The others followed his lead, except for Hiamovi. He looked towards Abby and smiled at her, a smile that she returned. In the privacy of a dark room, with all other eyes closed for sleep, Abby and Hiamovi’s were locked on each other. Their silence conveyed more meaning than words ever could.
“Ugh,” said Nate, who just happened to look up from his book to see Abby and Hiamovi staring at each other.
They took the hint and finally laid themselves down to sleep.
***
Several days after leaving Isaiah’s town, the group neared another resupply point along a major highway. This one was unplanned, but the main element had encountered a significant slowdown in marching across the country and bringing civilians up to move into abandoned cities and towns.
The discovery of Isaiah’s town and the massacre there dealt a serious blow to the nation’s morale, and Heammawihio decided the people needed some time to process such an atrocity, especially when the news networks played the audio recording over and over and showed the pictures on an endless loop.
And so the forward groups had been ordered to halt for a few days. To make up for the delay, new airdrops were hastily put together, but the airdropped pallet for Abby’s group was nowhere to be found. They searched around abandoned vehicles, under an overpass or two, and in the surrounding fields, but with no success. This was not a dire problem as they were not in danger of starvation, but it was certainly not a welcome development.
“Well, that’s disconcerting,” said Hiamovi.
“The big question is did someone take it or did they just totally miss their target?” asked Abby.
“Both are entirely possible,” Jax replied. “So let’s stay on our toes, and stretch your rations further.”
“Maybe it landed over on top of that factory,” said Yuri. He was looking through the high-powered optic on his rifle at an enormous building not far from their position on the highway.
Jax turned towards the building in question and nodded his head. “Maybe, or somewhere around it. Let’s go check it out.”
They rode towards the enormous building as the sun reached its zenith in the sky above them, casting small, short shadows. As they got closer, they saw the building was indeed a factory. A car factory, by the looks of it. Hundreds of vehicles sat in neat lines in a huge lot, never having been delivered to their intended customers.
Abby shook her head. She couldn’t help being taken back to the day of The Crisis, which is likely when all those cars had been manufactured. She wondered what had happened to the workers here. Had they been working when the zombies began to multiply faster than the military could put them down? Were they able to reach their families?
Such questions and more raced through Abby’s mind as she and the others rode around the building, searching for their missing pallet but without success, leading to a few grumblings amongst the group.
“Alright, let’s head inside and see if there’s easy access to the roof,” Jax said as they neared what looked like the main entrance of the plant. “But I don’t want to spend more than a few minutes in there.”
They dismounted from their horses so the animals could graze. Abby grabbed her gloves from her pack and put these on her hands, in case they had to push past sharp metal or broken glass to get to the roof. Jax posted Chris and Alex to stay back with the horses while the rest of the group walked towards the factory entrance.
“You finished my book yet, Nate?” Abby asked as they walked.
“Nearly. The big siege at that one asshole’s castle just started, and it’s pretty intense.”
“Oh, I love that part,” said Hiamovi.
“Me too, it’s really good,” Abby concurred. “What’s been your favorite part so far?”
Nate thought for a moment, then said, “It’s not a particular scene, but I love Wamba’s quips. Dude insults people who could literally kill him without facing any punishment and laughs about it. I think that’s hilarious. What about you?”
Abby opened her mouth to respond, but a burst of gunfire cut her off.
Chapter Thirteen
“Fuck! Fuuuck!”
Vic yelled as he hit the concrete. Bright, crimson blood shot in spurts from his thigh.
Abby dashed the three steps towards Vic as gunfire continued to crack through the air around her. They were in a terrible position to deal with a critical casualty, sitting in a wide open lot with no available cover for at least fifty feet. And even if they’d been closer to cover, there was no time to get there. Vic would bleed out in thirty seconds unless someone helped him.
The rest of the Raiders immediately hit the deck and returned fire up towards the huge, broken, second-story windows of the building, where they saw multiple muzzle flashes.
Abby reached Vic just as another stream of blood leapt from his wound and splattered across her shirt. She slammed her knee into his thigh, up near his groin, to slow the bleeding while she slipped a tourniquet on him. Despite what must have been searing pain in his leg, she realized that Vic was still firing his rifle from his back, aiming up at the people who had shot him.
Empty brass casings popped out of his rifle as he fired, doing cartwheels in the air before falling back to the ground. One casing however jumped up towards Abby and fell into her collar. She clenched her teeth as the scalding hot brass burned into her skin, pressed there by the strap of her sports bra, but she never stopped working on Vic, not for a moment.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” she hissed, the burning pain intensifying with each second. Finally she locked the tourniquet into place and she reached up to flick the hot brass from her collar.
Miguel and Todd reached Abby just as she finished tightening up the tourniquet, and for now the bleeding stopped. “We got him! You go!” Miguel yelled to Abby, pointing towards the building.
She looked and saw that the rest of the group was bounding forward in teams, one team shooting up at the windows while the other team ran ahead. The team on the right, closest to Abby, only had three members, Nate, Hiamovi, and Chris, so she sprinted forward under fire to join them.
“Set!” Jax shouted from ahead, just as Abby reached her position.
