Outbreak: Long Road Back (24 page)

Stark grabbed Parker’s arm and hauled him along as she tried to hurry towards the storage shed they had just searched.
How the fuck did everything go so fucking wrong so fast?!
the medic wondered to herself as she shoved the man into the little shed ahead of her and shut the door behind them. The shed had been secured by a padlock but Chang or Sharpe had busted it off when they broke in just a few moments ago.

Dizzy from shock and loss of blood Stark sank to the concrete floor of the shed. It was cool in the midmorning shade. Parker started trying to barricade the door but there was not much to work with. There was a brand new John Deere lawn tractor in the middle of the room so he put the mower in neutral and muscled it over against the door. He put the transmission into drive then set the tractor’s hand brake. “Don’t worry, Stark.” he said quietly as he watched the woman lie down on the cool concrete and rest her injured arm on her chest. “They had to have heard that back at the base and they’ll send people out looking for us.”

“Yeah…” Stark mumbled sleepily. Sleeping seemed like a good idea but she knew that she probably should not do it right now. She was aware of the fact that she was now covered in blood, both her own and that of Parker and Chang. “Keep talking to me. I think I’m going into shock and I need to stay awake, alright?”

“I heard you’re married.” Parker said quickly as he considered the woman drowsing off a foot or two away. “Just my luck.” He dragged himself to his feet and looked around the shed trying to find anything he could use as a weapon besides his SKS the little six inch Ka-Bar strapped to his hip. There was a hoe and a couple of archaic rakes that looked like the handles would snap after one or two good swings. “I get to spend time alone in a romantic little hideaway with a smoking hot little blonde and she’s married.”

Stark laughed quietly as she sat up and dug into her Combat Life Saver bag. The medic struggled with getting a big wad of gauze out and an ACE bandage. She regretted not having any Quikclot in her bag but then her National Guard unit in Georgia had trouble getting the stuff five years ago when things were somewhat normal. It was all going to units in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The blonde woman rinsed her wound with water from her waterskin. “Aw fuck me.” she hissed as she stared at the blood pooling back in to fill the trough dug out of her forearm. She had caught a glimpse of something metallic in the wound… Stark shoved the gauze into the wound and almost passed out. “Fuck…fuck…” she panted as she tried to fight off the dark clouds closing in on her vision. “Parker, I need a hand here.”

The man rushed to her side and knelt down. “What do you need me to do?” he asked. The woman’s face was pale and speckled with little flecks of blood. She did not look too good at all…
Stark put the gauze in his hand. “Be careful but put that in the wound till you can’t anymore then wrap it around it my forearm.” she said quietly, gritting her teeth against the pain she knew was coming. “After that wrap the ACE bandage around it to keep pressure on it.”

Parker nodded and did as she instructed even though he wanted to stop. She was breathing hard through her nose obviously fighting to keep from screaming. “Shhh...shhh…shhh…” he said quietly and smoothed a few stray locks of hair away from her face. “Almost done. I’m gonna put the ACE bandage on now.”

Once it was done Stark sat there for a few moments simply panting. Once she could open her mouth without screaming she looked up at Parker. “Let me guess. Sergeant Hanes had the radio, right?” the medic asked her voice heavy with sarcasm as she struggled to her feet. “So we’ve gotta get outta here and walk like a mile and a half back to the base.”

Parker helped her up. “Yeah, seems like.” he muttered under his breath. “I got my carbine and my ammo. How are you fixed?” He looked a little disappointed that the woman did not appear to have her SKS.

“I got my pistol and a knife.” Stark said as she checked that her Buck knife was still on her belt opposite the heavy revolver. There were two speedloaders full of ammunition near the hilt of the bowie style knife. “I got eighteen rounds for the pistol.”

“Any idea on what’s going on out there?” Stark asked weakly. There was only one tiny window that was too high for her to look out of and it was on the wrong side of the building to see where the explosion had happened.

He looked at the pale blood sodden woman. “Are you in any shape to walk?” Parker asked quietly. The woman looked like she was about to fall over. “I dunno if I can carry you if you’re gonna pass out on me a couple hundred feet outside the door.”

