Apocalypse Atlanta (69 page)

Whitley moved back, her rifle still trained on the bus steps.  Peter shook his head, trying to drive the unpleasant sensations that were interfering with his hearing away.  Scooting back a few feet, he rose to a crouch, paused for a moment, then pushed fully upright.

“I said, are you okay?” he made out Whitley’s voice finally.  “Sarge?”

“Fine.” Peter said, putting hand to his left ear experimentally.  Brushing his fingers across his ear, he looked at them reluctantly.  He’d half expected to see blood or something on them, but apparently he wasn’t bleeding from the ear.  It just felt like he maybe was.

“Not so loud, I’m right here.” Whitley said.

“I can’t fucking hear anything out of my left ear.” Peter said, purposefully pitching his voice lower than hers sounded to him.

“Yeah, well, sorry.  I figured you didn’t want to get eaten.”

“No.” Peter said, holstering the pistol.  “Cover me.”

“Just stay low.” Whitley advised as Peter went forward and grabbed the zombie’s body by the ankles.  The man, now dead for good, took effort for Peter to move.  The zombie was a little thick around the middle, but Peter set himself and gave a stronger tug.  The body moved, and Peter stepped back half a step before tugging again.  Now it was sliding easier, and he slowly walked backwards pulling.  The zombie’s head bumped sickeningly as it came down the steps, and Peter averted his gaze hastily.  He didn’t need to see that.

He felt a final thump as the body came completely out of the bus, and Peter pulled it about five yards away before releasing it.  When he looked back at the bus, he saw there were more bits of brain and bone on the steps.  Peter pulled his AR around on its sling and got it into his hands, flicking on the tactical light as he raised it up.

The bits of zombie weren’t wet, not like he supposed they should have been.  If you shot a person in the head, there’d be blood and stuff.  It would be wet, and wet things tended to glisten and shine like dry things didn’t.  But the bits on the steps were dull and sort of crumbly.  He wasn’t sure if that was more, or less, disturbing, but it was definitely not good.

Peter eased forward a few steps, then slowly tracked his AR along the line of windows.  He didn’t see anything else inside except seat backs, but he took his time, carefully watching.  When he’d swept the light back to the front, he moved forward cautiously and went up the steps very slowly.

From the inside, the bus was very dark.  The windows had tint on them, filtering what light did reach under the overpass out.  Between the tint and the overpass above, it was damned dark inside.  Peter uttered a silent curse.  He spoke without turning his head from the bus’ interior.  “Whitley, get up here and cover my ass.”

Peter edged forward as she mounted the steps.  Carefully he shined the light to either side of the aisle at the first pair of seats.  After a moment he stepped back and drew the M45 again.  The tactical light came off the AR’s mounting rail, and he let the rifle dangle behind him from the sling as he crossed his wrists to hold the light in parallel with his pistol.

His spine tingled as he moved forward again.  He hadn’t been afraid of much since he was a kid, but now he felt like he was eight years old and needed to go out into the back yard after dark to fetch a forgotten toy.  That had happened to him once, and he’d been more and more terrified as he’d crossed the yard to retrieve his football.  When he’d gotten the ball into his hands, his nerve had suddenly broken and he’d ended up pelting back to the house at top speed, his breath coming in great gasps as his heart hammered.

Now he kept his breathing even, but his pulse was quickened.  Even though he was a fully grown man, armed and with Whitley’s reassuring presence, and rifle, at his back, the bus’ dark interior lit all those old feelings.  But it had to be cleared.  He didn’t want to risk altering the balance of what discipline was left by retreating and having someone else do the dirty deed.  So he kept moving forward, swinging light and gun from one side to the other, checking between and under the seats.

Halfway back he found a body.  His boot came down on a floor that was tacky, sticky, at the same time his light fell across an outstretched hand.  Peter stopped and willed himself to take a deep breath.  The hand wasn’t moving.  It was fine.  No movement was fine.  He leaned forward a little more and angled the light for a better view.

