Down the Road: The Fall of Austin (29 page)

Sleepy cut a path with a riot shotgun he had
procured from the prison. Each and every zombie that came within
punching distance had their heads blasted off. He reached the
ladder in no time.

He arrived on the rooftop to much fanfare.
His underlings gave him hearty howls of approval and pats on the
back.

Nick Lopez nodded gratefully and said, “Thank
you for coming.”

Sleepy was then given the lowdown by Ducky.
“Hey Sleepy, I think a shitload of soldiers just left the
place.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah. They all just pulled out fast as shit
and took off.”

Sleepy looked through a pair of binoculars,
then looked at Nick. “That’s where your family is, amigo?”

“
Si, mon
.”

Sleepy refocused on the base. His mental
gears clicked, and he formed a very simple plan. “All right,
hermanos
. This is how it will go down.”

* * *

Specialist Elizabeth Noble found a hiding
spot near a convenience store a block away. Though she was wedged
in tight between a dumpster and a brick wall, the accompanying
stench was welcome when compared to the funk of the living
dead.

It was going to be tough getting out of the
corner, as the area around her had become quite crowded with
zombies. When those in pursuit lost track of her, they just
loitered nearby, stumbling back and forth and sometimes bumping
into each other. She figured Sgt. Arnold was probably chewing his
fingernails off right now while he scoured the landscape with his
binoculars in search of her.

More than anything else, she did not want to
let him down.

Considering her situation, she figured her
best bet would be to head to the roof. Rooftops were serving her
and her teammates well. The zombie plague was like a flood
disaster, and constantly searching for high ground seemed the
natural response.

She thought she might be able to scale the
wall by using the dumpster for a boost. It was risky, and the ledge
of the rooftop was high. She wasn’t sure she was tall enough to
make it.

She hesitated, awash in anxiety. The feeling
was frustrating. Never before had she felt so helpless, so scared.
Her military training and brief experience overseas was even more
dangerous, and she had faced them with the same guts as her male
counterparts.

But for some reason, this was different. She
was alone. Her adversaries were armed with only their teeth and
hands. Perhaps it was the sheer numbers, or the threat of infection
that froze her in her tracks once again. The fear of being eaten
alive—of a pair of rancid teeth tearing flesh away from her arms or
face—was paralyzing. Getting shot was something very different. The
bullets were penetrating, to be sure, but not as violating as a
beast eating your physical self, tearing pieces of your flesh away
from your body while you scream.

She needed to shake herself out of it,
though, as a zombie spotted her. It approached her position,
forcing her hand.

But she could not move. She was frozen again.
She looked down at the pavement as the zombie edged closer to the
dumpster. An old and crusty wrapper of Laffy Taffy was stuck to the
filth and grime below the dumpster. A smiling strawberry looked up
at her, ready to tell some of the jokes written on its wrapper.

A joke crossed her mind as the zombie scooted
into the narrow space between the dumpster and the wall.

Q: Why did the monkey fall out of the
tree?

A: Because it was dead.

She giggled. The joke always made her laugh,
and her laughs began to come out like spasms.

The zombie, only three steps away, looked her
in the eyes. As it approached, raising his hands to grab her, it
somehow began to share her smile, her laughter somehow resonating
with it despite the fact it was still about to grab her and eat
her. She covered her mouth with the hand that held her knife to
stifle her laugh, but it didn’t matter. More zombies heard her
delicate laughter and made their way to the dumpster. Blood dripped
down the knife as she giggled, shoving the advancing zombie with
one hand, pushing him just two steps back. She thought it was weird
that his chest felt so hard. Not like the firmness of a body
builder. More like a wooden board.

The beast was still smiling with her, and she
giggled at him. He wore a yellow H.E.B. security shirt, and his
headset was still in his ear. He took a step forward only to be
pushed back again, this time into another zombie that was directly
behind him.

Her heart rate rose and she was finding it
difficult to stand. The beast took another step toward her. His
smile made way to a gaping mouth. Blood and flesh and watery saliva
fell from the open orifice.

