Payload (6 page)

“Belize?” Doc asked.

“Yeah, I figure it was the British cocksucker who lived two doors down from us, always too friendly. He was something with British Petro, always talking about Belize. Can’t be a coincidence.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Marv thumped JD’s shoulder.

“Fuck her-I don’t give a shit now. But she took my kids.” JD slumped in his seat.

The Land Rover rolled on in silence for a while. Doc elbowed his companions in the back seat and pointed out two infected wandering around an abandoned vehicle.

“Hey, Doc, how are conditions in Belize?” JD roused himself.

“Um, let me check,” the small man dug out his tablet. “Last I checked, that region was clean-tourist season has passed. Mexico has serious problems, but only around Mexico City. If Belize goes into quarantine in the next twenty-four hours, they ought to weather the storm.”

“Well, at least my kids are safe. That’s something,” JD sighed. “Guys, no point in going to Tallahassee unless you need to. I’ll stick around until you get to Texas.”

“Don’t you need to go home and get your stuff?” Doc asked.

“No, she sold the household stuff and put my things in a storage unit, stashed the key and papers in our rental mail box. Thing is, that’s deep in the downtown area, and right now I think that’s not where we need to be.”

“What about you guys?” Marv asked. “Bear’s heading home, I’m under orders, but what about families and homes?”

“Addison is a nomad, and already has his belongings,” Captain Jack smiled. “Like you, my home is in the service. Doc?”

“In a storage unit in Jacksonville,” the medic shrugged. “Nothing important for the short term and that area’s going to be pretty hot for the next week or so.”

“OK,” Marv leaned forward. “Addison, let’s turn north on I-75. Getting inland will make things easier, I bet.”

“There’s the sign: fifteen miles,” Captain Jack pointed out.

“JD, Belize went under quarantine five hours ago,” Doc reported. “Your kids should be fine.” 

“That’s something,” the promoter mumbled, staring out the window.

By the time they reached the exit for I-75 they were travelling fifteen miles per hour, and the shoulders were lined with abandoned and often looted vehicles. They rode with the windows down and weapons resting against the stills, mainly as a message for the groups of armed men loitering on the shoulders of the road.

“Things are getting rough,” Marv eyed a handful of young men sagging and ragging in best street punk style next to the bright yellow crash barrels at the entrance to the off-ramp. “Those maggots are hyenas watching the herd. If we had more ammo and time I would love to sort them out.”

“Control is failing,” JD agreed. “It must be hell in places where guns are less common. Down here you take your life in your own hands jacking with strangers.”

On I-75, traffic was rolling in both directions, and the speed swiftly picked up to nearly sixty miles an hour. The shoulders of the roads were largely free of abandoned cars, and while the stores they passed were closed the scene appeared to be much more normal.

Then Addison cursed and twisted the wheel, side-swiping a Prius into the ditch as he swerved to avoid an expensive-looking RV that careened across two lanes and plowed into a pickup truck. In an instant all four lanes of north-bound traffic were transformed from an orderly procession to a scene of chaos. A semi with a Wal Mart box trailer had screamed to a tire-burning stop a quarter mile ahead, nearly jack-knifing as it came to rest across all northbound lanes. Two compact sedans and a Smart Car smashed into the trailer’s undercarriage while a green all-wheel-drive station wagon rolled trying to get around the barrier by way of the ditch.

The Land Rover got over onto shoulder, heading for the ditch, when an Air Stream trailer broke free of the SUV towing it and rolled, slinging its exterior contents across the roadway. A bright red dirt bike bounded off the asphalt and slammed into the Land Rover’s grill with an impact that killed the vehicle’s forward momentum.

For an eternal half-minute crashes and collisions rocked the northbound lanes as vehicles slid and yawed to a halt or an impact.

The five men sat in stunned silence as steam boiled out from beneath the hood, staring at the quarter-acre of destruction that had appeared with the suddenness of a whirlwind.

