Dead Team Alpha: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (28 page)

But she sees nothing but the undead
and that almost scares her even more.

“Where are they?” she mutters. “Come on, you motherfuckers. Show your eyeless faces!”

***

The Teams crest a
rise in the Turnpike and stop.

“I count twenty,” Diaz says.

“Yep,” Shep agrees.

Fifty yards
ahead, a line of twenty men and women, their eye sockets bleeding with fresh cuts, stand waiting, hands at their sides, holding everything from hunks of steel to old, split 2x4s. They stand silent, none moving a muscle. Even their chests seem still, their lungs stopped as they hold a collective breath.

Then they move. Fast.

“Fuck,” Stanford says. “We don’t have time for this.”

He pulls his 9mm.

“That’s what they want,” Val says. “Have us run completely out of ammunition.”

“Then that’s what they get,” Stanford says, his arm up, one hand cupping the other that
grips his pistol. “Fuck it, Mates. Take them down.”

9mms are drawn, beads taken, and triggers squeezed.

The crazies rush into the oncoming fire, bodies dropping as perfectly placed rounds strike them. Then it’s over and the Teams move forward, eyes watching the fallen blind men and women. Almost every shot is a head shot, and Shep and Diaz quiet those that still have their brains intact. Blood spills out across the pavement, pooling up against the boots of each Mate.

“One shot each?” Stanford asks, ejecting and checking his magazine then slapping it back home.

“I took two,” Val says. “Dropped that one and that one.”

“Then this was a waste,” Stanford says. “For them, not us. What the hell was the point?”

Alastair, Lang, and Cole roll a few bodies over and yank up the backs of their shirts. No markings.

“Keep us occupied,” Shep says, spinning about as they hear a slight scrape of gravel behind them.

All Mates turn and see five Code Monkeys standing there, only five feet away. Another scrape and Diaz, Val, Alastair, and Cole spin back around to see five more Code Monkeys.

The
Mates don’t need to see the backs of the people that stand in front and behind them. It’s easy to spot the difference by the way the new men and women carry themselves.

And by the deadly sharp blades they hold in each of their hands.

“You’re fast, but can you fucking dodge bullets?” Stanford asks.

The Code Monkeys run.
The Teams open fire. They all find out the answer to Stanford’s question.

Chapter Ten- Hold The Line

On come the Zs, adding to the crushed dead flesh that starts to mound up against the wall. Commander Lee’s fear
grows as bodies begin to be shoved upward from the force of the herd. Ten feet up, fifteen feet, twenty feet-the rotten corpses move ever higher.

“Grenades!” Commander Lee shouts. “
Throw the last of them now! Toss them past the piles! Don’t blow the wall!”

Arms are thrust forward all along the wall and the deadly grey/green pears sail into the air. The citizens of the Stronghold watch as their explosives clear patches here and there, but are quickly dismayed as the bloody holes are filled within milliseconds.

The ocean of undead continues to crash into the Stronghold, its tide never ceasing.

One by
one, all of the flares are lit and dropped, but there is nothing to be done. The Stronghold has run out of ammunition. Commander Lee looks down behind her and can see Kevin Ross yelling to Runners here and there to warn the houses that a breach is coming. He shouts orders to make sure the Gym is ready for the retreat.

“Commander!” someone yells and her attention is brought back to the scene in front of the wall.

There they are.

Mixed in with the Zs, somehow avoiding detection, the Code Monkeys come. They shamble along, keeping in step with the undead around them, but it becomes easy to spot their eyeless face
s that are turned up towards the top of the wall. Commander Lee can see the herd pushing the piles higher and higher, like the fault line that created the Rocky Mountains that the Stronghold is built upon, and knows that once the Code Monkeys reach the mound, it will be all over.

Twenty-five feet, thirty feet, thirty-five feet
, forty feet. Zs now start to clamber up the mound of their brethren, climbing slowly, undead hand over undead hand, towards the flesh that peers down at them in terror.

All of the Teams are deployed
elsewhere and the guns empty. Firepower will not win the day. Commander Lee takes her own rifle and spins it about.

“BREAK SOME SKULLS!” she screams and places a foot on the edge of the wall.

The entire line looks at her as she brings the rifle down onto the head of a Z that has reached the top. It cracks wide and grey matter oozes out between the crushed plates of skull. The corpse tumbles down the mound, smacking into the hundreds of Zs that claw their way to the top.

She brings the rifle down again and again, joined by the rest of the line, as her throat begins to go raw from the force of the war cry she doesn’t even know she’s screaming.

