by David Spell
They were halfway there when a slight breeze brought the scent of death to Chuck’s nostrils again. They were really close, he realized, fear making his heart pound. He stopped walking, spinning completely around in the parking lot, looking for the zombies. Where were they?
Beth smelled it too, but neither of them could see any Zs. Chuck raised his nose again, the strong odor of decay coming from the lake just a few feet to his left. He slowly moved in that direction. There was a four-foot drop off to the rocks below, the water just a few feet away. Five dead and decomposing bodies were sprawled on the rocks where they had been tossed.
Elizabeth was still standing in the parking lot, twenty feet away, watching their surroundings. She glanced at Chuck and saw a look of relief on his face as he looked down from the edge of the overlook.
“What do you see?” she asked quietly.
He shook his head and motioned towards the tents. “Let’s clear the camping area first.”
The flaps of both tents were open, Chuck shining his flashlight around the inside. The first tent was empty except for an air mattress in the middle of the floor with handmade restraints attached to the poles running alongside the canvas walls. There was blood splatter on the sides of the tent and on the pink sheet that covered the air mattress.
Elizabeth saw the anger in Chuck’s eyes after he pulled his head out of the first tent. She had a sudden flashback to the morning after he had saved her life, how she had looked into his eyes and seen danger. Not that she had ever worried about him hurting her. He had risked his life to rescue her, getting shot in the process. While they had been trapped in the abandoned house, he had been the perfect gentleman, even turning down an offer of sex after Beth had had a little too much to drink.
She had seen, however, how dangerous her husband could be to those who threatened him or those he loved, and in her case at the time, even a complete stranger.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
He held up a finger and motioned at the other tent. A quick check verified that it was also empty. McCain saw some supplies that he would investigate further but he needed to let his wife know what he had observed now that the scene was secure.
He pointed at the first tent and said, “Take a look.”
Elizabeth knelt, shining her light inside. “No! Were these guys doing what I think they were doing?”
“Shhh. Not so loud,” Chuck said, leading her back over to where he’d observed the bodies. “Let me show you what I saw over here. It’s pretty rough, but I think you need to see it.”
As Beth looked down on the tangle of bodies on the rocks below, she felt a wave of nausea sweep over her. That was what they had smelled. It was the scent of death, but it was actual corpses and not zombies. McCain guessed that the bodies had been there for at least a week.
She saw the bodies of three men, one black, two white, all fully clothed, with gunshot wounds to the head. The nude corpses of a black female and a white female were tossed onto the rocks, as well. The women’s bodies were covered with bruises, abrasions, and cuts. Their faces were battered and it took no imagination to figure out that they had died horrible deaths.
Unable to fight it, Elizabeth turned, vomiting off to the side. When she had emptied her stomach out, Beth realized Chuck was standing next to her, a concerned look on his face. When she stood upright, he handed her a bottle of water.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “It’s just…I mean, I can’t understand. Why?”
“Let’s go sit over there for a minute,” McCain pointed over to the pavilion near where their vehicle was.
They sat at a picnic table sipping water. Late February in South Carolina meant cold temperatures at night and comfortable weather during the day. Currently, the sun was out, the temperatures felt like they were in the mid-fifties, and the slight breeze let them know that spring was just around the corner. It was a beautiful day.
“What do you think happened?”
“There are two vehicles there,” Chuck shrugged, pointing at the Silverado and the Fusion. “Probably the black couple was together and the other two guys and girl were together. Those losers that tried to ambush us got those poor people to stop. They killed the guys outright and kept the girls around and used them until they got tired of them. That’s why you don’t need to feel bad about shooting the punk who was trying to get away. Remember, the rules have changed. Until the government starts functioning again, there are no police to protect you. There’s no Thin Blue Line to keep us safe.”
Beth nodded and took a deep breath. The young man in the Cadillac wasn’t the first person whom she had killed. Over a month earlier, the Northeast Georgia Technical College was attacked by a gang connected with the men who had kidnapped Elizabeth. They had managed to trace Chuck and Beth back to the school and came seeking revenge for the four gang members McCain had killed.
Elizabeth had shot three of the intruders as a firefight broke out involving the rest of the gang, Chuck, and the campus security team. Thirteen attackers had been killed in the confrontation. Unfortunately, three of the campus residents had died with another five wounded, including McCain. Thankfully, his wound wasn’t serious and after a month of healing, he and Beth were able to continue on Chuck’s original quest to find his daughter, Melanie.
Chuck put his hand over Elizabeth’s. “I know it doesn’t seem right to shoot someone who’s running away and isn’t a threat anymore. I’m a police officer; I understand. You’re a good person. I like to think I’m a good person. Something I learned from the Special Forces, though, is that you never let a threat walk away. If you can take them into custody, take them into custody. If you can’t do that, you kill them. Whether you realize it or not, by shooting that guy in the car, you may have saved someone else’s life tomorrow.”
Beth looked into her husband’s eyes. Originally, he wasn’t going to take her on this trip up north, telling her it was too dangerous. After the attack on the campus, however, he realized that there were no safe places and she would be better off with him than she would be at the school. Chuck had spent two weeks training the young woman on weapons skills and tactics. Clearly, the training was paying off.
