“You have got to be kidding.” Smith said.
“I’m dead serious.” Peter replied.
“Come on Smith, it’s going to be fun.” Crawford laughed.
“Leading a zombie horde around by the nose ain’t my idea of fun. Not on purpose.”
“Live a little.” she said.
“I plan to.”
Crawford opened her door and got out of the car. “You going to chicken out and let a girl show you up?”
Smith frowned unhappily, but he opened his door too. “I thought you were a man Crawford.”
“Just because I’ve got bigger balls than you doesn’t mean I’m not all woman.” she said as she untied one of the ropes holding the bicycle to the car’s roof.
“Remind me to track down an anatomy textbook for you if we live.” Smith muttered loud enough for his voice to carry.
“Just angle northwest across the field.” Peter said, getting out and pointing diagonally away from the intersection ahead. “When you get to pavement, come in from the west and get the horde’s attention then pull them after you. Then head south to the rally point and wait for pickup.”
“I know, I know.” Smith grumped.
“Sure you only need a mile?” Crawford asked as she lifted the bicycle down.
“Yeah. Either it’ll fire up or it won’t, and if it doesn’t then more time isn’t likely to improve my chances.”
“I thought you were a mechanic.” Smith said unhappily as he got the second bicycle free.
“Motor Tee.” Peter said. “And that means diesel. But there’s nothing that says whatever’s wrong with the Brad is something I can handle out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“So this isn’t going to work, is it?”
“Shut up Smith.” Crawford told him. “Come on, let’s go.”
“If I get bit and you can’t even get the thing working I’m going to be pissed.” Smith said, still unhappy; but he settled his shotgun, checked his holstered pistol, then started pushing the bike. Crawford led off, both of them angling off road and heading for the western side of the road visible ahead, running east-west as it intersected the one the Dodge was waiting on.
“Seriously, this is going to work though, right?” Whitley asked as Peter got back in the car.
“I can’t guarantee I can get it running.” Peter said. “But between you and me I’m willing to bet we can get the
radio
working as long as the unit’s still intact. As long as it is, odds are we get power to it and we’re on-the-air. Even if we have to dismount the unit and take it with us.”
“What are they odds of that?”
“Come on, it’s armor.” Peter said, gesturing at the zombie infested intersection ahead, with the squat hulk of the Bradley Armored Personal Vehicle visible on the far side of the mass of vehicles and bodies. “A semi-truck could have smashed into it and odds are it’d just scratch the paint.”
“A semi?” she asked skeptically. “You’re exaggerating just a bit, right?”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe, but I’d still be willing to put money on the fucking Brad making it through in one piece over the truck. I mean, the damn thing weighs thirty tons.”
“Fully loaded a truck can weigh a lot more than that.”
“Yeah, but that’s mostly sheet metal and particle board.” Peter said. “And the trailer, the cargo in it; none of that’s rigid. It all goes flying on impact. The Bradley is solid, all the mass is mostly one piece.”
“Well, you’ll excuse me if — assuming we get the thing rolling — I decline to be inside when you decide to test that theory.”
“Okay, I wouldn’t
want
to be inside if it happened either.” Peter admitted. “But I’d still pick the armor to come out on top.”
They waited, listening to the car’s engine tick over at idle and the rush of warm air through the dashboard’s vents, as they kept watch on the area. In the daylight, the intersection where they’d first met the Canton group was an even bigger mess than it had appeared in the darkness. Whatever had caused the chaos, there had been a
lot
of it.
Some of the cars had clearly burned, and a lot of them had broken windows. The ones like that lacking any other obvious impact damage — like a collision — made it clear there had been significant non-vehicular action happening. And there were the skeletons.
Not bodies; skeletons. It wasn’t the first time any of them had seen it, but it was never fun. Left to their own devices, unmolested or otherwise distracted, and zombies would eat someone right down to the bone. Just from here, even with the binoculars, it was obvious somewhere in the vicinity of a three-digit number of people had perished and become fodder for the horde. The bones usually got scattered in the consumption process, but skulls were an easy marker to tabulate.
Whatever story had led up to the intersection becoming such a hellish clusterfuck was lost to teeth and time. And Peter figured he probably didn’t
really
want to know the specifics. He had his own nightmares, up close and personal images from Downtown Atlanta and two months of surviving the ongoing apocalypse since, to bear. This was just one more, and he’d long since decided it was a waste of time to care about every little detail of what had happened.
What mattered was what happened next. So he waited with Whitley behind the wheel, watching the time and the horde while keeping an eye on the area closer in around the car. Finally, after about twenty minutes, he saw what was definitely sustained westward movement from the horde.
“There they are.” Whitley said quietly, nodding at the western half of the intersecting road.
“Yeah.”
The two of them watched as Crawford and Smith got in close enough to the horde to be noticed. Both decoys spent a minute or two wailing away with clubs, fending off the closest zombies while they gave the trailing edges of the pack time to coalesce. Then they started fading west. Predictably, the zombies followed.
“Thank God zombies are stupid.” Whitley murmured.
“And slow.” Peter agreed. “Only things saving anyone at this point.”
It took five minutes, but finally the intersection was more or less clear. Peter drew his M-45 and checked it over, then reholstered it and lifted the axe. “Okay, let’s go.”
Whitley put the Dodge in gear and drove north. She stopped just shy of the first crumpled vehicles jamming the crossroads. Peter had his door open before she even finished braking, and was out and on his feet by the time the Dodge rocked back on its suspension.