It was a woman, lying face down in a pool of what was obviously dried blood.  The back of her shirt had been torn and ripped away, and her flesh savaged with teeth and nails.  He could see her ribs, stark and white where they weren’t stained red or pink or maroon by blood.  Peter wasn’t an expert on anatomy, but he was pretty sure there weren’t supposed to be so many, if any, empty spaces inside a human body.

Peter was taking another deep breath.  In a sick and disturbing way, the half eaten body was almost reassuring.  Blood and gore, that he could handle.  Zombies even, no problem.  Having them lunge at him from the inky blackness was the problem.  His breath caught though, when he spotted another hand.  A small hand, barely half the size of the woman’s.

It was sticking out from beneath the corpse’s torso.  Peter frowned, his fear moving back to the fore.  “Oh man.” he muttered.  The fingers on that small hand were wiggling, slowly opening and closing like they were trying to grasp at something that wasn’t there.

“What?” Whitley asked.

Peter started a little.  His hearing, at least in the right ear, was coming back.  Her voice sounded like it was filtering through cotton or wads of newspaper, but he could hear her.  “Body.”

“Dead?”

“Dunno.” Peter said.  “There’s two.”

“Well?” Whitley asked.

Peter scowled, irritated.  Then his annoyance increased, because he realized he was not irked at her but rather himself.  What did he expect?  This kind of thing was going to happen.  If he were backing her up, what would he have her do?  Peter edged forward just enough to get a clear line of sight at the back of the woman’s head and put the M45’s sights on the back of her head.

“Firing.” he said, in case Whitley wanted to do something to protect her ears.  Peter waited two more seconds, then squeezed the trigger back.  The .45 bucked in his hand, but the normally deafening report was as muddled and faded as Whitley’s voice had been.  The woman’s head twitched, but there was none of the explosion of bloody gore that always happened in the movies.

“Oh shit.” Peter said.

“What now?”

Peter ignored the question.  He could only think of two reasons why the shot didn’t produce the expected mess.  One was that she’d already bled out fully and had been dead long enough for her body to settle somewhat.  The other was that she’d been a zombie, which definitely would explain the lack of wet stuff coming from her shattered skull.  And if the second case were true, then whatever was beneath her might be–

Abruptly, Peter shook his head once like he was trying to discourage a fly.  Focus.  Stay on task.  He didn’t trust his hearing right now, but if there were other voices, or crying or something, in here Whitely would have said something.  There could only be one explanation for what was under the woman.

He slid forward a bit more, then reached out with his right boot to nudge at the body.  Nothing much happened, so he got the toe of his boot stuck in beneath the remnants of the torso and lifted with a sort of kicking motion.  The body rolled over and off to reveal a smaller body.  Peter didn’t allow himself to think about it.  It was just a target.  That’s all, just a target.

His pistol lined up almost of its own accord, and he fired again before the second zombie could take advantage of the removal of the weight that had trapped it.  Peter watched with defocused eyes, waiting for any movement.  After ten seconds he looked away, satisfied but sickened.

“Okay, continuing.” he said over his shoulder.  As he edged forward again, resuming his sweep of the seats, he heard Whitley gasp as she was able to see what he had shot.  Peter ignored the reaction, forcing himself to pay attention to all the places other zombies might be concealed around the seats.  He reached the end of the bus without finding any more, and sighed softly in relief.

“Grab Roper and the two of you get those bodies out of here.” Peter said, lowering the pistol.  “Not Oliver.  He’s closer to the edge.  I’m going to see if this thing will run.”

Whitley preceded him back to the front, where she exited down the steps as Peter dropped into the driver’s seat.  He holstered the M45 as he scanned the dashboard and controls.  Sure enough, the keys were still in the ignition.  He’d half suspected they would be, but when he turned the ignition, nothing happened.  Nothing at all.  Peter frowned and thumbed the switch on the side console labeled ‘Running Lights’.  Nothing.  Peter sat for a moment, thinking, then went down the steps.

He undogged the engine compartment and lifted.  The cover raised up with a creak as its hinges protested ineffectually.  The locking bar that held it in the open position was slick with oil or grease and slipped through his fingers a few times as he tried to get it set.  When it finally cooperated, he shined his light inside.

