Running with the Horde (33 page)

Chapter 47

“Giving Up Baby”

             
I knew the next part of the story and wasn’t terribly excited about watching Tegan beat the shit out of me so I skipped ahead.

             
Through the beating and through the group’s terrible flight from the shit-storm that either Daisy or I had called up, all the way back to the empty drug store.

             
It took them a hell of a long time to get back there, the horde didn’t give up easily. The round table discussion in the RV that night was testy to say the least.

             
“What the hell do we do now?” Jeff asked.

             
Nobody knew the answer to that question and everyone was pissed.

             
Tegan paced the tiny room like a caged animal. Mike was watching the police station from the roof. Jeff, Seth and two others were crammed into the breakfast nook sharing a bottle of vodka. Diane and Laura, two women who’d come with the RV, were comforting each other on the tiny couch, they’d both just lost husbands at George McCloud’s house. Daisy slept on the floor with her head in Rosie’s lap while Rosie tried to stare a whole through the wall.

             
“We should cut our losses and just head south,” Seth suggested with a sigh.

             
“Maybe we could beg our way into the city?” another voice called out.

             
“That’ll fucking work, dumbass,” someone shouted back.

             
With that the room devolved into a chaotic mess of shouting and cursing and sobbing women. People were told off, names were called, threats were made and manhoods questioned.

             
This went on until Mike shouted down through the ceiling vent.

             
“HEY FUCKERS!”

             
The room went silent.

             
“WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A GODDAMN ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! STOP! FUCKING! SHOUTING!

             
“Okay, Mike,” Tegan said calmly.

             
“THANK YOU!”

             
For a moment all was silent but the levity was too much for Tegan and he started laughing. A gut-busting laughter he could not contain. The laughter spread and soon the RV was literally shaking with mirth, even the grieving women managed a few choked-up giggles.

             
“What’s going on?” Daisy asked with sleepy eyes and hair in her face.

             
The room had been getting under control but one look at Daisy and it started all over again.

             
When at last things had quieted down again, Rosie spoke up while looking at her sister.

             
“We may not have George but we still might have something they want.”

             
Tegan looked at Rosie to find her pointing at her sister’s pregnant belly. Daisy looked down at her belly and back to her sister, in stark terror.

             
“Rosie, you wouldn’t!” she shrieked.

             
“Ah sweet sister, you should know better than that,” and Rosie smiled.

Chapter 48

“The Police Station”

             
They waited until morning, watching the building all night long. No zombies and no people, it seemed like a ghost town, likely another dead end. Everyone was thinking it, you could see it on their faces. But no one said it, nobody wanted to be the one to jinx it.

             
Tegan led the way across the street with Seth, Aaron and Rosie behind him and Jeff trailing the pack from the rear. Mike had agreed to stay behind and keep an eye on Daisy in the RV, the rest would provide cover if the group needed to leave in a hurry.

             
There were bodies of course, scattered around the frontage road and the sidewalk in front of the fence. But this was nothing new, there were bodies everywhere these days. Tegan was fine with bodies as long as they didn’t move. There were none visible within the grounds of the station.

             
The gate was locked tight but breaching the fence would be the easy part, accomplished with a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. It had been made to keep out zombies, not people. It had not always been a fenced-in building, that part had only been added recently.

             
Tegan examined it from a safe distance. Mixed into the crisscross pattern of the steel fencing were tiny naked wires. It was an electrified fence.

             
That would explain why it was still standing as well as the reason some of the bodies were lying dead along the fence. There was no way it still had power running to it though, not after all this time but he wasn’t eager to test his theory.

             
“Seth, you want to try climbing the fence, see if it opens from the inside?”

             
“Fuck you, Tegan, I’m may not have been a soldier but I know it’s electrified.”

             
“Relax, bro, I’m only kidding,” he said as he ran toward the fence.

             
“Tegan, no!” Rosie shouted but it was too late.

