Survive (21 page)

“Roger, hold up back here for a minute. We’re going to go have a look,” John said into the radio. He leaned out the window and yelled up to the folks in the back of the truck. “Heads up. We’re going to check this out.” In the big side mirror, he saw several rifle barrels move over the side of the truck, pointing at the barrier.

Morgan shifted into low gear and approached the cars at a crawl. John scanned the area with a small pair of binoculars Sara had thoughtfully packed in his backpack. As they drew closer to the roadblock, he began to see signs of a struggle. Great bloody smears and splashes of red gore littered the cars. The ground in front of the barrier was strewn with bodies and parts of bodies. Most of the glass had been broken out of the cars, and John could see there were bodies inside some of the vehicles as well.

After what seemed like an eternity, they pulled to a stop less than twenty feet from the line of vehicles. Morgan killed the engine. The sudden silence loomed ominously.

“Stay here. I’ll go have a look,” John said, as he climbed down out of the truck. He glanced up in the back and was happy to see his family covering him as he walked forward. John carefully stepped over the bodies, checking to make sure that each one was truly dead as he passed by. He swept the muzzle of the MP5 over each one, not willing to take any chances. Most of the bodies had been Zeds, horrible wounds and decomposing flesh giving evidence to the fact, but some looked like they had been fighting the Zeds. These had fresher wounds. He even saw one man slumped against the side of a car with a Zed’s jaw still clamped to his neck. The Zed’s head ended at a ragged neck, its body slumped several feet away.

John climbed gingerly over a big Chevy Suburban, sliding across the bloody hood. He dropped down onto the pavement on the other side, suddenly more cautious. Bodies lay everywhere, most with hunting rifles or improvised weapons made from axes, pitchforks, saws, and other unidentifiable things. Not nearly enough bodies, though. The dead in front of John were only the ones with vicious head wounds, bites or lacerations, or sometimes gunshots from a merciful fellow defender. He did a quick count of the dead on this side of the barrier. Thirty-one.

His radio crackled to life, causing him to jump. “Careful there, we can’t see you anymore.”

“It’s okay, Roger. There’s nothing moving over here either. Looks like they were trying to keep a pack of the bastards out,” John said, bringing the black radio to his mouth and speaking softly.

“Did they succeed?”

“Not even close.”

* * *

They spent the next hour moving vehicles and bodies out of the way, all the while keeping watch for any of the Zeds that might still be roaming around.

“I don’t like it, John,” Roger said as Morgan pushed the last car out of the way with the dump truck. “It must have been a huge pack of those motherfuckers that hit these guys. I don’t like knowing they might be close.”

“These bodies are a couple days old, at least. The fresh ones, I mean,” John said, looking around at the dead. He bent down and picked up a pistol from one of the former defenders and tucked it in his belt. “But you’re right. I don’t want to stick around here any longer than we have to.” He patted the pistol he’d just recovered. “Let’s pick up what we can and get back on the road.”

They recovered several rifles and pistols but not as much ammunition as John would have liked. They loaded their booty in the trucks and continued their journey north, watching warily for whatever pack of undead had massacred the poor defenders of Springfield.

* * *

The two trucks rumbled along the deserted highway until they saw the exit for Windsor. No cars blocked the exit ramp, so the big trucks pulled off, barely slowing as they reached the main road leading to the National Guard base. Finally, after several exhausting hours of remaining vigilant, they saw a sign that said “Vermont National Guard Armory 186, Forward Support Company A”. Several brick buildings surrounded by a chain link fence topped with razor wire loomed ahead of them. A big chain link gate lay open in the road, with a small brick guard house to the left. Morgan pulled the dump truck right up to the guard house, but no one hailed them. John jumped down out of the truck and checked the little shack. A plain wooden desk with a clipboard and pen stood against one wall, with a simple metal office chair tipped over on the floor. A telephone was attached to one wall, with the receiver dangling by its cord.

A single bloody hand print stood out in stark relief on the white plaster wall behind the desk.

