The Dead Series (Book 4): Dead End (38 page)

After a few seconds, he said, “The chute is about fifteen feet long, and the slope isn’t too bad. I can see the bottom where it ends, but that’s it. No dead around.”

“Can we bang on something and try to attract them?” Fagan asked.

Pointing up at the house, Cage shook his head and replied, “Might attract the wrong kind of attention. There’s only one way to do this.”

Taking a deep breath and holding it, Cage sat down and stuck his feet in the hole, preparing to slide into hell.

Fort Redoubt:

After spending some time with Denise, Tick-Tock went in search of Rick Styles. The now constant sound of gunfire was distant, so he felt safe enough leaving her alone for a few minutes. The lights that normally illuminated the camp were off, the electricity used to power them having been diverted to the electrified fence, so he had to shuffle his feet to make sure he didn’t step on anyone. Many of the people that sought sanctuary in the fort had found places along the wall to set up small camps, but there were so many that they spilled into the main courtyard. Quiet conversations filled the air, everyone speculating on the imminent arrival of the dead. A few cooking fires burned, giving him just enough light to weave his way through the mass of refugees.

Entering the building that housed the communication center, Tick-Tock spotted Rick sitting in a chair outside the door of the radio room with his head propped up on fists, staring at the far wall as if in a trance.

Commenting on this, Tick-Tock said, “From your expression, I take it the aliens have landed.”

Looking up, Rick seemed surprised to see him as he said, “I thought you would be halfway to Louisiana by now.”

Tick-Tock laughed as he said, “And miss all the fun?”

Rick’s reply was interrupted by one of his men coming to the door and saying, “The inner barrier has been breached in three locations, sir. There’s too many Ds coming in for our people to hold them anymore.”

Sighing, Rick said, “Order everyone inside the fort and have the electricity switched from the fences back to the compound. They’re probably so broken up by now that they’re not doing any good anyway. Turn on the floodlights so the troops fighting out in the boonies can find their way in.”

“But won’t that also lead the dead-asses straight to us?” the man asked.

Rick laughed and said, “I’m pretty sure they know where we are.”

As the man turned to go, Tick-Tock asked, “Any word from fort one and two?”

“One is still off the air,” the man told him. “Fort two called in a few minutes ago and reported that they’re planning to break out to the east.”

Standing, Rick waved for Tick-Tock to follow him as he entered the radio room. Leading him to a map of the area, the commander studied it for a few seconds before saying, “I told them to give it a shot. They might have a chance if they take off now. They’re the furthest fort to the east, so they probably aren’t completely surrounded by the Ds coming in from the southeast.”

Wishing he was at fort two, Tick-Tock asked, “So where does that leave us?”

“Surrounded,” Rick answered. “When the main herd split and a bunch of them came along the lake, it really screwed us. They circled around the entire camp. On top of that, we haven’t gotten any transmissions from fort one for almost half an hour, so my guess is they got overrun. They were directly in line with the group coming out of the southwest. That’s what cut us off from fort two. By now, that group has probably joined up with the main herd to our east.”

“And the aliens,” Tick-Tock asked.

Rick laughed and said, “They’re not here yet, but when they do land, I hope they eat the dead and piss gasoline because we’ve got too many of one and not enough of the other.”

Tick-Tock laughed, then turned serious as he asked, “How long do you think we can last?”

Rick thought about it and said, “If the walls hold, I’d say we have enough food and water for two weeks. Fuel is our biggest problem, since it was already getting scarce before all this. Running the lights is eating up our power, but we need them right now. It figures the Ds would hit us at night.”

Thinking about the fortifications, Tick-Tock said, “The walls are all angled out, so we should be able to reinforce them with the weight of the refugees in the fort. The dead will be pushing in and up, so all they have to do is climb on them to counter the force with their weight.”

Rick smiled and asked an officer standing nearby, “Did you hear that?” The man nodded, so Rick said, “Then get the people in the courtyard organized.”

As the man went out the door, Rick turned to Tick-Tock and asked, “By the way, how’s Denise?”

“She’s up on the parapets,” he answered.

Concerned, Rick asked, “Is she well enough for that?”

“No,” Tick-Tock answered, “but I’m not going to try and convince her to go back to the hospital. She’s a very willful woman.”

“Maybe I can talk to her,” Rick told him. “Besides, I want to be out there when the dead hit so I can try to keep everyone organized.”

As the two men moved through the courtyard, they could see a dozen of Rick’s men getting the refugees in place along the west side of the fort. With the lights now on inside the camp, it was easy for them to make their way through the throngs of people milling around as they waited to be sorted into groups of ten and moved into position. Conversations were hushed and hurried, everyone thinking that if they kept their voice down, they wouldn’t attract the attention of the dead.

Using two-inch square pieces of wood nailed into the telephone poles, Rick and Tick-Tock climbed the angled wall and onto the narrow parapet. Sidestepping around the defenders, the two men found Denise twenty feet further on. Noticing that she was no longer leaning against the wall with her head down, Tick-Tock thought she was feeling better.

He started to comment on this, but she quieted him with a quick, “Shhh.”

Realizing that she had only perked up because she had heard something, Tick-Tock tuned out the noise coming from inside the fort and focused on the woods. Faintly at first, he could hear the whining of the dead. The noise grew in volume, reminding him of the Doppler effect of a speeding car coming toward him. He noticed that the sound didn’t grow in volume as fast as a Formula One race car on the track, but it was rising quick enough.

The next sign Tick-Tock had of the approaching dead was the tops of the trees moving. Starting as far out as he could see, the entire forest seemed to come alive as the dead passed through it. Like a groundswell forty feet in the air, the shuddering of the foliage showed their progress as they neared the camp. Watching the surge until it reached the clearing between the woods and the fort, he looked down when he saw the dead break out of the woods.

