The Zone (16 page)

“Anybody else get hit when you did?”

That caught me off-guard. “My whole team. Fact is, o
ut of both sides of the cluster I’m the only one still alive. One other made it six months before he ate his gun.”

“You know what survivor’s guilt is?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It probably has something to do with it. How come you know so much about that sort of thing?”

He pulled a gilt coin out of his billfold. “I had a kid brother, got himself zapped overseas. I filled his head with all the USMC stuff, and he up and enlists the first day he’s eligible, and comes home in a box. He was a pretty good Marine, they sent home a Silver Star with him. Spent a lot of time in encounter groups, sponsored a couple people, helped with AA. Music and bar business, you see plenty of substance abuse.” He stowed the coin. “You think being a hero this time will change anything?”

“According to the brass, I was a hero the first time,” I shrugged. “I did OK. I went down shooting, and got a couple. This time, I dunno. I’m not really responsible for anybody; hell, I got my ex out of the Zone.”

“Reason I ask, is because there’s a strong element of don’t give a shit about you,” Charlie eyed me shrewdly. “Like maybe you
want
to buy a patch of ground.”

“Not really,” I said slowly. “Thing is, this is the first time I’ve felt like I was whole since I got shot. I don’t want to go back to feeling the other way. I think, maybe, if I do well enough in this mess, then maybe I’ll get back to the way I felt before my knee was
screwed up.”

“That worth getting killed over?”

That didn’t require any time to think. “Definitely.”

He nodded with feeling. “Man has to put his own value on things.”

“Ok, this is what we got,” Charlie sat on the back bumper of the truck, a city map spread out on a cardboard box on his lap. “We got an apartment complex here with three widely-scattered apartments where survivors are holed up, nine people all told. A tight squeeze, but we should manage. All three are third-story apartments, so I figure we stick with Martin’s plan: get close, and they come down. Our ladder will reach the second floor, so its their business to get that far. I’ve briefed them and gotten phone numbers so we can make contact when we are close. Problem is, we don’t really know the layout, and its one of those trendy places that have lots of trees and crap between the buildings. If we had something quick and quiet and cross-country that we could use for recon it would really help, like a protected golf cart or something, life would be a lot easier. As it is, we get in and move fast, that’s it. Ideas?”

“Yeah.” Miguel held up a cube of neon yellow ballistic plastic with a black braided nylon wrist loop. “You pull the loop and this thing screams like hell, box says a painful decibel count, its for muggers. Got a strobe light, too. Maybe Bob drives down a street real close and drops two-three of these when we’re ready, pull the infected that way.”

“We should send one guy with Bob if we do that, so he concentrate on his driving. And in case he gets a couple grabbing on like we did at the projects.”

“I’ll take the truck roof again,” I wasn’t parting with my M-4.

“Mick, you take it, me ‘n Martin know the roof drill,” Miguel suggested.

“You just don’t want a brother showing you up,” he grinned. “OK, show me how to use those things.”

I wired up two more propane bottles on the drive over, which with the two I had worked up on the drive to Radio Shack gave me four. At this rate someone could track us across town by the trail of empty cartridge boxes and discarded bits of electronic equipment we were leaving behind.

The apartments were as trendy as we had been warned: Charlie had to zigzag between all sorts of unnecessary shrubbery and even a couple statutes; if we didn’t have to worry about tires we could have really wreaked havoc.

The first stop was a young couple with their act together: before Miguel could hoist the ladder a red and green nylon rope came down the side of the building and thumped onto the roof of the truck, and a second later a young woman clambered awkwardly over the balcony and rappelled down to us using a rock-climbing rig; her husband free-roped down once she was clear, a plump canary-yellow backpack on his back.

There were a few infected shuffling about but they weren’t reacting as fast as they had at the projects, and I held my fire lest we stir them up. Miguel was helping the woman get unclipped from the rope when I realized that the shrubbery and little trees was breaking up our outline and engine noise. Not perfectly, but it bought us nearly a full minute. Charlie was putting it in gear when we heard the first howling wail. I armed one of my decoys and tossed it atop a hedge as we started to move.

Charlie must have tipped Mick, because we heard a sudden shrieking electronic scream a couple blocks away and easily half the infected in view took off to check it out.

Target site number two was a couple with two kids; they had opened up the floor of their balcony and somehow dropped a kid’s box springs, mattress, and a bunch of cushions and pillows onto the second story balcony which they dropped down onto. 

I didn’t pay much attention to them as the alarm had been raised and I was shooting every infected within sight. The cluttered landscape was now an impediment to us, letting the infected get close before I had a good shot at them; I was hitting torsos, shooting for speed, knocking them down without killing, trying for the delay factor, but the trouble was that 5.56mm is not a great man-stopper, particularly in full metal jacket as the rounds tended to just zip through the torso. Two or three torsos in cases where I was shooting at a pack, but still not a good short-term solution.

Switching to the mag in the double bracket I jerked the cable to fire the driver’s side extinguishers before opening up again. I was targeting heads now with the laser sight while the white cloud was compacting them, but it was an all-too-temporary respite. Miguel was shooting over the hood as I reloaded, and hands were clawing at the razor wire on the rear.

“Go! We’re getting over-run back here!” I yelled into the radio and put a round in the forehead of a twenty-ish female infected pulling herself up the rear of the truck. Charlie popped the clutch and we lurched forward, the extension ladder falling behind us into the infected. The truck hit something, lurched, and stalled; Miguel fired the passenger side extinguishers while I blazed away into the sea of faces clawing at the back doors of the truck.

We were going to die. That was a fact: they were going to get on top of the truck, and even if we got inside the roof hatch would not stop them for long. I concentrated on the laser dot and the skulls; dot dot tracer dot dot dot dot, mag release, empty in the dump pouch, fresh mag into the weapon clicking home, bolt released, dot dot dot dot dot dot.

