Zompoc Survivor: Inferno (16 page)

“Reload!” I yelled as I ran toward her. “On your six!” Automatically, she dropped the mag from her pistol, slammed another into place as she turned…and froze when she saw the solid wall of infected less than ten feet away.

Time slowed down to a microsecond crawl as I raced toward her. A ghoul broke from the ranks and leaped toward her, its mouth open impossibly wide, arms stretched out for her as it closed the distance between them so much faster than I could make my feet move. It reached the apex of its jump and started to descend toward her, yards of separation becoming feet, then inches.

I was still yards away when the ghoul flipped in midair, its forward motion arrested as if it had hit an iron bar. Then the sound of a gunshot hammered against my eardrums, and I watched the ghoul do a horizontal face-plant a foot away from Amy’s feet. I made it to her side as she raised the still smoking pistol and pointed it at the nearest zombie’s face and pulled the trigger again. It dropped and she adjusted her aim, fired and repeated, slowly going through her magazine a shot at a time. The slide locked back on the thirteenth shot, and for a moment, she stopped cold.

“Reload,” I told her as I stepped up beside her and brought the M39 up. At that range, I didn’t really bother with the scope picture. If I covered a zombie’s head with the scope, I pulled the trigger, and nine times out of ten, it went down. I backed up as I shot, and before I was halfway through the mag, Amy stepped up beside me with her new pistol up.

“Wait for it!” I said between shots. A few rounds later, the firing pin fell on an empty chamber, and I stepped back and grabbed a fresh mag from my vest. “Reloading! Go!” I yelled. Her gun came up again, this time less steady, and she opened fire again. I hit the magazine release and caught the empty mag, dumped it in an empty pouch and slammed the fresh one in. Amy’s gun went silent as I pulled the charging handle back, and I barely got the rifle up as she stepped back and dropped her second mag. I fired as fast as I could, but the sheer number of them made it impossible to stop the tide. This time, when the well ran dry, I didn’t reload. Instead, I wrapped my right arm around the sling and let go of the stock, letting gravity and momentum bring the rifle around to my shoulder as I drew the Colt from its holster on my vest with my left hand. Amy stepped back up beside me and we both started firing, dropping zombies at ever closer and closer ranges. The Colt ran out first, and I drew the SOCOM with my right hand, thankful the LAM helped me keep rounds on target even with my off hand. As Amy’s automatic ran dry, she drew her revolver, this time picking off targets on our right flank. To my left, I heard a deep boom and a pair of zombies dropped. Another followed and the head of a zombie on my left just evaporated under the impact of double ought buckshot. Ruth stepped up on my left and blew another zombie’s head and shoulders into oblivion as I put the last three rounds into a trio of zombies right in front of me. As they hit the ground, I saw that there was a little distance between them now, and that the nearest one was more than five feet away. As I holstered the SOCOM, I guessed maybe twenty zombies were inside the garage itself.

It was twenty too many.

My hand reached over my shoulder and I grabbed the handle of the Deuce. As it slid free of the sheath, I saw my course of action laid out in front of me clearly. Each zombie was its own target, and I just had to keep moving a little faster than they did to walk my way through them. As an afterthought, I grabbed the pair of shooting glasses tucked in the pocket of my vest and slipped them on. Things were about to get messy, and I didn’t want zombie splat getting in my eyes.

The feel of the first skull splitting under the Deuce’s edge was exhilarating, and I couldn’t wait to feel it again. I pulled the blade free and twisted it in midair to slam into the top of another skull, then yanked back on the blade so I could spin and hit the next nearest infected in the temple. The front of its skull sheered away, and I reversed field to take a couple of steps toward the next one. The Deuce caved in the side of its head, and I had to yank the blade free and step back from a zombie on my right. I ducked under its grasping hands and spun around, slicing it across the knee. It dropped to the floor, not dead but  a lot less mobile. I sidestepped to the left and brought the blade up and at an angle, shearing off another zombie’s cranium above the jawline. Another one got inside my swing, and I hit it with an open palm, sending it staggering back several steps. Suddenly surrounded, I brought my right elbow up into the teeth of one while I brought the sword down on the top of the head of one right in front of me. I felt hands on my shoulders and heard the click of teeth on the gorget. My right hand dropped to my belt and I drew the Tainto, then slammed it into the eye of the zombie on my back. It came free with a wet slurp and I stepped forward, furious that these things would dare attack me, and euphoric that I’d already killed so many. I went back to my right and slammed the Tainto into the head of the zombie I’d hamstrung, then grabbed the sword in both hands again and brought it down on another skull with a primal scream. Again and again, I moved, struck, moved again. Suddenly, there was nothing left in front of me to hit, but the rage felt stronger than ever.

