He knew that he was faltering as the spots he picked grew closer together
. His thighs burned, and it felt like someone had poured ground glass into his spine, slowing his pace in direct proportion to the rising sound of the dead.
Falling to one knee when the strain finally took its toll, he
knew it was over. Despite this, he shrugged his shoulders to get Denise further up and to ease her weight so he could keep moving. Trying to stand, he fell forward onto his side, watching Denise roll off him onto the grass to lay motionless. Reeling, he started to crawl forward to pick her up again but knew that it was no good. He might be able to make it to safety if it was just him, but there was no way he could carry his love another step. Fear and anger rose up in him at his inadequacies, but looking at the unconscious body lying spread eagle in the dirt, he was suddenly grateful that she wouldn’t see the end.
With her weight off him, Tick-Tock
rose shakily to his feet and unslung his M4. A burst of adrenalin surged through him, but his already saturated system barely felt it as he checked that he had a full magazine in his rifle.
His last magazine
, he realized.
So this is how I die, he said to himself as he rammed the clip home and drew back on the charging handle to chamber a round. Looking down at the bullet he had ejected, he bent down and picked it up, twisting it in his finger
s before extracting an empty clip and loading it. Methodically ejecting another round from his rifle, it followed the first one.
This one is for
Denise, and the last one is for me, he decided. I’ll fire the last of the rounds in the rifle, fire my pistol until it’s empty, and then load this magazine for her and me.
A squealing noise seemed to come from close by
, causing him to jerk his head up and try to see around a long curve in the path. With his arms and legs shaking, he knelt down next to Denise and sighted back the way they had come.
He didn’t have
long to wait for the first of the dead to appear.
Sighting in on its head, Tick-Tock slowly let out his breath as he started to squeeze the trigger. Knowing he only had a fraction of an ounce of pressure left before the rifle went off and the fight was on, he was
startled by the voice that called out from behind him, “Are you okay, sir?”
Spinning around, he found five of his trainees standing only a few feet behind him. Turning his attention back
to the trail, he saw three more of the dead appear behind the first. Without hesitation, he shot them each in the head and then pointed to Denise, saying, “Pick her up and get moving.” Motioning to the lady he had first taught to shoot, he said, “You’re with me. We hold them long enough for everyone to get away.” As they all reacted to his orders, he added, “And someone give me their rifle and ammo.”
***
Steve looked anxiously down the trail as he waited for Tick-Tock and his people to show. After what they had just been through, he had hoped to call the others part of the group now, but he knew that from here on out, they were Tick-Tock’s people.
Upon reaching the bridge and finding that
his second in command and his girlfriend were missing, Steve immediately started back to look for them. He had barely taken a step, though, when he was halted by an older man named Brent, defiantly standing in front of him and blocking the way.
About to curse him and
push him aside, Steve was surprised into silence when Brent said firmly, “You’ve done enough. We’ll go look for Tick-Tock. He’s our leader, and we’ll go get him.”
Steve opened his mouth to protest, but Brent shut him up by saying
loudly, “It’s not up for discussion.” Turning, he picked out four others and started down the trail at a run.
That had been fifteen minutes ago, and since then, Steve had heard a lot of gunfire. At th
e sound of the first shot, he had wanted to drop his pack and run to help, but Heather held him back by telling him he would do more good here covering the retreat of the rescue team when they showed up.
Looking at the fifty feet of open space between where the trail ended and the narrow
, wooden footbridge began, he knew she was right. His mind then turned to the confines of the trail, and while he knew from the nearing noise of the gunfire that he could reach Tick-Tock in seconds, he might end up doing more harm than good once he got to him.
Looking up from checking his watch for the tenth time in three minutes, he felt relief wash through him at the sight of four people breaking from the path into the woods and running across the clearing. He felt a second of fear
, though, when he saw that they were carrying someone, but his attention was drawn off when Tick-Tock and another person quickly followed them, backing up as they shot at something unseen down the trail. He watched as Tick-Tock turned and shouted unheard words at the woman before they both turned and ran.
Seconds later, the dead poured from the opening in the woods to flood onto the clearing.
