World of Ashes (6 page)

             
"We need to hide these. Rural places we can fall back to if either army comes through here again.” Ethan suggested, opening his own drink Full Throttle energy drink.

             
"What other army?" Rowe was confused.

             
"The Army of the Undead, Officer Rowe." Keith pointed to the pre-dawn sky. They could already see smoke on the horizon from the direction of Union, the town was under siege. Next would be St. Clair, and then Sullivan. That night the lights stayed on again. Someone suggested putting up construction lights and pointing them down the hill to where Ethan and Keith had wrecked their truck. They still didn’t know who’d shot at them, but they had a hunch it was some of the local hillbilly types celebrating an end to Martial Rule by the most Unpopular President in History. Some were rather vocal about trying to stop newcomers, fearing the plague or for whatever other reasons they had, some being slightly more than bigotry. No one really knew where it had come from, or the caused it, and much ignorance still raged about how it spread. At the far end of a curve in the bridge a lookout claimed to see a person walking. Keith flicked on a set of thermal sights he'd found. He didn't see anything but a glow on the horizon, and you didn't need anything but your eye to see that. The world was burning slowly toward them, the consuming fires of the end of days.

             
"I definitely have movement." A guy in urban cammo said. He reached to the forward grip of his “illegal” M4 and turned on an IR laser. Through the night vision goggles and thermal lenses the man painted his target. Those with sights saw the laser land with great precision on a figure’s center mass. "I have one unknown at the far end of small arms range… Waiting for kill order."

             
"We're not
killing
anyone yet." Ethan warned, though he knew it was an inevitable order. "If the government does come back, let’s not be the ones who record ‘killing’ zombies as a pastime activity, shall we?”

             
"This guy’s missing most of his left arm. I can see the bones split around a ripped up shirt." Keith took his eyes off the lens, a red ring circling where the rubber had met his skin. "He's infected, Ethan. Let's just put him down. That was our mistake at Antire Hill, we let them get too close because we have this overwhelming desire to know what we’re shooting at. It’s ingrained in us just like shooting center mass.” Keith gestured at the bottom of the hill. “In ones and twos they’re almost harmless, but let them get five and six deep, let one person get bitten and they become the fucking Juggernaut." Keith's argument was set in stone when three other lookouts detected movement.

There were now hundreds of undead shambling down the interstate, probably having already overrun Union and St. Clair hours earlier.
It was a long way from St. Louis to Sullivan, but if you never paused to rest, never slowed your pace, walked all day and all night in search of the next soul to devour, distance meant little. There was a story Ethan had read in high school, the 1953 short story
The Ruum
by Arthur Porges. An alien device pursues a prospector at a slow, yet relentless pace. A creature could easily outrun it, but the creature had to eat, had to drink, sleep, do all the things a living being must do. The Ruum, or in this case the Zombies, had none of those needs, no concerns about its self. Its only goal was
you.

             
Reynolds blanched. He looked at the rest of the decision makers. "Should we shoot them all?"

             
"Yes." Keith didn't back down on his belief. "I'll give the order myself." He walked to the middle of the bridge and looked at the dozen or so people gathered there. "We’ll walk to the edge of the hill there, and pick them off in the valley below. Don't let them get past the road graters at the bottom. Take your time and fire selectively. If you need time to catch your breath or take a piss, just do it. We’re gonna be here a while. Some people, whoever thinks they’re unprepared right now, stay back until people start needing a break. Then we’ll rotate until the job’s done.” Keith said loud enough to be heard by everyone.

             
At first, several people in hunters camouflage refused to fire, knowing there had been legal and political backlash to euthanizing the infected with what the administration had deemed Illegal Weapons, (a dangerous term as all firearms in the hands of the public were considered illegal under Marshal Rule.) The gathered men had no such reservations after Keith fired and hit the closest zombie in the leg. It fell to its knees, but continued to moan and drag itself toward the thin red line. Its head then exploded in the opening salvo as the others let loose their bullets. They kept the pace, firing from the bridge the entire night in an orchestrated chaos that eventually drew the entire town to watch as if this were the first Battle of Bull Run. With any luck, this time the spectators wouldn’t be running away at the end of the battle, right behind the retreating soldiers.

