Zombie Fallout 16

by Mark Tufo

“Mrs. Deneaux, this is Canter at…” She interrupted him then he continued. “Captain Vienden is presumed dead or captured. The camp has been overrun and is in enemy hands.”

  “Talbot.” Deneaux was seething.

  “Can’t confirm that, Mrs. Deneaux. We didn’t see them.”

  “Oh, I can guarantee it was him. He has an uncanny ability to be everywhere at once. My bomb?”

  “They have it, ma’am.” Canter winced as he said the words. Now that he’d called, he wished he hadn’t. It was unlikely she would send transportation to pick them up after a failed mission. In fact, she might actively seek ways to end their lives. “We should have just gone somewhere, anywhere else,” Canter said softly.

  “Fucking twits.”

  “Ma’am, should we go back to the rendezvous point for a pick-up?” Canter asked.

  “She left and in a hurry,” Amells said after a few seconds of dead air.

  “Fuck.” Canter dropped the mic. “We need to find a car!” He was panicking.

  “What’s the matter?” Cushing asked.

  “She’s going to blow up the bomb!” Canter was checking vehicles along the side of the road.

  “She can’t! We haven’t got a chance to get away.” Cushing’s muscles had stiffened since they’d stopped running, and he was having difficulty keeping up now.

  “Which part of you thinks she cares about us at all?” Canter was sitting in a late model Ford, keys still in the ignition. The car was as dead as they were going to be soon if they didn’t find a way out of town.

  “She’s our commanding officer…she wouldn’t do that.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Cushing. She wanted us to kill Vienden because he was expendable, and so are we.”

  “But…”

  “No buts, man. We need to get as far away from here as possible.” Canter wasn’t feeling good about their chances. The odds they found a car with a working battery were extremely low, and to compound the issue, even if they did somehow find one, the gas was most likely a useless sludge.

  Cushing had fallen behind; he was exhausted and had slightly tweaked his ankle. He rested his hand on a bike. With his head hanging down, he saw that what he’d first mistaken for a lock chain was instead a cord leading to a small solar charging station. When he raised his head, he saw that there was a row of the two-wheeled contraptions.

  “Canter!”

  “I’m not waiting for you! Keep up or don’t!” Canter was halfway down the town’s main street, desperately searching for anything that might aid in their current predicament, not realizing that the best thing they could have done was just stay put.

  Cushing unplugged one of the bikes; a small light turned from red to green as he powered it on. “Canter, I’ve got rides!”

  The sergeant stopped in his tracks to turn around. “Bikes? They’re not going to get us far enough away.”

  “They’re electric! Not super fast, but close to thirty miles an hour, I think. It’s what I’m doing, anyway. Keep up or don’t.” Cushing got on the bike and was heading out of town in the opposite direction.

  “Motherfucker,” Canter swore as he ran to the bike station. “How do I start this thing?” he called after the fast retreating back of Cushing, who had either not heard him or chose to ignore the question. After some frantic searching, he was able to locate the button, and, within a half-mile and some frenetic pedaling, he had finally caught up to Cushing. “Nice of you to wait.”

  “Like you did?”

  “Got me there. Nice find, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” Cushing replied.

  “I hope they get us far enough away. Need a minimum of ten miles,” Canter said. Periodically he would look over his shoulder, expecting to see a rising mushroom cloud and the rushing firestorm.

  “Is that Gordon?” Cushing was pointing far up the road at a man sitting in the middle of the street.

  “It is,” Canter said as the man looked up.

  “Hey, guys!” Gordon was waving his arms as he began to stand.

  “Why are you slowing down?” Canter asked. “There’s no bitch seat, and how fast do you think you’ll be able to go with the added weight?”

  “I can’t leave him here.”

  “Suit yourself, dumbass.” Canter zipped by on Gordon’s left as Cushing applied his brakes. “Don’t haunt me after your face melts off!”

  “He’s such a dick.” Gordon was holding his side.

  “You all right?”