A grin broke out on her husband’s face. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “You really are becoming a deadly weapon.”
She smiled back, his words making her feel better. “I’ve got a really good teacher.”
McCain leaned in, kissing his pretty wife, his lips lingering, teasing. After a few minutes, the couple stood and walked hand-in-hand back to their armored truck to continue their dangerous journey.
CHAPTER TWO
Hostile Intentions
Buckhead, Atlanta, Wednesday, 1100 hours
Antonio, “Tony el Tigre,” Fernando Corona stood in his red silk bathrobe on the balcony of the top floor of the fifty story apartment building that he had claimed for himself and his men. He was of average height but obese, his stomach protruding and making more than one of his soldiers think that their boss looked pregnant. In truth, however, he had lost at least twenty pounds since coming to Atlanta, the quantity of food that he was used to consuming every day, not being available. He wore his black hair long and slicked back, his idea of a cross between a ladiess’ man and a gangster.
The Peachtree Summit Luxury Condominiums was the name on the sign out front. Corona had already decided to rename it after himself. Casa de Corona or El Palacio de Corona? No rush. He had plenty of time and many more important things to concern himself with than naming his headquarters.
Two nude women slept in the large bed behind him. The light-skinned black girl and the blonde had been found hiding in an office building nearby, three weeks earlier. His lieutenant, Jorge Quintero, knowing his boss’ taste in women, had not let the cartel soldiers harm these two. Quintero did make sure the two survivors watched his men execute their three male coworkers found in the office with them. Seeing their friends shot in the head had left the two ladies in a state of shock but ensu
red that they understood the gravity of their own situation.
Jorge let them know that he was taking them to his boss and that their lives were dependent on how happy they made him. Tiffany, the blonde, and Alissa, the African-American, both nodded, unable to speak as they remembered their friends’ bodies left to bleed out in the Atlanta street. Quintero knew that he had done well as he saw Corona’s eyes light up when presented with the pair of lovely captives.
Antonio considered himself a sophisticated man and had not harmed the women. He had slapped them around a little the first few days that he had them, but that was just to get their attention. They had quickly understood what was required of them, and had worked hard to please the cartel leader.
Corona scanned the skyline of the once beautiful city. Smoke rose from various locations throughout Atlanta. The smell of death and decay was still in the air but some of the recent death and destruction had been caused by him and his men. And he was just getting started.
Four months earlier, Antonio had been contentedly helping his uncle run the Tijuana Cartel. Even though they were located in Mexico, their cartel ran much of the drug and sex trafficking business in the Southern United States. Corona had visited Atlanta on many occasions, making sure their operations were running smoothly. On his last trip, he had personally executed two of his subordinates, one of whom had gotten greedy, while the other had become careless.
The greedy one thought that no one would notice if he skimmed a little money off the top for himself. It was the last mistake that he ever made. Corona’s obesity did not take away from his physical strength. He was a dangerous man, having beaten more than one enemy to death. Tony the Tiger had made the thief’s death as painful as he could, using his knife first, carving him up, before eventually shooting him in the stomach and letting him die slowly.
The careless cartel member had lost a shipment of ten kilos of cocaine to the police on a traffic stop. The drug runner had abandoned the car and fled on foot, managing to elude the officers and even their dog and helicopter.
No matter. The cartel would have killed him in prison if he had been arrested. He should have kept running and tried to disappear. By returning to his apartment, the subordinate just made Antonio’s job easier. In Corona’s mind, however, carelessness was not as great a sin as stealing from your employer, so this man received a quick death: a bullet to the back of the head.
In Tijuana, the senior leadership of the cartel had been following the events in America and especially the east coast closely. The cartel had even helped smuggle many of the Islamic soldiers and suicide bombers into the United States. The Muslims had paid the Mexicans very well.
Now, Antonio’s uncle, Jose “Pepe” Corona, saw a chance to regain some of his cartel’s lost glory. The Mexican Federal Police, at least those who weren’t on his payroll, and the American Drug Enforcement Agency had killed or imprisoned many of his best people. Jose’s brother, Antonio’s father, Juan, had been killed in a shootout with the federales just two years earlier. Now was the perfect time to strike back against the arrogant gringos and reclaim some of what they had lost.
With the American east coast in shambles, and thousands of zombies still roaming around unchecked, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Pepe called his nephew, Tony the Tiger, into his office and outlined his plan. At first, the younger man was shocked by the boldness of the idea. As his uncle talked, however, Antonio began to see that this was his chance to do everything that he had ever wanted to do. He could build his own criminal empire with his uncle’s blessing.
Antonio brought his lieutenant, Jorge, twenty of the cartel’s best soldiers, and his ever-present, four man security detail. A caravan of forty vehicles contained close to a hundred and thirty additional enforcers, many of whom had been serving life sentences in various prisons throughout Mexico. Most of the prison recruits were members of the vicious Sureños 13 gang, which had a strong presence in Mexico’s maximum security facilities. Pepe’s money and threats were able to secure their release, along with his promise that these notorious criminals would be crossing the unprotected border into the United States.
