Down the Road: The Fall of Austin (28 page)

The men laughed with intense joy.

Then Tiny had an idea to wake him up
again.

“Hey, watch this shit,” Tiny said. He took a
length of duct tape and placed it across Garrison’s eyes. He
slapped the tape against his forehead, making sure the tape was on
good and tight. Then, with a quick flick of the wrist, he tore the
tape off.

Garrison awoke, stunned. The strong smell of
the tape glue and blood drifted into his nose. He began to gag on
the bloody fingers in his mouth, swallowing his own blood and
shooting it back out of his nose. Red streaks laced the tape like
rain streaking down a window.

On the tape were Garrison’s eyebrows.

Sleepy and Tiny laughed so hard they fell to
the floor and rolled around. They looked at the tape again and
laughed in masochistic glee. They then looked at Garrison. He had
no eyebrows. They pointed and laughed again.

Then, still laughing, Sleepy pulled out a
knife and grabbed Garrison’s goatee. With all the grace of a serial
killer, he cut at the skin just below the duct tape and began to
pull. Garrison screamed in muffled misery, muffled by his own
fingers, blood, and the gray and unforgiving bond.

Sleepy sliced just a bit more before yanking
away the goatee and a large segment of skin. He held it up and he
and Tiny laughed as blood poured from Garrison’s chin.

Tiny took it one step further. Taking a
length of duct tape, he taped the hairy mound to Garrison’s crotch,
giving the illusion of femininity.

The laughter was not stopping in the
least.

Sgt. Nickson finally stood up on his bound
feet. He yelled, “Stop!”

“Oh, Mr. Big Shit,” Sleepy said, turning
around at the still-dangling soldier. “What are
you
going to
do, huh?” His hand slowly creeped toward a nearby can of gasoline.
“Huh? What are you going to do, Mr. Big Dick?!” He picked up the
can and removed the cap. “You think you can make the rules here?!
Hanging from the ceiling, you think you can make the rules?! Huh?!
Shit, you think your rules apply out there anymore?!” He shook the
can in open intimidation. Splashes of gas spilled on the floor.
“You can forget it,
ese
.” He splashed Nickson with gas. “No
rules, bro. That’s how I like it.” He splashed him two more times.
“You think you’re big shit with your guns? Bombing countries and
fucking over their people?” More splashing, casually. “Wake up,
ese
. You’re a thug like me. You take your orders and you do
what you’re told to do. You treat those people like your bitches. I
saw the pictures. I see what you do. And that’s just what they
showed us. Now how’s it feel?”

Sleepy lit a lighter. Nickson barely
flinched. Unlike Garrison, he was ready to pay. He scowled at
Sleepy with contempt.

“You scared?” Sleepy teased.

“Fuck you,” Nickson said.

Sleepy’s cell phone rang.

“These flames won’t be shit compared to the
place you and I are going,” Sleepy said. “You can take it up with
me when I get there.”

Both men stared at each other with glares
that would melt ice.

Finally Sleepy answered his ringing phone and
raised it to his ear.

As he casually strolled away, he tossed the
entire lighter at Nickson, setting him ablaze.

“
Bueno
,” Sleepy said into the
phone.

Behind him, Nickson was squirming, but
refused to cry out in fear and pain as flames danced across his
uniform.

“
Sleepy, it’s me. Ducky
.”

“Do you have my friend’s wife and daughter
yet?”

“
No, Sleepy. The apartments. It’s a
fuckin’ compound. Military all over the fuckin’ place. We can’t get
in there alone. We need help
.”

“Military?” Sleepy asked.

“
Yeah. It’s secured good. Towers with guns
and shit
.”

Nickson’s clothes were not flame retardant,
but the fire did not catch as anticipated. And though the temporary
blaze burned blisters on his hands and face, the fire burned itself
out. Charred hair sent its aroma around the room.

“I can help you,” Nickson said, taking a
chance he understood what the conversation was about.

“Wait, Ducky,” Sleepy said, turning to
Nickson again, partially amazed that the flames were not rising
across his body anymore. “What did you say?”

“I can help you. If it’s the military, I can
help you.”

Sleepy thought for a moment. Tiny shrugged,
still holding the duct tape and eyebrows.

“Okay,” Sleepy said. “You can help me.”

4:00 PM

South Point Apartments

“What’s going on?” Keri asked, stepping onto
the balcony.

