What was good was the service road did in fact lead to a rear loading area, which also had two swinging steel doors visible at the back of the platform. And he figured Sarah had gotten the bulletin when she blasted out through them, like they’d better not be locked because she had no plans to slow down.
He skidded to a halt and shoved open the passenger-side door, which Sarah poured herself through, straight off the loading ramp, not having to change direction, nor even really slowing down. As she slammed the door closed, the two of them exchanged a wide-eyed look across the cab.
“Holy shit,” Sarah breathed.
“Yeah,” Homer agreed. Another close call, but they had hit their markers weirdly perfectly. Now all they had to do was drive the hell out of there.
No dramas, as Henno, Alpha’s Yorkshireman, would say.
And then the sound of gunfire erupted behind them.
* * *
It was both loud and close. And there was a hell of a lot of it.
But Homer quickly worked out that, while close, the rounds weren’t incoming, not a threat to their current position. Instead, it was all kicking off around the front of the building. It was also accompanied by the sound of gunning car or truck engines – more than one, at least one of them big.
Homer also knew they now faced the two horns of a dilemma. Getting shot up by trigger-happy survivors would get them just as dead as being devoured by Zulus. Deader, actually, given the likelihood of coming back after the undead got to them. On the other hand, neither was a great outcome, and that herd was still inbound – had already arrived, to judge by the chorus of undisciplined gunfire out front.
This location wasn’t going to get less crowded.
Not soon, if ever.
Homer’s initial recce of the back of the Autozone told him there was only one way out – the same way he’d come in. The small lot was surrounded by steep landscaping, planted with trees. Maybe they could take the truck up over it. But probably not.
“Get down,” Homer said. “Behind the engine block.”
Sarah semi-complied, slouching down in her seat – but also getting her rifle up and ready to go. Homer kept the headlights off, and the engine purring, as he rolled them through a tight turn, straightened it out, then leaned into the curve of the service road around the side of the building…
Which was blocked by a squat, hulking truck.
“Bearcat,” Sarah said, over the noise of the firing.
It was a small armored vehicle, complete with turret on top – but, to Homer’s eye, one for law enforcement rather than military. And the men on and around it were firing nonstop. It was like the day of liberation in some banana republic.
Or a wedding in the Middle East…
At least they were still firing in the opposite direction.
* * *
They also didn’t turn around, not one of them, betraying no awareness of the Ford and its two occupants behind them. No rear security, not even a quick look back – zero situational awareness.
Homer scanned in all directions. The berm to their right was too steep to go over, and the building all but touched their left-side mirror. So he slipped into reverse and backed them slowly and quietly away. He felt Sarah’s breath on his ear, at the cut-out section of his helmet. She wasn’t quite shouting over the gunfire, but she sure wasn’t whispering.
“What do we do now?”
Homer let out a big breath, turned his head, leaned in, and not-quite-shouted back. “We stay out of it.”
Sarah snorted, which made her seem both amused and annoyed. “How about asking them to move their goddamned vehicle? So we can get the hell out of here?”
Homer couldn’t help but laugh at this. “Not while they’re blasting away. We risk getting shot if we do that.” He paused to consider. “Hey, take the wheel, okay?”
“Where are you going?”
He nodded up at the berm to their right. It overlooked whatever cake and arse party – to borrow another line from Henno – was happening out front.
“Not far,” he said. “Sit tight.”
And then he was gone.
* * *
He didn’t have to patrol far to get to a position of overwatch, and he sure didn’t have to be stealthy doing it. After climbing the berm, he moved forward through the wrist-thick saplings, then went down on his belly, and inched forward until he had a good view.
And it was pretty much exactly a cake and arse party.
About a dozen shooters occupied the front lot, along with two more vehicles. As Homer glassed them, squinting from the blinding and incessant muzzle shear, he also squinted just trying to figure out what exactly these guys were. Superficially, they looked para-military. But some of the kit was too perfect, too on-the-nose. And Homer realized some of them might literally be wearing Airsoft gear.
Ha. That’s not a good sign – for them…
So he wasn’t enormously surprised when he saw one get taken down by a runner coming in from his nine – first firing like it was bottomless ammo day at the Olive Garden, then fumbling his mag change, all the while having zero awareness of anything to his flanks. A second man got taken down by another runner, trying to help the first. This group turned into a four-person bullet-riddled meatball, getting shot to hell by their buddies, turning their weapons toward the center and blasting away.
It was a miracle none of the others went down in the crossfire.
All of this – the lack of small-unit coordination or fire discipline, the smash-mouth tactics, the stylized gear – validated Homer’s decision to keep him and Sarah well out of it. He did amend his earlier verdict, though – actually, these guys were probably more dangerous than the dead. Their spraying swarms of 5.56 rounds, moving 3,000 feet per second, were harder to run away from.
It wasn’t totally clear how this fight was going to play out, but however it did, Homer liked the idea of waiting for it to do so from a secure position. Even considering their spray-and-pray tactics, he was ten feet above them and forty feet behind, so he didn’t see even these guys sending stray rounds his way. Sarah was probably even safer in the truck. And then…
And then a big-ass runner pack piled into the group’s flank.
