Regeneration (Mad Swine Book 3) (11 page)

“We’ll get through,” I said.

The man looked at me for a moment and
then Brian said, “Get some more shooters up on the towers to give
suppressing fire. They have the best vantage point up there and
they can help control enemy movement on our flanks.”

“It’s hard to see out there with all
that smoke,” Don said. “How are they going to know who are the
friendlies?”

“We have to take that risk. We also
need someone up there directing ground operations. We’re going to
be blind out there,” I said. “Even though it’s not ideal, the folks
on the tower will have a better view than those on the ground.”

“Don, can you handle that?” Phil
asked.

“I can direct our fire but we don’t
have communication capabilities so I won’t be able to direct your
ground movements. You guys are on your own out there but I’ll keep
them off your flanks as best we can though.”

Phil nodded. “We need Sam’s group on
scaffolds at the walls to cover our retreat once we break through
and reach Kat so make sure she gets word. No one else outside the
walls no matter what, Don.”

Donald nodded his head.

“We need weapons,” Brian said.

Phil led us to a table on which our
weapons lay. I snatched up my gun belt and rifle and Brian did the
same. There was not extra ammo and I did not see my shoulder bag.
We’d have to make do with what we had.

“All right, let’s move then,” Phil
shouted.

We approached the wall closest to the
explosion. The scaffolding allowed us to peer over the fence. Men
and women unfamiliar to me were firing down into the street. From
where I stood, I saw the large box truck that had rammed one of the
containers at full speed, dislodging the container, knocking it
aside. The truck and turned on its side and slid twenty or more
feet into the safe zone before coming to a stop. The engine
compartment was on fire and infected were still stumbling and
crawling their way out from the vehicle, many of them on fire.

Fuel bombs sailed over the containers
and exploded in the street. As we watched, a woman and man caught
fire and rolled on the ground trying to put themselves out.
Suddenly, heavy machinegun fire strafed the wall.

“Get down,” I shouted and we all
dropped down off the wall to avoid being hit. When the machine gun
moved away, we peered over the wall again and through the thick
smoke we saw the bodies begin to filter in through the gap. At
first, I thought they were more infected, but one of them ignited a
flamethrower and aimed it at a group of infected that were stuck
under the truck, which had pinned them when it fell on its side.
Then he turned the flame toward us on the wall, driving us all once
again from our perch.

“Holy Christ,” Phil said. “They’re
burning everyone and everything.”

“Kat’s out there,” I said. I grabbed
Phil by his collar and pulled him close so I could be heard over
the din. “We need to get out there. There has to be another
way!”

He nodded his head and motioned back
over his shoulder. He led us to the northeast corner of the fence,
furthest away from the action. It was the best point to insert, out
of the line of fire. Along the wall the three foot high scaffolding
provided a firm platform for those within the walls to fire down
over into the streets and easily fall back to cover upon return
fire. I wish it were something I thought of many months ago, when
we were at war with Providence; things might have worked out
differently.

Phil hopped up onto the scaffolding
and without pause, leapt and pulled himself up onto the top of the
wall. Without looking back, he dropped down, disappearing from
sight.

“You first,” Brian said as we reached
the scaffold. “Do you need a boost?”

“No, I got this,” I said. I slung the
rifle over my shoulder and jumped up onto the wall, slid around on
my belly until my hips and legs were hanging over the other side of
the wall, and then slid backward, dropping several feet to the cold
ground.

Phil crouched behind an abandoned car
peering over the hood. I joined him and within seconds, I felt
Brian’s hand on my shoulder as he took a knee beside me. For a
moment, the three of us looked on, no doubt remembering the battle
between our two communities. Then, we had been on opposite sides,
but in the same world of shit.

Smoke, noise, confusion, action. Hard
to see ten feet in front of you due to thick smoke. Gunshots
continued to ring out and ricochet off the maze of vehicles or
skidding across the blacktop. A pair of crazies appeared out of
thick billow of smoke just in front of us. As we rose, ready to
move, several more appeared out of the smoke, searching frantically
for human flesh.

