The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (19 page)

Jeremy was sitting on the cold steel ramp of
the idling Stryker throwing a ball made from a rag tied in knots
out into the parking lot where Jumper was happily chasing it down
and retrieving it for another throw. The dog was content to play
this game forever it seemed.

Sarah sat on one of the bench seats in the
vehicle reading a paperback while Reese snoozed on the opposite
bench, an unlit stogie protruding from his lips.

The radio crackled to life. Sarah sat upright
stiffly and adjusted her headset. She looked over at Reese. “That’s
Hernandez, a situation is developing at Dogwood Hill!”

Jeremy and Reese both slid on their headsets
to listen to the radio traffic.

The Stryker and crew were acting as sort of a
Quick Reaction Force fire team in case Dogwood mission encountered
any problems. It appeared that those problems had materialized,
like they always do for any mission plan after the first contact
with the enemy, no matter how well the operation was devised.

Jeremy threw the rag-ball away one last time
and grabbed his rifle from where it leaned against the ramp and
slung it over his head and shoulder. He patted the pockets of his
cargo pants to reassure himself that he had plenty of full
magazines for his M4 pattern rifle. His 9mm was strapped to his
side, but the suppressed .22 was on his bunk with his pack. He
surmised that he wouldn’t need either for this mission.

“Stay!” he ordered Jumper when the dog
returned with the rag ball. The dog sat down behind the ramp and
forlornly eyed the boy as he entered the vehicle.

“What are you doing?” Sarah asked. Behind her
Reese was climbing into the commander seat and energizing the
.50-cal remote firing system.

“I’m coming with you.”

Sarah shook her head. “No, I don’t think
that’s a good idea.”

“I’m not asking,” Jeremy replied sharply,
steel in his eyes. He sat down hard on the bench seat next to
her.

“Look,” she said earnestly to him, “the
situation out there is deteriorating rapidly. It’s going to get
really messy and really dangerous.”

He smiled up at her. “I’ve been doing
dangerous for the last three months, I can handle myself.” He also
wanted to go along to protect her. He imagined that he was her
knight in shining armor, although he kept that fantasy to
himself.

“We’re rolling!” Hernandez informed them over
the radio after getting the all-clear/go from Murchison, who was on
watch on the armory’s roof.

“Damn it, Jeremy!” Sarah stood up and hit the
button to raise the ramp. When it was locked tight, she exited out
a back hatch and ran around the front of the Stryker to open the
gate. Jeremy swiftly crawled up to the driver’s cockpit behind
Hernandez’s seat to watch the forward looking monitor. Being ten
years old had its advantages; allowing him to go where most of the
others couldn’t dream of fitting.

Hernandez gazed back at him with a half-smile
as he grabbed hold of the back of her seat to pull himself into a
sitting position. “I guess you’re coming, kid?”

He had to shove her M4 rifle to the side of
the hell-hole to make more room for his butt while he nodded his
head and he locked eyes with her, waiting for a challenge.

“Just note I advised against it. Stay out of
the way unless we’re engaging the crazies and then make sure you’re
shooting at them and not any of us!” She turned back around and
drove the Stryker through the gate as it opened. “Now get your ass
back into the back and hold on!”

Sarah reentered the Stryker after locking the
gate and the armored vehicle left the secured compound to the care
of Pickeral and Murchison.

The Stryker set off on the shortest route
possible. Hernandez had the area’s map committed to memory and
drove the 8-wheeled vehicle like a madwoman through housing
developments, across lawns and fields and down side streets in the
most direct route possible to get to the OMS staging area. The
engine hiccupped once which gave her pause, then continued purring
like a kitten. She made a mental note to have Carroll do a
diagnostic run-through on the engine when this shit was over
today.

The Stryker was two minutes out when Heinlich
heard a static-filled transmission over his headset. He cupped his
hand over the earpiece to block out the banshee howls of the
crazies and listened again.

“Dogwood Two, this is Dogwood One. Do you
copy, over?” It was Shavers’ voice, barely above a whisper.

Holy
shit
! Heinlich thought to
himself.
They’re
alive
!