He wasn’t familiar with buses.  He had never actually worked on one.  Or, at least, not one like this.  There had been a few school type buses he’d helped maintain twenty years ago when he was stationed at Pearl in Hawaii, but that was it.  But he knew engines, especially diesel engines.  There were only two things he could think of, that he’d have any chance of fixing, that explained why the bus seemed to be without electrical power.

First he had to find the batteries though, which, as he peered around with the light tracking across the engine’s bulk, he saw weren’t on this side.  “Damnit.” Peter muttered, stepping back and rising.  Whitley was approaching with Roper following, and she gave him a raised eyebrow.

“Still checking.” Peter said absently as he stepped around them and headed for the back of the bus.  He looped around the vehicle to the other side.  Sure enough, just as Smith had described, the other vehicles they’d rode out from the apartments in were parked across the ramp.  The jeep was backed in between the Hyundai and retaining wall, sealing the gap without making it hard to drive out if they needed to move it.

The eight soldiers covering the barricade were all facing south, towards Courtland, except Hernandez.  He was keeping watch in the direction of the bus, and Peter realized after a moment the tall soldier was saying something.  Peter couldn’t make it out, his hearing was still cloudy, so he shrugged and gave a wave off gesture.  If it was important, Hernandez would yell louder or come over.

But it couldn’t be that important.  Peter could only see about twenty zombies on the ramp beyond the roadblock.  Not enough to be a problem.  Not yet anyway.  Peter’s job was to get the bus running if at all possible so they’d not be here when enough zombies to be a problem appeared.  Standing around jawboning wasn’t going to do anything except help serve the zombies dinner.

He opened up the driver’s side engine cover and grunted as he saw a pair of batteries there.  Sticking the light in his mouth, he reached in and started fiddling with the cables as he checked them.  Everything connected to the batteries seemed solid, no wear or cuts that he could see, nothing loose or disconnected.  Peter sat back and took the light out of his mouth.  “Fuck.”

Standing, Peter went over to the barricade.  A few of the heads turned to face him as he approached, but he waved everyone back except Crawford.  She came over just as Peter reached Hernandez.

“What was the shooting a few minutes ago?” Hernandez asked.

“Zombies.” Peter said with a shrug.  “They’re taken care of, but my hearing took a bit of a hit.  Listen, pull the Jeep out of the roadblock and stick the CRX in its place.  Park it over there.” Peter said, turning and pointing at the front of the bus.  “At an angle as close to that open cover as you can, but leave room for the Bronco to fit in next to it.  ”

“Okay.” Hernandez turned and raised his voice.  “Barker, hop back in that Jeep.”

“What?  Why?”

“Cause we’re swapping it for the Honda.” Hernandez explained.

“That little rice rocket?” Barker said with a scowl.  “The Jeep is a better block.”

Peter had to think, turning over the words in his mind to be sure he’d heard and deciphered them correctly, but he was pretty sure he caught the gist of it.  He answered as Hernandez opened his mouth to reply.  “Yeah, but the CRX probably can’t help jump the bus as well as the Jeep can, so move damnit.”

“And find me two sets of jumper cables.” Peter added to Hernandez as he turned to head back around to the other side of the bus.  “If they’re short ones, get others and we’ll splice them together to extend the length.”

“On it.”

Peter left them to handle the Jeep’s switch and returned to the Bronco.  He met Whitley as she started to come around the back side of the bus.  “Gonna have to try jumping it.” Peter said with a shrug when he caught the quizzical look on her face.  “Fuckers left the lights on or something; it’s flat.”

“Hell, can we jump something this big?” Whitley asked, spinning on her heel to fall into step with him.

“Maybe.” Peter sighed.  “Usually when I jump a big vehicle like this I have a dedicated jump pack that’s designed to work with it.  But the Bronco and Jeep might be able to get it to turn over if we hook both of them up.”

“Okay.  The bodies are out.  Roper threw up in the back of the bus though.”