Run (Book 2): The Crossing (18 page)

She was looking at the thermals on the screen in front of her, white shapes stumbling in the gloom. “Nine, but there are a lot of places they could be hiding.”

“Strictly speaking, they don’t hide. They do just pop out though, don’t they?”

“I know, right? They…hold on…” She peered into the starboard monitor. “Stark! Stark that road we just passed has a gas station, I saw it!”

The LAV braked, Stark managing to turn the behemoth in the middle of Main Street. He backed into a red Toyota Tundra, leaving a huge dent in the driver’s door of the truck. “Shit.”

“You want me to drive, Navy?” Dallas shouted from the bench in the back.

“I want you to shut it, redneck!”

Androwski looked sheepishly at Bourne, “Sorry, sir.”

Seyfert stood and climbed into the turret hatch, as John’s Gas and Go came into view through the front windows. He donned his night vision glasses and popped the hatch open, cocking the light machine gun on the hull.

“Thirty seconds people,” Bourne said almost casually, “smooth and by the numbers. Seyfert, are we clear?”

“Negative sir, we have hostiles. Six at least, and the window front of the station is gone. Take them?”

“Negative, we’ll go hand to hand until it gets bad. Henson, Wilcox, provide close cover, the rest of us will fill the tanks. Rick, you stay in the LAV with Stark and cover the back hatch. If this gets out of hand, fall back to the LAV. It takes one minute to fill a five gallon jug, we have four gasoline and fourteen diesel to fill. I want to be out of here in twenty minutes.”

The soldiers Henson and Wilcox snapped together two harpoons that they had made using a crude drawing provided by Teems. They were the first out of the hatch, and within seconds had dispatched their first undead. Several more were staggering toward the station, but rather than meet them, they covered the others as they used Chris’s pump to put fuel in the tanks.

It went smoothly. The two soldiers speared any approaching zombies, and Seyfert shot several more from his perch atop the LAV with his suppressed MP5SD3. Dallas and Bourne humped the cans back to the LAV as Anna filled them with the pump. They had three diesel cans left to fill when Seyfert opened up with the LMG. “Contact right! Fall back, there are too many!”

Not needing to be told twice, the fuel crew pulled the pump and ran for the safety of the armor, three cans left behind on the concrete. The undead appeared from nowhere, and there were dozens. Two different howling screams came from behind, and Henson spun to face them, fumbling for his sidearm. Sprinting up the road from the east, two fast movers came directly at the young man. “Screamers!”

Forty feet from the hatch, he realized he wouldn’t make it even though the others were yelling for him. Henson turned, took aim, and fired at the first one, scoring a hit at chest level. The thing flopped down and scraped across the road, leaving skin. His infected cohort kept running, and Henson fired again, missing. Adjusting his aim, the soldier fired two quick shots, both hitting the other blood-soaked thing in the abdomen. It staggered and fell, putting one hand to the ground and one on its bleeding mid-section. Looking at the man the creature closed its eyes hard in pain, and tried to scream at him. Only choked gasps came out, and it fell forward on its chest trying to crawl.

Henson realized that he had just shot a teenage boy and was saddened to his core. He immediately thought of his little brother, but that thought was shaken by the hollering behind him. He turned toward the LAV and saw the hatch closing as Wilcox, Bourne, and Dallas fought off a small horde of undead clawing at the rear of the vehicle. More were coming from his right and behind him. Seyfert gave one more burst to the front of the LAV, and spun his weapon at Henson. “Run! That way!” He pointed south. “We’ll pick you up!” He opened up on another group coming from the east, behind where the sprinters had come from. Seyfert fired over Henson’s head into the smallest group coming from the south, the clearest direction for Henson.

“RUN DAMMIT!” Seyfert screamed at him and he finally got going. The LAV was backing up to meet him, crushing some undead in its path, when another runner appeared and jumped up on the side of the vehicle. Henson reached the small crowd blocking his path and fired at their heads. He holstered his weapon and deployed his harpoon, destroying another creature, but as it fell, it dragged the harpoon with it, spinning the living man sideways. Getting a good look at the LAV as he twisted, Henson saw the runner climbing up after an oblivious Seyfert, who was carefully firing into the crowd. As he lay on his back, he pulled his sidearm and drew a bead on the sneaky creature to Seyfert’s side. Henson took a deep breath as three creatures fell to their knees around him coming to his level to feast. He let half the breath out and squeezed his trigger.

Seyfert couldn’t understand why Henson didn’t get up, they were right on him! The SEAL’s eyes went wide as he saw the fallen soldier aiming at him. His ears were screaming from the machine gun fire, so he was unable to hear the shot from Henson’s pistol, but he saw the muzzle flash. He felt rather than heard something slump next to him on the hull of the LAV, and he spun to see a farmer with a hole in his head rolling off the hull to the street.

