Winchester Undead (Book 2): Winchester: Prey (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

Tyler, TX

February 13, Year 1

The past four weeks had proved to be perilous for Amanda. A knock on her door early the day after Christmas began it all. She was a fast riser, the youngest Secretary of Agriculture for the United States in the history of the position, but for all her professional ability she wasn’t prepared to be able to dodge the series of bad hands that were continuing to be dealt. One of the commuter jets disabled by the EMP attack had crashed through the General Aviation side of the airport in Little Rock, which destroyed the military hardened Gulf Stream jet. That abruptly changed their plan of escape. The first vehicle they stole to flee towards Denver was an ancient Ford Bronco that still ran after the EMP, but that survived only until being ambushed by a militant group of survivalists outside of Texarkana. The second vehicle, an old Chevrolet Suburban, smoked so badly that it looked to be on its last leg when they found it. After the near disaster of Texarkana, Smith and Johnson decided to stick to the little-traveled Farm-to-Market roads around the eastern side of Tyler until reaching Highway 49 south of town. An old road atlas that unfolded to the size of a small table top was currently half-folded in Johnson’s lap while he traced the route with his finger.

“Follow this road until you reach Highway 31 and then turn west. We’ll stay on that road for about an hour.”

As they approached Highway 69, the knocking emanating from under the hood of the Suburban became sharply louder. White smoke billowed from under the hood and with a loud metallic crunch the motor stopped abruptly.

“Well, fuck me.”

Amanda raised her eyebrows at Johnson’s remark.

“Sorry ma’am. I’ll double check, but I think the motor just threw a rod and our ride is hard bent.”

Johnson climbed out of the driver’s seat and Smith exited the front passenger’s door with his M4 at the ready. White smoke continued to pour from the sides of the hood. Johnson raised the hood and tried to fan the smoke enough to see into the engine bay.

“Damnit. Well, Smith, it looks like we’re on foot again.”

“And after last time, our supplies are still low. We need gear, but more importantly, we need to replenish our food and water.”

Amanda climbed out of the Suburban and held her AR-15 at the ready while scanning the surrounding area. During the fight in Texarkana they were able to liberate a civilian-made AR from one of the militants they killed. Each night after setting up camp, Smith used the spare time to teach Amanda how to use it. She was a fast learner, but the new world in which they lived demanded that people be fast learners, or they would die only to shamble perpetually as corpses.

Johnson closed the hood and climbed up the front bumper and onto the roof of the Suburban, scanning the area with his binoculars before climbing down to discuss their options with the group.

After a heated discussion, Amanda told the men she’d seen a sign for Gander Mountain for this exit and suggested they could raid the store for the supplies they needed. With no better suggestions, the trio shouldered their bags from the back of the SUV and started walking north towards the general direction the sign pointed.

Thirty minutes of walking later, they knelt in the wood line on the south edge of the parking lot of Gander Mountain and surveyed the scene before them. It told the story of the early days after the attack. Parts of bodies lay in the parking lot, the scraps left by turkey buzzards and other animals to rot in the open. The glass at the front of the building was shattered and at this point none of them thought there might be much left for them to scavenge. They formed a loose column and walked along the edge of the tree line towards the rear of the store and around to the loading docks. A tractor-trailer sat abandoned at the dock, but the loading dock’s rollup door stood open, so they had a way in.

They circled up and began to formulate a plan. Johnson started, “I think the front of the store is probably wiped out. I say we ignore that and just check the back room for anything overlooked. Perhaps in the trailer as well. For tonight, if we can’t find a new vehicle we can recon the neighborhood across the highway and try to find a house that isn’t full of the previous residents.”

