The Zone (14 page)

“That’s a sick mind,” Mick said to Charlie. “Might work, though. You just sit around thinking about stuff like that?’

“Idle hands.” I shrugged.

There was no way to get to the projects without going through residential neighborhoods, and that meant going slowly; this was an older part of the urban sprawl, with tired row houses on small lots and run-down apartment complexes, neither particularly suited to rapid maneuvering in a vehicle such as ours. Miguel and I sat in the center of the roof facing opposite sides; I was wiring up my propane tanks when the road was smooth, but it was slow work made slower by caution.

I had thought that this area would have survived the worst better than most because nearly every place had bars over the windows and barred outer doors, but it was quickly apparent that while these deterred burglars they were no match for the frenzied assaults of the infected. The scars from bolts having been ripped out of ageing wood around windows was a common sight.

I figure we were averaging about fifteen miles an hour moving carefully, slow for the people we were going to help, but better help arriving slowly than never arriving at all.

My daughter called six minutes late, which did nothing for my stress level. “Mom’s still asleep.”

“Good. Wake her in ten minutes and have her call me; we’re getting close.”

She hung up without comment. Times like this, I don’t feel like such a failure as a father: look what I had to work with.

“They ready?” That was the first time Miguel spoke directly to me since Home Depot.

“Much as they can be, I suppose. You find out what you’re made of, times like these.”

“Yeah.” He kept his eyes moving. “You like being a cop?”

“Most days, I suppose. I get bored easy. Driving fast and wrestling drunks into a car kept things interesting. What did you do?”

“Clean windows. Had a company, did all right, office contracts.”

“You mean hanging off the side of a building on a board on ropes?”

“More like a little platform, but yeah.”

I was appalled. “What about when the wind blows?”

“It moves. Rope’s the same either way. You do it by the numbers.”

“Better you than me, twice I’ve fallen off ladders working on gutters. What’s the highest you’ve worked?”

“Twenty stories.”

I shuddered at the thought.

My ex called on the dot. “Where are you?”

“About six blocks away.” I outlined the concept. “Can you see outside?”

“Not in the right direction, but where we can see there are a few in the shade keeping an eye on things. They look really sick, Martin.”

She was always a master of the obvious. “There’s a surprise: they
are
sick.”

“I mean they look too sick to be moving. Some look more like they’re dead.”

Typical of her to dwell on unimportant trivia. “When your phone rings move, I won’t be in position to talk. Make sure everyone knows where they are supposed to be, and where they are supposed to go. Nobody stops for anything.”

“We know. See you in a few.”

I checked the autodial, then taped the phone to the railing. My radio clicked. “This looks bad, guys,” Charlie’s drawl was calm.

Miguel pointed: up ahead, a good block from the projects, infected were coming out of the houses, drawn by the sound of the truck engine. I cursed bitterly.

“Quick vote,” I said into the radio. “Either we back off, or just punch in and do it.” Miguel held up an upward thumb without looking around. “Two for ‘go’ up here, over.”

“Nobody smarter down here,” Charlie reported.

“OK, let me drop one of my decoys, and then give it some gas when I slap the cab roof.”

I wasn’t too confident of my construction’s durability, so I tossed it onto a pile of plump black trash bags on the side of the road. Charlie gave it some gas and we lumbered up to about twenty-five. He had to swerve us around a couple abandoned police cars; shell casings around the open doors and a scattering of dead infected told the story. I dropped another decoy onto the scruffy lawn when Charlie slowed to jump the curb and rumble into the open quad in the center of the projects.

Infected were coming out of the government apartment complexes, not flooding out in a charge as I expected, but at a businesslike walk; assessing us, I realized. If we had been on foot I bet it would have been a mad rush, devil take the hindmost, but the vehicle gave them pause. I dropped the last decoy for luck and got my bearings. Half a block away; I hit speed dial, then 1, then the green Send.

