“Thanks, buddy,” he said when he gained the upper hand. Forced the hurt aside for now. “I owe you one.”
Jessie smiled, his black and blue face reddened from the flames, his badly healed scar distorting the parts that weren’t swollen and broken.
“I used to have an old Merc,” his dad said, when Jessie said nothing and aimed for the opening gate. “Same color, too.”
“It is yours,” Jessie said, still smiling. He was looking into the rear-view mirror and there wasn’t anyone looking back with accusing eyes.
55
Lakota
Lacy was already running back to the ladder when she saw the dented and bloodied old Mercury pick Johnny up and tear away from the undead still trying to catch it. It was Jessie. It had to be. Who else would be driving that beat up old thing. Jessie had made it back, and Johnny hadn’t burnt up. She prayed with every pounding step she ran that the suit had protected him, that he wasn’t bitten. That would be a cruel joke, to finally be reunited, but only for a few hours until he had to be put down. She could hear Cobb bellowing orders and directing the guns at the hundreds still running after the car, or stumbling in from the road. Griz had grabbed the last chain gun and was running with it toward the far end of the wall, the ammo crew close behind. She could hear shouts and sustained machine gun fire coming from far off. Thousands of the zombies had run into the trench. Thousands had been incinerated in the blast of the exploded tanker, thousands had caught fire and burned, and thousands had fallen to the steady stream of gunfire. The slow runners were still coming, though. Like lemmings to the sea, they made their way toward the wall. Toward the living blood they sensed and were required to infect, the base level commands in the virus overriding any sense of self-preservation. They ran through the flames and around them, they fell into the ditch and broke arms and legs. It only slowed their momentum, didn’t discourage their forward drive at all. They filled the trench at the shallow ends, near the water, climbed over the fallen and boiled out the other side. They ran and crawled and limped toward the wall, toward the untainted blood they could sense just yards away. Bullets filled the air, a hundred guns firing and punching holes through animated corpses, but the corpses kept coming. The old men, the young boys, the women and the girls all kept reloading and firing. It was poorly aimed shots, from unskilled hands, but they kept firing. Kept pulling the triggers.
Blown open chests only made them stumble over the coils of putrefying guts that came tumbling out. Shattered legs only slowed them down when they fell to the ground and kept crawling. But the watchers on the wall kept firing, and the slower the zombies moved, the better their shots became. Heads exploded in bursts of red mist, faces caved in on themselves and fell bonelessly to the ground to be trampled underfoot as a thousand kept coming. Relentless and unstoppable.
Griz was panting like a great bellows, so hard he could hardly breathe, could barely get enough air in his lungs to keep from passing out. He was getting too old for this shit. He stood holding the gun, panting and sweating, looking out over the fields and the thousands pouring in around the wall of flames. The rest of the crew ran up with the battery pack and ammo cans, all of them trying to catch their breath after the half-mile sprint. The Gatling gun had much less recoil than the M-60s or Ma Deuces, the barrels spun and the bolt didn’t kick back like a regular gun. It tracked easy enough to be fired with one hand, and a big man could control one without fighting the constant jolting. The dead were coming, their screams loud over the gunfire, and there were enough of them swarming over the burning bodies filling the trench to stack up against the wall and get over it. They needed another row of containers. Another eight feet higher. That would be enough. Another eight feet. He’d worry about that later, right now he had some killing to do.
Scratch came up breathing harder than any of them and slid to a halt beside the gun Griz had balanced on his throbbing knee. He ignored the bleeding patches on his shirt, the blood he spat without thinking, and the sensation of screwdrivers being plunged into his chest. He flipped the timing button back and ripped open the feeder door with his good hand, pulling the feed chute into the slot with his mechanical arm.
As soon as Griz heard it click into place, he was already spinning the barrel by hand to feed the ammo up and chamber a round.
