Zompoc Survivor: Odyssey (21 page)

The tightness at the back of my neck slowly made its way down to the space between my shoulder blades as I came closer to the back of the truck. Something clanked in the back, metal on metal, and I gestured with my right hand for Amy to go a little further to cover me. I stepped around the back of the truck and pointed inside.

In the dim interior, something moved, and my tac light fell on Landry’s face. His mouth was full as he reached for something, and his hand came back dripping with something brown and chunky. As I came around toward the middle, I could see open cans and wrappers on boxes and on the floor, and Landry’s chin dripping with food.

“Hungry,” he growled as the light fell back on his face. “I’m so hungry.” His pupils were like pinpricks as he looked at me, his cheeks flushed and bright red. I’d seen something like this before.

“What the hell?” McGregor said as he came up beside me. A manic sounding giggle came from behind Landry, and I stepped to one side to see the alpha zombie’s case sitting upright, the thick plexiglass scratched and the case dented.

“You’re bad little monkeys,” the thing that used to be Sarah Bach said. “Mister Landry, would you please kill the Nephilim and that feisty little bitch with him, and let me out of here?” For a moment, Landry hesitated, his eyes starting to focus on us.

“I swore an oath,” he said slowly. “I shouldn’t…Mac, she showed me things…showed me Crystal…there are…so many things…but…I have to…” He shook his head, then let out a scream and dove at McGregor. My right arm came up and shoved McGregor away and my left hand tightened on the P90’s trigger a microsecond too late. Shoving McGregor to the side brought me just far enough into Landry’s path that we went sprawling together, the P90 flying from my grip. For a moment, my right arm was numb from the impact, and I used the brief respite to grab the SOCOM from the holster and shove the slide up against Landry’s back. Instead of trying to get free of him, I leaned in and pushed the gun forward, raking the slide across his shirt and chambering a round, then turned it and pulled the trigger as fast as I could.

Even that was a little too slow, and Landry tossed me to the side before I could empty more than five rounds into him. I rolled and staggered to my knees as Landry bounced to his feet. Again, there was a moment of hesitation, and Amy hit him with a round from the Mossberg. He staggered, and she pumped another round and shot him again. Then McGregor brought his pistol up and fired half a dozen times from the ground. Landry’s body jerked with each impact, then he fell to his knees, blood soaking his shirt. He coughed once and pink froth flecked his lips before he pitched forward.

I got to my feet as the last echoes of gunfire faded. Then Landry moved, reaching one arm toward me and gasping my name. I was at his side in a split second.

“Coming…” he gasped. “They’re coming…calling them…she’s calling them.” Then the light faded from his eyes and he fell back. I took a step back and pointed the SOCOM at his forehead, but my finger didn’t tighten on the trigger. Something was different.

“He’s dead,” Amy said as she stepped up beside me. “I mean, I can’t feel him. He just faded when he died.” I nodded, understanding now that she’d said it. Feeling was starting to return to my right arm, and it was a change I wasn’t all that grateful for.

“How?” McGregor asked. “They all go zombie after you kill them.” I looked down at my right arm, then at Landry, and suddenly, I knew.

“Get her loaded on the Guardian,” I said, pointing at the back of the supply truck. “Amy, get on your bike and get to Nate’s place as fast as you can. You have to warn them. There’s an army of infected headed this way. Mac, get everyone else loaded up and follow Amy as fast as you can. Get the President to Col. Shafer.”

“What about you?” Amy asked. I looked at her and turned so she could see my right side, slowly holding up my bleeding right arm.

“I have to go the other way,” I said as I pulled my shirt sleeve back to reveal the bite mark on my forearm.

Journal of Maya Weiss

November 14, 2013

Even ten days later, it’s hard to even think about this, much less write it down. I was at Nate’s house, during one of the seemingly endless planning sessions that had consumed my life almost from the day we arrived. Lynch and Shafer were debating something pointless, Nate was sitting back and listening while Dr. Shaked and Willie were consulting a book from the Heartland group’s library. Just another day in post-apocalyptic America.

And then I heard my Amy’s voice. I looked around, for some reason thinking she was in the room for a second before I realized it was coming from the radio room. Her first words are still ringing in my memory.

“Mom! Dave needs help!” she said. “Please, Nate, Mom, anyone. Can you hear me? Dave needs help.”

I swear that room parted like the Red Sea. Half went for the radio, the other half went for the door. Shafer handed me the microphone the second I set foot in the radio room, and Amy told me what was going on. An army of zombies coming from the east, and Dave driving straight at them with the alpha zombie strapped onto his vehicle. He needed our help to stop them. Now it sounds so ludicrous. One man stopping an army with the help of a hundred other people.

