Outbreak: Long Road Back (23 page)

Pittman smiled encouragingly at her. “Don’t worry, Stace.” the big southerner said. He patted the case of Comp B he was sitting on and grinned. “It’s all part of the plan. We’re driving way faster than those dumb fuckers can walk. We’ll get this shit set up and be long gone before they even get half way there.”

“I just got a real bad feeling about this.” Grimes muttered as she clung to her carbine as if it were some sort of magical talisman. She dug out a pack of spearmint gum and stuffed a piece into her mouth before offering it to everyone else in the back of the truck.

Robles took one and popped it into his mouth. “I’m just glad you noticed them.” he said as he slowly chewed the gum. It had been ages since he had a piece of gum that was not so stale it crumbled to bits in his mouth. “I was wondering if I was seeing shit.”

Lacey turned his head so that he could try to hear the conversation going on in the bed of the truck. It also let him steal another glance at Frays. The lustrous dark brown of her hair…the gentle curve of her jaw line…the graceful curve of her neck… She looked really fucking hot even in her plate carrier and Multi-Cams… The man felt a brief stab of grief over the miscarriage. He could not even fathom how profound a loss that was. Lacey fought back the urge to reach out and try to take the woman’s hand.

Frays caught him staring at her and she smiled. “Eyes on the road, man.” she said just loud enough for him to hear but hopefully not be heard by the others in the bed of the truck. He laughed and settled into his side of the bench seat. Frays looked over her shoulder. “Get ready, guys. We’re going to be in the target area in a couple minutes!”

Lacey muttered a curse under his breath as they got closer. There was a great big angry snarl of traffic around where they intended to set up the device making driving right up to it all but impossible. Frays stopped and looked at the man. “Well, come on.” the woman grumbled as she opened her door and hopped out of the truck.

“Let’s go, people!” Frays said tersely as she lowered the truck’s tailgate. “We can’t get closer with the truck so we’ll have to drag this stuff over there and get set up. Rowe and Pittman give Lacey a hand getting this stuff over there. Grimes, Robles we’re on security. We were drawing a crowd on the way here so let’s not hang around too long.”

It took a couple trips but the three men got the explosives along with its assorted paraphernalia unloaded and set up in the target area. Grimes stood on the little island of dead grass in the center of the traffic circle watching them out of the corner of her eye. Something about the stalled out hatchback a few feet away kept drawing her attention.

Sergeant Frays was busy helping Lacey set up the bomb while Robles and Rowe were running around sticking blocks of plastic explosive under nearby cars. Pittman was watching his half of the traffic circle. Grimes frowned over her shoulder at the rest of the group and crept over to the abandoned car. The windshield was thick with dust and had a crack in it as long as her arm. Thankfully the original owner did not appear to be anywhere near the vehicle…

Grimes practically squealed in delight. The little car looked like it was packed to the gills with supplies. “Hey, can we start taking stuff from the cars?” she asked loudly as she tried the passenger side door. A hand shot out of the duffle bag on the front seat and caught her wrist as the zombie she had not seen beneath the pile of stuff tried to pull her into the car.

Grimes screamed and stumbled back somehow able to twist free of the creature’s grasp. She stood there her ample bosom rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath. The woman glanced at the others as she looked at the pitiful sight in the passenger’s seat of the car. An animated corpse that used to be a preteen girl now so bloated that its skin was split open in places as it clawed at the air, held in place by the seatbelt.

“I’m alright!” she called as she unfolded the SKS’s bayonet and locked it into place. “I’m alright!” Grimes hooked the bayonet inside the handle of the duffle bag and flicked the luggage out onto the ground then took careful aim and thrust the razor sharp steel blade through the pitiful animated corpse’s eye socket. The creature stopped flailing like a hydraulically powered puppet that had been disconnected from its power source.   

Rowe came over with a brick of plastic explosive in his hand. He winked at Grimes as he set it on top of the driver’s side front wheel. “Good job. Are you alright?” he asked. Rowe had to admit that the woman was not as bad looking as he originally thought. Either that or she had gotten in shape with all the exercise they had had gotten over the past few weeks. He threw open the doors on the opposite side of the car and started tossing bags and milk crates of stuff out onto the grass.

