The Great Wreck (38 page)

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“What’s
taking him so long?” Birch asked as the others crammed into two shuttles that
looked like something out of
The Road
Warrior
. Each van had steel plates welded over all the windows with view
slots cut in them just big enough to peer through and shoot out of yet small
enough to kept groping hands out. On top, Birch had cut two openings in each
van and mounted a .50 machine gun on top. That allowed a gunner to pop out of
the roof and clear away any dead that might have gotten onto the sides of the
shuttle. On the front and back of each shuttle, Birch had also welded large
snow plows to push the dead out of the way of the vehicle. When the Doc saw
them, he laughed and said, “Birch, you fixing on needing to push any cattle out
of the way?” referring to the “cattle catchers” mounted on the front of older
trains.

“The
dead,” Birch said without a smile, “I plan on plowing through the dead, so you
might call it a dead catcher.”

Doc
stopped laughing and had said, “If we need plows to get through that many dead,
we are all good and truly fucked.”

“Amen,
Doc,” Birch had replied.

Birch
had taken one last look at the monitors that showed the tens of thousands of
dead pushing up against the south wall and determined that they were good and
truly fucked. But he was determined to see that every last one of the people
climbing in the shuttles would survive. If he couldn’t manage that, he’d make
sure they at least had a painless death.

Unbeknownst
to the others, he had rigged several hundred pounds of explosive under each
shuttle. If they got into trouble, say the dead managed to get inside or the
shuttle ran off the road and got stuck, he could blow either one or both from a
little switch he had installed on the dashboard.

He
hoped it didn’t come to that. He also hopped he would not have to leave Thomas
behind but he could see out of the ground floor of the parking garage past the
buildings of the government center and to the south gate. He could see the
dead’s arms and legs sticking through places where the gate was breaking free.
He could see that the gate was not going to hold much longer.

“Doc?”
he asked looking at their leader.

Doc
just nodded and Birch jogged over to a jury rigged control planed switching the
power from the building to the east gate. The lights in the garage died
immediately. Birch hit another button and the east gate began to slowly open
up. On the other side, Birch and his crew had spent months creating a miles
long corridor of chain link fence as free as possible of cars and other
obstructions. There wasn’t anything they could do about the heavy trucks,
tanks, busses, and other vehicles that were too heavy for them to move so they
left them in place. This created an escape route that looked a little like a
car obstacle course and in the early darkness of the morning, it’d be worse.
But if they moved slowly, they’d be OK. They’d be able to clear the Green Zone
and make it out the east to the warehouse without attracting the attention of
the masses of dead swarming up from the south. That is, if they got out of here
in time. If that gate came down and they were spotted by the dead, all bets
were off.

“Birch!”
Marti yelled as she clawed her way out the first shuttle, “What the fuck!? The
emergency lights are out in the basement and Thomas won’t be able to see
anything!

Birch
signed. He knew Marti had taken a liking to Thomas, but he had to think of all
the others. And this would solve the problem of what to do with the crazy fuck
they had locked up down there.

“Birch!”
she screamed again, then turned on Doc, “Doc! We can’t leave him!”

“We’ll
give him just a few more minutes,” Doc said, “But then we have to go Marti or
we’ll all die.”

“He
won’t make it down there without any light,” she said grabbing a flashlight
from the shuttle and sprinting towards the door.

Doc
yelled after her, “Hurry, Marti! The gate is going to go any minute!” He looked
at the gate and wondered if it might fail any
second
. But he’d wait as long as he could for Marti.

Doc
felt Birch tug at his sleeve and point toward the gate, “Doc, tell me I am
hallucinating. Tell me that the fear has addled my brain and I am not seeing
that,” Birch said as he pointed towards the south wall.

Doc
peered through the darkness and could see the south gate bulging inwards and
their make shift support of cars beginning to fail. Then he saw what Birch was
pointing at: the heads and arms of the dead poking over the top of the gate.
And the wall to either side of the gate, “I think we are in a world of shit,
old friend. I think that not only is that gate going to come down, but the
whole south wall as well.”

