Zompoc Survivor: Exodus (10 page)

Porsche turned her lights off again and let the truck idle. None of them seemed to be heading our way, so I gave her a nod and pointed to the little street a few yards to our right. Three turns later, we were pulling up in front of Cassie’s place. Her street was comfortably cute, with well-kept lawns and minivans in every other driveway. Cassie’s was one of the ones without the minivan or the prerequisite garden sculptures. We pulled into the driveway of her place and got out. We walked up to the door and I knocked softly, half expecting to be met with a gun barrel in my face.

“It’s open Dave,” I heard her call out. I turned the knob and pushed the door open but stayed in place. Carefully, I slung the M4 barrel down across my shoulder.

“Cassie, it’s me. I have someone with me, her name’s Porsche. She’s a friend of mine. She’s okay.” I stepped inside and kept my hands out to my sides, knowing I was silhouetted against the open door. The broad side of most barns would be harder to hit than I was just then. Porsche followed me in with her hands held up in front of her, and I heard the door swing shut behind us.

“Sorry for being paranoid, Dave,” Cassie said from behind me.

“It’s been that kind of day,” I told her as I turned around.

“Nate was pretty insistent about being careful.” Cassie was holding a Berretta M9 of her own pointed down at the floor. In the soft light from the street light, the only other thing I could see were her jeans and hiking boots.

“It was a good idea. I’ve already had to shoot at a couple of survivors. You ready?”

“We were just getting packed to go.” She stepped forward, and I could see that she had on a gray sweater and had her blond hair pulled into a messy ponytail. She led us into the dining room table. A half-full backpack and gear covered the table. “I sort of… unpacked the bug out bags. I kept all of the stuff, but it felt weird having all of it packed up.” I shrugged. Movement behind me caught my attention, and I saw Bryce emerge from the hallway with a backpack in his hand. His face lit up when he saw us.

“Hi, Dave!” he said brightly as he came over to us and dropped the pack at Cassie’s feet. “Dad said you’d be coming by.” He’d grown a couple of inches since I’d last seen him, and his dark hair had grown out from the buzz he’d had six months ago. Now it was in danger of getting in his eyes. He wore a pair of jeans and an Iron Man t-shirt with a pair of black sneakers. His face was just starting to lose the soft edges of baby fat, and his chin and jaw were looking more like Nate’s square features. His nose, though, was pure Cassie, slightly upturned and freckled.

“You ready to go, then?” I asked as he shook my hand.

“Just about. I didn’t unpack my stuff,” he said with a smile. For a kid, I figured having a pack full of gear was pretty novel. “All I had to do was pack my clothes.” He turned a smug look on his mother and got a glare that I could feel the heat off of from across the room in return.

“Enough of that, young man,” she said sternly as she put the last of her gear into the pack. He nodded and gave me a knowing smile while she shouldered her pack and grabbed her purse. “Go get in the car.”

“Mom, what about my gun?” he asked plaintively. He was bordering on whining, and I would have been too at his age. I gave her a nod, and she let out a tired sigh and headed back toward the hallway. She emerged moments later with a black rectangular gun case in her hand and a stern expression on her face.

“You are not opening this until we get to Dave’s house, do you understand me young man?” she said. His face lit up as she handed him the case, and he headed for the garage door. “We’ll meet you outside,” she told me as she followed him. Porsche hit the door a heartbeat before I did, then stopped in her tracks on the welcome mat. My ears perked up as I tried to keep from running into her, and I heard the sound of metal hitting metal nearby. Before either of us could say anything, the distinctive hammering of a machine gun ripped across the night. Without thinking, I went to push Porsche forward but she was already moving toward her truck. Two steps behind her, I unslung the M4 and vaulted into the bed even as the garage door started to open. She had her truck started and in reverse before the door was halfway up, and by the time it had cleared the roof of Cassie’s grey Wrangler, we were in the street. I looked to my left to see a black Humvee barrel through the next intersection over, followed seconds later by another. The second one was the source of the gunfire, the man in the turret hosing the road behind them with a steady stream of fire.

The machine gun stopped a heartbeat or three later, and I heard the sound of men calling out to each other. For a moment, I might as well have been back in Iraq, listening to an infantry squad. There is always an urgency to combat, but the men I had heard over in the sand box had a distinctive focus to their voices in a fight, a cadence unique to American fighting men. Hearing it now, in the States, I couldn’t change how I reacted.

