Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness (10 page)

Chapter 23

The wind was whipping through the pine
trees above Shane’s head as he and his team crept over a low rise a half-mile
from the prison. Everyone spread out along a line of shrubs and lay flat,
scanning the facility below. In the distance, just fading into the forest to
the north, was a massive convoy of trucks heading along the two-lane highway.

Shane glassed the guard towers with his
binoculars and then looked down to the main entrance below whose gates were
open, the only movement coming from a handful of armed men near the entrance
booth and a large garage where a fuel truck, ambulance, and van were parked. He
whispered down the line to the rest of his team on the right. “The last
satellite image I received from HQ indicated that there was a large troop
buildup here. That must be the group that just headed out in the rigs. The guys
below by the garage must be their resupply convoy.”

An immense flock of ravens on the other
side of the prison kept dipping down from the treetops towards some rotting
heap but Shane couldn’t make out the details. “I don’t see any other movement,
either in the towers or on the main grounds.”

“Same here—you think that group that just
left was headed for the dam?” said Jared.

“Could be, but nonetheless, it’s always
good to assume that things aren’t what they appear so everyone keep their
senses prickly when we head down.” He took one more pass with the binoculars
and then looked down the line at his team. “Compton, you stay here and provide
overwatch. Everyone else follow me down to the fence perimeter so we can get in
closer for sentry removal. After that we’ll split into two groups and comb
through the prison grounds. And make damn sure you don’t hit that fuel truck or
ambulance. Those are resources we need.”

An hour later, both teams had made their way
inside after using their suppressed rifles to dispatch the thugs hovering
around the main gate and garage. They split up and inspected the facility over
the next hour and then regrouped near the administrative building.

“This entire place has been cleared out,”
said Kress. “I mean even the blankets and cooking pots are gone.”

“Yeah, I saw a lot of vehicle tracks and
bootprints near the main gate when we came in,” said Shane. “This was a mass exodus.
Couple that with the fact that there was very little resistance here and I’d
say they sent their entire troop base north to the dam.”

Jared craned his head around, staring at
the cell blocks in the distance and the depressing views. “Who can blame ’em—there
are no mountains to look at.”

Amy stepped back and looked at the
hundreds of ravens circling overhead behind the mess hall. “What’s with all the
birds?”

They walked around the edge of the red
brick building and peered beyond the fenceline. A hundred yards away on the
cusp of the forest was a chest-high pile of mutant corpses. Each one had the
same wiry frame but they were in different stages of decomposition from the
constant freeze-and-thaw cycles. A few ravens swooped down to inspect out of
curiosity but wouldn’t touch the frozen carcasses.

“Look at all those things—there must be
fifty muteys there,” said Jared. “What the hell were they doing with ’em all?”

Shane opened the narrow gate and walked
through to examine the find. He tucked his mouth into his elbow to avoid the
stench while studying the immediate ground for tracks. “Not even the coyotes or
critters have touched the bodies.”

As they stood around the frightful mound
of mangled corpses, Jared grabbed a long stick and prodded a few bodies, moving
their heads. “Each one of these things has had some kinda surgery done to their
neck area.”

“That’s the C4 region that controls
breathing and nervous system functions,” said Amy, who was white-faced. “I’ve
seen some chilling things before as a paramedic but this tops the charts.”

“Experimentation on the undead—this
Mitchell is a sick bastard alright,” said Shane. “Question is: how many more of
these things does he have at his disposal?”

Shane glanced over to the right of the
mound and saw a man’s body perforated with numerous stab wounds—like he had run
into a wall of pitchforks. A name tag on his jacket indicated:
Doctor
Holcomb
. The man was lying face-up, his broken spectacles still clinging to
his blood-strewn face. “Looks like the life expectancy at this place wasn’t
very high.”

Shane backpedaled with the others as they retreated
inside the walls of the prison. Then they headed towards the vehicles parked
side by side against a ruptured water tower that was still dripping from the
gaping hole in its side.