Henson tried to roll to his left, but he ran into the bare and bloody feet of a dead woman in a blue bathrobe and she fell on top of him. Frantically, he pushed at her, but the others had reached him and halted his escape, and she had fastened her hands around his tactical webbing. Her head snapped back when he shot her in the face, and she released him. He felt a searing pain in his left hip and ear at the same time, and he continued firing until he was empty. The creatures were pulling on him, his weapon arm snapping to the right. He felt more pain in his forearm as he thrashed and kicked. Then they were biting him all over. The soldier saw an old woman chew his ring and pinky fingers off with a jerk of her head. He heard machine gun fire, and had a moment to think that this was a terrible time for a headache, before he mercifully died.

The barrel of the light machine gun was still smoking as Seyfert closed the turret hatch. “He…”

Bourne put a hand on his shoulder. “We saw, son. You did the right thing.” The colonel shouted up front, “Stark, get us back to the rendezvous point ASAP.”

Seyfert sat down hard on the padded bench. “Guy scored a headshot from a hundred feet with a pistol on a moving target. He saved my life and I shot him.”

“An’ wherever he is, he’s thankin’ ya for it,” said Dallas. “I promise.”

28

“Shit!” Murray yelled and threw the mic at his feet in the Humvee. It dangled by the cord and he watched it swing. He and the other three men in the vehicle heard what had happened to Henson from Stark via the radio.

The dead thing they were keeping an eye on was forty feet away now, and moving steadily toward the parked vehicles. “Fuckin’ things! They’re everywhere,” Murray said, grabbing an entrenching tool from the clip on the passenger door. He opened the door and got out, starting toward the thing coming at him. “This is not your country!” He unfolded the spade and snapped it in place. Murray yelled a battle cry and swung the shovel with all his might in a sideways arc. He took off damn near half its head, and the dead man in an orange jumpsuit crumpled to the ground. The back of the jumpsuit had letters on it, and as he had left the powerful flashlight in the Hummer, Murray pulled his pistol and used his tac-light to read I.S.P. in black bold print. He was using the jumpsuit to clean the entrenching tool of blood and brain, when he heard a noise in the scrub behind him. He spun, but couldn’t see anything as he squinted into the gloom. Raising his tac-light, he panned right to left, “Holy fuck…” he whispered and ran back to the vehicles.

“Look at Murray running,” laughed Biggs as he pointed out the right side of the Humvee. “Looks like a little school girl getting chased by a bee.” Keleher and Stenner chuckled as well. They were still laughing when he scrambled into the vehicle, slamming the door and picking up the mic. Keleher leaned forward from the back seat. “What’re you runnin’ from, chicken shit?”

Murray used the interior handle to swivel the exterior spot light on the passenger’s side and clicked it on. “Them,” he shouted, as the light illuminated dozens of undead staggering toward the vehicle.

“Holy fuck,” Keleher, Stenner, and Biggs said in unison. The red Dodge pickup beeped its horn and Webb, the driver, screamed over the radio:  “
Fucking move, Biggs! Go!
”

Biggs threw the Humvee in gear and floored it, the Dodge pickup following close behind. Murray keyed the mic, speaking concisely, “Wanderer, this is Roadtrip One, do you copy over?”

“
Roadtrip, this is Wanderer Actual, we have hostiles, bugging back to your position as initially communicated
.”

“Negative, Wanderer, we have hostiles as well. Dozens, maybe hundreds just outside of town. Roadtrips One and Two en-route to your position.”

Undead were staggering out of the gloom on both sides of the road now, the headlights of the Hummer illuminating them more and more as they got closer to the pavement,  “Request alternate evac route, things are getting bogged here.” Men, women, and children were materializing out of the darkness now all with the same intent.

“
Standby Roadtrip, we’re looking.”

Up ahead the things had already stumbled onto the road and were coming straight at the oncoming headlights, looking for a quick dinner. The Humvee had some light armor, while the pickup was unshielded although faster than the military vehicle. The undead were beginning to pinch the vehicles from three sides, and it wasn’t long before evading them wasn’t possible. The first thump on the driver’s side of the Hummer sent chills down Murray’s spine. The creature went spinning away, but two more took its place and followed behind the vehicles. “Roadtrip Two, tighten up, we can plow for you.”

“
Copy One!
”

The pickup sped up slightly, and soon the vehicles were only ten feet apart as they sped down the rural road at forty miles per hour. The thumps were more common now, and one went under the Humvee with a satisfying crunch. The truck behind braked and swerved a little as the crushed zombie was spit out from under the tires of Murray’s vehicle. Several more creatures in the road, heedless of the danger, moved straight at the front of the oncoming trucks, and were plowed under or pushed to the side. Inevitably, one rolled up the hood and over the roof of the Hummer, getting caught in blast shield in front of the machine gun turret.

