Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse (20 page)

He backed away towards the kitchen, shielding Samantha and Jillian. Somewhere to his left, near the diner’s entrance, he heard the sudden unmistakable sound of glass splintering….

Cutter drew one last deep breath and braced himself.

Suddenly a
truck appeared from out of the night and crashed across the parking lot. It plowed into the mass of milling frantic undead bodies, cleaving a wedge through the zombies and cutting them down like wheat. The vehicle was lit up like a UFO. Banks of bright lights were mounted across the front grille and there were more spotlights fixed to a roll-bar behind the cabin. One of the spotlights swung around and blazed through the glass-fronted diner. The light blinded Cutter. He screwed his eyes shut and flung up one hand.

Sudden urgent gunfire filled the night, the muzzle-flashes of
multiple weapons ripping through the darkness. The shape of a man leaped from the back of the truck and crashed the butt of his rifle against the door lock. The glass shattered, spraying in across the floor, and the door shook in its frame and then crashed back hard against its hinges.

“Get on the back of the truck!” a man’s voice shouted
in a broad Scottish accent, barking the order so urgently that the words sounded like they were almost joined together. “Now!”

He ran towards the group,
a solid bearded man with short brown hair. He was wearing some kind of a thick bomber jacket and faded denim jeans. He grabbed Samantha and Jillian by the arms and hauled them towards the exit. Cutter scurried back through to the kitchen and seized the heavy bag. When he came back into the dining area, he could see the women being heaved bodily up onto the bed of the vehicle.

Cutter put his head down and ran for the door. He could he
ar the truck’s engine howling, the big vehicle crabbing forward as though it were eager to be let off its leash. It was a 4WD with a long sided bed. It had monster rugged tires with a fierce jagged tread. Cutter saw several dark shapes crouched and covered behind the sides of the tray. They were directing short, controlled bursts of fire into the shifting undead figures, as time seemed to slow.

Cutter hurled the bag over the side of the truck and leaped. Strong hands caught him and heaved him aboard. The truck’s engine screamed,
then suddenly the vehicle was reversing backwards. Bright orange muzzle-flashes lit up the dark night, giving the scene a new flickering horror. The 4WD was surrounded by a mass of bodies that heaved and struggled and surged around the vehicle in a wailing undulation of skin-crawling horror. Cutter saw Samantha and Jillian curled up in one corner of the tray. There was a man standing over them, firing into the undead. Cutter drew his Glock and blazed away at two zombies who appeared out of the blackness, their faces pale and ghostly, and their fury like an insane frenzy. They hurled themselves at the side of the truck and Cutter hit the first one in the head and missed the second one completely. Close behind his shoulder he heard someone grunt and then the undead ghoul Cutter had missed fell to the ground in an eruption of rotted flesh and shattered bone.

Dark snarling bodies
clawed at the sides of the truck. Cutter saw one of the men aboard fire a rifle into a zombie’s face and the thing vanished in a gout of brown gore and bone fragments. But another instantly took its place. The man beside Cutter lunged forward with the barrel of his rifle, jamming it hard into a contorted snarling face. The man grunted, throwing all his weight behind the thrust, and the muzzle went into the ghoul’s eye. The eyeball burst as the zombie reeled away, flapping and twisting.

Cutter fired again into mass of dark clamoring bodies. A face appeared, staring up at him with malevolent rage. It was a man. He had a broad forehead and yellow slanted eyes. The man’s face was covered with brown dripping slime. Half of his
cheek had been ripped away, revealing jawbone, gums and teeth. The zombie snapped at Cutter hungrily. Cutter fired and somehow missed from point-blank range. He fired again and the impact of the bullet smashed into the zombie’s skull and flung it backwards into the undead mass.

The truck
kept reversing. Zombies flashed across the beams of light and disappeared again. The truck bumped and swayed over the undead and then slewed sideways. The big tires threw up a hail of loose gravel. The night filled with diesel fumes and smoke, and then the truck bounced up onto the road in a fishtailing skid. Cutter heard the crunch of gears and a sudden urgent whine as the vehicle leaped forward and raced back along the Draketown turnoff.