Before sunri
se the militiamen managed to pile more than two thousand bodies at the bottom of the hill. The teaming river of corpses didn’t stop until it was full light, and only one sniper remained to fire through the exhaustion, picking off the stragglers. No one spoke, the entire experience so weird, so foreign to any them that they couldn't speak, even if they’d had something to say. Those who’d fought in Vietnam, Desert Storm: Part One & Two, and in Afghanistan had trouble with what they’d been forced to do, the foul taste of shooting what had once been Americans burned into their mouths with so much cordite. One man, who wore a Vietnam service ribbon on his hat couldn't even bring himself to take a pinch from his open tin of Copenhagen. He just sat there, holding the can and lid, looking at the half pinched leaf inside as his hands shook with frayed nerves. What was already in his mouth hadn't been removed for hours, his face gaunt with shock.

             
"There were women and children down there." Keith whispered almost too softly for Ethan to hear, leaning on the overpass’ railing. Whether or not Keith intended for Ethan to hear him wasn’t certain.

             
"There's always going to be women and children, Keith. They're just as dead as the men and they'll kill you just as fast. C’mon, let’s eat, we have to clear the rest of the town before long."

             
"Why so soon?" Keith asked. “Most of ‘em are locked in basements or closets and shit.”

             
“And how long before all this gunfire makes them try to escape? Or before one of them causes a new outbreak in the middle of the night? This isn’t lawful, its survival. I have to survive long enough to track down my family. They’ll send an email or call soon enough. I can’t just run towards Oklahoma and hope I run into them.” Ethan handed Keith another energy drink. They were both too worn out to take an accurate shot anyhow, why not add some caffeine jitters to their mix of anxiety and fear?

             
Putting the side-by-side in gear Ethan headed towards the local VA hall that was doubling as the North Armory, the police station holding that function in the South. "Get a couple hours, okay? This is all going to get a lot worse before it gets better. You ever see the show 'Jericho'?"

             
"No. Never heard of it.”

             
"Well, I have it on a bootleg Hajji-Copy at the house, bought it for fifteen bucks in Iraq. I strongly suggest you watch it."

             
"This isn't TV, Ethan."

             
"Isn't it?" Ethan stopped the vehicle. "Look around you, man. The world has crumbled at your feet. England is gone. France is gone. Russia is gone. China is gone. Iraq is
blessedly
gone. Japan is gone. Australia is gone..." Keith's eyes were twitching with pent up emotion he didn't know how to vent. Ethan went on. "The United fucking States of America is
gone
, Keith. The land masses are all still there, but civilization as we know it has met its extinction event. I just wish the bastards hadn't taken my family with them when they left. Let me die with them at least." Ethan was about to put the small vehicle back in gear when they heard people shouting and a dozen more gunshots rang out from the roadblock. Without much thought they swung around and drove back as fast as they could, the little blue light on top of the canopy flashing. A bullet actually smacked the concrete frame of the bridge next to them as they pulled to a stop and took cover, unslinging their own rifles.

             
"Who the hell is shooting at us?"

             
"A bunch uh' fuckin niggers!" A kid, no older than fifteen shouted, working the bolt of his rifle, the brass casing clinking on the ground next to him.

             
"Well aren’t you charming." Ethan rolled his eyes. He was no racist, that might falsely imply he liked anyone in the first place. "Well, who are they? Does anyone fucking know, or did you just start shooting?”

             
"I'd say Bloods.” Another rifleman said. “They’re lit up like Redcoats, man. Looks like their Caddie got stuck when they started running over the bodies we stacked."

