Total Apoc Trilogy (Book 2): Fighting the Hordes (9 page)

            Olivia turned and knelt facing him in her seat.  She looked eager.  Excited.

            "Give me a couple pairs."

            "No."

            That surprised me.  I'd have given her anything she wanted.  Underwear seemed like such a trivial thing, too.  Did Ralph have some weird thing about his shorts?  I kind of hoped he did, so I had something to make fun of him about.

            "One pair," she pleaded.  "I'll give you my watch."

            Ralph leered at her, "The watch isn't what I want."

            Olivia gawked at him a second, before shaking her head and facing forward in her seat.

            "Guys are so disgusting," she grumbled.

            "At least I'm not wearing ten day old panties," Ralph returned.

            "Neither am I," she said, slanting a bemused
take that
look at him.

            "Hush, here comes Jake," I said.  Really, I didn't want to think about Olivia being commando.  I was wearing the same shorts I'd awakened in on day one of the zombie apocalypse.  That wasn't something I wanted to think about, either.  "How much fuel do we have?"

            "Half a tank," she said.

            That was more than enough to reach the armory, but not enough for a return trip to Emory.  My mind was already going beyond that, to how we were going to part company with Jake and company.  I'd like to have a full tank when that happened.  I glanced at the dark, smoky city.  There were possibilities of escape down there, too.  Heck, maybe we could even return to our apartments and grab some extra clothes and underwear.

            "Hey, man," I said before Jake could speak.  "We need to think about refueling before heading back.  On top of that our jerry can was shot full of holes."

            "I know," he said.  "I want to stop at the first gas station we find anyway and get some city maps."

            Military guys and their maps.  I knew the streets well enough to get us there.  Olivia and Ralph knew them just as well.  We all worked about a mile for the armory, though I rarely drove past it.  The Army Reserve armory was on a large street between downtown and Uptown.  Of course, if they had maps they might not need us.

            "Sure thing," I said, and forgot all about it when I looked past him and southward down the highway.  "Shit.  Are those the Deathdealers?"

            Jake followed my eyes and grunted.  Olivia jumped out of the jeep to see, and Ralph started cussing.  My heart raced as I looked upon two columns of motorcycles and RTVs topping the next hill back.  They had their headlights on, while we were driving without lights.  Again, some sort of military thing.  It really slowed us down.

            "Probably," Jake said.  "Hard to tell from this distance, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't them."

            "We've kicked their asses twice," Ralph said.  "What the hell do they want?"

            I wasn't so sure our second battle with them resulted in their asses getting kicked.  I was still battered and bruised, and ached all over, from that fight.  My ass was definitely kicked.  Yet, we did escape and killed a lot more of them than they killed of us.

            Jake headed back to his truck, telling us to mount up.  A moment later he ordered us to head out over the walkie-talkie.

            "I hate the Deathdealers," Olivia said, putting it in gear and starting forward.  "I think they broke my nose."

            Her nose didn't look broken to me.  Maybe it was a little swollen, but what did I know?  Ralph's nose kind of looked flattened it was swollen so much.  She did have a busted lip and a black eye.  I could only imagine what I looked like.  My face ached, but not as much as my left shoulder and right ribs.

            Ralph changed the ammo in the M60, mounting a full ammo can and racking the charging hand.  "Let's party like Green Berets!"

            The road was remarkable easy to see without lights.  Of course, we didn't have headlights glaring in our eyes.  Clouds blocked the moon, but Olivia didn't have any trouble staying on the road.  I found it a little amusing that she remained within her lane, despite no other traffic or police to give her a ticket.

            Old habits.

            The highway we were driving down went above the Loop.  So we slowed, allowing the convoy to close up ranks, before taking the off ramp to the eight-lane Loop around Carson.  Ralph and I were on alert, since it was a place we were forced to slow down and there were lots of places for ambushers to hide.