“Oh, bravo,” a dry voice rasped. “Bravo indeed.” I turned to see a corpse in an expensive suit standing in the opening of the garage. Behind it stood another horde, and I smiled as my rage found a target. The rest could have me as long as I could kill the one in the suit.

“Aw, fuck,” I growled as realization struck. “Another Patient Zero.”

My footsteps faltered as I realized what was happening, and a healthy dose of fear crawled down my spine, taking the anger I was feeling down to red hot instead of white hot. I’d faced something like this before in Springfield. Even being within a mile of one in Nevada had affected me similarly. Suddenly the adrenaline surge I’d been riding ebbed, and I could feel the twinge in my ankle flare into outright agony. I limped forward. Amy and Ruth stepped up to join me as I stopped in the opening, and I could hear voices above and behind us.

“Well, you are a surprise,” the thing in front of me said. “You’ve seen one like me before. And survived; even more surprising. I felt you the moment you fell into my city, but I thought it was the girl. I kept seeing her dreams when she slept. All this time, it was you.”

“What do you mean you felt me?” I asked as I took a step forward. Behind it I could see another horde of infected standing across the street. As much as I wanted to set myself on frappe’ and go to town on this guy, I knew that would get Amy killed. It would get a lot of other people killed too, namely myself, but Amy was my first concern. And since he was feeling chatty, indulging him would buy me some time.

“That rage you feel right now, that burning desire to kill me that’s lighting your brain on fire? That’s your soul’s reaction to my presence. It goes both ways. But the question is, which one are you? You’re too small to be the Knight. Too male to be the Angel. Not competent enough to be the Soldier.”

“What do you mean, which one?” I asked, not liking some of the comparisons he was making and feeling less than brilliant for all the questions I seemed to be asking.

“You aren’t the only one of your kind, just as I am not the only one of mine. You are as different from the good doctor there as I am from those behind me.”

“I’m just another survivor. No different than anyone else.”

“Your results tell a different story, Survivor” he said with a gesture to the carnage behind me. I could hear the capitol he’d put on the word survivor, as if he’d just put a label on me.

“Are you saying he’s somehow like you? Are you different from the rest of the infected?” Ruth asked, stepping up beside me.

“The good doctor should curb her curiosity,” he said. He didn’t acknowledge her directly, or even glance her way, and his tone sounded to me like he was impatient at being interrupted.

“I’m kinda curious myself,” I said. I was already not liking where this conversation was going, but he’d described what I was feeling, what I’d also felt around Deacon and the other PZ in Nevada, to perfection.

“There are some things in the dark places that were put there for a reason,” he said. “Things that should never have been brought into the light. The Asura is one of them.”

“Yeah, I think we got that,” I said. “So, now what?”

“Now nothing,” Zero said as it tilted its head back and forth. “I got what I came for. We’ll see each other again soon enough.” It turned and started to walk out of the garage.

“You’re just gonna walk away?” I said. Some rational part of my brain was screaming about examining the dentistry of a gift horse, but mostly I was just…irritated. Offended, even. He stopped, and my rational brain ran and hid in a corner as he turned to face me with an expression that might have been a smile.

“There’s no return on killing you right now, Survivor. I’ll come back when that changes.” He turned again and began walking.

“If you plan on trying to kill me, you’re gonna have to get in line,” I said to his retreating back.

Journal
of Maya Weiss

Friday, October 18, 2013

Mitchell Hodges showed back up this morning. He killed the Marine on watch and his own wife before I killed him again. I shot him in the head this time. I also made sure his victims wouldn’t be getting back up again. I feel like it’s my fault, even though Major Lynch and Porsche have both tried to tell me I couldn’t have known he’d turn. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.