John climbed back up into the truck. “Looks like the Zeds hit here already.” He brought the radio to his mouth. “No guards; Zeds already came through. Watch yourselves, boys and girls.”

After both trucks had pulled through the gate, Roy got out and ran to the guard shack. Moments later, the big metal gate rolled shut. He mounted back up and the trucks continued slowly into the base. Each brick building had been thoughtfully labeled with a green and white sign. They passed one building marked Administration but stopped at the second building. That one had a sign that read Security. John signaled a halt over the radio, and the group dismounted. They formed a loose circle around the two vehicles, keeping a watch for Zeds. John motioned for Douglas to follow him into the building. The others stayed behind, keeping the two precious vehicles safe.

The single story brick building was about the size of a small house, with white framed windows and a single glass door. John opened the door and shined his flashlight inside. Despite the sun’s position in the early afternoon sky, the hall revealed by John’s flashlight was dark. But he could see that the floor looked wet. As he moved into the hallway, he realized the wetness was blood. The thick red liquid was everywhere, the floor, the walls, even splattered onto the ceiling. As he motioned for Douglas to follow him, a thick spatter dripped down from the ceiling onto his right boot. He frowned and kept walking forward slowly, playing the light around in front of him, his MP5’s muzzle leading the way. Douglas followed close behind, his heavy breathing sounding far too loud in the close confines of the dark hallway.

John reached a lobby area with a desk marked Information. The desk had been tipped on its side, and a body lay just behind it. John slowly peered over the desk to get a better look. A man in his twenties with close cropped black hair and wearing a National Guard uniform lay in a heap, a bloody hole in the side of his head, and bite marks all over his face and hands. An armband marked him as an M.P., a military police officer. The dead man had a large ring of keys hanging from his belt. John reached down and grabbed the ring of keys, as well as the Beretta 9mm and spare magazines from the body. He tucked them into the thigh pockets of the cargo pants he was wearing and continued on past the desk.

They followed the hallway until they reached a door marked Secure. John fumbled with the keys, trying them one by one until he found the right one. The lock clicked open loudly, startling Douglas. John grinned at him and gave him a thumbs up in the dim light of the Surefire in his hand. He pushed the door open, and they found themselves in a briefing room. Papers lay scattered all over the table and floor. Chairs were turned over, and a severed arm lay handcuffed to a ring attached to the wall. More blood soaked the floor in puddles. Another door lay just beyond the big table in the middle of the room, and they made their way towards it. Again, John fumbled with the keys until he found the right one.

Just as John pushed the door open, a horrible stench came wafting out of the room. The overpowering scent of rotting meat assailed the two men, causing their eyes to water. Douglas made retching sounds behind John, but the big man pushed through the smell and illuminated the room with his flashlight.

This room looked like it had been used for meetings at one time. Tables and chairs had been hastily piled up at one end of the room in front of another hallway. A pile of rotting corpses lay on the floor or tangled in the pile of office furniture. Most of them were well on their way to putrescence. John walked into the room and saw that the bodies all had bullet holes in them. Some were in uniform, others appeared to be civilians. One even had a meter maid’s outfit on, with a shoulder patch that said “Town of Windsor”. She still wore her ticket machine over one shoulder. John signaled the all clear to Douglas, and they began clearing a way through the debris. Just on the other side of the pile of desks and tables, they found more bodies. These were all in uniform, and most had M16s or pistols.

“Let’s finish checking out the building before we pick up these weapons. Something nasty happened here and I want to make sure we don’t get surprised,” John said to Douglas as they walked past the dead.

They continued through the building, searching each room as they came to it. They found offices and interrogation rooms, as well as a locked door that led to a room with dozens of M16s, shotguns, pistols and crates of ammunition. “Jackpot!” John whispered a little too loudly. John radioed his findings to Roger, who then reported the outside to still be safe.