Cutter shook his head. His senses
reeled, numbed and overloaded. The entire incident had taken no more than a few wild seconds, and had been carried out with almost military precision.

* * *

The 4WD pitched off the Draketown Road in a cloud of dust. Loose stones and gravel sprayed out from under the big tires as the vehicle veered sharply to the right onto the estate road. Cutter crouched down on his haunches and clung to the side tray to keep his balance. His eyes locked with Samantha’s and he read the concern in her eyes.

Had they been rescued – or kidnapped?

Cutter wasn’t sure.

The night was pitch black. Dark grey clouds had swept across the horizon, low and heavy with
pending rain. Cutter glanced at the three men gathered around in the back of the truck. They were all heavily armed, and all wearing bulky clothing. They bristled with grim menace as their eyes hunted the night for danger.

The streets
of the estate were deserted – the houses seemed dark and empty. There was litter strewn across the streets, eddying and swirling in the freshening breeze.

The 4WD skidded onto the driveway of a two-story house that had neat gardens across the front of the property and a low white picket fence.

Cutter looked around the side of the vehicle’s cabin anxiously. At the end of the drive was a garage. The door was up. The truck parked up with a sudden lurch and the three armed men scrambled down off the back of the truck, weapons at the ready.

Cutter heard a deep authoritative voice barking orders as the truck’s cabin doors swung open and slammed shut again.

“Mr. Knot, get that roller-door down asap,” a man snapped. “Lone Wolf, take them inside and then get yourself upstairs. I want eyes on the road right now.”

Men moved. There was a bustle of activity and Cutter found
himself and the two women being escorted across a narrow concrete path to the back door of the house by the man with the Scottish accent who had burst into the diner. Behind them, the rest of the men followed, moving in concerted pauses as they swung their weapons in short covering arcs that swept the back fence of the home.

The women went in through the back door and Cutter followed. They were standing in a kitchen. The room was dark. Men spilled in behind them and then a light was flicked on. Cutter saw hard eyes and grim faces.

The man who had been giving orders in the garage gestured with his rifle, and the group went down a short hall into a living room.

“Back door, Mr. Knot,” the man nodded to the
guy who had lowered the garage door. “And lights out, please.”

The guy called Mr. Knot
was about forty years old – maybe an inch or two shorter than Cutter. He was a big solid man wearing jeans and a dark jacket. His head was shaved and he had a lazy right eye. He was staring at Jillian. The thin material of her blouse gaped open so that the swell of her breasts and the hardened press of her nipples was exposed. The man shrugged off his jacket and handed it to the young woman wordlessly, then spun on his heel and disappeared back down the hallway.

The Scottish guy went stomping up the stairs at a run. He had a bolt-action hunting rifle fitted with a telescopic sight. Cutter figured the man had drawn sentry duty and imagined him kneeling at a bedroom window that overlooked the dark street.

“People call me Rampdog,” the man who had been giving orders introduced himself. He was about Cutter’s height, but twenty years older. He had steady calm eyes. He studied Cutter carefully, and then glanced at the two young women. He paused for a long moment, and then went to the living room window, his gait curiously awkward. The curtains were drawn. He snapped on a small table lamp and turned back to the group. He was wearing camouflaged combat gear and army boots and strapped across his chest was a canvas rig stuffed with magazines of ammunition. He reached down and rubbed at his thigh absently as though it ached. “This is Bob,” the man introduced one of the others.

Bob was a giant: he stood head and shoulders above the others. He was wearing a chest rig over a dark shirt and jeans. The man nodded his head. He was older than the rest. He had a white beard, and he stared at Cutter with calculating intelligent eyes.

“And that’s Underdude,” the man said. “He’s the kid. We call him UD. It’s faster to say when shit is going down.”