“They’re fighting,” Mike said, looking down
onto the parking lot from the third floor of the apartment
building.

They both looked over to see a large group of
soldiers loading into a big personnel carrier. A scuffle had broken
out among a few of the soldiers as the vehicles fired up their
engines. Another growled to life, taking its first chug of diesel,
as another group loaded up. Mike estimated that the vehicles were
filled with more than half of the camp’s military force. A small
group of soldiers pummeled one of their own down to the ground
until he was not moving. They then dashed to one of the
vehicles.

Mike and Keri continued to watch as the
vehicles shifted gears and proceeded to the gate entrance. The gate
slid open, exposing the interior to the dead at the gate that the
transports conveniently crushed under their massive wheels.
Soldiers who remained within the camp opened fire on the invading
zombies as the gate closed.

The threat was neutralized, but the facility
had lost a large portion of its defenders.

“This is bad news,” Mike said. “Bad
news.”

He felt Keri snuggle close and wrap both of
her arms around him. He closed his eyes and savored it, despite the
way her arms were trembling.

5:47 PM

In the precinct of the H.E.B.

and South Point Apartments

“The Humvee’s real close, ya’ll,” Spc.
Parcells said, reading the screen of the GPS. The device revealed
with precision the names of streets all around them, even marking
edifices. He adjusted the view to see just how close they were. The
dot representing the squad was only two city blocks away from the
red blip of their target. The crimson dot pulsed like a heartbeat,
a beating beacon of doom they desperately needed to recover for the
sake of the survivors of Austin.

“How close?” Sgt. Arnold asked as they
skillfully negotiated the zombie mob that was spread out in the
shopping center parking lot.

“Two blocks.”

Sgt. Arnold gave a command. “Listen up,
people. No more shooting. Hand to hand. Silent weapons only. We
don’t want to reveal our positions more than we might have
already.”

“Fantastic,” Noble said, shouldering her
weapon and pulling out her knife. Knight also removed his knife
from its leather sheath, along with Arnold. Parcells armed himself
with a flick stick.

“Let’s get to the roof of that video store,
ladies, and figure out if we can get a better view of things,”
Arnold said.

With swift military efficiency, the team
slashed, bashed, stabbed, and front-kicked their way to the
building. No exterior ladder to the roof was evident, and since the
store had already been ransacked, the large glass windows in front
were broken. They entered through them and advanced to the back of
the store.

A rack of candy had a lone box of Sour Patch
Kids sitting next to a box of Twizzlers. Parcells snatched them
both, and tossed the Twizzlers to Knight.

“I don’t like Twizzlers,” Knight
complained.

“I’ll take them,” Noble said. “They make
mouths happy.”

Knight tossed it to her.

“I want some of those sours, Parcells,”
Arnold said, front-kicking a zombie that had stepped forward to
welcome them to the video palace. The creature went flying into a
rack of videos, knocking them over as well as each subsequent rack
behind it. By the time they all fell like a stack of dominoes, nine
racks had fallen, swallowing three zombies under untold video
rental bargains and used DVDs for purchase.

“Yeah, let’s be real quiet,” Noble
giggled.

Knight noticed one zombie totally oblivious
to the wreckage of Sgt. Arnold, standing in front of the new
release rack. It was female with short blonde hair, wearing red
shorts, a black shirt, striped white socks, and red Chuck
Taylor’s.

“Hey, don’t rent it,” he said. “That movie
sucks.”

The creature just stood there, staring at the
title
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
. Its back remained turned to
the squad.

Sgt. Arnold found a locked door marked
‘Employees Only’ and kicked it open, shredding the door at the
lock. It swung open to reveal a hallway. At the end of the hallway
was a ladder bolted to the wall.

“Stairway to heaven, ladies,” the sergeant
said.

“
Ladder
,” Noble corrected.

It did not take long for the team to scale
the ladder and reach the roof. The tar and pebble-laced surface
still simmered with heat in the early evening sun. Noble’s
porcelain skin, especially under her eyes, had already begun
turning rosy from so much exposure throughout the day.

Sgt. Arnold positioned himself near the edge
of the roof and removed his binoculars as the rest of the team
eased themselves down on the hot tar and jagged pebbles. He handed
the binoculars to Parcells, who began to scan the area for the
Hummer.

After a moment he said, “There it is.” He
pointed to the H.E.B. parking lot.

