A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (23 page)

Beyond the sprawling communities which had
housed mostly military personnel lay their objective.

The Pershing business park consisted of
blocks and blocks of two hundred thousand square foot warehouses
and its location, east of I-25, had been chosen due to the close
proximity to Colorado Springs to the north and I-25 connecting to
Pueblo to the south. The sprawling complex, erected on six square
miles of desert, received goods from all points on the compass and
served as a distribution hub for the entire eastern side of the
Rocky Mountain range.

The foraging caravan wove between the
increasing amount of stalls and multi-car wrecks as they neared the
interchange that would eventually take them south towards Fountain
Valley.

The lead gun truck, a Humvee GMV (Ground
Mobility Vehicle designed specifically for the Special Forces)
stopped short of the entrance to the gated upscale community.

Next to the secure entrance, a vinyl banner
sporting a crude hand painted warning flapped in the breeze. The
kindergarten style lettering read:
Go away. We are armed and
will shoot looters on sight
.

We shoot back
, thought General Gaines
as he cracked his first and probably last smile of the day.
“Rogers, pop the gate.”

A man in full battle rattle leapt from the
rear of the GMV and deftly placed breaching charges on the hinges
and in the center between the wrought iron where the gates met. He
unspooled a few feet of cord and ducked down near the wall, his
back to the gate.

“
Fire in the hole
!” he said clearly,
depressing the hand detonator. With a soft ‘
karumph
’ all
three charges went off simultaneously. When the smoke cleared
seconds later, the gate was still standing.

“Double the charges,” Gaines said to the
dismount.

“Roger that,” came the reply.

Two minutes later the gate and portions of
the wall it had been attached to were reduced to rubble.

After clearing a path through the wreckage,
the military vehicles and moving trucks turned into the
neighborhood dominated by earth-toned cookie cutter McMansions
fronted with like-colored grass.

The first contact came barely three blocks
into Fountain Valley Estates. A large group of walking corpses,
mostly first turns and likely drawn to the explosions, crowded the
thoroughfare ahead.

“Looks like we underestimated the amount of Z
infestation, Sergeant Hill,” Gaines said casually to his new
driver.

Compared to the zombie-infested streets in
downtown Springs during the first days of the cleanup, this pusbag
parade was nothing. Sergeant Howard Hill had been in the thick of
that battle downtown. The twenty-nine-year-old Midwesterner was a
trained SF sniper and loved being behind the gun, and most of all,
above the reach of the dead. But as he had quickly learned about
sniping Zs, he couldn’t have it both ways. As the saying went in
Springs—you drill ‘em, you fill ‘em—referring to the oversized
low-slung mining dump trucks the soldiers had taken to calling
Dead Sleds
.

At Fort Benning he had been taught to sit
still for hours at a time behind the gun waiting for a target—he
hated sitting behind the controls of an armored bulldozer for even
a minute. So in order to escape the sights and smells that went
along with loading the mangled draining bodies into one of those
Sleds,
he instead volunteered to drive General Gaines’s
Humvee.

Deftly wheeling the gun truck around the
hungry walkers, Hill answered matter-of-factly, “Yes sir. Looks
like a good number of the residents tried to shelter in place. But
after we get through this subdivision there’s a good two or three
mile buffer south that is totally devoid of residential. The dead
should
thin out the closer we get to the warehouse
district... I think as long as they haven’t been migrating north
from Pueblo we’ll be alright, Sir.”

“I concur. Thank you for the assessment
Sergeant Hill.”
Will they ever stop walking... stop
hungering
? Gaines asked himself. Then after a drawn out sigh,
he went on, “If they are
migrating
or whatever you want to
call it... when we get back to Schriever let’s start working on a
viable cleanup strategy for the southern corridor from here down to
Pueblo and implement it ASAP. We may need to build a temporary
blockade out of shipping containers and Jersey Barriers like we did
on I-25 north of downtown. A permanent barrier may be our
only
option if the Zs are moving this way in large
numbers.”

“Roger that General,” said Hill.

