The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (26 page)

They checked in with Gypsy Hill Base and gave
their location. Pickeral asked, if it was safe for them to do so,
to make their way back to the shopping center and try to get eyes
on the Stryker.

While Sarah and Jeremy continued to negotiate
their way through the town center, driving slowly by the stoic and
imposing white-granite circuit court building, they kept watch back
down the road for any sign of pursuit. Sarah accelerated down a
clear portion of the street with her eyes glancing into the side
view mirror, and failed to see a group of crazies that stormed out
of an apartment building’s doorless entryway until it was almost
too late. When she spotted them sprinting toward the Humvee, she
instinctively jammed her foot harder on the accelerator and spun
the steering wheel sideways trying to miss the handful of creatures
in front of them. The sudden turn launched Jeremy sideways and he
banged into Sarah hard enough to knock her hands free of the
steering wheel. Without tension on the wheel, it swung back to
center and the Humvee sped diagonally across the street, loudly
slamming into a parked pickup truck with enough force to send both
occupants flying into the armored windshield.

Jeremy woke to hollow banging sounds that
sounded like they were coming from within his own head. He felt a
warm trickle of liquid coursing down his brow onto his cheek and
swiped at it with the back of his hand. He felt it smear stickily
across his face and wondered what it was. In addition to the
banging, he heard something clambering noisily overhead and forced
his eyes open. It took a moment for his vision to focus and his
mind to become alert enough to remember where he was. He was lying
sideways on the driver’s side of the Humvee, on top of something
warm and soft. The banging continued to reverberate around the
interior of the vehicle, and something heavy was moving on the
roof. His thoughts coalesced grudgingly and he had trouble putting
the events together within his head while his sight spun dreamily
before his eyes.

How
did
I
get
over
here
on
the
driver’s
seat
?
Why
did
we
stop
?

Movement across the front of the windshield
caught his eye and he groggily pushed himself upright. “Where’s my
rifle?” he mumbled.

With a startling suddenness, a Loony launched
itself through the open passenger window when it heard his voice.
It made it about halfway though and its thick hand locked around
Jeremy’s calf, pulling him roughly toward it. Jeremy let out a
shriek and grabbed hold of the steering wheel to keep from being
pulled into those snapping teeth set within a large, white, round
face of a middle-aged man’s bald head. The Loony’s other hand found
his thigh and pulled itself a little further into the Humvee.
Jeremy kicked at it with his free leg, connecting with his heel on
its nose, flattening it in a spray of blood and snot. Still the
creature held on with an iron grip, its red-rimmed eyes locking
onto his as if to say ‘give it up boy’.

He kicked again while letting his hand drop
down to his belt holster and nearly cried with relief when his hand
closed over the cold plastic of the pistol grip. He yanked it free
of the holster and extended the 9mm until the barrel was almost
touching the Loony man’s lips. The creature plunged its head
forward and bit down on the steel of the slide right when Jeremy
squeezed the trigger. The rear of the Loony’s head mushroomed out
in a red spray of gore and the thing fell limp, half in and half
out of the vehicle. Jeremy kicked at it until it slid back out of
the window.

The banging continued unabated around him. He
sat up and assessed his situation. Five or six Loonies were outside
the Humvee beating on the armored driver’s side door and window,
smearing the glass with their blood-tinged spittle as they bit
wildly at it with their teeth. Whatever was on the roof was
pounding and thrashing relentlessly trying to get in. One of the
Loonies scrambled across the Humvee’s crumpled hood, clawing across
the windshield. It stopped when it saw Jeremy on the inside of the
vehicle and opened its rotten-toothed mouth to utter a snarling
hiss at him. Its dark filth-matted hair, gaunt face, and feral eyes
gave the female a mangy, diseased look of savagery. With a
startling quickness, it reared back then dove at him through the
windshield. Its face hit with a crack and Jeremy watched with
horror as most of its front teeth snapped off at the base and its
top lip smeared sideways, splitting open like an overfilled
sausage.