“Showtime,” I said over the radio. “I figure that building there to the front left, over.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed laconically.

Charlie had it lined up right: the driver’s side was next to the building; he pulled it in tight, the rear view mirror shucking chrome on the grimy brick. As we slowed they charged. Silently but with great enthusiasm.

I opened up while Miguel heaved the ladder up and extended it; I was much better at this than yesterday. Still, there were scores in sight and they continued to pour out of the buildings like a flood tide breaching a levee. Mick was firing from his door, aiming low, looking to cripple the lead rank and slow the pack; I was aware that Miguel had opened up with the Tec-9 as I switched to the other loaded magazine in the double bracket. Someone fired from above me, a handgun, firing down into the crowd, hopefully the last one in the group trying to provide some covering fire and not some idiot slowing down those behind him.

As before their numbers hindered them: drop one in the front rank and a couple more tripped over the body, and before they could rise the rest were clawing their way over the tangle. If I had a belt-fed weapon or a couple more shooters we might have drastically slowed them down, but I didn’t have either. As it was, there were too few guns and too many bodies.

Someone dropping onto the roof to my left nearly gave me a heart attack, but Miguel had been paying attention: he ripped open the roof hatch and yelled something to the young woman. I was stuffing the empty mags in their double bracket into my drop pouch and reloading when my daughter slid down the ladder and handed a bundle through the hatch. I hadn’t seen her in months, a quick glance said she was heavier.

Miguel fired the extinguishers and the front ranks recoiled, staggering drunkenly; I raised my sights and popped skulls in the press further back. It was ridiculously easy shooting, aiming at a range of a dozen feet, the full metal jacketed rounds occasionally drilling through and getting a chest or neck hit on the one behind.

Maybe it was my wife’s comment, or just the range, but these infected did look sicker. They were an even mix of men and women of all races, but they were a ragged-looking bunch. Quite a few were losing hair, and sores or some sort of skin rash spotted faces and exposed skin; the eyes were milkier, cataract-gray in some cases, and I thought I saw one guy with his ear bitten completely off, I mean down to bone, a wound that was at least a day old, and there was no scabbing or significant blood flow

One magazine was all I got emptied before the white mist dissipated and the crowd surged forward to crash bodily into the truck, literally rocking it. Miguel was pounding away with his shotgun, covering the rear, then switching to the Tec-9 again as I released the bolt and shot three heads trying to get over the hood.

Between Miguel and myself there were probably eighty downed infected, but our truck stood in a half-circle of bodies twenty people deep. I was sweeping the laser sight across upturned faces fast-tapping the trigger when Miguel slapped my back and the ladder crashed down onto the truck roof; a second later the roof hatch slammed. We were done, I dropped to my good knee and shot hands and arms pulling on the razor wire as Charlie threw it into gear and we lunged forward, jolting over bodies, some of whom still alive.

My earplugs dulled everything but the sound of hammering on the truck sides sounded like a hailstorm on a tin roof as we rocked forward, picking up speed. I replaced an empty magazine and then let the hot M-4LE thump onto my chest. Pulling the Glock so I could keep one hand on the roof rail, I carefully checked the sides and rear, shooting three infected who were hanging on.

Our jolting progress was faster than the infected could run, but just barely, and more were coming from the front; I clung grimly to the rail, putting a hollow point into those infected agile enough to make a leaping grab for the hood’s edge or a mirror bracket. The left mirror, anyway; we had lost the driver side mirror somewhere, along with the radio antenna and the passenger side windshield wiper.

I noticed a charred circle on the lawn and several badly wounded infected down the street when we dropped off the curb leaving the projects, so apparently my decoy concept was valid, at least in a small way. Given the odds every little bit helped.

Out of the projects Charlie could get enough speed to discourage the infected from keeping up the pursuit; I slipped a fresh magazine into the Glock and holstered it before lowering myself stiffly to a sitting position, first raking away shell casings.

