The Apocalypse Crusade 2 (14 page)

The Chinese operative shrugged, glanced around and then planted himself wordlessly next to the teenager who drew into himself even more.

Chuck took hold of one of Thuy’s arms and Deckard the other. “Just calm down, Doc,” Chuck said, easily. “They’ll get theirs, you can bet on it. When that Meeks guy comes back, he’ll rip into them and that’s for darned sure. Until then we should keep away, just in case they got the zombie bug.”

After glaring fiercely for a second, she turned cold. “That’s a sound plan, Mr. Singleton,” Thuy said, quietly. She would have her revenge, one way or the other. Never in her life had she ever contemplated the word revenge seriously, but now it took over her mind, filling her with a white-hot hate. “We should keep our distance for an hour or two, and I agree we should turn them over to the authorities, eventually, but I want them to suffer. I want revenge.” Her words were so cold Anna felt the chill of them wash over her.

“You’ve already had your revenge on me, Dr. Lee. Look at me! Look at my hand. You did that when you left me dangling in that elevator shaft. Remember that? And look at my wrists and ankles. Eng held me hostage and raped me for hours last night. Don’t try to pin this on me. I’ve been punished enough…and all I did was take some pictures and send some emails. It was Eng who sabotaged the Com-cells. It was Eng who made all of this happen.”

“What about the fire?” Thuy asked in a voice as soft as silk and as deadly as an adder. Anna’s face turned the color of old cheese. “You set the fire that ended up killing Riggs and Milner. Remember that?”

“You have no proof,” Anna answered, too quickly. It was only a guess. She didn’t know what sort of evidence Thuy possessed.

Thuy laughed softly. It was an evil sound. “Proof is for the courts. You are guilty in my eyes and I swear there will be a just punishment for you. Something more than a few lacerations on a pinky. Something closer to true justice. An eye for an eye, perhaps. Something that would make Hammurabi smile.”

Anna began to deny everything, one last time: “But I didn’t do…” It faltered under the hard glare. She looked away from Thuy. The others were just as cold. Only Eng and the boy next to him were different. The boy looked as though he’d been hit over the head with a shovel and Eng was smiling, gloating.

“Now who’s fucked?” he asked.

An hour before, just after they had made it beyond the barrier, Eng had turned his .38 on her. “I’m sure you understand. I can’t have you telling anyone that I’m alive.” Her mouth had come open to beg for her life and to promise she’d never mention him to anyone—she didn’t get a chance to speak this lie. Eng had cocked the pistol causing her heart to leap into her throat.

He would have shot her right then, but at that moment, four Humvees had come bustling into view from the east. Just as quick, the .38 was out of sight and Eng had her by the shoulders. “I will shoot you, I swear,” he said. “Be smart or else.”

She nodded, but that too was a lie. The Humvees stopped in front of them and men in masks had hopped out with guns pointed. They were all pointed Eng’s way. “You’re fucked,” she whispered and then stepped away from him and went into her performance. “Thank God you came! He raped me and held me at gunpoint. He’s got a pistol in his pocket.”

Eng’s hand had strayed to his pocket causing one of the soldiers to step forward aggressively, his finger drawing back on the trigger. “Hands up, you fuck!” he ordered. Eng’s face went flat, expressionless, and very slowly his hands went to head height. The soldier’s gun then swung toward Anna. “You too!”

“Me? I didn’t do anything. Look at my wrists. He tied me up and raped me!” In spite of the hoods and masks, she could see their moment of hesitation. It was a moment only. They had their orders and so they came forward to frisk the two, only Anna couldn’t allow herself to be frisked. In her pocket was a vial of the deadly Com-cells. Its presence would raise questions she couldn’t answer.

“I didn’t do anything,” she said, backing away, clutching herself. Her hand had stolen to her pocket and now the vial was in her palm. She considered dropping it but they would see. She turned away as though she had a thought of running.

“Stop!” one of the soldiers demanded. She could hear the hyped-up fear in his voice; it was raw as a wound. He would shoot if he had too. With her back to him, she stuffed the vial into her bra.

“Don’t touch me,” she whimpered, mentally preparing the soldiers to accept the idea that she was fragile and damaged. She cried some good fat tears and when they frisked her, they kept well away from her breasts. Then she and Eng had been forced to sit in the grass, under guard until an ambulance arrived. “You zip your lip, I’ll zip mine,” she had whispered to Eng, hoping to come to a truce. Neither of them would benefit if it became known they were associated with Walton in any way.

