Voodoo Plague - 01 (9 page)

I froze in
place, one step outside the doorway, and turned towards the voice.  It was the
group of men we’d passed earlier.  I mentally kicked myself for being dumb
enough to stop so soon after seeing them.

The man that had
spoken was a big, hard looking guy with any equally big belly.  He was dressed
in well-worn jeans, a checked work shirt and work boots with dried mud on
them.  He looked like he hadn’t shaved for a week and greasy hair stuck out
from underneath a ball cap that was so dirty I couldn’t tell what it originally
advertised.  The others were similarly dressed and my guess was they were
co-workers.

He held a long
barreled shotgun pointed between me and the dog who had stopped a few feet in
front of me and to my left.  A quick glance around spotted three of the other
four guys that I had seen with him.  One of them was behind me with a bolt
action rifle pointed at my back, one was behind the talker keeping an eye out
for infected and the third was in front of the truck with a scoped rifle
pointed directly at Rachel as she sat behind the steering wheel.  Where the
hell was the other guy? 

“So what we got
here?” The talker asked with a big grin that revealed tobacco stained teeth. 
“Looks like a looter.  What you boys think?”

The guy behind
me spoke up, “Looks like an asshole to me, Danny.”  I heard him spit followed
by a wet splash when what I figured was a stream of tobacco juice hit the
sidewalk.

“So whyn’t you
go on and put them bags down, Mr. Looter.  And that fancy rifle while you’re at
it.  We’ll just hold on to everything until the rightful owner claims it.”  He
was grinning, but the smile didn’t make it to his eyes.  He had eyes like a
pig, small and dark, the pupil and iris so close in color that you couldn’t see
anything except dark.

I slowly flexed
my knees and half squatted, lowering the more than 200 pounds of duffel bags to
the ground, never taking my eyes off the leader.

“You sure you
want to do this?” I asked in a low voice as I straightened back up.

The grin didn’t
falter, “Evan, you get that fancy rifle off his back for me.  I think it’s time
to upgrade from this scatter gun.”

I prepared
myself, but didn’t tense as Evan stepped up behind me.  I felt him grab the
rifle barrel and tug and I turned slightly and let him pull the sling over my
head.  He now had a rifle in each hand and couldn’t use either one.

As I had turned
and ducked for Evan to pull the rifle off my shoulder I had slipped my hand
under my shirt and onto the butt of the pistol I’d picked up in the outfitter
store vault.  An FNH FNX45 loaded with 16 rounds of .45 caliber hollow point +P
ammo was in my hand and ready to go.

I leaned to the
other side and brought the pistol up and put three rounds into Danny, two to
the chest and one to the head.  He dropped like a sack of bricks.  The other
three froze, but I didn’t.

Three more
rounds dropped the look out, but the other two had started moving again.  The
guy in front of the truck shifted his aim to me but before he could fire the
engine roared and the truck shot forward with a screech of tires.  He bounced
off the push bar and flew backwards, landing on the pavement with a sickening
crunch of breaking bones a second before the three ton Ford rolled over him and
crushed his skull.

The dog attacked
at the same time.  He hit Evan just above the waist and drove him to the ground
on his back, both rifles flying out of his hands and clattering away.  Evan
started screaming as he fought the dog but I silenced him by stepping up and
planting the toe of my shoe into his balls as hard as I could.

All the fight
and screaming went out of him instantly and he curled into a ball with a
pathetic moan.  The dog backed off a foot, but stood over him with hackles
raised and teeth bared.  I was really starting to like this pooch.

A squeal of
tires caught my attention and I ran to the corner of the building to see the
rusty Taurus disappear down the road.  Mystery of the fourth guy solved.  He’d
stayed with the car.

I motioned
Rachel to unlock the truck and I loaded the three duffel bags into the back
seat.  “Lock it back up.  Gotta grab a couple more things.”

Back in the
vault I picked up two more M4 assault rifles I had set out as well as a box
full of empty 30 round magazines.  I took one more look around the vault but
didn’t spot anything else.

