The Ugly Beginning - 01 (18 page)

***

“...just one more step, you son-of-a-bitch,” Thad Bushnell hissed through clenched teeth. The zombie, a middle-aged businessman with the tattered remains of a suit, worth more than Thad made in a month at the mill, stepped out from behind the jackknifed car-transport rig that blocked three of four lanes of I-8 heading east towards El Cajon from San Diego.

Even with the suppressor, the rifle made a noise that echoed. From his perch on the overpass, Thad scanned for the nearby vehicle that he could hear approaching. He focused his attention on the football stadium. There was plenty of movement, but none of it living. The crowd was drifting and heading in the same general direction. He drew the flare gun from the open duffel bag at his feet, pointed it skyward, and fired. The radio slung around his neck crackled to life.

“We see you, Thad,” a female voice said. That would be Chelsea. “JoJo is on the way. He just scooped Keith and is
en route.
”

“Well, I’m on the overpass and I managed to cut the lock on that Frito truck. Couldn’t stay down on the interstate, though. It was getting a little busy.”

“Sorry, I didn’t see that one,” some of the exuberance drained from her voice.

Thad shook his head. Her only job was to stand up there on the balcony of her suite at the
Four Seasons
and warn him if she saw anything coming his way. He shuddered. That girl had grabbed his shoulder. She’d been dead for a while, and the California sun had dried the corpse out enough so that the smell hadn’t carried far. Being so close to the large masses around the stadium left a hint of that stench on the air. The zombie walked right up to him from behind. Her body was now on the ground, a few yards from the one he’d just dropped.

The sound of the laboring engine grew louder all of a sudden. Thad looked as the garbage truck came into view. The truck’s prongs were out front with all of the steel grating welded on. Zombies practically exploded into pulp if they ventured across the path of that big machine. Using his binoculars, Thad zoomed in on the vehicle. JoJo was driving and Keith was on top of the cab in the makeshift turrets with Dinah Morello.

Dinah was their leader for all intents and purposes. As far as they’d been able to tell, she was the only living member of the San Diego Police Department. In the two and a half weeks that had passed, Thad had never seen her lose her cool.

He’d been with her the night this whole thing started. In fact, he was sitting in the back of Dinah and her partner’s squad car in cuffs. On the way to be booked, an emergency call of multiple officers down at Balboa Mall diverted their trip. Thad still remembered the total chaos that night.

“Stop wasting flares, Bushnell!” Dinah’s voice came through, crisp and curt as always. Two weeks into this nightmare, and she still treated him like he was in the back of her squad car.

“Well,” Thad yelled, “then hurry the hell up and come get me.”

The radio stayed silent. Dinah had done what she set out to, she had made him respond on the defensive. Thad grabbed his duffel bag, slung it over his shoulder, and threw a leg over the railing. He climbed down the rope they used to set up an easy access to the freeway below.

A moment later, the rumble of the big truck vibrated the insides of the cargo area. The back end of the garbage truck blocked out most of the ambient light as it backed to the opening. The warning beep echoed, doing its best to give Thad a headache.

In less than five minutes, every box containing bags of various chips, nuts, and cookies were transferred.

“They’re coming!” Dinah’s voice boomed from the PA.

The last big cardboard box was handed from one man to the next and everybody—Thad, JoJo, and Keith— scurried to the cab and jumped in. Dinah was now behind the wheel, she started the monstrous, armored truck forward as the men were still climbing up and in.

Thad popped open the overhead trapdoor and heaved himself into the machinegun turret. The .50 caliber that they had managed to salvage from an overturned National Guard Hum-vee was loaded and ready. He released the safety and swung to the left where the closest threats were pouring around all the abandoned, overturned, or burned out cars.

In short bursts just like Dinah taught, he began firing. Brass casings spat out, catching the sunlight as they flew end over end, clattering on the roof of the garbage truck’s cab and rolling away. Zombies spun as rounds ripped through their rotting torsos or simply dropped when the bullet found their heads. Some of the creatures’ skulls erupted in greyish-black explosions of jelly-like matter.

The airhorn sounded once, signaling that the vehicle was about to turn. Thad took his finger off the trigger and braced himself. With only a couple of stragglers falling under the wheels along the way, the journey back to their ‘fortress’ was relatively smooth.

Thad clicked the safety back on and turned so he could see what now counted as home for himself, Dinah, JoJo, Keith, Chelsea, and about a hundred others. The
Four Seasons
was twenty-three stories tall. The top floor was a restaurant and the two floors below that were luxury suites. That was where all of the meeting and planning and eating took place. They put an arsenal on every fifth floor, that way, if they were ever overrun, they had a solid source of weapons and ammo during their retreat.

Still, as they rumbled up the snaking drive that led to their home, Thad didn’t worry much about those zombies getting too thick. Their hotel-home was the only building built on this man-made plateau. Except for the curving, switchback driveway, thick undergrowth and trees covered the flat-topped hill on all sides. To climb up was difficult for a regular, healthy human, much less one of those uncoordinated undead. To make it more impossible, they uncoiled spools of razor wire all throughout the landscape.

Of course nothing is foolproof, so they completely filled the parking lot and all the flattened ground around the hotel with cars and trucks. Some had been turned on their sides. They left small gaps between every vehicle. If a zombie managed to climb the hill and got itself up onto a parked car or truck, it would then fall between the cracks. The third floor was where the guards kept lookout. Everybody able to shoot a gun took turns standing watch. Morning shift was the busiest. That was when the ten or so that managed to get in the perimeter during the night were dispatched.

