Beyond the Barriers (Novella): Ghouls (27 page)

I settled back on the cot and stared at the ceiling. Someone had left a pile of magazines in a corner but who cared about that shit anymore? Damn world was gone and I was supposed to read celebrity gossip? Hell, most of those chumps were dead anyway if Los Angeles went down like San Diego.

The enclosure was huge and filled with sorry sorts. We walked up and down aisles before deciding that if someone came for this pair of cots they’d have to be bigger and meaner to make us move.

People moved in and out of the area. Kids cried. Babies howled. Mothers shushed, and fathers looked dour.

“When do we tell them we’re enlisted?” I asked Joel quietly.

Joel leaned over close and whispered. “I don’t know if we should. Something weird about this base.”

I had to agree with Joel’s assessment. Since we’d arrived no one had answered our questions. They told us there’d be time for that later. We should settle in, relax and eat. No one would come clean about what was going on.

I’d tried to ask a few people, but they were all tightlipped. Then I found a guy named Edward Bowls. He was in his mid-fifties and coughed all the time. One time I thought I saw his hand come away with blood but he covered it up.

“It’s bad out there,” he’d said when no one else was around. “They try to make it seem like this is isolated but it’s not. The states are falling fast and there doesn’t seem to be anyway to stop the spread of the virus. It doesn’t get everyone but it gets most. Some have managed to setup battle lines and quarantine zones. I heard that Montana is pretty clear but there ain’t shit in that state to begin with, just a bunch of open space. Plus everyone’s got guns.”

“So not everywhere is as bad as San Diego.”

“Yeah but some places are worse. I heard Lee was up north and is heading back up there. Lee’s in charge I guess, cept he ain’t military.” Edward leaned over and coughed until he was out of breath.

“He’s not? He sure seems like it.” I tried to play it cool.

“Some group of mercenaries. That’s what I heard. I guess he was over in Afghanistan spreading freedom with a machine gun before his boys got called back home.”

“Mercenaries.” Joel swore.

“That bad?” I asked but neither one answered.

“I heard stuff and it wasn’t pretty,” Joel said and put his arm over his eyes.

I lay back on the hard cot and tried not to think. That lasted for about fifteen seconds.

“So mercenaries, like Black Water. US has been using them for years, right?”

“I guess, man. I never ran into them when I was over there.”

What if Lee had been right? What if Christy was one of them? What if monkeys flew out of my ass? One thing I’d learned in this new world was to stop dwelling on the what-if’s. All those got you was a big cup of regret and not much else.

But questions swirled around my head. Craig was fine all day and the night before. What was different about the disease when it attacked him? Why was it delayed?

Then it hit me. He’d gone back to Roz’s house and secured some of our gear. What if one of the things had gotten at him and he kept that part of her trip quiet?

Shit.

“Are you sure you didn’t you see any sign of the virus in Craig?” I asked Joel.

“You’ve asked me that a hundred times. I don’t know, man, I was there too and I don’t know.”

“Right? I know he was fine. I know it. Lee had no right to do what he did.”

“Lee’s probably gone now, so what are you gonna do?” Joel asked me.

“Go after him? Wait for him to get back. I don’t care. I just want a chance at his ass.”

“He seems to be in charge or something. Weird that he doesn’t wear any insignia but everyone knows who he is.”

“He’s an asshole,” I said.

“Truer words, brother.”

Joel rolled over and covered his head with his pillow.

Asshole.

We woke to screams.

I sat up in semi-darkness and felt around for my side arm. It was under my pillow, that’s right. Tucked next to a backup mag. Joel was on his feet and checking over his own weapon. We weren’t the only ones. There were so many armed folks you’d think we were at an NRA sleep over.

A guy dressed in fatigues ripped the tent entrance open and shouted over the rows of cots.

“Up. Everyone up. Move quickly to the landing pad. Choppers are arriving. When you get the sign, you keep low and get on board. Got it? You don’t listen and you get left behind.”

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. My head felt like it was full of cotton and my eyes were gummed shut. Joel was already strapping on his gear and appeared to have been up for hours. I wished I had a double dose of energy drink, then a bottle of whiskey to wash that shit back with. Thai whiskey. I’d crush a few heads for some.

