Beyond the Barriers (39 page)

I dropped to my side, dragged one foot up, and kicked low, hoping for a knee. I must have struck his shin, because he moved away and gasped in reply. He ran at me and kicked, then his foot stomped down. I rolled toward the truck again, but my attempt to get the gun was pretty pathetic. I could curl up in a ball and hope he got tired of beating on me soon, but I wasn’t sure how long it would be before Scott came too. If he had his gun ready, he could drop this jerk for me.

Moans nearby informed me that the dead were closing in. If Lee didn’t finish me off soon, they would.

A foot caught the inner side of my calf. If it had been angled, I’m sure it would have broken. I lashed up with my other foot and caught his leg, then hooked and pulled. He went down in a big puff of leaves and debris, and I wanted to turn my head and cough out a mouthful of the stuff. It felt like I was eating it instead of trying to breathe through it.

Dizzy and in pain everywhere, I sat up and tried to get ahold of a pant leg. He kicked out at me, but I got my hands up in time to keep the blow away from my face. Instead I took the shot on my already sore arms and hands. I balled my fist and hit him hard in the thigh with just two knuckles. A Charlie horse wasn’t exactly fair fighting, but I was more interested in living than offering him a chance to take my own life.

I went to work, using every memory of training I had acquired over the years. Ground fighting was tough; one had to keep his balance and work the big muscles in the thighs.

His arm came up as I moved close. I nearly hovered over him. Smashing aside his strike, I drove my straightened fingers into his shoulder, then took a blow on my arm. Turning just in time, I jabbed fingertips at his eyes, almost making contact. He looked away long enough for me to get another strike in, but it brushed his ear, and another knuckle struck close by his nose. He retaliated with a snap punch to my gut. Not much power, but it rocked me back on my heels.

I fell on him and batted aside his hands as he reached for my throat. I weighed about as much as he did, but my hope was that he was as weak as I was.

He bucked his hips up with a grunt and tried to turn to the side. I gathered what I had and smashed his nose with my fist. This time it was a full blow that knocked his head into the dirt.

I didn’t stop. I went for his eyes, his throat, then slashed toward his temples, grabbed his hair and smashed his head into the ground. Then I hit him a few more times, even getting a throat strike in that hit his Adam’s apple and made him gag. Smashing his already pulped nose, I hit him one more time.

He stopped moving.

A gun opened up, and I ducked in fear, but one glance told me that Scott had come to his senses and was mowing down the zombies with a purpose. Thank God for Scott! I was going to hug the man if we got out of this alive.

They were everywhere. I hit Lee again and decided to just leave him for the dead to finish off. After diving for the truck, I scrambled around until I found the big handgun and came up shooting. Zombies were all around us, but I dropped a pair, even though they weren’t badly wounded.

“Shit shit shit!” I yelled as I made for the truck. The AK was on the floor, and when I picked it up, I caught a glimpse of the ghoul laying still, his eyes ablaze, and I swear he was smiling.

“Just shoot them!” Scott gave the gun a break.

I opened up with the Soviet weapon and dropped several, then I moved into the driver’s seat and tried to turn over the engine, but it would have none of that.

“The other truck!” Scott yelled.

“I won’t leave you!”

“Just go start the fucking thing and stop acting like a bitch. I got this.”

I had to grin as I tried to jump out, nearly falling to the ground in my beaten condition. I limped the short distance to the rear door of the military transport. It was open, thankfully, so I walked up the short ramp and into the warm confines.

Some of the seats were gone. In their place sat a bunch of cardboard boxes filled with all sorts of gear. I maneuvered past them and toward the front. I didn’t know anything about this particular transport, so I just hoped for the best.

The driver’s seat was hard as I sat down. It might have been cushioned at one time, but someone had ripped out the material and covered it with a blanket that smelled like horseshit.

There was an ignition button with a big smiley face sticker on the top. When I hit it, the vehicle roared to life. I looked all over the inside for a way to release the back door. That would explain the shots from the end of the road. But where were his other men? I was sure he wouldn’t have come alone.

I didn’t know a hell of a lot about the army’s newest transport. While it was top of the line, this one had an awful lot of gear removed. The gunner station was open on top, but a large weapon of some sort was attached. Tubes led down the hole to blue barrels on the floor. I would have expected a big M2 browning .50 machine gun or even a grenade launcher. Who knew where Lee’s men got the damn thing to begin with? It was a pretty scary world where weapons like this were just left for the taking.

The command station was also gutted, and none of the electronics were in place. Some variations of this vehicle had pretty sophisticated gear. This one had next to nothing left. Someone had left a plastic drink holder duct taped to a space where electronic readout equipment should have sat.

Scott came hobbling out of the truck, firing as he limped. I hit the side door and kicked it open.

“Here!” I screamed.

He made a beeline for me and slammed into the seat so hard he gasped. He tossed the gun in the back and slammed his door shut. We were safe, for now, as there was no way for the things to get in.

I pulled forward a few feet, jammed the gear in reverse and, with a rending screech, tore free of the beat-up Humvee.

We roared out of the camp and made for the open road. The ride was bumpy, and I felt around for straps or something to hold me in the seat. Before long, we hit pavement and I stopped the Humvee. He leaned back and breathed deep. The air probably tasted like the best champagne in the world.

“What a cluster fuck,” I muttered.

“We had it, man, but that asshole had to spoil things.”

I stared out the window at the road ahead. Trees had grown here, long and lean, and branches hung over the road, creating a canopy. A power wire had been pushed down.

“What was I thinking? Dragging you guys into this. Now Jack is dead.”