I talked to Nate last night. He said we should bring the rest of the people with us along. “Safety in numbers,” he told me. He asked about Dave. All I could tell him was that I didn’t know if he was okay or not. At least I could give him better news about Cassie and Bryce. Strange that he asked about Dave first.

Today will be our first full day of travel. Major Lynch has made contact with a group of survivors at Fort Riley, so that will be our first stop, assuming we can make it to them. Then we have to figure out how to get to Nate’s place in Wyoming. He gave me the coordinates over the radio last night. I wrote them down on the first piece of paper I could find…one of Dave’s copies of his survival rules. I wish I could say that I keep it folded up in my pocket to keep it safe. It’s a little piece of him that I can keep with me, and something that I pray every night is keeping Amy alive.

Almost time to get started. Now comes the hard part: convincing a bunch of scared people to come with us to an undisclosed remote location to survive the zombie apocalypse.

Chapter
8

History Redux

~To reminisce with my old friends, a chance to share some memories, and play our songs again. ~ ~ Ricky Nelson ~

Morning snuck up on me and dropped an anvil on my foot. I woke up to pain. Lots and lots of pain. My right ankle hurt from the aforementioned anvil, and the rest of me felt like someone had also emptied a bucket of hammers on me for good measure. I let out a moan as I tried to move my arm. My elbow hurt. How in the hell did my damn
elbow
hurt? Oh yeah. I’d bashed a zombie’s teeth in with it last night.

“Good morning,” I heard Ruth say from beside me.

“No such thing,” I groaned.

“You took quite a beating last night. And you sprained your ankle. I can’t even count the number of bruises and abrasions you have.”

“Just the one,” I said as I opened my eyes. I was still in the Stryker. What little light we had came in through the open rear hatch. “All over my body.” Slowly I sat up, and aches and pains flared up all across my chest and stomach. When I looked across the floor at her, Ruth’s eyebrows were raised in a slightly surprised look.

“You move like you’ve done this before,” she said. “Do you get beat up like this a lot?”

“Not as often as I used to,” I told her. “I was in the SCA when I was in the Air Force. Did some heavy fighting, but mostly I liked light weapons and archery. I used to feel like this after I came home from a war.”

“Oddly enough, Mr. Stewart, I didn’t understand a word of that,” she said.

“Sorry. I haven’t had to explain it for a while. Society for Creative Anachronism. Historical recreation of the Middle Ages. Arts, sciences, combat; if it was done between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, you can bet someone in the SCA knows how to do it. A buddy of mine used to call it the original old school.” I rolled my shoulders and slowly started to stretch my arms up over my head. It had been so long since I’d even thought about the SCA that I’d all but forgotten about it. I’d mostly done it as a way to spend time after my shifts and a good way to blow the occasional weekend. After I’d been deployed, I had been reassigned a long way from my original shire, and I never got back in.

“Were you any good at it?” Ruth asked with a skeptical look on her face.

“I was decent, I guess,” I said. “Usually woke up with my fair share of bruises. I take it we haven’t been completely overrun while I was asleep?”

“I think you ran them off last night. The lieutenant wants to see you, though.”

“Great,” I muttered. “So, what’s the prognosis, doc?”

“I’m afraid I’m not that kind of doctor,” she said ruefully. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that under your hat.” I nodded and reached for my backpack. Every movement woke new flares of pain across my ribs and arms. Ruth went pale as I pulled the MP3 recorder into view.

“I have a couple of guesses about what kind of doctor you really are,” I told her.

“Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“Found it right where you left it, I’m guessing. Next to the zombie you’d flayed to the waist and hooked machines to its brain.”

“Please, Mr. Stewart,” she whispered in a shaky voice. “You can’t tell anyone! If you’ve been in that room, you know what happened to my colleagues.”

“Yeah. I’m just curious how you got out of there. Because we barely made it with four heavily armed people.” I felt like I’d just kicked a puppy when her lower lip started to tremble.

“I was outside the lab when it all started. I hid when I heard them start shooting the others,” she said. “Then the soldiers came, and I ran. We had a private elevator and stairwell to avoid too much interaction with the rest of the hospital staff. I just ran after that.” I reached out a hand and touched her arm.