He had given her the tiniest of nods.

The truce had lasted longer than either expected and now, with mutual enemies staring hate their way it would have to continue. “We’re both fucked,” she whispered. “Unless we can get out of here.” Both were realists: she didn’t trust him and he didn’t trust her, but they needed each other. They were also opportunists and each looked for the right moment, the right set of circumstances they could benefit from.

It turned out the opportunity to escape was right next to them. After thirty minutes of silence in the tent, the teenage boy suddenly whispered to himself: “This is fucked.” It was a snarl, but a low one.

“Look at me,” Anna said to him.

“What?” he spat out. His eyes were dark. They had been the color of a summer’s sky, but now they were a deeper, navy blue. They would slip into the color of midnight soon. After that…

“I know who did this to you,” Anna whispered.

At eleven that morning PFC Fowler killed his forty-third zombie of the morning. He was in the back position fifty yards behind Johnny Osgood and Will Pierce. They had discovered that as far as accuracy was concerned it was better to shoot from further away without wearing a mask than it was to shoot from right up close with the mask on.

The trio also found that Max was the best shot of the three, something that had been argued over for the last two years, but had never been proven. All three had qualified as expert over the years, but it was one thing to hit a stationary man-sized target at three hundred meters, it was quite another to hit a target that was three inches high and five wide—the size of the average forehead. They had wasted many bullets blowing out teeth, cheeks, and lower jaws; the forehead was the only true kill shot.

The forty-third had been easy compared to the rest. It had come strolling right up the road as if on parade. Except for the missing arm, it seemed very human. Max had pushed the thought out of his mind as he leaned into the M16A1, breathed out gently, and caressed the trigger. The gun bucked mildly, as it always did, and the zombie lost the top of its head, though it didn’t seem to notice for a few more steps. When it pitched forward in midstride, Johnny gave the thumbs up sign and then pointed forward.

He was on burial duty for the next twenty minutes. He climbed out of his foxhole swinging his shovel—they had gone into town and had “liberated” a few items of need: shovels, soda, chips, bleach, scrub brushes, thirteen hoses they linked together, and a bottle of Jack Daniels. They were supposed to take a swig every time they manned the back position, however the bottle was practically ready for its own burial. Someone, Max strongly suspected Will, was drinking more than their fair share. His mood had been strangely cheery for the predicament they found themselves in: they had done in seventy or so zombies so far and hadn’t heard dick from anyone in the unit.

As Osgood slung the shovel onto his padded shoulder and started off for the body, Max eyed the bottle of Jack. The honest truth was that he really, really wanted another swig, but he’d had his one shot already and it wasn’t fair. Just then, Osgood yelled something, causing Max to jump in alarm. For some reason Osgood lifted the shovel over his head and then to Max’s surprise he did a sort of primitive tribal dance around the corpse brandishing the shovel like it was a spear. He went around twice before he slammed the shovel down onto the body with a sickly thump that could be heard all the way back to the crap town of Myers Corner.

A second strike and a second ugly thump made by the shovel decided things for him. “Fuck it,” Max said and took a pull of the amber whiskey. “Ahh that burns.” But it was a good burn. He blew out a contented breath and looked up to see Osgood just standing there holding the thing’s stiffening legs. He was supposed to drag the body from the road and cover it over with dirt to keep the flies from spreading the germs, but he was just standing there staring off around the bend in the road.

“What the fuck is he waiting for?” Max asked. He screwed on the top of the whiskey and set it aside. Then on a hunch, he picked up the M16 resting against his knee. The barrel was warm to the touch as he lifted it to his shoulder and because of the extra padding of the MOPP gear, he had to snuggle it good into the pocket of his shoulder to keep it steady. There were more zombies coming.

Johnny Osgood dropped the legs of the corpse and with one hand holding his mask in place, he ran back, waving his free arm and yelling.

“It’s alright, Johnny, I’m not blind,” Max whispered and pulled the trigger. At a hundred and fifty meters, there wasn’t a discernable drop in the bullet’s trajectory, the cross breeze was practically nonexistent, and the motion of the target: steadily forward, meant any miss was operator error. The bullet went through the thing’s right eye. One leg shot straight out, it did a pirouette and then fell, twitching. Max was already onto the next target.

