These Dead Lands: Immolation (2 page)

“Guerra, when you get the chance, take a look at the water truck downrange. Are those bottles full or empty?”

“Hold one.” The staff sergeant slowly panned his rifle to the right. “Looks like most of them are empty. I guess the motorists raided it when the traffic got stopped. Might still be some in the truck, though.”

Hastings considered that for a moment. They would need water soon. It was going to be a long drive upstate, and they would need every consumable they could get their hands on, especially water. Dehydration was always a big concern. “Let’s get the fuel first,” he said finally.

Guerra bobbed his head. “My opinion exactly.”

Below, Tharinger continued siphoning fuel from the saddle tank while Reader knelt a few feet away, weapon at ready. Ballantine had walked toward the rear of the rig’s trailer, his weapon shouldered, barrel down. With the high magnification of the binoculars, Hastings could see the man’s finger extended along the weapon’s frame, hovering right above the trigger. The NCO was indexed and ready to go.

“Okay, I have more movement on the highway,” Guerra said. The tone of his voice made Hastings’s ears perk up. “Check about sixty degrees up range, heading toward our guys.”

Hastings swung the binoculars toward the north. It took him a long moment to figure out exactly what he was seeing. Heads and shoulders were swaying between the cars.
Thousands
of heads and shoulders. A veritable army of the dead was marching down the highway, threading through the traffic.
Jesus. They followed us all the way from New York City.

“You know, I see some reekers in there that look to be in pretty good shape,” Guerra said. “Might be runners. You, uh, might want to pass that on to Ballantine, Captain.”

Hastings spoke urgently into his headset. “Ballantine, we have a major contact headed your way from the north. Finish what you’re doing and get ready to run like hell. There may be some runners in the group, but we’ll do our damnedest to service them from here. Break. Hartman, get the vehicles ready to move out. Over.”

“Roger” was Hartman’s brusque reply.

At the semi, the three soldiers started packing up, moving quickly and efficiently. Ballantine pressed his back against the trailer, raised his rifle, and peered through his scope. While the weapon’s optics weren’t anywhere as good as Guerra’s, Hastings knew the NCO could see the writing on the wall pretty clearly. Ballantine turned and motioned for the others to hurry. Reader and Tharinger each grabbed a five-gallon can and hurried to the highway shoulder. Keeping as low as possible, they crawled over the guardrail, pulling the cans after them. Ballantine dropped back, grabbed the empty fuel canister, and hurried after them.

Oh, fuck me!
Hastings spotted a reeker changing direction to stumble toward Ballantine. Its arms were outstretched as if it intended to give the soldier a hug, even though he was well over a hundred feet away. The reeker was a shambler, which meant it moved about as fast as a toddler could walk, but its course deviation caught the attention of the zombies closest to it.

And some of those were runners, as Guerra had guessed.

Hastings watched as one, then two, then three zombies left the pack and toward the guardrail Ballantine had just crossed over. If the tall, stocky NCO had noticed them, he gave no indication. He charged after Reader and Tharinger as they bolted across the gently undulating field, leaving vague paths through the tall grass. Two more runners detached from the zombie herd to sprint after the others.

“Okay, guys,” Hastings said over the radio, “you have runners on your trail. Move some ass.”

“You want me to shoot?” Guerra asked.

“Take ’em out,” Hastings said. He dropped his field glasses and pulled his M4A3 into position and looked through its scope.

Beside him, Guerra worked the sniper rifle.
Bang!
One runner went down.
Bang!
A second stumbled and flailed for a moment as the 7.62-millimeter round tore through the left side of its head, just above the eyebrow, and pelted the reeker behind it with a splatter of gore. The runner fell onto its side and lay still.
Bang!
The third zombie jerked as Guerra’s shot took it right between the eyes, blasting out the back of its skull as if it had been made from papier-mâché. Hastings was impressed. The three shots had rung out in less than three seconds, by his estimation. Guerra certainly knew his stuff.

Hastings sighted on one of the remaining runners and squeezed the weapon’s trigger. The M4A3 cracked and spat its smaller, but no less lethal, 5.56-millimeter round. He wasn’t as good as Guerra at that range; the round hit the runner in the right side of its skull, but the angle was off. The zombie fell into the tall grass but continued thrashing, its blackened hands slapping at the sky in erratic convulsions.

Guerra brought down the remaining runner as it bolted across the field, reaching for Ballantine. The zombie slammed to the deck and lay unmoving only ten feet behind the sergeant.

“That one was practically an Olympian,” Guerra said conversationally. “Shoulda let it tap Big Carl on the shoulder before I hit it. That would’ve been priceless.”

“Yeah, and so would the ass-kicking Ballantine would have given you,” Hastings said.

The rest of the horde made it to the guardrail. The zombies piled up there without even trying to climb over the metal restraint. Instead, they just fell over it and collapsed to the ground on the other side, cresting the rail like some fetid tsunami of rotting flesh washing ashore. A cloud of black flies darkened the air around them from the insects orbiting the stinking mass. It was a curious phenomenon. By rights, the flies should have deposited eggs that would hatch, releasing masses of maggots. Since the zombies were nothing more than animated dead flesh, in theory, the maggots would have had first-class dining opportunities. But it never happened. Whatever reanimated the dead also warded off the predatory insects that would normally attack a decomposing corpse with zeal. Hastings wondered why the flies didn’t do the deed. It would have been enormously helpful if they did. But nothing preyed on the reekers—not insects, not animals, and apparently, not even bacteria. It was a biological oddity, almost as mysterious as the appearance of the zombies themselves.

