Dead Team Alpha: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (20 page)

“That’s a lot of guesses there, Dust,” Tiny D says.

“That’s all any of us have right now,” Duster shrugs. “Guesses.”

She looks at the
bloodstain on the side of his uniform.

“You gonna make the last leg of this hump to the Bell Tower?” she asks.

“Do I have a choice?” Duster grins and immediately grimaces. “Fuck my side, it’s my jaw that really hurts. Won’t be eating roasted nuts in the commissary for a while.”

“None of us will if we don’t live through this,” Tiny D says.

“Way to brighten the morning, TD,” Duster says. “Thanks.”

They keep their steady, careful pace towards Col
orado Heights University, senses on high alert for more freaks of the eyeless kind.

***

The Zs press him up against the concrete wall and it’s all Alastair can do to keep them from tearing through his uniform and getting at his juicy flesh.

“A little help!”
He shouts as he shoves one back, stabs another through the eye, and knees one in its mushy groin, which has zero effect. He pulls back his knife, slashes the desiccated throat of another all the way to the spine, loses his knife as it sticks between two vertebrae, then has to shove the first one back again as it comes at him once more. “DIAZ!”

“Got my own problems, Al!” Diaz yells, busy clubbing the brains out of a Z with the butt of his carbine. “
Be there when I can!”

“Fuck!” Alastair yells. “I die and I’m haunting you, asshole!”

“We’ll be haunting each other if we don’t get out of this horde!” Diaz yells back, ducking his shoulder and letting two Zs roll over his back.

He kicks one in the head and then brings his heel down on the other’s face, sending putrid brains squirting out the thing’s ears. The first one tries to claw at Diaz’s ankle, but he drops
a knee through the Z’s skull, obliterating its head.

His carbine only a few feet away where it was knocked from his hands, Alastair gauges the distance, and the amount of Zs, between himself and the M-4. It has a full magazine and all he has to do is figure out how to get from where he is to the weapon without being the bottom of a Z dog pile. He thinks his options through, doesn’t like any of them, but decides to go for it.

Crouching low when
in a group of Zs is not the best plan. It usually means they can get on top of you, overpower you with their weight, and then it’s only a matter of time before they rip you apart. These thoughts go through Alastair’s mind as he crouches low and starts throwing punches.

The first punch glances off a Z’s hip, spinning the undead woman to the side. His second punch tears right through a Z’s belly, moving through the rotten innards
as if they are made of mud. He feels the thing’s spine and grips it as he pulls his fist back, snapping the Z in two. He doesn’t waste a second and punches through another belly, tearing out another spine.

Torsos fall from legs, and Zs start to snarl and claw at
Alastair’s feet, but he doesn’t give two shits. His only focus is to create enough room to shoulder through and get to his carbine. He stomps on rotten fingers as he takes down another and another, shaking off Z hands as they try to tangle in his hair. A funny thought about how he’d meant to shear his scalp before deploying to Denver runs through his mind, but he lets it go and decides the time is right to make his move.

His shoulder down, he
slams into a Z, then straightens somewhat and runs forward, using the thing as a battering ram to push through the others. Five feet, four feet, three, two, one, he drops and rolls, lifting up his carbine and taking aim. Rotating on one knee, moving counterclockwise, he empties all thirty rounds in the magazine, then stands as he ejects it and slaps in a fresh one. A mental tally tells him he has only two full mags left in his vest.

“Nice shooting,” Diaz says as he slams a Z’s head into the pavement over and over until the skull cracks like an egg and spills its bloody yolk. “Still want to haunt me?”

“Nah,” Alastair says, looking at the dead Zs that litter the street. “I couldn’t look at that ugly face for eternity.” He watches as Diaz keeps pounding the Z’s skull into the street. “Uh, you about done there?”

“Stress relief,” Diaz says. One more smack. “And done. I sure feel better.”

He picks up his carbine, stands, and looks at all the Z corpses. “Better these fuckers than the blind fucks.”

