Payload (20 page)

“Wow!” Chip blurted.

“Welcome to the Middle Ages,” JD observed as Brick used the shield to batter the next zombie’s arms apart and then drove the spike on top of the hammer into its forehead. Reversing the hammer, he slammed the nut into the third zed’s knee while blocking with the shield, sending it to the ground, where he split its skull with the spike.

“Many uses,” he beamed at the watching Gnomes.

“Quiet, too,” Marv noted. “Certainly gives us some options. How are we going to carry the shields?”

Brick held up his shield and pointed to a quick-attach buckle on the reverse side. “Strap from belt.”

“Perfect-everybody should take a set. I expect you’ll want to stick with your ice axe, Addison.”

“Let’s get some gas,” JD hopped down onto the gravel. “We’re got hero-stuff to do.”

Chapter Eight

Sophia Travis had always known she was special, even when she was growing up in a blighted Queens neighborhood. Too special to take part in the stupid interactions of others around her. She was eight when she set her first fire, just a dumpster filled with sacks of shredded wrapping paper, drying trees, and cardboard packing from Christmas presents, and the flames from the holiday her mother never celebrated warmed something in her. By twelve she had graduated to simple black powder bombs, and in High School she moved to toxins and sabotage.

When she met Doctor C (as she thought of him) at a protest she was looking into medical tampering, but he changed everything. Not his theories about improving society-she cared nothing for such things, but rather his opinion that it would take widespread destruction. Sophia adored the idea of random destruction and injury for its own sake, and the good doctor was in need of motivated help. With a degree in administration (to best destroy, one needed to know how things
worked
) and a solid background as a staffer it had not taken long for her to achieve a position of trust.

And now the entire world was a line of dumpsters filled with paper and FASA had the matches. Sophia had been working twenty hours a day since FASA went operational, exhilarated by the images of society crumbling, cities vanishing under nuclear fire, streets running red, the mounting death tolls.

At first she had been disappointed to be assigned to the Fastbox 2 project as securing something intact went firmly against her core desires, but that quickly passed when she realized that gaining a quantity of the pure virus would open up vast new vistas of glorious chaos. The
last
quantity of pure virus availabli.

But first she had to find them. Doctor C had placed his faith on the teams watching the bridges, but she was less sure-a river was not a wall, just an impediment to land travel. The early stop bothered her- so far the Gnomes had been stayed off the grid and moving, laying up only at night. She had seen the sergeant’s file, and she gave him more credit than Cyrus had. Doctor C placed great stock in intellect, but she understood how instinct can be just as useful.

Around midnight an idea occurred to her and by three in the morning she had the link information on mobile TV sat feeds from the region of the RV park the night of the attack. It had occurred to her that people smart enough to use a blocker on a land line might be smart enough to bootleg satellite TV. The list only had credit card payees, but of the forty-three accounts only three were corporate cards. Choosing the only company of the three that she did not recognize, she ran a credit check and was immediately bogged down in cut-out data.

Using a back door FASA had purchased from a disgruntled employee, she searched the provider for the times and locations from which that account had signed on in the last twenty-four hours. She came back with three roving hits and a stationary one in the afternoon and evening. The locations took a while to decipher, but by four she was on a satellite phone to the assets assigned to her operation.      

Addison had worked out how to connect the laptop they had acquired from the office to the main area flat screen TV, and the Gnomes were looking at a Google Earth image.

“OK, its out of date by a few weeks, but that should work. Chatham is about seven hundred people, and the target location is about one block off the main drag. As you can see, its also only three blocks from the city limits, which is a quick drive but a long run with zombies dogging you. Right now my plan is to roll up as close as we can in the RV, and then five bail and do it the hard way thereafter.”

“What about guys on the roof?” Chip asked. “It supported me OK, and I’m the heaviest. We put a couple of the lighter guys up there, that could help.”

“Good idea,” Marv nodded. “Dyson and Addison would be the lightest choices. JD is our most experienced driver.”

“These are zombies,” JD said thoughtfully. “You’re thinking like a soldier, except we’re not soldiers, we’re…zombie fighters? Zombie hunters? Not sure what the term is, but anyway, the infected have to get to bite range. So the RV isn’t the best choice because we can’t shoot through the windows.”