“Well, that was freakin’ horrible, over,” I radioed Charlie.

“You got that right. Miguel says we got everybody, no injuries or viral exposure. I just got a call from Mick’s guys, they got the bus fixed up and are loading it with the folks from the Wheel plus some they ran into; they’ll meet us on the frontage road to the Interstate and pick up the evacuees. Its not too far.”

“Good.” The adrenalin was wearing off, leaving me feeling pretty empty. It had been an eventful several days, with a lot more activity, interaction, and mental effort than I had experienced in a very long time, atop a poor night’s sleep, and I was feeling a lot less than gung-ho.

The bus, two-thirds full, was waiting as promised; they had shot a couple infected who had been drawn to the engine noise, something we had noticed on the drive. They were getting more aggressive, or something. Maybe they were learning, and if that were true, how much learning were they capable of before the virus finished them off? There were never happy thoughts these days.

I climbed down the folding ladder as soon as we stopped; the passenger side of the truck looked like it had hit a belt of shoulder-high hail, dents pounded in by bare hands, many of which left smears of blackish blood.

Mick hopped out and looked at the damage. “Man, they never quit.”

“Highly motivated,” I nodded. The back door banged open, and a weary black couple scrambled out, their faces lighting up at the sight of the bus twenty feet away. “Thank you!” the woman waved as they made a beeline for the waiting door.

My daughter climbed out and marched to the truck without a glance or a word, carrying about twenty more slack pounds than when I had seen her last; I watched her go, not feeling a need to try to say anything. Whatever failures I was guilty of in the past would have to stack up against what I had just accomplished.

My ex was next, looking tired and older than she was, but given the last couple days she had held up rather well. She was still an attractive woman after the years and kids and troubles, still had a quart of sass after waiting all night for the infected to come, but I noticed some gray in the tawny hair, now in an unfamiliar short hair style and a few more lines around her deep brown eyes. It reminded me that I wasn’t the only one still paying for choices that were made too easily.

She gave me a tired smile as I walked over and gave her a hand down from the bumper. “You are a man of your word, Martin D’Erin.” She jerked her head towards the bus. “Any chance you’ll leave?”

“Nope.” I shrugged. “You know.”

“I suppose. Its foolishness, but everyone has to pick their place, don’t they?” She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “It never ends well, Martin.”

“Would you do it again?”

She grabbed my arm and squeezed hard. “Good luck, Martin.”

It was a better ending than we had managed the first time.

I watched the bus out of sight, then busied myself with pulling the expended extinguishers and replacing them with fresh ones. Charlie came over as I was finishing the last one. “Look, all this heroics stuff makes me hungry. Before we save the rest of the world I could use a beer and a burger.”

“Sounds good to me. The Wheel?”

“Yeah, one waitress hung around, hoping her beau shows up. You want anything specific?”

“You got wings?”

He grinned. “Best in the city.”

Riding in the back with Miguel, I reloaded magazines with boxed rounds from my gear bag, tired and not thinking about much. Without background music stuff just doesn’t seem all that dramatic. My family obligations were complete, and I had no burning desire to become a refugee. Lunch and maybe a nap, and I was up for killing infected or busting out other cornered people, whatever was to hand.  

Miguel sat on the bench to my right refilling the Tech 9’s magazines. He didn’t seem so angry now; maybe he was growing on me.

The wings were great, a big basket of deep-fried perfection backed by a basket of shoestring French fries with a dusting of seasoning salt and a cup of cold ranch dressing to hand. We sat around a big table chowing down while talking heads rattled on the big screen TV nearby. It didn’t take much to see that what they were reporting was pretty carefully sanitized, at least on the domestic front. It was bad, obviously; LA was gone and New Orleans was finished, but so far it was largely a major urban problem, so with CDC regs in place and airlines grounded there was a very good chance that we could keep things contained. Sooner or later the virus would kill off the bulk of the infected and it would end.