“Left! Left!” I called out.

“Are you nuts? There’s zombies that way!” Porsche cried.

“Don’t argue with me! Go left!” I yelled back. She cursed a blue streak, but she turned the wheel to the left and left rubber smoking in our wake as we barreled down the street.

“Which way do I turn?” she yelled back through the window as we sped toward the intersection.

“Right!” I called back as I braced myself for the turn.

“I should’ve known,” she said as she turned the wheel. The street slid into view in front of us, and I saw a Humvee turned on its side with several men crawling out of it. Two were on either end of the vehicle, and a third was crawling out of the turret. Porsche pulled up next to the Humvee and stopped. Through her windshield, I could see a group of infected coming down the street, moving too fast to be zombies. Even as I got to my feet, the soldier on the far end of the Humvee dropped one of them with a short burst to the chest. The other one pointed his gun at me. I forced myself to ignore the thick stubby barrel that was pointed at me and propped my elbows on the roof to steady my aim, then popped off a three round burst into the chest of one of the infected. The sweats-and-hoodie clad ghoul dropped, and I moved my aim to the right. Three more rounds peppered the torso of a naked ghoul, and I thanked whichever god happened to be listening for bad lighting and the fog of war as he fell.

“Get in!” I yelled between bursts.

“You heard the man, get in! Mason, talk to me!” the man who had pointed his gun at me called out. His gun hiccupped and another ghoul went down. I fired a stuttering burst from the M4, but mine spun and staggered but stayed on his feet. I squeezed off another three rounds, and he fell.
Twelve rounds,
I reminded myself.

“Kowalski and Hicks are dead, Renfro took a round in the right arm!” someone called from inside the Humvee. In my peripheral vision, I could see men crawling out of the Humvee.

“Jackson, get Renfro out,” the leader barked out. He put three rounds downrange, then another three. “Mason, Vasquez, pull the gear. Carter, grab the SINGCARS and get ready to pop thermite. You, in the truck…keep shooting those fuckers!”

“I’ve only got a couple more magazines!” I called back over the ringing in my ears. I switched the selector to single fire.

“Use ‘em!” he yelled back as soldiers crawled out of the vehicle. Porsche’s door opened and I saw her prop her arm against the frame. The pop of her pistol was a slow counter beat to the ping of my M4. I spared a glance at the leader, and saw him struggling with the turret as I felt the bed of the truck vibrate under my feet. Then a soldier was beside me, and my gun went silent. As I fished a magazine from my pocket, he opened up with his submachine gun, three round bursts coughing from the end of the barrel. Ghouls dropped as I rammed the magazine home and pulled the charging handle. Porsche’s gun went silent and I heard her curse.

“Get in!” I yelled to her, taking aim at a ghoul in a business skirt that was sprinting along the sidewalk on my left. I let the sight go past her slightly before I pulled the trigger, but she kept going. Another aimed shot missed her, so I brought the scope back onto her and started pulling the trigger as I slowly walked it ahead of her. The fifth round dropped her, and I turned back to the advancing horde. Seven more rounds dropped four infected ghouls, and then the leader stepped out in front of the truck with a boxy gun in hand. The guy beside me slapped my shoulder with the back of his left hand.

“Hold your fire!” he yelled. I raised the barrel of my gun and nodded as he called out again. “Put ‘em down, Captain!” In front of the truck, the captain raised the bulkier gun to his shoulder and unleashed a brand of hell on Earth on the ghouls that I was glad I was on the back side of. The sound of it alone hammered my ears, a deeper pounding than the M4’s sharp reports, and I saw the top half of one of the ghouls jerk uncontrollably before its head disintegrated. The captain lowered the barrel and slowly walked a line of destruction across the advancing line, sending body parts flying, including at least one arm and a head. A few seconds later, the gun clicked as the last round cycled through it, and very few of the ghouls were left standing. The man beside me let out a whoop as the captain turned and walked back to the truck.

“Fuck yeah!” one of the other soldiers called out.

“Stow that shit, Jackson,” the captain said as he climbed into the bed of the truck and laid the big gun down. He nodded to one of the other soldiers, a young black man who still stood by the truck. The soldier ran to the Humvee and pulled the pin on a grenade, laid it on the upper side of the vehicle then bolted for the truck again. Porsche didn’t need to be told to gun the engine, and we sped past the damaged vehicle as the thermite ignited. Cassie sped along behind us, and I heard the diesel catch as we turned the corner. I leaned down by the open driver’s side window.

