The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (28 page)

Where
am
I
? The pain in
her head exploded in flashes of white light as her vision started
constricting until she was staring through a long tube surrounded
by blackness.
Mommy
? she cried in her mind,
I
don’t
feel
good
.

That was the last coherent thought that Debra
Benton ever formed.

Carroll shook Benton by the shoulders as she
lay in a daze on the couch. “Come on, baby, speak to me,” he
pleaded.

Heinlich and Nantz stood looking over his
shoulder at the woman who was staring at the ceiling with unfocused
eyes. Hernandez and Reese remained out on the porch on watch.

“She’s infected,” Nantz stated with an
impassive tone.

The Sergeant nodded. He knew that Benton and
Carroll had developed a relationship with each other, and as long
as it didn’t compromise the squad’s ability to function
professionally, he had looked the other way. In this new and
unprecedented situation in which they found themselves, the old
rules of fraternization needed to be thrown out the window
anyway.

“But she wasn’t bitten!” Carroll snarled.

“Get Derek out of here,” Heinlich ordered
Nantz.

Nantz took Carroll by the arm and tried to
pull him to his feet. The man shook him off. “I gotta do this,” he
snapped when he realized with a startling clarity what his
girlfriend was becoming. He looked up at the other two men. “Give
me a minute with her.”

Heinlich and Nantz just stood there
silently.

“Go on. Get out of here,” he hissed.

The Sergeant nodded and backed out of the
room. Nantz shrugged and turned, following Heinlich out of the
house.

“How is she?” Hernandez asked when they
stepped out into the bright afternoon sunshine.

The Sergeant shook his head silently.

A minute later a muffled blast echoed through
the house. Carroll finally emerged, his eyes hard but moist. He
handed Benton’s rifle to Nantz. “She got about half a mag left in
it.” He bowed his head and quietly walked off the porch.

Sarah watched the last of the creatures
disappear from view down the road and let out a sigh of relief. “I
think we’re in the clear now,” she whispered to the boy beside her
in the silent garage.

“What now?” he asked.

She shrugged. “We wait. Either here or in the
Humvee.”

He peered out through the small pane of glass
at the wrecked vehicle sitting in the middle of the street. The
swarm of Loonies had parted around the Humvee like whitewater
around a boulder and had been pressed in so tight around it that
their bodies had slammed closed the doors the two had left open.
Many of the Loonies had simply bounded up and over the vehicle like
a pack of rats over a log.

“I’m not sure I want to get stuck out there
in that if they come back.”

Sarah nodded at him in understanding, “Yeah,
me neither.”

What she really wanted to do was find
someplace to lie down and nap. Her head still throbbed where it had
hit the windshield and the ache and stiffness in her neck and
shoulders had only gotten worse.

“How you feeling, Sport?” she asked.

“Like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

“Yeah, me too.” She massaged the back of his
neck with her hand as they stared out at the barren street and
Jeremy savored the feel of her warm hand.

They started to feel it through the soles of
their boots; a vibration like a low-grade earthquake that steadily
grew stronger. Things were rattling noisily within the garage as
the vibrations increased.

“What is that?” Jeremy whispered. “Do you
think it’s the rescue team?”

Sarah shook her head, staring out the window.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about—”

Like a dam breaking, the swarm flooded into
the street from around the building that was their refuge in a
raging, unending flow. It hit the blockade of buildings on the
other side of the road and backed up thickly before overflowing
around the far ends of the long complex of auto shops. The avenue
filled from end to end with bobbing heads on a sea of bodies as the
swarm sought a clear path to follow on their mindless journey.
Sarah and Jeremy were forced to duck down behind the garage door
out of sight of the window as the logjam of creatures backed up
into the door and were pressed tightly against it. The drone of
their yowls and babblings sounded like a loud, pissed-off swarm of
killer wasps, a sound Jeremy remembered all too well from
Waynesboro.

Out in the office they heard a crash of a
body falling though the broken glass of the entryway door. They
stayed low as they saw more and more shadows moving beyond the
bay’s service door in the office.

“They’re in,” Sarah said in a hoarse
whisper.

Jeremy took her hand and led her at a crouch
along the front of the shop to another bay where a white cargo van
would sit for eternity waiting to be repaired. He reached up and
tried the rear door. It opened with a clunk, causing both of them
to duck down and glance over at the door on the far side of the
shop. They could see shapes moving about in the dim light of the
office, although none seemed to have heard the noise. Jeremy helped
Sarah up into the back of the van then jumped in himself, closing
the door behind him with a ‘thunk’.

The rear windows of the van were darkly
tinted and in the darker interior they knew they would be invisible
to anything looking in from the garage. They lay with their backs
against the cold metal, their rifles on their laps, waiting for
something to happen, good or bad. After a while, the pandemonium of
noise from the swarm subsided and the boy and girl peeked out the
nearest window. From what they could see, the street had cleared of
the large mob. However, something still moved in the office.

“I guess we either do something about them or
were going to be stuck in here,” Sarah sighed.

“Well, let’s go take care of them.”

They immediately ducked back down against the
van’s wall when they saw the face of a young infected man press
against the office window.

“Do you have an ideas? ’Cause I sure don’t
want to make so much noise that that swarm doubles back on us!”

Jeremy wished he had his suppressed .22 with
him. He could kick himself for leaving it back in his room at the
armory.

“How many do you think are in there?” he
asked.

Sarah looked out the window again. “I don’t
think there’s a lot, although I can’t really tell.”

“When Shavers gets here he’ll look for us
when he sees the Humvee sitting there empty.”

Sarah nodded her affirmation. “We don’t want
them walking into an ambush of crazies though.”

