Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 (13 page)

As I head back towards the mining village, John continues to shoot at the infected.
The gunshots echo around the mine site, around the desert.

I hope he is actually killing some of them.
Because if worse comes to worse, and that horde starts chasing me again, one
less infected person could mean the difference between life and death.

The village is sprawled out in front of me.
A hastily constructed suburb. A suburb that was built in the
world’s
biggest rush, and then completely abandoned in one afternoon. Which I guess is
kind of what happened.

The sound of another gunshot makes me jump.
The crack of the bullet echoes and fades away.

He has to be running low on ammunition.

I wait for another shot. But it never
comes.

And now there is silence.

There are no more gunshots. John has
definitely run out of ammunition.

I look over my shoulder, back at the house.
There is no sign of the infected. They are still at the rear of the house where
we lured them. Hopefully they would stay there. The only reason they would come
after me right now is if I gave them a reason to.

If I fired my rifle.

If I screamed.

So I need to be quiet. I need to be
invisible. I need to find Kenji and the others. Marko said they wouldn’t leave
without me. He told me to get back to the Landcruiser. I have no idea where
they could be and no other ideas, so I decide to head there first. I realize
this is about two miles away, and I’ll have to move through the village. I
realize that infected people could be hiding anywhere.

Inside anyone of the miner’s shacks.

Underneath them.

Behind them.

I begin to run but I don’t like how loud my
footsteps sound against the road. I don’t like how the wind in my ears makes it
hard to hear anything. I slow down, darting from shack to shack, checking
between each one, making sure the area is clear, that there are no more undead
zombies lurking unseen.

I quickly make my way through the village.
Luckily, it appears that all the infected have now moved to the rear of the
large sandstone house. This is great news for me. But I know that right at this
moment, they would be clawing and smashing at the walls, at the windows, at
every single board and barricade. They will do this with single minded
ferocity.

This is bad news for John and Helen and
Nathan.

How long will those barricades last?

Once again, I push this question from my
mind. I make my way towards Marko’s truck. And now that I’m in the open, I
begin to run. There is no possible way the infected can sneak up on me.

I see the entrance to the mine site. I see
the broken boom gates. I can’t quite see the Landcruiser yet. I just need to
get to the other side of the office buildings.

I pick up the pace. I round the corner.

But the car is gone…

And in its place is a group of infected
people. There’s only about four or five of them. They are hunched over a body.
They are feeding. They are ripping and tearing and eating flesh.

But who is it?

Who the hell are they eating?

I can’t see.

I can’t tell.

For a second I am in shock and I fear the
worst. I imagine that
it’s
Kenji lying on the road and
that this is all my fault.

I raise my rifle and I forget all about
being quiet. I forget all about the horde of infected that I lured to the back
of the sandstone house. I unload the rest of the magazine, I fire whatever
bullets were remaining. And then I reload. And then I keep firing.

And as soon as I’m empty, I realize that
this magazine was my last magazine. And right now, I am completely out of
ammunition.

I can’t think straight.

I’m too scared.

I didn’t even aim.

I just shot from the hip.

I killed some of the infected just by sheer
luck and coincidence.

But some of them survive.

And now they have forgotten all about the
corpse they were just feeding on. And now they are chasing me, sprinting for
me. For some reason I don’t run. For some reason I stand my ground.

My hand reaches for my hip. Where my
handgun used to be. Where it was digging into my waist only a few moments ago.
But the gun is gone and so is any hope I have of shooting the remaining
infected. I grab my rifle by the barrel. The barrel is hot. It burns my hands.

But I don’t care.

I grab the rifle by the barrel and swing it
around like a baseball bat.

The butt of the rifle connects with the
head of an infected person. There is a loud crack and their skull collapses and
their whole body collapses forward. I step out of the way and it goes sliding
past me, head first into the dusty road.

More infected charge at me.

I get ready to swing.

But I don’t have to.

I hear the revving of a car engine. The
horn.

Marko is back.

I don’t know where he went. But he’s back…

I jump out of the way as Marko drives his
truck head first into the rest of the infected. The infected are launched into
the sky as Marko comes to a skidding stop. He also runs over the half eaten
corpse.

Kenji opens the door and waves me forward.
“Come on! Let’s go.”

At the same time, Billy jumps out of the
car and picks up the half-eaten corpse, throwing it into the back of the work
tray.

Amazingly, some of the infected have
survived the demolition derby, some of them are slowly getting to their feet.
And some of them are quickly getting to their feet.

Kenji opens fire, killing one more. He runs
out of bullets as I arrive at the truck.

I jump in and slam the door shut. “Go!”

Marko floors the accelerator and we drive
off into the desert, off into the sunset.