“Don’t worry. I won’t say anything. But you and I are going to have a serious talk later on about your research.” She nodded and I slowly got up and crouch walked out of the vehicle.  Straightening up took a moment, and my body delivered mixed messages from my feet to my head. Most of the other civilians were around the cars they’d slept in. Phil and Mark Nguyen, the man who had backed Beth down last night, were at the barricade. Off to my left and behind me I could hear Hernandez and Amy talking, and I figured Kaplan would be there, too. I waved to Phil and Mark, then limped over toward the Humvee. Hernandez had a pistol broken down and was showing Amy how to reassemble it.

“Out in the field like this you always keep one gun ready,” Hernandez said. She patted the M9 on her hip for emphasis. “Truth is, when you’re working on your own gear, you don’t want to have but one weapon field stripped at a time anyway.”

“Are you gonna make me put this back together blindfolded or something?” Amy asked as she started to reassemble the gun.

“No, but by the time we’re done, you’ll be able to do it without thinking about it. That blindfolded thing is just macho bullshit.” I mouthed a silent “Thank you” to Hernandez as I hobbled past. Kaplan was sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle with the door open and a pair of headphones on. He pushed one back from his ear when he saw me and shook his head.

“You look like six different kinds of Hell,” he said.

“Good morning to you, too,” I said. “What’s playing?” I nodded toward the SINCGARS.

“At the moment, not much. The Prophet’s been pretty tight lipped about what we took, and he hasn’t said a word about having any military vehicles.”

“I can’t blame him. Keyes showed him last night that he can hit him any time he wants to. If he’s got anyone in that compound who’s been in the military, he’s going to have a good idea of what a drone can do.”

“He’s already pulled back all his vehicles. They’re in civilian vehicles and on foot patrols only from what I can tell,” he said with a grim smile. “We need to limit ourselves to foot traffic as well. Can you walk?” he asked. He gave a pointed look at my foot, but I nodded. Even the short distance I’d covered so far was helping.

“I’ll wrap it,” I said. “Though I’d be better on the radio.”

Kaplan shook his head. “Not today. Garza and Nguyen both came to me this morning to let me know that Beth has been working on some of the men. Between you pulling a gun her and Chris Tate last night, and turning her down, she’s got a pretty big grudge going on.”

“I’m not sure the whole ‘out of sight, out of mind’ thing is going to work so well,” I told him. “If nothing else, it’ll give her time to do more networking.”

“Don’t worry, I have that covered,” he said with a smile. “Civilian office politics versus a Marine is a sucker bet. I need you and Hernandez to take a couple of people with you to go out looking for food, water and supplies today.” I shrugged, conceding the point without a word. A privileged one-per-center trying to yell down a Marine was something I would have loved to see, but my entertainment was going to have to take second place to the stuff that would keep us alive.

“We’ll take Chris with us, let him get a taste of life outside the wire,” I said with a smile. Kaplan nodded.

“Take Mark with you, too. He’s local; he should know where to find some of the places you need.”

I grabbed an M4 and swapped out the M39’s mags of 7.62 rounds for the lighter 5.56 magazines. The new M4 was still pretty shiny, and it was decked out with a tactical light, an AimPoint red dot sight and a foregrip. It had “KCPD” engraved over a serial number on the receiver. I broke it down and checked it over before I slung it and went back to get my body armor on. Once I slipped the Deuce in place, I went and found Hernandez, and we rounded up Mark and Chris.

An hour later, we were closing in on Messino’s Downtown Market. It was only a few blocks away, but getting there had been a slow process, made slower by navigating through unfamiliar streets clogged with rubble, abandoned cars, and the occasional zombie, as well as handling two new people. Hernandez and I looked down the street in opposite directions while Chris stood there looking dumbfounded, and Mark kept his eye on the front of the store. Fire raged in the upper floor, and the inside of the market was too dark to tell if it had been gutted or not.

“What are we waiting for?” Chris asked. “There’s obviously no one there. Just go in, get what we want, and go back.” He grabbed the neck opening of his borrowed armor and tugged it down.

“Not that simple,” Hernandez said. “Could be infected in there, might be other survivors like the Disciples. You want to volunteer to get shot, be my guest.”

“I’m not volunteering for a damn thing!” he said. “That’s your job.”