“We signed on to help. We knew the risks. It could just as easily have been me back there, dead, with half my fool head gone. But I’m alive, and so are you.”

I sighed.

“Look, man. It’s done and nothing can undo it. You gonna live with guilt your whole life, or are you going to channel it and make Jack’s death count for something? All the deaths, for that matter. We started this thing, so let’s figure out a way to finish it.”

“Are you crazy? I can barely move. Do you think we can just roll back in there with machine guns and shoot them all? We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Was he thinking about a suicide mission? I felt so miserable it almost appealed to me. But that would be a selfish way out. I owed it to Katherine to let her know I had survived. She would wonder for a long time, otherwise.

Scott crawled out of the chair and went in the back of the vehicle, climbed the small ladder, and poked his head out. He was up there for a while, fiddling with the weird gun. Then he dropped back down with a big shit-eating grin on his face.

“I have an idea.”

I stared at my bloody hands on the wheel of the vehicle. The knuckles on my right hand were bruised and torn. My left hand shook, and the pinky was bent at an odd angle. Probably broken.

“Erik, we have to go back anyway. The food and water is in the truck. Not to mention the ammo.”

I shook my head. I felt like I was coming out of a bad nightmare. “Yeah.”

“And the people still in the cages … Are we going to just leave them?”

Scott put his hand on my shoulder, and I looked back at him. His face was a bloody mess, and his hair was caked with dirt. We made a fine pair. I patted his hand like an affectionate uncle. He grinned and looked at the ladder. Following his gaze, I wondered what he had up his sleeve, and then he told me.

* * *

We roared into the camp the way we had left—like the devil himself was on our heels. This time we were bringing hell. I had wanted to destroy the base before, but now I would do it for real. Scott maneuvered next to the smashed Humvee. It was surrounded by the dead, but he rolled down his window and went to work with the AK-47.

I turned my unique gun on anything that moved. Scott had worked out the device. He followed the tubes to the blue barrels then back to the weapon. After messing with it, he discovered there was a tiny propane tank on the end that provided the spark. The barrel was nothing less than a flamethrower.

I turned the dial and let a little gas leak out. There was a sparker next to it. I clicked it a few times, and a blue flame appeared. The weapon had a couple of gauges on the side, so I messed with them until I had a good stream, then I triggered the gun. Fire leapt out and consumed the first pair of zombies near the side of the truck. They staggered away, now walking torches. I was hoping to set Lee on fire, but he was gone. They probably dragged his body back to feast on.

A search of the vehicle had turned up a couple of other weapons. I took a worn but well-oiled MP5 and had a few mags lined up near the flamethrower.

I set to clearing the immediate area while Scott dragged boxes from the back of the Humvee to our vehicle. He tossed me a large bottle of Gatorade, so I took the top off and drank warm but clean water out of it, draining it in a few massive swallows.

I turned the gun on one of the dead that had grown interested in Scott. His head exploded backwards, and his body slumped to the side, just like that. Another body to add to the list.

It only took a few minutes to move our supplies. If the rear door had been able to slide down, it would have been faster. The impact of the Humvee had damaged the rear too badly.

I slid down to help move things around, then we took our positions again.

“Ready?”

“Damn right.” I nodded.

* * *

We started at the rear of the camp. Our path was littered with the dead. When we came across them, we ran them down and kept going. I shot the few I had to, but I wanted to work from the rear to the front.

We approached the destroyed hut. The corrugated metal was pushed aside, thanks to my escape. I almost felt a sense of glee when I turned the flamethrower on the opening and set it for full stream. Fire raced down and roared into the space. It was so loud that I couldn’t hear any screams from those below. I let the fuel run for a few minutes until I was satisfied the place was sanitized.

It took most of the day to clean house. We worked from the other end of the camp, burning away any of the dead we found. Sometimes they came at us en masse, which made it easy to destroy them. When each section was cleared, Scott jumped out of the truck and freed any prisoners that were still in cages.

The stench of burning flesh tested my gag reflex. It filled the air, and I knew it would haunt my nightmares for years to come.

The survivors sat in what space they could find in the vehicle. A couple of the men took guns from our stash and joined in the massacre. We rescued a few children who couldn’t have been older than ten or twelve. I wondered why there were no others in Haley’s age range. Then it hit me: they probably took the older ones to convert to ghouls—which I had just destroyed.

The cleansing, as I thought of it, was a success. We left a mountain of scorched bodies in our wake. By the end of the battle, we had a tattered army of a dozen or so men and women. The younger members of the crew sat on the floor in the cramped vehicle. What seemed like a huge space before was filled with the wretched remains of the camp. Weary faces munched on the remaining protein bars. They drank what little water we had, and a few even broke into the energy drinks.

I stayed on the ladder for a long time, gun aimed at the opening to the camp so I could kill any stragglers. The flamethrower was just about out of fuel. I would have to work out the formula they used to create the custom device. It had been one of the most effective weapons since I came back to the world.

“You going to come down?” Scott called from the front. He popped out of the vehicle with the AK-47 slung down low. “I think I have this thing working.”

I crawled on top of the STRYKER then slid down inside. It was obvious we had cleaned the camp, as no other zombies wandered out. Flames still rose into the sky. A small section of forest had caught on fire, but it was dying down thanks to all the wet wood. An out-of-control fire in the woods would be a terrible sight. How would it ever be stopped?

Scott sat with his rifle in his lap. He had an old beat up CB radio with the top off on the ground in front of him. There was a wire running from a car battery to the inside.

I collapsed beside him, my body more tired than it had ever been. Talk drifted from inside the STRKER, but I couldn’t make out the words. The refugees had been grateful, but some also wore distrustful looks.