“You thinking that we should switch vehicles?” Bear asked.

“I’m thinking get a vehicle for this mission, and since the town is over-run we should be able to find one. Use it, then abandon it when we’re done.”

“What kind of vehicle?” Marv asked, impressed.

“Something that is sort of zombie proof,” JD shrugged. “But that we can fight out of.”

“A dump truck,” Chip suggested. “Tall enough that they can’t get in easily, enough power to jump curbs and that sort of thing, tough, and those in the back can shoot out.”

“How do we get a woman and kids up into it fast?” Marv frowned at the RV’s door, seeing the same problem there.

“A ladder. There’s a gravel pit about two miles outside of town, on this rail spur. Get a truck with enough of a load that you can stand and see over the sides, and get a ladder from someplace.”

“Gravel pit,” Addison leaned forward.

“What?” Bear asked the dark Gnome.

“Explosives. They blast to make gravel.”

“Better still. OK, gravel truck it is. We’ll need one to stay with the RV, and one to drive the truck,” Marv said.

“I’ll drive the gravel truck,” Chip volunteered. “I’ve a lot of hours on that weight class and I spent a summer driving dump trucks for TxDoT.”

“I’ll drive the RV,” JD volunteered.

“OK, looks like we have a plan. First stop is the White Mound gravel pit.”

“This is too damn easy,” Dyson complained as Gnomehome rolled through the gates of the White Mound Material Company and down the driveway towards an empty parking lot and a dark office building.

“We’re two miles from town-odds are no zombie attacks took place here,” Chip pointed out. “Trouble in town, everyone heads home to help or evacuate.”

“Point,” the Georgian conceded.

“There’s the trucks,” Brick pointed past the office building to a row of dusty vehicles.

“First we clear the office, find vehicle records and the key box,” Marv said. “Hopefully we can figure out which is the newest dump truck. We’ll gas up the RV and make sure the truck is good, find any explosives, and roll out. Thirty minutes if we do this right.”

“Here’s an idea,” JD pointed. “We could park the RV in that wash rack, safe from overhead eyes.”

“Good idea,” Marv pulled out a state map he had found at the relay point’s office. “I’m going to mark specific locations with letters. That way we can refer to meeting places over the CB without telling everyone where we’re going. Ideally we’ll meet up here, checkpoint Alpha, but it’s always better to plan for trouble. Another thing, and I’m writing it here in the margin: if I say ‘skip red, that means up two channels higher on the CB. If I say ‘Skip blue’, that means three channels lower. ‘Dexter’ means go to channel five. That way if we think we’ve got eavesdroppers, we can make things harder. I’m Unit Six, you’re Unit Two. No names, no real locations. I’ll take one CB, Chip takes one, who gets the other two? Bear?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“That gives each team one. Brick, you take the last one, since you and Chip are separated on this op. Grab a spare set of batteries with it. Everyone clear on the codes? OK, lets do this.”

It took longer than thirty minutes, but the Gnomes did not encounter any zombies. The office building yielded up keys, fire extinguishers, batteries, and a Glock Compact in .380 that JD took as a back-up. Once Gnomehome was topped off with diesel and hidden they took the best of the dump trucks and used the overhead drifter to load enough gravel to make shooting over the sides comfortable.

“This is mostly black powder,” Marv observed disgustedly as they stowed the company’s stock of explosives in the RV’s external storage. “Hardly seems worth adding to Gnomehome’s ability to self-destruct.”

“Industrial-grade black blasting powder,” Addison mumbled. “I can use it. Pipe bombs for concussion.”

“If you say so.”

They strapped the gravel company’s supply of two-inch PVC onto the RV’s roof, as there was no more storage left.

“OK, check your mags and loops to make sure you have all the ammo you can carry. At least two road flares apiece, but do not light them in the truck. Hammer or ice axe, shield, extra batteries if you have a CB, one bottle of water each. I’ve got a first aid kit, Dyson has a pair of binoculars, Addison has his burglary kit. Take whatever else you think you’ll need, but don’t over-load. Me and Addison on the left side, Bear and Dyson on the right, Brick covers the rear. Chip has the route marked, we’ll circle around and come in by the shortest route, which is from the north, and just keep heading south out of town, no fancy driving. On the CB don’t use names, Chip is One, JD is Two, Bear is Three, Brick is Four, I’m Six.”