“Jimmy, keep linking!” Scratch whisper yelled at a skinny little kid Griz had never seen before. The boy was fast, his fingers flew, tossing ammo cans aside and stringing the two hundred round belts together at lightning speed. There were a handful of other little kids doing the same. By the time Griz connected the battery lead, there were already a few thousand rounds of .308 linked up, spread out and neatly stacked so it wouldn’t jam. More people were running up with ammo and like a well-oiled machine, the kids started tossing cans and snapping steel.
“Fire in the hole!” Griz yelled and hefted the eighty-pound gun. Little fingers and hands kept linking, leaving it up to Jimmy to connect the belts to the live feed. Griz depressed the thumb switch and the barrels spun up for just a second before hell rained down on the undead, literally blowing them to pieces. It sounded like a giant zipper was tearing open the sky, as streams of red tracers found their way into the horde. The sound was terrible and continuous, thousands of rounds a minute, and it drowned out the tiny plinking of the M-16s. Griz raked back and forth through the running, screaming mob, bullets blowing off arms, ripping open heads, turning bones to splinters and plowing through to the next one. Then the next and the next. Each bullet, fifty every second, hit multiple targets and was a force multiplier unlike anything they’d used so far. It was like watching a laser gun, every fifth round a glowing red tracer, cut the horde to pieces. Literal pieces. The bullets vaporized organs and bones alike. Griz kept the trigger depressed, Slippery Jim and the rest of the ammo crew worked feverishly to keep linking belts to feed the lead-spitting double death-dealing machine. The deafening, cacophonous BRRRAAAAAAATTTTT of the mini-gun drowned out all other sounds. It was a bone-shaking peal of continuous thunder. It was God’s finger, and the fire spitting from it fragmented corpses, exploding them across the fields, putting them down permanently.
Empty brass and links skittered across the container and tumbled down into the faces and clawing hands trying to climb the wall. Shooters with the smaller guns quickly started taking aim at the close up dead, leaving the chain gun to cut down the masses. The diesel locomotives were burning hot, the fuel saturated into the ground all around them was sending bright flames and black smoke billowing high into the darkened sky.
Griz finally let off the trigger and the barrels spun down, gunpowder smoke curling up and their faint, red, overheated glow started to fade. They could see the killing fields clearly, even if it was mostly in silhouette, from the three-quarter moon and the flames burning brightly in the trench. They felt the heat, smelled the rotten flesh cooking, and took sips of ash-filled air. T-shirts were pulled up over faces and anyone with a bandanna quickly made a mask. No one wanted to suck zombie remains into their lungs.
Griz scanned the horizon intently, looking for more mobs, more hundreds or thousands making their way toward the wall, but nothing moved. The splattered corpses were motionless and the fires burned madly, spreading from body to body.
Slippery Jim and his crew were still tossing cans over the side, still linking the ammo as fast as they could, when he noticed the deafening silence. He motioned to them and they stopped and listened, slowly standing with everyone else to get a better view. There was no more chain gun sending out tongues of fire, speaking in lead, nearly bursting his eardrums. No more M-16s with their tinny retorts. No more Kim-Li placing well-aimed headshots and dropping one every time she pulled the trigger. No more screams of the undead. Just the quiet crackling of the fire as it baked bones, charred flesh, and popped skulls as they exploded from the heat.
Scratch was trying to stand, still breathing heavily with his one good lung, still trying to ignore the stabbing in his chest, still bleeding from torn
open stitches. Griz set the gun down then helped him to his feet, both of them surveying the carnage and looking for movement. Kim slung her rifle and draped his arm over her shoulders. There were only the burning trains and the ten thousand corpses, the jihadi fighters mixed among them. The river of flames was crisping thousands upon thousands of bodies to ash.
“Gonna have to write you up,” Scratch panted. “No eye-pro and no PT belt while operating Uncle Sam’s machinery. Them’s Article 15 offenses.”
Griz grinned.
“You’re still a dick,” he said and slung Scratch’s other arm over his shoulder as they turned to make the slow trip back to the gate.