  “Got a stitch I can’t get rid of, but yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for stopping.”

  “Didn’t seem right not to. We should get going. Deneaux will have hit the timer on the bomb by now. We don’t have long to get as far away as possible.”

  “Not with that wheel.” Gordon was pointing to the front tire, which was completely flat. “Nail,” he said as he pulled out the object.

  “What a fucked up day. Let’s go back toward town; there was a gas station that had booze signs on it. If I’m going to die, I want to be blind enough drunk I don’t see it coming.” Cushing pushed the bike over and angrily stomped toward town.

  “Fucked up day,” Gordon echoed as he followed his friend.

  22

  Mike Journal Entry 13

  The sailing was smooth until it wasn’t. One moment we’re cruising down the roadway making small talk, the next, a thumping so heavy behind me I thought we’d driven onto a driving range where golfers were taking bets to strike us.

  “Problem!” came through my headset. Tommy shouted, “Fucker is on!” It was strange to hear him use profanity, but everyone has their limits.

  Didn’t need any clarification for what the fucker was. “How far are we from the base?” I asked Dallas calmly, only because the surge of panic traveling through me had not yet reached the cognitive functions within my mind.

  “We’ve driven for twenty-five miles,” she answered as she looked at the odometer. She didn’t yet know what I did, but with the thumping and my question, well, no higher echelon degrees were needed for the reasoning.

  Twenty-five miles driven could be vastly different from “as the crow flies” miles, which was all a blast would be concerned about. “Base distance, Dallas.” Now I was freaking out. If we weren’t far enough away, I was more than prepared to keep driving to ensure it, but even if I kicked all my passengers out right this very moment, it was unlikely I would be able to drive far enough away to save them.

  “Umm.” she was thinking.

  This route had been chosen because the prevailing winds were blowing away and it was the straightest shot.

  “The rest area a couple of miles back was the minimum.”

  “Ten miles?”

  “Roughly.”

  I didn’t like the term roughly when it came to nuking my entire world.

  “There’s a timer,” Tommy sighed. “Five minutes.”

  “Well, that’s settled,” I said grimly.

  “Sir?” Dallas asked.

  “I was debating dropping all of you off and me and my explosive friend making a run for it but it doesn’t matter either way now.”

  “You saying what I think you are?”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry I got you into this,” I told her.

  “I volunteered, remember?”

  “Yeah but only because you wanted me to play go-between. If I hadn’t sired such a ravishingly good-looking offspring, you wouldn’t be here.”

  She gave me a genuine smile. “I realize this is way too soon, but since it doesn’t look like I’ll ever get another chance…for what it’s worth, I would have been honored to be a part of the Talbot clan and Justin and I would have made beautiful babies.”

  “Been thinking about this a bit, have you?” I asked.

  Before she could answer, Tommy spoke. “Vienden wants to look at the bomb.”

  “To diffuse?” I asked. It took a moment to get a response as he asked the captain.

  “He says he can’t diffuse. Maybe delay, though.”

  “By
how much?”

  “Nineteen minutes, nineteen seconds.”

  “That’s a very specific answer.”

  “Any more than that and the coding change was likely to make an alert.” Tommy must have handed over the comm. When on a deadly timer, it makes sense to not waste the commodity. “I called in a favor when I got this mission. I had a pretty good idea she was going to get rid of me. I have a key to the software; once I enter the code, the clock resets.”

  “Are you sure it won’t explode immediately?” I could hear Walde ask.

  “What’s it matter?” Vienden responded. I had to agree.

  “Mr. T, timer is under three minutes,” Tommy said directly into my head.

  “Vienden, how much time do you need once the key is in?”

  “Thirty seconds, max. But we need to be still, completely still.”

  “Tommy, let me know when we get to a minute thirty.”

  “Will do.”

  “Punch it.” I was talking to Dallas. “Okay, everyone, when Tommy gives me the cue, I’m going to have Dallas stop. Get that fucking thing out of the truck, fast. Vienden, do your thing and we’re going to hightail it back. Dallas, once it’s out, you get this truck turned around, clear?”

