by David Spell
Jimmy paused to sip his whiskey, reliving the tense moments.
“We climbed a hill and I took a look at the maps I’d taken with me. Bein’ a Marine officer, I know a thing or two about land navigation.”
Andy laughed and nodded at Eddie and Hollywood. “You guys know what the most dangerous thing is in the Marines?”
Marshall and Estrada shook their heads. Fleming continued, “It’s an officer armed with a map and a compass.”
“The enlisted Marine does speak the truth,” the former Marine captain acknowledged with a grin as they all laughed.
“Anyway, after a few minutes of figuring out where we were and catching our breaths, I heard growling coming our way so we started running again. There was another neighborhood about a quarter of a mile away through the trees and we headed for it.
“This street had maybe ten or twelve houses on it. We came out of the woods into a backyard and, thankfully, nobody shot us as looters. The first house we saw turned out to be empty and pretty easy to break into. We got inside and watched out the windows.
“After about ten minutes a group of twenty Zs came stumblin’ out of the woods. They had evidently lost our scent in the forest because they shuffled past where we were hiding and just huddled in the street growling at each other. A few more joined them, I’m guessing former residents of the subdivision we were in.
“So now, we’re trapped inside another house, we got no transport, it’s getting colder, and our water was running short. Thankfully, the good people whose house we were in had some bottled water in the pantry but we only had food enough for a few more days.”
“How’d Grace get shot?” Eddie asked.
“After two days in that house, things got real interesting. A National Guard hummer came roaring down the street. They cut down the all the zombies with the M-249 mounted on top and then they started going house-to-house. Grace wanted to go out and make contact with them. She thought they’d help us get out of there, but I was gettin’ a bad vibe off these troopers. There were three black guys and a black girl. I watched ‘em kicking in front doors, then we’d hear some shooting inside the houses. Maybe they were capping Zs but something just didn’t feel right.
“Grace still wanted to show ourselves and she was pissed at me when I told her ‘no.’ When they pulled up to our house, I grabbed her and we ducked out the back door and ran for the woods. Of course, when we got to the edge of the forest, some Zs were heading straight for us. I guess they were running to the sound of gunfire.
“This was a big group so I decided maybe we should take a chance with the guard, after all. We go running back to the house and those National Guard bastards came out the rear door shooting, not at the zombies, but at us! Two of ‘em had M-16s, one of them had a shotgun, and the girl was shooting her Beretta.
“Thankfully, they weren’t very well trained and stayed bunched together. I dropped one and then my rifle took a round, right in the center of the receiver. I heard Grace grunt and saw her stumble, but she kept moving left while I was moving right. Grace got the girl, hit her in the face with a blast of 00 buckshot. My M4 was out of the fight, bullets were whizzing around me, and now I’m hearing Zs growling, coming up behind us.
“I whipped out my Glock and killed the last two soldiers, but the Zs were less than twenty feet away, almost fifteen of them. I looked over and saw Grace was down on her knees and in pain. So now I’m running for her, shootin’ Zs, and starting to get a little concerned. I know the Marines and Roy turned me into a deadly weapon but this wasn’t looking good.”
Roy had been the CDC agents’ firearms instructor when they had gone through their initial training. While not speaking at all about his background, the common consensus was that he was a retired Navy SEAL turned contract instructor.
“I killed over half of them but then my pistol ran dry. Man, then things got real crazy. They were too close for me to reload so I dropped the Glock and whipped off that useless rifle and started swinging it. I crushed some skulls but then I felt one of the nasties grabbing my shoulder. Thank God, Grace managed to get up and put a shot into that Z’s head. That was the last one but with all the shooting, we knew their buddies would be heading our way.”
“Were those real National Guard troops or bad guys masquerading?” Hollywood asked.