The man named
Underdude smiled wryly and raised an eyebrow. “Hi,” he reached out and shook Cutter’s hand. Nodded politely to Samantha and Jillian. “Don’t mind Rampdog. He’s ex-army,” he said, as though that simple fact explained it all.

It didn’t. Cutter was hopelessly confused. He rubbed wearily at his eyes and sighed.

“Do I thank you for rescuing us, or do I hate you for taking us hostage?” Cutter turned to Rampdog.

“You thank us, dipshit,” the man said. “We’re not some redneck gang of desperados. We’re a team. We saved your ass.”

“And you’re pissed off about it?”

The man’s face turned cold. “I’ll tell you in twenty minutes,” he said bluntly and turned away.

“Bob,” you’ve got the door. UD, you’ve got the window.”

The other men moved into position.
Samantha and Jillian slumped wearily onto a narrow sofa. Cutter heard the rhythmic snick of weapons being re-loaded. He swapped his Glock for Samantha’s and then followed the man named Rampdog back out into the darkened kitchen.

“Anything, Mr. Knot?” the man asked quietly. The guy with the shaved head was leaning against the kitchen door, his body just a dark shape silhouetted by the soft light that filtered from the lamp in the living room. He was staring out through a gap in a heavily curtained window. He turned to
Rampdog and Cutter saw the man shake his head curtly.

Cutter frowned. “Aren’t we safe here?”

Rampdog turned on him, and although it was dark, Cutter could sense the suppressed tension that sparked from the man like a current of electricity. “This is zed-land, son. No one is safe. Nowhere is safe. All those zeds back at the diner haven’t vanished into thin air. They’re still out there somewhere,” he snapped. “Hopefully we outran them and they’ve lost the scent. We’ll know in a few more minutes. Until then, everyone is on alert.”

Cutter nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Where do you want me?”

Rampdog’s eyes narrowed. He looked Cutter up and down. “Out of the way,” he said bluntly. “You got caught in a diner, with no real weapons, no escape, and no way to defend yourself. It’s hardly confidence-inspiring stuff. So why don’t you just go back into the living room and keep the women company.” There was a snarl of distain in the man’s voice and Cutter felt himself bristling as his temper boiled over.

“I did the best I could,” he defended himself archly. “And we would have been safe if two guys hadn’t come to the diner to rape one of those girls.”

Rampdog’s expression didn’t alter. “I know what happened. I saw it all playing out,” he said. “We’ve been holed up here for twenty-four hours while Bob repaired the truck. We saw the two guys. They brought the girl to the house across the street. We watched them all the way to the diner.”

Cutter stared in silence for a moment. “
So you went there to rescue her?”

Rampdog
nodded. “Like I said, we’re a team, not desperados. We’re men – not monsters.”

The strain went out of Cutter in a long exhausted sigh. He was bone-weary and exhausted. Like a
rubber-band drawn too tight for too long, he suddenly felt the heavy weight of lethargy crush down on him. He nodded at Rampdog and turned back towards the dining room.

In the doorway he stopped again and turned back.

“Thanks,” he said.

Rampdog
nodded but said nothing.

Because t
here was nothing more to say.

* * *

Cutter sat on the sofa beside Samantha and watched Rampdog prowl restlessly through the house for thirty minutes before he finally gave the order for the men at the front window and door to stand down.

“Take a break UD. You and Bob will relieve the other g
uys at 0400 hours.”

The two men lowered their weapons and Cutter felt the tension in the room ratchet down.

Rampdog set his rifle down and went into the kitchen. When he came back he was carrying bowls of soup. He handed one to each of the women and then gave the last bowl grudgingly to Cutter. “We have a camp stove set up,” he explained. “Eat. You look like you could all do with something warm.”

The girls attacked the food ravenously. Bob and UD hovered in the background, relaxed,
but ready. Cutter stared at the weapon Rampdog had propped in the doorway. He nodded.