I stared at the show of hands. The interior lights beamed with a dull red glow that cast shadows onto the thin armor plate walls behind their heads. I scanned everyone’s faces for any sign of dissent or disagreement and all I saw was the faces of a bunch teens that looked like they’d aged twenty years in the span of a few months.
“Plan Z,” I said slowly, “Isn’t my plan. It’s Green’s. We’re going to put it into motion.”
“It’s cool,” Doug grunted with a slight nod. “Listen, brother … you’ve got skin in the game. Jo believes in you and that’s good enough for me.”
I threw Doug a firm nod.
“You were closest to Sergeant Green before the creeps took him down,” said Dawson as she cleaned the barrel of her carbine with a push-rod. “I’m sorry about this morning. Won’t happen again.”
“You didn’t start it,” I said as glanced over at Sid. “It won’t happen again, right, Sid?”
He nodded and said nothing. That was good enough for me.
“
I
want you to lead this thing, Dave,” said Cruze, her voice filled with resolve. “We’re going to break the fuck out of here and head for Sanctuary Base and we’re going tomorrow at first light. It’s decided.”
“Jesus …
tomorrow?”
I nearly spit out the words. I hadn’t expected to go within hours.
“It’ll be winter soon and tomorrow is as good a time as any,” said Mel Dixon. “We can’t collect snow and melt it for drinking water. The sky is poisoned – we’ve all seen the rain. It’s fucking oily – who the hell knows what’s in it by the time it hits the ground.”
Sid snorted. “We’d probably freeze to death in this place too. We’ve got tents and plenty of naphtha, but that will eventually run out.”
“You have my support, Dave,” Kenny Howard added. He ran a freckled hand through his shaggy mop of red hair and then pointed to the crew commander’s hatch behind him. “We’ve all decided and it’s unanimous. Green picked you. He knew you were always the guy with his nose inside
Infantry Section and Platoon in Battle
.”
There it was – the unanimous vote of confidence I was hoping for. I could have thanked everyone. I could have tried to improvise some bullshit speech that was designed to motivate and inspire, but I knew they would see through it. And there was still a major decision to be made that couldn’t come as a directive from the team leader.
“Sgt. Green said we should head to the mountains. If we’d have never heard that broadcast, we’d break out of here and push through to Lake Louise. But we know about Sanctuary Base. It’s a thousand miles from here and these carriers will get us maybe a third of the way if we’re lucky.”
“We’re going to need a shit pile of luck,” said Cruze. “When we burn out the last of our fuel, we’re going to be on foot and hauling the toboggans – we’re not even sure of their specific location.”
“But the closer we get the better the chances are that we can hail them on the radio,” said Doug as he took a sip of coffee from his plastic cup. “They must want people to join them otherwise they’d be on radio silence.”
“There’s probably close to a million creeps in this city,” Dawson said with no shortage of gloom in her voice. “Once we’re clear there’s every reason to believe we might even find a better place than Sanctuary Base – you never know, right?”
“Good point, Kate,” I said as I studied everyone’s faces. There wasn’t even the tiniest flicker of doubt among them.
“This is an escape,” Sid Toomey interrupted. “This city is a prison. I don’t give a shit where we go, as long as we’re moving.”
“Alright then, tomorrow at first light,” I said firmly. “Kenny and Doug – are these carriers going to fail us?”
The pair looked at each other and then Kenny said, “They’re serviceable as far as we can tell. Once we’re on the road, who knows?”
“This is like Noah’s Ark!” Jo chirped. “We’re gonna escape just like Noah and his family.”
I gave her a big thumb’s up as my lips arched into a wide grin. “Then my carrier’s call sign will be Ark One. Cruze’s will be Ark Two.”
“YES!” Jo shouted as if she’d won the lottery.
“Alright … alright,” said Cruze. “Radio frequencies should be fifty one twenty for day travel, fifty one sixty for night time.”
“Agreed,” I said as I pointed to the map on the floor of the carrier. “If you look at the map, you can see that we should be no further than 500 meters away from each other once we get out of the city.”
Mel leaned forward and squinted as she focused on the map. “Yeah but we won’t have line of sight, so if we get in trouble we’re going to have a hell of a time making it over to you.”