The civilians around us rose and packed quickly. Kids were quieted and shuffled out. It didn’t turn into a panic until the guns started to boom outside.

I pushed through the throng with Joel Kelly close behind. Roz was on her feet with a backpack over her shoulder. She tugged out a handgun and held it at her side.

Christy stuck to her side but she was clenching her fists open and shut over and over again. I dropped my pack to the ground and opened it. Moving things around, I found what I was looking for.

“Don’t shoot anyone. You know how these work, right?”

It was the little Sig Sauer 229 I’d found on Monster Ken an eternity ago.

Christy took the gun and looked it over. She racked the slide back to inspect the chamber and then let it slam shut.

“I’ve played a lot of video games.”

“Good,” I said. “Now don’t shoot anyone unless they’re a threat.”

“Yep.”

She lifted her head and nodded at me. Confidence, though a spark at best, showed.

“What now?” Roz yelled over the noise.

I tried to smile at Roz but it came out as a sneer. She thumped me in the chest, then kissed her fingers and smacked me across the cheek, not too hard, kind of a love tap. Then she did the same to Joel Kelly.

“Let’s go kick some ass,” Kelly said.

“Or haul ass,” I said.

Together we navigated the throng and moved to the entrance.

Our quarters weren’t even two hundred feet from the entrance to the base so we got a quick appraisal of the action and it wasn’t good. Not good at all.

Joel must not have believed his eyes because he moved toward the gate. The wrong way. Stupid jarhead.

Civilians streamed past us in a panic, clutching children close. A man lugged a huge suitcase a few feet then looked over his shoulder and gasped. He tossed the bag to the side of the pathway and started to push through the crowd.

Men and women, some in white gowns and others in wheel chairs spewed out of the hospital doors. Other’s watched from windows with huge eyes.

I watched too. I watched and I got scared.

As far as the eye could see they came. The mass was the largest I’d seen yet, even surpassing the horde that we’d spotted moving through the city. They stumbled toward the fence in their greed for human flesh.

It wasn’t an easy task to navigate the traps and bodies left to rot from the previous incursion, but they came at us anyway. They poured over the remains of the crashed chopper we’d arrived in. They came even though gunfire smashed into them from a running squad making their way for the gate.

An enemy with any sense would have ducked and moved as they sought to find firing positions. These had no care in the world for tactics. These monsters just wanted to eat.

The dead numbered in the thousands, or maybe even the tens of thousands.

Guns opened up in force this time. They fired without respite, .50 cals along the outside walls and men positioned over the newly constructed mesh gate. If we thought we were safe, it was an illusion. As soon as they hit the chain link, our safety, that illusion was gone.

Joel dashed to the line and tapped a gunner on the shoulder. The other man didn’t look at him, just kept on shooting. Joel pulled his pistol, took careful aim, and fired.

Joel was like that. If there was a fight he was there. I wasn’t like that. I would fight if I had too but this was too much. The men and women defending us were looking at a painful death.

If I left now I could probably slip into the mass of people and use my size to my advantage to fight my way to the front of the line. If there was a truck or chopper headed away from this mess, I wanted to be on it.

Who was Joel Kelly anyway? Just a guy I’d been stuck with since our boat was overrun. We’d put up with each other for days. We’d argued, fought together, and even come to be friends. I’d saved his life and he’d saved mine.

“Take the kid and go,” I said to Roz. “Just go. I’ll be there soon.”

“Fuck you, sailor boy. I’m getting in this war.”

Christy grinned up at her. Who the hell was I to tell them to run away?

Jesus Christ, was I the only sane one? Now was my chance. I hadn’t asked to be shackled with this bunch. I might be better off on my own.

Who was I kidding?

“Oh, fuck a duck!” I said and went to join Joel.

I wasn’t the only one. A number of civilians did the dumb thing, like me, and moved toward the action. They carried what weapons they could gather, mostly melee, but some had guns. Military guys roared up in jeeps and spun to expose beds laden with huge cases. These were dragged into the center of the action and broken open. Automatic weapons gleamed back at us. Cases of ammo and magazines, some full, were also left out for us.

