Zombie Rush 2 (17 page)

“Lin Su.”

“Sorry, I never looked beyond the uniform to see that you’re a woman.”

“Quite all right.”

“Do you know how to use that thing?”

“I have my good days and bad days, Lieutenant. There’s a cube van approaching the compound at two o’clock. Tires are either low on air, or they’re loaded down.”

“Is that a Ma Deuce, Lin Su?

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“Disable that vehicle, Lin Su.”

“Roger that, Lieutenant.”

A three-round burst from the fifty caliber exploded out the barrel of the Ma Deuce, and the van instantly started to smoke from the engine compartment. There was the sound of metal on metal followed by successive knocking as the van rolled to a stop.

Lisa waited for the firing to start; instead, the gang members by the vehicles just watched them. They didn’t react or start firing; they simply watched with what could have been construed as confusion. A gruff man’s voice was suddenly cursing.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted as he appeared from out of the group, a long duster-type coat flowing in the breeze as he walked toward Lisa’s rig. His rage was evident. “That was the only fucking cube van we fucking had, goddammit!”

Lisa heard, more than saw, Lin Su direct her aim at the man striding toward them.

“Stand down, Lin Su,” Lisa said, in spite of the bloodied spear the man held in one hand and some kind of piece of wood he held in the other.

“Oh, so the fucking Army finally shows up. To what? Shoot us? Is that the fucking deal?” the man shouted as he was still several feet away.

“Dude’s got a foul mouth,” Skit said.

“I like it,” Lisa replied, eliciting a chuckle from Lin Su in the back. “What the fuck are you doing, trying to attack this compound? I am here to eliminate gangs of marauders and criminals. Are you a fucking criminal?”

“Criminal?” The man stopped, astonished by the accusation. “I ain’t no fucking criminal and neither are the people with me. We’re survivors looking for a place to hole up, is all.”

“Then what’s all that shooting?”

“I don’t know, but my people don’t have those types of guns. Shotguns and a few pistols is all we got,” he replied and approached a little closer.

“That’s close enough,” Lisa said, already beginning to smell the stench of three days without a shower and lots of sweating. “So you’re not here to steal everything inside the complex?”

“We don’t even know what’s in there. Seems nobody does. We just want a place to hide from fucking zombies.”

“What about Hot Springs? Why didn’t you go there like the radio station instructed?”

“Hot Springs? Radio? I haven’t had time to listen to a radio or visit Hot Springs for fuck’s sake. I’ve been running for three motherfucking damn days.”

“And your army?”

“Army? That ain’t no army. They’re just people who saw us running and joined in. We ain’t no army, though we do have some good fighters,” the man said, and then turned when he heard the shout.

“Zombies!”

“Fuck,” Lisa said as she saw a horde coming down the road and several more coming out of the woods. “Lin Su, get us to the gate.”

***

“Jesse, this is Lieutenant Reynolds with the Hot Springs PD. We have the situation in hand and I need you to open the gate,” Lisa said as she stood in front of the camera and displayed her badge. “Tim, set your men along the perimeter; civilians fill in between. Lin Su, signal the trucks to block us in and get the ammo in here. Tim, start shooting, they’re getting too close, and I don’t have to remind you about head shots.”

She looked at the horde that was approximately seventy-five yards away, easily outnumbering them three to one, not counting the ones coming out of the trees and moving slow. Runners were tracked and taken out before they even broke through the crowd. When they did break free, they were singled out immediately and peppered with bullets. Lisa always thought that would look like a body jerking violently as one bullet after another entered it. It wasn’t like that at all, as bullets from six different points heaved the body back like it was hit by a wrecking ball. Spine and brain damage so severe, it just lay writhing where it landed.

Another broke free and charged for three steps before multiple 5.56 rounds turned its head into a spray of muck, as if it had exploded. Pumpkins on a firing range were all that Lisa could come up with as a worthy comparison.

A mechanical voice responded.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot do that,” Jesse replied, still holding on to the protocol, which he believed had saved him from the gang up to that point. He had gone through months of training where they hammered into his head that following protocol would one day save his life. There was also the fact that the gate controls had to be transferred from the gate shack to the main building before he could do anything. Unfortunately, the gate shack was where Wayne, his coworker-turned-zombie, resided. Everything was designed for a single-user operation. During delivery hours, the shack was in use; after hours, it was manually switched over to the office. The door to the office remained secured until the time card in the shack was activated. The company required complete accountability and left no room for blame to be passed. Products were never revealed to guards and were stored in private lockable areas where the contracted company’s own employees moved product to and from trucks and lockers.

It sucked being treated like a criminal at your own job, but it paid 50 percent more than any other security job.

“Jesse, you called us here to help you. Now here we are. All of us are seconds away from being eaten by zombies, so open the gate.”

“I can’t do that, Lieutenant. The controls are in that gatehouse with the zombie in it right inside the fence. I have to get to that building in order to operate any controllable access on the property, including the office door.”

“Fuck! God damn as soon as you think you have things figured out …” Lisa started. “Jesse, can you turn the electricity off on the fence?”

“I could by crossing the circuits, but it would probably kill me and ruin the system.”

“Well, give it a try.”

“No. I will not. You heard me say it would kill me, right?”

“You said
probably
; that leaves a level of chance.”

Skit, along with Solomon and Lin Su shook their heads, wondering if anyone of them should take over the conversation since Lisa was doing nothing to instill trust. Solomon stepped forward.

“Okay, Jesse. There has to be a way to get around this.”

“There really isn’t. This place is impenetrable, even to an army, when the fence is on. And that’s designed to stay on for years.”

