LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (54 page)

It was slow going most of the way, as I had to watch for vehicle obstructions and other dangers—like fence posts or half-collapsed road signs—that could be hidden by the tide of undead. I weaved in between cars and trucks, trees, and bushes. As I moved closer to the rear of the herd, it thinned slightly, enough for me to get up to about ten miles an hour fairly consistently. But I still had to watch the saw blade, making sure I didn’t take too many at once.
 

As I was seen and heard, I became the singular greatest attraction the world of the undead had ever encountered.
 

I drew them from the trees like moths to a flame. I drew them along the road like the pied piper. I even drew them from inside cars and buildings—zeds that hadn’t even bothered to show as we passed along the day before were coming out to see the magnificent McKnight and his happy tractor of Britney-love.
 

When I had reached the turnoff to the road that I would ultimately use to funnel the creatures eastward again—and where I would hop off the magical carpet ride of charnel house death—I thought the jig was up.
 

A jackknifed package delivery truck blocked most of the road, leaving only a thin margin on the north side between the truck and a large tree through which I could pass. I would never fit. Staring at it as I throttled down to a slow approach, I took in the truck, and the single large tree. Nearly fifty feet tall, with a narrow umbrella of foliage, it wasn’t a huge tree, but it wasn’t small.

But then I had remembered the alternative use to which my machine could actually be put. Smiling, I pulled forward slowly through a small thinning of the herd. I approached the tree and, using the claw manipulators to close the aperture of the grip until only a foot or so remained on either side, I pushed forward, taking the tree at the base with the saw, which seemed happy to finally be cutting into wood instead of rotten undead bone and flesh.
 

I slowly tightened the claw as the saw moved forward, until Bessy lurched violently forward suddenly with the weight of the tree.
 

Carefully backing up, I maneuvered over the fresh stump, watching nervously as the huge tree swayed above me, then passed clear of the overturned truck with my fifty foot antenna held high.
 

On the other side of the truck, the road was clear but the zeds were thick again, moving slowly to the east, which was perfect. Accelerating slightly, I thought I could see a clear space in the distance, perhaps half a mile on. In front of me, a cluster was forming, and I realized my saw was occupied.
 

I could fix that.
 

I retracted the claw and applied the brakes suddenly, watching as the huge tree I had been carrying flew forward and tumbled heavily onto the herd of zeds in front of me, trunk and limbs crushing creatures beneath its immense girth. Navigating around the edges, I widened the claws again, and woke up Bessy’s circular kiss as we accelerated, eager to reach the tip of the zombie spear and find the front edge of the slow-moving herd.
 

 
I didn’t have to wait long. Another fifteen minutes of driving through the waxing and waning press of bodies found me in front of the creatures by the length of a football field. Looking around, I assessed that this was the best I could do. Solid trees to my left and right, with a few isolated farm houses scattered through the area. A feed and grain store was the only building within view, with a half-collapsed roof and the evidence of a recent fire, charred black wood reaching into the air like broken teeth.
 

I stopped quickly and grabbed my canvas sheet and my carbine. I was traveling light. No pack, only one extra magazine (because frankly, if I had to start shooting, I would be dead within minutes anyway), and my trusty machete.
 

I shoved the door open, grimacing as a severed hand fell from the roof, having apparently been thrown free of the saw and claw attachment. Wincing at the loud music that was directly in my ear—she was doing it again … for the fiftieth time—I dropped down to the ground and made my way to the front of the claw, draping the ragged sheet over everything, including my arms. Then I pulled a pair of yellow cleaning gloves from my cargo pocket and approached the front of Bessy.

Gore and bloody body parts draped the small enclosure. A leg was jammed underneath the left hand claw; a head was impaled on one of the large steel spines. Another held the remnants of a full torso, complete with hanging entrails and, oddly, a single strip of bloody leather belt that still clung to the remains of a pair of jeans dragging from the bottom of the torso.
 