They continued searching through the building and eventually came to a set of stairs leading down into the basement. Red emergency lights still shone in the underground part of the building, though they flickered ominously. In the red light, the blood on the floor just looked like water.
Works for me,
John thought to himself as he walked through the hellish hallways. They finally reached a door with a sign over it that said Holding Cells A-E. John pushed the heavy steel door open to find a scene right out of Dante’s Inferno.

Zeds wandered back and forth aimlessly, tripping over fallen dead. John did a quick estimate and thought there must have been twenty or thirty Zeds in the long hallway facing several barred cells. Dozens more lay on the ground, truly dead. As the door banged open, every Zed in the room turned its head and looked right at the two men. Douglas screamed. John brought his MP5 up, dropped to one knee to steady himself, and began firing aimed shots at the Zeds. Douglas aimed his AK 47 and began firing wildly into the room. Most of his shots hit something out of pure luck, but John’s were better aimed, and soon many of the Zeds had joined their comrades on the floor. A few managed to make it to the doorway, where Douglas had finally calmed down enough to aim for the creatures’ heads. He fired the last shot and brought down a man wearing nothing but boxer shorts and missing his right hand.

After the final blast, the two men stayed where they were, transfixed by the sight of all the dead under the flickering red light for several moments. When John was satisfied no one was getting back up, he stood back up and walked into the room.

“Good work, Doug. Stay here and watch my back.” John continued into the room, walking toward the cells. He heard Douglas reloading behind him as he noticed that one of the cells seemed to have people in it. As he got closer, he shined his flashlight into the cell and saw several uniformed men slumped against the walls. He counted thirteen of them, all seated with their backs against the concrete walls and slumped over, their heads down on their chests. Every one of them had a rifle or pistol next to them. Empty rifle magazines lay scattered about the cell floor. Then he saw the blood splattered all over the walls behind each person.

John walked up to the cell door and pulled. The door was locked. John looked inside at the dead Guardsmen. It was then that he noticed the notes. Each man had a white sheet of paper pinned to the front of his uniform. John could barely make out some writing on the soldier closest to him. He could make out the words “Mom” and “I’m Sorry”.

Douglas came up behind John noisily. He looked inside the cell. “Oh my God, what happened?”

“They ran out of ammo. They knew help wasn’t coming.” John felt a strange sense of pride in his fellow man as he looked in at the doomed soldiers. From the Battle at the Barricade, John understood the feeling of helplessness in the face of waves of undead. “I hope if the time comes, I have the guts to do what they did, what Dad did,” John muttered quietly in the red glow.

Douglas stared at John’s back and shook his head, grimacing. John turned and walked past Douglas, back up into the daylight.

John signaled the all clear to Roger. With a few men posted outside on guard duty, the rest of the Mason clan emptied the armory of its contents, loading everything into the big white trailer. John was also able to find the key to the cell where the brave soldiers had killed themselves to avoid becoming the enemy. They took their weapons, as well as the notes that had been pinned to each man.

While they were cleaning out the armory, Douglas found a map of the base and located the buildings most likely to have food and other supplies they needed. There was no sign of a base hospital, though, this being a relatively small facility. They collected the first aid kits they found in each building.

The next building on the map was a big warehouse marked “Supplies-Consumables”. Roger backed the trailer up to the loading dock, while Jack Kensington and his cousin climbed up onto the roof of the truck and stood watch. John, Morgan and two of the other survivors whose names John couldn’t for the life of him remember, entered the warehouse.

Much smaller than the grocery warehouse they’d raided before, it still represented a dangerous place where Zeds could hide.

“Morgan, take point. I’ll be right behind you.” John motioned for the other two to follow him, and together they walked through aisle after aisle of pallets filled with crates and boxes with indecipherable government identification numbers and abbreviations. Halfway down the second aisle a female Zed in uniform shambled around a corner directly in front of Morgan. The agile young man brought both of his Glocks up and fired at the monster. The Zed tumbled over backwards and sprawled on the floor, unmoving. Almost immediately a chorus of Zed moans and groans erupted all around the four men. John glimpsed movement through the racks of supplies on either side of them.