Below, the three soldiers ran up the hill as fast as they could. Hastings got to his feet, his assault rifle still at his shoulder. Guerra remained prone and fired on another runner that detached itself from the mass of necrotic flesh crossing the highway.

Hastings held his fire. Shooting anything but a runner would just be wasting ammunition. “Hartman, how’re we doing back there? Over.”

“Six, we’re ready to roll when you are. No reekers here yet, but I imagine they’re coming now that you guys have started shooting. Over.” There was no recrimination in Hartman’s voice, just cold truth. Gunfire could be heard for miles in each direction, and every reeker in range would zero in on the noise and attempt to follow it to its source like sharks tracking a ribbon of blood through a dark sea.

Ballantine caught up to Reader and Tharinger. He stopped to check and make sure they were clear from behind. The closest zombie was almost two hundred feet away, so he continued slogging up the hill. Reader and Tharinger huffed and puffed their way toward Hastings and Guerra, taking great care to stay out of the latter’s lane of fire.

Hastings heard them gasping for air behind their armor as they approached. “Keep going, guys. Get to the Humvees,” he ordered.

Both men mumbled something and continued past him with the gas cans.

Ballantine crested the hill next, almost sauntering over to Hastings. He looked down at the prone Guerra then back at the mob of zombies advancing toward the hill. “You know, this probably isn’t the best time to take a
siesta
, Guerra.”

“Blow me,” Guerra replied.

“I don’t have time to organize a search party.”

“Come on, Ballantine. I saved your ass, man.”

Ballantine shook his head. “Less than ten gallons of diesel, Captain.” Ballantine hefted the gas can he carried. “This one’s empty.” He was taller than Hastings, who was six-one, by a good three inches. “Let’s do what we can with what we have,” Hastings said. He pointed toward the growing horde advancing toward the hill at a shamble. “We have to bug out before they get too thick.”

“Hooah.”

“Sergeant Guerra, any more runners down there?”

“Affirmative, but they can’t get through the crowd just yet.”

The mass of rotting former humanity still seemed confused by the guardrail. While over a hundred reekers had fallen over it, almost a thousand stood bunched up behind it.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” Hastings said. He saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned to the left. Ballantine did as well, raising his M4. Three reekers stumbled down the opposite hillside, their dead faces turned toward the men as they lurched along.

Guerra got to his feet. He glanced at the zombies coming down the other hill but didn’t comment on them. That more would be arriving was a given.

Hastings led them back to the Humvees at a trot.

*

They put the
lion’s share of the diesel in the Humvee that was almost dry then poured the remainder into the second vehicle. It wasn’t much, but they would be able to put some miles between them and the zombies massing on the other side of the hill. By the time they secured the gas cans and mounted up, the first reekers had crested the hilltop and begun staggering down the slope. They reached toward the soldiers while moaning plaintively.

Hastings ordered Specialist Craig Stilley behind the wheel of the lead Humvee. Guerra rode in the second vehicle, which would keep the two apart and away from each other’s throats for a little longer.

“Okay, sure thing, sir,” Stilley said in his booming voice.

“You know how to drive, right?” Hastings asked.

“Oh, hell yeah, sir. Happy to do it.” Stilley sounded genuinely pleased with the duty. He pulled open the Humvee’s armored driver’s door and slid inside.

Hastings and Ballantine exchanged a glance.
Better you than me with that idiot, sir,
Ballantine’s look said. Then they climbed into their respective vehicles. Before the reekers managed to make it halfway down the hill, the two Humvees were crossing a field, leaving the dead behind.

*

“Stilley, let’s hold
up here,” Hastings ordered an hour later as the two vehicles rolled down surprisingly clear suburban streets. “I want to check out that oil company there.”

Stilley brought the Humvee to a halt. The low-lying buildings to their right were surrounded by a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. “Well, that’s heating oil, sir. We ain’t gonna be able to use that.”

“Stilley, are you fucking blind?” Tharinger asked from the rear seat. “Look at the
delivery trucks
, man!”

“Oh, yeah,” Stilley said.

“Pull up to the gate,” Hastings told him. Into his radio: “Ballantine, we’re going to check this out and see if we can get more fuel from any of those trucks. The place seems pretty unmolested. Over.”

“Roger that, Captain. You want us where? Over.”

“Maintain overwatch, and let us know if the shit’s about to hit the fan. I don’t envision we’ll be out of visual range, so just stay in the street. Over.”

Stilley stopped the Humvee in front of the padlocked gate.

“We’ll have to hook the winch to the gate and use the Humvee to pull it down,” Hastings said. “Stilley, stay in the vehicle. Tharinger, you’re with me. Keep an eye out, we probably won’t have the place to ourselves for very long.”

“Roger that, sir.”

Down the street, the remains of a strip mall smoldered, though it looked as though the fire had started days ago. The charred carcass of a police cruiser sat in its parking lot. There were two horribly burned, man-sized figures stretched out beside the vehicle, but the shapes were barely recognizable as human remains.
At least they ain’t walking around looking to eat us.
Hastings and Tharinger stepped out of the Humvee, weapons close at hand.

The top hatch on the second Humvee opened, and Reader stood up in the turret and gripped the handles of the mounted MK19 grenade launcher. “I’ll keep an eye out for you guys,” he said over the radio.