Chapter 12
Cole went first again, but this time they had me go next. Down was easier than across, mostly because I didn’t need that much grip strength and could let gravity help along—which would have been fatal ten minutes ago when we’d made it across the gap to this building. My palms hurt like hell from slight rope burn, gloves or not, but I managed to get down to ground level without cracking an ankle or breaking my neck. As soon as my boots hit the asphalt, Cole and I spread out to secure the area.
Since the front road was a no go, we skipped around the next building and made for the next parallel street, hoping to find it abandoned. It wasn’t—at least not completely—but the shamblers there seemed to be less intelligent than the pack that had ambushed us. These stood, if not quite in the middle of the street, easily visible out of cover, and with lots of patience and deliberate movements, we managed to slowly make our way past them without alerting them to our presence.
We were three blocks further down the street when the howling finally died down. I hoped it was due to the shamblers having lost interest, and not because they’d hunted down enough food to satisfy them. With the parking lot of a supermarket ridding us of cover to the right, Richards signaled us to try to detour to the road we’d previously followed, and maybe luck out and find one of our other teams.
The road looked as deserted as when we’d started on it earlier, not a scrap remaining of the two people we’d lost. With the lanes blocked and cars wrecked into those that had been parked on the sides, it would have been easy to hide anything back there—as we’d learned the hard way. Richards had us break into our previous two-and-two formation again, and within moments, I’d lost sight of Cole and Hill both. The heat was unbearable, even with the odd cover throwing shade, and I felt like our progress ground to a halt.
If not for a hand suddenly shooting out from behind a truck, I wouldn’t have noticed that someone was hiding there until after I’d passed by, and maybe not even then. I wasn’t too happy to find out it was Hamilton, but that Sonia and Burns were with him and still alive was good news. While I did my best to get some rest crouching between two mangled wrecks, I watched the road nervously as Hamilton and Richards had a quick, near-silent conversation before we set out once more. Cole and Hill remained out of sight until an hour later, when they dropped back to report that the marines were taking a break ahead of us. All the while, we’d slowly gravitated away from the highway, and if we’d made it more than three miles, I’d eat my despicably stinky socks. Being forced to constantly duck and run for cover with intervals of crouching in between was hell on my hips and knees, and with no chance of a reprieve ahead, the idea of getting torn apart by zombies lost more and more of its inherent horror with every minute that passed.
Ahead, the haphazard maze of buildings evened out momentarily at a patch of green—the spot where the marines were supposedly waiting for us. My stomach sank when I realized that it was a cemetery. Theoretically, not the worst place in the zombie apocalypse since those that were dead for good remained that way, but it meant a lot of open ground. Taking a stroll among the tombstones sounded like a great way to make that our permanent residence. Lo and behold, neither Scott nor Blake were stupid enough to make us all crawl across the overgrown lawn, and using the small mortuary at the eastern end of the cemetery for a gathering spot wasn’t that bad of an idea. Like the shed where we’d waited for the morning to come, it was a small building that nobody had bothered to loot, and it came with an intact door—at least for one of the rooms in the below-ground level in what used to be the morgue, or whatever you’d call the room where the dead were kept before being displayed in one of the two somberly furnished rooms above. There were some signs of carnage downstairs, making me guess that someone had gotten their dead loved one to the mortuary quickly enough that they had reanimated here—but otherwise the room was mostly clean.
Shirking my pack without a word and lying on my back to stretch out my aching limbs seemed like a damn good idea, so that’s what I did. Rest, water, food—it really was a very short list of priorities. I did a quick headcount as the remaining people came filtering in, coming up one short; the scavengers had lost one of theirs, but I hadn’t bothered memorizing his name. None of the others looked more or less shaken up than before, but Eden had stopped with her over-the-top, cracked-up routine. Withdrawal ebbing, if I had to take a guess. Unlike last night, nobody seemed to feel the need to clean up, and what words were traded were few and far between.
I checked my watch—three more hours until sunset. If yesterday was any indication, that would give us less than four hours until we turned back into the city’s main attraction and all-you-can-eat buffet.
