The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (17 page)

“It’s ten hundred hours and the lookouts just
gave the all clear. The mission is a go.”

Jeremy watched on the screen while Sarah slid
open the gate and the two vehicle procession rolled out, turned
left onto a two-lane blacktop road, and rumbled out of sight around
a small lake. The gate was slammed shut and re-chained within
moments of the Humvee clearing it.

Chapter Seven

Lamar surveyed the road ahead of him through the
dirty windshield of the Escalade. He sat on the berm of Interstate
66 slightly west of Haymarket, Virginia. His black Cadillac was the
lead in a procession of six vehicles. They sat in a line behind the
Escalade, a variety of late model high-end vehicles with their
engines idling while Lamar decided how he was going to get around a
jumbled wreck of cars piled about the mangled remains of a tractor
trailer. The crash had blocked all three lanes of the road ahead of
them, including the grassy berm. It must have happened during the
morning rush on that day over three months ago. The twisted
wreckage was burned and rusted and had caused a river of cars to
become dammed up behind them. The battered cars and trucks had sat
that way ever since; the skeletal corpses of the victims still
tangled within the blackened and contorted metal and shattered
glass.

The convoy had been driving up the highway
berm, trying to edge past the eternal traffic jam onto the
relatively vehicle free roadway beyond the pile-up. Now their path
was blocked entirely.

“Wut da fuck we gonna do now, nigga?”
demanded the passenger beside him.

“Ah tol’ you keep your grill shut while I’s
thinkin” Lamar snapped back. He leaned forward over the steering
wheel to observe the mess before them.

The other gangster, known as 2-Stroke, glared
at him menacingly, however, he kept his mouth shut. They had
already gone to the mat to determine the pecking order here and he
knew better than to challenge the big man again.

When they had entered the roadblock into the
Escalade’s GPS unit, it had recalculated their route and was
telling them to ‘turn around when possible’ and take an exit that
would lead them through Haymarket. Lamar, who his crew called
Juicy-Juice, didn’t like the idea of going through another town,
especially one that would be loaded with the creepy-creeps.

“How long we gonna be hangin here fo, JJ?”
his sister asked from the back. “Jus use yo chrome-ass ride to push
through dem rusty-ass cars, foo!”

He turned in his seat as if he were going to
reach back and slap her. “Bitch, ah ain’ gonna mess-up mah Caddy!
You need to put a twinkie in yo mouth or sumtin.”

His mind went back to the problem at hand. He
needed to figure out how to get his crew on the other side of that
mess. Lamar gripped the steering wheel hard causing the large
muscles in his arms to bulge. Ever since he had made the decision
to move his ragtag crew of gangsters out of Dirty City, things
seemed to keep going from bad to worse. Those things out there had
no fear. They’d come right at you and fade your ass if you didn’t
stop them. He had lost several new jacks and a vehicle to attacks
by the creepy-creeps and now this shit. His crew was down to
fifteen, including the motherfucking B-H Blood next to him. He
never thought in all his days he would ever be hanging ‘n banging
with a Bounty Hunter.

No
Grape
Street
Watts
Crip
eva
be
caught
alive
kickin
it
with
any
Blood
.
C’s
up
,
B’s
down
!
Since
da
creepy
-
creeps
be
out
‘
n
about
now
,
the
enemy
of
my
enemy
n
all
dat
shit
.

Lamar shook his corned-rowed head at the
thought.

He peered in the rearview mirror at the
assortment of vehicles lined up behind him. They’d be sitting ducks
if the creepy-creeps come at them right now.

“Yo, Sis. Go back an’ tell dat nigga Crazy-8
git his ass up here,” Juicy-Juice ordered his sister Takeisha.

“I ain’ goin’ out dere!” she snapped back at
him, crossing her arms across her ample bosom. She stared up at him
in the mirror with her eyes just daring him to do something.

“I ain’ got time for dis shit.” He looked
over at the man next to him. “2-Stroke, go git his ass up
here.”