“Listen for the shooting,” Sid chuckled.
“What happens if we run out of fuel before you guys?” asked Kenny. “I mean … we can’t expect you to come and get us … so we’re on our own then, right?”
I shook my head. “We’re all we’ve got so nobody gets left behind. We’ll need to radio our fuel levels periodically during the day. We’ll also set firm rendezvous points before nightfall in case we get separated or so we can share whatever we scrounge up. If you come across a fuel tank on a farm or some equipment we can siphon from, then you need to radio a grid reference and we’ll RV before investigating. Nobody goes it alone … we clear? You don’t leave your APC without covering fire from the other section.”
The group bobbed their heads in agreement as Kenny pulled out his water bottle and gulped back a mouthful. Mel leaned over and pointed to the map. “500 meters between two APC’s – man that’s a hell of a distance to cover if anyone gets in trouble.”
I clenched my jaw and ran a finger along the route I’d traced on the map with a china marker. “And that’s why you hit the combat locks on the doors and stay hatches-down until we can get to you.”
“Fair enough,” said Kenny. “But if the carrier is swarming with creeps I’d appreciate if someone would divert them away with their personal weapon and not the turret guns – the hulls on these carriers can’t stop ammunition bigger than 5.56 MM. The turret guns are way bigger than that.”
I nodded. “No freaking doubt. The creeps are attracted to noise, light and movement – that much we know.”
“Yeah, just like any predator,” Cruze said grimly. “Except these ones don’t exactly have critical thinking skills.”
“Oh yeah … Kenny can totally relate to that,” Mel chortled, as she nudged the bony redhead in the ribs.
Kenny stuck his index finger in his mouth and then drove it into Mel’s left ear. “You just say that because you’re secretly hiding the fact that you’re into me.”
“Ugh … I’d rather make out with a walking corpse!”
“Well take your pick, Mel … there’s a jillion of them just outside the main doors!” Kenny said with a snort.
“Look, guys,” I said ominously. “The creeps are just one of the obstacles.”
“What are you saying?” asked Dawson.
I took a deep breath. “Think about Green’s warning. Other survivors are going to be out there – people like us, people with guns. We’re a unit and we need to stay that way. Now, between us we’ve got plenty of food and ammo, and it’s
ours
– got it? We lose any of that stuff to other survivors then it means less for us.”
Kenny gave me a nudge. “Yeah, we’re a unit – we gotta guard our stuff and each other with our lives.”
“And we might have to kill to protect it,” said Cruze in a cold voice. “We need to lay down some rules right freaking now so that when we’re on the move there’s no second-guessing – we don’t have that luxury.”
Kate Dawson grunted. “I wish we weren’t heading north. Aren’t there warmer places to start over?”
Doug raised a finger. “There were three hundred million people in the U.S. before Day Zero and millions more the further south you go. We only know about one city they nuked before the Internet crashed – for all we know three quarters of the country could be a radioactive wasteland. That means on top of the nuclear hot spots, there are probably three hundred million creeps that would love to make a meal out of you – simple math, Kate. Sanctuary Base said they were all clear – that must mean they’ve got a handle on creep control. Maybe the colder temperature slows the creeps so it makes sense that they’d freeze come winter. They’re just dead flesh walking and nothing more.”
Doug’s matter-of-fact observations seemed to have hit the spot with everyone because nobody said anything for the next few minutes. We all just studied the map and if anyone was contemplating our chances for survival, they were keeping it to themselves. The team wanted to go at first light. They accepted my leadership and it was clear they were leaning toward Sanctuary Base. I just needed to confirm it.
“Okay, listen up. Plan Z – do we head to the mountains? Raise your hands?”
Nobody raised their hand. It was unanimous.
“First light then,” said Cruze.
“Wait … what about the main doors?” asked Kenny. “Whoever opens them is gonna get their ass chewed off by the creeps.”
I shook my head and tossed a stick of C-4 to Kenny.
“No they won’t,” I said menacingly. “We’ve got high explosives.”