Oh, and as an afterthought, the President was coming.

“Col. Shafer, I know you want to go help Sgt. Stewart, but there’s nothing we can do. He’s been bitten. It’s just a matter of time, and you know he wouldn’t want you to risk your lives on a fool’s errand,” the President said. I wasn’t sure who she thought she was trying to convince. Shafer took the microphone from me, and he made me proud.

“Ma’am, you’re probably right, he wouldn’t want us to come help him, not against those odds. But you and I both know that’s exactly what he would do in my shoes. Besides, he can’t stop this mob on his own. Like it or not, we have to get out there.” She didn’t reply, and I was through waiting. I grabbed the mic from him.

“I’m coming, Amy,” I told her. “Hang on.”

“Roger that,” I heard Nate say over the radio. I hadn’t even heard him leave the room. “I’m on my way, kid.”

“Stomper, rolling,” Lt Kaplan echoed.

One after another, people chimed in. Karma One, Heartland, Zombie Stomper, and finally, Porsche added Landmaster One to the list when I slid into the driver’s seat. Lynch said “Ooh-RAH Marines! Mount up!” as we headed for the gate.

We looked like hell. A hundred different vehicles with almost no discipline and no clue what we were doing. But I was damned if I was going to be behind anyone on this trip. Someone must have spread the word, because everyone got out of the way as I drove toward the head of the column.

We saw them a couple of miles north of the compound, a girl in a helmet with blue Mohawk streaks on a dirt bike, a black armored transport and a heavy truck. The truck kept going south, but the bike spun around and headed back to the east, and the armored car followed her.

There weren’t many people here who didn’t owe Dave their lives. He’d already done so much alone. But not today. Today, it was our turn to help him. Even if we couldn’t save him, by God, he wouldn’t die alone.

Chapter 10

The Last Mile

~ Brotherhood means laying down your life for somebody, really willing to sacrifice yourself for somebody else. ~ Tim Hetherington

The only good thing about facing an army of zombies is that they’re so damn slow. I was driving like a maniac, on the other hand, or at least as crazy as I could in a massive armored vehicle that couldn’t beat seventy miles an hour. Up ahead, I saw the Medicine Bow Mountains, and an idea took root in my head. The far side was a relatively gentle slope up, but the side closest to me was much steeper, with several vertical faces. As I came around the southwest edge of the mountain range, I saw the sign for Sugarloaf Mountain, and up ahead I could see its much more modest profile across the lake in front of me. In better times, it might have made a nice place for a wedding.

I pulled to a stop and checked the map. The road turned due east just before Sugarloaf. The oncoming horde had to still be a ways off, though I was starting to get that creepy vibe across the back of my neck again. If they were still east of us and on 130, this was going to be my spot. I took the left and turned past a sign that marked the entrance to the Lookout Lake Recreational Area. I stayed on the road until I hit the lake’s edge, then I went four wheeling, following the rocky western shore along until I found a good spot. Above me, a narrow gap beckoned, though narrow in geological terms was still big enough to drop a house into. I pulled past the gap, then backed up the slope until I was in between the base of the vertical faces. From here, I could see a good ways down the road, and off in the distance, I could see the zombies approaching.

Curious, I popped the gunner’s hatch open and took a look through the binoculars at the slow moving mass of dead people. None of the ones I could see moved with the slow, shuffling gate of the stage twos, the zombies. These all looked like ghouls. They were faster, but easier to put down for a while. But after that, it was a head shot or nothing.

“Have you turned yet, little monkey?” Bach asked from behind me. “I don’t think you have. I can still feel you there.”

“Nope, still human,” I said.

“It’s only a matter of time,” she said. “That little shot they gave you won’t save you. Nothing can do that.”

“It isn’t supposed to,” I said as I set the binoculars aside and opened the Mk 19’s receiver. “It’s just supposed to buy me a little more time.” As I talked, I pulled the can of high explosive grenades out of the tray and reached for the HEDP rounds.

“Time? Why fight it? If you’re going to die, just put a bullet through your head and be done with it. Why prolong it?” As she talked, I loaded the first round into the receiver and closed the top, then pulled the charging handle back.

“Why not?” I said as I pressed the butterfly switch and let the bolt go forward. The belt advanced the first round into the chamber, and I grabbed the charging handle and pulled it back again. “I have this thing against dying, but if I’m going to go out, why not go out like a boss? Warrior’s death and all that.” The fifty had a full can, so I ducked back down and pulled my M4, both Landry’s P90 and mine, plus his Five-seveN.  Finally, I pulled the Deuce’s scabbard out. Amy had helped me strap it to the Ruger Takedown’s carry bag to make it easier to get on and off in a hurry. I fully intended on going through every round I had with me and taking out as many as I could with the Deuce before they took me down or I went zombie. For good measure, I also grabbed a couple of fragmentation grenades from the ammo stores at the rear of the main compartment.