And now Homer could actually pretty accurately predict how this was going to play out. The devil on his shoulder – and he wondered if Sarah might have put it there – suggested to him that he continue to sit it out.
What was the old expression? A self-cleaning oven?
If he waited, most of the threats would simply take each other out. But, sighing quietly, he knew he couldn’t do it. Letting these guys die in front of him was not just morally dubious, it was also tactically unsound. At the very least, he’d have to move their damned SWAT truck, and do so with a whole bunch of runners still swarming around.
Taking a deep breath and releasing half, he started making careful, silent, single shots, the green beam of his IR laser roving invisibly across the battlespace, producing a nearly one-to-one shot-to-kill ratio – versus probably 200-to-1 for these guys.
He shook his head as he realized they had no idea about the deadly angel watching over them – winning the battle, and saving their lives, from up on high. They thought they were doing it themselves. Then again, when you shot like that, you couldn’t have any idea where your rounds were falling.
In about a minute, it was all over.
All the dead in the vicinity lay unmoving on the ground. But there’d be more. There were always more.
And Homer was even redder on ammo now. Dark red.
* * *
“Friendly, up top!” Homer shouted.
But he stayed where he was – hugging dirt, covered by tree trunks – for a little longer than strictly necessary, before finally showing himself. People, in his experience, were often surprising in their goodness and decency.
But they could be even more shocking in their stupidity.
At a certain point, though, he just had to have faith these guys wouldn�
��t light him up. But faith he had, in abundance. Faith he was good at. Pointing his barrel at the sky, he actuated the white light and waved it around a little, keeping it going as he stood up and moved forward.
A couple of flashlights from down below landed on him.
But no rounds did. That was good.
“Coming down!” Homer added. “Check your fire! Friendly, coming down!” He just kept saying it as he descended the slope. He also kept not getting shot, and as that stretched out, he started to think: Okay, maybe these guys are okay.
They were the living, after all. Survivors.
Who, as Handon had recently and pointedly reminded the team, were the people they were doing all this for in the first place. Maybe these ones had turned up to help, in return.
Even if Homer was the one who ended up bailing them out.
Mainly, they were all God’s children.
* * *
“Holeee shit, dude. You get that bad boy on eBay?”
Jesus Fucking Christ, Sarah thought. What a bunch of sinister ass-clowns. She had maintained her position in the truck, covering Homer as she watched him descend the slope – a maneuver she regarded as neither particularly safe nor hugely smart. Whatever advantage he saw in interacting with these guys, Sarah couldn’t see it herself, and wasn’t a huge fan.
But she was pleased they at least hadn’t clocked her yet, 50 feet behind, in the dark of the back lot. From the darkness of the truck cab, she could at least still cover Homer.
In case it all kicked off again.
“And he’s got, like, an Aliens motion tracker on his arm, man!”
Jesus Christ.
Sarah shook her head, and maintained her aim.
* * *
“It’s really just a glorified iPhone,” Homer replied with a smile.
He considered backing up, maintaining space in case he needed to react. Then again, he wouldn’t need a whole lot of space to react. And these guys were currently presenting as harmless enough. Even when one of them stepped up and put his finger on the trident on Homer’s vest.
“No, man, I think that shit’s real. Those don’t turn up on eBay.” He took a half step back, then spoke over his shoulder to the others. “And check out the accessories on that AR. That’s a real EOTech. Shit, and he’s even got a mini one on his pistol.” He faced back toward Homer. “And those night-vision goggles – operator as fuck, man! Seriously.”
Homer tried to keep smiling as the others gathered round, ogling his weapons and gear. Now, suddenly, they were all fanboys. And, despite having cleared out the immediate threats, none of them really had time for this.
“Hey, can you gentlemen move your vehicle, please?”
This was Sarah, walking up from behind, clearly sharing Homer’s sense about the lack of time to hang out shooting the shit – but, then again, failing to take his precaution of announcing herself before appearing.
Everyone in the survivor group drew down – and for one horrible frozen second, Homer thought she was going to get lit up. And then somebody did shoot – a single round, which luckily went completely wild.
“Check your fire!” Homer said. “Weapons down! She’s with me.” He resisted the temptation to physically lower the barrel of the guy who had negligently discharged, worried that would escalate the situation, rather than de-escalate it. When he looked back, Sarah was down in a crouch, rifle up. He made a lowering motion with his hand. She complied.
“Everyone take it easy,” Homer said. “We’re all friends.”
But now the guy who had fingered Homer’s trident suddenly didn’t look too friendly. However, he then reached out and lifted up Homer’s gold crucifix, which had swung free on its chain from under his vest. And his look of suspicion morphed into a smile, followed by a nod. He reached under his own vest, and fished out a nearly identical one.
“We’ve got a camp,” the man said, his tone different now – confident. “Not far. Water, food, ammo. You can hole up for a while. Wait for this shit to settle down.”
