Crusade (Eden Book 2) (2 page)

With a
whoosh
the gasoline went up and scores of zombies were immolated as they raced forward. The sound of their suffering and death filled the air. With the bridge ablaze, his attention turned to the creatures remaining about him. Mindless beasts heedless of the danger facing them. One by one he dispatched them with his hands: a crushing punch caving in a face, a blow to the temple felling another. He gripped one by the hair and the entire scalp came off, revealing white bone. The man brought the bottom of a gauntleted fist down and cracked the exposed skull.

In sweatpants with “Juicy” embroidered on the bottom, the final zombie on his side of the fire screamed and circled. He stalked over and grabbed it by the neck and crotch. It tried to fight as he snatched it from its feet, cleaned it to his shoulders and pressed it, then threw it into the fire. It wailed and tried to escape but could not.

He watched them burn as the woman fired at the mass of bookers beyond the wall of flame. He reloaded and holstered the .357 then swapped magazines in the M16A2.

The man aimed over the fire and the forms that crumpled in it—some still twitching—his Commando’s semi-automatic discharge joining the woman’s. The zombies beyond the fire roared and cackled and dropped one by one. As the fire burned itself out the man and woman kept choosing their targets and firing. The numbers on the other side of the fire dwindled. Eventually the few remaining zombies were able to risk the road and jetted through the last remnants of flame, closing in on the man, who met them with the morning star.

In moments only the man and the woman were left on the bridge.

He reloaded the M16A2 and let it rest against the remaining gasoline barrel. There were pistol shots behind him. Their gunfire had drawn zombies from outside the town along the road they’d come in on. Zombies that now grouped about the Chevy and the woman. They were slow and she was well out of their reach. She fired down into them with deadly effect from the pistol.

There was a collective groan from the road ahead of him. The fog had burned off considerably at this point and he could make out a mass staggering his way.

The man thought of the town beyond the bridge and the thousands, perhaps millions, of undead within it. As he did so the rage crept over him once more, filling his person. He was sweating behind the splatter mask so he shrugged it off and stared out into the gloom with his one eye.

“Bear.”

The woman joined the man at his side. Removing her face shield revealed her beautiful olive complexion, chiseled cheekbones prominent, and a lock of thin black hair sweat-stuck to her forehead.

He walked across the remainder of the bridge. Sucking noises came from the rubber outsoles of his booted feet as he stepped through liquefied remains. The sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh was pungent. Rain drops fell around him, first a few then more until a light downpour enveloped the bridge.

Ahead an undead army worked its way forward, their ranks innumerable. He stalked towards them, drawing first one Glock 18 from his hip then a second.

The zombies saw him and let out a collective bellow—a roar of hunger and hatred. Their host crowded the road beyond the bridge from shoulder to shoulder and there was no end to their mass in sight.

Bear stopped where he stood and gazed out upon them. They moaned and chortled and shambled forward.

He tucked one Glock under his arm and chambered a fresh round in the second, then repeated the process for the first. They had cut the distance separating them and were now starting across the bridge, which formed a natural bottleneck and only allowed a dozen to pass abreast.

The rain was falling in steady sheets now.

Bear looked at them with blind hatred. From deep within his core he summoned a fierce roar that boomed from the bridge to the town beyond and the heavens above. The zombies, incapable of fear, trod onward to their doom. Bear affixed the splatter mask and resumed his walk towards their front lines.

He stopped less than ten yards from their reaching arms, cracking jaws, and wraithlike moans, extended the Glock in his right hand and started firing. He triggered one shot at a time, chose another target and fired again. When the pistol in his right hand was empty he switched it for the one in his left and fired that one out in rapid succession. At this range, and with the zombies pressed so close together, his aim was accurate. One after another they collapsed to their knees to be bowled over by their gruesome companions, or folded to the asphalt to be trod over by the ones behind.

The rain came down in a steady shower, soaking living and dead.

Bear turned his back to the undead and walked off a few steps, dropping first one spent magazine and reloading a pistol then the other. He cocked back the slides on the 9mms and turned. They loomed before him like the water from some nauseating sea, inexorably surging forward foot by foot. He walked back to their ranks and a collective roar went up. He extended the Glock with the green laser sight and resumed the business of killing.

Nadjia had joined him but dared approach no farther than the barrels where she fired into their midst with a Commando. She fired out magazine after magazine while Bear alternated between approaching the line and turning from it to reload. Periodically Nadjia twisted to guard their rear, picking off a stray zombie that had shambled into sight amongst the Chevy, the Hummer, and Bear’s wheeled cart.

Bear reloaded the pistols with the last of his magazines and fired them out into the crowd. Zombies bobbed up and down as they climbed over their fallen, the hunger and determination in their eyes unmistakable. When both pistols were empty he holstered them and unslung the Commando from his back. He flipped the selector to semi-auto and pulled the stock into his shoulder, sighting and firing. The back of a zombie’s head came undone like a jigsaw puzzle and it slumped to the bridge surface.

He judged their progress by his distance from the barrels, emptying the Commando, reloading, stepping back a yard or two while reloading. The rain pooled around his feet, mixing with blood and muck.

Nadjia fell back to a position halfway between the barrels and the cars, taking a knee and resuming her fire.

When he reached the barrels he took up his morning star and brought it down with a crash onto the remaining full drum. Gasoline jetted out of the punctures as he wrested the spiked head free. He knocked the drum over and rolled it with his foot. Pushing off with all his weight behind it, he watched it spin towards the zombies, gasoline splashing up into the air, mixing with the rain. Two or three of the undead tripped over the barrel and struggled to regain their footing as their legion reeled forward, unrelenting.

