Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (23 page)

The truck shimmied as Hicks and Lopez bounded out, following
the agent’s lead.

“They’re
all
going to dismount?” Ari said incredulously.
“If one of them gets bit, who is left to pull them back in?”

“If one of them gets bit,” said Jasper. “You don’t want them
getting back in.”

“You don’t need to remind me how this works,” Ari said. He
looked at the slider. He looked left at the leering Z and the wall of yellow
pressing against the door. Lastly, he looked past Jasper at the Suburban
blocking egress on that side. “Newsflash ... we’re stuck in here. And if those guys
go down it’ll only be a matter of seconds before the things are banging on the
back window. Do you want that?”

“Relax, Ari. Cross’s plan is solid ... they’ll handle it,”
said Cade. “We are going home. I promise.”

After putting down a dozen Zs and heaping their leaking bodies
waist-high into some kind of rotten Maginot Line stretching between the Suburban’s
rear wheels and roughly the middle of the school bus, Cross, Lopez, and Hicks sat
down hard on the rear bumper with their backs braced against the tailgate.

“OK Captain,” Cross said into the comms. He paused for a split
second to catch his breath, then went on, “I’m going to count to three and then
you milk this bitch for all she’s got.”

“Solid copy. On three,” replied Cade.

Cross started the count and when he got to
three,
with
all their might, the bone-tired trio braced their boots and pressed a combined
five hundred-some-odd pounds of flesh, bone, and muscle against the rust pocked
tailgate.

Hearing Cross say
three
in his ear bud, Cade mashed
the accelerator to the floor and crossed his fingers. Responding to the wide open
carburetor, the trapped Chevy squatted under power, and a tick later the
transfer case divided and unloaded the newfound torque to the differential, onward
to all four hubs, and finally through the tires and onto the road. The truck surged
ahead six precious inches, paused momentarily, engine roaring, until the
forward motion and energy building behind it was greater than the series of
bolts keeping the right front fender attached. A drawn out groan and a series
of sharp metallic pings filled the air as the fasteners sheared, zipper-like, one
by one and the Chevy’s fender peeled away, freeing the pick-up from the clutches
of the Suburban’s twisted grill guard.

Sensing a little forward momentum building behind the sudden
halt, Cross dug his heels in, straightened his legs until every muscle was
burning, and yelled, “Push!”

Following the agent’s lead, backs straining, neck muscles
corded, Lopez and Hicks redoubled their efforts and as a direct result two things
happened at once. The two-and-a-half ton Suburban rocked on its springs and shifted
a few degrees to the right, and the pick-up shot forward, dropping them, to a
man, flat on their backs staring at the azure Dakota sky.

Seeing the men slip from view, Cade jammed the truck to a
stop, hollering, “
Get in, get in, get in
,” at the top of his lungs. As
he sat in the truck trying to figure out what was happening with the team, the
dead that had been scratching on the rust-streaked hood streamed into the newly-created
passage and slammed full force into his window. Momentarily startled, he looked
left at the crush of rotten bodies. Then, pushing the first tingling of a
rising panic back where it belonged, he popped the testy differential out of
4x4
Low
, racked the transmission into plain old
drive
and gunned the
engine to keep it running. “Jump in now!” he bellowed, flicking his eyes up to
the rearview expecting to see Lopez, Hicks, and Cross piling aboard. Instead, he
noticed a new flurry of movement behind and to the left as the bus door
inexplicably hinged open and the undead driver spilled out, arms flailing, face
first onto the interstate. Then in the next instant, just when Cade thought things
couldn’t possibly get any worse, undead kids began pouring from the stairwell,
navigating the driver’s prostrate body like a gangplank. “Check your six,” Cade
warned. Then, to add insult to injury, he witnessed Cross’s makeshift barrier waver
and then topple, corpses rolling like logs as more Zs stumbled and staggered
over the top of them. Custer’s last stand came to mind as Cade barked out new
and more dire warnings to his diminished team.

