LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (34 page)

I considered it briefly. I could probably take out that many. Even in the dark. And the water.

Ugh. But it wasn’t going to be fun.

To Greg, I nodded and projected confidence.

“So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go through that exit, clear it for the rest of you, then hoof it over the dam on the road to the other side. I’ll plant the charges and meet you at the exit. We’ll blow the dam, and enjoy the peace and quiet.”

Susan raised her hand from behind the rest.

“I don’t understand. What does blowing the dam do for us? What’s going to stop those things from getting us when we leave through the other exit?”

I smiled, glancing at Eli and then back to the group.
 

“Don’t worry. I have a plan for that.”

***

“So you’re just going to open the door, walk in, and take a little jaunt through that water-logged house of horrors? The lawyers were right, man. You’re out of your mind.”

The hallway stank of smoke and dust, and in the far distance, I imagined that I could make out the low groans of zeds still stuck under piles of rubble. I shrugged underneath my rig, settling the weight of my pack on my back and checking the magazine in my carbine one more time before exhaling and turning to Greg, who stood at the doorway to the control room, peering into the darkness with a look of fear and incredulity. Behind him, Eli watched with a blank expression on his small face, eyes unreadable amongst the remainder of the crowd of survivors.

“First off, I won’t be walking. Second, those things don’t see well in the dark. I do. If I move quickly enough through, I might be able to get to the other side before they come for me. When I do that, I can convince them all to follow me out and kill them as they pour out the other side. Nice and easy, one at a time. Third, and most importantly, if you ever mention lawyers to me again, I’ll end you with a fist colonoscopy. Copy?”
 

I stared into the smaller man’s cowardly eyes with disdain, ignoring the guffaws from several of the people behind him, including Ethan.

He must be warming up to me.

“What if those things are clustered around the door? What are you going to do then, smart guy?” He had stepped back, now with one hand on the half-open door.

“Well, I guess I’ll have to come back and drag your useless ass with me for bait. Now if we’re done with stupid question time, I have a job to do.” I raised my voice and looked beyond Greg, who spluttered something briefly as I spoke.

“Remember. Give me one hour. If you get to the room and you can see from the entrance that the far side door is still closed, I didn’t make it and you should fall back. If it’s open and light is coming in, make your way through and wait for me on the trail, where you’ll be out of sight from the main road. I’ll be back for you after I set the charges and make sure we don’t have any more friends waiting for us outside. Got it?”

I saw heads nod in the background and Rhi pushed herself to the front, grimacing as she had to touch Greg who glared at her briefly before begrudgingly falling back.

“You sure about this, Mike?” she asked, holding out her hand.

I smiled, and shrugged before taking her hand briefly.

“Sure? Of course. Nothing I’d rather be doing more.”

She frowned, shaking her head.

“Seriously, boy. None of that bull crap. If you tell me you can make it happen, I believe you. But don’t you go into that room thinking it ain’t nothin’—we lost a couple good people to that craphole, and if we lose you, we’re all dead. Whether it’s to hunger or another earthquake, we’re not long for this earth if you bottom out in there. So you get your shit together and soldier up, you got me?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said reflexively. Visions of Ms. Gretchen, my fifth grade teacher, flashed through my head as my spine straightened slightly and I had an urge to stop leaning back in my chair.

She nodded once and then offered a grin.

“Good,” she said, backing into the doorway and pulling the heavy door closed until only her face was visible. “See you soon.”

The sound of the door slamming in its heavy frame reverberated in the hallway as I shook my head and started forward. Looking down at my hand, I followed the instructions that I had written in Sharpie on my palm—left, then 20 meters, then right, then follow the signs for “Pump Room.” Easy enough, right?

The water on the floor was creeping higher and it sloshed sloppily against my boots and into my already soaking socks. Making my way to the first intersection, I checked my corners well before crossing to the left.