“Then shut up and let us do it,” she said. She turned to me. “I’m thinking we hit the back doors.” I nodded and followed her as we headed around the side of the building. The back door turned out to be a loading dock. All of the loading doors were open, and we could see the inside was pretty much burned out. Rubble covered the floor, and a single trailer was backed up to the raised concrete dock. One of its doors squeaked as it swung slowly around in the breeze. The trucking company’s logo showed the gold and green Monos leaf in a blue hexagon as it came around, then the breeze shifted and it started to close again.

“Doesn’t look like anything could’ve survived in there,” Mark said softly.

“You all are chickenshit,” Chris said as he strode forward. Hernandez and I called out for him to come back but he turned and flipped us off. “Chicken-SHIT!” he called out as he skipped backward. Behind him, the door stopped moving as if it had hit something, then started to open again. The breeze was to our backs, so I knew the wind hadn’t shifted again. Hernandez looked at me with wide eyes and pointed to the left, even as she stepped right. I took a few steps to my left and brought the M4 up as the door opened the rest of the way, revealing blood splatter and smeared handprints across the surface of the other side. Chris has turned around in time to see that, and froze in place as he saw a bloody limb push the door open. A hand that looked like a ham adorned with five plump sausages on the end of a sagging forearm was pressed against the door, and behind it came the rest of the infected. It waddled more than walked, and reminded me of a walking marshmallow. Pale flesh strained against a bloodstained t-shirt that had long ago been filled to capacity. Below it, rolls of flesh hung from under the thing’s torso and hung in lumps from its arms and legs. I couldn’t tell if it even had pants on under its belly, though I could see the remains of a pair of shoes clinging to the football shaped blobs where feet would usually go. Even its head seemed to be covered in cellulose, its face a tiny, gore streaked part of the oblong protrusion where things like heads and necks might go on most bipeds. As it looked at Chris, it brought something bloody to its mouth and tore a chunk away from it. As it gobbled its grisly snack down, we could hear it smacking as it chewed with its mouth open.

“Oh God!” Mark said with a choked gasp as it threw its current meal aside with a splat, revealing a shoe on the end it hadn’t been gnawing on. I heard him gag and start to retch as the massive infected looked at Chris with undisguised glee and let out a high pitched giggle. It waddled toward us, and I heard a ripping sound as I brought the M4 up.

“Shoot it!” I yelled at Tate as it jumped off the dock. My own first shot went high as it dropped out of my sight picture. I tried to lead it as it bore down on Chris, but my second and third shots went wide, too. Hernandez’s P90 spat rounds at it, but they just chewed up its right shoulder. Chris didn’t move as it covered the few yards separating them, and I dropped my aim point to its body. I couldn’t miss that big of a target, and if it was a ghoul I’d at least slow it down while it reanimated. I put a round in its chest, and that seemed to break the hold on Chris who finally did the smart thing: he turned and ran. The massive infected stopped and looked back and forth at Hernandez and me, then turned my way and let out its weird giggle again as it started lumbering my direction. I brought my optic back up to its head, but even running straight at me its head moved too much for me to get a good shot in. I put another round into its chest, then three more, but that only seemed to make him giggle more. With Chris’s example in mind, I turned and headed for the dock. My only hope was that Jumbo the Giant wasn’t as agile as he was big. The raised concrete section was too high to just leap onto feet first, so I threw myself into the air sideways so that I hit and rolled. With my right hand, I pushed myself to my feet about the same time as Jumbo hit the dock and bounced back. Still I felt the impact through the dock itself. He staggered back a couple of steps and went down on his ass. Hernandez was moving out of his six, side stepping back to her left, and my right. I moved right to mirror her and brought the gun to bear on the infected, trying to get the red dot centered on its face as it struggled to get to its feet. As it rocked back and forth, my eyes went to the bullet holes I’d put in its chest. Five-five-six rounds didn’t make a very big hole going in. It was the high velocity wobbling and tumbling they did after they got into the body cavity that did most of the damage. But Jumbo’s front was sporting holes that looked like I’d shot him with a fifty caliber round instead of a five-five-six. Long, red lines stretched down his belly as well, and I knew I hadn’t done those, unless my M4 suddenly sprouted a bayonet launcher or something. I brought the gun down a little and took a closer look. Sure enough, the long tears in his stomach were slowly getting wider, and the holes I’d put in him were spreading. The entire right side of his shoulder was covered in red, and I could see a good sized piece of it was actually
gone
.