“Contact!” Hubbard shouted as he raised his carbine. A handful of figures stumbled towards them winding their way drunkenly through the stalled cars and trucks. He drew careful aim on the closest one and took a deep breath as he flicked the carbine’s safety forward. The tall spindly black man’s face disappeared when the 7.62mm bullet smashed through its skull just above the bridge of its nose.

Frays stood up from the motorcycle battery she was hooking up to the radio and looked around. Lacey was running a spool of det cord from the main charge to the bricks of Comp B the others had positioned under the cars and trucks. “How much longer you need, Lacey?” she shouted as she tried to figure out how many more zombies were coming.

Lacey looked around and counted the remaining charges that needed to be set. “Maybe ten minutes!” he yelled as he finished crimping the end of a length of det cord to the shock tube and jammed it into the brick of Comp B.

Grimes shouted a warning. She fired two quick shots both of them whipping past the head of a reanimated child as it came towards her at a fast clip its little hands hooked into claws. The woman grabbed the door of the hatchback next to her and shoved it open in violent motion smashing the little monster in the face with a sick thump. The creature stumbled and fell on its back allowing Grimes to plant a boot on its chest and stab downward with the bayonet. A gunshot rang out close enough to tug at her hat.

There was a creature on the ground with the top half of its head missing a few feet away. There was the sharper cracks of Sergeant Frays’ suppressed M4 now joining the others. Grimes stood there watching the others her breath coming raspy little gasps as the bullets whizzed and whined past her. All of a sudden Sergeant Frays was standing in front of her. “Shoot something you little twerp!” the NCO shouted as she violently spun the private so that she was facing the incoming zombies.

Frays grumbled and shoved the woman aside dropping a zombie that was coming around the bumper of a rusted out Chevy Tahoe. The woman shook her head disgustedly. “Get that stuff on the truck!” she shouted at Grimes and covered the woman’s sector of fire. “I got this. Just get the stuff on the truck and come back here.”

The sound of a creaking door opening followed by a very familiar baseline started throbbing out of the oversized speakers. Frays raised her cheek from the stock of her M4 and gave Lacey a look as the man hurriedly assembled the last of the charges. She shook her head when the man grinned up at her. “C’mon! It’s funny!” Lacey shouted over the noise as Michael Jackson asserted that it was indeed Thriller Night.

Just as Frays and her group were choosing what music to listen to Sergeant Hanes and his group were starting out for the housing tract east of the FOB. PFC Stark nervously fingered her CLS bag and readjusted the strap.
God, if you’re taking requests, please don’t make me have to use this today…
the slender woman thought as she tugged her cap down to keep the sun out of her eyes as they left the east gate behind them.

Sergeant Hanes was driving with Buckley in the passenger seat. The plan was that Stark and Parker would pull security on the truck while the rest moved out as teams of two to search the houses. Each team had a big rucksack or duffle bag to stash supplies in and a can of bright orange spray paint. They were looking for medicine followed by any stores of lumber or building supplies. If they ran across anything that they might need but could not fit in the truck they were to mark the building with the spray paint and a team would come along later with a bigger truck to get it.

The brakes squeaked as Sergeant Hanes pulled the pickup truck up onto the lawn of what probably used to be a nice little two story colonial and jumped out. “Okay, let’s make this fast!” he shouted as the others piled out of the vehicle and hurried off. “Keep an eye out and be careful. No gunfire unless you have to. Watch your corners and be back here in twenty!”

There was a flurry of activity as Hanes and Buckley went towards the house in front of them while Sharpe and Chang made a beeline for the large storage shed off to the side. If there were any building supplies there might be some there.

The first house turned up some good stuff: a closet full of winter coats, snow pants, a pile of canned food and dry pasta that was still good, some hand tools, a couple boxes of shotgun shells and a heap of 2x4s in the shed. This last discovery made Chang spray paint a big letter L on the side of the shed so that the next crew to come by could see it from the street.

