Total Apoc Trilogy (Book 3): Horde Ravaged (4 page)

            "Do you think the guys back at Jerry's Crossing looted a house and then set it on fire or something?" I asked. "I can't actually see any structures. The smoke doesn't look too far off the road, but all I see are trees."

            "If they did, it's because there were people there," Ralph said.

            That was pretty much my thought. That meant there could be some very angry, or very skittish, survivors waiting in ambush. People who might shoot first and ask questions later. People hurting so badly they wanted to hurt someone just as bad. Or it could be a nightmare of dead bodies.

            I wasn't sure which worried me more.

            "Walkers to the north," Olivia said, standing in her seat to point.

            "Well, that sucks," I replied, studying the small horde.

            They were just reaching the outskirts of the copse of woods from which the smoke was rising. The zombies' arrival was a game changer. We couldn't turn back, and if they spotted us parked out there in the open then we were fucked. Fences and recent heavy rain kept us from going cross country, so we were stuck on that road.

            "This gives us an opportunity," Ralph said. "If there are armed survivors hiding in ambush, then they have to turn their guns on the zombies. That gives us a tiny window of opportunity to drive through before the zombies reach the road."

            None of us were adverse to using zombies to our benefit against other survivors. God knew we'd done it before. Still, I worried about the survivors. There had to be two or three hundred zombies in that little horde. I wasn't sure that copse could hide enough survivors to fight them off.

            "Should we help them against the zombies?" Olivia asked.

            "No," Ralph and I said in unison.

            I added, "They might turn on us afterwards."

            "That's crazy talk," Ralph said. "Never make contact with any survivors. They'll shoot you."

            "Okay," she cried. "Sorry, my humanity reared its ugly head for a second."

            Gunfire erupted inside the wooded hilltop. That was confirmation of armed survivors. I was kind of hoping there wouldn't be any.

            "Let's go!" I said when the zombies surged toward the trees. "It's not going to take them long to reach the road."

            Rifle in hand, heart racing, I prepared myself to fight. Thing was I didn't know if our foe would be survivors or zombies. Or both. The copse of trees was only a few hundred feet in diameter. Without armed resistance, the horde would reach the road about the same time we did. I was hoping they had enough armed people to hold them at bay.

            We quickly picked up speed. It looked like Olivia wanted to blast through at full speed. I was completely onboard with that tactic. That wouldn't give the survivors much time to fire at us. Of course if we hit a zombie at that speed it would probably total the jeep.

            Men ran across the road ahead of us, atop the hill, moving from the south side to the fight in the north. One stopped and pointed at us. That couldn't be good for us.

            "Ralph, watch out for gunfire to the left," I shouted over the wind. "I have the north."

            "Are those guys carrying bows?" Olivia asked.

            "Oh man, I miss my crossbow," Ralph said. "Silent death!"

            If they were fighting zombies and other survivors with bows and arrows, then that was one desperate group. It's only been a couple of weeks, but I suspected they were starting to run low on food and water. They probably didn't have a lot of ammunition for their weapons to begin with, which were probably hunting rifles and shotguns.

            As we closed with the trees, sporadic gunfire came our way, along with a few arrows. Ralph opened up on the south side. I shot into the wood to the right. I'm not sure what Ralph was shooting at, but I was mostly laying suppressive fire. I didn't want to kill any of the living. Not unless I had to.

            Men, women, and children began running across the road all around us, from north to south. Olivia had to hit the brake and swerve violently to miss a middle-aged man. He looked shocked to see us.

            We went off the road and onto the soft, wet earth. For a second I thought we might bog down and be trapped. Olivia made me proud and got us back on the black top.

            Bullets and arrows zipped by us. An arrow ricocheted off the windshield in front of Olivia, cracking it. Another struck Ralph's M60, before a bullet hit the barrel.

            The M60 stopped firing.

            Zombies appeared on the road.

            "Holy crap!" I cried.