“Head back to where we split up,” I told Porsche. She nodded, her face slowly losing a slight green cast in the fitful light.

“Thanks for the ride!” the captain said to me as Porsche made her way back toward the railroad tracks. He stuck out one gloved hand. “Name’s Adams.”

“Stewart,” I said. “Dave Stewart. What the hell happened back there?” Adams gave a glance to one of his men before he turned back to me.

“Fuckin’ Homeland pukes rammed us when we hit that big bunch of infected,” he said. Even over the ringing in my ears and the wind, I could hear the scorn in his voice. “Opened fire with my team down range, too. Killed two of my men. Did you say your name was Dave Stewart?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You the guy who wrote The Frankenstein Code?” the guy beside me asked.

“Yeah, and Operation Terror.” He gave a nod to Adams.

“I read your stuff, man. Not bad. Kinda out there, but hey, it’s just a horror story, right?”

“Not anymore,” I said.
 

Chapter
9

A Little Knowledge

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

~Napoleon Hill ~

“Garland, this is Karma,” Adams said into his radio as we bounced along the right of way beside the tracks. One earphone was held to his ear, the other swinging from the curved headset to bounce against his shoulder. “Tertiary objective sighted. Preparing to secure.  We are down two KIA, one wounded.” He listened to the response on his headphones, then looked over his shoulder at Cassie’s Jeep. “Negative on secondary objective. Homeland rabbited on us before we could verify that intel. Roger that.” He kept the headphone to his ear and looked back toward the front of the truck with the impatient expression of a man on hold.

“Hey, Stewart,” the man beside me asked. His name tape read Vasquez. He pointed to the carbine in my hand before he went on. “Where’d you pick up the M4?”

“Ran across a couple of National Guard trucks outside Kickapoo,” I said as I reached into my right front pocket. “Grabbed what I needed to stay alive, and pulled their tags. I figured someone should know what happened to them.” I handed him the three sets of tags.

“What did happen to them?” he said, and I heard a little hostility creep into his voice.

“Near as I can figure, they tried to clear a bunch of infected from the high school and got overrun.” I watched his face, and saw the look change from hostile to skeptical as he looked down at the tags in his hand.

“They turned?” he asked.

“Yeah. I took care of them, and we led as many infected away as we could,” I told him. He gave me a nod, then turned to Adams. In their gear and helmets, they had that lean uniformity that I’d seen in so many front-line soldiers. They wore smaller helmets but their other gear was not much different from most I’d seen: tactical vests and holsters, elbow and knee pads and heavy gloves over digital camo fatigues. Their shoulder patches bore the Special Forces tab, most of them having a Ranger tab above the obligatory Airborne tab. All of them bore the subdued version of the Special Forces shoulder patches, an upright sword crossed by three lightning bolts in black against the olive drab arrowhead. I reassessed my situation as I realized that I was sitting among a team of Green Berets, men who had earned the term ‘bad-ass’ several times over before they’d even made the grade for the Special Forces. If there was a place that could be called safe in the newly fucked up world, I was as close to it as humanly possible.

“Negative,” Adams said suddenly. “I repeat, negative sir. Infected are one thing, but that is an order I will not follow. Yes, sir, I understand who it comes from, and that does not make it a lawful order. No, sir. Understood sir.” He threw the headphones down and spat something I couldn’t hear, but suspected it was something unpleasant. The graveled roadway rose to meet the concrete bed of Bennett St., and Porsche turned the truck’s nose east. Cassie pulled up behind her, her Jeep idling easily.

“What’s the plan Captain?” Carter asked from his place next to the tailgate.

“We secure the secondary and tertiary objectives, then head back to base.” The soldier across from me looked back toward Cassie’s truck, nothing more than a shifting of his eyes, and his face seemed to cloud. “Maximum discretion, people.” Without another word, all but Vasquez and Adams grabbed gear before they got out of the bed of the truck and spread out a little, two on each side, one facing forward, the other to the rear. In the dim light, I could barely make out Adams’ expression as he turned toward me, putting his face in shadow. Something in my gut tightened, an instinct that I’d learned to listen to in the past few hours.