“I’m fine. Are you?” Stark muttered under her breath. She went to the window and stood on her tiptoes and tried to look outside. The man’s head wound was distressing. He did not seem to be having any symptoms of a concussion or anything but then again he might fall over and start frothing at the mouth if a clot worked its way loose or something.

“I’m good.” Parker said quietly. He paused as he considered their options. “Thought why don’t we stay put for a minute? Like I said somebody’s bound to come looking for us. And if we’re quiet those ones outside will wander off.”

The two of them searched the shed and turned up little that might help them out of their current situation. There was a gas powered weed whacker along with a small selection of other lawn care implements. Parker doubted that the weed wacker’s plastic blades would do little more than annoy a zombie while the little engine drew all kinds of attention. Something else caught his eye: a red three gallon sized plastic gasoline can that was nearly full. Stark had also found a roll of duct tape and plastic blister pack of emergency flares…

Parker grinned when he put the idea together in his throbbing brain. “Hang on, Stark.” he whispered as he grabbed the gas can and the road flares. “I got an idea. I saw this in a movie once.”

Stark’s eyes went wide when she figured out what the guy was thinking. “Are you fucking insane?” she grabbed the man’s arm to try and stop him from duct taping a road flare to the side of the gas can. “You’re gonna light your stupid ass on fire!”

“Got a better idea?” he said sharply. Parker looked around the little shed. “There’s two of us and like thirty zombies out there.” It took a couple moments but he nodded. “Yeah…okay. We’ll call this ‘Plan B’ then.”

Stark looked at the garage door at the end of the shed facing the road. “How fast do you think this mower goes?” the medic asked as she went to the big green lawn tractor. It certainly seemed big enough to carry both of them if one of them sat on top of the engine or she sat in his lap. The woman frowned. “How much gas is in it?”

Parker shook his head as he unscrewed the gas cap and peered down into the tank. “Looks like it’s about half full or so.” the man muttered. He looked at the woman out of the corner of his eye. “Lemme guess your husband always mowed the lawn, right?”

“No.” Stark grumbled defensively. “He’s an EMT so he works funny hours. We hired one of the neighbor kids to cut our grass.” She passed the gas can to Parker. “I say we top it off if we can and ride it outta here.”

Parker could not help but snicker when a line from an old Vince Gill song sprang to his mind. “Oh she might have took my car keys but she forgot about my old John Deere…” he recited as he dumped the two and a half gallons of gas into the tractor’s tank. It was a pretty good idea, actually. The tractor would be loud but they probably were in no condition to walk or jog the half a mile or so back to the base.

A few minutes later Parker had the tractor pointed back at the overhead door. As a precaution he had sprayed a little ether into the John Deere’s engine in case it did not want to start up right away as it had been sitting in here since the start of the plague some five months ago or so. It would not do at all for the two of them to be sitting there trying to get the engine to turn over while a horde of undead tried to pull the shed down around them. Parker showed Stark how to start and operate the lawn tractor then went to the overhead door.

Stark sat on the tractor waiting for the signal from Parker. The two of them nodded their heads in unison mouthing the countdown. The Medic cranked the key into the start position making the starter motor whine. “Fuuuuuck…” she hissed at the machine underneath him as she tried the key again this time making the big twenty four horsepower engine roar to life. “C’mon! C’mon! Parker! Let’s go!”

Parker threw the overhead door open and it stopped with a groan. “Oh come the fuck on!” he shouted. The door was stuck about half way up. “Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck!!” He got underneath it and pushed upward for all he was worth forcing the door up on rusted squealing casters.

Stark slid aside and clung to the side of the tractor letting Parker scramble into the driver’s seat. The man jammed the tractor’s transmission into drive and they were off at a whopping five or six miles an hour as he threw the throttle to its wide open position and mashed the accelerator down as far as it would go.

