Books of the Dead (Book 3): Dead Man's Land (6 page)

Chapter 11

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

The team had come together in a haphazard fashion, with men scrambling this way and that.  Brandon did his best to bring order to the chaos, but Paige’s expedition took them all by surprise. 

Russell wanted to leave right away, but Brandon insisted they gather a team and outfit it properly. Everyone had to have two weapons and a backup, along with enough ammunition to last in a small scale war. Russell fretted over every lost second. Brandon conceded and cut a few corners, leaving them a man short, in his opinion, and without a couple weapons he felt they should have. 

In the end, they were out and on the road in just twenty minutes. The air was moist and heavy with a thin layer of fog blanketing the road as they sped along.  Brandon was at the wheel, and Russell had the shotgun seat. Travis and Devin were in the backseat. Devin looked his usual nervous self, fidgeting with his gun most of the way.  They’d have left him home, but Brandon insisted that the team have at least four people. Travis, on the other hand, seemed distracted, looking out the side window for most of the trip. Brandon had questioned taking him at all, but he was one of the best marksmen they had.

Brandon had the pedal to the metal, as the truckers used to say, reaching eighty on the straightaways and swerving in and around abandoned cars, barely keeping the truck on the road.  Whereas preparation had been everything for Brandon, execution was a bit sloppy.  This recklessness only added to Devin’s anxiety as he felt he was about to toss up his breakfast at any moment.   

They didn’t set a land speed record but made it to the edge of town in nearly record time. They only slowed on the final curve into town. (If they hadn’t, they would have most certainly ended up down in the ravine along the side of the road.)

Just as they got around the curve, they immediately saw the worst of it. The picture was an ugly one.  The truck Paige had commandeered sat just a hundred yards down the road, burning out of control, flames leaping into the morning sky.  There was a body in the street beside the truck, and zombies surged toward the scene. The zombies weren’t alone.  A spray of bullets came from somewhere in front of the burning truck and tore into it, sending pieces of safety glass into the air like a shower of glittering jewels.  

Russell watched in horror as the zombies approached. 

“Those are the controlled zombies,” Travis said, his voice rising with each word.

“What?” Brandon asked.

“Look at the wires on the sides of their heads,” Travis said pointing toward the zombies.  “They use some sort of device to control them”.

“What does that mean?” Brandon asked.

“That means the guy who controls zombies is still alive.”

Russell scanned the scene for any sign of Paige. Through the smoke from the burning truck, he saw someone moving and immediately recognized Paige as she stood and fired down the road through the flames. 

Brandon slammed the brakes, sending everyone in the truck forward as the truck’s tires smoked to a stop. Russell grabbed for his door handle, but Brandon pulled him back.

“Not so fast,” Brandon shouted.

“But Paige is down there,” Russell said.

“You won’t do her any good rushing down there,” Travis said, leaning over the back seat.

“We need to know what’s going on first.”

“There’s no time to plan,” Russell said, trying to pull away, but Brandon held him fast.

Russell tried to pull away, but Brandon jerked him across the seat and said, “We don’t need to put it on paper, but we’re not rushing in there. Got it?”
              Russell tried to yank away again, but gave in when Brandon refused to let go and he slumped back against his seat.

“We’ve got another vehicle on the scene,” Rex said over the walkie-talkie.  As predicted, Rex and his team had arrived too late to intercept the initial truck, but the camouflaged set of spikes Anthony had set in the street had worked to perfection, taking out the tires of the intruder’s truck.  When the bus arrived on the scene, they saw the truck sitting in the center of the street like a beached whale. 

Three people, all with rifles, stood outside their vehicle, assessing the damage.  A man with bushy hair sat in the driver’s seat, nervously drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. The woman was tall and leggy with dirty blond hair.  She looked like a cat about to jump in the air at the slightest of provocations.  Of the two men outside the truck, one was a stubby little guy wearing a ball cap, and the other was big and broad, with a thick black beard and mustache reminding Rex of a wrestler.  Rex sensed that if one of them meant trouble, it would be the big one.

They reacted almost immediately when the bus eased onto the scene, pulling their rifles out and taking defensive postures beside the truck.  From his view from the bus, Rex noticed that the women looked the most afraid while the men seemed more perplexed. They had no idea what was about to come down on them, and Rex liked that. 

He quickly put his team into action, pinning down the intruders with some well-spaced shots from their assault rifles. The man with the beard took a chance and ran to the side of the street for cover. The woman with dirty blond hair fired immediately on the bus, peppering it with bullets.  Roy returned fire, and she was forced to find cover behind the truck. The driver ducked down in the front seat.

Too bad for him
, Rex thought as he pulled out his rocket propelled grenade launcher.  Anthony’s toy box was filled with all sorts of surprises.

As Rex aimed the RPG, the woman recognized just how much trouble she was in and sprinted away from the truck. The stubby little man waddled behind the truck for all the good that would do him.

Rex pulled the trigger, and a split second later, the truck exploded into a ball of flame, sending pieces of metal in every direction. The man inside was toast.  Blackened and burnt toast barely good for eating, but the zombies didn’t care. They’d eat almost anything. 

The force of the blast lifted the stubby guy off his feet and threw him ten feet down the road.  A piece of the back panel, sent flying by the explosion, had nearly sliced his head off.  A jagged piece of metal protruded from his neck. He ended up lying face down in an expanding puddle of his own blood, never really knowing what hit him.

What was left of the truck burned freely.
Two down
, Rex thought,
two to go
.

As the two survivors scattered for cover, Rex and his crew put their soldiers into action.  The zombies, driven by the corrective shocks to the pain centers in their brains, bore down on the intruders as if it were a Black Friday sale and they were first in line.
This was going to be a fun
, he thought. 