“Mister Stewart, thank you for the ride,” Adams said as Vasquez turned toward me but made no move to get out of the truck. “We certainly owe you our lives.” In the instant before he moved, his stance changed, something I probably would have missed if I wasn’t already expecting something to go wrong. Without a second thought, I grabbed his vest and pushed myself backward, pushing Vasquez out of the bed of the truck along with me. I landed on Vasquez, and Adams landed on me.

“Porsche! Go!” I yelled. I heard Cassie gun the engine on her Jeep, and Porsche hit the gas, sending her truck forward in a screech of burning rubber. Cassie’s Jeep shot past a split second later, and I could hear the pounding of boots and cursing around us. The dwindling red dots of their tail-lights down Bennett was almost as rewarding as being with them. Cassie knew the way to my house, and Porsche was smart enough to follow her lead. I had kept my end of the bargain, and Nate would keep his. Maya and Amy had a shot at surviving.

Adams pulled me to my feet with a curse. “You son of a bitch!” he snarled in my face.

“Sorry I screwed up your snatch and grab,” I said as a strange sort of elation bubbled up inside me. Even if they killed me right there, I’d already won. My girls were safe, my friend was safe and so was Nate’s family. Somehow, though, I didn’t think Adams was likely to do that. He was a Green Beret, a consummate professional. His trade might have been war, but somehow, I knew that he wouldn’t kill me in cold blood. He shook me once, then pushed me away. I staggered back, barely keeping my feet. Then he was turning back toward me, and I barely registered his fist moving before it slammed into my jaw.
So,
I thought as my face plummeted toward the concrete,
I guess hitting me is still an option.

I came to with a headache and a throbbing in my jaw that made dropping back into oblivion pretty damn inviting. My shoulders ached and something was digging into my wrists, probably the same something that was holding them behind my back. I opened my eyes to find myself in a cage, stripped down to my boxers. Around me I could see bleachers and scoreboards, as my senses slowly told me I was in a basketball court. To my left I could see a set of tables covered with boxes and cables, and in front of me stood black clad men with assault rifles held at the ready, barrels down and fingers outside the trigger guards. They didn’t have the look of soldiers, and a couple had goatees and hair longer than military regs allowed sticking out from under their ball caps. A dry, rasping laugh came from my right, and I turned to see a man strapped to an angled table that held him almost upright in the cell next to mine. Only bars separated us, and some part of me didn’t think that was enough. As my eyes focused on him, I changed my guess. He might have been a man once, but whatever he was now, ‘man’ wasn’t the right word for it. His eyes were milky white, and his skin had the gray pallor of death. His face was gaunt, exposing every line of the skull beneath it, and the few clumps of hair on his scalp looked like they had faded to a dull gray. I admit it, I stared at him, and some part of my brain sort of locked up as it tried to force what I was seeing to make sense. Then it turned its head and looked straight at me.

Oh yeah
, my brain suddenly told itself,
zombies.

“What the hell are you lookin’ at, asshole?” the thing asked. Its voice was a raspy parody of human speech, but it was at least understandable. “You eyeballin’ me?”

“Kinda hard not to,” I said with an instinctive animosity. The urge to kill this thing was growing in the back of my thoughts, and I had no idea why. Even if I did know why, I didn’t care. All that mattered was that this thing ended up dead. The world would be a better place without the thing in the next cell in it, of that I was certain.

“I’m gonna fuck you up when I get out of here,” the thing said to me. That pissed me off even more, and I felt my lips curl back from my teeth. My heart started pounding as I gave him a cold glare.

“That’s something I’d like to see you pull off,” another voice intruded. I turned to the front of my cage to see Captain Adams standing next to a man in black fatigues and a baseball cap. His clothes were unmarred by any insignia, and he wore a massive handgun in a tactical holster on his right thigh. The chrome slide contrasted with the black grips, and by the shape of the slde, I guessed he was carrying a Desert Eagle of some caliber or another. “You know, I was surprised that this little shit stain of a city rated three targets. And here we have two of them.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“The man asking the questions, Mr. Stewart. That’s all you need to know. You can call me ‘Sir’ if you need to address me by some kind of name.”

“Sure thing asshole,” I said. Adams suppressed a laugh, but a snort still got through.

“Let’s start with the basics. How long have you been colluding with Nathan Reid?” he asked. Adams face went blank at that, and I decided to test a theory.