             
Tegan grabbed the fence with both hands and went into convulsions with his face stuck in a silent scream of pain.

             
Rosie let out a scream everyone could hear and dashed forward to help him until Seth grabbed her in a bear hug.

             
“You can’t touch him like that,” he yelled into her thrashing hair. “You’ll be electrocuted too!”

             
But she wouldn’t stop struggling, Aaron came over to help and soon all three were barreling into the fence which was, of course, not currently running any power. Only Jeff had been smart enough to see that Tegan had been faking. He stood impatiently behind the group with his hands on his hips waiting for them to get up.

             
Tegan had already cut open a gap and was laughing at them from the other side. Rosie was so mad she could chew glass. Tegan wasn’t close so Seth got a punch to the jaw and Aaron a kick in the ass. Even Jeff smiled at this as he shooed all three through the gap.

             
Once inside, Tegan got real serious, though Rosie promised him an ass kicking for later. He led the group through the municipal parking lot, past a few rows of badly used police, rescue and military vehicles to the entrance of the old brick building.

             
Gone were the glass doors found in most such places, they were replaced by large steel doors. Attached to the door was another poster of George McCloud but that meant nothing, the other stations had them as well.

             
Tegan tried the doors but they were locked.

             
“Jeff?”

             
“On it,” Jeff called out. He set a small charge on the door and everyone dashed back behind the rows of vehicles for cover.

             
The small, controlled blast blew the doors open and through the smoke and rubble came charging a small platoon of zombie soldiers still in uniform, screeching into the daylight at their new found freedom.

             
The group let out a collective groan.

             
“Light ‘em up, boys,” Tegan sighed.

             
The morning was drenched in the sounds of a one-way fire fight until the last zombie was dropped with a single shot from Jeff’s shotgun.

             
“Everything okay in there?”

             
Tegan turned to find the rest of the group, except Mike and Daisy, standing at the fence, managing to look scared and disappointed at the same time.

             
“Everything sucks but its fine, go back to your posts. We’re gonna check out the station, try to salvage at least some supplies anyway. We’ll be out in a few.”

             
Aaron was tasked with collecting guns and ammunition from the dead soldiers, a job he was more than happy to do if it meant not having to go inside. Tegan, Rosie, Seth and Jeff made their way into the gloom of the dead station.

Chapter 49

“Revelations?”

             
It was dark as a mausoleum once they got a few feet inside which meant flashlights were required. From the lobby, they moved swiftly through the processing, interrogation and holding rooms. They put down a few more zombies along the way that they found trapped by doors or other obstacles. The break room and lounge were empty, cold coffee congealing in the pots.

             
The dead elevators were not an option so they hit the stairwell and had to choose. The basement held records and the armory and the second floor was administrative. Seth, Jeff and Tegan started down the stairs.

             
“Wait,” Rosie said.

             
They paused, impatient to get out of there.

             
“Let’s just go, Rosie, check out the armory and get out of here while we still can.”

             
“Tegan, I just want to check.”

             
“There’s nothing up there,” he insisted impatiently.

             
“Please.”

             
The desperation in her voice got to him. He looked at Seth and Jeff who both rolled their eyes but nodded.

             
They trudged begrudgingly up to the second floor, through the door and into a sea of partitioned cubicles. The musty cold of the heatless room seeping through their clothes. Nothing in the cubes but dead computers, dead phones and the eternally smiling faces of dead loved ones.

             
Next came the offices, they were mostly empty as well, though there was one corpse and the gun she shot herself with at rest behind her desk.

             
Finally, they came to the last office, the biggest one which dominated most of the office space.

             
It had, at one time, belonged to the chief of police but had been commandeered at some point by the army. Evidence of their occupation was still strewn around the room. Seth and Jeff investigated the files and papers while Tegan and Rosie approached the desk.

             
On it was a satellite phone in a heavy duty case, bolted to the desk with a thick chain. Tegan picked up the phone, the buzz of the dial tone like a memory from a different life. The handset illuminating a key pad with only one key.