“Doesn’t seem like they were planning on
coming back here,” said Jared, stepping over the bullet-riddled body of a
convict in blue coveralls.

Shane opened the rear doors of the
ambulance while two of his men covered him from behind. The vehicle was fully
stocked with trauma supplies, a few oxygen canisters, and paramedic bags.

“This is a welcome sight.” He closed the
doors and walked alongside the immense fuel truck, running his weathered glove
along the stainless-steel hull until he got to the gauge panel. Jared had slung
his rifle and climbed up the narrow metal steps to the top. He twisted the
safety lock on the airtight seal and lifted the round hatch. “Full payload of
liquid gold here, my man.”

“Excellent,” said Shane, looking around
the grounds. “Alright, one of our vehicle-based units is inbound and should be
here shortly. I’ll have them get these rigs back to Lewis. Let’s scour the
admin building and see if we can turn up any pertinent intel they might have
left behind.”

Chapter 24

Darcy led Carlie and her team back along
the mountain trail they had come in on. They trotted for a quarter-mile and
then veered off to the right, going around a field of low boulders. Carlie
could hear the roar of the monstrous truck in the distance as they approached.
Arriving at a rocky ledge that overlooked the snow-covered valley below, the
two-lane highway came into view. On the other side of the road was a river
whose swift current paralleled the canyon walls around them. The truck was two miles
away and would be driving under their location in another minute.

Carlie motioned to the group to drop low
then she squatted on one knee and rested the barrel of her M4 on a stump,
sighting in a spot on the highway below around two hundred yards distant.
“Matias, you and I are going to pop a few tires on that rig as it slows down
around the curve in the road. As soon as it comes to a standstill, we’re going
to descend on it and grab whoever’s inside. I need answers on enemy movement in
this region and this may be our best shot.”

Both shooters readied their rifles as the
bellowing sound of the truck’s engine filled the valley beneath them. With the
eighteen-wheeler rounding the nearest bend, both M4s crackled, taking out the
front wheels. The truck careened along the metal guardrail, which nearly
collapsed from the force. The rims screeched on the blacktop while rubber
shrapnel spewed out from under the chassis.

Carlie stood up and motioned with a wave
for the rest of the group to follow her down the hillside. As the vehicle
continued fishtailing along the highway, she heard the groaning of metal and
arrived at the gravel shoulder to see the rear of the truck slam into an
old-growth spruce tree, the metal crimping like aluminum foil and causing a
rupture in the left side. The front end had impacted against a rock outcropping
and was lurching towards the river whose current, fed by recent snowmelt, raged
a few feet below the mangled guardrail.

The two burly drivers inside lifted their
slumped figures from the cracked dashboard, their eyes trying to focus through
the spiderweb fractures on the windshield while they rubbed their bleeding
foreheads.

Carlie and her team along with Darcy and
five of her people fanned out along the road, their weapons fixed on the
occupants of the cab. Carlie heard some thrashing coming from the crumpled back
end of the cargo section of the truck and she motioned for Eliza and Matias to
inspect it.

She grabbed the passenger door and swung
it open, fixing her rifle on Brimley, who was stemming the flow of blood from
his broken nose. “What the hell, bitch—you just picked the wrong group of guys
to fuck with.” He fumbled on the seat to his left for his pistol but noticed
that it had been jarred onto the floor between his crusty leather boots and
numerous empty beer cans.

“This is why you boys should wear seat
belts,” said Carlie, jabbing the barrel of her rifle into his leg.

He looked around at the others outside the
rig, noticing Darcy and then glancing back at Carlie. “Shit, can you believe
our luck, getting held up by a coupla highway hotties,” he said, tapping Butler
on the shoulder as the man kept shaking his head, trying to process the words
as his skull fracture caused his head to swell.

Butler glanced in his sideview mirror at
the rear of the truck, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping at the sight of
the undead slowly streaming out of the fissure “Ah, lady, you just stirred up a
fucking hornet’s nest.”