As I walked, I considered the patent absurdity of my situation. From looney bin to secret government facility to aircraft carrier to farmland to DC. From DC to Seattle, via a crazy ass train trip and a running gun battle with militias and zombies, and now through an earthquake and tsunami. All during a zombie apocalypse.
 

And now, I trudged through the remains of a broken dam on the ass end of the furthest northwest corner of the country, trying to get to Canada. Laughing slightly to myself I scratched my face absently. If you had asked me a year ago where I would run to if the world ended, Canada would not have been on my radar.

But then again, a year ago “zombie attack” wouldn’t have been one of the boxes I’d expect to tick for ‘cause of death’, and I’m pretty sure that’s how I’m going to meet my maker when the big boomstick in the sky tolls for me.

Holding my rifle ahead and tucked into my shoulder, I followed my Sharpie directions through the dark hallways. No movement followed or preceded me—a good sign. Either all those dead heads from the entrance had been buried under the rubble, or they had wandered off and gotten lost. Either way, nothing stood in front of me as I reached the rather unassuming metal door in front of me. A long-dead potted plant stood next to the doorway, its thick pottery bowl showing signs of mold and rot—just like the rest of the disused building.

The door looked innocent, despite what I knew lurked behind it. Bare and relatively clean, despite the ever present fungus that grew along the walls and ceiling. A rather large metal handle was jammed against its stops and I took a breath as I put my hands on it, holding the cold metal as if I could divine what was on the other side.

But then again, I knew what was on the other side.
 

Death. Hunger. Pain.

I just had to dodge all those things and get to my happy place first. Through the dark. And the water. And the debris.

Yep, this was definitely the sweet life, folks.

In the distance of the winding hallways and darkness, I heard a sudden loud rumble and a brief popping noise, followed by a dull series of heavy thumps. Frowning, I turned back momentarily, watching the hall behind me. For nearly thirty seconds, I waited, listening and watching. My ears strained for the evidence of pursuit.

Finally, in the far reaches of the hallway, I heard it. Footsteps. Fast moving footsteps.

And a woman’s scream.

What the hell?

I moved forward several steps, peering into the darkness, water sloshing around my ankles. A sudden change in the air currents in the hallway pushed a slight breeze over my face as the sound of rapid footfalls turned the corner closest to me.

Oh lovely.

Eli and his caretaker, Rosy, were barreling forward as if pursued by Lucifer himself, arms pumping, legs splashing through the thick water. Eli’s face was excited, but showed no fear, his flaming hair flying in the dank air of the passageway.
 

Rosy on the other hand, looked like she was three seconds from losing control of her bowels. Her face was painted with desperate fear, her eyes wide and searching.

I called out softly.

“Over here!” The harsh whisper helped guide them forward and assure them that my dark form was not a zombie.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked as Eli pulled up in front of me, Rosy lagging close behind, her hands on her legs as she panted. In the distance, I could hear another disturbance: many more feet sloshing through the water of the hallways beyond.

“Shit,” I whispered to myself, pulling my rifle up unconsciously. “Where did they come from?”

“The rubble,” he said simply. “It shifted. As we were walking past. The ceiling came down, and it pushed the debris around a little.” He paused, looking over his shoulder once then back to me, calm and steady. “Some of them got in.”

“How many?”

He shrugged.
 

“Maybe ten?”
 

Rosy whipped off a line in Spanish, gesturing at Eli and pushing tears from her face, but Eli just stood, looking at me and then at the door.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked again, caught in indecision, debating about which fight to take on. If I started shooting, the creatures in the room would hear and we’d never make it through. If I went into the pump room with these two and left the zombies behind in this hallway, Rosy and Eli would be in serious danger, and I might not be able to protect them and myself all the way through.

“You weren’t going to be able to do it,” he said, looking over his shoulder once as I crouched down.

“What? This room? Of course …”

He shook his head violently, as he did so, I noticed the massively overfull backpack on his narrow shoulders. It looked heavy. As if laden with books.

“The explosives.”

“What? Why?”