            Olivia was all over the road trying to avoid hitting anyone. Our speed was greatly reduced by the detour off the pavement, but we were still moving too fast to safely hit anyone. Safe for us. We were halfway to the other side and could see freedom.

            "Fuck me! Fuck me!" Olivia screamed.

            I didn't have to ask what she meant. Steam was coming out from under the hood.

            "Punch it! Get as far as we can!"

Chapter 6

            "God damn!" I cried when an arrow hit me in the meaty part below my hip, but above my thigh. I immediately, without thinking, ripped it out. "Dammit, that hurt!."

            "Are you okay?" Olivia asked.

            "No! Keep going," I said through clenched teeth.

            The pain was bad, but adrenaline kept me going. A zombie leapt at me. I smashed the butt of my rifle into his face, smashing his nose flat. He fell to the side and we were beyond him in a flash. I quickly ejected and slammed in another magazine. More and more zombies were coming out of the woods. No one was shooting at us anymore.

            "Ralph, how fast can you change the M60's barrel?" I shouted.

            "Not fast enough!"

           
Poof!
Echoed through the air when he fired a grenade.
Ka-Boom!

            That shot took out about a dozen zombies. He quickly reloaded and fired another grenade, and another, and another. The remaining zombies continued on as if nothing was wrong. There were still too many to kill.

            "Open road!" Olivia cried, and hit the gas hard.

            We surged forward. Steam or smoke, whatever it was, continued to come out. It didn't matter what it was because it meant we were about to be on foot again. I couldn't image any of us being able to fix it. I didn't know the first thing about car repair, and I doubted either of my friends did either. We could tear a computer apart and put it back to together better than before, but my car repair skills didn't go beyond changing a tire.

            "This sucks greasy balls," Olivia muttered when the jeep began to sputter.

            Ralph and I looked back toward the trees. We could hear gunfire, so the survivors were still fighting. None of the zombies were following us. Why should they? They had fresh meat right there.

            "You think we can make it over that next hill?" I asked.

            I didn't want to be broken down in view of the zombies. They would come after us.

            "No promises, but I'll try," she said. "Tell me the truth, how badly are you hurt?"

            "Not too bad," I lied. How would I know? "We'll find out once we have to start walking."

            "Good thing you're not a horse," Ralph said. "We'd have to shoot you."

            "Ha! You're so funny," I said, slanting a dirty look back at him.

            But it did give me an idea. Horses. We were in the middle of farm country, so there had to be horses available. We might be geeks, but we grew up in a small farming community, so we all knew how to ride. Now, actually taking care of horses was another issue. None of us grew up owning or taking care of horses.

            "What about horses?" I suggested. "If we can find more than three, we'll have pack animals, too."

            "Oh my god, I love it," Olivia said. "No zombies could catch us on horseback."

            "Hell yeah," Ralph said. "I've always wanted to be a real cowboy."

            "Herding zombies," I added.

            "Yippee kai yeah, get along little zombies," Olivia said.

            The jeep shuttered, slowed, but kept going. We were heading up the low hill, which put a strain in the dying engine. Her hands tightened around the steering wheel. I held my breath for a moment. Even Ralph grew grim. Nothing beat our jeep. I missed it already.

            "Come on," she urged it. "Come on. Come on. Just a little bit farther."

            Smoke really started billowing out from under the hood. The engine began to sputter. My foot was pressing down on thin air, trying to give it more gas to keep going. And it died.

            "Dammit," Olivia snapped.

            She quickly pressed down on the clutch, disengaging, and let the jeep coast. We continued to roll down the hill for a good mile or more. We all let out a frustrated sigh when it rolled to a stop. At least we made it to the other side of the hill, and out of view of the zombies. Out of sight, out of mind.

            "Fun times ahead," I said. "Okay, we have to figure out what we
want
to take, and what we
can
take."

