World of Ashes (26 page)
“Zims’ll go right for a smoke grenade. So now they’re basically attached to a giant bottle rocket that leaves a smoke trail back to you, but lands and makes noise and light flashes about three hundred meters away. It’s not a perfect system, but it beats turning your LZ into a Red Zone.”
Ethan suddenly slammed the breaks and the car lurched to a stop. Pevely was no longer a rural town along the Mississippi River, but instead was a completely overrun hive of death, the hordes thick even outside of town. There were more undead residents now than people who’d live there before. They could see all sorts of half burned, half sunken boats and barges wrecked against shores, teaming with the fetid flesh of the undead.
“Balls to the wall?”
“Fuck it. Why not.”
Slamming the accelerator to the floor they took off down the road behind the horde that swarmed the flare. They could see Captain Saio holding a day glow marker flag in the air atop a building in the Teamster’s Park. They slid to a halt in front of the building and Saio, with no regard for his own safety, jumped down to the roof of a van, then to the hood, then to the ground where Ethan and Groupe were shooting a number of Zims who’d stuck around.
Saio jumped into the car and they were off before anyone could come to grips with how incredibly stupid what they’d just done was. The adrenaline dump made Ethan’s hands shake, but he managed to hold the wheel steady. Around the corner and back towards Highway 55 they spotted Captain Michaels. He was running down Highway Z after having dumped his gear, a human-slinky of zombies doing the Airborne Shuffle right behind him. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone. It might have been comical if he were calling cadence.
Swerving around the zombies, and hitting a few of the smaller ones, they pulled up next to Machaels, who was very much alive, and very happy to see them. He jumped in through Saio’s open window and they raced down the road away from the horde. The mass of rotting flesh would continue to follow them until they found something else to chase, but a stumbling corpse had nothing on one of Pontiac’s finest machines.
“Am I fucking glad to see you!” Saio hugged and then punched his pilot. “Just gonna go check around the corner my ass! I heard all fifteen shots. How did you make it?”
“I fucking ran, man!” Michaels said between breaths. “Fucking fuck man!”
“Gentlemen, this is Sheriff Ethan Cally from Sullivan. That’s where we’re heading.” Groupe reported.
“Nice of you boys to come for us.” Saio patted Ethan on the shoulder.
“Don’t thank me yet, we’re still a long way off.” There was a moment of silence before Ethan spoke again. “Look, I’m former military, I know what classified means, but let me tell you, our mayor is fucking furious about your cargo. We know it ain’t MREs and toilet paper you’re shipping to Labodie.”
“Damn right it wasn’t. Labadie Outpost put in an emergency order for war fighting equipment and a Mortar and Artillery platoon to follow. I guess they got attacked or something.” Saio said.
“Wasn’t you guys, was it?” Groupe asked with mock suspicion.
“No, we were there though. A squad of their Marines was almost wiped out by a gang hold up in a storage unit compound. I guess they didn’t take their Marine’s deaths lightly.”
“Would you?” Groupe raised an eyebrow.
“No. We took care of that gang and a local biker clan before last winter set in. They were monsters, raping women and killing anyone they pleased. I’m just sayin, Mayor Kenly doesn’t like having explosives flown over him by a spooky shadow government. Can’t imagine how he reacted when the Air Force lost those nukes a few years back.”
“No kidding. That was a clusterfuck.” Groupe handed the rest of the water that was in his canteen to Michaels. He drank it all. “I had just gotten to my first squadron when that B-52 took off. We had I.G. agents all over.”
Slowing the car as they approached Hillsboro the men all checked their weapons and slowly approached the bedroom community at the end of Highway 21. There was smoke in the distance, coming from the chimney of a house on a hill. It was foolish to let people or the undead know where you are, but as cold as the winter had been no one would blame someone for prioritizing heat over safety. At least it was warm enough now to rain instead of snow, but only just.
Groupe climbed out of the car after Ethan stopped to look around. He slipped on some of the snow slush and down into a drainage ditch as the others dismounted the car. Everyone rushed over to see why he wasn’t shouting for help. They saw, their hearts jumping into their throats. The ditch was filled with bodies only partially covered by the melting snow. Groupe was mostly on the embankment, his gun pointing down at the bodies, waiting for one to stir. None did.
“I think they’ve been dead for a while.” Saio said after sliding down next to Groupe. They rolled a body over, and sure enough the only wounds were a mess that could only have been caused by buckshot. Hauling one of the bodies, a teenage boy, up to the road they put this theory to the test and stripped him naked to look for bite marks. He didn’t have any, not even a scratch save the gaping hole in his chest.
“Well, he was alive after the panic.” Ethan looked around, his eyes narrowing at the only house with smoke coming from it. “Otherwise, why would he be wearing a winter coat and a stocking hat?”
“We can come back, Sheriff.” Groupe said, already knowing what Ethan was thinking, because he was thinking it too.
“No. By the time we come back these bodies will be too decomposed to recognize.” They all jumped back into the car and drove the little extra way into town as quickly as possible. Inside the nearest gas station they found what they were looking for. Disposable cameras, one of the few things not looted because basically, you can’t eat a camera and it won’t fuel your car. They went back to the grave site and took as many pictures as they could, filling seven cameras in all. They looked for ID’s on people but found none. Not until Michaels walked to the other side of the road and found where the murderers had dropped everything they didn’t want, including a plastic bag full of drivers licenses and school ID’s.