With little discussion, Smith and Amanda agreed, and quickly their plan was set in motion. Inside the loading area and storeroom stood pallets of merchandise that was still boxed and wrapped in plastic to be secured for transport. Twenty minutes passed but the three of them were able to cut the boxes free from their wrapped pallets and look for items they could use. Luckily, they found much of what they needed. A bit over one thousand rounds of .223, which would work in Amanda’s AR as well as the two agents’ M4 rifles. They also found new boots, clothes and socks for each of them. A lightweight backpacking tent, sleeping bags, and a compact backpacking stove with fuel rounded out the surprises. It felt like they’d won the lottery, met Santa Claus, and had a birthday all at once.

With the new gear distributed, they climbed off the loading dock quickly, wanting to get back to the safety of the tree line without being seen. They were walking along the edge of the semi-truck when Johnson let out a muffled yelp followed by a single shot from his M4. The upper torso of a reanimated corpse lay face down on the pavement, black fluid pouring from its ruined skull. Johnson sat on the ground and rolled his left pants leg over his calf. The zombie’s teeth had punctured his pants and the skin of Johnson’s leg. His death warrant had just been signed in blood.

Smith and Amanda stared at Johnson in disbelief.

“Looks like I’m going to take that boat ride across the river before you do, buddy.”

“Yeah. Shit. I’m sorry, brother.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. I should have been more careful. I’m not sure how long I’ve got, but let’s try to find you guys some wheels before I turn. I’ll take lead. That way you won’t be surprised when I turn. Will you put me down when I do?”

“I promise you I will.”

The two men hugged before forming in a column again, this time with Johnson taking the lead.

The neighborhood across the highway from Gander Mountain looked promising, with most of the cars in the driveways being older models, and only twenty minutes later they found an early 1980s GMC van. The A-Team van it was not, but after some work Smith hotwired the van and it ran. It ran poorly, but it ran. Thirty minutes and four backyard metal sheds later, three five-gallon gas cans had been located and the group was driving back onto the highway where their disabled Suburban still sat.

Johnson and Smith stood at the back of the Suburban and transferred the rest of their gear to their “new” van. Johnson gave Amanda his M4, his body armor, magazines and the rest of his gear that she might find useful. His face was ashen and his clammy skin betrayed the cold winter air. Johnson was going to die soon, and Smith had one more duty of love to carry out for his brother-in-arms. He and Johnson hugged, and Smith kissed Johnson on the forehead before Johnson turned to face away from his friend. Smith drew his pistol, muttered “Till Valhalla, brother,” and pulled the trigger once. The bullet entered Johnson’s head at the base of his skull, which killed him instantly and prevented him from rising from the dead as a walking corpse. Tears welled in Amanda’s eyes and the famous speech from Henry V fell into her thoughts: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” This was the saddest, bravest and kindest act of love Amanda had ever witnessed.

CHAPTER 5

Juarez, Mexico

February 13, Year 1

A dusty gloved hand reached into the large hole in the concrete floor and helped Odin climb out. From their location, surrounded by crates and fifty-five-gallon drums, the warehouse was pitch black in the very early morning before sunrise. The interior appeared grainy green, visible only to the four men kneeling in the middle next to the hole in the floor. They looked like aliens with their Night Observation Devices, NODs, hanging from their helmets, flipped in front of their faces.

Odin spoke in a hushed voice. “Yeah Chivo, it goes about a hundred meters north and then nothing. It doesn’t look like a cave-in, it looks like someone demoed it already. We’re just lucky the river is low or the tunnel would probably be full of water and goddamned rats.”

The pale squat warehouse near Bulevar Juan Pablo and the Rio Grande River in Juarez, Mexico didn’t look like much, but for Chivo and his four-man team, this building had been their best hope. For the past four months the four men known as Chivo, Odin, Apollo and Zennie had been operating illegally in Mexico. Former American Special Forces sheep-dipped into the CIA, they worked for a front company named Overland Shipping Consultants and were in the interior of Mexico battling the powerful drug cartels. The teams fought against the cartels’ ultraviolent regime and tried to disrupt the constant flow of narcotics into the United States. Since the attack on the United States nearly seven weeks prior, the four-man team had fought their way north, trying to return to U.S. soil. The reports of the EMP event in the United States were less pronounced in Mexico; however, a lot of technology had failed. But now, trapped in a warehouse used by the drug cartels to smuggle drugs under the Rio Grande, they were surrounded by thousands of undead. They were in trouble.