Reaching forward, I grabbed the loosest and bloodiest of the gore and began to smear it on my canvas, taking care to drench the fabric copiously. Large chunks were best, and I gagged as I pulled entire pieces of human being against myself, rubbing it on my chest and legs and arms like a bloody luffa.
 

Finally, as I began to hear the moans approaching from behind the parked machine, I finished the gruesome work. Over the blaring music of Britney’s finest tunes, I rose from where I had been crouched, now fully visible in front of a horde of tens of thousands of undead.

Closing my eyes and taking a breath, I stepped into the road, and lurched awkwardly in place, pawing at the machine as if it contained filet mignon. I had to be one of them briefly, until there were more clustered here. Then, I planned to slowly fall back and to the left until I was at the edges of the herd, then to turn and double back to the mill. It would take me at least an hour at a full run—assuming my cardio would hold up—and I need every minute.

I listened as the first footsteps began to gain on me, the raspy voice of the approaching undead mixing oddly with the blaring music. I risked a sideways glance, head down and lolling lazily, as if mounted on silly putty.
 

Bessy was covered in ghouls within seconds, hundreds of them clambering to scale her metal hide, hands and faces searching for the human that they knew was there, faces snarled in hunger.
 

The remainder of the group, having been pulled along by the herd mentality, and not being able to comprehend what the other hundreds were doing inside the writhing mass in the center of the road, continued forward, intent on continuing in their trek, searching for more food somewhere in the distance.

It was working.
 

I dared not look back as I slowly moved away from the machine, running into creatures clustered tight around me. Their arms brushed me, their stench overpowered me. I flinched with each breathy, hungry moan. But I continued to move away, as if confused and looking for food somewhere else.
 

I was with them and they with me. Mouths agape, hands twitching. Eyes casting back and forth, none locking on me as I faded in speed, falling behind and amidst the dead.

They jostled me from behind and from the side. Dead arms and hips sending me to the sides; dead hands grasping stupidly; dead heads hanging limply from weary necks. The stench took me again, as it had in the cabin of the truck, nearly knocking me over.
 

I began my tilt to the left, slowing even more and veering ever so slowly to the north side of the road, where the woods—still thick with zombies—offered refuge from the naked vulnerability of the road.
 

It was the cracked asphalt that betrayed me.
 

My left foot caught the edge of a slightly raised piece of cement that had been pushed up by the quakes. In the press of flesh around me, I couldn’t see it and dared not stare too hard at the ground as I maneuvered to the left in a desperate attempt to break from the herd and begin my return.

So I fell.

On my face.

Hard.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, really. If it had been a simple fall, I could have played it off as a clumsy-zombie moment. An “I’ve zombie-fallen and I can’t zombie-get up” kinda thing.

But you see, I hadn’t just fallen. I had fallen on my face. And unable to catch my fall sufficiently, I did something that zombies who fell down did
not
do.
 

I started to bleed.

My nose, crushed against the pavement at an odd angle, instantly started to spit blood down my face. This wasn’t hotel elevators full of the thick crimson stuff, but it was enough.
 

Instantly, noses began to wrinkle and moans began to change in pitch. The creatures closest to me slowed, then stopped. Those behind me sped up.

I had been in a small pocket when I fell, with no zeds within five feet. That pocket was collapsing quickly.

As fast as I dared, I regained my feet, pulling my hand up from the ground with a handful of dark earth in my palm. I was standing on the edge of the roadway and to my left were still hundreds of creatures. To my right, hundreds more among the trees. And still between me and the mill, thousands.

The blood was running down my face as the creatures in front of me began to turn. Quickly, I stuffed the dirt in my hand up both nostrils, wincing in intense pain and discomfort as the earthy-smelling grit made its way into my nostrils. Pulling my hand away, I cursed silently at the thick red blood on my hand.
 

