Ragnarok Rising: The Awakening (Book One of The Ragnarok Rising Saga) (30 page)

I pulled the
gear shift from four wheel-high to four wheel-low, then shifted into first gear. Then I turned and drove directly into the nearest group of zombies. They made a wet crunching sound as they disappeared beneath our wheels. The big Bronco only bounced a bit as it ground zombie after zombie into zombie bits.

“Are you nuts?” asked Southard.

“Little bit,” I said, and kept going.

I had noticed that none of the zombies in the area were in groups larger than ten.
So I decided that I would just turn a bunch of the
Sprinters
,
Shamblers
and
Shriekers
into
Crawlers
. I drove around the area, running over as many zombies as I could line up in front of the Bronco. The big brush guard helped out with that. We sat up too high for any of them to easily scramble onto the hood and I kept moving so that they couldn’t surround us.

The tactic was working, too.
I was rapidly thinning the ranks of the mobile dead. Sure, there were plenty of
Crawlers
around, but you pretty much had to not be paying attention to get grabbed by a
Crawler
. Once I’d made a significant dent in the crowd on our side of the apartment complex, I pulled back into the road and stopped.

“Now what are you doing?” asked Southard.

Grinning, I ignored him and got out of the vehicle. Spec-4 didn’t wait for an invitation and followed me out the door. She wasn’t sure what I was doing, but she was going to cover my back whatever it was. I liked that about her. She was ready to fight, and trusted my lead without questioning everything I did. Reluctantly, Southard jumped out his door and covered the area.

I lay my AK-47 on the hood of the Bronco and started taking aim.
The hallways to the apartments were open. I could see between the apartments on both floors from where I stood. I scanned the top floor and saw six zombies. I aimed carefully and started taking my shots. We weren’t any more than fifty yards away, so the shots were easy. I made six headshots in less than ten seconds.

Spec-4 saw what I was doing, and followed suit.
She put her rifle down on the hood and started scanning the floors. The two of us cleared the ten zombies off of the ground floor in less than ten seconds. Southard took the hint and started clearing the path to the stairs while we were clearing the hallways.

“The hallways are clear!” I shouted to the girls.

They didn’t need to be told twice. They disappeared into the apartment. A few seconds later, they emerged onto the second floor hallway, carrying backpacks. We covered them as they ran down the stairs and emerged on the ground floor. Then they sprinted towards us, easily avoiding the
Crawlers
on the ground.

“Get in!” I yelled, as they approached.

They piled into the back seat without hesitation. Spec-4 climbed into the back, as well. Southard and I were the last inside, and locked the doors.

“Are either of you bitten?” I asked.

“No,” they both said, at the same time.

“Give me time,” mumbled Southard
, waggling his eyebrows at me.

I just grinned and nodded at Spec-4, and she started checking them over.

“Want any help?” asked Southard.

I ignored him and fired the engine back to life.
I put it back into four wheel-high, and put it in gear. Then turned around and headed down the road to the south. I knew that this road would take us out to Republic Road, and from there it wasn’t very far to the Library. The addition of two more bodies to the vehicle was going to make things pretty tight, though. Oh well, I’d rather be crowded and moving than trapped and waiting to be eaten. We’d work it out. I’m sure that Southard would volunteer to let the women sit on his lap.

“They seem ok to me,” said Spec-4.

“Thank you for rescuing us,” said the red-head. “My name is Alyssa and this is Miranda.”

The blonde smiled and waved.

“I’m Charles Southard, but you ladies can call me Chuck,” said Southard, smiling.

“I’m Chrissy Wilder,” said Spec-4. “And that guy driving is Wylie Grant.
He’s with the Sheriff’s Office.”

“I’m a Deputy, as well,” said Southard, grinning lecherously.

“What about you?” said Miranda to Spec-4.

“I’m with the National Guard,” she said. “But I guess I got drafted by the Sheriff’s Office.”

“Well, I guess since I’m kind of the Sheriff right now,” I said. “I’ll just deputize you, too.”

“Cool,” said Spec-4. “Is there an oath or something?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Here it goes. Ready?”

“Yep.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“I do,” she said.

“You’re in,” I said, smiling.

I fished one of the badges I’d collected out of my cargo pocket and tossed it to her.

“Welcome to the department,” I said.

“Damn, that was easy,” said Southard.
“I had to get my law enforcement certification at Drury and go through a background check and application process. Not to mention all the interviews and the psyche eval.”

“You passed a psyche eval?” asked Spec-4, incredulously.

“Yeah,” replied Southard. “I sure fooled them.”

“Well,” I said. “All things considered, I think I’ll waive all of that.”

“Hmm,” said Southard. “You may have a point.”

“Is there someplace safe that you can tak
e us?” asked Alyssa.

“We’ve got a group of survivors holding together at the jail,” I said.

“The jail?” asked Miranda, surprised.

“Yeah,” I said.
“It’s a fortress. We can hold it.”

“That’s fine with us,” said Alyssa.
“Just don’t leave us alone, again. I didn’t think we’d ever make it out of that apartment. We barricaded the door, but we couldn’t escape.”

“Then it’s lucky that we came along,” said Southard, with a smile.
“I saw you girls up there and I knew that we couldn’t leave you behind.”

“Really?” asked Miranda, excitedly.

I saw Spec-4 roll her eyes in the mirror and I had to suppress a chuckle. I could tell that she wasn’t impressed with the intelligence of our two newest rescues. Alyssa seemed ok, but Miranda wasn’t too bright. Southard didn’t seem to notice or care. He was only interested in how grateful they were for being rescued. He continued to chat them up while I just drove and ignored them.