“Shit!” Marv said with heart-felt emotion. “Good driving, Addison, you saved our bacon. OK, secure weapons and medical gear, and start gathering packs. Where’s Bear?”

“Right here,” the biker walked past the Ranger’s window and examined the Land Rover’s grill. “Yep. It’s done for-the radiator is gone, the fan is wrecked…probably more, but that’s just overkill.”

Marv grabbed an ALICE pack the trio had brought with them and started stuffing the trash bags containing their food supply into its maw. “Bear, keep watch. How’s your bike?”

“Lost some chrome. What a mess.”

“Anyone hurt?” Doc paused in slinging various bags around his shoulders to stand on tiptoes and peer around.

“Everyone stick close,” Marv said. “First we secure our gear, then we see about helping others.”

“That’s weird,” Bear stepped up on the Land Rover’s bumper to get a better view. “The guys in the Wal Mart truck are opening up the box trailer.”

“Perhaps they have something useful there,” Captain Jack suggested, shrugging into his pack.

“Something ain’t right…oh,
shit
.” Bear jumped back down.

Heaving the pack onto his shoulders, Marv grabbed his baseball bat and stepped out from the rear of the Land Rover as Bear lunged past him.

Pouring out of the rear of the semi’s box trailer was a veritable river of infected.

Chapter Two

Heaving himself up onto the hood of the Land Rover, the thin metal buckling under his weight, Marv took in his surroundings: to the west southbound traffic was starting to react to the sight of the pile-up and the horde of zombies, and collisions were occurring: no route there. To the east was a ditch, a stub of a frontage road, a hundred feet of cleared ground, and swampy stands of trees. Due north, besides the vehicles and a horde of infected, was about a hundred yards of Interstate, and then a bridge crossing a muddy river.

“East!” he shouted at the others, praying that they would follow him. “We go east!”

Looking back, he saw that the press of vehicles and their own haste were hindering the zeds-they were jammed together in an unwieldy mob, a delay that was temporary but welcome. He saw a husky teenager run forward yanking on the starting cord of a chainsaw. When the ‘saw burped into life he shoved the throttle to maximum and slashed at the nearest zombie’s head.

The whirling teeth swept a gory ruin across the zed’s scalp and down the side of its head, pulping its ear and cheek before burying itself in the trapezius. The whirling chain-mounted teeth could not get a purchase on the smooth bone dome exposed by the terrible wound, and before the teen could recover his heavy weapon the infected was on him, biting away.

Ripping his pack out of the Land Rover, Bear cast a longing look at his hog, but there was no way it was getting through the mud and muck to the east. Captain Jack was helping an overburdened Doc down the ditch, and Addition was kneeling by the front left wheel working on something. JD was smashing the rear windshield of a late-model Ford sedan and then helping a couple climb out, the vehicle having been pinned between two other wrecks. 

“Get them into the woods,” Marv yelled at Bear. “When you’re clear of the road, work your way to the river-I’ll meet up with you there.” The big Ranger dropped into the ditch and trotted north, keeping low.

“C’mon,” Bear yelled at JD. In the middle lane a tough-looking blond man with a pack on his back was shepherding a group of tourists, a lit road flare in each hand. As the zombies closed he advanced upon them, handling the flares like rapiers, and Bear was amazed to see the zeds recoil from the fire. Dancing and weaving, the young man maintained a barrier between the infected and his crowd of charges.

But one man could only do so much- as they emerged from their self-created congestion the infected spilled out across a broader front, and flowed past the flare-wielder.

Bear didn’t wait around to see what happened next.

Passing the open rear of the semi box trailer Marv gave the cavernous cargo area a cursory examination and kept moving, cursing himself for stupidity. His mission was to deliver the payload, a job that was already turning to shit, and here he was taking on additional risk for no real gain. This was his entire life in a single stupid act, he told himself. 