“I hear that,” Alastair says. The sun cresting over one of the buildings hits him right in the eyes and he squints, pulling a pair of battered sunglasses from his vest. He puts them on and sighs. “That’s better.”

“Got an extra pair?” Diaz asks, pulling his own pair from his vest. The glasses are twisted and bent with one lens cracked down the middle. “Old buddy, old pal?”

“Nope,” Alastair says. “But keep a look out.” He nods at the fronts of the buildings around them. “I’ll bet there’s a pair in one of these old shops.”

“Like this block hasn’t been picked through already?” Diaz says. “Not worth the risk of getting jumped in there. I’ll squint.”

Alastair retrieves his knife from the Z he took down and the two Mates go from Z to Z, stabbing those in the brain that didn’t get
stilled by bullets to the head. Done with stilling the zombies, they work their way up the street, eyes watching doorways and broken windowpanes, waiting for the next attack.

All
night, they battled their way, block by block, stabbing and shooting Zs while fighting, and mainly running, from the occasional blind crazy. It didn’t take long to figure out that the blind were way more dangerous than the undead. Not something either of them would have thought to discover in their lifetimes, but evidence is evidence and they each have the wounds to prove it.

A rag i
s cinched around Diaz’s thigh, wet with blood, showing where a blind crazy had jumped out at him with a machete before Alastair could shoot the guy in the head. Alastair’s cheeks have long, deep furrows in them that have stopped bleeding, but look raw and red. The nails on the bitch he’d had to kill were deadly sharp, but not as sharp as the blade he put in her gut and jammed all the way through to her spine. He’s more worried about infection from what may have been under those nails.

They make it a few blocks before they come to South Santa Fe Drive. Across the four lanes is an old warehouse store, the parking lot of which would have normally been filled with milling
Zs, since they tend to congregate in places that meant something in their old lives. Malls, schools, bars, clubs, the Zs go there and no one can figure out why. The ghost of memories looping through rotting synapses is the theory.

However,
the parking lot only has a handful of Zs this morning as Alastair and Diaz crouch walk their way across Santa Fe to the side of the burnt out Costco. The building had been one of the first places survivors flocked to for supplies in the weeks that followed Z-Day. The reality is more people died at greedy human hands than by hungry Z teeth.

Checking the spacing of the Zs, Alastair nods to Diaz then runs from the cover of the building, zigzagging through the empty husks of old compacts and pickup trucks, keeping the Zs from getting a bead on his direction. He reaches the far side of the wide parking lot, turns, and takes a knee, his carbine up to cover Diaz.

Without missing a beat, Diaz follows, going a different route than Alastair, keeping away from the Zs that spotted the first Mate. Groans and hisses follow him through the cool, morning air, but Diaz doesn’t look back as he reaches Alastair and the two men leave the lot and run through the overgrown grass of the Broken Tee Golf Course.

In its
prime, the golf course didn’t have much for cover, being just open areas of meticulously cut grass and tended sand pits. Now huge oaks dot the landscape, surrounded by random groves of pines that have taken root. The Mates turn this way and that, taking in every detail of their surroundings they can. Careful not to be taken by surprise by a stray Z, the men cover each other as they approach one grove, then move to another and another until they’re at the edge of the South Platte River.

An o
ld bridge meant for golf carts is just yards away, but Diaz holds his hand up then points. Alastair looks that way and frowns, and then nods as he sees the shape sitting just underneath the bridge by the side of the river. They watch the shape for a minute and both shake their heads.

Not a Z.

Whoever it is, they are obviously wounded as the person rocks back and forth, clutching a leg.

Alastair looks at Diaz and shrugs. Diaz shrugs back and points. Alastair frowns and shakes his head. Diaz taps Alastair’s sunglasses and smiles. Alastair lowers his sunglasses and glares, then pushes them back and sighs. He rolls his shoulder
s, sets his carbine, and moves from the shade of the pines, walking slowly towards the person.

