A Time to Die (41 page)

“Wade, get the fuck up!” Andrew screamed.

“Okay,” the man said and surprisingly made it to his feet. “Find us a building or something?”

“Sure,” Wade said set out around the tank. Andrew got to his feet and with his friend, side by side, they backed in the direction Wade had left. In only a few seconds they heard him yelling that he’d found something. When they found him it wasn’t optimal.

“A stairway?” Chris asked.

Wade had found a big box made of chain link fencing. It protected the bottom few steps of a metal latticework stairway heading upwards. It climbed in a rather shallow angle around the outside of the tank, up, up up, and out of sight. The tank seemed to go up a thousand feet into the diming sky.

“Fuck me,” Wade moaned. Other moans answered just out of view, and untold thousands answered others. “Open the gate!” Wade yelled and jerked at the handle. There was a huge lock secured by a chain wrapped around the bars multiple times. “God damn it!” he screamed and jerked over and over again, tears starting to pour down his face. The growls got closer.

“Back away,” Chris barked. Luckily Wade didn’t argue. As soon as he was back a couple feet Wade let the M-16 fall to his sling, whipped out the M-9 from his waist band and fired once, twice, a third time. The chain parted and fell loose. Wade rushed in and with shaking hands unthreaded it, threw the shattered chain aside, and jerked the fence door open. Without being told to he begin rushing up the steps. He quickly slowed, but kept going ever upward.

“Go, I’ll take the rear,” Andrew said. Chris started up and Andrew was right behind him. Less than a second later, the first of them appeared around the corner and practically sprinted at the gate.

He was a huge hulking man, completely naked, his upper body covered with tattoos and scars. He reminded Andrew of Dany Trejo, and Andrew shot him dead with one round through his forehead. The body hit the lowest metallic step with a disgusting crunch and spray of blood.

Andrew ignore the screaming of his legs and began going up the steps backwards. He instantly thanked whatever gods had decided the incline would be a gradual one. His legs shook almost uncontrollably with each step. Fatigue was getting worse by the moment and he knew from long practice and the SERE course that he was approaching a wall no amount of inner drive and fortitude could push past.

Another dozen came racing up toward the entrance. Andrew shot first one, missed with the next shot, hit the second, third, and fourth. Then the magazine was empty. He performed a rapid swap, an extra already in his left hand and dropped the bolt on a fresh round in only a second. And a good thing too, the other eight odd screaming and mostly naked ghouls had jumped or clambered over the ones he’d shot and made the stairs then started up after him.

Andrew was only a few dozen stairs above them. He fired at almost point blank range into the first one, a portly dark skinned woman. It was close enough that the muzzle blast blew her hair back and the round exploded the side of her neck. She fell in a spray of arterial blood that stood out in stark contrast against the white of the oil tank. She fell backwards and into the ones behind her. The stairs were just wide enough for one to climb easily so they had to fight past her. One of the others took the easier meat and started ripping into her flesh, further slowing them. Andrew backed up and shot the one behind her.

Up and back he went until that magazine was empty. It was the same each time. Shoot a few, slow them down. The others would feed or climb over, and he’d do it all over. But as the magazine ran out, fewer and few were interested in feeding. They wanted him. And they were getting faster.

“Reloading!” Andrew yelled.

“Switch,” Chris said. Andrew spun around, grateful for the chance to use different muscles, and climbed as fast as he could for two dozen stairs, reloading as he went. He almost lost the magazine, his heart leaping into his throat. That was one of only two left. Below Chris banged away and fell back. He’d watched what Andrew had done and emulated him. Only he hadn’t realized the crazies were getting bored with the game. A smallish woman took a graze to the head that seemed to expose brain, but didn’t slow her up a beat. In an instant she slammed into Chris and knocked him back.