***

The
citizens of the Stronghold that stand down below the wall, realize that the tide has turned as they watch their friends and family desperately try to beat back the Zs that come over the top. They start screaming, yelling for their loved ones to retreat, to fall back as they have practiced a thousand times.

The flight half of the fight or flight instinct kicks in and the citizens that stand in the streets of the Stronghold bolt and run, heading to the promised security of the Gym.
They rush inside and bolt the doors, knowing that the defensive guard still has one option left, one place to find sanctuary.

***

“Not faster than bullets, are ya motherfuckers?” Stanford smirks, panting and clutching his shoulder where he took a nasty swipe of a blade.

All about
the Teams, the bodies of the Code Monkeys lie, their heads and chests leaking blood.

Alastair kneels next to Diaz and holds up three fingers.

“How many?” he asks.

“Three too many,” Diaz snaps. “Get your hand out of my face.”

“He’s good,” Alastair says.

“She isn’t,” Val says as Anna Lee lays in Cole’s arms, struggling to breathe, a knife sticking out from her sternum.

The rest of the Mates, those with rounds still left in their pistols, watch the area, ready for another attack as Val and Stanford squat next to their cousin.

“Fu-fu-fu-fuck…ing go,” Anna Lee croaks, her voice a bloody gurgle. “G-g-g-get…to the…S-s-s-s-strong…hold.”

“Go,” Cole echoes. “I’ll wait with her.”

“Fuck…that
,” she says and grabs onto the knife handle, using the last of her strength to pull it free.

None of them
shouts for her to stop, and even though Cole is right there, he knows what she is doing, and doesn’t move a muscle as the wound gushes blood that was being held back by the blade. Anna Lee Franks takes one last gasp and then falls still, the knife clattering to the pavement. Cole picks it up and finishes the job, making sure Anna Lee will never have the indignity of coming back as a Z.

He gets to his feet, his uniform slick with blood, and takes the pack that’s handed to him.

As one, the Teams turn towards the direction of the Stronghold and start to run. They no longer have the luxury of a hard march, only a sprint up the mountain will get them to their home in time.

At
least, they hope it will.

***

The butt of his shotgun shatters one skull, then another, as Collin beats back the Zs trying to crawl their way over the wall. He kicks a third, then a fourth, almost losing his balance and falling backwards off the platform. Filled with corn hooch and courage, Collin just whoops it up as he regains his balance by leaning forward. The face of a Z is only inches from his, its mouth open, teeth ready.

The thing’s jaws snap down onto empty air as Sheriff March grabs the collar of Collin’s shirt and pulls him upright.

“Nearly lost that veiny nose of yours, Baptiste,” Marsh says. He slams the butt of his rifle into the Z, ripping the thing’s lower jaw off. A quick kick and it falls backwards, dislodging four more Zs on its way down the mound. “Come on, time to retreat.”

“I ain’t no chicken,” Collin says. “I’ll fight until I die.”

“Unless you plan on killing them with your breath,” Marsh says. “Then that’ll be all of two minutes. Come one, you drunk fuck, you’re coming with me.”

Marsh pulls Collin along the platform, joining the rest of the Stronghold citizens that are abandoning their posts and running for
the last refuge. He almost considers leaving Collin’s ass behind as he struggles to get the man down one of the ladders without both of them falling and snapping their necks. However, they make it and Marsh continues pulling the man along as Collin gawks at the insanity of the Stronghold with that strange mix of anger, awe and confusion that drunks have.

Weaving through
sprinting clusters of guards, Marsh finally gets them to their destination.

“You ready?” Marsh asks the sweaty
face of Deputy Doreen Crespo as she throws the Sheriff’s Office door wide.

“Yes, sir,” Doreen says, taking the empty rifle from Marsh and handing him a fully loaded MK-46. She sets the empty rifle down and picks up an AK-47, pulling back the slide and sending a round into the chamber. “Set and ready.”

Collin stumbles into the Sheriff’s office and looks at Deputy Linda Fitzpatrick as she lays out rifle after rifle across Marsh’s desk. His eyes go wide at all the firepower.

“And you gave me a fucking shotgun?” Collin snaps. “Asshole.”

“I never thought this day would work out right,” Marsh says as he slams the door shut and bolts it. “So I made sure Crespo and Fitz had things ready when we had to book it out of there.”

“Which one is mine?” Collin asks, reaching for a
short-barreled sub-machine gun. His hand is quickly slapped away by Fitz. “Hey!”

“You just have a seat back in the corner,” Marsh says as he throws a window wide and settles the barrel of his MK-46 on the sill. “I’m not arming you unless it’s a last resort.”

