A Time to Die (40 page)

The scene played out for almost half an hour. Wade didn’t complain anymore, it gave him a much needed breather. Now that the sun was low to the horizon the temperature was dropping fast. The sojourn was having a rejuvenating effect on him. Andrew absently fished out the second to last water ration, took a deep drink and passed it out. He did it quickly so he wouldn’t miss much.

As the sun just touched the horizon the first few infected began wandering down the dirt road. Andrew couldn’t see the inbound flow from either direction abating in the least. As those first few wandered in their direction, more followed. In just moments it was a concerted flow. Then a river.

“Time’s up,” Andrew said and slung the binoculars.

“It was worth hoping for,” Chris commented.

“I enjoyed the rest,” Wade said as he struggled to his feet.

Andrew was thinking as they started on down the dirt road. Because of the location in the horde that began to head his way, it looked like those who mostly came from Laredo. Was it just him, or did they appear not nearly as travel weary as the ones that had chased them from the crash site?

* * *

Turning might have been their only option, but it was ultimately a mistake. Andrew wondered if they should have gone west and taken their chances with the river? The road had gone on for maybe a mile before turning north. Even before they turned everyone could see the dust plume of another group coming south. Probably more of that quarter million from Laredo. Two hundred or, two hundred thousand. It didn’t make much difference to their situation.

The other two man stood and watched in opposite directions as the two groups approached them. The bank of the road was low, with no real ditch. All around them were scrub trees, dried brush, and cacti. There was no way they’d be able to hide. And both the groups were close enough to see them now. The closer of the two, from their original direction, could already be heard howling and growling, picking up the pace. They weren’t trundling along any longer, now they moved in long, loping strides that chewed up the distance.

“Look,” Chris said and pointed to the east.

Andrew spun and looked. There was a speck in the distance. He brought up the binoculars. A structure of some kind. Maybe a farmhouse or factory? He let the glasses fall on their lanyard as he examined the turn. Sure enough, there was a mailbox and barely discernable ruts in the hard packed dirt leading off in that direction. Ruts meant a car. Maybe.

“What is it?” Chris asked.

“A building, can’t tell.”

“Jesus,” Wade cried, “they’re running!”

“No choice, move it!” Andrew said and started jogging towards the distant building, the other two close behind.

After only a hundred yards Wade was already flagging. Stopping was no longer an option. Andrew glanced back. The first group, the ones from the road they’d come from were gaining at a disturbing rate. They were maybe another hundred yards from the turn off. He glanced to the north. The others were cutting off the road and vectoring in on them like an interceptor missile! They were going to be cut off in the open!”

“Chris, pop a couple from that group!” Andrew said, gesturing at the ones to the north.

“On it,” the ex-champion shooter said.

The targets were closer than before, and time was of the essence. Chris adopted a standing, braced shooter’s stance. In only a moment the first shot rang out. Andrew flipped his own M-16 around on its sling and brought it to his shoulder. He wasn’t any kind of a champion shooter. He’d qualified as marksman with the M-4 carbine, a shorter-barreled, more modern version of the M-16. It also had better optics than these peep sights. But shooting was shooting. As Chris took his fifth shot and his magazine went empty, Andrew breathed out as he’d been instructed, let the sights lower until the torso of a half-dressed businessman came into view. He raised his aim to the top of the man’s head and slowly squeezed the trigger. “Crack!”

The sound of the rifle jammed icepicks into his ears. He reacquired his sight picture and saw the man staggering, a hole pumping blood down the suit jacket from his left breast. Andrew clicked the windage one, found another target, and repeated.

Chris fit a new magazine and fired five more rounds before the two men stopped. The results were less than satisfactory this time. Only a few slowed to take advantage of the new meal. It was almost as if this group were…better fed.

“No joy,” Andrew proclaimed, slinging the rifle. “Come on.”

“I don’t think I can,” Wade said.

“You giving up?”

“No!” the gamer barked, “but I’m out of gas.”