“Mount up!” I shouted, as I waved my left arm overhead in a circular motion. The parade square was thick with the acrid stench of diesel and I coughed heavily as I raced to the main gate with Sid Toomey in tow. I could hear the loud clank of the hatches on the APC’s and I glanced over my shoulder to see the headlights blinking from both vehicles, confirming that everyone was accounted for and ready to go. We’d placed five shaped explosive charges on the door, designed to detonate outwards – we’d have sixty seconds from the time we pulled the ignitors until the charges would blow, one every ten seconds, so we’d have to haul ass back to the carrier.
I blinked a few times and drew in a deep breath as I pulled the small sliding hatch on the main door to the right and peered outside to see what we were in for once the charges detonated. To my front no more than ten feet from the peep-hole was a small gaggle of creeps. The one closest was shirtless. The dull grey skin on his torso was pulled tight – like the skin itself was receding back into the creature’s skeleton. A massive gash stretched from its left shoulder down to its right nipple exposing the rotting layers of tissue beneath and I could make out its ribs through the wound.
I was about to close the hatch door when the monster slowly looked up at the peep-hole. A thick, cloudy blue-grey film gave its eyes an unearthly appearance. It was like staring into the eyes of a statue; cold, empty and forever lifeless. The skin on its face was puffy and I noticed a thin stream of yellowish liquid dribbling out of a wound on its right cheek.
Even through the thick wooden door, the foul stench of decomposition filled my nostrils, threatening to cause my breakfast to wind up being spewed across the door. The monster lurched forward followed by a small gang of rotting husks, so I place the barrel of my carbine into the viewing port and fired off three quick rounds that tore the top of the creep’s head clean off. It dropped like a wet sandbag.
I closed the sliding hatch and then glanced back at my APC as I gave a thumbs-up – Doug Manybears, my driver, gave me one in return and pulled the driver’s hatch down over his head. The plan was that Doug would plow through what was left of the blasted doors as soon as I took my place in the crew commander’s hatch. Sid would climb into the turret and open up with the .50 caliber machine gun and the smaller GPMG. Both guns fired in tandem through an electronic solenoid, and the barrels were bore-sited to fire at whatever Doug saw through his visor-mounted scope.
I slipped my left index finger into the pull ring on the first ignitor, and then glanced back at Sid.
“You ready for this?”
“Are you done daydreaming? I thought I lost you there for a minute.” he said, nervously, as he dropped to a kneeling position and cocked his rifle.
“Yeah, I’m good. Here goes nothing,” I said, and pulled.
My nostrils filled with the pungent smell of burning powder as the safety fuse hissed and spat flaming embers and melted plastic onto the floor. Quickly, I pulled the rings on the other four ignitors and ran like hell to the back of my carrier. Sid dove in after me and we pulled the doors shut, slipping the combat locks over the door handles. I crawled over the other three people in my carrier and grinned at Jo as I climbed into my crew commander’s hatch.
“Cover your ears!” I shouted as I glanced at my watch. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one …”
The vehicle pitched sharply as the first charge exploded, followed shortly by the other four. I peered through my periscope as I adjusted the microphone on my helmet, and saw a minivan-sized hole through a plume of smoke and burning wood. But that was nothing compared to what I saw next.
It was like we’d opened a door into hell. No sooner had the smoke from the explosive charges cleared when a huge swarm of the monsters poured through the opening like water through a spillway. Sid opened up with a series of controlled bursts from the turret guns, and the inside of the carrier quickly filled up with the smell of cordite and burning gun oil.
I grabbed the radio switch dangling from my helmet and pressed the push-to-talk button.
“Go! Go! Go!”
I roared into the mouthpiece.
I felt the vibrations of the engine revving up behind the engine panel beside me and then our APC lurched into gear. I grabbed hold of my periscope handle and pushed my face into the rubber-coated visor as the ten-thousand-pound armored fighting machine barreled through the door, smashing through the monsters like a wrecking ball. We bounced heavily as the eight twenty-two-inch tires bounded over rotting bodies and debris. My carrier was clear of the building.
“Hard left!” I shouted, spotting a clearing between a pile-up of smashed cars. The carrier swung sharply and our bodies tilted to the right as Doug made the turn.
My radio hissed and squawked in my ears. “Ark One, this is Ark Two – we’re clear of the building and right on your tail, over!”