“That thing is still fucking kicking,” shouted Keleher. “I can hear it!” The zombie was indeed making some noises from above, as it scratched and scrabbled on the roof of the vehicle.

“
Roadtrip One, Wanderer, what’s your twenty, over?”

“Wanderer, we’re a klick out and coming at mid speed. The road is getting thick, any alternate routes would be appreciated!”

“
The only alternate route is overland Roadtrip, recommend you remain on the road until it becomes impassible. Rendezvous two klicks east of town, unless you require assistance, out
.”

“Roger that, Wanderer, stay tuned. Did you get that, Two?”

“
Copy that, five by five
.
And you have a hitch-hiker on your fucking roof
.”

Murray looked out the back window. “Tighten up, Two, you’re back too far.” He let go of the mic and looked out the front. “We have to get off this fucking road. Where are they all coming from?”

“Dunno,” said Biggs. “But there are a shit-load of them.”

The speed of the vehicles had decreased to twenty miles per hour as the road became bogged with dead people. The Hummer plowed them down, but the truck was having difficulties, and began to shimmy on the driver’s side. Murray looked at all the dead faces out the window as they drove, “Shit, we’re not gonna make it…”

Stenner looked back over his shoulder out the window. “Well,
we
will…”

“We’re not leaving them, Stenner, if you—”

Stenner interrupted him. “Due respect, Murray, but that’s shit and you know it. It’s one thing saving a buddy behind enemy lines, with motherfuckers shooting at us, but there’s
always
a chance. If that truck stops on this road, there’s no chance to get to them. None. We would have to stop and get out in the middle of
that
,” Stenner pointed to the throng of dead things encroaching from all sides. “There’s no coming back from that for any of us. Four dead is better than eight dead, and we need the soldiers.”

Murray keyed his microphone. “Wanderer, we’re going to need an extraction. Roadtrip Two is in trouble.”

“
Roger that, One, we’re coming
.”

“Webb, did you copy—?” 

Roadtrip Two didn’t get a chance to answer  The left front tire blew, sparks flying from the wheel rim as it made contact with the asphalt. Three undead were run down, but two more went over the hood, one spider-webbing the safety glass windshield before rolling away into the night. The vehicle carried on for another fifty feet then jerked violently to the left, going down a slight embankment. The driver’s side headlight impacted a mound of earth, and the rear of the truck jumped into the air, tires still spinning. Dazed, the men in the truck tried to gather their bearings. “Jesus…” Webb said when the first ghostly palm smacked the passenger window. The driver, Slone, wiped his hand across his brow and looked at it. It was bloody. Past his hand, out through the front windshield, a woman was pinned between the truck and the dirt pile. She was scratching the hood of the truck trying to gain purchase in her single-minded pursuit of what was inside the vehicle.

There was frantic pounding all over the pickup. Webb pulled a grenade from his tac-webbing and looked at Slone. He nodded, also pulling a grenade.

“Fuck that,” came a voice from the back seat.

“You’ll never make it, Carr,” Webb said, shaking his head. Without answering, Carr threw open the rear window slider and threw his M4 into the truck bed. He shimmied through the window, picked up his weapon, and began firing behind the truck. He threw a grenade behind the vehicle and ducked down into the bed. The muffled explosion threw limbs and gore in all directions, and Carr jumped into the crowd and ran, shooting.

A hand reached through a hole in the front window glass, the skin flaying away on the green safety glass to show purple muscle. Both the driver and passenger windows were beginning to crack, and an undead had made it into the truck bed. Kimball, the other rear seat passenger, shot it with a suppressed round. “Do it,” he said.

“Wanderer, Roadtrip One, this is Two.”

“
Go ahead, Two
.”

Webb looked at Slone and spoke back into the mic, “Good luck.”

Both Webb and Slone pulled the pins from the grenades. Slone smiled. “Spoons off in three?” Another suppressed round came from the back seat, and blood sprayed the inside of the cab and back window. “Sounds good.”

Sloan’s window let go and hands grabbed him, “Three!” He screamed and shoved his grenade into the mouth of the dead mailman trying to pull him out the window. More hands were reaching in, and they pulled at him while he fought them off. At the same time, Webb let go of the grenade’s primer handle and put the weapon on the seat between them.

Murray put his head down as the Hummer cleared the swarm. A small explosion lit up the night behind them, just as headlights appeared from the right side. “Wanderer, Roadtrip Two is down.”

“
Copy that, One. We see you, can you exfil to us?
”

“Roger that, Wanderer.”