Dead World (Book 1): Dead Come Home (24 page)

“It’ll take those three about twenty minutes or so to reach us … maybe more. They look pretty tore up. For now, we need to get every firearm we have out of the vehicle and loaded. Walt … after we get them out here, I want you to point out any weapons you aren’t familiar with, so I can explain ‘em to you. You’re gonna have to do my reloads for me once we get into the thick of it. Okay?”

“I can reload the guns, Mike,” Joseph said.

“No, I’m gonna need you behind the wheel. You’re the best driver out of the three of us. Trust me, your hands are gonna be full enough just trying to drive us through this shit storm in one piece.”

Mike, Joseph, and Walter devoted themselves to loading every weapon they had to full combat capacity—when possible, that meant one round in the chamber with a full magazine. The task took about a half an hour. In truth, if one of the slowly approaching undead hadn’t tripped onto his face, Mike wondered if he would have forgotten all about them.

“Joe, the Winchester.”

“Here ya go.”

Mike took up his father’s old rifle, steadying the barrel over the hood of the Blazer. He took his time, lined up his sights, and aimed in on the closest one.

BANG!

The skull blew apart into bloody fragments, and the body collapsed to the sand. Mike cocked the lever and repeated the process two more times. Three rounds. Three kills. Immediately afterwards, Mike wondered if shooting them had been a hasty mistake, a waste of ammo. They were all three slow, bodies nearly crippled by the damage of rigor mortis and the harsh desert climate. They would not have been difficult to take down, he realized. At the least, he and Joe could have dispatched them with hammers or hatchets without too much trouble.

“Take a mental note, guys. From now on, when we run into small groups of stragglers like this, it would probably be better for us to save the ammo and just do it the old fashioned way, if you know what I mean.”

“At this point,” he answered as he loaded three rounds into the rifle, “would it really matter if I wasn’t? Like you said, my hands are gonna be full.”

“We both will,” Walter chimed in. While their new passenger had already proven himself handy with shotguns and revolvers, it had turned out that he’d needed a little instruction on how to properly clear and load some of the other weapons, namely the
Desert Eagle
and the Winchester. Luckily, he’d also turned out to be a quick study.

“Okay,” Mike announced, “No use putting this off any longer. Let’s load up.”

All three men took their respective positions—Joseph in the driver’s seat, Walter in the back next to his daughter, and Mike standing up through the sunroof. The former Marine found it amusing that he was, quite literally and for the first time, “riding shotgun.”

“Good … you gotta be on the spot with those reloads, okay? If I run out of loaded weapons, we’re gonna turn into sitting ducks real quick, hear me? So I’ll start with low round capacity stuff—shotguns, revolvers, the Winchester, and then the semi-automatics. Got it? Are there any loads you want me to go over with you again? Or are you good?”

“You’re sure? … Are you
SURE
?”

“I
GOT
it, Mike!”

“Okay. Then barring any unexpected catastrophes, we got a good chance of making it through. We all stick to our stations—I kill, you drive, and he reloads while watching our asses.”

“We’re running out of light, Mike,” Joseph said nervously, pointing to the horizon. It would be dark in just short of an hour.

“Then we’d better get moving, huh?” Mike growled. He knew his frustration had nothing to do with Joseph. He just hated situations like these, where he had no choice but to do something he knew would be unpleasant. Situation like these reminded him of jump school. Mike hated heights, and so he’d hated jump school even more than he’d hated mountain warfare school. At least learning to climb made sense. Flying in an airplane was no big deal. Jumping out of one, however, was an entirely different story. He’d made it through every grueling day by repeating the same mantra, over and over again, in his mind—
I don’t gotta like it. I just gotta do it!

Now, as he popped the upper half of his torso through the sunroof, cradling a shotgun, he found himself chanting that mantra once more.

You don’t gotta like it, Mike. You just gotta do it.

“Okay, guys,” he called, pounding his fist twice on the roof of the
Blazer
, “Let’s take a bite of this shit sandwich and see if we can’t swallow it.”

“What!?” Chuckled Joseph from the driver’s seat.

“Let’s
go
,” Mike growled, finding himself tickled by Joseph’s laughter. “You smartass.” Mike was unable to hold back the smile that pushed on the corners of his mouth. There had been a time when he used to wonder how people laughed in the face of death … but that had been a long time ago.

The Blazer roared to life and they were soon on their way … into God-only-knew what kind of mess.

* * *

It wasn’t long before Mike’s eyes caught something in the distance, the first thing he’d seen in a while that wasn’t sand, rocks, or dried up brush. Far head, Mike saw a green mass of vegetation. He knew that Roswell had to be on the other side, though this wasn’t what he’d expected to see. In truth, Mike wasn’t exactly sure what he
had
expected Roswell to look like, maybe just a city standing alone in the middle of the desert.

Great … all that vegetation is going to make it impossible for me to tell what we’re driving into.

“Walt, hand me a pair of binos, would ya?” He called down, sliding the shotgun to Walter in exchange for a pair of camping binoculars.

Getting a clear view of anything while standing through the sunroof of a moving SUV turned out to be difficult. However, Mike soon focused on a cluster of tall buildings that peeked out above the treetops. Aside from a few wisps of black smoke, he saw little to further increase his concern about entering the city. He handed the binoculars back down and motioned for the shotgun.

“See anything?” asked Joseph.