             
A few more shots rang out, Keith waved his hands, "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

             
The kid snickered. "That'll happen to you when you try to take ‘twenty- fours’ off- roading. Fucking ghetto rat tard fuckers."

             
"So when you sit there late at night, masturbating to your elf character on WoW and dropping a load on your anime print body-pillow, do you ever stop to think about truly fucking sick you really are?” Ethan narrowed his eyes and addressed the rest of the Minutemen assembled. "No one shoots until we find out what they want. Let them run out of ammo, we’re well out of range of handguns." He stood up and heard a few more shots fired from downrange. The gangbangers only had pistols, maybe even a sawed off shotgun. They certainly had no idea how to properly use either. "Keith, go get that up-armored M1114 and a five ton. We'll bring them back here and in-process them."

             
"In-process?" Rowe stood as well, realizing there was a snowball’s chance in hell of getting hit. "Are we arresting them?"

             
"Did they shoot first?" Ethan turned to the kid. The kid looked away and made a discrete exit. "Arresting them is your call, we'll get information and identification from them and then we can push them on South. There's a lot of vehicles here, we can afford to give them one if it means we don’t have to keep gang-bangers around.”

             
"Why waste the gas on ‘em?" A man asked. "Fuck ‘em."

             
"Yes. Right. ‘Fuck them.’ That makes loads of sense. Why don't we just go ahead and quarter them at your neighbor's abandoned house instead,
Mr.
Singer
is it? I thought you were a Man of God.” The bearded Minuteman's frown made his beard twist in funny ways when scolded by Officer Rowe. "Deputy Cally’s idea will work fine. We'll send them on their way. Escort them as far as Bourbon so we know they won't come back."

             
Keith returned with the truck and another driver. He forgot to unlock the other doors and had to play twister inside the Humvee to unlock them for Ethan, who was watching and trying not to laugh from outside. Others piled into the 5-Ton truck as the gangbangers down range began to come to grips with the fact that they were surrounded by
truly
dead people, thousands of them. They were also in the gun sights of a well trained militia, the ones who’d stacked the bodies they’d become stuck on. Slowly the two trucks crept toward the newcomers, rolling over corpses, their bloating sacks of fat and gases popping and crunching like so much roadkill. Everyone vomited at least once, if not from the smell then the sound. It’s not one you ever forget, like the squeaking of a cassette tape when the play button isn’t pushed hard enough. Nails on a chalkboard.

             
As soon as the convoy was within seventy five meters, still just outside effective pistol range, Ethan got on the bullhorn. "Attention. Attention. This is the Sullivan Militia. Lay down your weapons and come out where we can see you and you will not be harmed.”

             
Amazingly enough they complied without a fuss. It was probably the machine gun in the turret that changed their minds, though they were slow to lay the guns down, and who wouldn't be? The terrified city dwellers never stopped making eye contact with Ethan as they inched closer to the ground to lay down arms. Ethan and a few others dismounted, carefully approaching with their guns pointed down, making it clear they really weren’t going to open fire first. For some reason, the men in the red gang colors seemed relieved they’d met someone who was willing to talk. A zombie that had been buried under the other zombies groaned near a deputy, startling him as he took his position for the encounter. A three round burst echoed across the valley, he’d blown its head off and was still screaming as he jumped away from it.

             
Confused and frightened, the gangbangers grabbed their guns and started shooting wildly, shouting racial slurs and about being betrayed. Someone managed to hit a deputy in the vest, knocking him down and out when his face hit the pavement. Others dragged him away in the confusion of shouts and screams. Ethan’s experiences in Iraq had been harsh, but they were never this gruesome. What transpired in the next ten seconds was something more becoming of an SS Extermination Squad than American Militiamen. The machine gunner, having seen it all from above and withholding his fire because his own men were below, took a ricochet in the helmet. He had tried to warn the gangbangers not to pick up their guns, but after picking himself back up from the massive impact to his head pulled the trigger and mowed the gangbangers down in a violent salvo that ate the entire belt of ammo and melted the barrel.