The arrival of the second vehicle cut down on the ‘fun factor’ somewhat, but he’d deal with it.   He decided it was a prudent move to check in with Anthony on this new development.

“How many are there in the second truck?”  Anthony asked over the walkie-talkie. 

“There’s only one truck.  Maybe four to six at most.”

“Do you have the soldiers deployed?” Anthony asked.

“Yes, they’re on the move,” Rex said.  He felt a small sense of pride at the efficiency of how Roy and Maggie had moved into action and put the zombies into play.  Anthony’s constant demands for practices and drills paid off, he’d certainly gave the boss man credit for that.  Before the Outbreak, Rex had been a beer swilling, mostly unemployed lout, barely keeping his ass out of jail due to his drinking and bad temper.  Under Anthony’s tutelage, Rex had found his purpose: discipline and dealing out the pain -- in small and big doses. Having a purpose was good in Rex’s book. 

A shot winged off the front of the bus. Rex tracked it to the bearded man who had taken up a position behind an abandoned car, canted halfway into the street and on the sidewalk. 

“No way, asshole,” Rex said and ran his fingers over his control keypad. A set of zombies split off from the main group, heading away from the burning truck and towards the abandoned car. 

Rex keyed his walkie-talkie and said, “Maggie, you keep moving your set down the left side of the road. Roy, take up a position behind the house on the right.  Do
not
let anyone up the side street. You copy that?”
              Roy replied, “I’ve got it.”

Anthony had planned this intercept point well, making sure the vehicle was disabled before they could get to an escape route on one of the side streets.  It was a near perfect choke point.  Intruders would have to either bull their way toward the Stag Bar on the west side of the road or the used car lot on the east side of the road.  Rex and his crew would do everything in their power to make that as difficult and painful as possible. 

Rex reflected that he’d done a lot of good drinking in the Stag.  He had also done a lot of good ass kicking in there, too.  Today wasn’t going be any different.  He felt the familiar giddiness he always experienced before he stomped someone’s ass into the ground. It tingled through his body, and he welcomed it.

Brandon slammed the truck in reverse and sent it hurtling backwards.

“Where are we going?” Russell shouted, his voice rising in pitch.

“We’re sitting ducks out here in the open,” Brandon said as he angled the truck for a driveway, just off to the east of the road, behind a thick stand of trees.  “That truck looked like it had been hit with something -- an RPG or a bazooka.”  He jammed the brakes and brought the truck to a jerking stop.

“Everybody out,” Brandon shouted and jerked his door open. 

Russell didn’t need any urging and jumped out immediately. Travis leapt out just behind him.  Devin sat frozen in his seat.

“Devin, get out. We need you,” Brandon said as he walked to the back of the truck.  He opened the tailgate and started yanking out bags.  He rifled through them and started handing out extra ammunition and gave two grenades a piece to Russell and Travis.

“Devin, get out!” Brandon shouted. 

“He’s afraid,” Travis whispered.

“We’re all afraid, but we need him to man up and get his ass out of the truck.”

“I’ll get him out,” Travis said and went to coax Devin out of the truck.

An exchange of gunfire sounded down the road, making Russell jump.  From their current vantage point, he couldn’t see what was going on, but every impulse told him to run in the direction of the burning truck.  Paige wasn’t going to last long if they didn’t get there as fast as they could. Her life expectancy was numbered in seconds, not minutes.

“We need to use these woods as cover to get down the road as fast as we can,” Brandon told Russell, pointing to the trees along the east side of the road.  He reached into the back of the truck and pulled out something long and thin, wrapped in a blanket. “You and me are going to make a run for the trees on the other side of the road.”

“But that’ll put us out in the open,” Russell said, looking at the wide-open space of the four lane road.

“I know that, but it’ll give me the best angle to fire on those bastards with this,” Brandon said as he pulled the blanket off his very own rocket propelled grenade launcher.  “Two can play this game, mother fucker.”  He glared down the road.

Travis walked up beside them with Devin in tow.  Devin looked as if he were about to jump out of skin, but he was there.  For how long, no one could guess.

The firefight continued down the road, but Russell wondered how much ammunition Paige could have with her.  From what he could tell, they looked as if they had been driven from the truck with little warning, leaving them disorganized and in a near state of panic.  Adding to the fear factor was the fact that along with being shot at, there were the twenty zombies headed her way.  Her options were limited.  Sooner or later, she was going to have to make a run for it, which would make her an easy target.  It was that or be eaten.  Neither were great options.

Brandon outlined his plan, and as soon as he finished, they broke into two groups with Travis in the lead with Devin and Brandon and Russell in a holding pattern until the others got into position.  

They watched as Travis and Devin rushed into a place down the road.  Travis gave an exaggerated thumbs up once they were safely tucked behind an old, rusted out pickup truck.

“You ready?” Brandon asked.

Russell’s throat felt parched, but he nodded his head.

“When we start to run, I want you to fire down the road. That’ll keep them off us.”

“Okay.”

The seconds seemed like hours for Russell.  The firefight continued, but the shooting seemed more spaced out.  Even as much aggravation as Paige had caused him lately, he knew he would do anything to save her.  He only hoped he would have the chance.

A burst of shots echoed up the road, and Brandon said, “That’s our cue.  You know what you have to do.”  He stood without looking back and sprinted into the road.  Russell didn’t hesitate and followed right behind. 

When they hit the center of the four lanes, Russell stopped momentarily and looked down the road, spotting Travis and Devin, rising up into a shooting position.  They let loose with a vicious barrage and focused their fire on the bus, blowing out its windows and sending a shower of glass into the cab.