The creature sat back up, dazed, blood
pouring from its mouth in a river of red. Jeremy forced his eyes
away from the woman and dove to the passenger seat, rolling up the
armored glass window. As soon as he moved the woman’s eyes
refocused on him and she launched herself at the windshield again.
Her forehead smashed into it with a loud hollow ‘thunk’, deforming
grotesquely when it impacted the heavy glass. Immediately, her eyes
went dull and she slid down, leaving a smeared trail of blood on
the windshield.

Jeremy tore his gaze off of the dead Loony on
the hood. He gasped when he saw Sarah lying slumped in the driver’s
seat, snail trails of blood cutting paths down her pretty face.

“Sarah!” he yelled and ignoring the pain in
his own head, crawled over to her side. He blotted out the sight
and sound of the Loonies at her window and holstered his pistol,
pulling her down between the seats, cradling her head in his lap.
He said a prayer of thanks when he saw the breath rise and fall in
her chest. He felt the large lump on her forehead above the
hairline where a cut was seeping blood onto her porcelain-skinned
face. He looked around for some type of cloth to compress her
wound. Before he could spot anything, the roof hatch to the .50
cal. lifted up and dropped with a bang. Then it started to rise
again. Jeremy dropped Sarah’s head and launched himself up and
back, grabbing hold of the hatch. He slammed it back down and
speedily dogged it tight. He let out his breath and collapsed back
down onto the floor with Sarah, swiping at the blood running down
his own face to keep it out of his eye.

When he looked at her again, her eyes were
open and he let out a sigh of relief while she tried to focus on
his battered and bloody face.

“You look awful,” she croaked. “But not as
bad as I feel.”

He grinned at her with bright red blood
smeared all over his face, a rather ghoulish look, she thought.

“Can you sit up?” he asked her over the loud
banging and growls from the Loonies.

Sarah nodded and he helped her up into a
sitting position. She peered out and saw the handful of creatures,
insane with rage as they tried to beat and bite their way through
the armored vehicle. Her head was still swimming and her stomach
felt like it was twisted in a knot of nausea.

“I guess we’re in a bit of a pickle, aren’t
we?” she asked him

He nodded again. “Looks like we messed up the
Humvee pretty good.”

Sarah crawled back up onto the driver’s seat,
keyed the mic for the radio, and was rewarded with a static-filled
squelch.

“Gypsy Hill Base, this is Ferguson.
Over.”

“Hi, Ferguson, we copy you. Are you at the
plaza?”

“Uhh, negative Gypsy Hill Base. We, uhh, have
a situation.” Sarah swiped at blood leaking from her forehead with
the sleeve of her shirt, staining it red. Jeremy found a half-clean
rag in the back and handed it to her to hold over her wound.

“Go ahead, Sarah, what’s wrong?” Charlotte
asked her over the radio, concern evident in her voice.

“We’ve had an accident. I think the Humvee is
messed up.”

“Copy that. Are you guys okay?” The motherly
worry was apparent in the way the woman dropped the military jargon
from the radio call.

“Um, we’re hurt, although not bad. We got
some crazies around us, but they can’t get in.”

She hoped that was the case. Her head felt
like someone was using it with an anvil and her neck and shoulders
were stiff and painful from the collision with the windshield.
Looking at Jeremy as he swooned slightly in his seat confirmed that
he wasn’t in any better shape.

There was a pause on the radio before
Charlotte came back over the net.

“We copy that. First Sergeant Shavers is here
now. He wants to know your position.”

“We’re just past the circuit court on East
Johnson.”

“Okay kids. Stay there and stay buttoned up.
We’ll get to you as soon as we can. Those things shouldn’t be able
to get in to you.” Charlotte instructed them in a comforting voice.
“If the situation changes, you call us before doing anything else.
Do you copy?”

“I copy Charlie, thanks. This is Ferguson,
out.”

Sarah glanced over and smiled at Jeremy.
“Looks like we gotta wait for the cavalry to rescue us this
time.”

Unfortunately, Jeremy knew the cavalry didn’t
always come to the rescue in time.