Nate gave us twenty minutes. Then we were off again. In my head, I cursed up an exhausted storm but obediently took my place in the single-file exit line.
Not surprisingly, nothing had changed in the time we’d spent underground. The city was still stinking to hell, the air was hot enough to create flickering mirages over the pavement, and in every dark doorway some thing or other could be lurking.
From the slight elevation of the cemetery, the highway was visible once more where it turned true south, the zone of utter destruction coming to an end. About a mile down, part of it branched off to the west. Our destination was maybe four miles away—an easy one-and-a-half-hour walk in the past.
The few hundred yards over to the highway took us a good thirty minutes. Closer to downtown, the entirety of the roads that led to the highway were jam-packed with vehicles, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because without the cover that provided, we would have been dead in no time. But it also worked like that for the shamblers.
I had been the seventh to leave our hideout, only Scott and his remaining marines and my fireteam before me, with Richards remaining plastered to my side. Having paid for the lesson with blood earlier, they fanned out and remained as close to the ground as reasonable, every motion deliberate and as silent as possible. Neither Hill nor I could replicate that level of stealth but Cole had managed to sneak further ahead to test the waters. Since we stirred up no extra attention, I thought I was doing reasonably well.
That was, until a shambler made a grab for my ankles, and a hard jerk later, I was sprawling on the cracked pavement, only the suddenness of the maneuver—and the hard impact that drove the air from my lungs—keeping me from shouting in surprise. If it had been smart and launched itself at me, I wouldn’t have had a chance against the shambler, but it tried to pull me underneath the car instead, fingers like claws digging into my calf hard enough to make me afraid they were already tearing into my muscles. The undercarriage of the SUV it had been hiding under was certainly far enough from the ground that I would have fit underneath. Thankfully, they weren’t intelligent enough to account for the bulk of weapons and packs.
Instinct had me kick out with my free leg, but I didn’t manage to get much force behind that maneuver while my mind was overwhelmingly blank. The pain jump-started my adrenaline, sudden clarity wiping away the fog of confusion. I had maybe three seconds until I would be dragged far enough underneath the car that my pack would get my torso stuck, thus halting my progress but also leaving a lot of fleshy thigh and juicy ass for the undead to get interested in. I was partly on my side which greatly hindered the usefulness of my arms, but since hurling one of my tomahawks under the car—and possibly chopping off what remained of my foot in the progress—didn’t seem smart, that wasn’t much use. My best bet was to wait until most of me was closer to the snapping jaws and then make the next kick count.
Instead, I slammed the heel of my boot up against the back door of the car, hoping that it wouldn’t give, which would likely end with a stuck foot and dislocated hip—which I’d have maybe five seconds to enjoy before becoming zombie chow. Rather than lock my knee to try to remain in place, I pushed as hard as possible, trying to get away. That did nothing to dislodge the shambler, but it got me a few inches back into the glaring sunlight�
��enough for Richards to grab my pack and left shoulder, and pull.
One giant heave was enough to get me free of the car, but that left the shambler still clinging to my leg. I felt one clawed hand’s grip loosen, yet before I could kick it off, it sank its fingers back into my leg, closer to my knee now. Ignoring the sun, it started pulling itself farther up my body, the other hand now digging into my thigh. Since it wasn’t my left, mostly numb leg, that hurt like a bitch—but also brought the shambler close enough that I could jack-knife up from the ground and slam one axe into the skeletal arm that was attached to the claw that was trying to strip my thigh of vital muscle and fat.
