When There's No More room In Hell: A Zombie Novel (19 page)

A man stepped out from behind the wheel and headed for the main doors. Amy grabbed her brother by the hand and dragged him from the room.

“C’mon, Rob, we have to let him in.”

Robert was trotting along behind her as she led him to the reception doors
, which they had avoided for the past two weeks.

“How do we know he's not like the others?”

“He's a policeman, and he has a car. I don’t think the nasty ones can drive, Rob.”

They reached the door and saw the beam from a torch light moving across the reception area on the other side. A man stood
there in the gloom of the doorway that led outside, scanning the room before entering. He saw the children reaching up to open the bolt locks at the top of the door and moved toward them.

Amy opened the door and the man shone the light
down the corridor behind them and then over their dirty, dishevelled faces before pointing it to the floor.

He crouched down as he came close and sm
iled warmly at the two children. “Don't be afraid, it’s okay. I'm a policeman. You're safe now, and I’ll take care of you. My name is Tony.”

17

They had thrust their way north from Baghdad, through the mayhem and hordes of infected, headed for the Turkish border.

The journey had been
far from uneventful and they considered themselves to be lucky to have made it through at all.

After breaking out from the capital, with Hussein and his two remaining fighters joining the team in their bid to escape the meat grinder that was Iraq, they had passed through numerous villages and towns as they fled along the main roads and tracks that crisscrossed the
country. They tried to keep clear of the populated areas as much as possible, but sometimes it was unavoidable.

In places
the roads were packed with static vehicles, most of them abandoned. Many of them with their dead occupants entombed inside. Some of the stalled cars, trucks and buses were peppered with bullet holes, showing the tell-tale signs of ambush and attack. Others had burned, and whole sections of road became impassable with the charred, still smouldering skeletons of wrecked and destroyed cars.

Marcus had pushed his men hard. Angry survivors had fired at them
with machineguns and rifles and even rockets on one occasion as they passed through villages and small towns. Their reaction had always been the same, to pour heavy, thunderous firepower at the firing point in reply from the machinegun turrets on the tops of the vehicles, suppressing the enemy until the team was clear of the field of fire.

Further on,
American Apache gunships had buzzed them and lined up ahead, hovering low above the road as though about to attack. Ian had thought quickly and pulled the American flag from his glove box and frantically waved it at them through the armoured glass of the windscreen.

Whether the pilots believed that they were on a legitimate mission or not, Marcus was unsure, but they moved off nevertheless and allowed them to continue. They could still see them in the distance
to the West, paralleling them. As they travelled along the road they watched as the same two helicopters attacked a column of Iraqi tanks that were travelling at a right angle toward the team and may have been headed to cut them off.

Marcus silently thanked the pil
ots and watched them turn back South and disappear across a ridge line, leaving the column of destroyed and burning tanks in their wake.

As
the team approached a town called Tuz, just south of Kirkuk in the northern section of the country, they had halted on a deserted stretch of road to observe the route leading up to the outskirts. They knew the town, and to sum up the general feeling, Stu, while planning a previous mission in to the area, had commented, “The hostility that the locals feel toward Western security forces is matched only by their hatred of soap.”

Marcus climbed out from his vehicle and walked to the front of their small convoy where Ian was already observing the road with his binoculars.

“How are we looking, Ian?” he asked.

Ian lowered the field glasses and handed them to Marcus without tak
ing his eyes away from the town. “Looks deserted. I can see a few infected moving about in the main street, but other than that, nothing that looks like real trouble.”

Marcus raised the binoculars and scanned the buildings and rooftops. He hummed as he did so
, acknowledging Ian’s observations. “Can’t see any signs of an ambush, but you fucking never know with this place.”

He keyed his mouthpiece and spoke to the rest of his me
n. “Pardon the pun guys, but the place looks dead. We’ll push on. Keep the speed up and be ready on the guns.”