“Moving!” yelled Nate.
“Move!” came the reply from Jax.
Abby and her team picked up and charged forward while Jax and his team covered them.
I’m up, he sees me, I’m down, Abby thought, then she and her team hit the deck again. When moving under fire, Marines never stay up longer than it takes to recite those seven words in their head.
“Set!” yelled Nate.
“Moving!” Jax shouted.
“Move!”
Once again, Jax’s team raised themselves up and dashed forward while Nate’s team provided cover fire.
Like everyone to her right and left, Abby fired her rifle up at the unseen enemy, but she was not shooting with the intent of killing anyone. She aimed for the concrete above and below the windows, knowing that placing rounds that close to the shooters would keep their heads down and prevent them from shooting back with any kind of accuracy.
One by one, the shadowy figures up in the windows, illuminated only by the muzzle flashes of their rifles, dropped and fell away from view. By the time Abby and the others neared the building, they weren’t sure if any of the people who had ambushed them still lived, but they had to be certain.
Chris’s voice crackled over Jax’s radio. “Jax, take ‘em in! We’ve got you covered!”
A barrage of rifle fire cracked overhead, peppering the concrete and window area above Abby and the others. As one, they all stood up and sprinted towards the open door in front of them, hoping to get up to the second level and either finish the fight or confirm that all enemy combatants were dead.
Rifle-mounted flashlights pierced the darkness as the Raiders entered the plant, finding themselves in a long hallway with several doors on either side running the length of it. Chad, young and filled with a blood-lust, took the lead along with Max and Hi
amovi.
Jax looked left and right, wondering what to do about all these doors. Doors were dangerous for an assaulting force; behind each one could be a machine gun waiting for a target. That was a hard-learned lesson from Fallujah.
He was just considering a retreat from this situation when a muzzle flash appeared halfway down the hallway on the left side, spraying bullets at the Raiders who immediately returned fire. Trapped in a concrete hallway, the sounds of battle were deafening.
“Come on!” shouted Chad. He’d seen the body of whoever had shot at them flee through the door from which it’d come and launched into pursuit.
“Wait, goddamn it! Halt!” Jax shouted, but it was no use. Chad had already reached the door and flung it open. With a sigh, Jax fell in behind everyone else as they rushed through the open door.
Flashlights danced this way and that as the Raiders swept their rifles around their new, pitch-black environment. With no other walls in sight and a ceiling high above them, it was clear that they were in the factory itself now. A row of car doors on jigs suspended about a foot above the ground filled the assembly line in front of them, and behind these were more lines on which the vehicles, in varying stages of assembly, waited silently to be completed.
The group glided forward in two columns, advancing cautiously but at a rapid pace. In the lead, Chad caught his foot on something and he tripped, nearly falling over. He cursed, but his voice was overpowered by the sound of laughter from somewhere in the empty expanse.
“The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble. Book of Proverbs, chapter four, verse nineteen,” cried the voice.
Abby shuddered. Hearing his maniacal voice on the tape recorder had been one thing, but the booming echoes in the darkness felt like the cold fingers of Death itself.
Isaiah.
The group froze in place, dropping to one knee and scanning all around, looking for the source of the voice.
“Show yourself, Isaiah!” Abby said. “We’re not afraid of you!”
“Oh, but you should be, Abigail,” came Isaiah’s reply. “That’s right, I remember you. A demon in saint’s clothing, but your true form will soon be exposed. ‘And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the LORD: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung.’ Zephaniah, chapter one and verse seventeen.”
“This fuckin’ guy,” hissed Chad. He had bitten into his lip hard enough to draw blood as his head whipped up, left, and right, hoping to shoot down Isaiah, wherever he was.
“You fight against a power higher than you can possibly imagine. The Lord has blessed me and my mission here,” Isaiah continued. “My disciples and I struggled. Food was scarce, and we had no more bullets. That is when God delivered aid from on high. Food and water to sustain us, and ammunition with which to fight Satan and his armies of darkness. It is beyond dispute that I have the holy favor of the Alpha and Omega!”
“We don’t want to fight you,” said Abby. “We’re just messengers! The US government is on its way, we’re bringing civilization back across the country.”
“Lies!” cried Isaiah. “For just now you have cut down my last remaining disciples and ushered them up to the gates of Heaven.”
“You tried to kill us!”
“For I saw the wickedness in your heart, even from afar. I know your purpose. You have come here to free your wicked brethren, Abigail, if that is your real name. But I will not allow that to happen. As Michael the archangel will guard over the Beast, the Devil, and the Anti-Christ in the Lake of Fire, so I watch over these demons here in darkness. That is the new duty God laid upon me when I could find no more living souls to free.”
“He’s crazy. Let’s end this,” said Hiamovi.
But Abby paused, her eyes growing wide with fear. Moments ago Isaiah had said her ‘true form’ as a demon would be exposed, and accused her of wanting to free her ‘wicked brethren’. And years ago, when he tried to burn her to death, his people cried ‘demons’ when attacked by…
“Isaiah,” Abby said, “are there demons inside this building?”
The sound of laughter in the darkness.