Bear brought the Commando up to his shoulder and patiently fired out another magazine, then turned and walked off towards the vehicles. Nadjia shouldered the 66mm M202A1 Flame Assault Shoulder Weapon and sighted. Bear reloaded on his walk towards her as she fired the first of the rocket launcher’s four barrels. The backblast from the rocket motor licked out almost to the Silverado. The rocket zipped past on Bear’s right trailing flame, impacting the first wave of zombies. A brilliant splash blinded as the M74 rocket detonated, vaporizing the front ranks of the undead. The gasoline drum detonated and a cloud of flame reached to the sky. Smoking body parts rained down on the bridge.

Nadjia shifted her aim and fired the second and third rockets several hundred yards beyond the bridge. The explosion rivaled napalm detonations. The triethylaluminum agent exposed to the air burned at twelve hundred degrees Celsius. Zombies ignited like dry leaves. Even those nowhere near the points of detonation were seared by the thermal radiation of each blast. She fired the fourth and final rocket into the dark and rain. The light and heat flared in the distance. Zombies wailed as scores of them perished in the annihilating fires.

Nadjia laid the empty incendiary rocket launcher down and took up her Commando with what remained of a bandolier of ammunition. Bear tossed her his M16A2 and she caught in on the run in the rain, trotting over to the front of the Hummer. Bear stalked over to the Heckler & Koch G3 he had leaned barrel-up against the stone wall of the bridge. Two soaked bandoliers of magazines for this assault rifle waited atop the waist high wall.

The rocket explosion and gasoline drum had temporarily halted the zombies but now they advanced. The rain quickly quenched the fire. Several of the zombies staggering forward over pieces of their brethren were charred and smoldering, burnt beyond belief but still ravenous, enraged, moving.

Bear fired out first one magazine then another, the rainfall competing with the barks from his rifle and Nadjia’s Commando. He stopped only to clear a jam then worked his way through one bandolier of magazines. He was nearly through the second when the zombie front ranks passed the spot where the empty barrel rested.

He signaled to Nadjia and she fell back to the Chevy, clambering atop the bed to fire from first her Commando then Bear’s, reloading when both were fired out then continuing.

Bear reloaded the G3 and chambered a fresh round, then placed it back against the wall as he had left it earlier. He took up his morning star and considered the throng closing in on him. He squinted through the grill of the splatter mask and looked to the sky but the purple-dappled clouds masked the universe and its secrets.

He cocked the morning star over his shoulder like a baseball bat and charged their ranks for the second time that morning, uttering a guttural cry of pure detestation, of loathing and something more—
conquest
. Closing with their ranks he swung the morning star. A zombie’s head disintegrated in a red mist of bone fragments and meat. He swung again, from left to right, smashing two off their feet into the others. They shrieked and bore down on him, attempting to encircle as he slew them where they stood.

He brought the morning star straight down with both arms, the spiked ball collapsing an undead’s skull in a shower of crimson to the shoulder line. Bear left the morning star stuck in the thing’s clavicle and from his back took the flanged mace. He lofted it to shoulder level and swung left and right, sweeping blows that brained zombies and sent them staggering backwards, melting down.

He grabbed an obese zombie by its neck with his gauntleted hand. Manhandling it he wielded it as a shield at his one side, momentarily staunching the press of zombies. With his right hand he swung the mace, felling undead. They pressed on, a veritable wall of necrotic flesh, purple pools of blood under bruised skin, many naked, their bare feet marbled blue and ivory. Others wore the clothes of their former trade—mechanics, maintenance men, soldiers, highway road crew members—all once human beings.

As Nadjia fired into the mass of undead she watched them close around Bear until she had lost sight of him in their midst. She resisted the urge to aim into the crowd and instead concentrated on the zombies pressed against either side of the bridge walls, lest one of her bullets strike the man she fought with.

As she reloaded she watched many zombies knocked back and tumble to the ground. Bear stalked from their midst. A flare in one hand kept the zombies back. The mace swung in his other as he cleared a path to his assault rifle. He took it up and fired into the horde closest to him. When the magazine was expended he took up the remaining bandolier and crossed the bridge to the front of the Hummer.

He leaned one hand on the hood and caught his breath. Nadjia’s steady fire zipped by overhead. Bear sighted down the barrel of the G3 with his good eye and fired, caving in the nose and mouth of a zombie, the bullet punching out the back of its head and into that of one behind it.

He retrieved the Stoner M63 Light Machine Gun from the rusted roof of an old vehicle. A box-contained 150-round belt magazine was affixed. He clambered atop the pile of bodies at its low point and stood with the M63 in both hands, the stock pressed tight to the side of his hip. Bear fired at the wall of zombies pressing in, reaching for him. He sprayed ammunition left to right and back again. The Stoner fired more than seven hundred rounds a minute. Plumes of blood erupted from heads and shoulders. A mist of it filled the air to be battered down by the rain. Dozens of the undead dropped in their tracks.

He took his finger from the trigger when the weapon was empty and dropped off the pile of bodies, hustling back to the car, taking a second box-contained belt of ammunition and affixing it to the M63. Bear moved to his left and scrambled atop the bodies there. The ranks of zombies were looking for him where they had last seen him. They were taken by surprise when he unleashed the Stoner a second time. A hail of 5.56mm lead ripped through their front lines. Zombies crumbled in scores to be stepped on and stepped over by the ones behind. Shell casings streamed out of the light machine gun, lost amid the bodies and blood and rain on the bridge.

The Stoner emptied, Bear lay it down and hopped off the bodies, confronting half a dozen zombies that had gotten around the heap of undead and now came for him. Their mouths cracked, their hands groped. He grasped the first by the sides of its head and jerked violently, tearing the creatures’ head from its shoulders. The body dropped and he pitched the head at the next closest zombie, knocking it from its feet.