The dog was
still guarding Evan when I got back outside.  I heard the door locks thunk open
as I approached the truck and I quickly stowed the rifles and magazines in the
back seat.

“We’ve got
company coming,” Rachel said, pointing down the street at a couple of dozen
males shambling towards us.

I whistled for
the dog and he looked up at me.  I gestured at the back seat and in a flash of
fur he bounded across the sidewalk and into the truck.  I slammed the door and
turned and looked at Evan.  He wasn’t moving and the infected males would be on
him in less than a minute.  I had a momentary thought that I should do
something to help him, but dismissed it as quickly as it came to me.  Hopping
behind the wheel I closed and locked the doors and drove away without another
thought.

We drove for
another half hour then stopped when we found an open park that was deserted. 
We stopped in a parking lot that was surrounded by soccer fields on all sides,
giving us at least 200 yards of open space to the nearest tree line.  Two roads
led in and out of the park providing reasonable escape routes if we needed
them, but I was confident we could just drive across the fields if necessary.

Heavy clouds
were building to the north as the afternoon wore on, black and swollen on the
bottom and I expected a big storm within the next few hours.  I’d experienced
the kind of summer storms that can blast through Atlanta and I wanted to keep
our stop short and find some shelter for the night.

The first order
of business was to water Dog.  Not ‘the dog’, just Dog.  I didn’t know his
name, but decided to name him after the dog John Wayne had in my favorite
movie, Big Jake.  So Dog it was.

I dug through
the duffel bags until I found the mess kit I’d looted from the outfitter.  A
shallow aluminum bowl worked great and I only gave Dog a little water at a
time, giving his stomach a chance to absorb rather than cramp and make him
throw the water up.

Rachel watched
me in silence and I realized she hadn’t said anything since we’d left the outfitters. 
“What’s on your mind?” I asked, scratching Dog between the ears as I poured a
little more water into his bowl.

She watched me
another minute before asking, “Who the hell are you?  You killed two of those
men in less than two seconds, you left one to be killed by the infected and
here you are petting a dog like nothing has happened.”  She stared at me
closely with not exactly fear in her eyes, but concern over the psychopath
she’d hooked up with.

I sighed and
gave Dog some more water that he greedily lapped up.  “I’m just a business man
that happened to be here and not at home when the shit hit the fan.”

“Bullshit!”  She
turned sideways in the seat to fully face me and crossed her arms over her
chest.  “Business men don’t know how to kill two men with a hand gun faster
than I can blink, then go on about their day like nothing happened.  Business
men don’t even look like you for Christ’s sake.  I haven’t seen arms like yours
anywhere other than on TV or in magazines.  Now tell me the truth.  I need to
trust you and right now I don’t.”

I faced forward
and sat for a minute staring out the windshield at the gathering clouds.  Dog,
satiated for the moment, stuck his head between the two front seats and put his
chin on the arm rest between them.  He could feel the tension in the truck but
didn’t seem inclined to take sides, rather kept looking back and forth between
Rachel and me.

Rachel reached
out and put a hand on his head while she stared me down.  Finally I pulled out
my wallet and handed her a business card.  She took it and looked at it for a
bit.

“You’re a
program manager for Tatushima?”  She asked, the doubt clear in her voice.

“Yes, I am,” I
answered.  “But I’ve not always been a program manager.  Army Special Forces,
Green Beret, and then a tactical assault trainer for the DEA before I got into
a more boring line of work.”

She handed me
the card back and I replaced it in my wallet before returning the wallet to my
pocket.  I looked at her and shrugged my shoulders.

“Don’t know what
to tell you.  At best, those guys would have taken everything we had and left
us standing there with no way to defend ourselves.  At worst, well… I think you
can imagine what the worst would have been.

“Guys like that
were kept in control, mostly, by the police and the threat of jail if they let
their urges get the best of them.  This is their big opportunity to finally
behave the way they want to, not the way society tells them they have to.

“I didn’t start
it.  I didn’t go looking for trouble with them.  All I did was finish it. 
Permanently.  Unfortunately I expect we’ll run into more people like them than
we will good people.  I’ve spent a lot of time in places in the world that were
coming apart at the seams and there’s always assholes like these guys that see
opportunity to prey on the week.  I don’t like bullies much, and that’s all
they are.”

