Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (35 page)

After a dinner of MREs, Chris and Dan volunteered for the remainder of the current shift, grabbed their rifles and headed off for the wall. Seemed those two had become close friends. Mattie said that she would like to help out the medics that they had on-site. They were way under staffed, and she had some medical training as an EMT. We agreed that would be a good idea.

“
Well, looks like we got the night shift. Let’s try to grab some shut eye first,” I said to Stephen.

“
Not so fast,” Stephen replied. “Appears Sgt. Grease Ball’s walking up behind you as I speak.”

I stopped dragging out my sleeping bag and turned to see a familiar figure sauntering our way. Sgt. Henderson, a fat man with a greasy receding hair parked his largeness in front of us, looking at us with an air of self-importance.

“
I see you two are making friends,” he sneered. “Lucky for you guys making a complaint against you will do no good.”

“
And I see you haven’t missed any meals other than what missed your mouth and is spilled on your shirt,” I shot back, pointing at several large stains.

“
I can’t believe he is still wearing his uniform,” Stephen chuckled, loud enough for Sgt. Henderson to hear.

“
I have had enough of your insubordination from both of you officers! I’m still wearing this uniform because I didn’t abandon my post like you two did. I want you to apologize to Councilman Lewis right away!” Henderson brayed. “He is an important man who we are blessed to have lead us through these dark days.”

“
Blessed?” I said mockingly, looking over at Stephen who, like me, never did care much for Sgt. Henderson.

“
Did you hear something, Stephen?” I asked. “Sounded like a suck ass doing what he does best.”

Stephen let out a roaring laugh.

Sgt. Henderson’s face turned purple with rage. ”Why you little…”

I stood up and got my nose inches from his face. “You got something you want to tell me fat man?” I asked in a dangerously quiet voice. “I would like to know how it is that we never saw you at all throughout that entire day we were fighting for our lives. Your spent your whole career hiding behind others. You’ve been a coward ever since I’ve known you. You can’t hide behind your badge anymore because these zombies don’t give a fuck that you are a cop. Now that the police department safety blanket you had is gone, you suck up to Councilman Lewis. Go back to your master, fat man. Stay out of my sight, and leave the fighting to the real men.”

Sgt. Henderson tried to shout more orders, which sounded like a sheep bleating. I ignored him, unrolled my sleeping bag and climbed in, closing my eyes. Finally he gave up and fast walked back towards the school.

“
Things here are already off to a rotten start,” Stephen said after he climbed into the back of the ambulance and put some food in Buddy’s bowl. Buddy had been forced to hide out, and now Stephen watched him greedily wolf down his meal. “We might want to think of preparing to leave for the prison.”

“
Let’s give it a week or two, for Mattie’s sake,” I replied. “If it doesn’t get better, we can pull up stakes and head out.”

“
Sounds good,” Stephen said. “It was her idea to come here damnit. Guess we were blinded by her hotness.”

“
She is too hot for her own damn good,” I replied, agreeing with him.

Stephen got his dog some water, and the last thing I remembered before falling asleep was Stephen telling the dog “good boy” for staying quiet and out of sight of Lewis and Henderson. He was pretty sure that there would be an even larger fight over the “no pets” policy at the school.

* * * * * * * *

We woke up sometime later and completed a shift on guard duty. It was dark, and most of the safe zone was quiet with the occupants fast asleep. Stephen and I spent most of the time talking with Jack on how to better run the security details. We decided in advance to leave Jack out of our plans on a supply raid in the morning and just deal with the consequences later. Stephen wanted to get some use out of his M1A rifle and spent a little time shooting the .308 at the zombies that were approaching from the east. While he did that I wandered around the school and came across the library. It was empty of people, of course, and I scanned some shelves. I spotted a few books of interest and placed them into my backpack. I was about to leave when a certain book caught my eye, the latest installment in Stephen King’s
Dark Tower
series. When the last book came out in 2004 it was supposed to be the finale, but a new one had recently been released. I thought the ending had sucked so badly on his last book and apparently many others had thought so as well, at least enough to force the author to write another one.

“
He’d better not have fucked it up this time,” I muttered, placing the book into my pack with the others.

I paused by the empty librarian’s desk and chuckled before leaving without having my library card swiped.

Satisfied, and with dawn approaching, I headed back to our ambulance for a quick nap before our raid and arrived at about the same time as Stephen. He was grinning ear to ear.

“
Shoots like a champ,” he gloated. “My new scope is dead on!”

Chris let us sleep until after ten and woke us up with Robert in tow. Dan was busy going over some gear he wanted to take on today’s raid.

“
Hey, Rob,” Stephen said. “I’m glad to see you can help out today. And has anyone seen Mattie?”

Dan told us that he last saw her somewhere near the intake area this morning with the compound’s medical team.

“
See if you can find her,” I asked Dan. “We have some planning to discuss, and she needs to hear what we come up with.”

Stephen and I started getting ready, and soon Dan and Mattie returned, along with another officer, Adam, following close behind on a department Segway personal transporter. I always thought those things looked goofy as hell, and were a waste of money. But I had to laugh as he pulled up. At least he wasn’t wearing the stupid bicycle helmet that came with it.

“
Hey guys, I’m glad to see you all made it,” Adam said as he came to a stop near the rest of us. ”Stephen told me you all arrived here yesterday.”

“
What have you been up to?” I asked while shaking his hand. “Besides rolling around on that thing like a dork.”