2-Stroke smiled at him darkly, displaying
several gold-capped teeth, then grabbed his AK and opened the door
to the Escalade, never taking his eyes off of Lamar. He slammed the
door and walked back to the last vehicle, a bright red 2010 Ford
F-250, and began talking with someone on the driver’s side. Lamar
stared at him impatiently in the side view mirror.

“Dat niggah gon’ be trouble,” he snarled to
himself.

2-Stroke returned and got back into the
passenger seat without saying a word. Soon a lean and powerfully
built black man was at Lamar’s window. The man was a decade younger
than Lamar’s 32 years of age and had been a rising star in one of
D.C.’s local street crews. Lamar had found him the day after the
creepy-creeps had started running rampant and the man had become
his right hand in this new crew. His face was mocha-colored, his
brown eyes cool and hard. A horseshoe-shaped scar traced a keloid
path from the corner of his left eye to the crook of his mouth,
causing his face to appear lopsided when he smiled, which he rarely
did.

“Sup, cuz?” Crazy-8 asked when Lamar put down
the window.

“Ah need you take that rig of yours and push
a path through that wreck,” Lamar ordered.

“You shittin’ me, cuz. That’ll bust up my
ride.”

Lamar’s face turned purple with rage. “Jus do
it, nigga, before dem creepy-creeps come down on our ass. You can
git another ride anywhere, anytime!”

Crazy-8 walked back to his truck cursing to
himself. 2-Stroke sat next to Lamar smiling a gold and white
smile.

“Wut da fuck you smilin’ at?” Lamar snarled
at him. He needed to get control of this dog before it bit him when
he turned his back.

After a half hour the Ford had cleared enough
of a path through the wreck that they were able to squeeze through
and continue on their way down the clear westbound interstate.

They would often come across a group of
creepy-creeps who would launch themselves at the vehicles like mad
dogs. They were incredibly fast and strong. Still, the crew had
more than enough firepower to deal with these small groups and
would shoot them down like the crazed dogs they were before they
could get too close. The further west they drove the whiter the
faces of the creepy-creeps became and the less they saw of any
brothers running with the crowds. Not that Lamar had a problem
killing another Negro— creepy-creeps of any color were fair game.
Lamar considered himself an equal opportunity killer, although he
took a certain pleasure in killing any crackers he came across
without having to worry about 5-0 coming after his ass.

This
world
belong
to
my
peeps
now
.
It
ain’t
the
white
man
world
no
more
.

They had a long way to go to get to his
cousin’s house outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. He had last talked
to him a couple of months back before the cell service disappeared.
He was poor and didn’t have much, but it would be a place where he
and his crew could chill.

“They gots-ta have food out dere in da
country,” he had told his sister weeks ago.

Lamar and his sister had roamed the decimated
city of Washington, D.C. at night while the creepy-creeps slept,
slowly increasing their numbers one or two per day until he had
built up a formidable crew. Unfortunately, almost half of his new
crew were bitches, and the few brothers he had found didn’t have
any real street experience. One sister they had picked up a couple
of weeks into the shit who was riding back with Crazy-8 was so damn
fat, but was turning into such a motherfucking stone cold killer
that if she was white they’d be calling her Frosty the Snowman! He
smiled to himself at the thought, showing his own gold. Sometimes
they found survivors that didn’t want anything to do with their way
of life, even though they were the only game in town surviving.
Lamar couldn’t leave those types breathing and competing for the
limited resources left in the hood. If prison had taught him
anything, it was how to survive on limited means. The newcomers,
whether they were the wet behind the ears newjacks or hardened
gangbangers, each had to prove themselves to Lamar against the
killer creepy-creeps, one way or another. There were plenty of gats
around the Dirty City now lying around for the picking, and Lamar
new where to look for them and find them. His crew became well
armed with a wide assortment of firearms. The creepy-creeps better
beware!

