Six Feet From Hell: Unity: 6FFH Book #5 (16 page)

CHAPTER
17

April 18, 2022 – 1641 Hours

“These fuckers ain’t very friendly! Your friends are real assholes, you know!” Cornbread yelled as he ducked down under the dash. The truck’s high profile saved them from taking several rounds to the face, but it was already smoking badly. A couple of the rounds had obviously penetrated the radiator, spraying the hood and windshield with oil and antifreeze. Jamie couldn’t see anything through the hazed glass.

Jamie
tried his best to control the truck despite not being able to see. A plume of white smoke continued to billow up from the hood. Jamie lowered his head, making himself a smaller target for the assailants. Rounds smacked against the truck, none of them hitting home, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He couldn’t figure out why the members of Camp Brown were shooting at them, but right now, he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting the truck out of the line of fire and getting to a safe distance. He slammed on the brakes and desperately tried to force the truck into reverse. Metal ground against metal, ruining the transmission of the big rig as Jamie continued to force the gearshift to do his bidding. The truck finally gave way, popping unceremoniously into reverse. Both men smacked their heads against the dash as it did.

“I
think it goes without saying, but get us the fuck out of here!” Cornbread yelled.

“Shit!
Shit! Shit! I’m trying! Start fucking shooting or something!” Jamie hollered, shoving the gearshift.

“I
would, but I like my fuckin’ head right where it is, thank you!”

Jamie
popped the clutch and slammed the gas simultaneously, spinning tires and forcing the truck backwards. They flew backwards quickly, faster than Jamie had expected. He didn’t have enough time to completely turn the wheel, and the truck slammed against the rock wall across the road with a hard thud. He’d managed to turn the rig just enough to keep Cornbread’s side out of the line of fire. The passenger’s side rear wedged against the wall, slinging it further to the right, and the truck abruptly came to a complete halt. As soon as the truck stopped, Cornbread quickly jumped out, racking his shotgun as he did.

Jamie
fumbled with his M4, but finally managed to get a firm grasp on it. He too swiftly clambered out of the truck, climbed onto the hitch, and ducked behind the flimsy fiberglass cab. It wasn’t the best spot to try to return fire, but it kept him from getting something important shot off. He was lucky enough to catch his attackers between magazines, giving him a slight moment of levity and a chance to figure out just what the hell was going on.

Cornbread
didn’t give the guards the same courtesy.

He
fired a homemade slug – made of hot glue and 4.5mm air gun pellets – at the first man that he saw. There were no negotiations, no attempt to resolve the conflict. He didn’t know who was shooting at him and, frankly, he didn’t give a shit. It was a cutthroat world. There was no sense in trying to talk it out.

The
first slug sailed wide right, but the two men got the hint. Each one instinctively ducked down and scrambled for cover. A derelict car about thirty feet to their left was the best they could muster. The men scrambled over to it and continued firing random shots as they escaped.

Cornbread
racked the next round – another hot glue and pellet salvo – as he saw both men duck behind the abandoned car. Jamie eased over to Cornbread’s left and peeked around the corner of the truck. Cornbread pointed to his eyes and held up two fingers, the international sign for
I have eyes on two.
Jamie brought the rifle’s ACOG scope to his eye. He could see the car, but no movement. Only after waiting for a few seconds did he see the slightest shadow under the car start to move. He fired three shots in quick succession, not expecting any of them to land, but to let the two gunmen know that they meant business. Cornbread followed his three-round burst with another hot glue slug. The round hit the car with a hellacious force, the impact ripping a sizeable hole in the rear quarter panel.

“The
next one is gonna be through your head if you don’t identify yourself!” Jamie announced.

“Unless
you’re one of our people, then I suggest that you put down your weapons and come out slowly!” Came the reply.

Cornbread
looked to Jamie and shook his head urgently. “No way in hell these are your friends, Jamie. I say we pop ‘em and worry about the consequences later.”

“And
how do you propose we do that? I can’t get a shot, and you can’t, either. They aren’t gonna stroll out and give up there, hoss.”

Cornbread
swiftly reached up to the cab door of the truck and flung it open. Jamie kept his attention to the abandoned car, covering Cornbread’s movement. He fired three more shots as he noticed the two men stirring. Cornbread sat back down behind his shoddy cover, an assault pack in his hand. He opened the pack and fiddled around in it for a few seconds, finally producing a contraption that made Jamie cringe.

“Is
that C4?”

Cornbread
held up the makeshift bomb. He had taken two Claymore mines, tied them back-to-back, and filled the empty space between them with a half-pound of C4. Three wires ran from a small radio on top of the contraption, one to the C4, and two more to each one of the Claymores. It was a formidable-looking explosive. Cornbread had plenty of time to fidget with some of the explosives and had come up with the device for taking out any size wall or other obstacle. After four months of next to nothing to do, he’d decided to take the bomb with him on their current mission. He reached into the bag again, this time procuring a basketball – flat – with a large slice down the middle of it.

Despite
the predicament, Jamie lowered his rifle, momentarily taking his attention off the attackers. “What the fuck are we gonna do with a flat basketball? You plan on settling this over a really shitty game of one-on-one with these assholes?”

“It’s
a pain in the ass for a one-armed man to throw something this size, so I figured I’d stuff it in the basketball and chuck it. A flat one tends to flop and stick wherever it lands, too. Besides, no one thinks of a basketball being thrown at them as much of a threat, do they?”