“This is Dogwood Two. I copy, over.” He tried
to keep the excitement out of his voice.

There was some more static and the first part
of the transmission was garbled, “… haven’t breached… interior, but
… all over us. Over.” The reply was again in a whisper.

“Dogwood One, hold tight. Relief is on the
way. Keep this frequency open.”

He heard a double squelch as the First
Sergeant keyed his mike twice in reply that the message was
received.

Across a scrub-field to his left he heard the
racing diesel motor of the Stryker approaching and then between two
distant houses the vehicle bounded into view, kicking up a plume of
dust as it sped toward his location. He undid the chain from around
the fence and slid the gate open silently on its rollers.

What
a
beautiful
sight
, he thought to himself as the armored transport
vehicle motored through the gate and ground to a halt behind the
Humvee. Heinlich threw the gate shut behind them and wrapped the
chain back around to secure it.

The rear hatch of the Stryker opened and
Sarah stepped out, followed by Reese and to Heinlich’s surprise,
the boy. Corporal Hernandez came around from the front after
climbing out of the driver’s cockpit.

“What’s the plan, Sergeant?” Hernandez asked,
walking up to him.

“Did you hear Dogwood One’s
transmission?”

“Yeah, I copied it.”

Heinlich rubbed his hand over his sparse
blond beard and was about to reply when their headsets came alive
with PFC Carroll’s voice. “We have hostiles in sight. Fifty meters
to the west and one hundred meters to our northwest and closing.
They ain’t excited yet, however, they’re steadily moving this
way.”

“Don’t engage and stay down,” Heinlich
ordered, his mind racing to put together a plan to get them out of
the developing situation. The heat was turning up on the cook pot
they were in and he needed to get them the hell out without putting
them into the fire.

“Okay, we’re gonna have ourselves a complete
Charlie Foxtrot on our hands if they detect us in here. We gotta
act fast.” He looked at Sarah. “I want you and the boy to play pied
piper for us.” He quickly laid out his plan and threw the keys for
the Humvee to the girl.

He then addressed Jeremy. “You’re going to be
her door gunner and keep her safe. Make sure those things follow
you.”

Jeremy nodded and replied in his most
grown-up voice. “Don’t worry, Sergeant, I’ll look after her.”

Hernandez winked at the Sergeant, indicating
her approval of his idea for getting the teenager and kid out of
there.

“Go! Now!” he ordered as he ran to the gate
to open it. Already the first of the crazies were in sight.

Sarah started the Humvee, swung it in a tight
U-turn around the Stryker, and shot out of the gate. Jeremy’s head
poked up behind the open window of the passenger door with his
rifle pointing out the window. When they reached the street they
raced across the pavement to the field that the Stryker had taken
on its way in. As soon as they were in the field, Sarah honked the
horn repeatedly and Jeremy took several potshots back at the
growing swarm.

It was as if someone instantly injected them
with a pure dose of high quality methamphetamine. The front ranks
let out a chorus of growls and garbled screams and sprinted toward
the sound. At once the whole swarm moved in concert with the
leaders.

Heinlich, Reese, and Hernandez hurriedly
raced into the Stryker as the Humvee shot away. Reese resumed his
seat at the commander’s station and watched the action through the
remote cameras while keeping the .50 cal. trained toward the gate.
The Sergeant and the Corporal stood through one of the hatches and
scrutinized the scene with their eyes barely showing above the deck
hatch as the living mass swarmed down and around the compound at
speeds that seemed humanly impossible. They were so thick a gnat
couldn’t have squeezed its ass between them.

“Look!” Hernandez whispered in his ear,
nodding out toward the other fenced-in lot that held a plethora of
Army vehicles that would have been destined for overseas action.
The swarm hit the fence like a giant steamroller in their
single-minded raging quest to get to the noise that was driving
them into a rabid foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy.

The fence collapsed inward without resistance
as the swarm plowed through and around it, obscuring the large lot
with their numbers. A carpet of living tissue swarmed over the
entirety of the lot, smothering every vehicle and each other as
they clambered over everything in their way in their mad pursuit of
the distant Humvee.

