laughed. “C’mon,” he said, throttling his Harley, “let’s go put in some work.” Behind them, the pickups followed.
• • •
Halsey stared into the black, trying to ignore the hammering fists and snarling coming from below as the dead began stacking up against the walls of the cabin. Though he couldn’t see them in the dark, he could hear more feet dragging across the yard, bumping against his pickup. He couldn’t tell how many were out there and wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Where was Vlad? The man had vanished into the night as soon as he jumped off the roof. Had he run in the right direction? Was he even still alive? Halsey gripped the tower wall and leaned out, unable to see a thing.
A white flash and the crack of a pistol came from the darkness, followed immediately by a man’s scream. Halsey stared at that point, thinking he saw a light, wondering if it was his imagination. No, it was a flashlight. It moved and then was gone.
Glass broke below as the dead shattered the cabin’s windows and began hammering at the wooden shutters.
“Come on, buddy,” Halsey said.
• • •
Vladimir’s flashlight swept across the black fuselage of the helicopter just as the cloud cover parted, the landscape suddenly lit with moonlight. A corpse with one arm missing was pawing at the cockpit’s windscreen, and it turned as the pilot approached, yellow eyes shining in the flashlight beam. It lurched away from the aircraft and came toward him, and Vlad raised his pistol and shot it in the face.
Moans chorused from the field behind, and the Russian turned to see the wall of decay trudging toward him. His pilot’s brain calculated the math: their distance, speed of approach, the time he would need for his new task. The numbers weren’t in his favor.
He climbed up into the troop compartment, wincing at the pain and leaving a blood trail across snow and metal, then ducked into the cockpit. He took the night-vision goggles from their compartment above the pilot’s seat and hung them around his neck. Even without them, the newly arrived moonlight gave him a panoramic view of the approaching dead, confirming that his original plan, to return to the cabin with the goggles, was now impossible. The cabin and outbuildings, as well as the landscape around it, teemed with the walking dead. There were several hundred, maybe more, and Vladimir saw that he would not make it back to Halsey, especially limping with this wound.
Wasn’t that ironic? He had survived the opening act of the apocalypse, escaped death countless times both on the ground and in the air, all without a scratch. No
w this, a self-inflicted gunshot wound that had almost certainly blown off one of his toes. He had been practically touching the side of the torso-zombie’s skull with the Browning when he fired, and the high-powered bullet had punched completely through the creature’s head, then right through his boot just inches beyond.
It hurt like a bastard. He had crippled himself and was now leaving a bloody trail as an invitation to the undead.
A line of headlights appeared on the road above Halsey’s ranch, winding down from the burned-out mansion. Vladimir didn’t have to guess who they were. He threw another glance at the wall of corpses plodding toward the Black Hawk, muttered a curse in Russian, and started firing up the turbines.
• • •
The clouds were breaking up, and below them the small ranch was revealed in the moonlight. In a field beyond the cabin sat the dark shape of a military helicopter.
Braga stopped and jumped off his motorcycle, waving to the trucks. “There it is! Go kick some ass!”
The pickups raced past the Harleys and down toward the ranch, men and women in the truck beds holding on to the sides.
“Yeah, get some!” Titan shouted after them. Then he produced another joint and fired it up. Braga stood nearby with his hands in his pockets. They would have a great view of the action, safe up here on the hillside.
• • •
Halsey looked down from the tower in every direction, seeing the dead in the new moonlight. He could also see the Black Hawk now, and with his binoculars he spotted Vlad in the cockpit, illuminated in the red glow of instruments. A mob of at least fifty corpses was closing in on the chopper.
He wanted to shoot them, increase his friend’s chance of getting airborne—for that was surely what he was attempting—but didn’t dare. The dead were between Halsey’s rifle and the Black Hawk. A miss would risk hitting Vlad. It didn’t occur to him that the Russian was trying to escape while Halsey was still trapped in the tower. Even if it had, the ranch hand had always been a practical man and would not blame people for protecting their own lives.
Halsey dropped back down the ladder into the cabin and filled a canvas pack with ammunition from the gun rack, including a box of shells for the big pistol on his hip. When he climbed back up, he was also carrying the scoped deer rifle and a Winchester lever-action. Halsey kicked the roof hatch shut and started loading the weapons.
The echoing blasts of shotguns pulled his attention to the hillside, where a line of headlights was snaking down from the main house. After a moment, three pairs of lights left two others behind, engines racing as they closed on the ranch.
“Couldn’t do much when you came to the Franks place,” Halsey said, raising the deer rifle and working the bolt. “This here’s a different story. You ain’t got your tank, and I ain’t a grandpa.” He sighted and fired, blowing out the windshield of the first pickup. It swerved but kept on. Halsey ejected the spent casing, sending it spinning into the night. He led the truck a bit and fired again, hitting the left front tire. Damn! He had been aiming for the windshield. Still, there was a loud bang and the pickup ground to a halt on the side of the road.
Moonlight flashed on brass as a new round entered the breech. “Ain’t too smart, are you?” The rifle cracked and the stock slammed back into his shoulder. One of the men in the bed of the stopped truck flew out of it backward. The others scrambled after him, taking cover. He began firing faster, the darkness and partial moonlight working against his aim, causing him to miss more often than he hit. Halsey focused simply on hitting the truck, hoping for the best. The left rear tire blew. A hole appeared harmlessly in the side of the truck bed. More misses, and then he was quickly reloading. Moments later he was up and firing again. A bullet punched a hole midway up the driver’s door. Good. Anyone still inside the cab would be trying to hold their intestines in with their hands by now.