Turtled, and nearly out of breath, with Cade’s voice booming
in his ear, Cross reached to his thigh and drew his Sig Sauer.
What next?
he thought as he tucked his chin into his chest, spread his feet wide apart and
aimed between his boot tips at the creature nearest him. He steadied his
breathing and caressed the trigger twice, only a second’s separation between
shots. The first .357 jacketed hollow point leapt from the muzzle at a blistering
fourteen hundred and fifty feet per second on a diagonal upward trajectory, covering
the eight feet to the soft spot under the female Z’s exposed chin in the blink
of an eye. Then the five hundred-plus pounds of kinetic energy behind the
bullet wracked the stunted creature’s head back at a sharp forty-five degree
angle, the intense shockwave tearing an additional vicious half-moon-shaped
gash below the initial entry wound. The second round punched in an inch to the
right of the first, adding its own kinetic energy into the equation and rocketing
the Z off its road-gnarled feet. As Cross shifted aim, he registered the limp body
contorting into an upside down ‘U’, its newly misshapen head on a collision
course with the pavement.

As expected, Lopez and Hicks’ training kicked in and they entered
the fray before the first Z struck terra firma.

Pistol bucking, spent shells tracing crazy arcs through the
air, Lopez pivoted on one knee, walking fire left to right into the building
crowd. Simultaneously, Hicks had noticed the same movement that had caught
Cade’s eye and crabbed sideways in order to engage the Zs tumbling from the
bus. First, he stilled the undead bus driver with a double tap to the center of
its pasty forehead, blowing brain and bone in a flat arc into the stairwell
where it hit with a viscous slap. Time seemingly slowing to a crawl, he shifted
his gaze to the tiny creatures tumbling from the stairway. He bracketed one
about the same size and presumably the same age as his niece, Kylie, who he was
certain was no longer among the living. But he found the resemblance uncanny enough
to cause him a moment’s hesitation, which had disastrous consequences. The
round snapped low and right, and instead of striking the Kylie lookalike in the
forehead where he had been aiming, the bullet blasted a hole the size of his
fist in the side of her reed-thin neck. Pissed off at himself, and affected by
a sudden flood of emotion, Hicks overcompensated and pulled the second shot
high and right, sending the blazing lead dead center into the fire extinguisher
which according to SDDOT (South Dakota Department of Transportation) mandate
was strapped within easy reach alongside the bus driver’s seat. The ensuing
explosion of toxic chemicals took the path of least resistance, roiling out the
door and coating both him and the Zs with a fine white talc.
This isn’t what
I signed up for
, he thought as the little monster crawled toward him. He
fell to both knees with a ringing in his ears, eyeing his pistol. Ignoring the
other pint-sized Zs, he stared, fixated on the spot where he’d blown the hunk
of flesh from the Z’s neck.
She certainly doesn’t look like Kylie any longer
,
he told himself. With its head attached by a thin cord of shiny muscle, and trailing
shreds of yellowed larynx and emitting noises that sounded to him like a pissed
off badger, it clawed its way toward him.

The last thing he remembered hearing before the extinguisher
cooked off was the jangly sound of brass hitting the road intertwined with the dissonant
pop, pop, pop
of something sounding like a starter pistol. The air
around him sizzled and then went quiet, an absence of sound he imagined
persisted in outer space. And as the Z inched forward, its head bobbing to and
fro like a damaged Jack-in-the-Box, suppressed thoughts and morbid visions began
to loop through Hicks’s head—a silent horror film comprised of visions from his
past.

He relived the old folks’ home outside of Atlanta. Beautiful
day. Geriatrics choosing the lesser of the two evils. Leaping from the rooftop to
their deaths, en masse, instead of facing the dead on its terms. The spree of
mercy killings that followed visited him every night.

Then Pony Tail getting flying lessons courtesy of General
Mike Desantos. The man’s slight form, arms rolling up the windows on the way
down, before being ripped apart by the dead without benefit of a mercy kill.

Did he deserve it?

Did it really matter?

No. Ponytail visited nightly anyway.

The visions from hell continued as the overloaded party
barge capsized in his mind’s eye and the water went red when bullets from the mini-gun
he was manning shredded survivors and Zs alike into little pieces.
Nothing
but chum.

Then the bobble-headed Kylie imposter was on him. Grabbing
and scratching, splintered shark-like teeth clicking. It got ahold of his off
hand, drawing it towards its open maw. Then, barely registering, he felt a
twinge of pain on his wrist. Like a bee sting. Or a scratch. Here, then gone. Nothing
to write home about.