They patched each other up the best they
could with the first-aid kit from the Humvee and at least got the
bleeding stopped, antiseptic on, and the wounds covered with gauze.
They lay back in their seats looking like survivors from a
battlefield, trying to ignore the creatures that were pacing about
outside the vehicle. The Loonies had stopped their insane attempts
to get into the Humvee and were roaming around the two wrecked
vehicles as if probing for a weakness. Every so often the creatures
lunged and beat on the exterior if they spotted any movement or
heard any sound from inside. They would then stand as still as
statues, staring into the vehicle, breathing heavily and drooling
thin strings of spittle. It was a very unsettling sight to
observe.

“Oh man, I gotta go,” Sarah whispered to the
boy after a few minutes.

“Go where?”

She nodded her head toward her crotch and
gave him a look that said ‘
you
know’
.

“Oh,” Jeremy said as it dawned on him what
she meant.

“Can you hold it?”

Sarah shook her head. She looked out the side
window for some way to get relief. An old gray-haired crazy lady
with drool running down her wrinkled chin stared back at her,
snapping her tooth-challenged maw like a cow chewing its cud. The
few teeth that remained in her liver-colored mouth were blackened
or yellowed, with bits of rotting food stuck between them. Sarah
turned back away from the disgusting sight. On the roof of the
Humvee the crazy was still sliding around probing for a way to get
in, and Sarah wanted to shoot through the roof to stop the
incessantly distracting noise.

Instead, she reached for the key and turned
the ignition switch. They both stared at each other when the engine
turned over, caught, and roared to life.

She laughed. “I’m such an idiot.” “No, you’re
not. I didn’t think to try it either.” The front end was so
crumpled and meshed with the front quarter panel of the large
pickup truck that he couldn’t believe the engine was running.

“You’re ten, Jeremy. You don’t have a
driver’s license yet. I don’t expect you to know about this stuff.”
She grimaced at him. “Me on the other hand…”

Outside the crazies were riled up again,
beating and clawing at the Humvee.

Sarah shifted the transmission to reverse and
backed the vehicle away from the truck with a rending sound of
metal on metal. They finally tore apart and she pulled clear of the
wrecked truck with the crazies surrounding and clinging to the
Humvee. The dead crazy woman on the hood slid off and to the ground
as Sarah backed away.

“We’re outta here, dude,” she said, shifting
into forward, and the vehicle lurched ahead. The crazy on the roof
rolled off the back, landing hard on the ground, and then was
instantly back up on its feet. Something was grinding in the
Humvee’s right front end and Sarah felt a wobble in the wheel when
she accelerated. As she picked up speed the wobble transformed into
a shimmying vibration that transmitted up and into the steering
wheel, rattling her arms and making her head hurt worse. The Humvee
sped away from the crazies’ grasping hands.

“I don’t think we can go much faster,” she
stated, fighting to keep control of the wheel.

Jeremy stared out the back window at the
chasing Loonies. “We’re not going to lose them at this speed.”

He found his rifle on the floorboards and
grabbed it up. Ignoring the pain and stiffness in his shoulders, he
stood and un-dogged the roof hatch and threw it open. He stood up
in the gunner’s hole, his head barely clearing the roof. He wished
he had had the time to learn how to use the .50-cal. that was
mounted on the roof turret. It would have made quick work of the
pursuing creatures. Instead, he laid his AR rifle across the back
of the roof, braced an elbow, and took aim at one of the trailing
Loonies. With the vehicle shimmying so violently, it took him four
shots to drop the creature. He saw that the old woman Loony was
falling behind while the four younger members of its pack were
keeping pace with the limping Humvee.

Sarah swung a right onto Greenville Avenue,
smoke billowing from beneath the chassis in ever thickening
clouds.

On the roof, Jeremy was shooting at his next
target and was rewarded with the creature tumbling to the pavement
from a hit in its thigh.

Sarah slammed on the brakes and the vehicle
came to a stop, the wafting smoke carrying a scent of burning
rubber to their noses.

“Far enough!” she cried, grabbing her rifle
and jumping out of the Humvee on wobbly legs. She engaged the first
of the charging crazies at a distance of less than fifty meters.
She dropped two more of the crazies with center mass shots while
Jeremy took out the furthest one away with a shot to its stomach
area that blew out the back of its spine. The old woman Loony was
just coming around the far dogleg when they finished shooting.