They had to finally leave Southeast D.C.
after the creepy-creep hordes had become too large and the food
supplies too low. Without the farms supplying food to the city,
stocks disappeared rapidly. They decided to escape to the country
where they would take whatever they needed from whoever got in
their way. He had the back of the Escalade packed full of dope and
guns. There had to be mothafuckers out there fiendin for a fix and
willing to do anything fo it. Lamar had the shit, and that made him
king for sure. He smiled to himself.

Dog
,
we
be
unstoppable
!

The HEMTT was backed ass to the glass at the
Kroger, although there wasn’t much glass left from where the truck
had smashed its heavy bumper through the foyer windows and wall.
The two men and the woman worked with a frenzied yet orderly speed,
wheeling cart after cart of groceries to the rear of the vehicle
where Shavers would manually heft the cart up and over the truck’s
bed and dump the contents as quickly as possible into the growing
pile of nonperishable food and supplies. It had turned out to be an
untapped treasure trove of food. Unfortunately, now that the
exterior was breached, it wouldn’t be long before the crazies found
the place and tore through it like grasshoppers ravaging a
cornfield. Between the utter rampant destruction that the creatures
would leave behind, along with their contaminated feces, the place
would become untenable for further scavenging. It was now or never
to get what they needed from the dark, dusty shelves of this
supermarket.

The Humvee sat with its motor idling in the
center of the Kroger parking lot, Heinlich still in the driver’s
seat, alertly looking methodically about him for any signs of enemy
movement while Nantz nonchalantly made slow circling arcs with the
.50-cal. on the roof of the vehicle. Carroll and Benton were in the
grocery store helping McCully procure the food and supplies.

Heinlich glanced nervously down at his watch;
fifteen minutes left before he was to give a short call to
terminate the operation over the radio. He looked back up and to
his right at the car-part distribution warehouse across the street.
The large entryway double-doors were torn off their hinges and the
dark interior beckoned like the black maw of a beast. It was a
foreboding image that gave him the willies every time he glanced in
that direction. He looked away from the warehouse with a cold
shudder and trained his eyes up Statler Boulevard past a Staples
store. It was that direction where they assumed the large horde
that used the warehouse for a den had headed for their morning
watering ritual at the old water-filled granite quarry. At the
first sign of movement along that road he would yell the abort
signal into the radio while Nantz would begin engaging and
hopefully slow the approaching critters down long enough for them
all to get out of Dodge.

“Dogwood Two. This is Gypsy Hill Base, over,”
came Pickeral’s voice over his headset snapping him out of his
reverie.

“This is Dogwood Two, go ahead,” Heinlich
replied, never taking his eyes off of his surroundings.

Hmm
-
mm
, he thought to himself
at the sound of Charlotte Pickeral’s lovely voice.
I’d
love
to
be
getting
me
some
Pickeral
about
now
instead
of
sitting
here
with
an
itchy
ass
and
the
heebie
-
jeebies
.

“Requesting Sit-Rep, over.”

Heinlich glanced down at his watch again, ten
minutes left. He replied to her with the information, daydreaming
of her soft, warm body with a whimsical smile stretching across his
face.

“Roger Dogwood Two. Let us know when you’re
Oscar Mike. This is Gypsy Hill Base out.”

He forced his mind away from the carnal
images of the older woman and looked back up the boulevard again.
Did his eye catch movement around the bend? He strained his eyes to
see.
Maybe
a
dog
or
something
,
he thought to himself. Thing was, there weren’t many dogs or cats
left anymore. They had immediately become food for the two-legged
critters.

“Nantz! Three o’clock. Anything?” he yelled
back to the wiry private.

He saw Nantz swing around to the right and
scan the area.

“I don’t see shit,” he called down.

A flock of blackbirds suddenly took to the
air doing a synchronized ballet through the clear blue sky.

Something just didn’t feel right. He glanced
at his watch again. Two minutes. “I should call it now,” he quietly
said to himself, squinting his eyes trying to see further up around
the road’s curve.