56
Lakota
Lacy burned her hand on the door handle, the car still smoking and hot from its run through the flames. She didn’t even feel it, and the joyous cry that was on her lips turned to a wail of anguish when she saw her baby sitting behind the wheel, bleeding from a dozen places, one arm twisted at an odd angle, his face like pounded hamburger and barely recognizable as human. She stared at him and her hands flew to her mouth. Jessie smiled.
“Hey, mom,” he said a little dreamily. “I was hoping I would find you here. I got a dog. He’s a good dog. I named him Bob. Can I keep him?”
He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, still smiling, and finally let himself drift off to sleep. He was safe. His mom would take care of him. He had made it.
“Get a stretcher!” Gunny barked as he opened his door, hopping out on one foot and leaning against the car.
Sara ran up, a pair of young men she’d volunteered jogging behind her, carrying a litter between them.
It had been meant for Gunny, she’d been listening to the excited radio chatter, had heard he probably had a broken leg, but no one had mentioned how damaged his rescuer was.
“You!” she yelled, indicating Captain Wilson as he came down the ladder. “He’s in quarantine until he gets checked for bites.”
She was pointing at Gunny as she leaned in to see how bad the boy was hurt. To see if she had to do anything before she laid him out on the stretcher. There was a low noise from the back seat and she saw a bloody dog, panting heavily and half growling, half whining at her. He was in as bad a shape as the kid. What kind of hell had they been through? She wondered as she ignored Gunny’s protests and yelled at him again.
“Quarantine until you get checked. Captain, shoot him if he doesn't comply.”
She knew that wasn’t going to happen, but she was serious and they needed to know. They could still lose it all if an infected were turned loose inside the walls.
The kid looked like he’d been through a wood chipper, but he wasn’t bleeding out so she took a second to talk to the dog, to reassure him that she wasn’t going to hurt his master. Her voice with the animal was soft and soothing and he thumped his tail at her. She spotted the empty IV bag and grabbed it. It was unlabeled, but maybe they could tell what he’d been dosing himself with. She didn’t want to kill him now by giving him something that might react badly when mixed. It was something strong, that was sure. The kid was as high as a kite and certainly wasn’t feeling any pain.
“Is Mr. Jessie gonna be alright?” she heard, and spotted Slippery Jim in the gathering crowd.
“Get the vet,” she told him. “He’s at the clinic.”
Jimmy was gone in a flash, sliding through the legs of the grownups as they came to see who had saved the president from certain death.
“Dammit, I’ll get naked right here,” she heard Gunny yelling. “I’ll show you I’m not bit, but I need to be with my son!”
Sara unceremoniously shoved Lacy aside and helped the two men lay Jessie out, careful not to jostle him. She saw the dried blood caked in his hair, Concussion, the blood trickling from his mouth, internal injuries, the wrong bend in his arm, fractured radius and ulna, the crusted blood on his shoulder and upper arm, gunshot wounds, highly elevated heartbeat, extreme tachycardia, and she continued to list the damage in her mind, her fingers dancing over his body checking for bites.
The one thing they couldn’t fix.
The one sure death sentence.
Lacy was openly crying now, sobbing at the sight of her only child and Gunny hobbled over to her, naked except for his underwear and boots. His skin was red and blistered from the intense heat, bruised from the savage bites through the heavy cloth, bleeding again from the gunshot, crisscrossed with jagged scars from a lifetime of battles. They held each other as Sara instructed the young men to lift in unison, then they hustled away toward the clinic.
“I’ll send you a wheelchair,” she said to Gunny when she saw his leg. “Quit moving it around, you're only making it worse.”
Lacy turned her face into Johnny’s chest and let the relief and fear and horror she’d contained for months come out in wretched sobs. Gunny held her tight and felt what she felt, but there was also a glowing ember of hatred being kindled. At Casey, for his last-ditch effort to kill them all. At whoever had administered such a savage beating to his boy. At the radicals for what they did. He had some more payback to give. It wasn’t over yet.
They started after Sara, heading to the clinic, Gunny leaning heavily on her, as he half hopped along. He’d meet the wheelchair halfway.