My right arm throbbed under the vambrace, and I wished I could scratch at the sudden itch that started around the wound. I consoled myself with the thought that I was going to be too busy killing infected soon to notice. That gave me a moment’s pause. Was that the hyper-aggression from the Asura virus, or was that the zombie killer in me, the Nephilim blood in my veins that always seemed eager to kill zombies? Whichever one it was, I was going to make the best use of it I could. With a wistful smile, I reached for the iPod we’d found in Landry’s pocket and plugged it into the exterior PA, then pulled myself out through the turret hatch.

“How did you turn Landry?” I asked Bach as I propped her up so she could watch me play havoc with her little army.

“I didn’t, little monkey,” she said with a cruel smile. “You did.”

“I’m pretty much the opposite of one of you,” I said. “So try again.”

“Not you,” she said with an exasperated head shake. “Your barely evolved simian race did our work for us. We could never have done it so quickly one bite at a time. Not even in your most crowded cesspits. But you…you devised an idea we would never have even thought of. You put it in your food!”

“Our food…” I said, my knees shaking as I planted my butt on the edge of the turret.

“That’s right, monkey. The Asura isn’t confined to bites or body fluids. You’ve been harvesting it in your crops and gorging yourself on your own extinction for months!”

“There’s no way you could know that,” I said.

“They kept the alpha from the first outbreak in Persia. He was there when Sikes first tried to harness the Asura in Nevada. What one of us knows, we all know. And now you’re going to die knowing it was your own greed that killed your race.”

“You’re going to watch me kill a whole bunch of your kind first,” I said. The zombie killing rage took enough of the edge off of the horror that threatened to shut my brain down to keep it at bay, and I climbed back into the turret. Below me, I could see the first of the infected moving through the valley made by two smaller hills. It was almost time to make my last stand.

I hit the play button on the iPod, and the first low knells of AC/DC’s Hells Bells rang out across the lake. Landry might have been a dick when I knew him, but the man had good taste in music. I racked a round into the chamber on the fifty, then waited for the horde to get a little closer.

They barely seemed to be moving but after several minutes of waiting, the first of the horde hit the midpoint of the valley. That was when I pressed the trigger on the turret controls and sent the first tracer rounds toward the mass of once-human flesh. Hundreds of yards away, I could still see the results of the impacts as ghouls got tossed around like rag dolls. Fifty caliber rounds had originally been designed to shoot down armored aircraft. Against infantry, even undead infantry, it was devastating. The gun pounded in my ears, and I tracked the tracer rounds through the front ranks of the dead, sending bodies and parts of bodies tumbling with short bursts. After the first few bursts, though, the ghouls did what live soldiers would be hard pressed to do: they charged forward. I kept the trigger down for longer as I raked it across the thick wall of infected. More and more fell, but they reached the mouth of the valley and began to spread out, making it harder to slow them down. When the fifty ran dry, I could hear Bach cackling behind me.

Her laughter stopped when I hit the trigger control for the Mk 19 and traversed the turret across the front of the line at the lake’s far shore. Five meter wide holes appeared in middle of the column, with wider gaps showing up on the outer edges. Even short bursts with HEDP rounds were far more effective than Ma Deuce’s efforts.

“No!” Bach screamed from behind me as the line faltered for a moment.

“Welcome to modern warfare,” I called out before I brought barrel back across the ghouls. More bodies went flying as another string of HEDP shells detonated among them. Movement to the west caught my eye, and I saw another group of ghouls come running along the outside of the westernmost hill. I turned back to look at Bach, and she bared her gray teeth at me in a hateful grin.

“Only a fool fights with the enemy general looking over his shoulder!” she crowed. I raised an eyebrow, stood and reached behind me. Her grin vanished when I grabbed the corner of her box and flipped her around so that the Plexiglas landed facing down. When I turned back, I saw that I’d caught a little bit of a break. The lake was slowing the ghouls in front down. The ones behind were starting to get backed up as the vanguard slogged across the bottom of the lake. Unfortunately, even with the rain from the night before, the lake was only a few feet deep. I didn’t know if ghouls could swim, but since doorknobs were pretty much beyond them, I figured swimming would be too. Very few disappeared completely below the surface, and most of those tended to pop back up a few seconds later. But, it was still a slow walk across the lake. I walked the last few rounds in the can along a narrow spot in the lake, then grabbed another can of ammo for both guns.