There were many targets, too many targets, in fact the road was suddenly full of them, and yet, just as he lined up his shot, the zombie jerked as it was struck by a three round burst. Half its face was torn off and yet it continued to plod forward. Max switched to a new target, thinking that Johnny or Will would have to clean up their own mess. He swiveled to his right slightly, blew out a light breath and fired—his bullet parted the hair, scalp, and skull of the beast and despite the horrible groove running right down the middle of its hairline, it kept coming.

“Shit!” Max tried to calm his breathing and fired again. Now it went down. How it fell or where it was hit, he didn’t care. There were far too many zombies to care. The number of the beasts was thirty-five, but he would have sworn it was a hundred. Still thirty-five was a frightful number, especially for the two men in the foxholes on either side of the road. The zombies fell one after another, but very quickly, the rest were at the concertina wire. The first of them, an old farmer from the looks of his bib overalls, fell across it and got caught up in the barbed coils; the next eleven stumbled over the others and kept coming.

Johnny Osgood, twenty yards away, clambered out of his foxhole and ran. Will Pierce kept shooting and so did Max. Knowing Will would go for the closest ones, Max concentrated on the second closest one at any one time. At sixty yards he couldn’t miss…just as long as he didn’t rush his shots. He rushed four of them and his heart was in his throat as his gun went dry with three of the beasts, a family still in their PJs, practically in Will’s foxhole.

With trained hands he dropped the empty mag, slapped home a fresh one, sprang the bolt forward and shot again in the span of a second. His thumb slipped the gun into three round burst and, four pulls of the trigger later, the last zombie fell forward onto Will, spouting black blood.

“Holy fuck!” Will cried. His words were muffled due to his mask, but there was no denying the emotion: wild, angry, panicked relief.

“You’re welcome,” Max said, quietly before returning the selector to single shot. There was still killing to be done. The zombies in the wire were tearing their own flesh off in order to get at the hyperventilating Will Pierce. As Max shot them through the head, needing twelve bullets to kill nine of the beasts, Will came stomping up, and was actually reaching for the whiskey before Max leapt away.

“Hey! Dumbass, you’re covered in blood! Get away from me.”

Will’s chest was huffing hugely, trying to suck in all the oxygen he could through the filters. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Man, that was too freaking close. Oh, God, they were right on top of me for fuck’s sake.”

“It was close,” Max agreed. “Now, go and bleach yourself. I hate you being so near when you got all that blood on you.”

“Will you scrub me?” he asked pitifully.

“What would your boyfriend say?” Max asked with a smile. Will didn’t laugh. He turned away but not before Max thought he saw tears in the man’s eyes. “Hey Johnny! Make sure all them zombies are dead.” Johnny had come back to his foxhole, lowered himself down and tried to pretend he hadn’t just run off screaming.

Max thrust his head into his mask, zipped his coat, and pulled on his gloves. The usual fog of claustrophobia engulfed him. Breathing became a chore as he brought air up through the filters. After sucking in a big breath he said, “Alright, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Their clean station consisted of three gallons of bleach, two long-handled scrub brushes and the end of thirteen hoses stretching from the nearest spigot three hundred feet away. The pressure was surprisingly strong. He soaked his friend and then doused him with the bleach. A part of him wondered if this was the proper method to kill the germs in the blood. He didn’t trust it, that was for sure, and he made sure to stand as far back as he could as he scrubbed down Will.

“Where are they?” Will asked when Max smacked him on the back. He tore off his hood, angrily. “The lieutenant said he’d be back. It’s been four hours, Max. It’s been four fucking hours. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

A sigh escaped Max. He was starting to think the same thing. “So what? Are you thinking we should leave?”

Will lifted a single shoulder and refused to look him in the eye. His normal jovial self had completely withered. He was hunched, shooting his nervous glances everywhere. “Yeah,” Will said through gritted teeth. “They’ve abandoned us. They fucking left us out here all by our fucking selves. That is treasonous. They have an obligation to us, you know what I mean?”

Max didn’t remember any mention of an obligation when he had taken the oath, joining the Guard. “I’m staying. You can leave, but I’m staying. I have a wife, man. She’s thirty miles that way,” he said, pointing south, “and that’s way too close. I can’t leave, I have my own obligations. I hope you can understand.”