“Let’s move,” Brian said, running out
from behind the vehicle to engage the walking corpses. Phil and I
followed right behind; Phil falling off to the left flank and I
took middle ground.

Reaching down on my left, I pulled
the machete from its sheath as I also drew the 1911 from its
holster with my right hand. Running at the first creature in my
path, I slashed at its neck with the blade and continued past it,
not looking back to see if it was dead. The meaty thud of its
decaying body impacting against the blacktop told me all I needed
to know.

Slightly to my right, I engaged a
second creature, slamming the machete at a downward arch, cleaving
its skull. It stopped for a moment, its hands grasping at my
clothes. I raised the 1911 to its eye and pulled the trigger,
splatting its fried brain into the smoky air. I pulled the machete
from its head as the body fell to the ground with the impact of
dead weight.

Breathing heavily, suddenly excited
by the rush of adrenaline and violence, I scanned my surroundings
as I moved forward. Brian was still on the right, moving forward at
an angle toward another abandoned vehicle where he paused a moment
to take cover and get his bearings. On my left, Phil was following
along the wall, walking in the slight depression where the
landscape sloped into drainage culverts. As I watched, he suddenly
took a knee and raised his weapon, firing it into the smoke. A
second later, a body skidded to the ground. It tried to push itself
up, but before it could get more than a few inches, Phil was on it,
slamming the butt of his rifle against its skull, battering it
until the skull burst and bore its gray matter fruit.

The sounds of battle grew intense as
I continued to move forward. The stench of burning fuel and flesh
thickened until it became overwhelming. I had to fight to control
my gag reflex to keep from splashing vomit all over my boots. My
eyes began to tear and burn now. It was hard to keep my eyes
open.

On the left, from within the
community, a volley of fire continued. Crystal and Don were
directing their fire down into this maze of death. I had no idea if
they could track our movement or if we all just looked like the
undead to them from their vantage point behind the walls in which
case it was only a matter of time until someone took a bead on me.
Assuming they could even see me through the smoke.

Putting aside the thought that
friendly stray bullets could kill me at any time, I pushed on.
Somewhere ahead, Kat. I needed to get to her, pull her from this
hell in which I had abandoned her months before. Visibility
diminished further as a breeze swept a blanket of gray-black smoke
eastward. Panic gripped me for a second when I realized I could no
longer see Brian or Phil. I called out for my brother, but the
sound of gunfire, the blast of the flamethrower, and screams of the
wounded and dying overpowered my voice.

Skirting the fender of an overturned
hatchback, I stepped on someone’s leg and fell back against the
vehicle. A dead crazy lay with its face blown in half by a round
from someone’s rifle. Next to the dead creature, a dark haired
woman, the right side of her face and hair scorched.

I was a stranger to her, yet she
looked at me with her left eye, pleading for help. The blacked
fingers of her right hand twitched as if she was reaching out to
me. Perhaps there was some comfort in dying with a stranger than in
dying alone.

Softly, I touched her hand. “I’ll
come back for you,” I said. Before I could tell her another lie,
she silently passed. Her left eye glazed over, staring up into the
blacked sky.

I moved on, hoping that Kat was still
alive out there. It grew increasingly difficult to step without my
foot landing on a dead person’s torso or dying person’s appendage.
I couldn’t help but wonder if one of those corpses belonged to Kat.
I quickly shoved away that thought.

The dead and dying seemed
concentrated in this area, which meant I was getting close to the
center of the action. More than ten minutes seemed to have passed
since I last saw Phil and my brother, but more than likely it had
only been one or two, certainly no more than five.

Suddenly to my right, a firebomb
exploded no more than twenty feet away from where I hunkered down.
Even at this distance, I could immediately feel the wave of heat
wash over me, chapping the skin on the right side of my face.
Screams of pain and horror told me that people, not crazies, were
scorched.