             
He looked at Rosie and she looked at him, an expression of awe on both their faces.

             
“Fucking push it already!” she said.

             
The ringing began after a brief clicking, a strong and steady chime that echoed in their ears. Seth and Jeff waited eagerly on the other side of the desk.

             
On the seventh ring it was answered.

             
“Command,” the man had a voice that matched his moniker.

             
“Um hello, Command,” Tegan wasn’t sure how to start, “We have information about the man on the poster, George McCloud?”

             
“Are you asking me or telling me?” the voice asked.

              Tegan blushed, he’d been out of the military game for a while and knew he sounded like an idiot.

             
“I’m telling you, sir,” he stood up a little straighter.

             
“Do you have him?”

             
“Not exactly, sir, but we have something that he wants.”

             
Command didn’t respond for a while, Tegan worried they’d lost the connection and almost hit the button again.

             
“Where are you calling from?”

             
“The City of Friendly, at the police station, there was no one else here, no one alive I should say. We let ourselves in”

             
“We thought as much, that post has been radio silent for some time. You are civilians then.”

             
“Staff Sergeant, Tegan Matthews, United States Marines Corps, Retired, sir. But yes, we’re civilians. Is that going to be a problem?”

             
“Not at all, Staff Sergeant, and thank you for your service. Now what is it you have you think George McCloud wants?”

             
“Not a ‘what’ as much as who, sir.”

             
“And who might that be, Staff Sergeant?”

             
If Tegan wasn’t mistaken the voice of Command had taken on a bit of an edge.

              “Uh, we have his girlfriend, sir, she is quite pregnant with his baby.”

             
Another long pause.

             
“Look, will this get us into the city or not? There are eleven of us,” Tegan said.

             
“I believe it will, Staff Sergeant, provided you have what you say you have. If you do not, it won’t go easy for you or your people, you understand, son?”

             
“Yes, sir, I do.”

             
“Good, can you get down to the 3
rd
Avenue Bridge?”

             
“Can’t you just pick us up here, sir?”

             
“Unfortunately not, son, the bridge is the best I can do. Now hear me on this. It’s going to get very hairy down there the closer you get to the city. I need you to search the facility for a device. It will be labeled as a sonic barrier.”

             
“We’ve found one already, sir,” Tegan said.

             
Rosie looked at him funny but he waived her off, he would explain later. The things Henry had told him were making a hell of a lot more sense now. He only wished he would have had time to ask more questions.

             
“Good, now listen carefully…”

             
Command went on to explain the basics about using the sonic barrier. It was solar powered and needed to sit in the sun for several hours for four hours of usage. It attached to the roof of a vehicle much like the siren to an unmarked police car. It was turned on and off using a power cord laid on the dashboard. Just the act of turning it on and off used a lot of power. Command cautioned it be done as infrequently as possible.

             
The plan was for Tegan and company to get down to the bridge using the sonic barrier and rendezvous with Command on the roof of the nearby Wilshire Gardens Apartment Building where they would be airlifted into the city.

             
Command cautioned that if they were careful, the sonic barrier should get them very close to the building. Getting from vehicles onto the roof of the building would be very challenging as the undead were extraordinarily thick in that portion of the city. The group would be on its own for that part.

              Tegan asked a few more logistics questions but soon the conversation was at its end.

             
“Good luck and God Speed, Staff Sergeant Tegan Matthews, I think you’re going to need it,” Command said.

             
Tegan looked down at the dead sat phone in his hands, a great big smile creasing his unshaven face. He looked up at Rosie, she was beaming at him.

             
“Well, baby, thank God you are such a stubborn, head-strong bitch!”

             
“We should be just as grateful you are such pussy-whipped, numb-nuts, shithead who always does what I say!” Rosie whooped.

             
“C’mere, boys! We’re gonna live to see another sunrise!” Tegan shouted.

             
Then there was laughter and tears and group hugs shared by all.

             
Damn it.