Six Feet From Hell: Unity: 6FFH Book #5 (11 page)

White
grunted and looked back at the horde. “Well then let’s get this fuckin’ thing started and get the hell outta here before they notice there is a goddamned dinner buffet down the street!”

“Guys,
I think they know we’re here.” Boyd’s voice cracked as he spoke. “Look.”

Several
of the zombies near the front of the pack slowly shambled towards them. It would only be a matter of seconds before more would notice, starting the domino effect of undead. The men immediately noticed the shambling corpses and fast-forwarded their plans.

“Curtis,
get in the truck and fire it up. Everyone else, get back in the Dodge and get it started. Curtis, if you can’t get it started, don’t stand there all day and try. Get the hell out and get in the Dodge,” Joe ordered.

Curtis
grabbed the door handle of the LMTV and pulled himself up, leaving the door open. Once seated, he grasped the ignition and clicked it twice towards START. He closed his eyes and prayed.

“Here
goes nothin.’”

Joe
walked to the end of the LMTV, raising his rifle as he did. The straggler zombies were less than twenty yards away, but he didn’t want to fire just yet. For the most part, they still had the element of surprise. The rumbling sound of a large diesel engine attempting to start took that element away. The truck coughed and sputtered, bellowing black smoke from the exhaust stacks.

However,
it did not start.

Joe
looked back to the truck with hopeful determination, gripping his M4 until his knuckles were white. “C’mon you hunk of shit! Start!”

Curtis
continued turning the engine over, to no avail.

As
Joe turned back towards the tunnel, the deluge of undead began flowing in his direction. At first, the stragglers had little company, but within a few seconds, some of the others began to shamble in the same direction. The domino effect had started. With the element of surprise gone, Joe fired the first shot. A walker less than fifteen yards away was the first victim. Skinny and extremely dirty, the zombie took a round to the left eye, dropping like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The rifle shot through the head looked like a rotten pumpkin exploding; various bits of former gray matter and other indiscernible goo blew out the back of its head.

Joe
fired several more shots at oncoming zombies, each one suffering the same fate as the first. As a few zombies fell, more and more stepped up to take their place. Joe retreated a few steps, slowly walking backwards towards the end of the tunnel, firing off more shots as he did. The roar of the undead became deafening, the tunnel provided macabre acoustics for the approaching horde. The sound of moans and guttural growling shot out of the tunnel like a cannon. No amount of ammunition, at least what he had available, was going to make a dent in the zombie populace. Joe dropped his first clip and procured a second, loading up the M4, slammed the bolt forward, and continued firing. The stragglers weren’t stragglers anymore, though, they had plenty of company behind them, and they were all headed his direction.

Rick
waited for his father to clear the line of fire and step back into the more lit end of the tunnel before he fired his first shot. The 7.62mm rounds bellowed out from the AR-10 as the undead were in hot pursuit of his father. He adjusted his aim, placing the crosshairs on a particularly quick zombie as it approached the back of the LMTV. Rick squeezed the trigger, the recoil bumping his sight off the target for a moment. When he eyed the creature again, it was missing the entire left half of its face. The destroyed remnant of its brain slid out and plopped onto the ground before it fell down as well, leaving a slimy trail as it did.

Joe
felt a tug at his side. He instinctively spun and grabbed where his holster was. As he whipped around, he saw what was pulling at it. Captain White stood behind him with. In his right hand, aimed towards him, was Joe’s .45. White paused momentarily, and then fired. Joe ducked down and away, fearing White was trying to shoot him. He knew deep down that the bastard couldn’t be trusted. There were too many variables to make him useful; he was damaged goods in more ways than one. The cordite smell took over the stench of undead for a moment, the burnt gunpowder lingering in the air.