What had him on the move was that he had seen one of the men who had opened the truck duck under the trailer heading north, moving very oddly. They obviously knew what they were doing by opening that truck, so it seemed likely they had an exfiltration plan. Marv wanted to know what that plan was, and who they were. And to do something to stop them from pulling this sort of stunt again.

The infected were single-mindedly pouring down the Interstate to attack the people struggling to free themselves from the wreckage; staying low in the ditch except for his look into the truck, Marv was unmolested, both by the infected and the gunfire erupting north of the truck.

Coming up onto the roadway twenty yards north of the semi, pistol in hand, Marv found himself thirty feet from a blue quad-cab dually pickup starting to roll north. A limping man, moving awkwardly, was trying to drag himself into the rear passenger area as the truck rolled not much above idle. A man kneeling in the bed was shooting at a heavyset older man in jeans and a red USMC tee shirt who was firing back with an M-1 Garand. Nearby a woman of similar age to USMC was crumpled in the roadway, a stainless steel revolver still clutched in one hand.

The man in the bed of the truck was punched off his feet by a .30-06 round, but the old Marine’s victory was short-lived as a passenger in the back seat opened up with an automatic weapon and cut him down.

Marv dumped his pack and was moving even as the shots were being exchanged-from the blood on the roadway the old Marine and his wife had had the same realization as the Ranger had had, and their actions had slowed the men long enough for Marv to catch up.

He reached the truck even as the limping man got on board and was trying to swing the door shut. Jamming himself into the opening, Marv shot the limper with the muzzle an inch from the man’s temple, the concussion of the shot deafening him. Firing at the driver and seeing blood fly, Marv rammed the dead limper deeper into the truck as the front passenger fired a pistol at him, the muzzle blast making his head ring as the rear windshield exploded in a shower of safety glass. Fortunately for the Ranger the front passenger was firing blind, half-turned in his seat with the head rest blocking his view of the backseat.

With his right boot on the floorboards and his left hand braced against the truck’s roof, Marv fired twice through the headrest, knocking the front passenger back against the dash. Seeing the weapon coming around out of the corner of his eye, the Ranger heaved himself a few inches deeper into the truck and shot the fourth man, the shooter who had gotten the old Marine, twice in the chest. Heaving himself another half of a foot into the vehicle and managing to get his left leg into the cab, he shot the fourth man in the head for good measure.

It registered that the truck was not only still moving, but picking up speed an instant before a sledgehammer hit the world and an earthquake followed.

In the confusing world of motion, flopping limbs, and hard objects hitting his body a part of Marv’s brain advised him that the truck had hit something, rode up on it, and was now rolling lengthwise into the ditch.

Except it was turning out to be one extremely deep ditch.  

It always came down to this: his mother trying to capture his teeth-this was only different in terms of method and scope. Standing, Addison pulled the four second-delay on the pipe bomb he had duct-taped to the gas can and heaved the assembly into the ranks of the zombies.

Catching up his duffle bags, he turned and slid into the ditch.

Bear swept the legs out from the zombie and slammed the bat into its skull until it went limp, cursing the weapon. The bat’s business end was too broad to reliably cave in a skull-he wished he had an ice axe like Addison, but where was he going to find one in
Florida
?

There was a double explosion up on the Interstate, and a ball of fire blossomed upwards. The few zeds who had followed them off the Interstate immediately turned and stared; Bear took advantage of the distraction to make a mighty two-handed swing that caved in the skull of an infected woman wearing a Denny’s waitress uniform, snarling when his bat cracked just above his grip. Discarding the useless weapon he raced to the east.

Captain Jack had hung a camouflaged poncho liner between two trees, and he and Doc were beckoning the others behind it. “Here,” he called to Bear. “It appears that if they lose sight of a target, they lack motivation.”

Kneeing behind the cloth barrier, Bear peeked around the northern support-tree and saw the slender man was correct: the infected who had followed them were wandering back towards the Interstate. “They watched the fireball,” he whispered to Captain Jack. “Break their attention, and they have to re-acquire.”