Honestly, part of me was surprised just how well I hit, and that I didn’t narrowly amputate my own leg. It wasn’t a perfect blow that sliced off the limb or shattered the bone, but it distracted the shambler and made its grip ease up. As soon as he’d felt me move, Richards had let go of me, and now used the opportunity to kick at the zombie’s head where it had just cleared the vehicle, putting his boot right through the softer bits of what remained of its face. I had to wait until he cleared the space before I could use my ax again, and this time the damaged arm split apart, leaving the hand and a few inches of bones attached to my leg. Richards must have done some real damage as I felt the grip of the other claw lessen, and when I pushed myself farther out into the sunshine, he finished off the shambler with a second stomp that reduced the zombie’s cranium to so much mush and splinters. Gore splattered all over my legs but I didn’t care, scrambling backwards onto my feet as soon as I could. From the corner of my eye I saw movement coming from underneath another car, making me whir around to face it with a second to spare. Coming full-frontal for me as soon as it could clear the vehicle, that shambler was easier to fend off, but two more came after it, making me start to back away. Richards picked off one of them but then got busy fighting off yet another that came vaulting over the hood of the car underneath which I’d almost ended up. And as if the sounds of fighting off the undead weren’t bad enough, they took that moment to howl for backup, making the entire blocked street around us come alive.
No, I didn’t really need Hamilton sprinting by me and giving me a clap on the shoulder to realize that it was time to run.
Richards and me getting bogged down momentarily had one advantage: in the meantime, the scavengers and the rest of Nate’s team had managed to sneak by. That left Blake’s group behind us. I didn’t dare check on them as I forced my body into forward momentum, giving up any pretense for stealth in favor of what speed could be gained scrambling over rusting cars. Richards caught up with me quickly but remained just behind me, giving me the odd boost when a car ahead seemed a little too large or high for me to get over it on my own. My ego howled with rage but the smarter parts of my brain didn’t protest, instead paying him back for his efforts by often halting long enough for him to clean an obstacle—and hack at what came after him when he seemed a moment too slow to make it unhindered.
In front of us, the street continued over the highway and into the charred remains of the houses on the other side, but just like Marleen and Burns sprinting ahead of me, I aimed for the ramp leading to the highway instead. Somewhat sheltered from the blast, the cars across the many lanes had been pushed together but no longer to the point of turning them into one giant mass of scrap metal. Maybe three hundred yards farther downtown, I could see the lanes of the branch-off leading to the side, and at least the two innermost lanes leading downtown were somewhat less of a chaos of metal and rust. I saw figures bobbing up and down between the cars there, hoping that it was our vanguard and not more shamblers already jumping up in anticipation of their next meal.
Fletcher and one other marine sprinted by me, making me guess that Blake’s people were catching up to us. As soon as I managed to squeeze past the cars permanently clogging up the ramp, I did my best to aim for the inner lanes, using every inch of free room to get there faster. The howls cut off but there was still movement aplenty around us, which kept me pushing myself as hard as I could. My lungs were screaming for oxygen, making me slightly woozy, but I knew that if I slowed down, I was toast. The leg the shambler had been clinging to gave a few uncomfortable twinges but soon got drowned out by the other signals my body was sending.
Whether by accident or because he decided his life was worth more than mine, Fletcher cut me off as I tried to vault over a limousine’s hood, forcing me to bounce off the side of the car to halt my momentum. I cut off the curse that I wanted to scream at him, instead taking a step back to gain enough speed to slide across the car after him. Rather than a normal—or even scrambling—landing, Fletcher disappeared out from sight, giving me a split-second to wonder what was going on. Then I was coming off the hood myself, legs first—and right on top of the two zombies that had grabbed Fletcher and were doing their best to haul him underneath that very same car. I felt a little like a late-comer to a huddle in a football game, and since directly underneath me was only animated dead flesh, I blindly hacked at heads and hands where I could reach them. Too fast to slow down or avoid me, Richards came barreling right into me, incidentally—or maybe not—shoving me off the heap of bodies.
Staggering to regain my balance, I whirled around and went right for the closest shambler, and within moments, Richards had pulled the other off Fletcher to give him room to breathe—but not before the one I was about to kill reared back and went straight for the marine’s neck. My ax bit into the back of the shambler’s skull a few seconds later, but the damage was done, bright-red blood spurting when I kicked the zombie off Fletcher. His eyes were impossibly wide—likely more from pain than panic, but that would come soon enough—and when I leaned down to offer him my arm, he was quick to grab it so I could pull him to his feet, never mind my gore-covered tomahawk at the end of it.