This was
probably the most I’d said to Rachel at one time since I had rescued her the
previous morning.  I expected her to take some time to digest what I’d just
said and then try to argue with me and tell me why I was wrong.

“OK then. Thank
you for telling me.  Now we’d better find some place to shelter for the night
before that storm gets here.  I really don’t want to spend the night…”

We both jumped
and Dog leapt to his feet and started growling when the whole truck rocked from
the impact of two infected females slamming into the right rear door.  We’d
been so absorbed in our conversation that none of us had seen them coming.

Looking around I
spotted several more running towards us across the empty fields.  At least 20
males were shambling along behind them.

“Time to go,” I
said, putting the truck in gear and hitting the throttle.  We quickly pulled
away, but one of the females that had slammed into the truck had a grip on the
mesh covering Rachel’s side window and was pulling on it, trying to rip it off
the truck and get inside.

“Get on the
floor,” I shouted at Rachel who instantly complied.

Hitting a button
on the driver’s door the passenger window buzzed down and suddenly the cab was
filled with the roar of the diesel and the snarls of the infected woman.
Raising the .45 I fired a single shot that took the top of her head off, the
body dropping away and a heartbeat later a bump as the rear tire rolled over
her.  I rolled the window back up and Rachel climbed back into her seat looking
shaken.

“What the
hell?”  Rachel asked.  “Where did they come from?  There weren’t any around
when we pulled in.”

I slowed at the
end of the access road to the park and turned back onto the main road. 
Immediately ahead about a quarter of a mile was an overpass and signs said we
were approaching I-575. 

The visible
portion of the freeway was jammed with cars as was the surface street and on
ramps.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of people wandered amongst the stalled
cars.  As we got closer I recognized the uncoordinated walk of the infected and
jammed on the brakes.

“That’s where
they came from,” I said, staring in horror as the crowd seemed to notice us all
at once.  Males started slowly turning and shambling our way but too many
females to count started sprinting down the road directly at us.

“Oh shit,”
Rachel muttered, a hand over her mouth.

“Oh shit is
right,” I said and hit the throttle and threw the truck through a screeching
U-turn.

Heading back the
way we had just come from we quickly encountered the females that had raced
across the park and followed us out onto the road.  They ran straight at us
with no fear.

As we reached
the front of the pack I backed off the throttle and dropped our speed to just
under 30.  Even the heavy, welded push bar on the front of the truck could only
take so many impacts from all the human bodies running at us.  The first two
were bulled aside by the truck with stomach clenching thuds, but the third
female was young and looked to be in excellent shape. 

With a leap she
cleared the front of the truck and slammed into the wire mesh covered
windshield.  The wire did its job and absorbed the impact.  If not for it we’d
most likely have had the female in our laps as she’d have crashed right through
the already compromised glass.

I kept driving,
mowing down females as we went, then we were clear of the pack.  But we still
had our passenger who had a death grip on the wire mesh.  I tried slamming on
the brakes at 40 miles an hour, but all this did was get a yelp from Dog when
he was thrown against the backs of the front seats.  The female still clung
like a barnacle.

“Shoot her!” 
Rachel’s voice was up a couple of octaves and I could hear the stress in it.

“I don’t want to
put another hole in the windshield,” I said as I tried swerving the big truck
from side to side to shake the infected loose.  The maneuvers had about as much
effect as when I slammed on the brakes.  Dog, with no seatbelt, was definitely
getting the worst of it.

I had an idea
and kept my eyes open, finally spotting a large, empty parking lot.  Roaring in
to the lot I spun the wheel and jammed on the brakes, the truck coming to a
stop in a cloud of tire smoke after sliding sideways for twenty feet.  The
female was thrown off balance, staying on the truck with the grip of only one
hand.

In a flash I had
my door open and jumped out, raising my pistol to acquire my target.  I was
shocked to see that the female had already regained her balance and had her
feet under her ready to spring.  Without hesitating I fired and the heavy
hollow point slug nearly decapitated the body.  She flopped dead onto the hood
and I had to walk around and drag the body off the truck.