“
I’ve been in charge of the police mobile command center,” Adam replied with an air of authority, ignoring my playful ribbing. “And I have had my hands full keeping Sgt. Henderson and Councilman Lewis happy. Y’all look like you are up to something. Stephen mentioned yesterday he wanted to plan a supply raid.”

“
I was just getting to that, Adam, and I’m glad you are here because we could use the extra trigger man,” Stephen replied.

“
No problem,” Adam answered. “What are ya thinking?”

“
Now that all are here, we can get to it,” Stephen continued. “The handfuls of raids other people have gone on have returned with little or no supplies, from what I’ve been told. And Councilman Lewis hasn’t planned any additional runs. That does not bode well for the refugees here at the compound, because from what I can tell, the safe zone is burning through the food and medicine stockpiles at an alarming rate. At the most, this place has enough for one, maybe two more weeks.”

“
I’m convinced Lewis is sitting on a secret stash as well,” Adam informed us. “He’s got the east end of the school pretty much on lockdown.”

“
That may be true Adam,” I said, “but if this place doesn’t get overrun first, food is gonna get scarce, and sooner rather than later. After that happens, they will be looking to loot what little we have, even though it wouldn’t feed them all for even a single day!”

Stephen nodded. “So what we have in mind is to set out on our own resupply raid, maybe hit the Sam’s Club warehouse down the street. I’m sure it’s been hit somewhat already, but there is bound to be stuff left.”

Dan, Chris and Mattie all voiced their agreements and willingness to participate.

Adam had the look of a kid about to rip open presents on Christmas day.

“
Oh hell yeah,” he said eagerly. “You have got to take me with you. I haven’t had hardly any trigger time here yet cooped up in that command center. I mouthed off to Henderson when I first showed up and he’s had me stuck shuffling fucking paperwork ever since. I’m dying to do something!”

“
You may get more trigger time than you really want, bro,” Chris mumbled quietly to Adam.

“
Alright folks,” I said. “Grab whatever gear you think we might need and meet back here in thirty minutes.”

“
What about getting clearance to leave the compound?” Adam asked.

“
You let me worry about getting clearance; you just get back here in thirty, which should be more than easy in your personal chariot.”

Adam laughed, did some fancy turn and zoomed off.

The others left to grab their gear and wolf down some food, but I just grabbed an energy bar and munched on it as I prepped an assault bag for the raid and then hit the shitter. By the time I returned, sighing in relief, most of the group had formed, and they were apparently waiting on me and Robert. Adam was present, minus the fancy ride, which he mentioned needed a fresh charge.

“
Everything come out okay, Mike?” Dan asked, munching on an unlit cigar.

Refusing to be baited by him, I ignored the question. “Is everyone here?” I asked instead. “Good. Listen up, we will take the ambulance and head over to the nearby Chevy dealer and commandeer a couple of cargo trucks in order to load as much as we can.”

Within a few minutes, Robert came jogging up to the ambulance with his shotgun in hand and Glock pistol in his old duty belt.

“
Sorry I’m late guys, I had to say goodbye to wife and kids,” he gasped, out of breath from the run.

Dan climbed into the truck, put it into gear, pulled up to the gate and stopped. The gate guard walked over to our rig and asked what was going on.

“
We’re going on a resupply run,” I told the man. “We should be back in a few hours.”

The skinny man looked skeptical. “We were not informed of any raids today. In fact, Councilman Lewis ordered us not to allow any unsanctioned resupply missions out of the safe zone without his authorization.”

Dan waved the man closer to the driver’s window. When the guard got close enough, the man’s eye widened when he saw Dan’s 1911 that was now pointed at his face.

“
Now listen to what I have to say real good little man,” Dan growled menacingly. “We are going out of these gates with or without your consent to go get supplies for the people inside these walls. Now, it is your call if the gate is in one piece or not when we leave. Do we have an understanding?”

The wide-eyed man nodded his head up and down briskly and swallowed hard nervously.

“
Open the gate!” he yelled over to his partner.

“
Good choice,” Dan said, putting the truck into gear as the bus blocking the entrance was moved.

Chuckling, Dan proceeded out of the safe zone, accelerated down the street and with the exception of running over several shambling zombies that were too stupid to move, made it to the car dealership without incident. When he pulled up to the main structure, Chris and Stephen hopped out.

“
The rest of you guys set up perimeter and stand fast until we locate some keys for the trucks,” Stephen ordered and took off at a jog with Chris towards the office area of the dealership.

The rest of us exited the ambulance and set up a makeshift perimeter around the truck.

“
If we get heavy numbers of zombies, take appropriate actions,” I informed the small team. “If just single numbers, let me know and I’ll dispatch them with the bat. The less noise we make the better.”

I took up a roving guard position and walked the inner part of the perimeter to better help if needed.

Within a few minutes, Stephen and Chris returned with several sets of keys, and we moved over to where the cargo trucks were located. After trying many different keys, we were able to find the correct ones and had two trucks started within minutes. I handed out several of the small two-way radios from Stephen’s stash to aid in communication. Spreading our available personnel among the three trucks we now had, we then proceeded to our target, the Sam’s Club. We slowed for the turn into the business parking lot, and I noticed right off the bat that we had our work cut out for us. In front of the wide open electric sliding doors were approximately one hundred of the infected bastards milling around. They quickly turned their attention on us, however, and began shambling in our direction.

“
Make a path through them with the truck,” Stephen said. “We don’t want to waste all our ammunition before we even get into the store.”

“
Roger that!” I said and slowed down a bit before the large ambulance began shuddering from the multiple impacts. I figured it wouldn’t be good to disable the truck from hitting zombies too hard.