The next shot missed because the truck lurched, and for a second I thought they were going to turn it over, but the jolt wasn’t the infected but movement: the truck lurched forward, hung with the engine racing for an eternal second as the rear tires wailed and the hands and heads came up on the wire, and then they got traction and we rolled forward, slow at first, then faster, our passage through a hedge dragging off most of those climbing to the truck, although we lost the razor wire on the driver’s side and the rear.

Charlie veered and swerved through the ground clutter, heading for a clear shot at the street while Miguel and I clung to the roof and wasted rounds shooting at the pursuers.

By sheer coincidence I looked up and ahead and saw two uninfected people at a shattered window on the third floor of one the buildings we were passing; I don’t know if they were the third pick-up we had planned or two survivors who had not contacted the extraction website, but the expressions on their faces as we roared past without stopping were indescribable.

I dropped one of my decoys onto the lawn just before we hit the street-it was a feeble act of defiance at best, but it made me feel an atom’s worth better. Miguel raked shell casings from the roof with angry sweeps of his booted feet, leaving black curves on the grimy metal.

Charlie must have been communicating with Mick via radio, but I didn’t notice; we met up with the bus in a big gas station set on the edge of an expanse of parking lot.

It was a small consolation to see that we had gotten all four from the second pickup location when we transferred our passengers to the bus; Bob gassed both vehicles and re-stocked the ice chest while the rest of Remote Control Halo gathered around Charlie’s map.

“That was a lot closer than I want to get,” I opened the discussion. “What did we hit?”

“Planter,” Charlie shook his head. “Didn’t see it until too late. Lucky thing it was wood, collapsed under the weight.”

“Besides damn near getting overrun, I burned up a lot of ammunition,” I announced. “One more hot operation is all I’m good for today.”

“Pick-ups need to be isolated from each other,” Miguel dug a soda from the fresh ice in the cooler Bob dragged up. “In and out quick. Even with distractions they pile up too fast.”

“We need clear ground, too,” I put in. “We can get them tangled up and slow down the pack if we have some room to work with.”

“OK,” Charlie examined some notes he had made on a receipt pad from the bar. “Do we need to find some more razor tape?”

“No,” Miguel shook his head. “I think it gave them better handholds. They don’t care about injuries.”

“Its four, sun goes down at seven, and we need time to get home and button up,” Charlie mused while he sketched on the cardboard from a twelve pack. “Seems the infected don’t look down, either; there’s twenty-one people holed up in the basement of the old Metro Hotel, and while the area is full of infected. I know the place, did quite a few gigs there, worked even more concerts. There’s a street entrance to the basement, coal chute they made into an emergency exit, comes up to the sidewalk. Thing is, we know the infected will swarm us. Martin, you’re the military thinker.” He held up his sketch and explained what meant what. “You see any way to do it?”

I compared his sketch to the city map. “Yeah, I do. Its set square with the compass with the entrance on the south side of the building, right? So the truck comes up the west side of the building heading north, that’s four lanes plus a turning lane, going say ten miles an hour, dropping Miguel’s personal alarms and my decoy tanks and shooting at the infected. They swarm the truck, which drives just fast enough so they can’t swamp it but not so fast they lose interest. That should pull damn near every infected around into a pursuit. Go for head shots, not mobility hits. When they’re good and committed the bus nips in from the east to the entrance with one shooter, and the people scamper in. Once the bus is in place the truck speeds up and breaks contact, and by the time the infected double back, the bus is moving. If the people in the basement move briskly, it could work.”

They gave it some thought. “They’re predictable,” Charlie tapped the sketch. “Worth a try. Who goes where?”

We replaced the extinguishers before setting off, which cleared a little space on the crowded truck roof; I checked the water, oil, and belts in the truck, concerned that the extra weight might be straining the engine, but everything looked fine.

Miguel drove the truck, Charlie and Mick took the truck roof,  Bob drove the bus, and I rode shotgun with him, with the phone the Guard had assigned to our team.

“OK, we’re starting our run,” Charlie radioed.

“Roger.” I hit the send button on the phone. A man answered with an educated tone, the sort you associated with a Mr. Chips kind of teacher, but Charlie said he had managed a furniture warehouse. His name was Trevor. “Get in position but keep the door closed, and stay on the line, the distraction operation is beginning. Don’t move until I give the word, and then move damned fast.”

“I understand. Devil take the hindmost.”

“Exactly.” I hea
rd shots start popping to the west, and then the screeching of one of the personal alarms.

“We’re passing the hotel,” Miguel radioed.

“Is that your vehicle we hear?” The warehouse manager asked.

“No, that’s the distraction, and with luck, every infected in a three block radius is chasing them. It won’t be long now.”

The firing picked up. “They’re everywhere, worst yet,” Miguel reported. “We’re hitting the north street.”

“Roll,” I told Bob, who had heard and was releasing the clutch. “Trevor, we’re moving, less than a minute.”

One limping infected was at the southeast intersection at the hotel, a thin white guy with bare gray patches on his scalp and a twisted leg that looked like he had been gimped up before the virus got him. Bob ran him down before he could give a howl, although there were a half-dozen in a cluster at the opposite corner staring at the ground, and a couple dead ones scattered along the center line of the street. I was looking right at the group when my decoy detonated; apparently that was what they had been staring at. It was fast, one red-gold flash, some smoke, and prone bodies, two or three on fire, the rest blackened and smoldering.

It was really surreal when they all climbed to their feet, except one that had lost the use of his right leg.

“Trevor, go!” I threw my weight onto the lever and the doors banged open as Bob bounced the tires off the curb and the bus shuddered to a halt.