Before she could answer, Carlie heard
gunfire coming from the back of the truck as Matias and Eliza began shooting at
the growing menace that had been unleashed.

Chapter 25

With the zombies pouring onto the
blacktop, Carlie yelled at the others to head to the rear and stem the tide.
She grabbed Brimley by the belt and yanked him out, his thin figure crashing
onto the pavement. She kept her rifle trained on his head while she placed a
boot on his chest. Carlie glanced up at the driver, who had a frostbitten look
as he continued staring at the frightening horde to the rear.

“Out of the truck,” she said.

“I can’t move. My leg is pinned under the
steering wheel. Get me out of here,” he screamed as he saw several zombies
making their way along the side of the truck.

The gunfire at the rear had increased and
Carlie found it hard to speak above the din. She looked down at the man beneath
her and pressed on his chest. “Answer me first and then I’ll get your friend
out. Where were you headed and what were you going to do with all these
creatures?”

The man was squirming, his eyes darting
under the truck at the shuffling legs of undead on the opposite side. “We were,
uhm, we’re supposed to meet up with the convoy headed this way soon.”

“How many—how many more trucks are there
like this back at the prison?”

Several creatures were squirming under the
truck, making their way towards Brimley, who was thrashing wildly under
Carlie’s boot. “Shit, let me go, bitch. Those things are almost at me.”

She thrust the muzzle of her weapon in his
cheek. “You didn’t answer my question yet so it’s either get eaten or get
plugged.”

“What? What?” Brimley said, trying to
recall Carlie’s request as the moans of the undead were drowned out by the
constant staccato of gunfire to his rear. “We got—I don’t know—thirty more rigs
like this with about a hundred freaks in each one.”

Carlie raised her rifle to shoot an
approaching zombie whose pudgy fingers were almost within reach of Brimley’s
head when she saw a blur of metal zing by her face as a crowbar flung by Butler
just missed her jaw. As he lifted his hand to throw a beer can, she stepped
back and fired off a round into the cab, piercing his temple and showering the
face of an approaching zombie. Carlie felt a sting of pain in her left leg as
Brimley kicked her below the shin with the tip of his boot. It caused her to
wince long enough to lower her guard and Brimley lunged up in a linebacker’s
assault, slamming her into the guardrail. She instinctively elbowed the man in
the side of his head, hearing the cartilage in his ear crunch. This only
enraged Brimley further and he punched her in the face twice as she positioned her
hand for a throat strike. Carlie tried to hit him but felt her arm restrained.
A zombie in a tattered rodeo outfit had grabbed her jacket sleeve and was
pawing at her hair with its blackened fingernails. Its rancid breath permeating
the cold mountain air around her.

While she struggled to break free of both
beasts, she caught a glimpse of Eliza running up from the rear of the truck as
the group backpedaled away from the undead that had overtaken the road. She
shielded her face from the next punch from Brimley, struggling to reach down to
her belt and withdraw her tactical blade but the weight from the zombie on her
arm was too much. As she leaned back on the crumpled guardrail she felt the
supports give as all three of them tumbled into the icy river below.

Chapter 26

The glacial grip of the water was stabbing
through Carlie, trying to rob her core of its precious heat. Her ribs
constricted and she had to force herself to breath. She knew from the action of
the water that she was kicking her feet but couldn’t feel anything below the
waist. The zombie had been swept away but she hadn’t seen what happened to
Brimley.

As the torrent flounced her along, Carlie
realized her life would be reduced to minutes if she didn’t get out of the
frigid river. Each rock and overhanging tree branch was just out of reach, as
if the river conspired to keep her in its frozen clutches.