  When Tommy let me know, I told Dallas. It seemed to take the truck an hour to come to a complete stop. I heard the tailgate crash against the truck bed and I went out to help as best I could.

  “Now, Dallas!” I shouted once the crate was in the road. She drove up a hundred feet. I didn’t watch to see her turn; my attention focused on Vienden…all of us were focused on him. It was that compelling.

  From around his neck, he removed a small crucifix. He pulled the bottom of the cross off to reveal a tiny electronic piece, looked like a miniature USB thumb drive. I wanted to ask what it was, but the timer was displaying a looming fifty-seven and counting. At forty-two, the idling truck was beside us.

  “You two, go,” I ordered Tommy and Walde. They didn’t move.

  At thirty-four, Vienden’s hands were shaking and he had an abnormal amount of sweat dripping from his brow. “It didn’t work.” He spared a look up at me.

  “Try it again,” I told him.

  “It didn’t work.”

  “Fucking try it again! You got somewhere else to be?” I yelled.

  His hands were a blur as he rooted around within the software. I’d be lying if I had even the slightest idea what he was doing. At seven seconds, I figured this would be the moment it reset; that seemed to be the time displayed in most shows or movies that dealt with bombs. Seven cruised on by. At three, my teeth were gritted because it’s well-known that a clenched jaw has the ability to stop a thermo-nuclear device—true fact.

  Two dissolved into one. At zero, we would all dissolve. There was a strange whirring noise, then nineteen, nineteen was displayed. We were all frozen in that moment; maybe our minds had stopped, believing our bodies were already gone.

  “I…I did it,” Vienden said the words so hesitatingly I don’t think he believed them.

  “Go!” I began to push people toward the truck. Dallas had it floored, driving as fast as the truck would allow. “Walde, radio back to the camp let them know what’s happening.”

  “On it, sir,” she replied.

  “A little late for this, sir, but wouldn’t it have been better to sail this thing as far off-shore as possible and sink it into the water?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. It would have taken ten minutes to get it to base and onto a boat. Vienden would not have been able to do what he was while the boat was bobbing around. And just so you know, I’m just thinking of this now; a boat never came to mind. More than a better chance we would have sunk the carrier.”

  “Not sure if that would be the worst thing in the world,” she replied, referring to what she’d heard about what was on the ship. “What if there are people that live near here?”

  I locked up; here was something else that I’d never even taken into consideration. So focused on the mission and protecting my loved ones at the expense of all else…. Why were their lives any more valuable than whatever people whose doorstep I’d just dropped this off at? I had a modicum of a justification, but it tasted dirty and stale like garbage-found bagels. “People were going to die no matter where this thing ended up.” She looked over for a sec. Apparently, the dumpster diving words didn’t go over so well with her either.

  “Tommy, how much time has elapsed?” I asked, wanting to curtail any further discussion along that vein.

  “A little under ten minutes.”

  “Dallas, how far have we driven?”

  She checked the odometer. “Just over ten miles, seven from epicenter.”

  I looked down the roadway, angry at every twist in the fucker that kept us from getting farther from the bomb.

  “Vienden, when we get to a relatively safe distance, would it be better to hunker down or try and ride it out?” I asked.

  “If we can find something with a concrete basement, I’d say stop. Otherwise, distance is key.”

  “Tommy, at five minutes, I want one-minute updates until the final ten seconds.”

  “You got it, Mr. T.”

  I couldn’t even wrap my mind around the fact of what we were doing. I liked it worlds better when Deneaux was only trying to have the HOA fine me for something inane; shit, even the occasional bullet or two she would fire at me felt like nostalgic events. That this feud had been ratcheted up to a nuke was beyond insanity. Who in the absolute fuck does that to kill one person? Deneaux…she wouldn’t care if a hundred thousand innocents were killed as long as the main objective was obtained. The dedication to completion was as admirable as it was downright psychotic.