The convoy wound up a long twisting hill,
ending up in a part of the subdivision where the mansions were
situated such that they all had panoramic views of the Rockies; as
Gaines’ team neared the south entrance to the gated community, they
encountered dozens of walking corpses.

“Stay frosty, Ick,” Gaines said into the
comms, addressing his team leader who was riding shotgun in the
MRAP bringing up the rear. “We have multiple contacts.
Hold
fire
and
do not stop—
we’re going to push on through to
the gate.”

“Copy that,” said Zack ‘Ick’ Lawson. The
lanky, newly promoted, 10th Special Forces captain resembled
Ichabod Crane and was a veteran of the Springs clean-up campaign.
He grabbed the Motorola with one oversized hand, thumbing the talk
button to address the civilians whom he had the undesirable task of
running sheepdog over. And after he warned the civilian convoy of
the walker situation, he reiterated the rules of engagement. He
wanted to be thorough. The volunteers were all he had for this
mission and he knew full well that it would only take one of them
losing his or her shit to ruin his day.

***

In the Dakota truck at the rear of the
convoy, Brook also noted the increasing numbers of zombies. She
switched the M4 selector from safe to single shot, then, thinking
to herself that the Kevlar heat trap would only slow her down, she
undid the chinstrap and flung the sweat drenched brain bucket on
the bench where it bounced around between her and Wilson. “Fuck
it’s hot in here,” she bitched. Supposedly the truck’s air
conditioning was running, but with only tepid air smelling of death
blowing through the vents she finally relented and cracked her
window an inch.

Wilson had found the going easy for the first
fifteen blocks or so. It was the same as every so called
pony
ride
his mom had taken him on as a kid—all he had to do was
concentrate on following the ass end of the truck in front of him,
purge the other realities of his situation from his mind, and
everything
should
be OK.

The first creature Wilson mowed down with the
Dakota truck was a female first turn. He couldn’t avoid her. The
ferocity of the impact and the sound her body made as it was slowly
ground into hamburger trapped underneath the truck took him back to
Castle Rock and Sam the butcher—the gigantic zombie that nearly
ruined everyone’s day. Anticipating a geyser of water from the
ruined radiator, his pulse quickened and he began to perspire
profusely. Then his stomach clenched as his fight or flight
instinct was aroused.
PTSD,
he thought to himself
, Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder... they’re only letters Wilson...
relax.

The soldier’s warning that had just blared
through the two-way set Brook’s nerves afire; she sat squared-up
with her finger braced against the trigger guard, head constantly
on the move as she tracked the rotting first turns futilely
reaching and swatting at the lumbering U-Haul. “
Watch your
spacing kid
!” she barked. “
We cannot afford to stop here...
no matter what
.”

As if in response to her admonition, the
brake lights on the U-Haul in front of them flared solid red as the
ungainly truck swerved left and its dually rear wheels spit forth
chunks of rancid flesh and stuff her stomach didn’t appreciate her
looking at. And then as if driven by a drunk, the truck
inexplicably wheeled right, reversing course as it slewed to a stop
blocking both lanes.

“Good God,” Wilson gasped. “What just
happened?”

Brook had no answer. She peered into the side
mirror so she could ascertain what action the armored MRAP was
going to take. Suddenly out of nowhere, a gray palm slapped her
window followed by the sneering creature’s peeled lips and rheumy
milk-colored eyes. The vile image caused her to instantly flash
back to her escape from the Ford dealership in Lumberton with Raven
snug in the middle and her crazy brother behind the steering wheel
trying to kill them. Running the gauntlet of living dead on foot
and then in the souped-up orange truck en route to Fort Bragg had
left indelible images in her brain that she wouldn’t soon
forget.

“Back up,” Brook implored the novice driver.
“Give ‘em some room.”

Duh, lady, I was about to do exactly
that.
“Then what? Sit here looking like an oversized Happy Meal
to those things?” Wilson quipped as he threw the truck into reverse
and backed away, bouncing over a fleshy speed bump in the
process.