When he’s within about ten yards, the person, obviously a woman, stops rocking and turns towards Alastair. Even shadowed by the bridge, Alastair can tell there are no eyes in the woman’s face. He is about to pull the trigger, not wanting to take a chance with the crazy, but he stops as sunlight that reflects off the river hits something white sticking from the woman’s thigh.

He inches closer and closer, but the woman doesn’t budge. The shadow of the bridge falls over him and he pushes down his glasses, studying the nasty, bloody break in the woman’s leg.

“I can still kill you,” the woman growls.

“I’d like to see that,” Alastair says then backtracks. “No, no, actually I wouldn’t. How about you lift your hands from your leg?”

“No,” the woman says. “I’ll die.”

Alastair studies the way she’s holding her thigh and realizes she’s not doing it because of the pain, which he’s sure there is plenty, but in order to keep pressure on the break. She lets go and she’ll probably bleed out in only a few minutes, maybe seconds.

“I have a compression bandage in my pack,” Alastair says. “It’ll keep you alive.”

“You should kill me,” the woman says. “Save me and it’s your death.”

He holds up his hand and gesture
s for Diaz to come forward. In seconds, the man is at his back, turning and watching their six, making sure they are covered.

“What’s the hold up?” Diaz asks. “Take her down.”

“She’s wounded,” Alastair says.

“Point being?” Diaz asks.

“That maybe she’ll answer a couple of question without trying to rip our heads off,” he replies.

“I will not speak to you,” the woman says. “You don’t deserve the Truth.”

“Oooooh, I heard the big T in that sentence,” Diaz says. “Capitol letters always mean there’s a story, Al. maybe we
should
ask some questions.”

“Why are you attacking us?” Alastair asks, as he moves directly under the bridge, but still a couple feet out of the woman’s reach.

“You attacked us,” the woman says. “Left us for dead. But we rebuilt, we trained harder, grew stronger, and now you cannot stop the Code Monkeys.”

“That’s what the kid called himself,” Diaz says.

“Yep,” Alastair said. “You a friend of Marshall? The, uh…”

“He is the Thirtieth Code Monkey,” the woman says. “I am Tamara Bolling, Eighteenth Code Monkey
.”

“What the fuck is up with the Code Monkey shit?” Alastair asks. “It’s weird, lady. Are you a cult or what?”

“We are a people sworn to keep the Code,” Tamara spits.

“And we are a people sworn to keep our heads, but you fucks seem to want to rip those off our shoulders,” Alastair answers. “Why? Answer me that and I’ll give you the compression bandage. Why are all of you blind Monkeys coming at us?”

Tamara cocks her head, moving it back and forth, as the Code Monkeys do.

“Not all the blind deserve the honor of the Code,” Tamara says. “Many train a lifetime, but are not worthy of the language of the Code to be inscribed upon their flesh. While some are born and it is instantly known
that, they will be great and powerful as the blade takes their eyes. The Code is a burden, but it is the highest burden a human being can carry.”

Her head stops moving and here empty sockets find Alastair.

“We were all that stood between you and the Final Destruction,” she whispers. “And you came and killed us and raped us and made us hide, but we have risen. We are back! And we have deemed you all unworthy of being saved! The Codes will be united and the Final Destruction will not be stopped by us, but wrought by us! In the end, you will all suffer for what you have done!”

“Lady, I haven’t done shit,” Alastair says. “All I want is to get back to-. HEY! STOP!”

He falls onto his knees and claws at his pack for the med kit inside as the woman pulls her hands from her thigh and bright red blood begins to pour from the break.

“Fuck,” Alastair swears as he opens the kit and yanks out the compression bandage
made from old tires and hemp.

He moves forward, but Tamara swipes at him, a jagged rock clenched in her fist. He’s able to pull his head back, the rock just missing his nose, and he lashes out with a left cross, nailing her in the temple. It dazes her enough that he can move in, slam an elbow into her face twice, stunning her more, and
begins to wrap the bandage around her leg. Every time she moans, he nails her with his elbow, keeping her docile.