Ian and Marcus moved back to thei
r respective vehicles and up into the turrets. Stu was already manning his gun at the rear of the call sign.

“That's us mobile
,” Ian sent over the air.

Within a few hundred metres, the three trucks were travelling at speed, racing toward the town and aiming for the far side.

Tuz consisted of a cluster of buildings and residential areas that straddled the main road running South to North through the centre. Most of the buildings were dilapidated single-story breeze block and wooden shacks.

Ditches lined the road and collected all the waste and trash that ran from the homes
and businesses and flowed into the oily, stinking water that filtered into the outskirts, acting as a medieval-style open sewer system. Plastic bags and bottles clogged every ditch and dead animals, left to rot at the sides of the road, would be in abundance while people stepped over them and ignored the stink as they continued with their daily routines.

Before the plague, the roadsides would have been packed with trucks and cars being repaired and refuelled at the countless small mechanics garages that ran the length of the
main street, with hundreds of people milling about and staring with hatred and contempt at the team as they passed through.

The checkpoint at the S
outhern end of the town was unmanned, another indication that the place had fallen to the dead. The stretch of road that cut through the built-up area was no more than a couple of kilometres long, and Marcus hoped to be clear to the other side of the town and back on the open highway within just a few minutes.

Mid
way through, Ian saw a gaggle of infected that crouched over what must have been a body in the centre of the road as they tore at the scraps of flesh, still clinging to its bones. A couple of them heard the approaching vehicles and rose to their feet. They began to stagger toward the convoy and then broke into a sprint, headed directly at the lead vehicle.

“Straight at them
, Jim, don’t try to swerve at this speed, you’ll roll the vehicle.” Ian turned the turret and began to fire into their path.

Zaid, the insurgent that had been assigned to Ian’s vehicle
, sat in the passenger seat. He braced himself in his seat as they closed the distance to the first of the infected.

Jim stomped his foot down on the pedal, hoping to squeeze a little more power from the
engine. “C’mon you ugly fucker!” he snarled through gritted teeth as he aimed the front of his vehicle directly at the lead sprinter.

The grill of the SUV slammed in
to the midriff of the first body. It folded immediately with its lower limbs being dragged under the wheels and its head smashing down hard on the steel hood of the vehicle. It burst like an overripe watermelon and its brains and thick sticky blood was splattered all across the windshield.

Ian felt a slight bump
as he continued to fire when the body was crushed beneath the wheels.

The second approaching
infected was slightly off centre from the line of approach and it was hit with a glancing blow that sent it hurling through the air in a tangle of smashed and broken limbs. It landed ten metres away with a wet smack, sounding like a large, fresh slab of meat being dropped onto a tiled floor.

The remainder of the infected, still feasting on the carcass in the middle of the road, were completely unaware of the heavy
steel monster approaching them. Only one looked up at the very last instant, as the bumper smashed into its pale, gaunt face. Ian felt more of a jolt as the vehicle ploughed over the organic speed bump.

The dead began to materialise from the houses and streets after hearing the roar of the engines
and machinegun. They reached out longingly for the speeding black vehicles, as though they expected the team to stop to satisfy their ravaging needs. The loud chorus of moans as more and more of the walking corpses gathered could be heard over the engines.

Some sprinted for the roadside, but by the time they reached it the team had already passed
them, and their clumsy efforts to give chase were no match for the momentum at which the SUVs charged away from them.

Marcus, Stu and Ian didn't bother to waste the ammunition
from the machineguns by hosing them down. They were no real threat. Unless a crowd appeared ahead of them, speed and the heavily armoured SUVs themselves were their best weapons at that moment.

The last of the vehicles passed
through the final checkpoint on the far side of the town. Like the first one, it was unmanned, except for a dead Iraqi policeman who stepped into the path of Stu’s truck and was obliterated by the heavy wheels.

“That’s us c
omplete.” Stu informed Marcus that the entire call sign had made it through.

Marcus
was about to reply when Ian’s frantic voice sounded in his ears. “IED right,” he hollered.