“Captain Reid helped me with a couple of my books. That’s common knowledge to anyone who read them,” I answered casually. Blackshirt’s eyes narrowed and I could see his jaw clench, while Adams’ mouth quirked a little, like he was trying to hide a smile. His eyes flicked to Blackshirt for a moment, and the grin started to form.

“Don’t try to bullshit me, Stewart. You attacked the men sent to retrieve you, you knew we were after you, and because of you, a pair of fugitives are running loose in this city. Now, stop playing games with me. Where is Reid?”

“A mother and her kid are fugitives? What did they do? Skip a PTA meeting or something?”

“Where is he?”

“No idea,” I answered.

“We know you were in contact with him today. We have your phone. Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll have you stripped naked and thrown outside the wall.”

“I’ve been out in the shit all night, and I started with next to nothing,” I said. “Come back when you can make a real threat.” From my right came the wheezing laughter I’d heard earlier.

“How about I come in there and work your god damn kneecaps over with a ballpeen hammer?” he said with an impotent snarl. “How’s that for a threat?”

“Come on in,” I said. “I’d hold the door for you, but I’m kind of tied up right now.” His eyes went to the door, then back to me. Behind him, Adams shook his head.

“Talk to me or I’ll find your girlfriend and splatter her brains on the wall while you watch. Maybe we’ll do her little girl, too. She’ll die screaming for you to help her.” My eyes narrowed as he said that. They didn’t need my phone. They had been monitoring it all day. My conversation with Amy hadn’t been in my texts, but he knew she looked to me for help. The animosity I’d been feeling for the thing in the cell next to me had no trouble switching targets.

“Give it up, Keyes,” Adams said. “He’s getting more intel out of you than you’re getting out of him.”

“Fuck you, Adams,” Keyes said. “When you have my permission to have an opinion, I’ll tell you what it is in a memo. I’ll conduct my interrogations any way I see fit.”

“Tell him,” Adams said to me.

“You’re afraid to come into these cells. You’ve been monitoring my cell phone all day. The walking cadaver over there is your primary target, Nate Reid’s family is the secondary, and I’m the tertiary target because of my association with them. That tells me that you think he knows something, and that you need leverage on him to keep him quiet or under control, which tells me you’re probably to blame for the zombie clusterfuck going on out there or you know who is. You’re carrying a chromed Desert Eagle on your hip instead of a Sig Sauer or a Browning, so you’re not military, and I’m pretty sure you’re not even really government. That makes you either a mercenary or private security with a tendency to over-compensate. Did I miss anything?” I asked Adams. He turned to Keyes, who gave him a glare and stalked out of the room.

“Your story checked out,” Adams said after a door slammed nearby. “The detachment at Kickapoo reported a Nissan truck showing up and drawing the bulk of the infected away from the front barrier before they evac’d.”

“Don’t expect me to roll over now that you’re going all good-cop on me,” I said. Adams shrugged.

“Whatever Keyes wants to know, he can get on his own. I don’t know who he really works for, but it sure as hell ain’t Homeland Security. What I do know is that I served with Nate Reid when we were both Rangers, back in oh-four. He’s a good man, and any man he trusts his family with is okay in my book. My team is on the next chopper out of here. I just wanted to say thanks for the help. And sorry about punching you.”

“You were doing your job, man,” I shrugged. “You have one hell of a right hook.”

“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” the thing in the cage next to me croaked. “You two got a regular little bro-mance goin’ on.”

“What the hell is that thing, anyway?” I asked, tilting my head toward the next cell.

“Mike Deacon, Springfield’s version of Patient Zero. First case reported. At first they thought it was some guy on bathsalts or something like that. Got arrested after he tore his girlfriend’s throat out with his teeth. Best guess is he’s the primary carrier, and she woke up in the morgue at St John’s, then infected the rest of the city through the people she attacked. This shit spread’s so damn quick, though, it’s hard to say what really happened.”

“But he can still talk…and think?” I asked.

“Yeah, ain’t that fucked up?” Adams said. I looked back over at Deacon, and fought the urge to try to kill him. “He’s the tenth one we’ve captured. The folks at the CDC figure every city has one.”

“Where did he get it from?” I asked as I turned back to Adams. He gave me a perplexed look, and opened his mouth to say something. A second later, he closed it, then looked back at Deacon. The living zombie started to laugh again as a door opened off to my left.