Steve took in the scene for a split second, and recognizing the person being carried as Denise by her long hair, he hoped it was from the effects of the concussion and that she hadn’t been bit. Switching his attention to the immediate threat, he fired at two of the Zs in the lead of the pack coming up fast behind Tick-Tock. Relieved when Denise and her bearers raced past him and onto the bridge, he turned and followed them, with Tick-Tock and his assistant close behind. Looking back over his shoulder, he knew it was going to be a near thing.
As the six of them raced toward the tree line, Steve turned repeatedly to see where the dead were. A few of the faster ones reached the crossing and were cut down by fire coming from
Heather and Brain in the tree line, but it was the main group rushing after him that he was concerned with.
When he saw
they were going to reach the bridge before he and the others had reached the safety of the woods, Steve shouted out, “Down, down, everyone down,” as he pushed the person next to him flat.
***
Heather fired into the head of what looked to have once been some type of business man by the raggedy suit and tie he still wore before switching her aim to the wad of plastic explosives tied to the rail near the center of the bridge. She had been alternating between shooting the Zs that got too close and aiming at the bomb as she tried to keep the dead back as long as possible while getting ready to blow the bridge at a split second’s notice. She could see that the dead had reached the far end of the crossing, and just like the survivors when they reached the trail, the Zs bunched up as they all tried to make their way onto it at once. Unlike the survivors, the dead pushed, shoved and clawed at each other as they forced their way across. Some were forced into the ravine, giving hope to Heather that they landed on their heads. Switching her focus, she saw that the six people racing to the safety of the trees were still too close to the blast for comfort. They needed a few more seconds, but she didn’t think they were going to get it.
Hearing
Steve call out for everyone to drop down, she watched as they disappeared into the long grass. Glancing to where the first of the herd had made it halfway across the bridge, she knew he had seen them, too, and had decided to take the risk of being too close to the blast.
Settling in, Heather sight
ed into the center of the mass of plastic explosives and squeezed the trigger, watching the carnage that followed.
The blast came as a bright flash
, followed by a dull whump that sent splinters of wood from the bridge high into the air and down into the steep gully it crossed. Along with these, she could see the blown apart pieces of the dead that hadn’t been disintegrated by the explosion flying with them for a split second before the area was covered in a cloud of dust. Arms, legs and pieces of dead flesh rose into the air to drop down onto the Zs further out from the immediate blast radius and the six people caught out in the open before the scene was enveloped in a cloud of dust.
***
Easing the door of the storm cellar upward a few inches, she took a quick peek. Letting it down quietly, she returned to her companions and said, “It is mostly clear now, but we must make ourselves presentable first. I refuse to let us go out in the world looking like ragamuffins.”
Taking a few minutes, they brushed themselves off from the dust
, soot and cobwebs that clung to them from the long crawl between the floorboards, down an old unused chimney, and into the basement.
When she deemed them presentable, she said, “There are a few out there, but nothing we can’t handle. We take them out quietly
, and then move on. Time is of the essence. It’s not safe here anymore.”
She could see her
assistants nod in the dim light of the lantern, so she turned and walked up the steps to the storm doors. Flipping one back to bang against the ground, she stepped up and into the light. Hearing a loud explosion from the direction of the bridge, she smiled as the noise attracted the attention of the few dead still scattered around the lawn. As she watched them turn away, she knew it would be child’s play to take them. It was almost poetic how she had done her part in keeping her children occupied before dropping into the escape hatch she had created months ago, and now Steve had done her the same favor in return.
With a smile,
Delightfully Grimm unslung her scythe and turned to Thing one and Thing to as she said, “Come, my good friends, there is much reaping to do.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Washington, D.C.:
General Eastridge set his reading glasses down on the report lying on his desk and rubbed his eyes. A dull thud shook the building, letting him know that they had started the airstrikes again. While the dead had initially been pushed back when the Marines retook the capital, they were drawn in such numbers to the fresh human meat now clustered here that at least once a day, A-10 warthogs had to be called in to bomb the perimeter.
Thinking back to those first days
after they had fought their way back into the capital, he marveled at the speed in which the Seabees had erected a temporary wall that ran from the river straight down K Street, turned on Massachusetts Avenue before turning again on Fourth Street, and then made its way to the 395 freeway before making a left at US One and ending again at the water. Being outside this perimeter, the Pentagon was secured by its own defensive barricade but was easily accessed by air and subway. While the creators of the D.C. wall thought that the Potomac would make a natural barricade, they were sorely mistaken and eventually the wall had to be lengthened to take in the entire shore.