Jamie
had to admit to himself that Cornbread had a damn good point. Appearances were everything. The undead weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, so it wouldn’t matter what you threw at them.
Living
people, on the other hand, were much more perceptive to their surroundings, so a basketball would confuse them, maybe for just a few seconds, but just long enough to take them out.

Cornbread
finished stuffing the large bomb in the basketball, turning the radio on and noting the channel that it was on before he did. It was a difficult task for a one-armed man, but he handled it adequately. After applying a small amount of duct tape to cover the hole, the IED (Improvised Explosive Device) was ready. He fished out the companion radio to the device and turned it on.

“Fire
off a few rounds. When those fuckers duck down, I’m gonna chuck this thing as close to the car as I can.”

“What
if you don’t get it all the way there?” Jamie asked.

Cornbread
chuckled. “With the amount of boom-boom this thing is gonna produce; it won’t really matter where I get it, as long as it’s within fifty feet or so.”

“I’m
not worried about them, dipshit! What is the blast radius on that thing?”

The
gunmen behind the car startled both Jamie and Cornbread. Both stood at the same time and fired off what seemed like a full magazine each, none of the rounds hitting anything but rock and making more holes in the truck.

“
Fuck it! Get to it! I got this!” Jamie hollered, and then proceeded to start firing.

Both
the men ducked down quickly at the gunfire. Jamie wasn’t going crazy with the rate of fire, firing off two rounds a second, just enough to keep the assailants suppressed. He made a mental count of how many rounds he fired, minus the six he’d already sent down range.

Cornbread
didn’t waste any time, either. As soon as Jamie began firing, he stood and sized up the distance he needed to keep them out of harm’s way with the basketball IED. The car was around thirty or forty yards away, which would stretch the limit of his throwing abilities, and was still inside the blast range of the Claymores, but not by much. As long as he and Jamie stayed behind the engine block of the truck, they should remain unscathed.

Or
so he hoped.

With
all the energy he could muster, Cornbread stood and heaved the IED towards the car. He watched as the bomb sailed through the air and landed about ten feet short of the car.

Well,
shit. Here goes nothing,
he thought, and grabbed the radio.

Jamie
was still firing off rounds at the car when he noticed the ball sail through the air, landing a little short of its intended destination. He stopped firing and ducked down, covering his ears and opening his mouth. With any luck, the shockwave and concussive blast wouldn’t burst his eardrums.

“Fire
in the hole…” Cornbread whispered, and keyed the radio.

The
blast was considerably larger than he expected. The ball bearings in the Claymores flew out in all directions, penetrating anything and everything in sight. The fourteen hundred one-eighth-inch-diameter steel balls flew out at an incredible 1,200 meters-per-second, flattening anything in their path. Although the rounds were no bigger than #4 birdshot, the sheer force and velocity of the explosion rocked the truck and moved the abandoned car nearly twenty feet. The thunderous roar was bound to attract more of the undead, so Cornbread wasted no time in popping back up, Mossberg in hand, to survey the damage.

The
car was nearly flattened and now laying on its top. Gravel and small bits of exploded fragments were still falling through the air. There was a sizeable crater where the bomb went off, dug out of the old asphalt, and a small fire near the now-overturned car.

Cornbread
was proud of himself. Not since blowing up Captain White’s LAV had he gotten the chance to blow something up, something that he relished doing. It was a rare opportunity, so he took great pride in the accomplishment.

Jamie
slowly let go of his ears, the ringing still there despite his effort to prevent it. He slowly blinked, making sure that he hadn’t joined the ranks of the dead with Cornbread’s handiwork. He looked down at Cornbread, who was scanning back and forth with the Mossberg. Jamie brushed away bits of gravel and dusted himself off, then slowly climbed down to join his partner.

Cornbread
lowered the shotgun and laughed. “I think I got ‘em.”

“I
think I’m gonna be deaf for a week. Jesus, ‘Bread, I think we are gonna have some company soon. Every living
and
undead creature for a mile heard that blast.”

Cornbread
was already walking towards the demolished car, his shotgun at low ready. “Then let’s not be around when they get here. C’mon, we gotta find your people in that building.”

“Something
tells me if they heard that blast that they would come running. If we just killed two of ‘em then they aren’t gonna be real happy with us.”

“Well
something tells
me
that they weren’t your Good Samaritan people. I don’t think we killed anybody of consequence.”

Jamie
was a few paces behind his one-armed friend when he saw the movement near the car.
There is no way in hell that someone survived that!
He thought.
With a closer look, he did indeed see someone crawling from under the wreckage.

“Hold
up! One of those fuckers survived!” He swiftly caught up with Cornbread, holding his friend back for the moment. Jamie raised his rifle and slowly turned the corner on the car. As he approached the two bodies, the one closest to him groaned.

Cornbread
raised his shotgun to finish the battered subject, but Jamie held it at bay. “Wait. I want to see if these fuckers have anything to say before they die.”

“Well,
by the looks of it, the other one is deader’n shit, I mean, look at him!”

The
second man was very much deceased. There were multiple holes throughout his body, including several in his head. He looked as if someone had shot him with a powerful shotgun with a wide spread. Blood poured from every hole in his body, both natural and artificial. His clothes were nearly removed from his body, and substantial bits of his hands and face were missing altogether. His cohort favored better, but not by much.

“Yeah,
I’d say so, but this one is still kicking, at least for now.” Jamie turned his attention to the man that was still alive. “You tell me something worthwhile, like why you were shooting at me and my friend here, and I will make sure you don’t come back as a dead fucker.”