Muzzle flashes appeared around the disabled pickup as its occupants started returning fire. A few bullets thudded into the cabin; others chipped at the wood of the observation tower. Halsey dropped to one knee to finish loading.
The remaining two trucks roared off the hill and up the road toward Halsey’s compound, crossing the point where he would have had a gate and a moat if there had been enough time. Dead bodies banged against grilles and hoods and were flung away as the trucks full of raiders drove into the hard-packed yard. Weapons fired from the truck bed in all directions, hitting the walking dead that turned toward the new arrivals.
Halsey stood, saw the trucks below, and raised his rifle. A volley of fire from the disabled pickup filled the air with snaps and whistles, chewing wood off the tower and forcing the ranch hand to drop back down. He swapped the deer rifle for the quicker lever-action with its open sights. To his right, out across the open ground, came the whine of aircraft turbines spooling up. A moment later he heard the engine of one of the trucks in the yard revving as the driver gunned away from the buildings and out into the field toward the Black Hawk.
“Hell no,” Halsey said, standing and sighting on the bed of the departing pickup, trying to aim at the two bouncing figures within, a woman and a chubby man, both with rifles and each hanging on to keep from being thrown out. The .30-30 Winchester kicked, and the bullet missed. The ranch hand worked the lever and sighted again. This bullet passed between both passengers in the bed, but the rear window of the pickup exploded, and the truck swerved hard right, its nose dropping as it suddenly stopped with a crunching impact. Both passengers were hurled from the truck bed.
More bullets tore into the tower from the disabled pickup, and now also from the raiders in the yard below. Splinters flew about him as a bullet kissed Halsey’s chin, laying it open to the bone. Another grazed his elbow and a third slashed across his ribs in a red line. He dropped to the floor as a bullet punched through the boards and buried itself in his right calf.
Halsey cried out, braced himself against a beam, and struggled to reload his Winchester.
• • •
Two men and a woman were standing behind the disabled pickup, pouring fire onto the little tower rising above the cabin. All three had participated on the bunker ranch raid and had been under fire before. Still, one of their number had been shot out of the bed of the truck, and the driver hadn’t escaped the cab. They were rattled.
Then a pair of hands gripped the window frame on the passenger side and the driver hauled himself out. He landed hard on the road and left a red smear down the door.
“He’s gut-shot,” one of the men yelled, ejecting a spent magazine and reaching for another. “Barry, just stay low. Don’t try to move.”
The gut-shot driver looked up with milky eyes and growled, scuttling on all fours, catching hold of the man’s leg and sinking his teeth into the soft tissue at the back of the knee. The man shrieked and fell, and the driver scrambled up his body, ripping his throat out.
The second raider hiding behind the truck swore and lifted his weapon, but then he was hit from the side by a snarling weight, the man who had been shot out of the pickup bed. Teeth ripped into a jugular vein, spraying the side of the truck red as the drifter bore the dying man to the ground.
The remaining woman bolted from behind the truck, running back up the hill toward the two motorcycle lights. Winchester bullets from the tower chased her unsuccessfully but didn’t prevent her from running straight into the outstretched arms of a snapping ghoul.
• • •
Halsey saw the running woman go down and swung the Winchester back toward the yard, levering a fresh round into the chamber. He didn’t fire, though. It was unnecessary. The ranch hand leaned against the wall then, taking weight off his calf, blood running from his chin, his shirt and coat turning red at the elbow and ribs. He looked on in grim fascination.
The raiders who had driven into the yard, shooting at zombies and firing on his tower, had been swarmed and overrun. Dozens of DTs were clawing their way into the truck bed and through the cab’s open windows, tearing into fresh meat. It was over
quickly and then the feeding began.
Halsey turned his attention to the moonlit field on his right. He could see where the last pickup had come to rest, nose down in a depression in the terrain, taillights pointed up at a sharp angle. “Found yourself that little ditch, didn’t you?” He pulled the can of chewing tobacco from his hip pocket, tucking a wad into his lip. He knew this land and knew exactly what had happened to the truck. There was a deep crease in the ground where a bit of a stream had once flowed, carving a furrow in the earth. It was deep enough that he stayed mindful of it when he was running the backhoe.
His binoculars revealed blood-slicked metal and glass, and the vehicle crawled with the undead. Halsey fired four quick shots into the rear of the cab just to make sure it was out of action. Then he leaned against the tower wall, wiping blood off his chin and wincing at his bullet wounds, watching the Black Hawk lift off in a cloud of blowing snow.
• • •
Not looking too good down there,” Titan said, sitting astride his motorcycle. The moonlight had showed them everything.
“Fucking Corrigan,” Braga spat, shaking the long hair out of his face. “We could have taken this down easy if he hadn’t been such a pussy.”
“He’s a dead man,” Titan said.
“Bet your ass.”
A boy in swim trunks galloped out of the darkness behind Braga and hit the biker in the lower back, taking him to the ground.
He bit through Braga’s long hair and deep into the biker’s scalp.
Titan was too shocked to react at first, even when his friend started screaming and thrashing. The swim trunks boy nuzzled into the biker’s neck with a moan, and a bright gout of arterial blood shot across Titan’s Harley and then his leg and boot.
“Motherfucker!” he cried, aiming his shotgun and firing two quick blasts at close range, both to the head, one into the dead boy and the other into Braga. “Fuck this,” he said, firing up the Harley and kicking up stone and dirt as he spun in a U-turn and shot back up the road toward the burned mansion.
Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters Page 23