The first of the reanimated corpses came forward in ones and twos, bringing gasps from some of the defenders on the parapets. This trickle quickly turned into a raggedy wave as more and more of the dead broke through the brush into the clearing. Within seconds, the field was packed with bodies moving in a rush toward their food. Dead feet trampled over each other, breaking bones, but the mob was so densely packed that it carried the debilitated Zs along with them. Out in front of them, the leading edge of the horde hit the wall, their impact not even making the telephone poles buried deep in the ground shudder.

Knowing better than to think this would be the same case with the main body of dead, Tick-Tock called out for everyone to brace themselves. Reaching out to Denise, he put one arm around her while the other hand clenched the top of the wall in a death grip.

Heedless of injury, the main body of the horde smacked into Fort Redoubt with a dull thump, the impact causing the telephone poles to shudder and dust to rise off them in a sudden cloud. Being angled outward, hundreds of dead were pushed into the base of the wall and crushed by the weight of the others piling in behind them. The lights along the entire west side of the fort flickered for a few seconds but stayed on.

Half-expecting the wall to collapse when the dead hit it, Tick-Tock was amazed when he found himself still alive. Outside of the fort he could hear the screeching whine of the dead, and inside he could hear screams and calls from the courtyard, but the sound that overrode them all was the creaking of the wall as the dead pushed against it by the thousands.

Looking both ways down the length of the parapets, he could see
at least five different places where it was starting to buckle. This was the first sign that their fortifications were starting to fail. Only two or three of the less secure telephone poles were being pushed in at each location, but if they were separated from the others, the whole wall would start to crumble.

Moving down the parapet toward the nearest breach, Tick-Tock and Rick stopped when they saw dozens of people scurry up the angled barrier to jump up and down on the bulging posts. Seeing this, others ran forward to repack the small amount of dirt displaced at their base
as they were slowly realigned. All along the barrier, men and women worked to keep the wall intact, knowing if there was even a small breakthrough by the dead, it would cause a flood of them to pour into the compound.

After checking to make sure that Denise was okay, Tick-Tock joined Rick as he inspected each repair on the west wall. Reaching the last one and finding boards being nailed across it for reinforcement, Rick called out over the deafening whine of the dead, “Holy shit, it held.”

Listening to the increasing creaking noise coming from the overstressed telephone poles, Tick-Tock replied, “Yeah, but for how long?”

Russellville, Arkansas:

Doctor Hawkins opened the door to his lab and smiled at his three hostages tied and gagged at the far side of the room. Nodding to where Cain was seated in the corner, he said, “They look comfy. Have they given you any trouble?”

“Connors has been as quiet as a church mouse, and the little girl is no trouble,” Cain told him. “The other one is a handful, though.”

Hawkins looked at Heather with mock disgust as he shook his head in disapproval. As if speaking to a child, he said, “Now you behave, young lady.” Turning his attention to his assistant, he said, “Time is getting short, so we should begin.”

Jim moved toward Cindy and picked her up, sending Heather into a flurry of short kicks as she fought against her bonds. Whipping her head back and forth as she writhed on the floor, she tried to shake off her gag while struggling against the zip ties that held her hands and feet.

Frowning at this, Hawkins walked over and grabbed her by the hair. Raising her face up so they could see eye-to-eye, he said, “If you continue with this disgusting display of futility, I will stick
your
arm into the cage.”

Despite this threat, Heather still did her best to headbutt him.

Reeling away to avoid the blow and shoving her back, Hawkins stood and looked down at her. After a few seconds, he said, “Your usefulness is limited to how well we get along. My suggestion to you is to remain passive. The less trouble you are to me, the longer you live.”

Turning his attention to the twenty-foot square, glass testing area, he watched with satisfaction as the girl was strapped into a wheeled office chair. When Jim released her arms, she swung one up to strike him, but he easily avoided the clumsy blow.

Turning toward where Cain was seated, he said, “Although Jim seems a little more adept at dodging female fists than you, please give him a hand.”

Cain scowled at the crack as he stood and walked over to the girl. Grabbing her left wrist in an iron grip, he easily forced her hand down to the arm of the chair and zip-tied it in place. Moving to the other side, he helped Jim secure her right arm to a piece of metal welded to the chair at shoulder height.

When they were done, Hawkins took in the sight of the little girl strapped to the chair with her right arm sticking straight out to her side and said, “Looks like half a crucifixion.”

Cain was the only one who laughed at the joke.

Hawkins turned to where Doctor Connors lay on the floor and said, “Bet you didn’t think of this little experiment, did you?”

Her eyes wide with shock, Connors could only stare in disbelief.

Smirking, Hawkins said, “That’s what I thought. You always did sit on your moral high horse when it came to field experimentation. Now we get to see if the little girl is really immune to the HWNW virus. We will let one or two of the specimens into the testing chamber, where they are free to take a few bites of her proffered arm, and then wait and see what happens.” Turning to his assistant, he said, “Move her into position, Jim.”

Watching as the chair rolled across the floor, Hawkins had a moment of doubt when it looked like the little girl’s arm was too low and would hit the shatter-proof glass. He breathed a sigh of relief, though, when it slid all the way in to her shoulder.

When Jim was done securing the chair in place, Hawkins asked him, “How many dead do we have in the containment room?”

Checking a clipboard hanging from the front of the control panel, he answered, “Sixteen. Eleven men, and five women.”

Looking at the testing chamber, Hawkins said, “We really only need a couple, so don’t leave the door open for more than a few seconds. I don’t want too much damage done to our subject and have her bleed out.” Pointing to the Malectron, he added, “As soon as she’s been bitten twice, I want you to repel the dead and bring her arm out.”