Survivors (13 page)

Brewster shifted the heavy pack around on his shoulders and made a face. Trevor remembered a time when Ewan had said that typically, in Africa, his MOLLE pack weighed up to seventy-five pounds, but it had been different, then. The pack now only weighed forty pounds, but circumstances changed everything.

“I know you said only one, but this is a big goddamn bag. How come we couldn’t make this stop on the way back?”

“You know how it gets,” Trev said as he adjusted the straps on Brewster’s pack. “Sometimes we get milk runs, sometimes we have to lead a chase back. So far, this has been a milk run, and it would be a shame to waste this opportunity.”

“Meanwhile,” Brewster said as they walked back to the big roll-up door, “I carry an extra forty pounds of stuff we probably won’t need. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss IEDs and terrorists. Take them over these shambling fuckheads any day.”

Trev got down on the ground and pushed the door up an inch, looking around. It had only been seven months since the outbreak began, and Trev had seen all stages of the virus. He was no longer surprised by it, but every day that they ran across a sprinter made him wonder just what those things were living on, how they could survive. He knew that the demons were impervious to most forms of injury, and even if you did kill them they’d come back, but even with their unnatural, virus-fed vitality, the demons were still wearing human skins. How long could they live for?

Shaking his head, Trev dismissed that train of thought. It was enough that they existed, and he was there to kill them.

He was putting up with the former private’s bitching pretty easily today, and not only because he’d had the opportunity to dispatch a demon; in spite of his bitching, Brewster had gone along with Trev’s idea. It gave him hope for their future, immediate and long-term.

“All clear,” Trev said, pushing the gate the rest of the way open. “It’s not much farther to the next pharmacy.”

“You’re not the one carrying forty pounds of—”

Brewster’s comment as he stepped outside was cut off by the snarling impact of a sprinter, almost two hundred pounds of rabid, subhuman creature bowling him over. The thing’s lips were pulled back inhumanly far, revealing most of its teeth, and it made hungry, almost mewling sounds as it reached out for Brewster’s unprotected neck. In all its clawing, it hooked fingertips in the loops and straps of his body armor.

Frustrated, it pulled back its head and opened its mouth to howl, which would surely bring more of its kind.

The howl was cut off by the end of Trev’s ASP as he forced the head of the baton down the foul thing’s throat.

It backed off Brewster immediately, yanking the ASP out of Trev’s hand as it stood. The sprinter’s head was forced back at an unnatural angle by the sudden sword-swallowing act it had become a part of. Strangled screams coughed out of the sprinter’s mouth as it tried to force a howl around the protrusion.

“Foreign object,” Brewster muttered as he got to his feet. Trev helped him check himself. They found no rips or tears in his clothing or skin, and Ewan looked up at the feverish sprinter and, for just a moment, his face reddened.

Trev knew the feeling, when the mad rage overcame him.

A low rumble started in Ewan’s gut and he threw himself at the creature.

Grabbing the handle of the ASP, Brewster yanked down and drew his knee up, shattering the thing’s teeth on the metal tube lodged in its throat. The sprinter fell, and Brewster stomped on its hands, breaking bones with each footfall, until they were little more than sacks of meat.

He fell back, spitting and wiping his mouth. “Foul fucking thing,” he finally had the breath to say.

Trev, who had been watching all this with curious detachment, retrieved his ASP and finished off the creature.

“Now you see how I see them.”

The scavenging teams filtered in back at the base, disgorging the contents of their packs onto the table in the executive meeting room, the largest flat surface in the entirety of the Fac. Brewster had a flush to his face and neck as he emptied his pack.

“What is this?” Juni asked, pulling at one corner of the generic wrapping of the large sack. “And why is it so heavy?” With a grunt, she put her weight into it and flipped the forty-pound bag.

Denton snorted a laugh at her expression.

“Dog food, Brewster? You brought
dog food
? What I look like to you?
Scheissekopf!
”

“Fine, fine,” Brewster said, his blush deepening as he looked over at Trev, who was clearly enjoying the entire exchange. “We’ll get rid of it. Whatever. Feed it to the captive assholes or something.”

He snatched the bag up and headed out of the room, almost running headlong into Thomas.

“Slow your roll, asshat,” Thomas growled at Brewster in the hallway. “What’s that? Dog food?”

“Yes,” Brewster sighed.

A glint came into Thomas’s eyes. “Well, shit on me. I thought you’d never do anything right, Brewster. Let me guess, they didn’t like it?” He indicated the group in the conference room.

Brewster nodded.

“Well, in times like this, there’s an old saying that always comforts me,” Thomas said, laying a hand on Brewster’s shoulder. “And that’s ‘Fuck ’em.’ Put it in the back, where the civvies don’t look. When the food runs low, we’ll feed it to ’em on the sly. Good thinking, PFC.”

Ewan Brewster watched Thomas’s retreating back as he legged his own pack into the conference room, a smile growing on his face.