“Not really … the tops of some buildings … a few weak smoke pillars … but that’s all. If this town is anything like some of the places we’ve already been through, then smoke on the horizon isn’t all that surprising. Probably coming from traffic accidents. But all that damn vegetation is blocking my line of sight from here. I can’t see a damn thing we’re coming up on.”

Mike suddenly found himself wishing he had a few things—like a good long-range rifle with a high-powered sight. And when he heard the sound of rapid gunfire, now growing louder with each passing moment, he found himself wishing he’d been able to find some body armor, or even just a nice plate of Kevlar. Zombies would be the least of his worries if he got hit with a stray bullet from some trigger-happy weekend warrior, spraying rounds like they were going out of style.

A road sign passed, alerting drivers of an approaching decrease in the speed limit, which told Mike they’d be hitting Roswell any minute now. The trees were soon on both sides of the road, and Mike brought the shotgun to the ready, butt into his shoulder. He watched a street sign pass to his right as Joseph maneuvered around an overturned truck. The sign read “2
^nd
St.”

The gunfire had grown even louder by now, and Mike knew that, whatever was happening, it was happening close by. He could now hear not only the popping of gunfire, but the bullet impacts as well. He tried briefly to crouch, but found it impossible to remain steady while doing so and soon gave it up.

“Hey, Joe. Take the next turn you can … I think someone is shooting up ahead. And slow it down to a school zone crawl. I don’t want to get shot if we accidentally pop up on somebody.”

“I hear ya, Mike.”

They passed a number of modest ranches before Joseph was finally able to turn right onto a road labeled “Garden St.” As they rounded the corner, Mike immediately regretted the instructions he’d given to Joseph. Directly in front of them, no more than ten yards ahead, about a half dozen young men, decked out in camouflage and armed with what appeared to Mike to be old M1 service rifles, were standing on top of a semi-trailer that was backed up flush against the loading dock of a Quonset hut. Mike looked at the side of the half-circle structure—ARMY SURPLUS.

The young men were pretty thickly surrounded, firing wildly at what Mike estimated to be about thirty walking dead. Joseph brought the SUV to a screeching halt. The sudden and unexpected sound must have made one of the young men jerk, because Mike heard and swore he felt
,
the crack of a round passing by his head.

“HEY!” He bellowed back, flinching a bit. “What the fuck are you doing!? Do I look like a fucking zombie to you!?”

One young man, presumably the one who’d fired the shot, stood up and stared with brief bewilderment at Mike, as if trying to figure out whether or not what he was seeing was actually
real
. He began tapping his fellow gunmen on the shoulders, one-by-one, and pointed their attentions to the Blazer. Mike wondered if they shouldn’t just drive on. For all he knew, these guys were just a bunch of ill-fated looters. Then again, he realized they might also just be good people in a world of trouble.

“Mike! Four o’clock!” Walt called out from the backseat.

Almost without thinking, Mike reacted, bringing around the shotgun barrel to his rear right. He zeroed in on a mullet-sporting zombie in a blood-spattered “wife-beater” tank top and a pair of faded cut-offs. The shotgun spit fire and a solid lead slug collided with the zombie’s upper torso. Limbs, blood, flesh, and bone fragments exploded in all directions.

“Joe! Get us closer to that big rig, but take it slow and be ready to haul ass out of here if I tell you to. These guys might not be friendly, no matter how fucked up of a situation they’ve gotten themselves into.”

“Got it!” Joe replied, letting off the brake just enough to allow the SUV to crawl forward.

“Walt! Switch me out! I need the Winchester and a nine-mil!”

Walter took back the shotgun and handed Mike the pistol then the rifle. Mike tucked the pistol into his waistband and brought the rifle to the ready. He knew they couldn’t stay near the rig for long, or they ran the risk of getting surrounded themselves.

“What am I doing, Mike?” Joe called out, a tone of frustration in his voice.

“Get me over to the hood. Close enough so that I can climb over onto it. But take it slow,” Mike replied. “Walt! Once my feet leave the hatch, you take my place up here with the shotgun! But watch your fire! Once I’m over, Joe, you back away fast.”

“Then what?”

“Then you just keep this fuckin’ vehicle
moving
! Don’t stop unless I tell you. Drive donuts or figure-eights if you like … but don’t you dare
stop
!”

“Damn it, Mike.”

“Just do it!”

* * *

Joseph eased the right side of his vehicle alongside the big rig’s hood, little-by-little.

“Almost,” he heard Mike saying. “Just a little more … right
there
!”

Mike scrambled out of the sunroof and leapt across to the truck’s hood, almost losing his footing in the landing. Joseph then heard the former Marine urgently ordering, “Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!”

“The roof of the truck, whatever it’s called. A couple of ‘em are reaching for him, but he’s already out of grasp. Okay, he’s climbing onto the trailer. A couple of those kids in the BDUs are coming over to help him get up top. Okay, they’ve got him up. He’s clear!”

“Godammit, Mike,” Joe sighed under his breath, then to Walter. “Wait … did you just say
kids
?”

“Yeah,” Walt answered, “I got an eyeful of one peeking out over the side when we pulled up to them. He couldn’t have been any older than sixteen. Those are a bunch of kids up there, or at least one of ‘em is.”

* * *

Mike got his feet, expecting to find himself face-to-face with a group of young men, maybe even reserve soldiers or National Guardsmen. What he saw, however, was a gaggle of teenagers in BDUs, armed with old school M1 service rifles, which were little better than antiques.