Spec-4 crawled into the front seat and sat next to me.
The Bronco had a bench seat in the front and could easily accommodate three adults in the front. And that’s just one of the reasons I loved cars from that time. They’re so much better than their modern counterparts. Call me old-fashioned, but I think cars from back then just had more style. That, and they were damned sure easier to work on.

Southard crawled into the back seat, to continue his conversation with the girls.
Spec-4 stayed where she was, leaving the passenger seat empty. I had to smile at that. With a woman sitting that close to me I felt like I was a kid back in high school on a date, not trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. It might have been funny, had it not been for the fact that we were both wearing body armor and weapons. That kept things in perspective. You had to love the irony, though.

The residential area we drove through still had zombies in it, but we were fine so long as we kept moving.
There were a lot of them, just not concentrated together into a group. That could’ve been a problem. The only time it got intense was when we were passing a church on our right. There were zombies galore in the parking lot of that church. Fortunately, the road was clear enough that we didn’t even slow down. We had to avoid quite a few abandoned cars, but we made it to Republic Road without incident.

As we got closer, I could see that James River Freeway was jam-packed with cars in both directions.
No use in trying to go that way. By the look of the Freeway, I knew that the intersection to the east of us would be impassable. I decided that it wasn’t worth risking it. I was going to have to go the long way around to the Library.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s 1425 hours,” said Spec-4. “We have plenty of daylight left.”

“That’s not it,” I said. “I told Sergeant Daniels to turn his radio on at the top of every hour.
That was almost twenty four hours ago. I haven’t been checking in.”

“I’ll set my alarm,” she said. “We’ll check in at 1500, assuming we haven’t made it to the Library by then.”

I nodded and turned right. This direction was mostly blocked with abandoned cars, but cleared up on the other side of the bridge. I had to drive on the shoulder and nearly scraped the side of the bridge, but we made it across. I intended to turn left, between the Church and the Chinese Restaurant, but the road was blocked. I would have to go farther west.

As I approached a large intersection, I had to drive to the far left hand side of the road and onto the sidewalk to get through.
There was a collision in the middle of the intersection between a soda truck and a City Bus. The entire intersection was blocked with cars and zombies. If it hadn’t been for all of the cars blocking the area, they would have mobbed the Bronco.

On the northwest corner of the intersection was a grocery store.
The place looked like it had been hit by a tornado. No glass remained in the front of the store. There were cars and shopping carts all over the parking lot. It looked like widespread looting was in effect when the zombies found them. Some of the shopping carts were still loaded with food. I made a quick mental note of that. No sense trying to get in there, right now. We were already full, almost to capacity. I really hoped that Sergeant Daniels and the others didn’t have much in the way of baggage.

Approaching the next road, I could see that a command center had been set up at the Catholic Church.
There were military tents, vehicles and two helicopters on the parking lot. The entire place had been surrounded by a prefabricated fence. It was the kind of fence that can be transported and quickly assembled. The gate was shut, but we were on a slight hill and could see inside.

Curiously, the place looked abandoned.
I could see body-bags piled near the parsonage, but no living or even quasi-living things were to be found. I quickly counted three deuce-and-a-half trucks, four Humvees (one of which was set up as an ambulance) and the two Blackhawk helicopters.

“Want to stop and scavenge?” asked Spec-4.

“We don’t have the room for any more stuff,” I replied.

“So, we let Southard stay in this with the girls and we take another Humvee,” she said.

“That just might work,” I said. “That’ll give us more room for people and gear. Chuck, what do you think?”

“Sounds good to me,” he replied.

“Good,” I said. “When I pull in, you cover us while we make a quick scrounge run through the area. If you see anything, let us know.”

“Got it,” he replied.

“Chuck,” I said, “watch us, not the girls.”

Southard looked at me in the mirror and met my gaze.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No problem,” I said.
“Just focus on us, for a few. Once we’re in a Humvee and moving, you can flirt till your heart’s content. I’ll take lead and use the armored vehicle to clear a path.”

Southard reached up and squeezed my shoulder.

“I’ve got your back, Wylie,” he said, seriously.

“I never doubted that for a second, Chuck.”

With that, I pulled up to the gate and stopped.

“Cover me while I open the gate,” I said, opening my door.

“I’ll do it,” said Spec-4. “You stay behind the wheel, in case we need to get moving in a hurry.”

Southard nodded and climbed out with her to provide cover.
Spec-4 climbed up and onto the hood of the Bronco, then looked over the gate. Southard stepped up next to her and brought up his AK-47. Then Spec-4 leapt over the gate. It only took a few seconds for her to unlock the gate and swing it inward. I pulled into the parking lot as she shut the gate behind us. Even though we could still see zombies in the parking lot of the grocery store down the street, it was almost eerily quiet here.

“This just doesn’t feel right,” I said.
“Let’s get what we need and get the hell out of here.”

“I’m with you,” said Spec-4, nodding agreement.

I climbed out the driver’s side door and brought my weapon up. Spec-4 came around on the passenger side with hers at the ready. Once I stepped clear, Southard jumped down off the hood and took my place by the driver’s door.

“Stay in the Bronco,” he said to the girls.

Southard brought his weapon up and nodded to me. I began walking slowly, weapon at the ready. I selected a Humvee that had an M-249 mounted on the roof. It was loaded and ready.

“This just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” I mumbled.

Spec-4 caught up with me and kept pace a few feet to my right. Her lips were pressed tightly together. She looked about as worried as I felt. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was very, very wrong here. I opened the door to the Humvee, expecting trouble. It was empty.