            We came to a stop in the middle of the right lane. We all got out of the jeep to check the engine, as if there was something we could do. It didn't take long to figure out it was steam, and what caused the problem. There was an arrow in the radiator. I popped off the two catches and Ralph helped me raise the hood. A big cloud of steam puffed out.

            "All we have to do is patch the radiator," Ralph said.

            "How do you do that?" I asked. He shrugged. "Exactly. Besides, I think we ruined the engine by continuing to drive it until it died."

            "So what do you want to do?" Olivia asked. "Take what we can carry and hoof it, or go find horses and come back for our stuff?"

            I looked around. Cultivated fields surrounded us, but I didn't see a single farmhouse or barn. No grazing land with horses or cattle, either. Finding horses might prove harder than anticipated.

            "I don't think we can come back," I said. "We have to keep going forward. Besides, I'm sure other survivors will be all over this jeep." I paused to consider our options. I wondered why everyone expected me to make the decision. They never listened to me before our world went to hell. "We take what we can carry. I think we did okay back when we were on foot before Emory."

            "Yeah, what was that? Two days of hoofing it before the zombies chased us onto an island?" Olivia said, shaking her head woefully. "We need to find transportation, weather vehicle or horses."

            More gunfire erupted back at the zombie attack. I was pretty sure I heard single shots sound from a few other directions, too. The woods were alive with survivors and zombies. Olivia was right. We did not want to walk all the way home.

            "How many packs do we have?"

            "Packs?" Olivia asked, eyes big. "Oh. We didn't need packs in the jeep."

            We looked at Ralph. I knew I didn't add any packs to our supplies. He turned toward the jeep.

            "I know we have at least one," Ralph said. He led us around behind the jeep. There was an old Army rucksack hanging off the back of the jeep. It had two arrows in it, and a few bullet holes, but looked serviceable. He pulled it off, opened the top flap, and dumped its contents on the road. "This is where I kept all of the Army manuals."

            We did a quick inventory of what we had in the jeep. Sure enough, there weren't any other packs. We decided on rotating who carried it so at least we all wouldn't be exhausted all of the time.

            "We have some party crashers coming," Olivia said.

            She was looking northward. I saw them. Seven zombies were shuffling across that tilled land. It looked like some grain crop. I might've grown up in a farming community, but I couldn't tell what a crop was by just looking. It all looked like weeds to me. The crop was about waist high.

            "They're still a couple hundred yards away," Ralph replied, barely giving them a glance.

            "Let's hurry," I said.

            "I'm taking the M60," Ralph said firmly.

            Olivia didn't flinch. I looked back and forth between them. Were they crazy?

            "How fast does it go through a can of ammo?" I asked.

            He grinned. "Oh man, you know it spits out rounds like crazy. It just eats zombies up," Ralph replied. "That M60 is more deadly than all of our other guns combined."

            "How many boxes of ammo can you carry?"

            Ralph stared at me, understanding starting to dawn. And he didn't like it. He shook his head, frowning, and failed to answer a few times.

            "Leave it," I said. "It's too heavy. The ammo is too heavy. And the prospect of finding more ammo along the way is zero. We're better off stuffing the pack with M16 ammo, and some 40mm grenades."

            "We need to at least take three blankets to sleep in," Olivia said. "But yeah, you're right. We can't take the M60."

            Ralph looked incredulous.

            "You want to just leave it?" Ralph said. "Someone else will get it."

            I shrugged. "They'll be way behind us, so who cares?"

            "Should we destroy it?" Olivia asked.

            I shook my head. Whoever claimed it, if anyone, wouldn't be a threat to us. Taking the time to destroy it seemed a waste of time and energy.

            We filled the main compartment of the rucksack with M16 5.56mm ammo, with full magazines on top. We allotted about ten percent of the space for M1911 ammo, since all three of us carried the same pistol. Finally, we stuffed the jeep's crowbar and the remaining machetes down beside the ammo, with the handgrips sticking out the top. It was already pretty heavy, but we stuffed some spare clothing in the side pockets. Blankets were strapped to the bottom of the pack.