A shambling corpse scrambled towards them its hands groping for the roaring metal thing with the food sitting on it. Stark sat down on Parker’s leg then drew her handgun and fired nearly decapitating the thing with a .357 Magnum round fired directly into its face when the creature was mere inches from pulling her off of her tenuous perch on the tractor.

Parker laughed as they led a slow motion parade of cripples down the street towards Forward Operating Base Freedom’s gate. He and Stark had to look like some kind of fucked up Pied Piper of Hamlin or something. There had to be at least forty or fifty of the undead stumbling and tripping after them as they rolled down the street just fast enough to keep out of reach. Stark let out a nervous little titter at first but soon was laughing too, probably half delirious from all the blood she lost.
Oh God we’re so gonna fucking die!
she thought as she watched the crowd chasing them.

A cold clammy hand came within inches of the back of the tractor so Stark shot a fat male zombie in the eye. She could not help but crack up when about half dozen or so other zombies tripped over their fallen comrade and fell flat on their faces. “Here!” Parker shouted as he pulled the sling of his SKS over his head and let the woman seated in his lap take the carbine.

Stark put her revolver back in its holster then fired the carbine into the horde following them picking the creatures closest to them. She remembered what Sergeant Frays had taught them and did not waste ammunition trying or a headshot but instead aimed for the pelvic cradle or torsos of the zombies, not trying to destroy the undead following them but instead just slowing them down so that they could escape. The weapon’s bolt locked to the rear and Stark tried to dig a fresh stripper clip out of one of the pockets of her chest rig.

“Fuck!” she shouted when the tractor struck a pothole jarring the ten round clip of ammunition from her wounded hand. The medic managed to get another clip out and into the magazine with a little effort and a lot of cursing. Strangely she was not even scared anymore or angry or anything…and somehow she was actually kind of glad that she had tried acid back in college. It sort of made the mental image of being chased by a couple dozen drooling cannibalistic freaks while riding shotgun on a goddamn riding lawn mower somewhat less surreal.

So when Parker turned the tractor onto the shoulder of Route 109, their horrible rotting diseased and fucked up entourage in tow, it did not even strike her as odd when a zombie’s head evaporated off to their right a half second before the sharp hard crack of a rifle bullet breaking the sound barrier reached her ears. 

The two of them started whooping and hollering when they noticed the wall around the FOB ahead of them. The stragglers to either side quickly dropped as more shots whizzed by their heads. All of a sudden a figure lurched out from between two stalled cars to their left and Parker tugged the wheel to avoid it sending the tractor rolling into the ditch a few feet away on their right.

White hot bolts of agony fried Stark’s heart like it was a lump of hamburger being squished on a grill. She had banged her wounded arm falling ass over tea kettle down the steep grade. The medic lay at the bottom of the ditch clutching her left arm to her chest, the pain making it impossible to even open her eyes let alone scream. The sound of a foot scraping on blacktop got Stark up and stumbling away from the noise.

The tractor lay on its side about ten feet away. “Parker!” Stark shouted as she stumbled towards the overturned John Deere. She could hear him screaming somewhere nearby. “Where the fuck are you?” A zombie shambled towards her and she tried to raise the carbine but it hurt too fucking much to try and close her hand around the weapon’s fore end. Stark tripped over something and fell flat on her face. Bloodied, confused and practically spent she could only lie there in the grass for a second gasping and trying to catch her breath.

With great effort Stark shoved herself onto her back just in time to see the lanky form of a desiccated zombie nearly on top of her. The medic drew her revolver and fired the recoil of the big magnum almost making it fly right out of her hand. The shot missed the zombie’s head but still struck the neck the 158 grain hollow point leaving an exit wound the size of a small man’s fist on the back of the creature’s neck. It flopped to the ground its mouth still snapping as if it longed for just a taste of the woman scrabbling away from it.

A small cluster of the creatures made their way down the hill as Stark finally reached the tractor. Parker’s leg was trapped under the John Deere’s motor. She fired two more shots striking the closest one high in the torso staggering the monster but barely slowing it down. She pulled the trigger again and this time all that happened was a flat metallic click.