I grabbed a machine gun of some sort, probably some gun Joel could wax poetically about for days telling me the exact length of the trigger action and round capacity. In another box I found full magazines. I picked up a box of shells and went to find a nice corner to plan my death.

The horde came on and was answered with lead. As the horde closed, and even picked up speed, it became apparent that we had minutes at most. You’d think that twenty or thirty people shooting could handle anything but we were outnumbered. For every body that fell there were five to take its place.

And there were shufflers. A lot of shufflers. They were in the pack but many of them held back as the slow ones went to do their dirty work. I swear those goddamn things still have half a brain.

The fortifications outside of the gate did a lot to help slow the dead. They got hung up on barbed wire and stuck to posts. Some were fired upon while others left to lift their hands and reach for us in vain. Losers.

I ducked and moved toward Joel Kelly. He was outside the gate, on one knee, aiming and firing with grim determination. His position was right next to an overturned truck. I touched his shoulder and he looked back and shot me a wink.

“Glad you could make it, bud.” He aimed and dropped a woman dressed in the remains of a nightgown. She fell without a sound and was quickly trampled beneath the mass behind her.

Next to him was someone I didn’t expect. Anna Sails fired in rapid succession with a gun as long as her legs, and she wielded it like a pro. She fired, shifted, aimed, fired again, and every time her gun boomed one of them dropped.

“Civilians are being moved out in trucks. Buy them time. Fall back when the horde gets close. We got a surprise for them.” A man with a bullhorn shouted at us. I thought it might be Lee and had a hastily constructed plan where he accidentally takes a bullet, but when I looked back it wasn’t him.

It didn’t take long for us to create a wall of bodies but it didn’t do much to deter them. A couple of shufflers leapt off the top and came down near some of our guys. They were quickly shot down, but it was close.

The first line must have gotten some signal. They dropped down low while the line behind them stopped firing. They scurried back and the second line opened up again. We were about fifteen feet from the gate and when they called for us to do the same.

Five or six guys ran out as we retreated. They carried bandoliers covered in metal globes. They stopped, pulled pins, and tossed a wave of grenades at the approaching horde. I was already on the run when the explosions shook the ground and I didn’t look back.

We were cutting it close. The dead were only a few feet away when Anna Sails stowed her weapon on her shoulder and ran after us. I kept an eye on her and even shot a shuffler as it leapt out of the mass. I hit him with three or four bullets but they only ripped into his body. He was blown to the side, but he was a quick one and rolled to his feet. With an Olympian leap he managed to take down one of our guys. The soldier howled in fury but got off a shot and hit the bastard in the head. Brains exploded and one of his buddies stopped to pull him out from under the corpse.

“Everyone in, now!” The guy with the bullhorn roared, so we hauled ass.

As we cleared the gate the heavy machinery we’d seen earlier in the day roared to life. A pair of fences sections had been tied to the bulldozer. It rammed into the horde with a sound that will haunt my nightmares for years to come. It came to a halt after crushing a great many of them, and then backed up with a flash of yellow lights and piercing alarm.

Joel helped Anna in but she shrugged off his hand and went to stand with a group she seemed to know. They set up a new firing line behind the fence while the rest of our guys filed inside. It was all high fives and way to go’s but not everyone was happy. Edward, the man I’d met in the mess hall, looked haunted. He also looked like he needed to find a bucket.

Behind us, civilians moved onto trucks that lurched away. Some didn’t wait and tried to crowd on to full trucks or jump on board before they had stopped moving. When the Z’s hit the fence it was pandemonium.

“We should go, Joel,” I said and grabbed his arm.

He pointed toward the crane we’d seen when we first arrived.

Its arm moved into the air, lifting a huge claw and then it swept own and cleared a path. Not even a hundred Z’s could stand up to the crane’s power as it swept back and forth.

The mass was here, though, and it was a matter of time before this entire base was overrun.

A shuffler hit the fence and tried to climb it, but Anna Sails shot him through the head.

“Yeah, it’s time,” Joel said.