The M-16 fell from his grasp, only hanging on by the strap over his shoulder. Chris cried out and grabbed her neck in both hands. She fought, clawing at his face and trying to get a bite on his arm. Andrew leaned against the hot metal of the tank and sighted careful. It was maybe two inches from Chris’s head. The other man was screaming as the woman’s teeth inched towards his face.

“CRACK!” The M-16 went off, the bullet passed through the dome of her head and traveled down her neck, blowing out around the middle of her back. The body was carried backwards, and over the edge.

“Did you get bit?” Andrew asked, helping him to his feet.

“No, I don’t think so,” Chris said, carefully recovering the gun. He got to his feet and checked himself. “I’m fine,” he said. But there was no time to recover, they had to keep going no matter what the cost. Chris continued up while Andrew held the stairs.

Andrew craned his head and looked up. The top of the tank was not as far as he thought. He decided to try a new tactic. He let a group clamber over the couple of bodies on the stairs. They fought each other for position to be the first to reach him. Several more were right behind them, only five feet away when he brought the M-16 to his shoulder and pumped five rounds into the group.

The typically over-penetrating .223 caliber round passed clean through the test[[?]] line of crazies and into the second, a couple rounds even into the third. They jerked and fell, one going over the edge with a strangled scream to cartwheel almost a hundred feet to the ground. The others made a large pile of former humans, jerking and bleeding out. One woman still trying to crawl towards him.

Andrew took advantage of every second, turning and hurrying as much as his tortured, fatigued limbs would let him. Even the low steps were a torture, each one felt ten feet tall and caused bolts of pain to shoot up his leg. The air pumped from his lungs like a laboring steam engine. Sweat rolled off his forehead in a torrent and he was having trouble focusing.

“Almost there,” he huffed.

Andrew caught up to Chris after casting a look over his shoulder to be sure they weren’t about to be overrun. Wade was just a few steps ahead, only taking one step every second or two so Andrew was about to help move him along when he realized they’d reached the top at last!

Wade took a couple steps at the top of the springy steel tank and fell to his knees, gasping for breath and holding himself up with hands. Andrew and Chris took up positions at the top of the stairs and waited. It only took a few seconds for the first customers to arrive. The air smelled heavily of oil.

They fired methodically and carefully. Each shot Andrew made was a center chest shot from less than ten yards. Sometimes the target met a few steps before falling, sometimes they fell instantly. As the bodies started to pile up, it became progressively harder for the infected to climb over the top, and easier for the two men to shoot those that did. If it wasn’t life and death, Andrew would have laughed at the comic qualities of it. It reminded him of a Japanese gameshow, Takeshi’s Castle. Only with zombies.

“Almost out,” Chris said.

“Me too,” Andrew said also. There was a huge pulsating pile of dead and dying infected. Some still reached out towards them, others just lay bleeding out, most were already dead. Blood poured off the expanded metal stairs in rivers, much of it in long streaks down the white tanks sides in carnal streaks of crimson.

“There’s a catwalk,” Wade said. Andrew glanced over to see the big man had regained his feet and walked over to the far side of the tank. A catwalk was clearly visible leading to another tank, and another past that! It was an entire network of tanks.

“Go!” Andrew urged him. Back on the stairs they could hear movement. As they caught up with Wade who was carefully moving along the catwalk, the first head appeared at the top of the stairs. Chris shouldered his AR-15 and fired, the head exploded and fell back. Another replaced it and he shot that one too. His bolt locked back.

“Empty,” Chris said. Andrew handed him his last magazine.

“You’re better with the rifles,” he told the man as he followed Wade across the narrow shaky bridge. Chris’s methodical precision fire resumed momentarily.

When he reached the other side he yelled to Chris and raised his rifle, only the remnants of the magazine left to him. Chris turned and started across. In the instant it took Andrew to acquire a target several of the crazies made the top of the tank and raced towards them. Andrew shot one, two, three, and a fourth. But they kept coming. How many had they killed? A hundred? Two hundred? His heart raced in near panic as he realized this was probably it. There was to be no escape. As he’d crossed the bridge he could see below, a sea of moving moaning, screaming animals. All looking upwards and reaching for them.