The battle was over, Cobb could mop up the remaining undead stragglers stumbling their way toward the walls. Griz, Kim-Li, and Scratch joined them, with the big man carrying half of Scratch’s weight as he still struggled for breath. Griz’s legs were ready to give out after the days of unending running, his knees black and bruised from the beating they took from the truck door.
They watched Tommy embrace Daniel with a huge bear hug when he saw him, nearly crushing the young Lieutenant. Gunny had to smile through the pain in his leg, despite the barely controlled chaos all around him. They had done it. The town still stood, despite all that had been thrown at it these past few hours.
The town still stood.
57
Lakota
The next few days flew by in a blur of rebuilding the walls, mopping up the undead stragglers and burying the casualties from the Third Battle of Lakota. Martha had been planning a celebration party as soon as things got back to normal, and on the third day, a train slowly made its way to the outskirts and blew its horns. The half of the town that wasn’t already out in the fields cleaning up the charred corpses, came out to greet the injured survivors from the disastrous Atlanta run.
Stabby had found a train on one of the sidings at the paper mill while he was out gathering supplies. The gun battle with the Muslims had drawn every zombie within miles, and they had chased Gunny’s train when it took off on its way to Lakota. Great hordes, a hundred thousand strong, had merged and disappeared somewhere in Alabama. There wasn’t any undead left in the part of Atlanta where they were hiding, and he only saw a few small gatherings all the way back. After a day of prepping the new locomotive, he’d simply loaded up the wounded, set the throttle and followed the tracks.
“We need to ‘urry up and get ‘em off, though,” he said. “I prolly got a bit of a following behind me, I need to run back down the rails to thin ‘em out some, before they show up ‘ere.”
Jessie was making a near miraculous recovery, according to the SS sisters. His dog, too. Stacey had demanded someone make a run somewhere and get her an electron microscope. She wanted to see what was in the bag that he had been injecting himself with. It was some very advanced medicine, as far as she was concerned. Something from a government lab, probably. His broken arm had knitted together so fast, they had to re-break it to set it correctly. Once he stopped constantly moving his arm and tearing open the wounds, the gunshot holes were closing up faster than they could believe.
Jessie wasn’t very helpful, he didn’t remember much beyond waking up in an underground tunnel network. Everything else was pretty foggy. He couldn’t even remember what state he had been in. He recalled a yellow-haired angel helping him, and Bastille ran the heck out of that s
tory, the Disfigured Road Angel being aided by a mysterious golden-haired beauty. Lacy had finally put a stop to his sensationalizing by threatening to cram that microphone right up his ass if he ever called her son disfigured again. The radio audiences around the world cheered and laughed at the pissed off mother, when she barged in on the live broadcast one afternoon and it only cemented Jessie into a legend in their minds.
Bastille was careful not to use that exact phrase again, but the story was already being repeated, embellished, and retold around thousands of fires. In many places they were barely hanging on, and the stories coming from Lakota gave them hope. The fact that Scratch replayed the recording nearly every time he was on the air didn’t hurt, either.
Dead or Alive wanted notices went out for Casey, with a five-million-dollar reward, to be donated by Lars from his bank vault, but it was never claimed. He and Bridget healed up as best as could be expected. She walked with a limp, was missing an ear, and would have to cake on heavy makeup to cover her scar. She never did, though. She wore it like a badge of honor.
Lars had gotten lucky. Once the sisters got a look at his arm in their new x-ray machines, they could see the bullet hadn’t shattered his rotator cuff, it had punched through cleanly, only leaving a small hole. Everybody knew he wanted to be a billionaire, so he was always getting duffle bags of money from people raiding banks for fun. Within months the reward for Casey was up to a hundred million dollars, but after a while, even Lars got tired of collecting useless cash. It didn’t even make good fire starter, it barely burnt. Once Carson came up with the New American Dollar, all the old currency was less than useless. He had to hire some men to help him haul it off to the dump.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 99