The foragers hustled towards a big bluish green house across the street. This one had a small barn or a garage build a few feet from the house. Stark sat on the top of the truck’s cab and kept watch with a pair of binoculars as Hanes kicked in the house’s back door. Her heart stopped when she spied movement through a window at the opposite side of the house. A gunshot rang out inside and the next thing Stark knew she was staring up at the sky and her ears were ringing. For some reason a thick black cloud waved and swirled across her vision. Something was burning? What the hell happened?

She sat up with a groan and electric currents of the most agonizing pain she had ever felt nearly made her black out. The woman lay there gasping as she tried to figure out what the hell happened. The Tacoma was on its side, the contents of the vehicle’s bed spread all over the blacktop. There was a rapidly spreading pool around the pickup which she guessed to be the contents of the vehicle’s gas tank. “Ah! Fuck!” Stark spat as she tried to sit up again. It was right about then that she noticed the huge open gash in her left forearm and the hot blood coursing out of the deep open wound.

The medic struggled into a sitting position and tried to open her CLS bag with her good hand. After a few moments of cursing and frustrated shaking she managed to undo the buckle and get the bag unrolled. Fighting unconsciousness she dug open one of the pouches and found what she was looking for: a Combat Action Tourniquet or CAT. “C’mon you stupid bitch.” she muttered to herself as she shook out the inch wide loop of fabric and shoved her wounded forearm through it. She grabbed the tab with her blood slick fingers and tightened the tourniquet a few inches above the wound and twisted the plastic rod then locked it in place, cutting off blood flow to the rest of her arm. She then gathered her CLS bag back up and tried to get to her feet. The explosion had to have drawn a bunch of attention…

Parker stumbled up a half second later. “Jesus.” the lanky beanpole of a man spat. Stark almost shat herself when she got a closer look at the man. For a half second she had mistaken him for a zombie: his face was a mask of deep scarlet and he smiled revealing a missing tooth. Instinct took over and Stark was on her feet in a heartbeat, instructing the man to sit down on the curb. She used some of the water in her waterskin to clean the man’s face off revealing dozens of tiny wounds on his face and a good sized chunk of his scalp hanging off at an odd angle.

Stark grimaced. “Sorry…sorry…”she hissed under her breath as she flipped the scalp back into place and wound a bandage around his head. “What the fuck happened, Parker?” the medic asked as she secured it in place with a knot.

“The fuck should I know?” her patient grumbled. “Motherfuckin’ house blew up.” The man’s eyes grew large his attention obviously grabbed by something moving behind her as she finished patching him up.

Stark spun and leveled her Smith and Wesson at the form stumbling towards her. Chang took a few more steps and fell flat on his face, the man’s arm severed at the shoulder. The medic rushed over and tried to stop the bleeding but a half second after she managed to find the artery in the stump and pinch it off the Asian man’s chest made a hitching noise followed by a sound like he was about to hawk up a wad of phlegm. Stark hurriedly checked his pulse. “Fuck…no, c’mon Chang!” she grumbled more to herself than anyone else. She tried administering CPR for a few moments before giving up realizing that there was nothing she could do for him unless they were like ten feet from a fully stocked, staffed and functional hospital emergency room.

A sound reached her ringing ears that made her sphincter muscles tighten. “Oh fuck…” Stark whispered as she regretfully scrambled to her feet and drew her revolver. A swarm of perhaps ten or fifteen zombies made a drunken stumbling run straight for them their mouths opening and closing like fish out of water. She thumbed back the hammer and drew a bead on the closest one took a deep breath and held it…then lowered the hammer and jammed her sidearm into the battered holster on her hip.

“C’mon, Parker.” she rushed to the man and helped him up. “We gotta go, buddy.” Stark pushed the man ahead of her and tried unsuccessfully to not look back. The swarm, now numbering about twenty or so, started after them then turned as one and descended on Chang’s cooling corpse like a flock of rotting vultures finding a choice morsel on the side of the road. The smacking chewing noises as they rent the corpse apart and stuffed the gobbets of gory flesh into their maws.