“Run,” Abby whispered to the group.
Somewhere a door opened. Screams echoed throughout the factory.
“Run! Come on!” Abby shouted.
Enveloped in darkness and pursued now by an unknown number of zombies, panic seized the hearts of some of the Raiders in Abby’s group, and they scattered in different directions.
Jax shouted at once for his men to assemble and head back for the door through which they’d entered, but it was already too late. He would not abandon his men like this, and so he chased after the nearest one, hoping to smack some sense back into him.
Hiamovi looked about in the sudden confusion for Abby, but could not see her, so he followed Jax’s example and tried to catch up with one of his comrades.
Abby, having faced the undead many times before, was not so stricken by fear as the others. She could still think clearly. Unfortunately, she had assumed that the others would all think just as clearly as she. When she shouted for them to run, she assumed they’d follow her to the door. But when she heard Jax call for them to assemble, she realized what had happened.
Spinning on her heel, Abby ran after the lights emanating from the Raiders’ rifle-mounted flashlights, hoping like Jax and Hiamovi to get the group back together before it was too late.
The screams from the zombies grew louder and they came from different directions. It seemed that they too had split up to chase down their prey. The battle cries of the undead soon became mingled with very human screams of fear. Rapid bursts of gunfire erupted throughout the darkness.
Abby did her best to follow the lights, but she eventually lost sight of them all as old manufacturing lines and equipment obscured her line of sight. Now Abby began to panic a little as she was lost in an enormous, dark factory filled with zombies, cut off from any help. She could hear someone shouting, probably Jax, but mixed with the screaming and the gunfire, it was impossible to pin down his location.
Turning a corner, Abby was suddenly tackled by two zombies running at full speed. Her rifle clattered to the ground as she fell on her back, the light from her rifle now shining away from her and of no help in her predicament. Blindly she drew her pistol and fired two rounds into the darkness in front of her.
The muzzle flashes revealed one of the zombies fall to the ground in front of her as the first round tore through its skull; a lucky kill. The second zombie was right behind it, unharmed by either shot but it was tripped up when the first zombie fell. It lunged awkwardly at Abby, but she redirected the creature by kicking her legs up so that it fell beside her instead of directly on top of her.
Rolling away from the zombie, Abby got up to her feet and drew her tomahawk with her right hand. But the ghoulish thing was just as quick and lunged for Abby again. The creature was already too close for Abby to level her pistol, so she shoved it aside with her left arm, then spun about with her tomahawk, burying the sharpened blade into its lower back.
This must have severed its spinal cord for the creature immediately fell face first to the ground and appeared unable to use its legs. Abby pulled the weapon free and swung it downwards, striking the zombie in the crown of the head.
Before she could pull the tomahawk free, Abby was hit by yet another charging body. She kept her feet at first, but the creature continued to push her backwards until she tripped over her dropped rifle and fell.
Whatever was pushing Abby fell with her, landing on top of her. And now in the light shining from her rifle, Abby saw that familiar, wicked face.
“Behold your doom!” Isaiah cried.
A knife flashed in the light. Abby had barely enough time to move her head, but the tip of the blade still caught her, leaving a small laceration along her cheek and cutting off a tiny piece of her ear.
Before Isaiah could strike ag
ain, Abby kicked her leg up, hitting him in the groin. He howled in pain and let go of the knife as Abby pushed him off of her. She tried to get up but Isaiah swept out his shockingly strong arm, knocking her legs out from under her.
Abby turned, still on the ground, and swung her arm around, hoping to aim her handgun at him and buy herself enough time to get up and get some distance.
But Isaiah was already moving. He pushed her arm aside and once again mounted her, but he made the mistake of failing to control Abby’s arms.
She brought her gun up again, pressing the barrel into his fleshy throat. “Don’t move!” she cried.
Isaiah laughed. “Fool! You think your weapons can harm the chosen of God?”
Abby heard a scraping noise to her side. She looked over and saw, just on the outskirts of the light from her rifle, the zombie she thought she’d killed dragging itself towards her, the tomahawk still stuck in its head. The blade must not have reached all the way to the brain, Abby realized.
While she was thus distracted, Isaiah suddenly seized Abby’s hands in his, pressing the gun even further into his throat. “Go on! Pull the trigger and witness the power of God!” he declared.
Abby tried to pull the gun away, but Isaiah’s grip was a vice and her gloved hands made it difficult to slip out of his grasp. She looked over at the zombie again, still inching closer.
“Let go before that thing kills us both!” Abby cried.
“Ha! You still wish to keep up your disguise, demon? Afraid to stand exposed before the chief servant of the Almighty?”
The zombie moved still closer, snapping its jaws and snarling at Abby.
“No, damn it! Just let go!”
“Pull the trigger then! And behold as God protects me from death!”
Sweat rolled down the side of Abby’s head. She didn’t want to kill him. As wicked as he was, she swore a vow to never kill again, and what good was that vow if she broke it at the first inconvenience? She feared the rest of her progress would likewise be undone, and she would fall once again to the level of a cheating, lying, back-stabbing murderer.
His Name Was Zach | Book 3 | Their Names Were Many Page 11