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James
and I stood in the pitch black darkness. We’d tried every hall I could find for
nothing. Each door lead to an office.

We
were dead.

“Well,
we could go back to the cells and lock ourselves in. Hope the dead don’t find
us,” James said. For him to suggest that we go back into the cells let me know
just how dead we were. I couldn’t see any better solution and by now the others
had to have left.

We
slid our hands along the wall making our way back to where we hoped the cells
were. My hand came across the metal handle of a crash bar and I pushed it and
opened the door to find the dim red glow of the emergency exit sign, “Thank
God!” I said and James let out a whoop.

We
raced up the stairs in the dull, red light to the first floor. I spotted a sign
that pointed towards the parking garage. We sprinted down the hallway towards
the garage. The others may be gone but James and I could find a spot on top of
one of the buildings and hunker down until the dead passed.

We
turned right around a corner and nearly smashed into Marti, “Thomas!”

“Marti!
You didn’t leave!” I said as we hugged each other.

“We
were about too! The whole south gate is coming down! We need to run!”

We
ran.

We
bolted down the long hallway turning left and right so often I lost track of
where we were. The emergency lights were almost all out. It was a stone cold
miracle that there were any on in the stairwell. Without Marti and her
flashlight we would have never made it. We followed her down another long
stretch of dark hallway, her flashlight bobbing up and down along the walls and
floor and burst out into the parking garage.

“My
God!” Birch yelled, “The wall’s coming down! Everyone in! James up in the front
shuttle and take the roof gun. Marti and Thomas, into the second shuttle and
get your rifles out the back ports!”

We
jumped into the second van as James jumped in the first and quickly made our
way to the back. I pulled my rifle out, checked the ammunition clip and looked
out the back port of the shuttle. Marti did the same as we knelt next to each
other and watched out the back.

I
could see that the gate was going to fail. I could also see that even if the
gate hadn’t failed, the waves of dead would have made it in anyways as the
mounting pressure slowly pushed the dead higher and higher until they would
eventually spill over the top.

I
watched the first of the dead tumble over the sagging gate and land inside the
green zone. He stood up and looked around as if surprise that he’d had actually
made it in. In any horror movie this might have been funny, a moment of comic
relief but the moment was short lived as the hundreds of dead behind him came
pouring over the top of the gate.
  

This
lasted for a few seconds as the south gate buckled and finally collapsed with
thousands of dead tumbling into the compound. The walls to the left and right
gave a few seconds after the gate did and now the whole southern perimeter of
the compound was exposed to the dead outside. They rushed in with the force of
a flood as the tens of thousands behind them pushed forward. It would only be a
matter of seconds before they spotted the two idling vans. And as soon as the
first van pulled forward, the dead would lock on and the chase would begin.

I
heard the first shuttle drop into gear and begin to slowly move forward. A
second later, our shuttle lurched ahead and the two vehicles began to slowly
make their way out of the parking garage. Birch must have hopped that by moving
slowly, we wouldn’t attract the attention of the dead.

He
was wrong.

The
hundreds of dead at the leading edge of the wave spotted us and began to moan
and shuffle towards us. A second later I heard the first scream of a sprinter,
then another, followed by dozens more. After that I lost track. There must have
been thousands of sprinters mixed in among all those walkers. Within seconds
they had made their way to the front of the masses and were tearing a path
towards us.

Doc
sat up front of the first shuttle with Harriet at the wheel, “OK, Harriet, slow
and easy. Just like we practiced.”

Harriet
put the shuttle into gear and eased the heavy machine forward heading out of
the parking garage and towards the east gate. No sooner had she began moving,
then the screams of the dead behind her began in earnest. Doc could see the
fear in her face and put a hand on her shoulder, “Never mind them, you just
focus on getting us to that gate. We get through that, and thirty seconds later
it will shut the dead in, OK?”