Lexington, NE
28 June 2007
1643 hrs_

“I
DO NOT LIKE
this,” said Rico. “I do not like this one bit.”

Stiles nodded in agreement.

They were standing in front of a gently sloping road. Abandoned cars littered the pavement, some with windows broken out. Several had smashed into one another, as if the drivers were frantically attempting to get away from quickly approaching doom. Hoods and trunks were smashed in, and stains marred the pavement, old oil mixed with old blood.

Yet it wasn’t the vehicles that made Stiles nervous. It was the bridge that lay beyond them. It was a congested swarm of smashed auto bodies and several freight trucks, one of which was tipped up on its side, blocking nearly all of the bridge. It had probably started the trouble, trapping the vehicles fleeing Lexington behind it. Everyone would have had to run for it on foot. Five months before, when sprinters were everywhere, it would have been a hellish scene. Even from the bank looking out, the small group could see dried bloodstains in the windows of the wrecked cars, and a similar dark rivulet had stained the side of the bridge a rusty color where it had run out to drip into the Platte River.

“If there were any other way around, man—” started Allen, but he was cut off by Harris.

“There isn’t. We went over this with Keaton while you lot were drinking. This is the only way across the river for miles. Unless you want to try to swim across in full clothing with sixty pounds of gear on your back, of course.”

Hillyard scowled, but said nothing. The commander was right. The bridge was the only choice.

“We either go across, or we spend a week trying to find another crossing,” said Wendell. The petty officer looked resigned. “And we might not even find one. Bridges could be out, like I-80’s. Even if we did find one, it might be too late to get Stiles to Omaha. The infected could’ve overrun the Doc and her friends by then, for all we know.”

“Across it is,” said Harris, holding his MP-5 at the ready. “Stay sharp. It might be bright and sunny out here, but some of those trucks look nice and shady. Lots of places to hide.”

The thought made the group shuffle. They started out, glancing back at the truck they would have to leave behind; there was no way they’d get it through the snarl of bent and burned cars that were blocking most of the lanes on the bridge.

Hal and Stiles stuck close to Rico and Wendell. Hal held out his pistol defensively, and Stiles was glad for the crutch in his armpit, even still grimacing at the pain in his leg. He levered a round into the Winchester and held the rifle out in front of himself, ready for anything.

“All right, gentlemen, here we go,” said Harris.

The group wound through the wreckage of the cars and onto the baking tan surface of the concrete bridge.

“Maybe we should just run for it,” whispered Brown. “The infected hate the sun, right? It’s hot as hell out here. If there are any still around, maybe they’d rather just stay put.”

“They’ll follow us,” said Stiles. “You and I both know that. They only stay in the dark if they can’t find us.”

“Shut up!” whispered Wendell. “Keep quiet! And stay close together. Watch each other’s backs!”

The group moved farther onto the bridge.

The long, narrow span was jammed full of vehicles, bumper to bumper. Here and there a trail of blood led away from the cars, and a splash of gore on the guardrails spoke of violence long since past. Several corpses were scattered about. A few lay on the pavement, some still sat in their cars. Most were missing limbs and had large caverns in their midsections where they’d been gutted and eaten.

The backup of trucks was near the middle of the bridge. The one that had tipped over had blocked all but a few feet of open space. Several corpses lay in the space, stacked atop one another, and scores of bullet holes pockmarked the hood of the overturned truck and the pavement around the open space. Stiles had the scene all worked out in his head, now: The truck had lost control, blocking the highway. Behind it, thousands of people had all been trying to flee Lexington at once, and, finding traffic halted, had all come running across. The first few dozen probably made it through with time to spare.

But then the infected would have caught up. It appeared as if a few intrepid folks had made a stand near the overturned truck, holding the small pass with whatever weapons they had, until at last they were overrun themselves. The corpses they had already passed must have been the last defenders. With a little luck, their lives had bought enough time for their fellow refugees to flee to safety.

“Up and over, people,” said Harris, pointing at the overturned truck. The group gave the corpses a wide berth. Chances were good the virus was as dead as they were, but there was no use in risking contact with anything potentially infected. They climbed, one by one, over the truck’s engine block and cab.

On the other side, more bodies greeted them. They all, Stiles noted, lay facing the tiny gap between the truck and the bridge’s edge. Infected, then, gunned down as they tried to get through.

They continued along silently, more than halfway across now.

“Something big went down here,” whispered Allen, leaning in close to the side of a maroon Chevrolet, a corpse still buckled into the front seat. A rusting revolver lay on its lap, exposed for months to the elements by the sedan’s shattered windows. “Wonder how this guy checked out.”

“Shut up!” Harris said.

Rico turned, and his boot caught a slick of oil that had run out from under a battered Ford pickup. He slipped, falling hard on his rear. His weapon discharged once, making the group jump. The surrounding vehicles bounced the sound back and forth and amplified it, and the trees along the riverbank caught it and sent it back, echoing for what seemed like forever.