Rosy let loose another long string of Spanish. I could only assume they were expletives comparing our mothers to goats with loose morals, as the first of a crowd of undead turned the corner.

“Do you know how to prime explosives?”

I stared at him blankly.

Well, no I didn’t. I figured I would wing it.

“I…”

“I do,” he said simply. “But we don’t have time to talk about it. We need to go.”

Rosy was near me now, her hands moving quickly and her face covered in tears, gesturing to the small group that was closing in on the door. More than eight or nine now, and they knew we were here. My hand found the cold metal of the door handle and I drew in a breath, looking at Eli.

I couldn’t shoot them. And I couldn’t risk the noise of a big fight with my blade. We would have to go through the pump room together.
 

“Okay, you stay on me. One hand on my belt at all times.” I put his hand on my belt and he nodded seriously. I looked up at Rosy, who was pushing against me, trying to get closer to the wall. “And you,” I hugged my arms to my chest and made a gesture of staying close, then brought my fingers to my eyes and then out again touching my ears, admonishing her to look and listen.

“But most of all: Be. Quiet.” I put my finger to my lips, drew my machete and waited for them both to nod. Behind us, the creatures were only twenty feet away.

“Eff it,” I said softly, pulling the handle up and over and pushing the door inward.

Only ten minutes after leaving the winery, Kate had been shifted from the Rhino to the lead humvee, pulled away from the girls and Ky, ostensibly to debrief Starr. The conversation had been short, and Starr had conducted it with a vague look on her face, her brief questions issued with a calm nonchalance that Kate didn’t trust. It was the attitude of someone that didn’t want the answers to the nonsensical questions, but who just wanted the opportunity to ask them.
 

Oddly, the Captain had shifted out of the humvee soon after, moving back to the Rhino to check in on the girls, leaving Kate in uncomfortable silence with Fray and Sherman.

The convoy turned north and Kate broke the quiet, asking Fray about their intended destination.

“Orders say north,” the woman said curtly, eyes narrowed as she watched the road. “Can’t go much more to the west anyhow,” she added, flicking her headlights on in the gathering dusk.
 

“Water. Damn ocean is twenty more miles inland. It’s like the whole side of the country just dipped into the water.”

Sergeant Sherman threw down from the fifty cal turret. “Yeah, it’s fucked up. Ships and cars and trees everywhere. Huge buildings totally under water. Treetops poking out of the ocean. Crazy shit.”

“I know,” Kate whispered softly, allowing her thoughts to drift to her daughter. She knew that in hoping to find her alive, she was compounding two mathematical impossibilities: one, that Liz had survived the infection unharmed, and two, that she had somehow survived the cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami combination that had annihilated most of the west coast. Her head knew these things. But her heart wanted.
 

And she would follow her want until she couldn’t any more. It was that simple.

The convoy moved north until Kate heard Starr’s voice over the comms. In the gathering dark, the lead vehicle pulled off the road, following a dirty and gravel road past a worn and cracked sign with the picture of a bear wearing a cowboy hat that read “Uncle Pat’s Camping Adventure.”
 

After two miles, the rough road through a thick forest led to a narrow gate, which was yawning open. Fray simply bulled the humvee through the gate, nudging it gently so that it could be closed again behind them, and pulled to the right hand side of a large roundabout. The small overgrown green space in the middle housed a flag pole, and five roads led off into thick foliage in a half-spoke formation, all five leading out and away from the main drive.
 

A large, worn wood rectangular structure sat on the left, and a slightly smaller one on the right. By the signs, they were the administrative building and the bathrooms.

“Six-five, take a team, clear the admin building. Six-six, secure the entrance. Post a guard on the road, and secure the bathrooms. Convoy, give me four cars on each road, park facing the exit. Stay close to the main circle. Watch posted at the end of each road. Keep the fires small folks. Check in in thirty mikes. Jolly Roger out.” Her voice crackled with exhaustion and Kate simply sat in the humvee as Fray and Sherman jumped out, both groaning with weariness.