“If you’re breathing you can move. Chris, help!”

Andrew grabbed one beefy arm and drew it over his own shoulder. Chris took the other and did the same thing. Wade didn’t complain. Between the two of them, they helped him enough that the three managed a shuffling jog. Andrew briefly considered a fireman carry. Then felt the weight of the guy. Only half his weight, actually, on his shoulder, and discarded that. His leg was throbbing, and he doubted he could carry the huge man for even a hundred yards.

“Come on,” Andrew yelled, “we’re almost there!”

It was a complete lie, of course. Wade was so gone he was only looking down and somehow managing to put one foot in front of another. He might have carried one-quarter of his mass, Chris and him the rest. But they kept moving, somehow. Foot after foot, yard after yard. The building was closer every time Andrew glanced up. And so was the ravenous sounds behind them.

They were just getting close enough to see some detail on the building when Andrew heard it. Footfalls, clear as day. He flipped Wade’s arm off his shoulder, spun and clawed at the old military style flap holster on his hip. The man was maybe twenty feet away and coming in fast. Really fucking fast. He was nearly naked, lean, tanned, and muscled like an athlete. Some part of Andrew’s mind knew that was likely exactly what he was. Maybe he’d been a distance runner or even an Olympic sprinter? It didn’t matter. As Andrew fumbled the M-9 clear of its holster and worked the safety he knew it wouldn’t be fast enough. He decided to move sideways and draw the man off and away from Chris and Wade. Maybe it would buy them a few moments more of life. “Boom!”

Another pistol spoke before Andrew had his up. The crazy who’d been reaching out for him had the back of his head bloom like a red cabbage and he went down into the dirt and rocks face first, skidding to a stop inches from Andrew’s flight boots. A foot away Chris held out his own M-9 pistol, one handed and at a bad angle. The shot had been flawless.

“Three gun, remember?”

“I do now,” Andrew said. He holstered the M-9, swung his M-16 around and flipped it from safe, to full auto. “Ears,” he warned the others a second before emptying the remaining 15 rounds from the assault rifle in one long burst. He raked it left to right across the approaching crowd, now only 150 yard away. At that range, every round was a hit. And it actually slowed them. More from tripping over the fallen than from any other effect, but he would take what he could get.

Andrew let the magazine fall empty, slapped in another, and grabbed Wade’s arm. The man had been standing there, eyes glazed, gasping for breath the whole time. He hadn’t so much as twitched when the gunfire started.

“Haul ass!” Andrew yelled and they were moving again.

Every hundred yards Andrew repeated the ritual. An entire magazine was sprayed at the closet group. It didn’t stop them from closing the distance, but it did slow them. He was almost certain the gain was worth the pause. On the fourth time he didn’t have a magazine in his pants to reload so he was forced to use one from Chris. Once they were moving again he awkwardly slung the rifle (which was getting hard to handle, the barrel was becoming very hot) and managed to get into his pack with a free hand. He found the last six magazines and took them out. He looked up, a part of his mind noted the building was about four hundred yards away. Jesus, it was going to be close!

He was going to go back to the same routine when he glanced behind them and saw their pursuers were maybe a hundred yards and gaining. Running and stopping to shoot wasn’t going to work anymore.

“Chris!”

“Yeah?”

“Take a couple mags and shoot as we go.”

“You can’t pull him along by yourself,” Chris said as he took the magazines.

“No,” Andrew agreed as he slung the rifle, pulling on the strap to tighten it snuggly before turning to Wade. “Are you sure you can’t go any further?” The other man just panted and shook his head, chins waggling and sweat pouring from his hair like he’d just come out of the rain. “That’s what I was afraid of,” Andrew said. He took Wade’s left hand and pulled it over his own shoulder. The other man didn’t resist. Once he was up against the man’s chest, he bent over and put his shoulder against the gamer’s solar plexus. Holding the wrist tightly, he pulled the arm, pushed in and pulled. Andrew wrapped his left around behind Wade’s knees and stood. The man’s body went over his shoulders balancing the mass evenly.