Saio had had enough, “We need to get out of here. I have a bad feeling about this place, just like that fucking junker plane.”
“Not a bad idea.” Ethan agreed. He too had the distinct impression they were being watched. He was just thankful the snow was confined mostly to wooded areas, and not on the roads. They wouldn’t even have made it to Pevely had the roads still been covered. Despite their claims that a front wheel drive was better in the snow, Ethan knew for a fact this model car was too ass-heavy for ice and sharp turns.
“How’s the gas holding out?” Groupe asked, breaking the silence.
“We didn’t even use half a tank. We’re fine.” Ethan replied, but he had another question. “Why didn’t you guys ditch in the Missouri River, instead of in the Mississippi? It was much closer.”
“Because we didn’t want to risk missing the river and giving materials to non Texan personnel. The Mississippi was always our desired ditch-zone because it’s a swift current and a lot deeper.” Saio adjusted in his seat, holding onto the “oh shit” handle above him as they careened between two wrecked pickup trucks.
“Even though it’s a ‘red zone’?”
Saio nodded “Well, we were supposed to line her up North to South, lock autopilot, bail and wait for rescue, but the controls were nearly dead, the plane would never have made it there.”
“What happened to the plane? I didn’t see anything burning.”
“After we got out she nosed over and went straight into the river. I can’t believe you didn’t see any smoke, the oil slick was huge.”
“Well, we might have. But fucking everything is burning. I can’t imagine JP-8 on the water would burn any differently than a house.”
“Probably not.” Michaels hadn’t closed his eyes since Hillsboro. He had that
first time seeing a dead body look
at everything he saw. “I marked the location the plane made splashdown. Just two miles North of Pevely mid-river.”
“You okay?” Saio asked.
“No.”
“What do you mean no? Are you bitten?” Ethan unclipped his pistol.
“What? No. I mean, it’s just… I was stationed in Amarillo before all this. I’ve never…”
“Been outside the wire since the end of the world?” Ethan nodded. “Well, it’ll take some getting used-” A concussive force stronger than anything anyone had felt before nailed the car. The vehicle was blown several feet into the air just past the town of Lonedel in a valley of farmland. A second thud and crunch meant they had come back down, but they were still moving, sliding on the car’s roof until it crashed through an abandoned trailer with a flat tire. It was stacked with a bunch of soggy, weather beaten household items that flew into the air and showered down on the car as they plowed through the wooden frame. The second crash sent both the trailer and car spinning or cartwheeling over an embankment and into a nearly dried up Little Meramec Creek. The car hit trunk first and settled into an eerie silence.
Everything was quiet for what seemed like an eternity, save the ticking of the car’s smashed engine while it cooled. Ethan looked over at Tech Sergeant Groupe and met nothing but cold, glazed, dust covered eyes looking back. There weren’t any puncture wounds, but Groupe definitely looked dead. Ethan tried to look back, but his neck hurt, for that matter his while body hurt. The car’s battery was still good and just by feel he managed to unlock his doors, all but falling out onto a gravel bar when the latch opened. The ass end of the car was in the shallow water, but the passenger section was dry. After drawing his weapon and checking their area quickly despite his double vision Ethan first popped open Captain Michael’s door. Michael’s was conscious, but dazed and kept calling Ethan Military Instructor Ryan.
“Captain? Captain, are you okay?” Ethan clenched his eyes, still trying to recover from a probable concussion and poking Saio with a stick he picked up.
“My foot is broken.” Saio said back, taking short, shallow breaths. “I think maybe my entire right leg is. I can’t feel anything but the foot.”
“Okay, can you open your door?”
“I don’t know.” Saio tried, but the door was bent shut. “Tech Sergeant Groupe.” Saio said. “Sarge, you okay?”
“I think he’s dead, Sir.” Ethan reached through and unbuckled Saio. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to drag you out this way.”
Saio nodded and braced himself for the pain as he helped push himself out of car. Captain Michaels was sitting in the gravel, slowly recollecting himself. There was the smell of burning oil and they worried the car would catch fire. Ethan walked around the car through the pile of junk they’d slid into and found Groupe’s door to be held on by nothing but a single cracked hinge. He broke it off the rest of the way and hauled his friend’s body to safety. It must have been the shock of movement that brought him out of it, but Groupe was alive and started thrashing in pain, screaming bloody murder at the top of this lungs.
Ethan instantly dropped him with a kick to the knees and drew his weapon, instinct telling him that Groupe had somehow become infected. Michaels’ must have had the same thoughts as he squeezed off a round, which luckily hit only a toaster oven.
“Ah! Fuck! Stop shooting at me you bastard!” Groupe started to calm himself, “I’m not infected! My back! It’s my back!”
“Okay, be quiet! We don’t know who’s out there.” Michael’s helped Saio get across the creek while Ethan carried Groupe. There was a house on a hill up ahead and it seemed better than nothing. The car was well and truly fragged and everything else on the road was rusted out, the tires flat or parts missing.
After they got back up on the road Groupe passed out cold from the pain, but was blessedly silent. There was a black mark on the road and two vehicles were on fire where the explosion had happened. It was a booby trap for sure, some kind of explosive that left the signature blast marks of a claymore mine. It had blown the transaxel out the side of the Grand Prix and flipped it end over end. The rest was history.