Jimmy shrugged. “That’s a good question. Grace was really hurting so I helped her back inside. She had been hit in the vest and was stable, so I went out and gathered up weapons and ammo from those idiots. I think one of ‘em was still breathing but I didn’t even bother to finish him off. I knew he didn’t have long. I also snatched the dead girl’s body armor for Grace and two of the guy’s coats. If we were going to be stuck in that house, we needed to stay warm.
“But here’s what really pissed me off. While I was grabbing their stuff, I saw tattoos on two of the dudes. ‘BMF.’ Black Mafia Family. That’s a really hard-core street gang. I didn’t take the time to look but I’d bet the other guy and the chick were marked as well. My guess is that these were legit National Guard troopers who decided to go rogue when everything fell apart. And as gangsters, they resorted to doing gangster stuff.
“Even in the Marine Corps, we had gang members make it through recruitment and boot camp. They usually didn’t last long before they got caught doing something stupid and I’ve heard the same thing has happened in the other branches of the military, as well.”
Hollywood spoke up, “Yeah, when I was in the Army, I was recruited by a couple of different Mexican gangs. As an MP, we even arrested some gang bangers when we could catch them selling drugs or trying to steal weapons to resell to their gangster buddies.”
Jones nodded and continued, “After I got the doors barricaded and made sure the house was secure, I went to check on Grace. She’d taken two 9 mil rounds to the vest and a third grazed her left arm. Her vest saved her but I’m pretty sure her sternum was cracked. I’m just glad she didn’t take an M-16 round. All she had on was her police pistol-rated vest. That’s why I grabbed the heavy one the dead girl had been wearing. Grace needed stitches on her arm but the best I could do was clean it, bandage it, and tie it up real tight.
“The good news was that now we had a vehicle. When I went and checked it, the hummer only had a quarter tank of diesel but they also had a few boxes of MREs and some more water so we were OK for a while. There was a lot of stolen crap in the hummer, too. Jewelry, cash, and some other loot those goons had snatched from houses.”
“You said your rifle got shot in the receiver? Were you able to fix it?” Andy asked.
“Not a chance. That bullet hit the ejection port and screwed the bolt up. It wouldn’t shoot and I couldn’t even get the action to cycle. But the scumbags gave us two M-16s, a Mossberg .12 gauge, and a Beretta,” Jimmy said, pointing at the pistol attached to his plate carrier and an M-16 standing against the wall.
“All that shooting drew in the zombies and they surrounded us, just shuffling around our house and the neighborhood. We hunkered down in place and tried to be quiet. It was cold and Grace was in a lot of pain. I had a few pain pills in my IFAK but she burned through those in three days and then just had to grunt it out.
“After probably a week and a half, Grace was able to get around again. I remember from Marine Combat First Aid Training that a cracked sternum takes several weeks to heal fully. She wasn’t a hundred percent but it looked like most of the Zs had moved on and there were just some stragglers hanging around the area. I told her that we needed to get out while the coast was clear. When I cranked up that humvee, though, a bunch came running so we played Frogger gettin’ out of the neighborhood.
“We were close to Highway 78, but I knew the big interchange with Highway 441 was blocked. I drove south until we were out in the middle of nowhere. I stopped and gave Grace a crash course on how to use the machine gun.
“There’s a little town over there, Watkinsville. It’s maybe eight or ten miles from Athens. The Zs had swept through there li
ke locusts. There were partially eaten bodies, body parts, and some decaying zombies still hanging around.
“It looked like the police had tried to make a stand. They had set up some barricades and had the road blocked. There were a couple of zombie cops who wanted a bite of us but the big bumper of that humvee put them out of their misery.
“Right after we got out of town, the hummer started sputtering and then died. The gas gauge still showed a quarter tank but that bitch was dead and there was no reviving her. We loaded up with as much ammo, food, and water as we could carry and started hiking.
“After a mile, Grace’s chest was really hurting and I knew we needed to stop again. There was a business park just ahead, and being a highly trained Marine officer, I read the directory and saw just what we needed.”