As I racked the first round into the Mk 19 and pulled the charging handle again, I took stock of things. I hadn’t expected to be able to reload, but I had hoped to do more damage by the time I ran out of ammo for the mounted weapons. The first of the soggy ghouls emerged as I primed the M2, and I let loose on them at closer range. This time, I could see the rounds hitting two and three of them at a time, the overpenetration knocking more of them back as they started to come across the rocky shoreline. But the line of them was too broad, and I couldn’t stay ahead of them.

In the space between switching from the machine gun to the grenade launcher, they charged again. This time, Mother Earth herself was my ally. The spot I’d chosen made a deep V shape the further up the trail you went. Instead of spreading out, the terrain forced them back together into a wedge shape. Below, the rest of the ghouls were stacking up in an attempt to push their way into the narrowing ravine. Gravity worked against them, slowing their advance enough that I could take my time and walk my shots down the middle and along the sides.

When the first of them was about fifty yards away, I flipped Bach’s case back over.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. Without a word, I traversed the turret right. The last notes of Hell’s Bells faded, and the opening riff of Thunderstruck started playing. Just to be dramatic, I waited until the first chorus of “Thunder!” belted out of the speakers before I pulled the trigger. Four HEDP rounds slammed into the side of the mountain, tearing chunks of rock from beneath a sharp ridge. The cliff face seemed to shift, but not enough to satisfy me, so I pulled the trigger again. A low rumble started, and I turned the turret left. Once more, when AC/DC called out “Thunder!” I pulled the trigger, pounding the nearer cliff face with a longer burst. Chips of rock rained down on the Guardian as the belt ran out.

“Bringin’ down the house!” I yelled over the growing rumbles of my artificial avalanche. Then I ducked into the vehicle as the left cliff face dropped more my way than I’d figured it would. Boulders rocked the armored sides of Guardian as the mountain fell down around me.

As soon as the world stopped rocking, I tried the upper hatch. It wouldn’t move, so I tried the driver’s overhead hatch. It slid aside with a shower of rock dust, and I emerged into the sunlight. The side of the mountain was now at the base of it, extending halfway through the lake. Most of the ghouls were buried under tons of rock, but that was a problem. Most of the ghouls still left a shit ton of them still up and walking around. The turret was bent all to hell, both guns pretty thoroughly destroyed.

It was time to get personal. The Asura-fueled aggression raging through my blood made that seem like the best idea I’d had in a long time. I ducked down into the vehicle and grabbed my guns and my sword, then crawled out of the hatch. As I slid the Deuce into its scabbard across my back, I heard rocks shifting nearby. I looked over the side to see Bach floundering beside the Guardian, her box shattered a few feet away. Long red scrapes ran down her exposed flesh, and I could see areas of dead flesh turning a mottled black on her arms.

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” I told her as I climbed along the top toward the rear of the ruined turret.

“Laugh while you can, Survivor,” she snarled. “You’ll be screaming sooner than you think.” I didn’t say anything as I crouched down on one knee and brought the P90 up.

Even after the avalanche, I had a target rich environment. Squeezing off short, controlled bursts, I went through the first magazine too fast for my taste. Ghouls dropped with every touch of my finger on the trigger, though. That brought a smile to my face. I changed out magazines in a few seconds and went back to shooting ghouls. They had advanced a little further than I’d wanted, so I flipped the selector to full auto and sprayed all fifty rounds in a sweeping, sustained burst that dropped most of the ones closest to me. Sure, they were going to get up again, but that wasn’t happening for a little bit.

I dropped the last of my spare mags onto the P90 and tried to keep it more controlled, popping off short bursts into groups and bringing down four and five at a time. By the time that magazine ran dry, they were within a few yards of the Guardian, and it was time to get tactical. I dropped the first P90 and pulled the second one up from my side. I’d set this one to single fire, and every squeeze on the trigger sent blood flying and put another ghoul down.

When they got to the front of the vehicle, though, they didn’t try to swarm up. Instead, they moved around to the side, and I realized too late what they’re real objective had been. They weren’t coming to get me.

They were after their boss.

Bach’s cackle was like an ice pick on a chalkboard to my ears as they dragged her away. I stood up and shot as many of the ghouls nearby as I could, but I already knew it was too late. Several had thrown themselves on top of her, and even from more than twenty feet away, I could smell something putrid as the flesh slid off their bodies. Just to make her life difficult, I pulled one of the grenades from the pouch on my vest and flipped the safety, then pulled the pin and threw it at the writhing horde on top of Bach.