Joe’s
ears rang, but he blinked once, then twice. He was dazed, but otherwise unharmed. He dropped to one knee in attempt to right his scrambled senses. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Captain White slowly moving forward, the .45 firing off shots as he did. White hadn’t shot him, but he’d taken out a rotting corpse that had rounded the corner of the LMTV. The creature was still wavering back and forth, the synapses still momentarily firing, and then it fell in a heap in the road, a large .45 caliber-sized hole in its forehead. Although he couldn’t hear, he could see White taking out more zombies.

Captain
White grabbed Joe by the collar, hastily forcing him to his feet. “I got you, soldier! Get the fuck out of here!”

Joe
scrambled a bit once he got his feet under him, righting himself and bringing up his M4. White fired the last of the 1911’s nine rounds and stuffed the pistol in his waistband. Even though he couldn’t hear it well, he could still make out what White was motioning. Joe stepped backwards and towards the LMTV as Curtis desperately tried to start the truck. He banged on the door as he backpedaled.

“Forget
it, Curtis! Get the hell out now!”

As
if to answer his seemingly futile pleas, the truck roared to life, filling the area with thick, black smoke. Joe slung his rifle and pulled his undershirt up to cover his mouth not only from the smoke, but also from the rancid stench of the undead slowly shoving its way through the tunnel. He waved feverishly at Boyd in the Dodge as he ran in front of the LMTV. Getting to the passenger’s side of the LMTV, he flung the door open and climbed in.

Captain
White backpedaled as he watched the LMTV rumble to life. Seeing that it was running, he spun around and sprinted to the Dodge. He grabbed the door and flung it open, jumped inside, grinning the entire time. He lamented the choices by the supposed “man in charge,” but they obviously weren’t trained well enough, a problem that he would try to fix. White needed to show him proper military tactics, survival, evasion, and most of all, escape. Their half-assed approach was going to get them all killed; he had to show them what it meant to be a well-oiled unit. They had obviously fought together and been able to take care of themselves, but they were capable of so much more. They had luck on their side, but it would only last so long. For now, they had to get away. It was a narrow getaway, but
any
escape was better than
no
escape.

Rick
pounded on the Dodge’s cab as he watched his father climb aboard the LMTV, out of harm’s way. “I think it’s time to leave!”

“Yeah,
I think it is!” Boyd said. He threw the Ram into reverse and swung the back end around so the truck faced back towards the onramp. He shifted into Drive and took off towards the ramp, the LMTV following closely behind it. The zombies began spilling out of the tunnel as the two trucks sped off. Bony fingers clawed at the air in a futile attempt to grab whatever they could. The undead noticed the whistling sound of the twin diesel engines as they made the turn onto the ramp. The shambling group turned collectively.

Then
they followed the sound.

CHAPTER
11

April 18, 2022 – 1335 Hours – Tazewell, Virginia                                                                                                               

Even
though Beverly and Roy volunteered for their duty, it still was no more pleasurable than their usual duties. They were lucky enough to have survived the apocalypse together, but didn’t relish their normal jobs of working the wall or the gardens. Even though Beverly possessed some medical skills, they were pale in comparison to Larry and his friends’ abilities. Since they arrived, Beverly had taken over the duties of tending to the gardens outside town. It was a dirty job, but it meant keeping food readily available, and as long as she was being useful, that was fine by her. Her husband had been a Virginia Department of Corrections officer, a job common to their area of Virginia. He drew guard duty most days, and other days he would tend the garden with her.

There
were benefits to working the gardens, however. The limited amount of tobacco they planted in the last few years had finally come to fruition, and Beverly enjoyed having one of the few packs of cigarettes left in the civilized world. It took some serious bartering to get decent rolling papers, but she had traded her way into several packs of them recently. It was nice to have a little bit of the old world back, especially for a former smoker. She stood in a doorway that led outside the prison, puffing away at a homemade cigarette. She didn’t want to irritate her husband’s asthma by smoking indoors. There weren’t any emergency inhalers left, and the few that they did have were long since expired.