“We wait here then,” Jeremy said firmly.
“When we see them outside we get out and go take care of the
Loonies in the office. Then, even if that swarm hears our shots,
we’ll be on our way to the armory before they get back here.”

Sarah ruffled the thick, auburn hair of his
head. “Sounds like a good plan to me, sport.”

Shavers was in a foul mood. Absolutely
everything that could have gone wrong today, had. It was like
Murphy’s Law on steroids. After the fiasco at the Kroger with the
HEMTT being overrun, things had cascaded downhill rapidly. They had
lost contact with the Sergeant and his squad in the Stryker and
then the two kids out on their own for some reason, had crashed
their Humvee and needed extraction. He had fired up the Ready
Stryker and taken McCully and Murchison with him on a rescue
mission, leaving Charlotte Pickeral to occupy the fort on her own.
She had taken a portable radio comms set to the roof of the armory
so she could watch for local trouble while keeping in contact with
the rescue Stryker and to listen for any word from the others. The
day was FUBARed. Two operations, two days in a row had fallen to
pieces. The only bright spot in today’s debacle was that they had
managed to secure the food supplies and get them back to the
armory, so their objective for that day was at least met.

They had loaded up on ammunition before
leaving, including the last of the 40 mm rounds. He longed for some
frag grenades, however, they had used the last of that inventory up
in sorties over a week ago.

Camilla sat quietly in the back of the
command vehicle while Shavers drove and McCully manned the 50 at
the commander’s station.

How
do
I
keep
this
day
from
getting
any
worse
? That was foremost on the First Sergeants’ mind. If
they ran into a situation with overwhelming enemy numbers that they
couldn’t get out of then God help Virginia. Right now the
splintered groups of the large swarm were roaming the city, their
positions unknown.

If they had lost Heinlich and his squad, then
this would be turning into the worst day since he had started
building the 29th back up again. He didn’t believe in luck, but if
he did, he would call that boy bad luck. Things had taken a turn
for the worse since they rescued him yesterday.

A
man
makes
his
own
luck
though
, he told himself.
That
boy
is
no
more
responsible
for
the
situation
today
then
some
butterfly
flapping
its
wings
in
Africa
.
React
,
adapt
,
and
overcome
. The mantra of the U.S. armed forces had
been beat into his head since boot camp.
God
has
put
these
obstacles
before
me
to
test
my
faith
, he mused.
We
will
overcome
.

The downtown sector was now less than a klick
away. They were circling in from the northeast and would soon be
exiting onto Lee Highway, which would lead them directly to
Greenville Avenue and hopefully the disabled Humvee and the
kids.

The driver’s hatch of the Stryker was cranked
open and the cool breeze of the autumn afternoon fanned his beard,
cooling his temper while it also cooled the stuffy interior of the
armored vehicle. Driving the vehicle helped clear his mind of the
clutter of the day. He made a mental note to himself to get McCully
checked out on the Strykers. They needed more trained drivers
besides himself and Hernandez.

Within minutes they were maneuvering past
stalled cars on Lee Highway. He called over the internal comms to
Murchison to take a position through a hatch and be ready. He gave
their position to Gypsy Hill base as he rolled onto Greenville
Avenue. Immediately he saw the Humvee with its distorted front end
parked in the center of the street. It appeared deserted. The
Stryker rumbled up the road slowly as its occupants scouted for any
signs of trouble. Several bodies littered the road past the
disabled Humvee and Shavers prayed they weren’t either of the kids.
He parked the big eight wheeler next to the smaller vehicle and
left the engine idling.

“Do you see them anywhere?” he asked over the
comm set.

McCully and Murchison both replied in the
negative.

“Okay, let’s unass and search for them. We
stay together as a fire team.”

They climbed out the top deck hatches and
dropped to the ground. The First Sergeant motioned for them to
follow and he set off across the street. From a building behind
them they heard a multitude of rifle shots. They instinctively
sought cover before Shavers corralled them back together and led
them toward the building that the sound of the shots had emanated
from. Before they could reach the gray cinderblock building, the
glassless door flew open and Sarah and Jeremy rushed out. Shavers
saw that both of their heads had large gauze bandages taped to them
and their faces were smeared with dried blood.

“We need to get out of here. A large swarm
passed by just before you got here,” Sarah told the First Sergeant
anxiously.

Jeremy grinned at them. “Man, I’m glad to see
you guys!” “Any idea where the other Stryker is?” the First
Sergeant asked as he ushered them back to the waiting vehicle.

“No,” Sarah and Jeremy both replied.

Shavers helped them up onto the deck and into
the Stryker while Murchison assumed a defensive position at the
idling vehicle’s rear and McCully got back into the commander’s
seat and on the fifty.

“Camilla, go get the ammo for the fifty out
of the Humvee.”

It took her two quick trips to remove the
heavy ammo cans from the wreck and hand them up to Shavers, then
she mounted up and the First Sergeant got the Stryker turned around
and headed back out to Lee Highway. From there he changed direction
south toward the annex. While he drove he queried the two as to how
they wound up in the Humvee on their own. They explained to him how
they ended up where they were, settling that question in his
mind.

The Stryker veered off the highway and
followed the same route that, unbeknownst to the First Sergeant,
Heinlich had taken with the Humvee earlier that day. As they
approached the OMS Annex, Shavers saw that something had happened
there. The large military vehicle lot had two walls of fencing
collapsed and there were a scattering of dead crazies about the
building, most exhibiting the devastating signs of large diameter
bullet strikes. Of the several Strykers that were in the OMS lots,
none belonged to the missing squad. The gate was locked tight and
as they circled the Stryker around the perimeter, the First
Sergeant could see no indication the main fence had been
breached.

“Okay. They’re not here,” he said into the
mic. “The last we saw of them was on Statler Avenue. We’ll head
there next.”