“Fuck these
things are fast!” I said to myself as I hurried back to the driver’s side of
the cab.

Back in the
relative safety of the truck I checked the area and saw no immediate danger.  A
quick search of the duffel bags yielded the GPS I’d found as well as an old
school road map.  I handed Rachel the GPS and some batteries and asked her to
get it running while I checked the map.  I also reminded her to keep watch so
we didn’t get surprised again.

The map was hard
to see and I reached up to turn on the reading light before I realized how dark
it had gotten.  The clouds had made it to us and the low bellies were swollen
with rain.  As I watched the first drops struck the windshield, slowly at first
then quickly becoming a torrential downpour.

The noise of the
rain on the metal roof of the truck was almost deafening, but nothing compared
to the bone jarring blast of sound from thunder that cracked right over our
heads.  The thunder had blasted at the same time as we saw the brilliant flash
of lightning so it had to be very close.

Dog started
whining and Rachel turned to comfort him as another blast of lightning lit the
world around us with a strobe effect.  In the strobe I could see shambling and
running figures coming towards us.  Damn it, I just needed two minutes to look
at a map.

Stomping on the
throttle we roared out of the parking lot and turned north away from the main
road that seemed to have a good population of infected.  We were quickly in
residential neighborhoods, most of the houses smaller ranch style homes that
had been built in the 70s and 80s as Atlanta continued to sprawl and the
northern suburbs boomed.

The rain was
relentless, now driven at an angle by the rising wind.  Water was coming in
around my duct tape reinforcement of the windshield so the glass was wet inside
and out.  Visibility wasn’t much more than to the end of the hood.

We passed
another park, barely visible in the rain, then back into another neighborhood
of single story homes, these slightly newer and mostly constructed of the brick
that is so common in construction in the Atlanta area.  We didn’t see a light,
movement or an infected anywhere and I started to think we should shelter in
one of the homes for the night.

The problem was
that we had no way of knowing if a house was occupied by people hiding out,
full of infected, or sitting empty.  I had no desire to shoot it out with a
homeowner who was just defending his home.  Neither did I really want to open a
front door and have to deal with the infected lady of the house.

The storm made
my decision for me.  The rain increased in volume and the wind picked up,
rocking the three ton truck like it was a Tonka Toy.  Lightning continued to
flash overhead and we watched a tree explode on a ridgeline directly in front
of us when lightning stuck it.

“OK, enough,” I
said.  “See any good possibilities?”

Rachel peered
through the storm as I drove, then suddenly sat up and pointed, “There!  The
one with the garage door up.”

I spotted the
house she pointed out.  It was a small brick one story with an attached two car
garage.  The house was dark and the front door closed, but the garage was open
and empty.  I was willing to take the odds that this house had been abandoned
in a hurry.

I turned into
the driveway and continued into the garage.  There were no hiding places to
check or worry about so I jumped out and released the garage door from the
automatic opener track then pulled it down.  The truck was still running,
quickly filling the garage with stinking diesel exhaust fumes so I rushed to
disconnect the wires and shut the engine off.

The fury of the
storm lashing the aluminum garage door was so loud I could hardly tell the
truck was no longer running.  I made a mental note to find an electrical switch
to wire into the truck so we didn’t have to twist two wires together every time
we wanted to start it.

It was dark in
the garage, but I brought out my looted flashlight and pulled the pistol.

“Dog,” I called,
and he jumped to the front seat then down to the garage floor through the door
I’d left open.

Rachel stepped
out of the truck, Glock in hand.  I looked at her and she glared back at me. 
“Don’t say a word, Mr. Bad Ass.  I’ve saved your life twice now, and I’m
getting a little tired of being left behind in the truck.”

I looked at Dog
who seemed to be smiling at me, shook my head and moved to the door into the
house.  Dog came up beside me and gave it a good sniff then stood still looking
at me, waiting for me to do something.  I didn’t know how he’d react if there
were either people or infected on the other side of the door, but I didn’t
think in either case he’d be as calm as he was.