“Chivo, what do you think? I’m not sure we’re going to be able to get to the river and sneak over the fence without being detected,” Apollo whispered.

Chivo shrugged. “We might have to double time it, run and gun and hope for the best.”

Undead corpses scraped against the side of the building, dragging pieces of the fence and building off as the mass of bodies flowed like a river burst from a dam. The moans were so loud that the four men could barely hear each other’s voices, but still they whispered for fear of being detected by the passing undead.

“Well mano, either way we can’t hold up here. I don’t think the building is going to remain intact for much longer. We’ve got to get back to CONUS and figure out what the fuck happened.” Chivo was interrupted by the sound of the heavy metal fence around the building twisting and breaking. “Zennie, check the overhead door on the northeast corner. Make sure it’s safe to open and see if there is a way to open it quietly. As long as we have stealth on our side we’ll use it, but we’ll break with bounding overwatch if we have to. As long as we make it across the river and through the fence, I think we’ll be OK from the swarm.”

Zennie nodded and evaporated into the shadows, walking to the roll-up door like a ghost. The other three team members moved towards the overhead door but took defensive positions in case they had to immediately engage any threats beyond the door. Through the grainy green world shown to Chivo through his NODs, he watched Zennie check the door for any IEDs. The business that operated this warehouse was only to provide a front for the cartel and to house the tunnel that crossed under the Rio Grande and into El Paso and the United States. The cartel was worse than the terrorists in the sandbox that Chivo fought before, more ruthless and driven only by money and power, not by any sort of moral code.

Zennie gave a thumbs-up with his left hand. The other three were in place with their M4 rifles held ready to immediately engage any threats, dead or living, once the door started to creep up.

BOOM!

Ears ringing and dizzy, Chivo was the first of his teammates on his feet, most of the force of the blast deflected by the large forklift he had been using for cover. A gaping hole remained where the northwest corner of the building once stood, moonlight flooding into the warehouse.

Stealth lost, the teammates checked in with each other, yelling across the ruined warehouse.

“Apollo, clear.”

“Odin, clear.”

“Chivo, clear.”

Zennie didn’t check in. Chivo, in a tactical crouch with his M4 rifle up, moved rapidly towards where the roll-up door once stood. Loud moans of the undead echoed in the large building and radiated through the bones of each of the team members. Chivo found Zennie’s body, both of his legs missing below the knee, his left arm gone, and his neck bent at an impossible angle. “Dammit brother, now what the fuck are we going to do?”

Chivo grabbed his dead teammate and hefted him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry just as Apollo and Odin made it to the blast site. The mass of undead was already stumbling over the brick and debris through the hole that opened the building to the street.

“Contact left!”

“Contact right!”

Odin and Apollo called out at nearly the same time as they began engaging the approaching dead. The staccato sound of the team’s rifles was drowned out by the sheer number of the dead shambling down the street and into the destroyed building, all of them attracted by the loud explosion. Only a quarter mile stood between the team and the relative safety found on the United States’ side of the heavy border fence, but even then they would only be away from this group of zombies and would be on the edge of El Paso. Large cities spelled trouble.