“So we’re just going to sit here killing those things?” Will said. He raised a gloved hand and was within an inch of running it through his short blonde hair, but he stopped and looked at the black rubber. “I don’t think I can, Max. It’s like shooting people. It’s like…” He broke off suddenly and hurried to the back position. Max grabbed the bleach and came after. Will had been wet with black blood when he had come stomping up; if there were any drops, Max planned on drowning the germs in bleach. Will went straight for the whiskey and downed the remainder, probably four shots worth.

He stared at the empty bottle for a moment and then tossed it aside. “It’s like murder, Max. It feels like murder every time I pull the trigger.”

“Then go,” Max replied. “Johnny and I will hold out here.”

Will didn’t leave. Max allowed him to stay in the back position while he and Johnny geared up and, after clearing the wire, they settled down to wait for more zombies. They weren’t slow in coming. Thankfully, they came in twos and threes and made easy marks—but they did drain their ammo. The three of them had come to Myers Corner with a full combat load: 210 rounds a piece, plus they had the ammo crate, another 900 rounds. It went fast. By one p.m. the crate was empty.

“Now do we leave?” Will asked, after he had topped off the last of his magazines; he was three rounds short.

“No.”

“No? You’re going to say no to me? I’m a fucking specialist, Max. I outrank you. What do you have to say to that?” Max had nothing to say, especially since they had already been given orders by an officer. Will couldn’t countermand them no matter what he thought. Will stood staring, sweating in his MOPP gear, until some internal frustration switch clicked on and he kicked the empty ammo crate. “Fine. We stay until we run out of ammo. Then I say fuck ‘em.”

He started to walk to the back position and said over his shoulder: “I thought you were cool, Max. I didn’t know you were some tight-ass, gung-ho senator’s son. When did that happen?”

Max was taken back by the venom in his friend’s voice. “Will, I’m the same guy.” For most of his life Max had been the guy who sat at the back of class making off-color comments under his breath. He was never mean about it, in fact he was a nice guy. He had an easy way about him and every one he knew considered him a friend. That easy way about him extended to everything in his life. School had been easy, but dull. Three semesters at college had been the same. At twenty, and already bored with life he had joined the National Guard, hoping to see a little adventure, but the wars had wound down at that point and he became the soldier in the back of the formation who made barely audible jokes and whose uniform was just barely acceptable and whose hair was just barely above his ears. He always knew he could do better but there never seemed a reason to try. Except now there was.

“I became gung-ho about the time the shit hit the fan. This is real, Will. Look at all those bodies. You saw how they are. They may look like normal people, but they’re monsters. Someone has to stop them. Someone has to draw a line in the sand. Someone has to stay and fight.”

Will glared for a moment, then grunted out a bemused laugh. “Nice speech, Captain America…shit.”

Johnny swung his head from Will to Max and back again. His forehead was all done up in lines of worry and confusion. “So what’s that mean? Are we staying or going?”

“Our fearless leader says we’re staying, so we stay,” Will said. “What are your commands, oh Great Captain?”

Max ignored the sarcastic tone. “Since there are too many bodies to bury, we’ll stack them in front of the wire as another barrier. Next, I want to change the rotation. I want only one up at a time.”

“Why do we need any one up by the wire?” Will asked. “All three of us should stay here. It’ll save ammo. Johnny can’t shoot for shit with his mask on.”

“Fuck off,” Johnny answered right back. “You ain’t no Audie Murphy yourself, Will. But, yeah, let’s all stay back from now on.”

They zipped up their MOPP gear and made their “line in the sand” using corpses. It was a hundred feet long, stretching across the road and right up to the forest on either side. The wall of bodies dribbled a ghastly black fluid, like thinned oil. The flies couldn’t seem to get enough of the stuff. Max and Will were staring at the insects constantly running their hairy legs through it when Johnny nudged them.

“There’s more coming.” Eleven of them came stumbling up the road. They were mowed down before they got to the wall. A minute later fourteen came round the bend. Three of these made it past the wall of corpses only to die in the wire.

Max was just getting up to head down to the wire when Will pulled him down. There were more coming. Twenty-three this time. They fired their guns hot and empty brass casings, blistering and smelling of spent powder littered their foxhole. The wire was covered in the beasts and no longer useful in holding them back. It was nothing but a speed bump.