            "Try to stay off the brakes," Jake's voice came over the radio.  "The Deathdealers can probably see our brake lights."

            "Damn, this place stinks," Ralph said.

            Mostly, I smelled smoke, but there was an underlying rancid stench.  The stench of death and the end of the world.  I didn't even want to think about it. 

            "Olivia, can we pick up the speed on the Loop?" I asked.  "Maybe we can get the convoy out of sight before the Deathdealers get here."

            "You don't think they can see us turning?"

            It was dark and I never looked back to see if they'd reached the last hill.  Turning off the highway without them noticing was the best case scenario.  But I wasn't feeling lucky.

            "Not sure, but it's worth a try."

            She got it up to 50 MPH pretty fast.  I half expected Jake to call and say slow down.  The jeep was the slowest vehicle, so they weren't having an issue keeping up.  I had Ralph watch the rear to see if the Deathdealers turned onto the Loop.  We passed out of sight before he noticed them arrive.

            There was the occasional lone zombie, and a few small groups of them, but we just drove around them and kept going.  They were no threat to us so we didn't have to waste any ammo.  I did hear one of the trucks behind us shoot up a group of about twenty walkers, which got Jake on the radio cussing them out.

            Jake was more concerned about alerting other hostile forces of our arrival.  I hadn't really considered that, since I was too worried about the known enemy shadowing us.  Always good to have more to worry about.

            "Here comes our turn off," I radioed.  "Cartwright.  We should be at the armory in ten to fifteen minutes."

            "I think you're supposed to say our ETA is ten minutes," Ralph corrected me.  "To keep in the military theme and all."

            "And you forgot to say 'over and out' too.  Dork," Olivia said under her breath.  She glanced at me and giggled.

            "That's commander dork to you, private," I replied.

            There were dark piles of cloth along the road that she had to swerve to miss.  It took me a moment to realize they were corpses.  I had Olivia slow down to check one out, and discovered it was mostly eaten.

            "Ugh!  I think I'm going to throw up," Olivia said, hitting the gas.  "So sick."

            For once I was glad it was dark so I didn't have to see the details of the others.  Unfortunately, after looking at one I couldn't get that image out of my mind.  Also, the stench of rotting flesh filled my nostrils.  It was there before, but now I knew what it was.

            "There's a supermarket in a strip mall over the next hill," I said.  "If I remember right, there are gas stations on all four corners.  We can stop to refill our tanks and get those city maps Jake wants."

            She hit the brakes as we topped a low hill.  "We have a problem!"

            Before us a barricade stretched out across the street.  That was not a traffic accident, even though the vehicles were all smashed.  Someone moved them into place to block passage.  And those someones were standing behind the barricade and pointing weapons at us.

Chapter 10

            "Turn right!" I cried.  The barricade was just past an intersection.  "Go!  Go!"

            Olivia turned so fast the right wheels almost came off the road.  I glanced down the side road just long enough to notice it was a residential street, lined with brick homes.

            Both Ralph and I opened up on the men behind the barricade, while we led the others past it.  Jake's vehicle followed us, and the others followed him.  Everyone fired at the barricade as they moved past it.

            "Shit," Olivia said.

            I faced forward to find another barricade just before the next intersection.

            "Ambush!  Ambush!" Jake screamed over the radio.  "Turn around!  Turn around."

            Armed men started firing at us from between the houses, and some from windows in the houses.  The convoy opened up on them.  Windows shattered, men screamed, but all I saw was dark shapes and the flashing of weapon fire.

            I stood up and faced left, the windshield held between my body and arm, while I fired over Olivia's head at the ambushers.

            "Pickups!" Mike called on the radio.  "Turn into the attack and charge!"

            We weren't in a pickup, but Olivia obeyed and turned left.  The jeep was jolted as we jumped the curb, almost tossing me out.  She drove into the gap between two houses.  One house had a wooden privacy fence, but the other didn't.  It was the rear-entry driveway side of the open side.  The jeep barely squeezed through.

