The Dead Series (Book 4): Dead End (36 page)

“They won’t be a bother for too long,” Cain said quietly, a smile breaking out on his face at the thought of pushing the woman named Heather out of a chopper at three thousand feet.

Fort Redoubt:

Tick-Tock heard the sound of gunfire grow in volume as they neared the fort. Trying to pinpoint its source, he realized after a few seconds that it seemed to come from everywhere. He tried the radio again to let them know he was coming in but gave up in frustration. It seemed like everyone was breaking in at the same time, clogging the channel with a lot of useless information.

He had listened to their chatter on the short drive to the fort and wasn’t surprised to hear the gradual breakdown of discipline. No one was giving their position or what they were up against, so there was no way to put together any kind of successful counterattack. Then it got worse. With the dead coming at the fort from three directions, most of the troops were breaking ranks and heading for the hills or hightailing it to their loved ones.

This helped to relieve the guilt he was feeling at what he was about to do.

Rounding a bend in the road, Tick-Tock spotted the outer fence. Relief washed through him when he saw that the gate was still manned. With everyone running blind and the dead coming at them fast, he figured it would be abandoned or overrun. He was also relieved to see armed men and women spread out along the length of the fence, telling him that not everyone had run.

Pulling up to the opening, he called out to the guard, “What’s going on? I can’t get anyone on the radio.”

“Standard operating procedure,” she replied. “If the channel you’re using is jammed with traffic, move up two channels. Commander Styles is the only one allowed to transmit on three, and he’s organizing our defenses right now. If you need to call something in, move down to channel two.”

Turning to his driver, he asked with exasperation, “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I’ve never heard it before,” she replied.

The guard broke in, saying, “Only platoon and squad leaders have radios, so she probably didn’t know.”

“So what’s happening?” Tick-Tock asked her. “Where are the dead?”

Waving her hand to encompass the forest all around them, she replied, “From what I’ve heard, they’re everywhere. The dead that split off from the main group coming at us from the west are hitting the outer fence along the lake right now. There were more of them than we thought, and they’ve moved along it all the way to the east of the fort. We have a big herd coming from the southwest, and the main group from the west left the road and is coming at us cross-country now.”

“How bad is it to the east?” Tick-Tock asked.

“There aren’t many dead-asses in that direction yet,” the guard told him. “Right now we’re pulling troops from over there to reinforce some of the other sections of the fence. We’re keeping the gates open until the last minute to take in stragglers and the recon teams that are still out. You’re probably the last of the stragglers, though, because we just got a report that the Ds have made it to this road. If anyone else is out there, they’re cut off or dead.”

Knowing that he still had a chance to get Denise and run, Tick-Tock told his driver, “Get to the fort as fast as you can.”

Having heard that the dead were right behind her, she wasted no time in getting him there.

As the Jeep skidded to a stop near the main gate, Tick-Tock jumped out and ran for the gate, slowing as he joined the steady flow of people going into Fort Redoubt. These were the very old, the infirm and young children. Outside of the fort, troops were preparing to board the last of the trucks and Jeeps that would take them to the perimeter. Watching as one by one they loaded up and pulled away, he looked around for his Jeep and driver. Seeing that it, too, was being piled with ammunition and readied to go out, he resolved that they would have to walk.

Hearing gunfire from the far side of the fort, he was reassured that the defenses along the lake were still intact. Once he got Denise out of the fort, they could head to the east and make their breakout from there. He would deal with the landmines by lobbing heavy rocks onto them to set them off, and the wire could be cut with his K-bar knife after he disabled the electricity flowing through it.

Thinking it through, he decided that if the guards were still there, more than likely they would join him in his escape. Everything was going to hell fast, and the Zs were on their way, so they probably didn’t want to hang around to be a main entrée. Who knows, he thought, maybe one of them even has a layout of the mines?

Deep in the flow of refugees, Tick-Tock was carried into the chaos of the courtyard. In the waning light of the sun, hundreds of people crowded around, yelling to one another as they searched for loved ones or asking a million questions of the few troops stationed there. Moving slowly through the dense crowd toward the hospital, he stopped when he heard someone call his name. Turning in a circle, he finally spotted one of his people wending her way
toward him through the swarm of people.

“You saved me a trip coming to find you,” Tick-Tock called to her over the din. “I’m going to get Denise out of the hospital. I need you to get everyone else together and meet me outside the gate. One of you bring some wirecutters if you can find them.”

Not wanting to be mobbed by people begging to go with them, he didn’t add that they were getting the hell out of Dodge.

As he turned to go, she stopped him by saying, “Denise isn’t in the hospital. She checked herself out.”

“Where is she?” Tick-Tock asked.

Pointing to where the parapets on the inside of the walls were being hastily manned, the woman said, “She’s up there somewhere.”

“I’ll find her, you go get the rest of the group,” Tick-Tock told her as he headed for the nearest ladder.

Russellville, Arkansas:

As Cage and an NCO passed him in the Major’s outer office, Steve could smell a burnt odor coming off them. Expecting to be kept waiting since they had the fire to deal with, he was surprised when Cage waved to him and said, “Come with me.”

Although the couch he was half-lounging on was the most comfortable thing he had sat in for days, Steve wasted no time in jumping up and following the two men. Once inside Cage’s office, the Major waved him toward the chair in front of his desk and said, “Sorry about keeping you waiting. We’ve had a few problems.”

“Fire in the radio room,” Steve commented as he sat down. Both men appeared grim, so he asked, “How bad was it?”

“We won’t be ordering pizza anytime soon,” the NCO said.