When they’d realized there was a way to the other tanks Andrew had considered going down the far side to make good their escape while the creatures all gathered on top of the tanks. But unable to get up in any numbers, they surrounded their quarry on all sides.

“We’re fucked.” Wade cried and slowly crumpled onto his butt. Chris came up next to Andrew where he stood a few feet from Wade, on the far side of the tank from the one they’d come up on. Andrew turned and saw one of the infected appear on the ladder to the tank they now stood on, a woman completely naked. They’d either climbed over the security gate or that one hadn’t been closed. He drew the M-9 and shot this woman twice in the chest before he even considered. She staggered and fell over the side.

“What now?” Chris asked.

“End of the road,” Andrew said. On the next tank over a stream of insane infected appeared from that ladder. It took them a moment to see the three men in the twilight, but see them they did.

Chris looked down at the empty M-16 and let it fall on the sling around his neck and drew his pistol. He didn’t raise it to fire, instead looked at the weapon for a long moment and sighed.

“I had a friend shoot himself two years ago,” Chris said. “I told myself that no matter what I’d never do that. I guess I spoke too soon.”

Andrew considered his own pistol. The infected were at the bridge to their tank, but had gotten tangled up. They were fighting to see who got to eat the men first. He pulled the magazine and checked. Nine rounds left. He knew there were four more full magazines in the backpack over his shoulder. Seventy-nine rounds on him, plus whatever Wade and Chris had in their pistols. His training to fight to the end began to flag.

“I’d rather pick my own way out,” Chris said and took a grip on the gun.

“What’s that sound?” Wade asked from where he’d been sitting?”

“What sound?” Andrew asked. All he heard was thousands of crazed flesh eating people growling, yelling and otherwise screaming their anger.

“That thumping,” Wade said.

“I hear something too,” Chris said and began to look around. “It’s a thumping, just like he said.”

“Thumping,” Andrew said and searched with the others. As he looked he noted their deteriorating situation. They’d have close and intimate company in a matter of minutes.

“There!” Wade said. He clambered to his feet and pointed. Andrew followed his direction and saw what he’d been expecting.

“Helicopter!” Andrew yelled. It was a couple miles out but looked like it was coming right at them. “It’s coming here,” he said.

“We’re not going to live long enough to be rescued if we don’t start stopping these creatures,” Chris pointed out.

“Well, start shooting!” Andrew barked.

Both men began picking their targets. Andrew fired on the ones trying to untangle themselves from the bridge nearest them. He spent six rounds killing or disabling all four that were on the bridge. He heard Chris’s gun speaking as the man engaged targets further back the way they’d come. Then he turned to Wade.

“You have to help us,” he told the overweight gamer.

“I ain’t no soldier,” Wade complained.

“Neither am I,” Chris said between shots. Wade looked more frightened than ever.

“We need you to hold this stairway,” Andrew said and gestured towards the closest stairs where he’d shot a woman only a minute ago.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Shoot anyone who comes up it,” Andrew explained.

“I can’t just shoot people,” he complained

“How many do you think you shot on the plane?” Andrew asked. “A hundred? A thousand?”

“That was a game,” Wade complained.

Andrew raised his M-9 and pointed it at Wade. The man’s eyes bugged as the pistol barked. He jerked, hands flying to his face, neck, chest, looking for a hole gushing blood. And found nothing. Wade turned at a gurgling sound behind him and saw an infected man fall face first onto the roof of the tank with a resounding bong.

With a shaking hand Wade drew the pistol from his belt and looked at it. Andrew reached over and flipped the safety off for him.

“Line up the sights and pull the trigger,” Andrew told him. “It’s a long pull the first time. After that, a short pull. It will kick, so hold it with both hands.” He showed with his own gun. “Live or die, you decide.”