LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (53 page)

“You’re good to go. Those things will probably pull the lights and speakers off eventually, but I figure you should be able to get at least 10 miles away by the time they do. You sure you can extract yourself per the plan? Seems a little dicey to me.” She looked doubtfully at the wadded canvas on the floor of the cab.
 

“It worked once before. I just have to move fast. Besides …” A flurry of automatic weapons fire from two different stations cut me short.
 

“Time to go,” Ky said, reaching up and slamming the driver’s side door. I stared through the wire mesh-reinforced window as she lifted her hand to her forehead in a mock salute.

“Don’t die!” she yelled over the sound of the engine.

“You should be so lucky!” I shouted back, smiling as I threw the massive machine into drive and lumbered forward.
 

As I turned the corner around the back of the mill, I saw the reason for the uptick in fire. More creatures had poured over the lip of the gate, and were ambling toward the building, bypassing Kate completely. She made no movements, and simply watched as they passed her by, nearly invisible to them as she sat, still and quiet, while Ethan and Rhi picked them off one by one.
 

But the ammunition we had added to the group’s stores would not last long. We had to get out the gate and make this happen now. The pressure was building and the dam was about to burst.

Several turned toward me as my noisy engine appeared from its hidden enclave. The huge, angry looking yellow beast with its six foot tires and bright red robot claw should have scared them.
 

But they continued forward, bereft of the modicum of human sense that would have sent them running.
 

Worked for me.

I flipped two switches and pulled up gently on a small lever, bringing the saw online and widening the claw to its greatest width. The metal fingers worked perfectly, gathering the first creature and pulling it toward the saw blade that spun roughly a foot and a half off the ground. The yawning, hungry maw of a half-decayed, blood spattered soccer-mom disappeared suddenly from view, its legs removed at the lower thighs.
 

I imagined the carcass suddenly collapsing and being flattened by the gigantic wheels to either side—or simply being driven over by the high clearance of the vehicle.
 

I took three more of the zeds as I approached Kate’s vehicle, pulling alongside and opening my door slightly as she did the same.

“Ready for this?” I yelled, even as four more creatures topped the gate. The swarming mass of undead had become so jam-packed against one another that they had become nearly solid. Beneath the feet of the writhing mass, hundreds had fallen to the ground only to be trampled by the weight of their brethren coming behind.
 

As they did so, the carpet of bodies had slowly raised the level of the ground, allowing even these stumbling, clumsy creatures to gradually overcome the sturdy barrier of steel and concrete.
 

Soon, they would simply be walking over the edge. And the suddenly very thin-seeming walls of the large mill would be no defense for thousands of hungry monsters.
 

“When haven’t I been game for something stupid. I’m in love with you, aren’t I?” Her smile was wide and real. No trace of fear or anxiety. She was ready.
 

“I love you,” I said simply, not letting my sarcasm out of its box for once.

“I know,” she said, slamming her door behind her and blowing me a kiss through the window. Then, without further ado, she pulled the cord attached to the pin of a grenade lodged behind the thick crossbar on the gate, and we watched the end of the world come crashing through.

We hadn’t been able to locate the key to the lock that controlled the large steel bar keeping the gates so admirably closed during our time in the mill. So we had to improvise.
 

The grenade was one of our last—a surprise saved for a special time from a remarkably successful foraging trip into a pepper’s cabin to the south. Placed high enough on the gate to blow the lock, we had hoped it would not damage the chain looped through both sides of the gates, so that when the time came to close the doors, we wouldn’t be disappointed.
 

The explosion ripped through the mesh of steel and iron at the heart of the lock, blowing through the supports on either side, sending the bar flying into the air, and turning nearly twenty zeds to a pulpy red mist in the process.
 

And then the gates flew open.
 

Per the plan, we were to wait as the initial surge passed us by or congregated around our vehicles. We needed the herd to be a little thinner before I could hope to pass through.
 

This seemed a much better idea from the safety of the mill than it did right now.
 

The dead swarmed, stumbling forward with eyes on the building behind us, but with many finding interest in the two humans locked up in the large vehicles. They began to fill the gap between our machines, pressing against the sides of our vehicles like a rising tide. Even over the noise of the heavy engines, we could hear the desperate moaning of the hungry dead. Their mouths open and yawning in malice, their eyes dead and milky, tracking our movements.
 

Around us, the tide surged forward, death personified in the entombed souls of the formerly human. The stench of the undead was putrid. Wafting through the cracks in the vehicles, it was a nearly solid wall of decay and bile.
 

The coppery smell of old blood was only a tinge of the fetid scent of rot and ruin. I gagged as I drew breath, imaging as I did so that I was inhaling particles of the long-since deceased. That their essence was becoming my own, deep in my unseen lungs. Coursing through my veins, into my heart, out to my extremities.
 

Time stood still as the waves of death passed over us. We had agreed that several hundred was the limit. It was the compromise between what I needed to move away to be able to move forward, and what we thought our improvised defenses could survive. I looked to Kate as the dead passed us by or stared at us in longing.

It was time. Smiling once at her, I looked forward and inhaled deeply. Once more unto the breech, dear friends.

The blade started to whirl, attracting more attention. The claws spread, motivating curiosity. The wheels turned, sparking interest.

And I put Bessy into gear, bringing death.

The huge rubber wheels barely registered the corpses as it crushed them beneath its girth. But for the difficulties in steering owing to the interesting traction of large wheels on decayed, bloody bodies, the ride was simply that of a tractor in a furrowed field.
 