Sgt. Arnold took the binoculars and looked in
the direction Parcells pointed to, catching just what he indicated.
Scanning the area, something else caught the sergeant’s eye. “And
there are the drivers,” he stated, pointing to the roof of the
H.E.B.

Everyone peered over the edge of the roof to
get a good view.

A fire was lit under the ass of Spc. Noble.
“It’s clear no one’s by or in the Hummer right now. Sergeant, I
want to go for it. Let me go get it.”

Proud and surprised at the same time at
Noble’s audacious plan, Arnold gave her the go-ahead. “It’s all
yours, Noble. What do you want us to do?”

“Don’t expose yourself. If I get caught by
one of those guys, or worse, just don’t expose yourself. I can do
this.”

“Good luck, soldier,” the sergeant said.

Noble gave a thumbs-up sign to her
battle-buddies. “I’ll be back before you know it,” she said before
hustling back down the ladder.

Down in the store again, Noble passed the
zombie deciding what movie to rent. She looked at her and shrugged.
She moved out the front door and into the slow and shambling zombie
mob.

The soldiers on the roof watched anxiously as
Noble prowled to the Hummer. She was attracting minimal attention
from the zombie mob, and any ghouls that happened to see her were
neutralized with a knife attack through the eye. She had to keep
moving and hiding to avoid getting

swarmed.

She moved to the street adjacent to the
H.E.B., and though she was just out of view of the people on the
H.E.B. roof, she was about to be totally exposed to the Viral mob
for a long stretch of land. The next move had to take her straight
to the Humvee.

Noble waited in a substandard hiding place
between a trash can and a bus stop bench. She looked for an opening
and found one.

But she hesitated. She suddenly felt so
exposed. Vulnerable. Frightened and over her head.

I can’t do this! What the hell was I
thinking?!

An anxiety attack overtook her body. She
froze, as if in a bad dream, the fear of being eaten alive rattling
her psyche. Noble was now stuck to the pavement in utter fear and
despair.

It took a groan from a nearby zombie to snap
her back into reality. And though the path to the Hummer was not
half as clear to her as it had been just before she had the
episode, she made a break for it, slashing, kicking, and shoving
her way to the Humvee.

“
Go, Noble, go
,” Sgt. Arnold said
under his breath. “
You can do it, girl
.”

The squad pumped their fists as she arrived
at the Hummer.

Noble opened the driver’s side door and
entered.

But the celebration was quickly brought to a
close as a large contingent of cars turned onto the nearby street
before pulling up to the parking lot. The surprise convoy was now
effectively boxing Noble in. She had just punched the button to
start the vehicle, but had to immediately turn it off as the other
vehicles filed in. Before she was totally cut off from escape, she
jumped out of the vehicle, completely exposed once again to the
zombies and the convoy.

“Ay, check it out,” said one of the thugs
driving one of the encroaching vehicles. “Someone was trying to
jack the Hummer.”

“
Gringita
, too,” said the
passenger.

They both had a moment in which they
considered chasing after her, but quickly made the right choice.
“Let’s just do what Sleepy says, ‘k?”

Near the rear of the convoy came a most
unusual hunting truck. Bolted to the bed of the jacked-up Ford were
two metal seats for hunters, extending several feet over the cab.
Tied to the seats were two very familiar people to Sgt. Arnold, who
continued to watch the whole event through his binoculars. The
hunting vehicle set up among the others.

“Looks like Nickson and Garrison are in a bit
of a bind,” Sgt. Arnold said.

“What about Noble?” Knight asked.

“Noble’s good. She’ll be back here in no
time. I assure you.”

He hoped he was right.

* * *

The soldiers on the opposing rooftop watched
in awe as the bandits unleashed a cruel and unorthodox attack on
the zombies, clearing a path to the ladder that led to the roof of
the H.E.B. Some of the thugs were using hammers, axes, picks, and
bats to hack and slash their way to their goal. Others had guns and
were lucky they didn’t pick off any of their own—the zombies were
doing a good enough job of that. Though many of the thugs were
cutting the ghouls down like it was their job, some were not ready
for the different angles the creatures sometimes appeared from.
Lucky for the thugs their partners quickly put down the zombie and
the infected thug with a savage quickness. After all, everyone
really only had known each other for close to a day. No one had any
real time to make friends. Not that that fact bugged many to begin
with.