            There were running men in the alley, and we fired them up.  More pickups appeared down the alley.  Mike ordered us to all turn left, and sweep down the alley towards the barricade.  We followed, shooting at anyone we spotted on the ground.

            "We're being overrun!" Jake said.  "Return to – "

            And nothing.  Olivia and I shared a wide-eyed look.

            "Did they just kill Jake?" she asked.

            "Hit the barricade, and swing back down that street!" Mike called over the radio.  "Hurry!"

            We were last in line.  While driving past two houses without fences, I was able to look all the way to the convoy.  Men were swarming over the trucks.  In that brief glance it looked like the fight was pretty much over.

            And shit started blowing up in front of us.

           
Boom!  Boom!

            "Those grenades are not from us," Olivia screamed.  One exploded between us and the pickup in front of us. 
Boom!
  "The others are shooting them at us!"

            "Yeah, I figured that out," I said.  "Zigzag."

            "We're in an alley, dork," she said.  "Where the hell am I supposed to zig or zag?"

            I was still standing, so was able to spot an out.  "Turn right into that driveway!"

            Olivia screamed, but obeyed.  The open gap between the houses appeared, and she shot the gap at high speed.  Okay, it was probably 15 to 20 MPH, but it felt super fast.  We ripped through that house's front yard, barely missing a tree, and bounced over the curb and onto the road.

            We were the only ones on that road.

            "Which way?" she asked.

            "Right," I said.  Seemed logical to go the opposite direction expected.  "Turn left at the next intersection after that."

            I started stuffing more full magazines into my pockets.  Olivia took us around the intersection, and I saw the road ended at the strip mall.  There was no entry into the shopping center, which was surrounded by a six foot high concrete wall.  But I saw a very dark, overgrown spot between the wall and the house next to it. 

            "Ralph, this is a good time to reload with a full ammo can," I said.  "Olivia, back us into that dark spot."

            "Why?"

            "We're hiding," I said.  "Dork."

            I guess the spot was actually an unpaved, overgrown alley of sorts.  The houses that lined the back of the strip mall fence had front entry garages, and their fenced yards ended about ten feet from the strip mall wall.  That strip of land was overgrown.  Olivia quickly backed into it, moving far enough into it for the shadows to hide us.  I hoped.

            "Now what?" Ralph said.

            "Good question," I replied.  "Wow.  I thought I was ready for anything, but…"

            As much as I wanted to get away from those people, and get back on the road home, I was worried sick about what happened to Jake and the others in the cargo trucks.  I heard trucks moving, and was pretty sure it was our trucks.  The ambushers were taking them.

            "Do you think they took prisoners, or just killed everyone?" Ralph asked.

            That made my heart race.  I couldn't breathe for a second.  The guys from Emory were godless bastards for how they treated us, but they weren't cold-blooded murderers.  To be just slaughtered for a few guns and not much ammo seemed so senseless.

            "One way to find out," I said.  "Sneak back over there."

            "Yeah, I really don't want to know that badly," Olivia said.  "That's a full time ambush site, so we'd definitely get caught and probably murdered."

            I nodded.  I wanted to know so badly.  Morbid curiosity?  But she was right.  And since it was a full-time ambush site, that meant they'd drag the bodies away and hide them.  Still, I needed to know for closure.

            "Shhh," Ralph hissed.  "Look!"

            The Trailblazer and all of the cargo trucks slowly turned the corner about three blocks up the street before us.  We froze, watching breathlessly, as they came straight towards us.  They turned one block before reaching our location, going left.  None of the men driving were our friends.

            "Headcount," Mike's voice came over the radio.  I picked up the walkie-talkie, mostly to turn the volume down.  It was on all the way to be heard in the open jeep while at highway speed.  Different guys indentified themselves, saying they were okay.  "Zombie Patrol, are you out there?"

            I looked at the others.  Ralph shrugged and Olivia nodded.