Reacting to the loud explosion and resulting white haze, Cross
rolled onto his stomach and rose to standing. He looked to his right and let
his gaze fall on Hicks, who was kneeling, arms outstretched, seemingly frozen;
then he saw the broken creature, face down, writhing on its stomach. Instantly his
sixth sense kicked in telling him that something wasn’t right with the picture,
so he crabbed sideways past the pick-up, Sig aimed at the stripe of white skin where
the thatch of hair was pulled away tight in two separate directions, and finished
the job Hicks had started with one well-aimed shot between the kid’s once blond
pigtails. Bile rising in his throat, he rushed to Hicks, pulled him to his feet
and pushed him towards Lopez. Wide eyed, he hollered, “Get him in the truck.”
Then he took a knee and methodically pumped a dozen bullets into a dozen little
faces, creating all new horror-filled visions to keep him awake at night. He
dropped the spent magazine and jammed a fresh one home, while in his ear bud he
heard Cade yelling for him to get in the truck. The sights and smells of death
all around started his jaw to lock up. He swallowed hard against out-of-control
salivary glands. Nothing doing. He was past the point of no return. He shook
his head and went to all fours and emptied his stomach on the dashed yellow line.

***

While the twenty seconds of mayhem was happening at Cade’s
six, he asked Ari to hand over the pistol they had confiscated from Jasper.
Handling the small black semi-automatic, he racked the slide back and checked
the chamber.
One in the pipe
. Then he dropped the magazine from the well
and counted the ten shiny .22 shells through the mag’s side window.
Ten,
plus one.
He slapped the magazine home and flicked the selector from safe
to fire. Batted away a tiny hand with the squared-off muzzle and shot the
offending creature through the eye.

“Next. Step right up,” he said as the Zs milled around outside
his window.

“Can’t kill them all, Captain,” said Ari. “You’ve got what?
Ten rounds max in that pea shooter?”

Another creature gripped the window with both hands, canted
its head horizontally and worked its slender face into the narrow gap between
the drain sill and the window. Holding his breath due to the overwhelming stench,
Cade placed the barrel in the Z’s mouth and let the thing chew on it. He looked
deeply into its dead eyes and found nobody home. The wheel was spinning but the
hamster was missing. No spark of life.

Although he used to harbor a small shred of empathy for the
dead, right now, with his ankle throbbing to a calypso beat and three dead teammates
in the box bed, he felt nothing. No remorse. No sadness. No guilt. Nothing
whatsoever when he pulled the trigger. “Every Z we put down right here and now
is one less we’ll have to deal with when it really matters,” he said.

Knowing precisely what the operator was alluding to, Ari
ejected the mag from his Beretta, thumbed one 9mm shell off the top, and reinserted
it with a solid slap. “It’s hot,” he said, placing the black pistol on the seat
next to Cade’s thigh.

Like thinning a slow-moving line at the DMV, Cade emptied
Jasper’s pistol into the dead as they filed forward. Then he traded guns and methodically
squeezed round after round from the Beretta into the Zs until their bodies were
piled knee high in a rough semi-circle stretching from just outside his door and
around the front of the school bus. Barrel still smoking, he handed the pistol
back to Ari, who promptly reloaded his last shell into the magazine, slammed it
home and racked the slide. “Insurance,” he said with a quickly disappearing
smile.

“We need to move it,” Cade said again over the comms. He looked
past Ari and regarded Jasper, who was rocking slowly back and forth. “Pull it
together, big guy. We’re going to need your muscle before all is said and
done.”

Nothing.

Cade tried reaching him again. “I’m sorry we had to cuff you,
Jasper. But I couldn’t risk having you bolt from the truck and let those things
get inside here. You understand that, don’t you?”

No response.

Cade noted three separate and distinct thuds and ceased trying
to get through to Jasper. He checked the mirror just as Cross was crawling over
the tailgate.

“They’re in,” said Ari, confirming what Cade already knew.

With the needle on the truck’s temperature gauge pushing dangerously
into the red, Cade stabbed the gas and wheeled around the few remaining Zs.
Then,
leaving the killing field in the rearview, he turned a hard, slow-rolling left and
scraped by the bus perpendicular to the breakdown lane. Over the ticking engine
he heard the Hercules make yet another pass. And then in his ear he heard Cross
remind him to find the yellow bug and they’d be home free.