“I could make bombs,” Addison offered.

Marv checked his watch. “Its six minutes to eight, and we’re at least thirty minutes from the ship yard, so no, we go as we are. I want to get across the river and start making tracks fast before FASA finds us again. Once across the river I plan to beat feet non-stop until we get there. Or at least stopping only to get fuel.”

“The river is like a wall,” Dyson observed. “We’re penned up against it.”

“Exactly. Anything else? OK, guys, say a prayer and load up.”

  Chip dropped a gear and gripped the steering wheel with clammy hands as they left the gravel road and hit the asphalt of Chatham. Steering around a pickup lying on its side he saw a group of zombies standing in a yard further down and swallowed hard: the distance was right.

“They’re waiting for us,” Marv said over the CB he had clipped to his shirt.  “Can you hit ‘em?”

“What, drive right into them?”

“Yeah. Go about forty, use the brakes after the first one hits the bumper.”

The husky Gnome studied the group as they rumbled forward-maybe twenty-five to thirty he guessed, at two blocks distance they looked like just a bunch of ordinary people standing around like it was a real boring party, a bit more bunched-up than socially usual. He could also see others emerging from the surrounding buildings, most lurching and clumsy, drawn by the sound of the engine. He took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

“Good. It’s not easy, but nothing ever is.”

Chip was grateful for that bit of understanding. Marv usually came across as sort of a jerk, abrupt and authoritative, but the Ranger was tough and he seemed to know what he was doing.  He didn’t seem to look down on Chip because of his weight or long hair like some did, and never treated him any different than the tougher Gnomes.  

Brick had plowed through a lot of zombies getting out of the RV park and Chip set himself to do the same. One eye on the speedometer, he moved the truck into the left-hand lane and when they were a half-block away he eased the truck up over the curb at an angle, the gravel weight softening the jolt. He brought the truck up fully onto the easement, feeling the tires slinging soft dirt and grass behind them as he centered on the group, catching sight of the curved dun-colored top of a concrete storm cellar out of the corner of his eye.

A few of the crowd started to move, but most, visibly disheveled and bloody even at this fast-closing range, stood their ground. Chip stood on the brakes as the bumper swatted a bloody dark-skinned girl in a sun dress off her feet, downshifting as the weight and momentum of the truck swept through the crowd as if they weren’t even there.

Dyson vaulted over the rear of the truck as Brick hefted the aluminum extension ladder over the side, the locking bar rattling over the rungs before snapping into place. Landing lightly, he laid about with his hammer, smashing skulls as the zombies tried to get to their feet, most pretty banged up by the truck’s passage. Guns were going off as the other Gnomes joined the fight, and he heard a loud crash which he realized was the cellar’s steel door opening.

Brick had done a great job on the hammer, he discovered: light, well-balanced, and it did the deed without wasted effort. The first had been hard-if it wasn’t for the pressure of the moment he wasn’t sure he could have slammed a chisel-spike through someone’s skull, but after the first couple strikes he stopped thinking ‘head’ and just saw ‘target’. It helped that up close even these relatively fresh infected didn’t really look Human any more, not really. The blind staring eyes, the ignored wounds, the moaning, and the jerky movement made them seem more like machines than anything else. He fended off a pair of hands encrusted with black, stinking blood and cracked their owner’s skull.

The lack of noise, he found, was also a big advantage-the zeds did not scream, thrash, or yell, just moan and try to get to him, dropping into complete immobility with nary a twitch or gasp when their brain was violated. It was like killing ants, he told himself.

He jumped when movement came up on his left, but it was a living woman carrying a child of around five, heading for the ladder. Dyson stayed by the foot of the ladder and smashed heads as the zombies crawled out from beneath the truck and four or five people pelted up the rungs, one spilling porcelain figures from a cloth shopping bag as she went.