Richards pushed me aside—or gave me a shove further down the highway, it was impossible to tell which—and pressed a wad of fabric against the wound on Fletcher’s neck, his scarf as I realized. Fletcher’s whole body shook as he switched his own hand for Red’s, and then both men came bolting after me, Richards quick to deflect another shambler that tried to come for Fletcher. Figuring that I was no use to anyone if I got eaten because I didn’t pay attention, I forced myself to face forward, my pace quickening now that the vehicles were far enough apart that I could swerve around rather than needing to go over them.
Whether by intent or accident, the marine had likely saved my hide, and now had less than forty-eight hours of his own to enjoy.
I much preferred running until my lungs felt ready to burst and the muscles in my legs were on fire to contemplating that.
I fully expected to keep running on the southward-bound branch of the highway—particularly since we’d all gone right past the lanes leading in the other direction—but just where the ramp coming from over there merging onto the highway came up, Hamilton had stopped, signaling us to turn right. Knowing that danger lay behind us, my mind wanted to balk at the idea of partially turning back, but as soon as I whipped around and started toward the ramp, I realized that it was a smart move, whether I wanted to admit it or not, coming from that jackass. For whatever reason, there were far fewer cars broken down there, leaving us enough room to sprint, unhindered, at full speed. My body protested but I forced it into compliance, then pushed myself more until my entire focus narrowed down to the open patches of road and where I could force my body through. I flew past a few of the others, catching up to Marleen and Scott where they were running almost at the top of the now gently curving passover. Below, I could see the last of our people—Hamilton and Blake bringing up the rear. Ahead, I caught my first real look at the skyline of downtown Dallas, but my mind was too preoccupied with keeping me alive to appreciate it. What caught my attention wasn’t that, but instead the tunnel the highway seemed to be leading into. From up here, I couldn’t tell if it was just for a few yards or a longer stretch. The cars were piled up almost on top of each other leading there, so it didn’t l
ook like the best way to go.
“Where to?” I asked Scott, hoping that he had a better idea. He did, wordlessly pointing to the very right of the highway where another lane, once separated by a low cement boundary from the rest that was mostly gone where several trucks had plowed right into it. Rather than backtrack, I jumped over the blocks, running up the lane toward where the skyscrapers hulked over us.
Nate caught up with me before I got to the top of the ramp where it merged into a huge intersection right above where the highway disappeared into the tunnel. Rather than turn to the street that led between the skyscrapers into downtown, he pointed at the park-like space above the highway, quickly signaling me to hide there. “Get lost” was more like it, I figured, when I glanced back over my shoulder and saw a good hundred shamblers coming up the upward-turning ramp I had just left, hot on the heels of the last of our people. I didn’t mind Hamilton getting eaten, but it would be a shame about Blake and Fletcher.
It was a real park, I realized, complete with sculptures and benches along what I figured must have been well-kept grass and trees. There was debris and junk everywhere that the wind must have carried with it that had been caught between the obstacles, turning it into a giant hide-and-seek stage. Scott and Marleen were right beside me as I disappeared into the green-brown maze, doing my very best to stop making so much noise. My strained muscles and lungs might have been happy for me to slow down, but my lizard brain was still in full-on flight mode, my instincts screaming at me to go for the open spaces where I could run faster.
What must have been a children’s playground appeared ahead and to my right, not much of it left except for the partially broken-down remnants of some kind of monkey bars and attached tower. It wasn’t great cover, but unlike the trees, it was something I could scale unaided, and it was far enough out in the open to see that it wasn’t inhabited. With a running start and some praying, I launched myself at the structure, feeling the hard wood shudder underneath my weight but hold. Crouching down in the corner, I held my breath until I started to see spots, forcing my breathing to slow down. I was still partly exposed, but with luck no shambler would check up here or see me if I didn’t move. The remains of the formerly bright red plastic slide on the ground, now bleached a light pink, were far more distracting than my tan-and-black gear.
Retribution: Green Fields #11 Page 19