We continue picking up speed. Marko is pushing the engine to its limit. I’m not
sure if that’s such a good idea since he was just complaining that it was in
danger of overheating.

But I don’t care.

I throw my arms around Kenji. “I thought
you were a goner.”

“Me too,” he says. “Marko saved my life.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says over his
shoulder. “I got us into that mess. It’s the least I could do.”

“You’re a damn good shot,” I say.

“I grew up with a rifle in my hands.
Seriously, if I had no aim there’d be something wrong with me.”

Billy leans across and slaps his brother on
the shoulder. “Don’t be so modest, Marko. You’re a crack shot. I
seen
you hit a rat at a hundred paces.”

I look at my rifle. I slide the magazine
out. It is completely empty. “I’m out of ammo,” I say to Kenji.

“Same here. I’ve only got my sidearm left.”

Sarah unzips her back pack and hands Kenji
a magazine for the rifle. “Here. You are much better with the guns than I’ll
ever be.”

He takes the full magazine off Sarah and
puts the empty one in her back pack. “Thanks.”

“The good news is the
roo
is completely untouched,” Marko says. “She’s still good to eat.”

“There were people in that house,” I say.
“Survivors. Three of them. Although they said they started with six.”

Billy turns around in his seat. “Wait.
There’s people in there?”

“Yeah. They’ve been living down in the
basement. They’ve locked themselves up pretty good. Apparently there’s plenty
of supplies down there.”

Billy turns around shaking his head. “I
can’t believe it,” he says to himself.

“They hardly ever come up,” I continue.
“They’ve been hiding down there for months. I don’t know how they do it.”

“There’s worse ways to live,” Sarah says.

I suppose she’s right.

“Anyway, I gave them my handgun. I needed
one of them to cover me while I got out of there. The infected had followed
me.”

“Are they surrounded now?” Marko asks.

“They’re OK for the moment. But the
infected… they’re right there. They have the place partially surrounded. I
don’t know how much longer their barricades will hold for.”

I know it won’t be long.

The infected will eventually tear those
wooden boards apart. They’ll smash through the wooden doors. They’ll smash
through glass. They’ll find the basement door and they will destroy it.

I have sentenced those poor people to
death.

“Should we go back for them?” Sarah asks.
“Maybe we can help.”

“We’re low on ammo,” Marko says. “And we
barely got out alive. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Those people have been hiding there for
months now,” Billy adds. “They know what they’re doing. The infected probably
won’t even find them. We’ve been there a whole heap of times and we never even
knew there were survivors hiding in that house. They’ll be fine.”

I lower my head. I hope he is right.

The drive west lasts for another few hours. The sun disappears and the desert
falls into darkness.

We arrive at the Boneyard in the dead of
night.

Billy jumps out of the car and runs towards
the entrance gates. He unlocks a padlocked chain and swings the first gate
open. There’s actually two sets of gates. These gates are built into two
separate chain link fences, spaced about twenty feet apart. The fences are
tall, at least forty feet tall. They appear to be topped with barbed wired and
razor wire. Although it’s hard to see in the dark.

Marko drives through the gates. Billy
swings them shut and locks them up and jumps back in the car.

This place is perfect, I think to myself.
It’s isolated. Well protected. It would be even better if they could
re-electrify the fences.

We drive through the entrance, past what
appear to be admin and office buildings.

Just beyond these small buildings are the
aircraft.

Row after endless row.

At the moment the aircraft are nothing more
than dark shapes in the night. The starlight and moonlight illuminate their
hulls, their wings, the windows of their cockpits. We drive down a wide road,
which is almost like a runway. Big enough for the biggest of the aircraft to
fit. I guess they have to tow the aircraft to their final resting place
somehow. The biggest planes are closest to the entrance. These consist of huge
civilian and military planes.

Passenger planes.

Cargo planes.

Then come the bombers.

The fighters.

These small and aerodynamic fighters
instantly remind me of the attack on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The destruction.
The massacre. The expert display of deadly precision.

The further we drive, the smaller the
aircraft become.

Marko points out the front windshield and
explains the layout of the Boneyard. “So basically, the big planes are located
near the front entrance, right? They’ve got every kind. Everything from 747’s,
to
Globemasters
. Hercules. B52’s. Everything. Then
further along, you’ve got the fighter jets. The smaller aircraft are towards
the rear. Little, single engine things. Helicopters. Anything and everything.
The whole thing goes on for miles.”

I wonder where these guys have chosen to
live. Where do they sleep? I guess sleeping inside one of the passenger planes,
like one of the big jumbo jets, would be pretty nice.

The Landcruiser comes to a stop in front of
three huge airplane hangars.