The first zombie to turn around had been a young woman. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, a ragged tear in the sleeve the only injury that marred her otherwise clean visage. It was unusual that she should have remained so well preserved. So unmarred by violence.
 

I imagined her hiding somewhere, maybe with family or a boyfriend. Maybe at college or at a party. One or more of them made their way in and scratched her or bit her. She didn’t realize the danger, and fell asleep with the fever raging. She woke up as one of the dead, another wasted human life.
 

Well, today, she was my salvation.
 

As she turned, the first to smell the fresh human blood, I did the only thing I could do.
 

I tackled her.

Like a zombie who smelled fresh meat would do.

As I fell on her, my left hand grabbing her sweatshirt in a balled fist, my right flew to the front of her chest and smeared the thick dirt and blood mixture from her chest to her navel. Leaning forward, as if to take a bite, I even rubbed my face against her clothes, smearing more of the fresh crimson liquid against her body.
 

A loud moan escaped her cracked and bloody lips as I bore her to the ground, rolling to the side immediately, as if I had simply tripped. I expected to have hundreds of teeth on me within seconds, but my ploy worked.

As the creature struggled to rise, several more zeds fell upon her, bearing her to the ground, teeth gnashing into her cold dead flesh, smelling and tasting the barest hint of fresh blood—but enough to send them into a frenzy. Three became five became twenty, all pushing forward to what they imagined to be the source of the glorious fresh meat.

Closing my eyes briefly as I rose, I continued my trek to the north, shuffling into the illusionary safety of the woods and heading home.
 

***

Relief flooded through Kate’s body as the engine turned over on the first try, sending powerful vibrations through the body of the huge machine, and causing the creatures on the treads beside her to flinch momentarily in confusion before continuing their campaign against the thick glass of her window.
 

Small cracks spiderwebbed across the pane, but she had quashed her growing concern as she watched the time elapse. More importantly, she had watched the crowd of undead outside the walls slowly ebb away, as if drawn by some weak magnet against their will.
 

Now, barely a hundred meandered around outside, cut off now from the main herd that had disappeared behind the curve of the highway a mile distant.
 

It had been more than an hour and a half, and she knew Mike was probably nearing his destination at the tip of the herd. He might even have disembarked at this point, and Kate shuddered at the thought. Alone in a herd of the undead, dressed in their own effluent and blood. She glanced at the sheet balled up in the corner of the cab.

Not unless she had to, that was for damn sure. Dying seemed an almost preferable option.
 

Around her, roughly fifty creatures milled and flailed, trying to get to her through the thick metal skin of the logging machine. And at the top of the hill, five or six hundred had made it through when they opened the gates, and even now stood against the metal walls of the mill, slamming their bloodied arms against the unforgiving barrier.
 

It was time to clean some house.

Her finger found the switch for the grinder attachment and she grinned as it came online, giant blades and grinding equipment spinning in anger and vengeance—at least in her own head—as she lowered the boom to head level and brought it around.
 

Directly through the crowd of undead surrounding her vehicle.

The first zed to feel the full wrath of the heavy machine—a machine that had been built to utterly destroy large pieces of stubborn wood, and to grind it into mulch—looked confused when it approached. A whirling ball of metal and teeth that was definitely moving, like it was alive.

The zed tried to grab it.

Then, looking even more confused as its arms simply evaporated, it tried to eat it.

Its head disappeared in a mist of gray and red brain matter, sending skull fragments into the air.
 

The others didn’t catch on any quicker.
 

The machine simply made the creatures disappear. Entire heads and torsos were ground to particulate matter; bodies fell in scores and very suddenly, Kate was alone with the five creatures huddled on the treads of the Grinder, still trying to gain entry.
 

Since the attachment didn’t reach that far—and she wouldn’t want that thing within ten feet of her even if it did—she had to take care of these herself. She couldn’t repeat her impression of a tank, by running them over with the treads, as she was now the anchor for the gates, but she didn’t mind. Five was a walk in the park.