Every time he looked at it, Eastridge was reminded of
a barricade that circled the green zone in Iraq. The main difference here, though, was that the city outside of D.C.’s safe zone had been entirely reduced to rubble as far as the eye could see.
Checking his watch, he saw it was almost time for the daily briefing
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A wave of anxiety washed over him as he wondered if he had been found out yet. After ignoring the direct orders of the Chairman, he knew it was only a matter of time before A talked to B and B said something to C, and word got back to the Pentagon about what he was up to.
Shaking off his worries, he knew he was doing the right thing. If there was another way to combat the dead that were coming back to life, it needed to be explored. The Malectron was a great weapon in the fight against the living dead, but it was just that, a weapon. Believing that the device would be used for more than herding the dead into remote areas where they could be dealt with, he was risking his life to seek out an alternat
ive solution.
Standing, General Eastridge grabbed his jacket off the coat tree standing near the door and exited his office as the walls shook again.
***
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called the meeting to order. After a quick briefing by the Colonel commanding the cit
y’s defenses, he waved the man off and said, “On to new business, and it’s good news, gentlemen. Just half an hour ago, I spoke with Professor Hawkins and he is ready to move into his new lab.” Turning to the Naval chief, he asked, “And how is progress on the facility going?”
The Admiral cleared his throat and started to say that it would be ready by the end of the day, but seeing General Eastridge look him straight in the eye and shake his head slightly, he paused. Although they’d had their differences in the past, he knew the Marine Corps general to b
e a standup guy. He took the head shake as a cue to stall the development of the Malectron, and wondering what was going on, he decided to play along for now and see where it went.
Clearing his throat again, he covered his pause by saying, “Excuse me. Must have something caught in my throat.”
The Chairman threw up his arms and said in an exasperated tone, “Then take a drink of water and tell me what the fuck is going on with the work on the new facility.”
All the men stopped at this
sudden outburst and stared at the Chairman. Ignoring this, their commander screwed up his face and asked, “Wellll?”
Sitting straight up in his chair, the Admiral said, “Sorry, sir. The new facility for Professor Hawkins is coming along well
. There are some electrical problems due to the draw required on the generators, but my people should have it worked out within the next three days.”
Originally, he was only going to give a one
-day delay, but with the Chairman acting like he could talk to him like he was some half-assed midshipman at the Academy, he’d decided to make it three.
The Chairman paused for a second, his face turning red
as he stammered out, “Three days? Three fucking days? I thought your Seabees had their act together. I need that facility to be ready by tomorrow. I have choppers ready to lift Hawkins, his equipment and his people here at 0600 the day after tomorrow. Are we going to drag them all the way here from Bumfuck, Arkansas, to tell them that they don’t have power? They’re also going to be living in that compound, so how is that going to work? Should I give them your room at the Watergate hotel instead until you get your shit together?” Looking up, he added, “Or maybe move you all out and turn your suites over to Hawkins and his people?”
General Eastridge almost laughed out loud at this. He had been
to his room once since it had been assigned to him, and that was just to get the key card. He rotated its use between his officers on weekends and the enlisted under his command during the week. For himself, he found the couch in his office suited his needs.
Gaining confidence, the Admiral said, “It can’t be helped, sir. The requirements
on our electrical supply for Hawkins’ lab will be tremendous. We’re already having to reroute power from two different grids in the safe zone, and even that might not be enough.”
Pounding his fist down on the table, the Chairman screamed, “Then reroute all the power
if you need to. Shit me some power if you need to. Tie a fucking key to a kite string and hope for lightning if you need to, but get that facility ready to run by tomorrow, or it’s your natural ass.”
Standing, the Chairman straightened his jacket. Looking around the table, he made eye contact with each man before saying, “
Now, on to the matter of our forces still stuck overseas. I know that we’ve managed to bring some of them home, but we have to focus on getting all of our military personnel back on United States soil. Once they have the Malectron issued them, we can begin our campaign.”