Harriet
nodded and gripped the wheel tightly as they rolled out from the garage and
down the quarter mile stretch of road that lead to the east gate.

Birch’s
voice came over the radio, “Uh, Doc?”

Doc
picked up the CB handle and responded, “Yes, Birch?”

“We
might want pick it up a bit. Take a look out your rear view mirror.”

Doc
looked back at his side mirror as the south wall collapsed entirely. Then he saw
the hundreds of sprinters screaming and tearing their way towards the two
shuttles. If the shuttles didn’t speed up, the sprinters would be here in
seconds.

“Harriet,
hit it!” Doc yelled.

Harriet
hit the gas and the shuttle lurched forward, its wheels squealing along the
pavement, the back end fishtailing dangerously across the road.

In
the second shuttle, Birch watched Harriet’s vehicle swerve all over the road
and come close to tipping over. He held his breath as it leaned to the left and
then far over to the right before settling down and hauling ass towards the
east gate. He glanced in his side mirrors as he let out a long sigh and got his
shuttle up to speed. The dead were closing in fast, “Get ready folks, they’ll
get to us before we can get to the gate.

In
the back I watched the dead closing in on the back of the shuttle and took the
safety off my rifle. Marti leaned over and put her hand behind my head pulling
me to her. We kissed for a moment, then got back to our guns. The sprinters
were pushing past their slower dead compatriots and were soon breaking free.

“Thomas!
Marti! Wait until they close in, just before they leap! Head shots only!”

I
smiled at Marti, “He thinks this is my first rodeo!” I yelled over the
screaming of the dead and the howling of the engine, “Just hold the shuttle
steady, Birch and we’ll do the rest!”

I
zeroed in on the first batch of sprinters, waited for them to close in on the
back of the shuttle and popped off a few rounds. The first couple missed but
the next took at two sprinters getting ready to leap. I squeezed off a few more
and another sprinter fell. Marti joined in and we began to systematically take
out the leading edge of the sprinters. Above me I heard Allen begin to let off
with the .50 caliber in nice controlled bursts as the dead began to close in on
the back of the shuttle.

Up
in the driver’s seat Birch watched as Harriet passed through the east gate. The
dead were hard on their heels and some would make it through the gate before it
closed up again, but they could handle that. Birch was worried that the dead
would start to flood over the fences they had put up once they heard all the
noise form the shuttles and the gunfire. Birch passed through the gate and
watched as it began to close up, the automatic timer they had installed doing
its thing. Then the gates stopped closing.

Birch
glanced back and forth to the road ahead and the gate behind willing the gate
to close up the last five feet but to no avail. It was stuck and the dead were
now pouring through, “Doc, we’ve got more trouble,”

“More
than usual? More than we are in now?” Doc replied incredulously.

“’Fraid
so. Gate’s stuck open.”

“You
have got to be fucking kidding me!” Doc said. Birch had to laugh. Getting Doc
to swear was one of his favorite past times. Doc hated to swear so it was a
good day to get him to drop the F-bomb. And on any other day than this, it
would set Birch off laughing.

“Nice
one, Doc. We still have our Missouri Surprise,” he said thinking to himself, if
we make it that far as he watched as Harriet weaved around the military
vehicles that were still in the road. His heart leapt up in to his throat again
as she clipped the edge of a semi-truck jackknifed in the street. He looked in
his side view mirrors and saw the dead were pouring through the gate and
beginning to closing in, “Harriet, you dump that rig baby, and we’re all dead.”

He
could hear Harriet in the background reply, “Tell that loud mouth motherfucker
to shut the hell up and let me concentrate.”

Doc
laughed in spite of the situation they were in and said, “Harriet thanks you
for your concern. Furthermore she thanks you for your keen observations and
advises you shut the hell up.”