I pressed the push-to-talk button. “Ark One, roger. Keep a distance of twenty meters behind me. You’re weapons free in controlled bursts but only if we become surrounded. Stay within your prescribed arcs of fire left and right of my position. Over!”
“Ark Two, roger that!” the radio hissed.
Smashing out of the armory was the easy part. We still had to navigate through streets filled with monsters and the burned husks of automobiles as far as the eye could see. The carrier pushed on and I swung my periscope left and right to survey the war zone that had once been the very heart of the city. The office buildings stood like towering sentinels, lonely reminders of wealth and power from a time and place that was still fresh in our minds.
The explosion was attracting the attention of hundreds of creatures, shambling menacingly through the twisted metal. Their mouths hung open, dripping gore and offal onto the pavement. They could surround our fighting vehicle ten deep for all I cared. We were safe inside and there was nothing they could do to get at us. The powerful engine would push us through the sea of creatures as easily as a plow pushes through the snow after a blizzard.
I glanced at my map of the downtown core. We’d decided on a route that looked reasonably clear of obstacles back at the armory, but that was from my vantage point on the northwest tower. I hailed Sid Toomey on the intercom. “Sid! We gotta get to Third Avenue and it’ll be smooth sailing onto the bike paths. There’s a wall of creeps blocking our route out of here – at least a hundred of them. Can you spot another way out? I don’t want to burn out your gun barrels.”
“Roger – clogged up, Ark One. I’ll swing the turret around and see if we can … HOLY SHIT!”
I spun my periscope around to take a look at what Sid was seeing. Dozens of the monsters were hurling themselves from the office building in front of us. The carrier backed up a few feet as I watched monster after monster plummeting to earth from smashed windows more than ten storeys above us.
“Hard right
now,
Doug!” I shouted into the microphone. “Get us the hell away from this building – I don’t want one of those things landing on us!”
“Roger that!” Doug replied in my earpiece as my body pitched sharply to the left and I grabbed onto the engine panel for support. Within seconds we were barreling across a green space littered with decomposing bodies. Some moved but most didn’t, and the ones that did move – well, Doug Manybears took great pleasure in grinding them to pulp underneath the wheels of our APC. I caught a glimpse of Cruze’s carrier to my left. She was keeping the prescribed twenty meter distance from me, so I swung my periscope to the twelve o’clock position and gazed out in hopes of finding a clear path to the river. I was just about to swing the periscope right when everything went black. Doug hammered down on the brakes as a monster dressed in a tattered police uniform slid off the front of the carrier and onto the ground. Doug tromped on the gas pedal, crushing the zombie beneath us.
“Where the hell did
that
thing come from, Sid?” I shouted into the microphone.
The radio squawked loudly in my earpiece and then Sid made a grunting sound. “It probably crawled across the hull to the front of the carrier when we stopped a few blocks back. I must have missed it. Hey, I see a clear path to the river, Dave. Do you see it?”
“No – it’s pretty much obscured from where I’m at,” I shouted back. The vibration from the engine made my voice sound like I was a robot. “What have you got?”
Sid was silent for a moment. I could hear the electric motor of the turret engaging the driving gear behind me, so I knew Sid was spinning left and right to get a clearer view.
“If we keep going straight for another five hundred meters or so we’ll hit another green space that looks like it leads to the south side of the river. I can’t tell what’s past that – it’s all low ground, but I’m pretty sure there’s a railroad track down there. Does the map show anything in the low ground?”
I tapped Doug on the head and told him to stop as I switched on a lamp and stared down at the map. I ran a shaking finger ahead of where I thought our position was to the green space Sid was talking about. The railway line cut right through the low ground, just as Sid said, but it was an area thick with woods and undergrowth. Also, the railroad track was a big obstacle for an eight-wheeled vehicle – each rail had to protrude a good five inches above the wooden railway ties, and there would be a sharp embankment on either side of the track. Our vehicles’ independent suspension might get wrecked if we hit the tracks too hard, and there was also the possibility that we’d wind up with a flat tire.
I peered through my periscope to get a real time view of the route ahead. Six months’ worth of uncut grass waved in the breeze and I could see countless pillars of smoke towering up into a blackened sky. Not a bird could be seen anywhere in the distance and I thought for a moment that if I popped open the hatch, the air itself would poison my lungs.