Up close, the intersection was worse. Blood stained most of the visible pavement, and even a good percentage of the vehicle surfaces he could see. Not all of the zombies had left either; but only a handful of the ones remaining were still on their feet. He reversed the axe — he still preferred the blunt end to the blade, letting weight of metal rather than the cutting edge do the damage — and started swinging as he worked his way through the intersection.
The axe head was somewhere around five or seven pounds of solid metal. Peter was aging, but he was able to swing the axe with a respectable amount of speed. When a zombie’s skull interfaced with a swing of the axe, it was shockingly effective.
Some of the heads just split and cracked on the spot. It wasn’t like fruit being smashed, but the desiccated insides of the skulls would spray out in a splattering of dusty debris amid whatever bone fragments dislodged and took flight. Those zombies tended to drop or crumple then and there.
Other heads resisted the catastrophic results of a shattered skull, but still suffered extreme damage and effects from the impacts. These corpses would go flying from the force of the hits, tumbling and stumbling and rolling out of his way. Some were left with gaping holes in the sides of their heads, others with broken necks or fractured limbs when they went down; but all that mattered was they got
out
of his way when he hit them.
Even taking his time, it was five minutes of climbing and axe work before he got across the minefield of teeth and hidden undead. As much as he could, he stayed on the cars and trucks, so he was less likely to be surprised by a zombie lurking beneath what remained of a vehicle. The extra height made the axe swings that much more effective, but he was still breathing hard as he neared his objective.
“You okay?” Whitley called as he made it to ground on the far side and paused for a moment to check his surroundings — and catch a second wind unobtrusively — before continuing.
“Yeah, just tired.” he called back.
“I’m not sure how much of the fuel I’ll be able to fetch through all this.”
“Just keep a look out and be ready to yell if anything sneaks up on me.” Peter answered. They’d found a gas station and brought a small supply of diesel just in case all that was needed for the Bradley was a fill-up. “I’ll let you know if we need to get into what we brought. And watch yourself.”
“Same to you Gunny.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
he muttered to himself. Moving closer, he studied the Bradley. It squatted in the grass beyond the intersection, a dozen or so yards from the nearest buildings. This one was painted in the beige desert camouflage that had effectively become the standard color scheme since the early nineties; when all the fighting happened in desert and arid climates, there wasn’t much utility in the greens and browns of a forest or jungle color scheme.
It didn’t surprise him to see some dried blood marring the sides, and a
lot
on the front where it had clearly done some driving through crowds of bodies, but except for those streaks that had clung on despite the wind and rain and sun the vehicle looked more or less intact. He didn’t see anything wrong with the treads at first glance, and there were no indications it’d been ramming or been rammed after deployment. Of course, he could only guess how long it had been parked — abandoned — here.
Glancing reluctantly at the rear deployment ramp, Peter instead started pulling himself up onto the vehicle. It took more effort than he cared to admit to heave himself up, but the Bradley wasn’t
too
much of a climb. The driver’s hatch was dogged down tight and wouldn’t budge when he tried it, but the vehicle commander’s lifted at his touch. Peter set his axe aside and drew the M45, then flipped the hatch all the way back and peered inside with the pistol at the ready.
The seat was in the lowered position, and covered in blood. But there was no body. Peter frowned, then picked up the axe again. Reaching the tool down into the Bradley, he used the head to slam and thump against the interior walls several times. It made a substantial thumping each time the metal axe head came into contact with the APV’s hull; one that was subdued enough out here, but that would unmistakable to anyone — anything — inside.
Peter laid the axe down once more, then got his flashlight out and settled back to wait as he strained his ears. Seconds became a minute, but he didn’t hear anything from inside the vehicle. From the look of it, either one or more of the crew had converted, or someone outside had managed to get up close and inflict damage on whoever had been inside. But whichever way the situation had gone, they weren’t here now.
“You hope.”
he told himself, taking a deep breath. Shifting around, he laid himself down and poked his head and arms in the hatch for a look. The interior was as stark and industrial as any combat vehicle he’d ever been in, but nothing moved. Peter took his time, looking and listening; but he had to admit if there were any zombies inside they were playing it extremely careful for zombies.
Slowly, Peter shifted around again and lowered himself through the hatch. Once he was inside, sitting in the seat, he looked around again, then climbed down and checked the rest of the vehicle. He’d known from the pattern and number of antenna protruding from the Bradley’s exterior this was a scout version, but one look at the rear compartment confirmed it. There were usually cases of extra ammunition for the vehicle’s weapons stored back there, but if there’d been any they were gone now. A lot of the space was instead occupied with radios and radio stations.
The driver’s compartment was also bloodstained, but again lacked a body or any other signs of problems. Dried blood flaked away from the seat like crumbling rust when he sat down and checked the controls. A little blood wouldn’t bother a military vehicle, certainly not one that was designed for limited amphibious operation. But when he tried the starter nothing happened.
Peter considered for a moment, thinking about that, then got up and managed to contort himself into position to open a service panel. He peered in at the exposed components, then nodded and reached for the hatch above his head. The locking levers released, and he was able to open and push back the circular steel without trouble. As he hauled himself out, he heard Whitley calling.
“What?” he called back, blinking at her in the sudden brightness of the daylight.
“How’s it going?”
“It’s empty.”
“Will it start?”
“I’m pretty sure one of the fuses blew.”
“So what’s that mean?”
“I want to try replacing it.”
“Will that work?”
Peter shrugged, then held up both hands and let them drop when he realized she might not be able to make out the shrug from across the intersection. “I don’t know. Just stand by.”