Moving again, I went toward the
screams. The heavy sounds of the machine gun suddenly fell
silent—either reloading or silenced by a someone’s bullet to the
operator’s head—and for the first time I noted that I could no
longer hear the swoosh sound of the flamethrower being ignited. As
I drew closer to the ball of fire, I realized why.

The man or woman—I could not tell
which—spun in the center of the fireball, arms wildly beating its
face, head, and body, trying to put out the flames that completely
engulfed. The tank strapped to his or her back had exploded, no
doubt pumping shrapnel and molten pieces of metal into the vital
organs.

Down on my right knee, my left raised
to provide a platform for my elbow, I took a bead on the dancing
pyro and fired two rounds. The body dropped instantly to the
ground. The smell of burning flesh and hair was more than I could
stand and I had to purge myself. Thankfully, my stomach was empty
and only a yellowish, thick phlegm came out.

I felt the intense heat of the
burning flamethrower on my left side, even at this distance.
Raising my arm to block my face, I got moving again, stumbled a few
yards before falling onto the ground. My throat felt raw, burned by
the thick billows of smoke I swallowed.

A set of hands grabbed at me and I
swung blindly at my assailant. Pushing up from my hands and knees,
I squinted and saw my brother. Downwind, the smoke was thinner.

“Dude, it’s me, stop swinging.”

He helped me to my feet and steadied
me by holding my right arm. “Did you take out the flamethrower?” he
asked.

I nodded my head, and then coughed
harshly, trying to expel the putrid smoke from my lungs.

“You should have let the fucker
burn,” he said.

Gulping in fresher air now that I was
downwind, I asked. “Did you find Kat?”

He stared at me a moment as though he
had no idea what I’d said and then, as if in a daze, he shook his
head. Although his face betrayed his words, he tried to sound
optimistic when he said, “Maybe Phil found her.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Not since we split up. Let’s move,”
Brian said.

On his six, I followed him back into
the smoke and flames. The battlefield was suddenly too quiet. I
realized I had not heard a gunshot in more than a minute, maybe
longer. Now, the only sounds were those of the wounded and dying.
And the living dead, most of which lay burning or charred on the
blackened road.

We killed a few of the crazies and we
moved across the road toward where we last saw Phil. Suddenly,
Brian stopped. We stood at the point of impact, where the truck had
rammed its way into our safe zone. Here, the concentrated dead
formed a semi-circle around where the machine gunner must have set
up. Scores of ejected cartridges littered the pavement. The machine
gunner, though, was gone.

Phil found us a few minutes later and
told us that a small group had retreated right after the
flamethrower blew. They pulled some wounded from the field, one of
them he thought was Kat, but he was not sure. None of those who
were reportedly with Kat were accounted for, either. The only way
to know for sure was to put out the fires and check all of the dead
and wounded to account for our missing or dead.

After more than an hour, Phil’s
people reported back and it was not good news. The five men and
women in Kat’s patrol were all deceased. There was no sign of Kat’s
body, however. They also found two men and one woman alive who were
not part of Randall Oaks or Providence.

“What’s their status?” Brian asked.
He was sitting at a table with a bowl of water, washing soot from
his face.

Phil said, “One of the men died
before we could get them inside. The second man sustained serious
injuries, including bites. I have him isolated in one of the
trailers.”

“And the woman?” Brian asked.

“She’s in triage waiting for Ravi to
look her over. From what my people say, she’s got a broken leg,
probably bruised or broken ribs. She’s in a lot of pain, but she’ll
live.”

“What do you think?” Brian asked me.
He finished washing up and was now patting his face dry with an old
T-shirt. “Time’s wasting and we need answers.”

I nodded my head slowly and then
pushed up from the floor where I’d been sitting. My eyes and throat
burned something fierce and my body was tired. But my brother was
right, time was wasting and every minute that passed, the odds of
getting Kat back alive continued to shrink.

“Okay, you two take the guy,” I said.
Before my brother could protest, I continued, “Get what you can
before he turns. Maybe if he knows he’s dying he might talk. If he
doesn’t, press him hard. Make him wish he was dead.”