  “Who’s that?” Dallas was leaning forward, trying to get a better view.

  If the camouflage utilities were any indication, it was a soldier. What he was doing here and on what looked like a mountain bike were things I couldn’t explain.

  “Slow up, we’ll grab him.” I hated losing any momentum or time but enough people were already going to die today. if I could save one, it’d be balm for the rough spots.

  “Tommy, Walde, we’ve got someone on a bike out ahead, we’re going to slow up, pull him in fast so we can get going.”

  “Roger that,” Walde said.

  “Sir, he’s pointing a weapon at us!” Dallas shouted just as the windshield pinged and starred.

  “Fuck him, keep going.” I had my rifle out the window and laid down suppressing fire, sending the bicyclist running into the woods.

  “What’s going on?” Tommy asked.

  “I think it’s one of Deneaux’s people. He took a shot, hit the windshield, we’re fine. I missed, but what follows won’t.”

  “He’s just standing there, in the middle of the road,” Walde said. “Jerk just gave us the finger! He has no idea how much bigger mine is than his,” Walde whispered. “Looks like he’s continuing his journey toward the light,” she finished grimly.

  I was thinking about the bike rider. It was likely he was the one that had called in the situation to Deneaux so that she could hit the trigger. If that was the case, and I sincerely hoped it was, karma was coming around full circle, wielding a white-hot sledgehammer. A part of me wished I could watch his face the millisecond between when he saw the initial flash and his eyeballs imploded in his skull and his shadow was etched on a wall.

  “Five minutes,” spoken from Tommy completely pulled me from my inner thoughts.

  “Dallas?”

  “Almost fifteen miles. Near as I can tell, twelve from the epicenter, and yes, trust me, sir, this truck is going as fast as it can. I think I’ve bent the floorboard trying to press the pedal through it.”

  The truck bucked and hitched as Tommy said four.

  “Might be something to worry about.” Dallas looked down at her feet.

  “So, not a big squirrel?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t appear so.” This followed by another clunk. For a couple hundred yards, it felt
like we were on square tires. I’m no mechanic, but I knew enough to realize that wasn’t right.

  “Scotty, tell Kirk we need four more minutes,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Star Trek. Not the time?” I asked when she didn’t respond. We’d been going close to seventy, now we were hovering around forty, and this I knew because I was leaning so far over to look that I was damn near blocking Dallas’s line of sight. Four minutes to two minutes blurred by, much like my late teens, though not nearly with as much fun and drugs. At a hundred and twenty seconds, I was hoping this was like the final two minutes of an NFL game, where we’d have the two-minute warning, a string of commercials, and three time outs, effectively giving us close to another fifteen minutes of actual game time. That would have been great, time to make one more good play, although there was more than a good chance it would be a sack, as the truck was on its last legs.

  We came into a small town on a limping crawl. We saw two soldiers sitting on a sidewalk, each with a bottle of what looked like booze in their hands. They waved as we slogged by. I waved back; it beat being shot at.

  “One minute,” Tommy said flatly.

  “Okay, everyone out! Let’s head for shelter.”

  Dallas brought the truck to a complete stop. The Broward Municipal building looked to be the sturdiest thing around. We made a beeline for it. I was just about to enter when I saw the two men; they were watching us. Hadn’t moved except for their drinking arms but they were watching.

  “It’s going to get mighty warm out here; you might want to seek shelter.”

  “Mister, I don’t know what you’ve been drinking…but I’d like some!” one of the men answered before making himself laugh.

  “What my ‘ebriated friend is trying to say is that a building is not going to stop what’s coming for us.”

  “I would imagine not if it were close, but fifteen miles is a good distance for a tactical nuke,” I told them.

  “Thirty seconds, Mr. T!”

  They were looking at me like I was discussing quantum physics. Realization was not going to dawn upon that barren landscape.

  “Get the fuck inside, dipshits!” When in doubt, cuss them out.