Once again forcing herself to ignore the
whining she barked an order, “If the MRAP continues through...
follow them
!”

No sooner had the prophetic words left
Brook’s lips than the motorized behemoth pushed around the
stationary Dakota truck on the right side, and with springs
protesting, jounced over the curb, its deep channel tires churning
up mocha-colored sod.

To Brook’s amazement, the decaying nightmare
next to her window disappeared under the MRAPs left front tire—its
leering mug replaced by the driver’s distorted profile as he
flashed by.

The MRAP stopped and the driver eased the
monstrous bumper against the stranded U-Haul; then with a burst of
power from the rig’s 9.3 liter power plant and a screech of
crumpling sheet metal, the fourteen-ton armored vehicle spun the
twenty-six foot moving truck like a toy.

The maneuver left the road temporarily
impassable and both vehicles side by side.

Unable to go around or move forward, Wilson
and Brook could do nothing but sit in the cab and wait.

Happy Meal
, Wilson thought
morbidly.

In a matter of seconds no less than twenty
zombies approached from the right-hand side, jerkily lumbering
across the brown lawns like some hellish welcoming party.

In no time, panicked voices started to filter
through the civilian comms, each overriding the other—an
unintelligible morass of terror.

“
Drivers
... I want you to push
through. Do not slow. Do not stop for anything. Civilian gunners,
safeties on
...
hold your fire
,” Gaines ordered,
bellowing to be heard over the frantic chatter on the civilian
comms.

Easier said than done
, Wilson mused as
he tried to tune out the people and their foxhole prayers. He
wanted desperately to get moving again—especially after seeing what
the horde did to his neighbors and their friends in front of the
Viscount Arms back in Denver—shredding them like barbecued pulled
pork. He
did not
want to be left behind surrounded by the
dead. He put on his mental blinders, pretending the monsters
weren’t there, and struggled to purge the bloody images from his
mind.

“Oh no,” Brook said in a low voice.

As if anything could be worse than the
situation they were in. Wilson pried his eyes open and asked, “What
now?”

“House on the right, there’s a little girl
poking her head out of the door,” she said, directing Wilson’s
gaze. “
No honey, go back inside
!” she implored the young
girl who appeared to be no older than Raven. “
Don’t let them see
you sweetie. Go back, go back, go back
!”

Wilson stated the obvious. “She can’t hear
you.”

By now the Dakota truck was pressed with
zombies and the two trucks to the fore still blocked the road.

Brook cranked her window down and leaned back
in order to escape the reaching hands. “What the hell are you
doing?” Wilson blurted.

She brought her rifle up and engaged the
nearest walkers point blank. Ear-piercing reports bounced around in
the cab as she fired controlled single shots into the pack. Then as
she changed mags she noticed one of the abominations stalking up
the pavestone walk towards the blonde girl, who had left the
relative safety of the open front door and was now standing in
plain sight in the center of the wide front porch like some kind of
sacrificial offering.

“
Go back into the house
!” Brook
screamed through the open window.

In reaction to Brook’s voice the girl whipped
her head around and locked eyes with her.

“
Go honey
!” Brook yelled, making a
shooing motion with her hand.

Inexplicably the girl stayed in place as the
lone zombie trudged up the steps towards her.

Brook slammed the fresh magazine home and
chambered a round. Then she kicked her door open, knocking the
nearest walker to the ground. From her seated position in the cab
she put a bullet in its brain, then tracked the short barreled
carbine up and around firing rapidly. Hot shell casings pinged
around inside the cab as brains exploded from the walkers
outside.

“
Close the effing door!
” Wilson
wailed, his voice nearly drowned out by the gunfire and moaning
ghouls.

“
I have to save the girl
!” Brook
cried. Dropping another spent magazine from the smoking carbine,
she pulled a fresh one from her MOLLE rig.

“We are supposed to stay inside of the
truck,” Wilson argued.

She was already crunching up the sloped dried
out lawn, firing as she went; his words never reached her ears.

***