Cage gave the Staff Sergeant a dirty look as he said, “I’d like to introduce the newly demoted Private Fagan, my straight man.”

After exchanging greetings, Steve said, “If there’s anything we can do to help while we’re staying here, just let us know.”

Fagan gave a half-laugh and asked, “Can you fix a radio?”

Steve smiled and said, “I can’t, but I have someone in my group that can.”

Both men looked at him skeptically, so Steve told them about how he and Brain had been working at the radio station when the HWNW virus broke out, then gave them a synopsis of how his group had only managed to make it this far because of the technician’s knowledge.

When he was finished, Cage looked at Fagan and said with raised eyebrows, “It won’t hurt to give him a shot at it.”

Fagan shrugged and said, “I don’t see how he could do any more damage. It looked like everything was pretty much fried, sir. And if he does get it to work…” Fagan shrugged.

This was enough for Cage. It would take two days to get a replacement radio to the base, and that was far too long to be out of contact. Standing, he said, “Then let’s do it.”

Fort Redoubt:

With her long brown hair tucked up in a black bandana and her face turned toward the rapidly darkening forest, Tick-Tock almost didn’t recognize Denise as he approached her. Stopping only because the woman seemed unsteady on her feet and was leaning too far backward, he reached out to keep her from falling off the parapet.  When she turned at his touch, his heart leapt with joy when he saw her face. Changing his reach from a steadying hand to enveloping her in a hug, he said, “It’s me, Babe.”

In disbelief, Denise said, “Tick-Tock?”

“I just got back,” he explained. “What in the hell are you doing up here?”

Clutching him tightly, she said, “They had so many people coming into the hospital that were so badly wounded that I felt guilty for being there just because I was a little dizzy. Rick came through looking for volunteers to man the walls, so I got up, got dressed and came out here.”

Loosening his grip on her, Tick-Tock quickly grabbed her again when she started to fall over.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” he told her sternly, his thoughts on how he would get them away from the fort.

“I can stand if I lean against something,” she explained.

“Can you walk?” he asked, his heart dropping at the reality of the situation.

“I made it this far,” she told him.

And it looks like just doing that wiped you out, Tick-Tock thought to himself.

Trying to think of another way out of the fort besides on foot, he came up blank. There was no way Denise could make it as far as the gate, much less away from the dead that were swarming the area. Even with the help of his people, it would be impossible.

His thoughts were interrupted as Denise reached out to caress his shoulder and ask, “What are you doing back here, Honey? I thought you were out with the patrols?”

Not wanting to tell her the about their now aborted escape, Tick-Tock smiled and said, “I came here to be with you, Babe.”

***

His shoulder aching, Lieutenant Wilkes pulled the string on the bow back and let his arrow fly. Seeing it pierce the eye of one of the dead, he didn’t stop to congratulate himself on his aim as he drew another from his quiver. Feeling only three left, he pulled one out and nocked it as he looked around at the men and women in his command to assess how many arrows they had left. With an audible grunt of displeasure, he saw that most had the same or even less than he did. They had each started off with thirty apiece, but the dead coming at them down the road were so numerous that they had almost used them up in the first five minutes of contact.

Not wanting anyone to use their firearms and attract more dead toward them, he called out, “Fall back to the outer wire. Fall back to the outer wire. We’ll rearm at the gate.”

Pleased to see his men and women retreating in an orderly manner as they fired their remaining bolts before turning and running for the safety of the wire, Wilkes made sure that everyone was past him before he followed. Fatigued and winded from the ongoing battle he had been fighting for the past three hours, his feet felt like lead as he picked them up and dropped them in a faltering jog. Behind him, the mob of dead, indifferent to the feeling of being tired or the need to breath, only took seconds to cover the fifty feet to where he and his command had taken their stand.

Looking ahead, Wilkes noticed that the men and women who had already made it to safety were taking up position behind the razor wire on either side of the gate and were switching from bows and arrows to automatic weapons. Seeing that their numbers were bolstered by two Jeeps with machine guns mounted on them, he started waving and shouting, “No gunfire, no gunfire.”

In reply, they screamed for him to get down.

Fear shot through Wilkes when he realized what was happening. The hours of listening to the constant whining of the dead had made him inured to their noise. This, coupled with his own labored breathing and the blood pounding in his ears, made him deaf to the sound of the dead only feet behind him.

Turning his head slightly, Wilkes could see dirty hands reaching out to him from at least a dozen reanimated corpses. Feeling a surge of adrenalin, it lasted for only a second before turning into a sick feeling in his stomach. Fearing that he would be ripped apart by the dead before they were gunned down if he dropped to the ground, he also knew he would never make it the last twenty feet to the gate before the dead caught him.

Opting for the long shot, he dropped down.

Dozens of automatic rifles and two .50 caliber machine guns opened up, their bullets tearing into the wall of dead flesh surging down the road. Thick, black ochre sprayed out as the rounds impacted the reanimated corpses, covering the ground in a sheet. Those hit by the heavy machine guns literally flew apart while the rounds from the automatic weapons punched neat entry holes and ragged exit wounds through the bodies of the dead. Dancing and shuddering from bullets that hit their extremities and torsos, only the Zs hit in the brain or the spinal column fell in the first salvo.

Seeing that they had literally obliterated the dead closing on Lieutenant Wilkes, the defenders of Fort Redoubt reloaded and switched from firing on full automatic to squeezing off short bursts into the craniums of their attackers. While most of them were more than proficient with the bow and arrow due to long hours spent practicing, the rationing of ammunition for their firearms showed in their marksmanship. By the time the last zombie dropped to the ground in a spray of bone, brain and black blood, they had fired off half their ammunition.