The opposite fence along the road frontage of
the lot suffered the same fate and crashed noisily to the ground,
disappearing under their massed bodies.

The bunker-like building of the OMS Annex
stood between the remainder of the squad and the swarm, forcing the
crazies to veer around parallel to the fence line as they raced
like one impenetrable storming mass along it, keeping that fence
from suffering the same fate by the mob as the one the defenders
had seen flattened a moment ago.

Sarah stopped honking the horn when the swarm
was approximately fifty meters back. “Hold on!” she called to
Jeremy as she depressed the accelerator and the Humvee leaped
forward, throwing up a cloud of dirt and dust as it sped across the
dry field. The plan was to constantly keep ahead of the crazies,
stopping intermittently to sound the horn and steer them in the
direction she wanted them to go. Hopefully that would be away from
the trapped squad and out of the path of their retreat to Gypsy
Hill.

She detected butterflies of fear stirring in
the pit of her stomach but also an exhilarating excitement; a
heightened awareness that she usually only experienced during an
orgasm. She had been in plenty of engagements with these things
before, though never with such an overpowering force as the one
that was moving like an unstoppable ocean tide behind her. She
glanced over at Jeremy and saw the big grin on his face. He felt
the same thrill of excitement from it too, she surmised. He saw her
looking at him and winked at her. She winked back with a smile. She
felt invincible and knew he felt the same way. They were kindred
spirits, untouchable! She laughed out loud as they drove through an
overgrown yard, barely avoiding a rusting swing set, and Jeremy
laughed along with her.

The horde followed in its mad lust for
blood.

The Sergeant, Hernandez, and Reese watched
from the safety of the Stryker as the swarm flowing past the annex
slowed to a trickle of individuals, mostly those sick, hurt or
elderly. Many lingered in place, confused or exhausted, as the
adrenaline rush wore off.

Several crazies were at the gate, peering
through the links as if searching for them, snapping their teeth
and giving warning growls when they bumped into each other. Their
bloodshot eyes gave them the demonic appearance of the
possessed.

“Carroll,” Heinlich whispered into his mic,
or at least what passed for a whisper with his bearish voice, “this
is Sergeant Heinlich, over.”

“Copy, over.”

“Do you still have eyes on the main body of
hostiles, over?”

“Roger, Sergeant. Trailing edge is about half
a klick to the northwest.”

“Copy. Let me know when they are OOS.” Once
the swarm was out of sight, they could engage the stragglers
without fear of the main body doubling back on them.

“Wilco, out,” Carroll’s voice crackled over
his headset.

“Reese, when I give the word I want that 50
ready to rock. Hernandez, get up front and ready to start this
thing on my go and get us close to the gate so we can exfiltrate,”
the Sergeant whispered his orders then ducked into the interior of
the Stryker. Hernandez lifted herself out of the hatch and
crab-crawled, keeping the remote weapons system bundle between her
and the creatures until she reached the driver’s hatch and dropped
through into the cockpit without being seen by the watching
crazies.

Reese looked bemused. “Sergeant, if I fire
the fifty through that fence we are going to compromise its
integrity.”

Heinlich nodded. “Hold your fire until we’re
through, unless circumstances dictate otherwise.”

After a few minutes Carroll came back over
the radio. “Sergeant, main body of hostiles is OOS.”

“Roger. Bring the team down. We’re popping
smoke.”

“Corporal,” he ordered Hernandez over the
radio, “as soon as you see the team exit the building fire this
thing up and head toward the gate.”

Hernandez gave a brief nod of understanding
and the comms went quiet.

“Reese, when she starts it up, be ready with
that 50.”

Sergeant Heinlich un-dogged the hatch
adjacent to the one he had been standing in and stood ready to
throw it open so that the squad could rapidly assume a defensive
line of fire when they entered the Stryker and clear the area
around the gate.

Within a minute the door to the building
burst open and the two men and the woman rushed from the entryway,
rifles shouldered and bogged down with green metal containers of
spare ammo and mags that they carried in a run toward the
Stryker.

After opening the top hatch the Sergeant
ducked back inside and immediately threw open the Stryker’s rear
infantry hatch and jumped out, holding it open for them to pile
in.