All three vehicles swerved to the left and
over to the opposite side of the carriageway in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between the expected explosion and themselves. The people sitting in the passenger positions to the right of the drivers made themselves as small as possible in their seats. The men in the turrets ducked down and braced for the shockwave and flying shrapnel.

The team was travelling too fast to be a
ble to stop in time. If they braked at that moment, they would have come to a halt in the centre of the killing area. Instead they had to try and push through.

A
deafening roar, followed by a wave of heat and a temporary vacuum, caused every ear to pop within the team, followed by a loud ringing. Vision was distorted as the shockwave jerked the eyes in their sockets and caused the brain to rattle inside the skull, which had an effect similar to being unexpectedly punched in the jaw.

The pressure wave forced the lead truck to tilt
momentarily onto its two left wheels before it rocked back over to the right, forcing it to swerve across the road as Jim fought for control.

Bangs and thuds echoed throughout the vehicles as s
hrapnel and debris slammed and embedded itself in the outer steel casing of the vehicles.

The three drivers, hardly able to see through the dust storm created by the blast, unable to hear due to the ringing and popping of their ears
, and incapable of any other thought through the concussion of the explosion, accelerated away from the danger area and concentrated on keeping their vehicles on an even keel.

Stu, regaining a moment of self control after being tossed about in the turret, gripped his gun and began t
o scan for any sign of a follow-up with small arms fire or vehicles from the surrounding area. Nothing stirred, except for a large grey and brown cloud behind them.

“Fuck
me. The bastards hit us with a fucking daisy chain,” he called over the net.

Whoever had planted the
row of improvised explosive devices had used a method known as a ‘daisy chain’, made up from a number of devices strung together and lining a length of road and set to go off as one, and intended to ensure maximum damage to a convoy.

The daisy chain intended for Marcus’ team
had been spotted by Ian as he scanned the road to the left and right from his vantage point in the turret behind the machinegun. It had been planted too close to the roadside and they had avoided it before it caught them in the kill zone as they had roared at full speed out from the town of Tuz.

They had had time to cross to the opposite carriageway, and as a resul
t the only damage done was that they were peppered with a few chinks of shrapnel, cracked outer layers of armoured glass, and Stu had a damaged rear wheel. The vehicles were fitted with run flat tyres and they continued for ten kilometres before they decided to stop and check over their trucks while they replaced the wheel.

They needed a break
, and Marcus decided that they would pull off from the main road and travel along a dirt track to lie up in a piece of dead ground for one hour to give them the chance to get some food and recover their senses after the shock of the attack.

“So then,” Ian turned to Zaid as they both sat
tucking into their rations. “How does it feel being on the business end of one of your IEDs then?”

Zaid looked at him blankly, understanding nothing that had just been said to him.

Hussein, chewing a large chunk of tuna, spoke for him. “He doesn’t speak much English, Mr Ian.”

“Okay then,” Ian turned on Hus
sein with venom in his voice. “Well, what did you think of it? You've probably planted plenty of the fuckers but never been on the receiving end. It’s a shame none of you were killed, so you would know how it feels to lose a friend in one.”

Hussein had stopped chewing, his eyes glanced down at his feet and for a moment Ian thought he would not reply.

Then he spoke. “Mr Ian, we have lost many friends too. My brother was killed in an attack from American helicopters who took him and his friends for terrorists planting a bomb by a road; they were actually repairing a water pipe. The helicopters fired rockets and machinegun bullets into them and there was very little for us to bury after that.

“
I have lost other friends too, Mr Ian. Friends that had nothing to do with what I did, and some have been killed by private contractors such as you.”

“Ian,”
Yan was standing with a cup in his hand and staring at him. “Leave it mate. We've all had a belly full of this war and suffered our own losses. The world has changed dramatically in recent weeks, and these lads are willing to work with us instead of against us. They did okay today and we've a long way to go, so we may as well let the past be.”