It was the spark she needed.

She imagined it was her blood. Her flesh. Her
fate. Shaking her head, dragging herself back down to earth, she
looked at the ghoul again. Her smile turned to a frown, and for an
instant the zombie retracted as if confused.

It was all the time Specialist Noble needed
to jam the blade of her knife up the chin of her smiling friend,
shoving the blade through its mouth, cutting the tongue perfectly
in half. The blade traveled up through the nasal cavity. Noble
thought she heard someone cracking eggs as the knife punched into
the brain. The zombie trembled, then fell limp as Noble removed the
knife. The second zombie was already on the way, taking an extra
moment to negotiate the new impediment in front of it as Noble
scaled the grimy green dumpster.

She did not anticipate the plastic lids to be
so flimsy, and almost fell in. But she quickly regained her balance
along the steel edges. She looked up. Her heart sank.

The roof was too high for her.

Below, three zombies had made their way into
the space she just occupied and were clawing at her boots. Others
had gathered all around on all sides now. She was limited to her
one and only choice, and that was the jump she could not make.

She looked, took a deep breath, and made a
jump.

Her fingers reached the edge, but had no
grip. She fell back down. Hoping to land in the dumpster, she
instead tumbled awkwardly on the zombies. She fell on top of two,
knocking them face first into the pavement. But the third fell on
top of her. She knew she had also lost her knife at some point in
her fall as she heard it clink against the dumpster and on the
pavement somewhere.

She had no time to look for it. The zombies
below were trying to regain their footing. The zombie on top of her
had regained its bearings and grabbed at her. She fish-hooked the
beast with both hands in a dangerous attempt to control it. As it
wiggled to take a bite at her thumbs, she pushed against its head,
her thumbs tearing through its paper-like cheeks and subsequently
losing her grip. Its head fell on her, and the beast closed its
teeth on her chest, taking in a mouthful of clothing. A portion of
her khaki field shirt ripped away, buttons popping like corks.

She instinctually screamed long and loud.

A portion of her mind told her to just give
herself over to submission, to let the monster go ahead and finish
her because she was screwed anyway. To just get it over with. There
was no point fighting; it would just delay the inevitable.
Exacerbate the pain. Prolong her demise.

Then she realized—remembered only when she
looked down with fearful eyes and caught a glimpse of it—that she
was wearing her Kevlar underneath. Teeth could never penetrate
it.

She gritted her teeth and chose to fight.

Grabbing the beast by the chin and head, she
whipped its head to opposite sides, tearing enough of the spinal
cord to immobilize it. She pushed it off and towards yet another
zombie entering the vicinity. She turned, got to her feet and found
the knife was actually just within reach. She grabbed it. With the
approaching zombie impeded by the bodies and the two others still
under her, she stepped up onto the dumpster with much more ease and
confidence than before. With adrenaline pumping through her veins,
she thought she now had just enough energy to make the jump. She
grabbed the ledge with her fingertips and writhed until she was
gripping with full hands. With some effort she pulled herself up to
safety.

She looked back down at the crowd that had
gathered around the dumpster, close to twenty or thirty strong, and
flipped them the finger.

She took a deep breath and sat near the edge
of the flat roof.

She inspected her thumbs: No bites or
scratches.

She wiped her hands on her pants near her
boots.

She removed the small mirror she kept in her
pocket and started flashing calculated bursts of sunlight, short
and long, at the video store across the way.

* * *

“She’s all right,” Sgt. Arnold said, turning
his face just long enough to display a wide grin to his team.
“Don’t know how she did it.”

Knight and Parcells skinned palms.

“Girl’s got skills,” Knight said.

“I want to signal her back,” Arnold said. He
patted his pockets. “Either of you got anything?”

With his head held low, Parcells dug into his
pocket. After a moment he handed the sergeant a mirror.

It was a compact.

“
Parcells?
”

“Long story, Sergeant.”

* * *

The conversation of blinking and flashing
light was being eavesdropped on by the eyes of someone who was even
more perceptive than Sgt. Arnold.