As the caravan drove towards Georgia, they stopped at every one of their operations across the south and drafted more soldiers to join them. It had not been an easy sell and Corona knew that he needed the men to buy into what he was asking them to do.
The idea of going into a city that was, for all practical purposes, under the control of thousands of zombies was not something that the American-based cartel members wanted to be involved in. They had a good life in their own cities spread across the American southeast and southwest. They were paid well to sell drugs and to run brothels. Why would they want to go to a place where someone wanted to rip their throats out and eat them?
Tony the Tiger became Tony the Politician. He promised them more than he ever would have under normal circumstances. These were clearly abnormal circumstances and he was ready to offer those who came with him a much larger piece of the pie. A total of thirty-seven more Mexican hombres malos volunteered to join him.
The journey to Atlanta was no picnic. They had to shoot their way through several groups of zombies, losing three of his men near Birmingham, Alabama. As they approached their target city, Antonio knew that getting into the urban center was going to be the most difficult part of the plan. The fight into the heart of Atlanta was brutal, and the cartel leader lost twelve more soldiers to the infected.
Two months later, things were finally looking up. The area around Corona’s building had been purged of zombies. He had lost a few more men to the infected but other Hispanics, including a dozen members of the notorious street gang MS-13, had shown up wanting to work for him. This gang, composed primarily of El Salvadorans, was usually at odds with the Mexican cartels and street gangs. These twelve, however, pledged their loyalty to the cartel boss and he was willing to give them a chance in his ever-growing operation. Twenty gangbangers from former rival clans had also approached the cartel offering their services with additional recruits showing up daily.
Early on, there had been some conflict and a few fistfights between some of the gang members. Jorge Quintero had kept the tensions from escalating into gunfights by forcing the gangsters to work together. Work details and patrols had members of various groups mixed together.
Quintero had also threatened severe repercussions to any gang members who started a conflict. None of them were allowed to wear their respective colors. The only colors Jorge authorized were the red, white and green of the Mexican flag. All of the Latino gangsters were coming to understand that their survival depended on working together and that Atlanta was ripe for the taking if they stayed unified.
Antonio knew enough about the city to know that Buckhead was the most affluent area in Atlanta. After picking out the large high-rise condominium building for his headquarters, his men cleared it, floor by floor, until it was secure. The building was relatively new, with most of the apartments empty, waiting to be sold or rented out. The few survivors his men found in occupied apartments were dealt with harshly. The men were thrown from the balconies of the higher floors by laughing cartel members, the women raped or executed if they resisted. The pretty ones had been kept as slaves.
After the Peachtree Summit was secured Antonio had his soldiers begin clearing the surrounding area starting with their block. Barricades of abandoned vehicles were set up to block off the roads and to keep the infected out. That was going to be the biggest battle, keeping the zombies from returning to areas that had been cleared.
There were still plenty of survivors hiding out in the many other upscale apartments or seeking shelter in office buildings surrounding the cartel HQ. At first, they were excited to see Antonio’s men coming to rescue them. Their joy was short-lived, however, as most of the male survivors were taken into the street and shot. The women were bound, and taken back to Corona’s headquarters.
Some of the smaller, weaker men were kept alive, as Antonio co
nsidered himself a businessman who supplied the right product or service for every paying customer. He didn’t think that many of his soldiers were gay, but these male sex slaves could eventually be sold, along with some of the women whom he had captured.
Within two weeks of the clan’s arrival, former inner-city gang members began approaching his soldiers at their barricades, wanting to offer their services to the Tijuana Cartel. Tony the Tiger wished that he could staff his army with only Mexican fighters, but he knew that wasn’t realistic. All of the Mexicans in the United States, both legal and illegal, weren’t cut out to be cartel soldiers, but there were plenty of other roles in which his countrymen could serve. These African-American thugs looked tough and came from the same background as him and his cartel members.
Jorge handled the initial interview, giving the group of eight dark-skinned, unsmiling men some tasks to prove themselves. The first one was to bring back weapons. The cartel soldiers were well armed but they would always need more guns and ammo to equip their ever growing army.
Two days later, three military humvees showed up, all packed with weapons. There were M-16s, 9mm Berettas, some shotguns, and a few other assorted handguns. Just as important as the weapons, though, were the spare magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Each hummer also sported an M249 light machine gun in its turret. The group of eight black gangsters had also grown to thirteen as they had recruited a few of their friends.
Antonio joined his lieutenant at the barricade, smiling at the haul. Maybe these guys would work out after all, he thought.
“Bueno, amigos. Where you find all of this?”
A tall muscular man with a shaved head and a black, bushy beard answered, “We’ve had the hummers for a while. We took out a National Guard Patrol when they first showed up. The M-16s and a few Berettas came from them. Those weekend warriors can’t shoot for anything. The zombies did a lot of the work for us, overrunning some the guard’s checkpoints. We just had to go in, load up everything they left behind, and shoot some zombie soldiers.