“Jesus Christ with a jelly doughnut,” Andrew groaned as he felt like Atlas taking the full load of the world.

“Don’t,” Wade moaned.

“Shut up,” Andrew said as he started walking. Every other step felt like an icepick being jammed into his leg. The ground was not completely level with large gravel that threatened to turn his ankle at every step. His back screamed under the load, and he desperately wished he’d taken the M-9 pistol out of Wade’s waistband before pulling him into a fireman’s carry because it was right up again his collarbone.

“God damn, Andrew,” Chris said in admiration.

“He’s heavier than a fucking Marine. Now shoot those fuckers while I haul some ass?”

One foot in front of the other, he thought desperately as pilot SERE training came back to him. In Survival Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training they taught him any amount of pain or fatigue can be overcome as long as the body still had energy to operate. He’d operated for two days in the swamps of Georgia with a cracked tibia, surviving on nothing more than swamp water and grubs. And not much of the latter.

“This is nothing,” he growled. Step. “Move your ass, Tobin!” Step. “You ready to quit yet?” There was the rapid crack, crack, crack, of Chris’s measured firing. He kept going, knowing that the man was the best choice to shoot while he was the best choice for this. “You never…” step, “leave…” step, “a man…” step, “behind!”

Chris ran past and it took every ounce of will Andrew possessed not to turn and see if the crazy bastards were about to jump on him. Chris stopped a couple dozen yards past, spun around and went to one knee as he slapped a fresh magazine into his gun and brought it up.

“Keep moving,” the other man hissed as he sighted and fired right past Andrew’s head. The sonic crack made him jerk and almost fall. He heard a yelp just behind him and something fall. The impact scattered rocks, some hitting Andrew’s pants from behind. “Don’t look back!” Chris implored him. 

Andrew went back to the endless pain and fatigue of bearing a man more than his own weight across the hard packed desert ground. He knew one wrong step would be the end. If he stopped that was the end. If they caught him that was the end. And if they ran out of ammo it was most certainly the end.

“I can walk again,” Wade moaned.

“Shut up and save it,” Andrew gasped. More steps. Chris raced past him, switching our magazines again. “One left after this,” he said as he ran by and turned to continue shooting. Andrew only nodded and kept going. When he looked past Chris he saw a vast expanse of white steel going up into the sky and curving away to either side. He looked up as far as his burden would let him and saw a huge UK Petroleum logo. It was a huge oil tank. “Any port in a storm,” he said and took the last hundred steps up to the base of the tank.

Andrew unburdened himself as best as he could, which unfortunately for Wade was more like a somewhat unceremonious dumping. Andrew ended up basically rolling over the other man and sprawling on his face, gasping for air and trying not to scream from the pain in his back and leg.

“Andrew!” Chris screamed.

Somehow he found the energy to roll into a sitting position and release the shoulder strap. The M-16 swung into his arms and his right thumb instinctively flipped the safety selector to single shot. Chris was running towards him, reloading. Andrew could see the oil tank to his back was near the top of a low rise. In the distance was the clear line of the highway they’d left. Between them and the highway was a surging sea of insane bloodthirsty humanity, all coming at them with murder in their hearts. There had to be ten, twenty thousand or more. Zombies in line for the new cell phone release, he thought grimly.

Andrew could see dozens and dozens of downed bodies, many swarmed by others tearing into flesh in a hungered frenzy. Still more had created piles, feeding frenzies that further slowed the advance. Chris had done a spectacular job of buying them crucial time.

He took all this in within a second, including that about ten of the monsters were hot on Chris’s heels. They were going to catch him. Andrew sighted in and started shooting. He wasn’t as accurate or methodical as the other man, but he was experienced. It took thirteen rounds to put them all down.

“Thanks,” Chris gasped as he ran up. Andrew had his pack open and he fished out the last three magazines, handing one to Chris, sticking one in his belt and holding the other in his left hand.