Passing the gates, I tried to assess whether they had been damaged in any way that would prevent them from holding when they were cinched shut behind me. But I couldn’t see through the crowd of the dead, and I needed to pay attention.

Concentrating on staying on the path was difficult. While the machine made for a rough, if doable, ride, it was slippery to say the least. Blood and viscera coated the small connecting road that sloped gently downhill to the highway.
 

As the claws caught any zeds in a path of seven feet or so in width, they funneled them directly to the saw. I had to move slowly to give the mechanism time to cut through each body, but we weren’t bogging down. I had to keep speed, or risk becoming trapped. Bessy was powerful, but if we stopped and got swamped, I was afraid that even she couldn’t get over a pile of undead six feet tall.
 

As far as I could see, the dead swarmed and teemed. In the front of the ranks, those that had been most intent on entering the compound—those that could see and hear food—had passed through. Now, we were into the ranks of the lemmings—those that could see nothing, but followed those in front, or the sounds of what they assumed were food—but had not yet seen.
 

It was time to close the doors, Kate.

As I focused on making a slow turn to the south in my trundling machine of death, I heard her engine roar, and saw the chain slowly rise from the ground as she began a ponderous reversal.
 

Nodding once to myself, I pressed on, looking back once as the gates started to slowly come closed, pressed against the tide of the dead.

Now was the time.

Britney, don’t fail me now.

My left hand flew to the lights, and a myriad of colored and blinking absurdities suddenly sprang to life, lighting my way and giving the zeds pressed into the highway something new and exciting to think about.
 

Then, the music started.

I couldn’t help but to sing along. I didn’t think I was tempting fate too much to be asking to be hit one more time.
 

And my new friends?
 

Well, they just loved Ms. Spears.

Almost as one, thousands of heads—from the front ranks to the rear, all the way to the tree line—turned on a dime. Milky dead eyes in ravaged faces turned to watch Bessy as she trundled her way south, saw blades whirling, claws extended, and Britney blasting.

***

Kate watched Bessy wade into the maelstrom and exhaled slowly. If anyone in the world could survive a dumb stunt like this, it was Mike.
 

She shook off the concern and concentrated. She needed to focus now, on what would get her closer to Liz. And right now, that was closing this gate. Securing this mill. Keeping the group safe so that tomorrow, when the dead were gone, they could leave.
 

They would go north. They would make their way to her daughter’s home. And she would know.
 

She wasn’t stupid. She knew the math. The probabilities and likelihoods of finding her daughter, much less finding her alive. But that was the thing about being a parent. Your children were always your babies—you had to try.
 

As they had gotten closer—through Starr and the quakes and tsunami—she had never lost hope.
 

Her anxiety had grown, wondering what she would find.
 

Her hope had diminished, as the world had somehow gotten crazier.
 

And her fear had widened, encompassing the dread of finding something, of not finding anything, of endangering her new family, of her not knowing simply continuing on until the end of time.
 

But her dedication had not wavered.
 

Today, she would get this done. Mike would do this part. They would be together again, they would do what they needed to do, and life would fucking well go on. That was all she could work toward.
 

But it was enough.

Throwing the machine into reverse, she stared at the rotting faces around her, several even having managed to climb onto the exposed treads next to her cab, thumping loudly on the glass windows.
 

“Fuck this noise,” she said softly, and applied the gas.
 

The treads instantly sprang to life, pulling the creatures on top beneath their massive steel weight, crushing them instantly beneath the Grinder as it reversed.
 

In front of her, she watched the chain pull slowly taut, then straighten as it rose from the earth. The length of chain between the two sides of the gate suddenly jerked up and across the entrance, tripping a dozen creatures as they passed through. A great swath of bloody meat nearly seven feet wide marked where Mike’s devastating Bessy had passed through, and the creatures using that swath to approach the gate were finding no easy route to traction.
 

This helped Kate as she accelerated, using the torque of the Grinder’s engine to slowly pull the chain tighter. The gates closed slowly but consistently, funneling the creatures that were able to approach into a narrower cone, until the gates were barely a foot apart. She stopped as the chain began to resist, knowing that the laws of physics could no longer help her.
 

The gates were as tightly bound now, with a slight inward bulge, as they could be. This left a gap of approximately one foot, through which several creatures were now trying to enter.

Kate smiled as she listened to the music blaring from Mike’s machine, watching the lights flare into action and the collective attention of the herd follow the new and interesting activity.
 

She looked at her watch. Now it was time to wait. They had to give Mike enough time to draw off the majority of the herd before they started to clear out the dangers within the fence.
 

Drawing a deep breath, and hoping that her engine wouldn’t decide to play dead, she turned the Grinder off and leaned back in her seat, listening to the sound of the undead outside her cabin, moaning and clawing for her flesh.
 

She smiled as she heard the next song on Mike’s playlist as he trundled away.
 

Oops. They had, in fact, done it again.
 

Hopefully they’d pull themselves through one more time.
 

***

If I told you that something was about an hour and a half away, by car, would you think that was interminable?
 

Would you groan in frustration, knowing the trip would be torturous?
 

Or would you shrug in ambivalence, thinking nothing of the journey?

What if I added in tens of thousands of zombies, a horrific sawing machine, decades-old pop music, and the nightmarish cast of Christmas lights on the dark, viscous blood of the undead, as they were crushed beneath your tires?
 

Yeah, summer vacation it ain’t. I was ready to be done.
 

The trip started off with a certain air of novelty. But by the time an hour and a half of careful driving and zombie-mulching had gone by, I was ready to pull over at the next rest stop and stretch my legs. And by that, I meant run away.