I grabbed the radio handset and clicked the toggle. “Ark Two … how’s your field of view?”
The radio hissed for a second and then I heard Cruze’s voice. “If you swing left, you’ll see the fourteenth street overpass. We can’t go through there – it’s filled with smashed-up cars.”
“We’re just in front of Millennium Park. Can you see if there’s a way to cross over Sixth Avenue? If we get past that, we’ll avoid the train tracks and we can cruise along the river bank until we hit the spot to ford the carriers across.”
“One sec,” she shouted back. The sound of the rumbling engine filled my ears and I glanced back over my shoulder to check on Jo. She was huddled in a corner against the back door with a poncho liner draped over her tiny frame, and she threw me a wide-eyed smile along with a big thumbs-up. I gave her one back, and then turned to look out my periscope again.
The radio squawked. “Dave, just swing left and you’ll be directly in line with Sixth Avenue. From what I can see, it’s a hell of a mess of smashed cars, but I think we can push through.”
Cruze’s view was better than mine. I tapped Doug Manybears on the shoulder and yelled into his ear. “Swing left and then straighten your wheels. Go slow as hell – we’re going to try to push through to Sixth Avenue. After that just follow my lead and we’ll be on the paths alongside the river.”
His helmet bobbed up and down and the vehicle lurched forward. The smell of diesel and engine oil clung to my nostrils as I slid the periscope left and right, all the while keeping a sharp eye for obstacles that wouldn’t be in Doug’s field of vision. In minutes, my APC was crossing Sixth Avenue with the riverbank no more than a two-minute ride away. I felt a .50 caliber shell casing hit the back of my neck as the twin guns in the turret opened fire in a short burst of loud pops that I could feel in my fillings.
“What are you shooting at, Sid?” I shouted into the headset.
“Just a trio of creeps in the bushes along the river, no probs.”
“Conserve your ammo! Three creeps aren’t a threat to this boat and we have to take the long view. You’re our eyes and ears – you’ve got a three-hundred-sixty degree traverse. Can you see Cruze?”
I heard the turret spinning and then Sid said, “About thirty meters behind us – they’re being chased by a mob of about two dozen.”
“That’s not a problem,” I said, eyeing the river bank. “The current is pretty damned fast and the rocks are slippery as hell. Once we ford the river, they’ll be swept downstream.”
“Roger that,” said Sid. “We going to head to the crossing we’d planned? There’s a few good spots I’m seeing about ten degrees to the northwest. The north bank of the crossing is just crab grass and dead brush.”
I glanced down at my map. We were about two kilometers short of our planned crossing site and the contour lines for the north bank showed a gradual slope that stretched west for about four clicks. We’d have little problem climbing the forward slope and then we could coast westward until we were out of the city, assuming there weren’t any major obstacles.
It looked too easy, and that gave me a slightly sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Still, it was a way out of the city core and it didn’t vary too much from our original plan. I tapped Doug Manybears on the shoulder. He glanced back at me and I signaled to drive another hundred meters. He gave me a thumbs-up and I pressed the PTT switch.
“Ark Two – we’re going to halt on the forward bank of the river – prep your section and seal up the back doors and firing portals with gun tape. The river should be shallow enough to cross without going into amphibious, so keep your props off and use your trim-vane only if necessary.”
“Roger, Ark Two,” Pam Cruze replied.
I removed my headset and climbed to the back of the APC. Jo was still hunkered down in the corner with her poncho liner pulled up over her chest.
“All eyes on me!” I shouted as the APC came to a squealing halt. “Seal up the doors and firing ports, we’re going to cross the river as soon as you’re done.”
Kate Dawson immediately went to work, pulling long strips of dark green tape off of a pair of rolls that had to weigh about five pounds each. She stretched each strip across anything that looked like it might let in water as Jo scrambled across a case of ammunition to get out of her way. I motioned for Jo to come up to the crew commander hatch, so that she’d be clear of Dawson, and then I crawled around the turret and sat down in my crew seat. Jo hopped onto my lap and threw her arms around me. “How are you holding up, kiddo? Do you remember what your job is for now?”