At a guess, Dillon was pretty sure he had two of those local kids with him. He scanned the courtyard, but it was empty. They moved through the courtyard and to a gap in the fence that you could have driven a motorcycle through. In the distance, a few dogs barked. The smell of garbage was appalling, and as they moved through the gap in the fence and through some bushes it became worse.
“Well, here we are.” he said, scanning left down the abandoned tracks as Jimmy scanned right. Dillon handed Abdul the two magazines of ammo and an MRE. He knew that the kids would need it more than him, and that they had weeks, if not months, of food waiting for them at the remaining apartment compound. “Shokran a mil, habibi. Shokran a mil.” he said, thanking the kids for their help. They smiled and waved before disappearing back the way they had came. Dillon took a moment to look south along the train tracks. They were barely visible under weeds and trash. He started walking, trying not to make too much noise as he moved.
“This is gross, dad,” said Mikey. Dillon nodded. He had tired of third world shit holes filled to the brim with trash. Now, he was wading knee-deep in it again, the sickening sweet smell of it burning his nostrils. Dillon shushed Mikey nonetheless. They moved south until the tracks started turning west towards the river. He knew that they would have to cross two major roads before they were within a block of the 611 complex. They came to the first one, Road 7, five minutes later. They all crouched for at least a half hour, listening to the sounds around them. There were definitely more than a few infected out there. It was about to get dicey again.
“We’re going to have to move and move fast,” said Jimmy. They were whispering, all huddled within an inch of each other as they looked in opposite directions to maintain 360 degrees of over watch.
“I don’t know, Jimmy. We’ve seen at least a half dozen and heard more out there. There’s a small, wooden kiosk to the left of the opening that used to sell cigarettes and sodas. After that, we’re looking at a large town square with a mall on the other side of it. There could be hundreds out there.”
“It’s only 30 meters. We can be across in five seconds. Then, we move along the right side. See the path through the garbage? Once we get about a hundred yards the tracks curve right enough that we can lose them if they chase us.”
“They won’t stop chasing us, and I have Mikey.”
“The longer we wait here the greater chance we have of being spotted. Then we’ll have to run AWAY from the direction we’re headed instead of towards it.”
“I know. Damn it. I know.”
“Come on, Dad, we can do this,” Mikey offered, trying to be helpful.
Every bit of Dillon’s military training was telling him to move forward, towards the objective. Every ounce of his parental instinct told him to not risk it. Mikey couldn’t run as fast as an adult, and Dillon couldn’t run as fast if he carried him. That would mean that they would have to run a hundred yards and then stop to take care of any infected that had decided to follow them. Dillon weighed the situation carefully, noting the terrain meant the infected could only attack from two directions. They would have to take out any infected in front of them once they crossed the road before they turned to kill any pursuers, but it was the best, the only, course of action.
“All right. We don’t need to go one at a time, this isn’t a gunfight. We all go at once, we take out any zombies in front of us, then we switch to take care of the ones that follow us down the tracks.”
“Copy,” said Jimmy.
“Copy,” imitated Mikey.
They waited a few more minutes for a group of three infected to sniff around the roadside before moving on, then they ran, staying as a group, across the road and along the path someone had made through the garbage. The way ahead, at least until the curve, looked clear, but Dillon looked back and noted perhaps a dozen infected following them. The infected were not quite smart enough to use the path, and they stumbled as much as they ran.
Jimmy was in the lead with Dillon bringing up the rear and Mikey in the center. As they rounded the corner, Jimmy slowed to a fast walk and brought up his submachine gun, rapidly putting single shots on multiple targets. Dillon stepped forward and to the right so he could see. In front were two dozen infected, the white robes suggesting that they had leaked out of a nearby mosque after seeking shelter. They looked like bloody ghosts, and Dillon flipped his weapon off of safe and started firing well-aimed shots into bodies as fast as he could. After a few shots, he spun around and began firing at the infected that were chasing them. There were at least a dozen close by, and it sounded like the sound of the infected stumbling through the garbage had attracted even more.
Hundreds more.
“Shit. Move! We gotta move!” Dillon said, a little louder than he would have wished. Dillon flipped the selector switch to automatic and dumped the rest of his magazine into the closest group, then rapidly reloaded and did it again. Jimmy was still engaging targets, making forward progress at about the pace of a fast walk. Still, the pack was coming at them a bit faster, and it wouldn’t be long until they were buried under a mob of biting and clawing zombies.
“Dad! Over here!” Mikey called. Mikey had moved over to the fencing and managed to get through an opening in the chain link fence. The fence itself was tangled with weeds, but it looked to be a construction site on the other side. Dillon started moving towards it, loading a third magazine and firing as fast as he could.
“Jimmy, let’s go! This way!”
Jimmy halted his forward movement a second, took a quick glance behind him, and then immediately ran for the gap in the chain link fence. Dillon was already half way through. Once through, Dillon fired through the fence as best as he could to give Jimmy some more time. Jimmy managed to get through the fence just before the first of a dozen or more zombies hit the fence, their teeth snapping angrily.
They all ran away from the fence, towards the shell of the building being constructed of formed concrete and brick. There was a ladder leading to the second story, and Dillon stopped to fire at the zombies pushing at the rusty fence as Jimmy and Mikey climbed. There were at least fifty, maybe more, and the fence lasted mere seconds under their combined weight. Dillon heard Jimmy start firing and moved up the latter as fast as he could. He was almost to the second floor when the ladder was knocked out from under him by the onrush of infected. One second he was almost safe, and then the next he was wildly clawing at the air for something, anything, to hold on to that would keep him from pitching into the crowd.
The Infected Land of the Dead © 2016 Cian Campbell
All Rights Reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are creations of the author’s imagination.
Cian Campbell is a U.S. Army veteran and current U.S. government employee who has worked in a number of the world’s roughest hot spots.