The Special Forces community never left a teammate behind if at all possible, so, trusting his teammates, Chivo let his M4 hang on the sling and carried Zennie’s body on his shoulders. Chivo’s shirt, his plate carrier, and the rest of his gear became drenched in blood. After the previous forty-nine days, the three men were exhausted and could only keep a pace just faster than the dead shambling after them. The team made it away from the destroyed warehouse and to the four-lane blacktop of Bulevar Juan Pablo. Abandoned on the road were a handful of cars and trucks left to rot on the desert highway after the EMP attack disabled them. Rounding the corner of a large box truck, Chivo ran chest first into a walking, rotting corpse. Already off balance carrying Zennie’s body, Chivo fell forward with a loud grunt, knocking the walking corpse to the ground beneath him. Zennie’s body fell over Chivo’s head with a wet thud onto the pavement. Instinctively, Chivo pushed himself up on the undead’s stomach with his left hand, but his hand sank into the rotting flesh while his right hand drew the Glock pistol carried on his right thigh. With a single shot, the undead’s skull exploded into a slimy black mass on the roadway.

Chivo quickly reholstered his pistol and retrieved his dead teammate’s body. “Sorry brother, but we’re at least going to get you back home to American soil.”

The steady rhythm of Apollo and Odin firing their rifles was interrupted only by calls of “Loading!” and “Covering!” whenever either would have to rapidly change magazines. The undead horde behind them was staggering in number and the smell was nearly overwhelming. Flies buzzed like a thick black cloud over the walking undead.

The team trudged over the desert berm and down into the dry river bed of the Rio Grande. Feeling closer to their goal, they jogged up the other side of the riverbank and onto American soil. If they were going to die at least they would die together and on home soil. The three men moved quickly to a large gate used by the border agents for their patrols. Chivo leaned Zennie’s body against the fence and pulled a pair of bolt cutters out of the pack on his back. He cut the links of the fence as fast as he could. There would be no way for them to open the heavy gate, so they were reduced to cutting a hole in the fence and securing it the best they could once they passed through.

Apollo called out “Loading!” and dropped another empty M4 magazine into his dump pouch before reaching to the front of his armor carrier to retrieve another fresh magazine to reload his rifle. His hand swept across the front of his carrier and found no magazines. He was out of ammo. Apollo turned and ripped a fresh magazine off his dead teammate’s gear and quickly brought his rifle back into the fight—none too soon, as one of the walking corpses was only ten feet from Chivo’s back.

“Chivo, you might want to hurry the fuck up. Things are starting to get a little sporty out here.”

“Easy mano, I’m almost done.”

Chivo pushed a three-foot-tall hole in the bottom of the fence open and crawled through before grabbing Zennie’s body and dragging him through with him. Apollo and Oden climbed through the fence with only seconds to spare, the first of the horde of walking corpses only yards behind them. Oden stuck the barrel of his rifle through a link in the fence and continued to drop the undead at the leading element of the horde, while Apollo took four pairs of plastic quick cuffs and secured the hole in the fence as best he could using the plastic handcuffs like zip ties.

Chivo pulled the remaining fully-loaded M4 magazines off Zennie’s gear and passed them out to Apollo and Odin. In a loose defensive circle around their dead teammate’s body, facing outward and watching for new threats, the team took a moment to discuss their next move.

Odin spoke first. “OK guys. SITREP, whatcha got?”

“We need ammo,” Apollo responded.

“We need wheels in a bad way,” Chivo chimed in.

“First I think we need to find a spot to hunker down to see if that horde passes. I’m afraid that even with the fence, more undead from this side will be attracted to the commotion. Besides, we need to take care of Zennie’s body,” Odin replied.

Something clamped onto the back of Chivo’s pants, causing him to jump forward and away from his teammates. Zennie was back and moving but he was not with the living. “Shit!” Chivo drew his pistol and fired a single shot, striking Zennie in the skull.

“Fuck dude, a man can’t even find peace in death anymore.”

Chivo pulled Zennie’s body back onto his shoulders, now that he was dead for good, and pointed to the neighborhood to his right. “Let’s grab one of those houses, lay up for a bit and see if we can figure out what our next move is. If we’re lucky, we’ll find some food too.”

The other two nodded and took off in a slow jog, spread out in a defensive line, towards the homes across the highway, hoping they would find a safe place to regroup.