“A Marriott?” asked Eddie, grinning.
“That would’ve been OK, too. No, I broke into Dr. Lombardi’s office. The sign said he was a general practitioner, and he had plenty of good drugs. I found some pain pills for Grace and some antibiotic cream for her wounded arm. She’s gonna have a nasty scar but at least it didn’t get infected.
“It wasn’t as comfortable as a Marriott but we didn’t see any Zs and it was a good place to let her heal up and rest for a few more days. Neither of us had gotten much sleep at her house or that other one with zombies just outside.
“We were only a couple of miles from Highway 78 so three days later we started walking. There was a big convenience store right next to the highway. I saw that purple Olds sitting next to the gas pumps and I knew that the good Lord was looking out for this brother and sister. There were a few chewed-up bodies lying around but when we made for the car, some Zs came pouring out from behind the building. There were about twenty of them but they were only fifty yards away from us.
“I had Grace check to see if the keys were in the car while I started popping heads with my National Guard issue M-16. She yelled that the keys were in the ignition, got it cranked up, and we were in business. We hauled ass out of there with the nasties shuffling after us. An hour later, we were home.”
“Wow! That’s enough excitement to last a lifetime,” Eddie nodded thoughtfully. “Now, if we could just hear something from Chuck, Scotty, Chris, and Terrence.”
The friends sat in silence for couple of minutes, glad to be back together. Andy finally broke the silence.
“No rush, but after Grace is feeling better, do you think she’d like to help with security here? It’d probably be good to give her something to do. She doesn’t need to be sitting around thinking about things and we could really use her.”
“Definitely,” Jimmy said. “I told her the same thing on the drive over. We need everybody and she’s proved that she’s a badass. We all saw how she got that group of survivors out of the Sanford Stadium when the zombie virus was unleashed. And I got to see her taking out Zs and dirty National Guard troops. She’s good. And speaking of the lovely young woman, I think I’ll go check on her.”
Centers for Disease Control Compound, East of Atlanta, Thursday, 1715 hours
Dr. Nicole Edwards stood up from her desk, laying down the latest test results for the zombie virus vaccine her team was working on. She was one of the top epidemiologists in the world, but she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything for the last two hours.
“I’ll be back in a few, I need some fresh air,” she told her colleagues, three men and two women scientists, busy at different work stations in the small lab, and walked outside.
Earlier, on her way back to the lab after a late lunch, she had had heard the car pull up outside the gate. Her heart had leapt inside of her, hoping that he had finally returned. Nicole didn’t approach the gate per the security protocol that the enforcement unit had in place. She did, however, watch from a distance, hoping and praying.
The purple Oldsmobile had indeed been occupied by a CDC enforcement officer, just not the one whom she had wanted to see. Of course, she was happy that Agent Jones had returned safely and that he had been able to rescue the young woman. That was great news.
At the same time, Edwards felt something die inside of her, realizing that he probably wasn’t coming back. She couldn’t explain her feelings. Chuck McCain had never said or done anything to indicate that he had any romantic notions towards her. Nicole, on the other hand, had fallen in love with the big man. It reminded her of the crush she’d had on the quarterback of the football team when she had been in high school. Johnny Masters hadn’t even known that she existed but Nicole had fallen for him anyway.
Dr. Edwards had always admired McCain from a distance, especially while her friend, Rebecca Johnson, was still alive. Nicole knew the two had loved each other, even though they had downplayed their feelings in public. After Rebecca was murdered, the scientist had hoped that one day, after Chuck’s heart had healed, the two of them might be able to get together.
Nicole unconsciously pulled her long, wavy brown hair forward and let it lay over her right shoulder, thinking back to that day, months earlier, when she had almost given up hope. She and the security supervisor, Darrell Parker, had gotten trapped inside the CDC security office while zombies roamed just outside. After several days of being locked in the dark office, Edwards had experienced a nightmare, waking up screaming and alerting the Zs that fresh meat was just on the other side of the metal door.