“Where the fuck did you get all of this?” Collin asks, his eyes growing wider as Fitz hefts a massive gun onto her own cleared desk. “What the fuck is that?”

“To answer your first question,” Marsh says. “This is a military town, Baptiste. You can’t imagine what I’ve had to confiscate over the years
after a drunken brawl or all night party. Never bothered sending Ross an inventory. Figured having our own stash might come in handy.”

“And this,” Fitz says
patting the gun as she answers the second question. “Is an MK-47 grenade launcher.”

Crespo helps her shove the desk up against one of the front windows. The woman hurries over to Collin and glares.

“Move,” she snaps.

“What?” Collin asks, having just done what Marsh ordered and grabbed a seat in the corner.

“You’re sitting on the ordinance,” Crespo says. “Move.”

Collin looks down at the metal box he’s planted his ass upon. He stands up, putting a hand against the wall as the room spins a little. Crespo drags the box over to the grenade launcher, opens it, and hands Fitz the end of
a belt of 40mm rounds ready to blow everything in their path to shit.

Looking at the desk of rifles, Collin licks his lips and starts to
sidle over to them.

“No,” Marsh says without looking back over his shoulder. “I have zero intention of you accidentally shooting me in the back, so just no.”

“Fine, you ass,” Collin says, grabbing the second drawer down on the left side of the desk. “Then I’ll get comfortable.”

He yanks open the drawer and smiles at the three jars of clear hooch waiting for him.

“Well, hello there,” Collin says. “My name’s Collin Baptiste. Pleased to meet ya.”

***

“In, in, in!” Kevin Ross shouts as those that made it off the wall stream through the front doors of the Team command center. “Hurry! Move! Let’s go!”

The last few cram inside and Kevin is about to shut the door when he sees Commander Lee
far off down the street, standing on the wall just next to the gate with nothing but a machete in her hand. A Z crawls up over the edge and she sends its head tumbling back down.

“Commander!” he yells. “COMMANDER LEE!”

The woman looks over her shoulder and frowns at Kevin. She waves a hand for him to get inside, but he shakes his head. She waves again, turns and dispatches one, then two more Zs, looks back at him, her face set, telling him she is not who he wants to deal with right now.

Kevin gives
her one last look, then slams the door shut. He makes sure the bars are locked, then reaches up and pulls down the rolled metal grate nested above the doorway. Using his body weight, he yanks the grate to the floor and slams home the locks that nestle into the concrete.

Outside
on the wall, Commander Lee can just hear the sound of the locks echoing down the street, before the whole Stronghold goes quiet, except for the continuous groans of the Zs coming at her. She knows that her people are safe for the time being from the Zs, but those creatures aren’t what bother her.

The Code Monkeys. Those fucks.

“You fucks,” she snarls, seeing the blind men and women milling about, seemingly invisible to the Zs. She has no idea how they are accomplishing keeping the Zs from attacking them, and eating them. But that’s something she can work out later. For now, she has to keep them from coming over the wall.

Her eyes find the
few men and women that are trapped on top of houses and buildings out in front of the wall that haven’t collapsed; the brave few that tried what they could to slow the herd down. She says a quick prayer, reaches down, and lifts a small box from the platform. Connected to the box is a wire which winds its way down the outside of the wall, and into the street, and then branches off into a hundred other wires, all leading to various charges.

The meat of her thumb rests on one simple button. All she has to do is push.

And she does.

One by one, the various dwellings and structures that fill the space between the wall and the outer perimeter erupt into massive fireballs. Their walls seem to flex
inward, then explode out in a hail of fiery shrapnel. Zs everywhere are sliced in half, decapitated, and disemboweled. Hundreds shamble about, their putrid flesh burning and falling off in hot drips. They stumble into each other and spread the flames, fire taking hold in the flaps of skin and scraps of clothing that can never retain moisture in the dry Colorado air.

In just seconds, Commander Lee is holding her forearm in front of her face to shield herself from the heat below. The whole stretch of land between the wall and the outer perimeter is a hellish inferno.

She knows she will probably be removed from her post, because she did not inform the Mayor or any of the council members of her backup plan. They would never have approved of the complete destruction of a third of the houses of their citizens. But she is a soldier, not a politician. She’ll take her punishment and hold her head up proudly, knowing she has saved thousands of lives.

Then
her blood turns to ice as she watches figures weave and dodge their way through the blaze, keeping themselves from catching fire while also pushing forward towards the wall. They shove the walking fireballs out of the way and immediately choose the paths up the piles of undead that aren’t yet set aflame. With speed that is near superhuman, the blind crazies come, scurrying up to the top of the wall.