Specialist Daniel Talltree.

Creeping along the parking lot, camouflaged
among the dead, Talltree quickly interpreted the signals and dashed
to a nearby McDonald’s to get a better look from the top of the
building.

On the McDonald’s roof, Talltree found a
comfy spot to sit. He was just a little over a hundred yards away
from the fireteam. From the contents of his pack, he began to
assemble a long range rifle, taking just a moment to wipe the scope
with a soft cloth.

It did not take him long to get the weapon
assembled, and he peered through the scope. He quickly found the
men on the roof of the H.E.B. He then found the truck with Nickson
and Garrison bound to it.

He placed Sgt. Nickson’s inexplicably burned
and blistered face in his crosshairs.

Red-man.

Talltree smiled, let his finger do a tapdance
on the trigger.

No.

His true advantage was his concealment.
Shooting Nickson could possibly expose him to Sgt. Arnold. If he
was to shoot anyone first, it would be Arnold. Nickson and Garrison
were clearly not going anywhere for quite a while.

Arnold would go first, like he had planned
from the start.

He just needed to wait for the heads of
Arnold and the two men with him to be up all at the same time so
they could be shot in rapid succession.

They would expose themselves. He just had to
wait.

* * *

On the roof of the H.E.B., the bandit army
was planning a similar tactic, prepared to reveal themselves to the
military compound, their goal. Sleepy approached Ducky to gather
more intelligence.

“
Ay
, we just saw two more big ass
trucks pull out of there with more soldiers.”

“No shit?”

“For realz.”

Sleepy looked at the complex yet again,
fancying himself like a battlefield general, rivaling even the
great tacticians of old. “Well, I told everybody what they need to
do. What are we waiting for now?” He turned to Nick Lopez. “Hey,
Nick. Let’s go get your family,
ese
!”

Below, languishing amid a crowd of living
dead, sat the unwitting prisoners of an unthinkable zombie war.
Sgt. Nickson simmered like a pot of broth, angry and searching for
a way to escape. He had been twisting and moving as best he could
to loosen himself in his bonds, so when an opportunity presented
itself for him to free himself entirely, he would be better
prepared. He had been making slight progress, but the pain of his
scorched and blistered wrists and hands had made the going
extremely

painful.

It wasn’t as bad as Spc. Garrison, though.
Beat up and missing most of his fingers, both his eyebrows, and the
trademark goatee that used to hold fast against his chin, his face
had swelled to cantaloupe proportions. Both his cheeks were puffed
around his eyes. His nose was broken. Duct tape hung near his now
exposed mouth. Fingers lay stuck on the duct tape still stuck to
his cheek near his filthy, blood-caked mouth. He had swallowed his
teeth.

Garrison had long since given up the ghost.
He was broken, a cowardly liar who had paid his price. He wished
for death. He longed for it.

But Sgt. Nickson was far from it. The energy
of revenge kept him moving, shifting in his seat, bearing the pain
of his burns as he tried to wiggle free of his bonds to exact
vengeance on Sleepy, who was on the roof initiating his simple
plan.

“
Ey! Caiense los sicos. Escuchen!
”

* * *

“Looks like Jose over there is rallying the
troops,” Sgt. Arnold said.

Knight popped his head up to look. His
anxiety was causing impatience. “What would you like us to do,
Sarge?”

“Nothing yet,” Arnold replied. “Keep your
head down.”

Knight returned to a crouch.

* * *

Talltree grunted.

* * *

Fireteam Arnold remained hidden for close to
ten minutes, until at last there was a development.

A battle cry was heard coming from the human
horde over at the H.E.B. that sounded as if a column of Mongols had
been unleashed on the world. The gang, most members clad in orange,
returned to their vehicles with cruel intentions, again pounding,
smashing, and blasting their way through packs of
shoulder-to-shoulder Virals. Some of the thugs jumped from the roof
with shouts of “whoo-hoo!”, crushing small groups of zombies under
the weight of their fall like pirates swinging to board a ship.