There was a big gap for the garbage truck to pull into. It was like placing the last piece of a puzzle. Thad, Keith, and JoJo hopped out and while Thad pulled in a few cars that they used to wall off the truck, the other two kept lookout. As Thad parked the last car, Keith walked about ten yards down the blackened driveway to the first curve.

“About a hundred followed,” he called as he began pouring a three gallon can of gasoline on the blacktop drive.

“Getting to be less every time.” JoJo pulled a pack of gum from his jumpsuit’s breast pocket. He extended a foil stick towards Thad who shook his head. “Suit yourself.” He shrugged and peeled away the shiny aluminum, pulling the piece of Big Red out with his teeth.

Joseph Jones, or as he was better known, JoJo, was about five-feet-seven and two hundred-twenty pounds. He claimed to be part Hispanic, as well as African- and Native-American. His long, wavy black hair came to the middle part of his back when he wore it braided, which was most of the time. A stranger might think he was just short, squat, and chubby. They would be wrong. Under the easy smile and baggy clothes was the pure strength of a power-lifter.

Where JoJo was short and stocky, Keith Thomas was tall, skinny and ill-tempered. Again, a stranger might be concerned about going out amongst death with somebody so unpleasant. But nobody could shoot like Keith.

“Those bastards are learnin’,” Keith stepped back and watched the tide of gasoline spread across the smooth blacktop. He waited until a good number made it to the wet pavement. “Douse ‘em!”

JoJo stepped up with a bug-spray canister full of kerosene, pumped the handle a few times and opened the spray nozzle. A mist of fuel began coating the oncoming hordes.

“That should do it.” Keith drew a box of wooden matches from another pocket in his green coveralls. “Step back!” He lit a match and tossed it to the ground.

FWOOSH!

A wall of heat rolled over the men even at this distance. A greasy, black pearl of smoke snaked skyward. As more of the zombies caught fire, the smoke grew darker and denser. One by one, the bodies toppled and ceased to move. The men stayed until the last body fell, and then waited for them to burn down.

The third or fourth time they had done this, one of their own had started in to dispose of the remains, loading the charred bodies into a waiting pick-up truck bed. A blackened husk had taken a chomp of the guy’s forearm. Without warning, Keith had walked over and put a bullet in the zombie’s head, then their co-worker’s. These days, they let the bodies burn longer.

The men sat in silence, sipping warm beer, watching corpses burn. Somewhere distant, the distinct sound of gunfire erupted. It lasted several seconds.

9

Geeks to the Rescue

“Left! Left Dammit!” Darrin screamed into his handset.

The U-Haul swerved left, its tires squealing and leaving a blue-gray puff of burnt rubber in its wake. Mike’s El Camino sped past Darrin with a roar. A pair of zombies flew as the solid front bumper shattered legs and ribs. The bodies twitched and struggled as Darrin glanced in his rearview mirror. They weren’t eliminated, just less of a threat to anybody else that might come along now that they could no longer walk.

The three-vehicle caravan turned off Main Street and took another left on Market Street. Darrin gave directions and Kevin led in the big U-Haul truck in an attempt to clear the way as much as possible for the group. Darrin was becoming convinced that he needed a new car. The Geo was great for gas mileage, but they weren’t paying for gas anymore. It would be best if he found something durable.

“They said the building was reddish-brown.” Mike’s voice brought Darrin back to the issue at hand.

They picked up the radio broadcasts on their CBs just before they reached the bridge that would take them into Ohio. The vote was unanimous; they turned around to see if they could rescue the owners of the voice that claimed to be a mother and her three daughters.

One of the daughters was seven months pregnant.

“I see the building!” Kevin announced.

The big truck began to pull away. Bodies were being crushed and knocked aside. There were hundreds. They were packed in around the building that held their objective.

“No way we can get in there,” Mike said.

“There’s too many!” Darrin agreed.

The U-Haul was now surrounded on all sides by throngs of the undead intent on getting at the living, breathing body inside. The truck pushed ahead, but the task seemed as pointless as that of Sisyphus and the rock.

“You’re gonna bog down and get stuck!” Mike warned.

“You two back up and see how many follow. I got a full tank, I can keep edging to the door. I think once I’m under the awning, there won’t be enough room for that many. I can pop the few that get stuck between me and those doors. Switch to channel ten and tell those girls to get down to the lobby. They’re gonna have to get through the window on my passenger side because I’m gonna be pressed up against the building. Opening the door is going to be out of the question.”

“Good luck,” Mike said, and switched the CB to channel ten where they had told the girls to listen for further instructions.

“...we do? Can you hear us?” The voice was near hysterics. Another voice, calmer, spoke in the background, “Stop using the radio. They’re down below. I can see ‘em. If those guys are trying to talk to us, we won’t be able to hear.”

“Okay, ladies,” Mike said, “start heading downstairs. Kevin, the one in the U-Haul, is gonna move under the awning at the main entrance.”

“Should we head down right now?” The calmer voice had the mic now.

“Yes, me and Darrin, the one in the little car, are gonna head away in different directions and hopefully lead some of those things with us.”

A big, meaty hand slapped the windshield of Mike’s El Camino making him jump. Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw that one of the things had managed to make it into the back with all the supplies. Slowly, the thing was crawling over the plastic tarp towards the cab. He could see Darrin backing up. He was almost to the corner.

“Oh shit,” Mike breathed. He keyed his radio. “Darrin! On your left coming around the corner!”

Mike could see Darrin’s face. He saw the way his eyes widened when he looked in the rearview mirror. A wall of zombies were coming around the corner. They had followed them down Main, drawn by the sound of engines and the moans and groans of their brethren to home in on their prey.