“Christ almighty, what the hell are you keeping in there?” Lisa asked in frustration.

“I don’t know. The guards never know… it’s part of the deal.” Jesse knew that he was coming off nonchalant, but he couldn’t help it when relating company details; it was all so boring. Jesse was definitely not excited about watching all of those people get eaten—and he would watch. He couldn’t help but watch.

“Hey! Charlie, get back here!” Dean shouted, not realizing that his son was on the other side of the fence.

Charlie held his hands out like
what the fuck
and shrugged before everybody figured out what had happened. Kodiak, covered in dirt just as Charlie was, came up next to him.

“Ha! Fucking-A!” Solomon shouted. “You dug a fucking hole! Good for you.”

“Look, hey, I don’t know who you are, but you need to get the gate open.” Lisa yelled.

“It’s Kodiak and my boy, Charlie,” Solomon said.

“Okay, Kodiak, then. The controls are in the shack by the gate and there is a zombie reported to be inside.” Lisa couldn’t see for sure there was a zombie since the windows to the shack were tinted.

Kodiak said a couple of words to Charlie, who aimed his shotgun toward the doorway and waited for Kodiak to open it. He thought briefly about his last two shells that he had saved and now he knew why. The moment didn’t seem as urgent as some, but it was even more so. A sigh of relief went through the crowd when it opened freely, exposing a well-lit room that reeked of decomposition. It only took a couple of seconds for the zombie named Wayne to come stumbling out.

“Let him get away from the door,” Kodiac said to Charlie, who had the over/under directly on the head of the ex-guard. Kodiak slipped behind the Z and into the shack just as a couple of followers who had crawled through the hole they had dug came up alongside Charlie.

Boom!
Both barrels rang out at once, causing Wayne’s head to explode, spraying the side of the other building.

Lisa nodded and backed away from the fence. “Mitch, I need you to get civilians through the wire first and set them up with rifles to cover the soldiers’ retreat.”

“All right,” Mitch said, making no attempt at official speech.

“You should get in there first. I can see blood seeping through your shirt, and you’re doing too much.”

“Shut up, Skit. This isn’t the time to think about that. Here, you’re shooting my rifle and I’ll stick to my Glock, okay? Does that make you happy? Good, because we’re last ones in.”

They heard the electricity to the fence shut off and the tire shredders on the main road dropped down into their assigned slots while the perimeter ones stayed up. The horde of zombies was close to the point where guns were becoming ineffective. The gates started to roll open and Lisa heard Mitch shouting to the groups, who rushed for the opening. She could only hope that a few of them would listen; it was about to get hairy.

“Tim, the gate is open!” she shouted.

Tim gave a single nod before he said into his comms, “Company fall back!”

As one, the line started to collapse upon itself, each man covering the backs of their brothers while filing back and setting up covering fire from within. The vehicles rolled in first, except for the disabled cube van and the two Tim left when they took to the woods.

Lisa followed on the edges, firing her Glock to keep them from coming around the group. She tapped Skit on the shoulder and directed him inside with a head flick. They backed through the gate last. Lisa, with both her Glock and the Rhino out, searched for targets coming in too close. The gate started its slow roll as five runners, who were either faking being slow, or just turned runner, jumped to life and rushed the gate. Lisa stepped back but saw that the gate was too slow and wouldn’t stop the runners in time.

If one got through or collapsed in the gate’s path, it would leave an opening for the rest. She stepped outside the gate and started firing, tracing three rounds from chest to chin with the Rhino 40 in her left hand. She pulled left and hit a second straight on, but she wasn’t going to get both of the other two.

The gate passed behind her and she felt a moment of panic as she pulled right and emptied the Rhino into a third. More runners started to come and the actual horde was too close by the time she used the Glock. Thirteen rounds between her and infection.
I’m half eaten already so what the hell, eh?
She was trying to get her hand up in time for the fourth runner when a solid chuck of wood swept it aside. Solomon jumped between her and the Z he had just knocked down and slammed his spear up to its shaft in the zombie’s head.

He pushed her to the north and she winced from the pain in her ribs.

“Easy, wounded.”

“No time for easy—run!”

She ran and the guns behind the fence opened fire. Solomon took the outside, leveling two with his buckler before penetrating their heads with a foot-long piece of sharpened steel. The encounters barely slowed the man who had been running and hiding for the past three days.

He stuck a runner up through the jaw and into the brain, causing himself to stumble as he tried to wrench it free one-handed. He stopped and slammed the thick wooden shield into another that was in full lunge, stopping it midflight. His hand followed it to the ground, where he turned his unique weapon vertically and came down on the base of its skull, pulverizing the brain stem as he tried to pull his spear free.

“Leave it!” Lisa shouted as she put out a couple of rounds over his shoulder before switching magazines. She fired again as he slammed his foot down on the skull that entrapped his blade once, twice, and the third time being the charm as Lisa reached around him to get a bead on one that was blocked from her view. She heard Skit and others urging them on from the other side of the fence as rifles shot zombies around them through the chain links.

The man started pushing her away from the gate again, causing the area of her missing rib to throb. She stumbled and struggled to her feet as the stranger stood over her with his weapons flailing. She had already given herself up for dead before he showed up by her side, and she was willing to do so again considering the numbers bearing down on them. Runners be damned as the horde started to crowd them from behind and side, leaving them only one way to run.

Something about the way the man fought spurred her on. It was like no matter how many came, he was going to do what he had to do to survive. She ran holding her left hand across her wound, trying to keep it from splitting open. The way ahead was open with nothing but grass and fence in view, other than the bodies that started to encroach from the side and created a walking cloudbank that was quickly cutting them off.