The creatures were just about to break through and she and Darrell knew that they were about to die. Suddenly, gunshots sounded from the other side of the door. Moments later, they heard McCain’s voice, asking if anyone was inside. Darrell had opened the door and Nicole had thrown herself into Chuck’s arms, embarrassing both of them.
In reality, they had never even had a conversation before that day, but she had fantasized about him coming to her rescue. Her feelings for McCain intensified over the next month. Chuck had very generously let Nicole share his guest room with Scotty Smith’s girlfriend, Emily. Since the scientist’s apartment was located near downtown, in the Buckhead community of Atlanta, she was grateful for his offer. Plus, it allowed her to stay close to Chuck. He’d been polite but had kept his distance as she shared his house. This, however, only increased Nicole’s desire to get close to him.
McCain and the other two male roommates, Scotty Smith and Darnell Washington, Emily’s paramedic partner, were all perfect gentleman. Chuck had made a point of checking with Nicole regularly to see if she needed anything and had loaned her a computer so that she could continue working. At the same time, it was obvious that he wasn’t looking for female companionship.
Edwards had overheard McCain talking to Smith one evening about his plans to go find his daughter. Scotty had wanted to go with his boss but Chuck had gently turned him down, reminding his friend that Emily needed him. Nicole remembered the feeling of fear she’d felt when she had heard that Chuck was launching out on his own.
And now he’s been gone for close to two months. What happened to you, Chuck? she wondered. A cold breeze blew over the CDC compound, Dr. Edwards wrapped her arms around her shoulders and turned to go back inside. She still had a lot of work to do.
CHAPTER FIVE
Taking Ground
Buckhead, Atlanta, Friday, 1100 hours
Antonio Corona stood on his balcony, which overlooked the area that his men had secured, but the cartel leader’s gaze carried beyond, towards the skyline of Atlanta just a few miles away. He wanted the entire city, not just the ever-growing foothold that he was carving out in this exclusive neighborhood. He was torn between wanting to rush into action while simultaneously feeling a sense of caution, as well.
The loss of his patrol on Wednesday had rattled him. He knew that the Americans would eventually come after him, but was shocked to hear that his entire eight-man patrol of hardened soldiers had been taken out with no apparent casualties to their ambushers. Corona was pleased that the traitorous maintenance man had been killed, may he rot in Hell. I only wish I could’ve been the one to send him there, Corona
thought.
Later in the afternoon, when the patrol never returned, Quintero had led a group of additional gangsters to the scene. After walking around the still smoking carnage, trying to figure out what had happened, the lieutenant returned to let his boss know that their patrol had been slaughtered. Each of the bodies of his men had received a shot to the head from close range to go along with whatever other wounds they had taken.
There was no way that the American police had done this. They were bound by so many rules, they would have never shot wounded criminals in the head. The military? Tony the Tiger didn’t think so. They were also forced to follow stringent guidelines and were forbidden to even operate on their own soil.
So who killed his men? Antonio knew that the gringos loved their guns. Maybe it was a rival gang? If that was the case, they were clearly a force to be reckoned with. All the more reason for the team he had sent out to get to his uncle quickly and bring back more soldados.
The Nissan Armada containing four soldiers and the white Chevrolet full-size van with two more gunmen to guard the ten women they were taking to Uncle Pepe, left early Thursday morning. They should be in Tijuana later today or tonight. Hopefully, the old man would be in a good mood when he read his nephew’s letter. The younger Corona had wondered several times over the last few months if his uncle had not been trying to get rid of him by sending Antonio to try and capture an American city.
It didn’t matter. Corona and his men had made steady progress, securing a large area of prime real estate just a few miles outside of downtown Atlanta. More cartel soldiers would allow Tony the Tiger to continue pushing outward, enlarging their presence in the large American city.