Marko puts the car in park and pulls the
handbrake on. We are parked next to a long line of other work cars.

Marko turns the engine off. “We need to get
our brother,” he says, his voice becoming serious. “We need to tell him that
we’ve got outsiders, guests. He’s a bit of a hothead, you know? So we need to…
prepare him. I need you guys to wait here in the car.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “We understand. No
worries.”

“I mean it,” Marko continues. “Wait in the
car. Don’t get out for any reason. Our brother does not take kindly to
strangers.”

Billy and Marko exit the car and move
towards the back, towards the work tray. They open it up and lift the Evo Agent
out.

“Walk!” Marko yells. “Get up! I know you
can walk.”

Marko pushes the Evo Agent forward. And Billy
drags the dead girl out, dragging her along the ground behind him.

“What do you think they’re going to do to
him?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Kenji says.

“Don’t care,” Sarah adds.

“What about the girl?” I ask.

“He said they were going to bury her,”
Sarah answers.

“I guess there are worse places to be
buried. The Boneyard seems to be appropriate.”

Although I couldn’t shake the feeling that
it was maybe just a little bit disrespectful to be dragging her body around
like that.

Billy and Marko disappear into the hangar,
entering through a small doorway.

“We need to get back on track,” Sarah says.
“Maybe we should ask if we can go right now. There’s a whole row of cars here.
Surely one of them as to be working.”

“Yeah,” Kenji agrees. “I mean, if there are
any other working cars, we should go right now.”

“Do you think he’ll let us?” I ask.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Sarah says.

“We’d be using a lot of fuel. At least a
tank full. Maybe two.”

“People’s lives are at stake,” Kenji says.
“I’m sure he’ll understand. And besides, I bet this place has its own fuel pump
somewhere. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“We can pay him back when we make it to the
town,” Sarah adds. “He can have food. Water. Fuel. Whatever he wants.”

“Should we check out these cars now?” I
ask.

Sarah shakes her head. “He said to wait
here.”

I look around. Apart from the aircraft, the
place appeared to be empty. “What do you think?” I ask Kenji.

Kenji looks unsure of himself. “I don’t
know. It could be dangerous. Marko seemed to think that if his brother saw us,
he would react violently. I think we should wait here. There’s no point in
risking it. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. We’ll be on our way in no time.”

So we decide to wait.

But minutes turn into hours.

We become restless, anxious. And as the
night drags on, it suddenly dawns on us that something is wrong.

“What the hell is taking them so long?” I
ask, breaking the silence. “Where the hell are they?”

“Should we go and find them?” Sarah asks.
“Should we get out of the car?”

“And go where?” Kenji says. “That hangar is
huge. This whole place is huge. We’d get lost in the dark.”

A few more minutes pass. But these minutes
feel like an eternity.

“This is ridiculous,” I say. “We have to go
and find them. We’re wasting time.”

“They went inside that hangar, right?”
Sarah says. “We might as well start there.”

Kenji doesn’t like this idea at all. But he
realizes we don’t have a choice. “How many bullets do we have left?”

“I’ve got one full magazine left for this
handgun,” Sarah answers.

“I’m completely out,” I say.

“This is bad,” he says.

“Why?” I ask. “How many bullets do you
have?”

“Not enough.”

“Enough for what exactly?” Sarah asks. “We
don’t need bullets. We’re in a secure compound. There’s no infected here.”

“How do you know that?” Kenji says.

“Because these two guys, or however many
people are living here, they’ve been living here since the beginning of the
outbreak. There’s no infected here.”

“I’m not worried about the infected,” Kenji
says.

“Wait. Do you think these guys are up to
something?”

“Why else would they leave us in this car
for hours on end? Something is wrong. I don’t like it.”

“You said it yourself,” I remind Sarah.
“Trust no one.”

“I know. But this doesn’t make any sense.
Billy led us to water. Marko saved all of our lives back at the oasis. And he
saved our lives at the mine site. Kenji, he shot that thing, that monster, when
it was all over you. He could have let that thing rip you apart. But he didn’t.
Why the hell would he save your life if he was up to something?”

“I don’t know,” Kenji says. “But this doesn’t
make any sense. I just… I don’t like it.”

Sarah takes a deep breath. “I don’t like it
either. But what are we supposed to do now?”

I scanned our surroundings. There were
aircraft in all directions, creating a maze. “Let’s check out the hangar,” I
say. “That’s where they went. And it’s really our only option. If we go walking
off in the dark, we’ll get lost.”

Kenji runs his hands through his hair and
rubs his eyes.

We are all tired. We are all exhausted. But
we need to do something.

He knows it.

I know it.

Sarah knows it.

“OK,” Kenji finally says. “Let’s do this.”