A minute later, she was scooped into a
bend, slamming beneath a small undercut in the riverbank and grabbing a
palm-sized root. Carlie gulped down a breath of air then coughed up a silty
mouthful of water. Her vision was level with the incoming ripples of white,
frothy water pounding at her body. She struggled to hold on, her fingers shorn
of sensation. Then she saw a gnarled hand grab her jacket. Jammed under the
roots was the zombie, now snapping its jaws only inches from her face. Gripping
the overhanging branch with her left hand, she reached up and snapped off a
banana-sized piece of the oak root and drove it into the eye socket of the
thrashing creature, watching the cellophane-like film of its orb collapse and
yellow fluid run onto the frozen stick. She forced herself up, her biceps
knotting from the intense shivering and her teeth chattering beyond control. She
pushed off from the creature and was sucked back into the current, eventually
clamoring up a fallen log that was sticking out to the right.

Carlie climbed over the log and followed
its length until she emerged on the muddy shoreline. She collapsed on the
ground, her boots still hanging over the edge of the raging waters below. Carlie
couldn’t tell how far she had drifted in the current but it felt like at least
a mile or more given the swift waters. Her team wouldn’t be able to wait for
her hopeful return and, after a hasty search for her, would follow protocols
and return to Darcy’s base to make radio contact with Duncan.

She couldn’t feel anything except the
moist exhalation of breath around her lips. Her energy was withdrawing from her
limbs and she felt her precious life force contained only within her torso. It
would be so easy to simply let go and allow the cold to overtake her, its
clutches having already whittled away at her body and now moving in on her
psyche. What would it matter now? She could leave this wretched world on her
own terms instead of dying one day from the virus or on another mission in some
remote hellhole. Her team was well-trained and looked out for each other like a
family—they would find another leader. Then her heart raced and her breathing
quickened as she thought of Shane, the serpentine coils of trepidation around
her heart unspooling. With each recollection of his face, his smile, his hands,
she warmed inside, the heat pulsing through her chest. Carlie raised herself up
on both elbows and forced herself to kneel, then stand. She leaned against a
tree trunk, clutching its branches.

“Time—there isn’t much time before I
freeze to death and it’s over,” she muttered to herself as if she’d forgotten.
Her vision narrowed and the fear of hypothermia caused another sudden surge of
adrenaline to dump into her veins. Carlie looked ahead and saw a cluster of low-hanging
spruce branches that were dead, their fine twigs covered with brown needles.
She staggered forward, each foot feeling like it was encased in cement.

Reaching the tree, she began furiously
breaking clumps of dry twigs and foisting the tinder onto a pile under the dry
ground near the edge of the canopy. She fumbled through her vest pocket for her
survival kit and removed a spark-rod. Her pale fingers felt like footballs as
she struggled to grip the firemaking device that she had used hundreds of times
in practice scenarios with her team. Kneeling down, she began feverishly
working the metal striker against the spark rod. The fine tinder eventually
flickered and then caught flame. She felt a pained smile emerge as her
half-frozen cheeks tried to move.

The flames grew higher from the resinous
wood and she stood up, breaking down larger branches and placing them onto the
tiny fire. She piled more resinous branches on until she had a waist-high pile.
Within a few minutes the crackling fire created a micro-environment that grew
with each armload of resinous wood. Carlie removed her wet clothes and suspended
these on branches near the heat then yanked off her semi-frozen boots. These
she filled with hot dirt from around the coals, using several changes to steam
out the interior over the next hour.

She wrapped up in her fleece overcoat,
which still retained its loft even though it was wet. Thinking back on the
weeks and months of suffering and hardship that she had endured, Carlie reflected
on her undeniable bond and commitment to her team. Then she sensed the confines
of her heart yielding whenever she thought of Shane—a feeling she had tried to
convince herself needed to be corralled and relegated to the farthest reaches
of her being lest she lose control. Now she realized that that feeling was all
that mattered in this insane world. Love is what ultimately enabled a person to
prevail and live rather than merely survive.

Carlie was still shivering but with each
rise of the growing flames, warmth returned to her eyes and she felt a surge of
hope for the future flood back into her soul.