Her
husband, Roy, sat a few feet away, slowly thumbing through an old paperback. As he lackadaisically kicked back in his chair, the title of the book came into view. The name of the book was
The Rising
by Brian Keene. Beverly rolled her eyes and sighed in contempt.

“Why
in the hell are you reading about zombies? Don’t you think that we know enough about them by now?” She said, blowing a lungful of smoke out the door.

Roy
peered over the top of the book, and then resumed reading. “This was one of my favorite books, and I want to read something. Besides, there might be something of use in here, you never know.”

“Roy,
the only thing that book is good for now is kindling for a fire.”

Roy
waved off his pessimistic wife and continued to read. A few seconds later, his watch beeped, signaling for another checkup of the “patient.”

“I
believe it’s your turn, honey,” he said, not bothering to look up from the paperback.

Beverly
groaned in contempt. She was beginning to feel less like a nurse and more like a babysitter with each passing checkup. For the last two hours, the woman had done nothing but sleep and occasionally whimper. The IV that Larry had started was beginning to run out, and they did not have another to give her. She had already gone through two bags of the saline solution, and it didn’t look as if she would get a third. Whether she survived would be up to her body’s ability to bring itself back from whatever had caused her near-catatonic state.

Beverly
eased over to the cell door and peeked in. The woman was on her back on an old prison mattress. The covers they had used to warm her still covered her. Beverly unlocked the door and swung it open. As soon as she did, she wished she hadn’t. The smell of urine and excrement was still permeating throughout the room, in spite of the woman being covered. Beverly noticed a damp spot in the crotch area of the blanket.
Great, she’s pissed herself.
She pulled up the handkerchief around her neck to cover her mouth as she entered the room. Vagrant or not, the woman still deserved some dignity. She grabbed another blanket from the corner of the room and braced herself for the smell of stale piss as she grabbed the soaked blanket. She pulled away the cover and gasped. The wet substance was not urine.

It
was blood.

Beverly
instinctively covered her mouth in surprise. There was no telling how long the poor woman had been bleeding, but judging from the size of the stain, it could have been quite a while. Beverly was shortly taken aback. The nursing instincts inside her soon went to work, however. She knelt down and grabbed the woman’s wrist to check her pulse, which had been weak and thready at best. As she pawed at the woman’s wrist, she came to a horrific conclusion.

There
was no pulse.

Beverly’s
heart literally skipped a beat as she realized what was imminent.

“Roy…
” She squeaked out, barely above a whisper.

The
dead woman on the prison mattress did not let her finish her sentence. Before Beverly could adequately react, the woman grabbed hold of her wrist with an inhumane strength, yanked her down, and clamped down on her neck. Blood immediately began to spurt from the gaping hole in Beverly’s neck as she desperately tried to scream for help. No sound came from the mouth-sized hole in her throat as the dead woman continued to gnaw at her larynx. The physiology that it took for her to scream was now being eaten by the undead woman.

Roy
sat and read. Completely enamored with his book, he did not hear the woman in the cell eating away at his wife’s face and neck. He didn’t realize there was anything wrong. The two women that he shared the small space with were standing in front of him a few moments later, blood dripping from their faces and other wounds.

Roy
thumbed the next page. “Everything all right in there, Bev?”

The
two women pounced on their oblivious prey. Flesh was torn from bone and blood bespattered the pristine white walls inside the jail as they feasted on the unaware man. Undead Beverly chomped down on Roy’s shoulder as the other woman clawed away at his midsection. As the woman tore into his abdomen, his entrails made an exit and splattered on the floor. The area looked like a slaughterhouse within a few short seconds; blood, intestines, and other gore painted the room.

Roy
didn’t put up much of a fight; he was too busy desperately trying to kick at the door to the outside. He knew that it would be the end of all the citizens of Tazewell if he didn’t get to the door. The door that led into the confines of the walled-in town.

The
door that was still propped open.