Homer thought it was nice for them that they had a camp, but also didn’t particularly care all that much, and was about to tell them thanks but no thanks – when he realized he could see more movement out in the darkness beyond the parking lot. He had cleared the immediate area, but they sure hadn’t cleared the continent. And thanks to this survivor group, they’d also made more racket than a brigade-sized infantry assault.
So rather than declining, Homer put one finger up in a gesture meant to convey both Hang on and Be quiet, and pulled his NVGs back down. Sure enough, the road back to the highway was an undead parade route, totally thronged. A whole lot more perked-up corpses were coming this way – not tremendously fast, nor yet all that close.
But thick. The road to the highway was basically closed out. He flipped his NVGs back up, and looked to his side.
Sarah had stepped up beside him.
* * *
She wrapped the fingers of her left hand around his right bicep – but then spoke past him to the others, tossing her head at the building behind her.
“That your man back inside? With the radio?”
“What, Virgil? Big fat dude? Fuck him. We kicked him out months ago.”
Sarah cocked her head. “There was also a boy.”
“Eh, he’ll find his way back.”
But even as she opened her mouth to point out that you didn’t leave a ten-year-old to fend for himself alone in the zombie apocalypse, the boy squirmed his way forward through the circle of armed men. If he still had Sarah’s radio on him, she couldn’t see it. Still, she breathed a sigh of relief – but also dug her nails into Homer’s arm. When he looked over, she just shook her head, subtly but firmly.
“The road’s jammed up,” Homer said quietly.
“So we’ll go around,” she said tightly.
Homer exhaled. “We also need to make that repair.”
“Word in private,” Sarah said.
Homer nodded at the group, looking apologetic.
Which Sarah found annoying.
* * *
Retreating from the survivor group, the two of them huddled up 30 feet back in the lot. As they talked, Homer changed out his empty mag. He tried to smile when Sarah said:
“So much for coming back with two and a half magazines.”
“Touché.”
She tossed her head over Homer’s shoulder, at the gaggle of Airsofters behind him. “Those guys,” she said. “Bad idea.”
Homer considered. Handon’s voice played in his ear, just as he’d heard it barking across that thick forest, reminding them that civilian survivors were the point of everything they were doing on their mission out here. His mind’s eye also lingered on that matching crucifix, a sign of God’s love and sacrifice. And, finally, he recalled that they’d done things exactly Sarah’s way at their last two decision points.
With nearly disastrous results.
So far, Sarah’s “local expertise” had been proving fairly dodgy. Then again, Homer wasn’t over the moon about a lot of his own decisions lately. But he decided he was just going to trust himself on this one.
“It’s too dangerous bashing our way back up the road,” he said. His long and hard experience was that victory lay not in defeating the dead – you could never win that fight, not in the end – but in avoiding them. “And we need somewhere to make the repair. Finally, as you pointed out yourself, we’re in an ammo hole. These people can dig us out of it.”
“It’s not worth the risk,” Sarah insisted. “I know survivors.”
“They’re people,” Homer replied. “And sometimes you have to trust them. We’re out of time. Come on.”
In less than a minute, both groups had saddled up, Homer and Sarah riding at the tail end of the convoy, all of them rolling up the rural road into rising forest. On the upside, they were heading away from the dead, and the way ahead was clear.
But they were also getting farther off their route.
And deeper into darkne
ss.
Crusaders
“Cannabis,” was Sarah’s only comment, when next she spoke.
It was only seconds after they parked up in a dirt clearing in the woods, and walked another 20 meters to the edge of a forest encampment. Homer didn’t respond, or quite understand. But, then, as they exited the dirt path into the camp, he smelled it, too. Weed. These guys, or some of them, were evidently recreational substance users. Burners.
“Good nose,” he said.
Sarah shrugged. “Fifteen years on the street.”
But pretty quickly they didn’t need a cop’s nose to smell it, and it didn’t strike Homer as a great sign. Then again, they were safe, clear of the dead, and finally in possession of the part they needed to repair the truck.
As they entered, the area resolved in the glow of shielded and dim camp lights. It was a good-sized forest clearing, dotted with tents – colorful camping or outdoors-store style, not military – but also a few pre-fab structures, like sheds, as well as one or two rudimentary hand-built ones, roughly grouped around a fire pit. And all of this, including the nearby parking area, was surrounded by eight feet of razor-topped chainlink fence, which had been strung around the perimeter, attached to sunken steel poles and the odd tree.
The whole thing was anchored by a Winnebago.
“So,” Sarah whispered in Homer’s ear, as they followed the others in. “Where are Carole and Andrea?”
Homer nodded at the top of the RV. “There’s Dale.”
Sure enough, they could see a sentry standing up on top of the Winnebago, but carrying a civilian AR, rather than a hunting rifle. Nonetheless, the two of them grinned and had to stifle their laughter. It wouldn’t be the first round of their mutual giggling-school-kid routine.
But they narrowly managed to avoid losing it.
* * *
“Hey. I’m Luther. This is Jewel.”
Homer had half-expected to be told “Wait here” while the others went to fetch their leader. But the camp was small, and the evident leaders, a man and a woman, were already waiting for them, out in the open. Homer took the man’s hand, whose grip was stronger than it needed to be.
Odyssey Page 9