Brent Acuff - Undead Nation 02 (10 page)

Laughter erupted in the humvee.
 

"We will be flying at a maximum height of zero today, unless your driver sucks and drives you through a ditch at a high rate of speed. Should this happen, please feel free to express your concerns to everyone and no one at the same time. In all honesty, we could give a rat's ass what you think."
 

More laughter sounded out. This time they could hear it coming from the humvee behind them. "Please keep all hands and arms inside the vehicle unless you want them ripped from your body, and which point you are once again fucked. Please enjoy your ride and thank you for flying Armageddon Airlines."

Liam released the button on the radio and looked to Alex. "You ready for this?" he asked. The sounds of zombies pounding on the outside walls and doors of the building were increasing such that Alex thought the walls might come down around them.
 

"Ready as I'm going to be," he said. Turning to look at the men behind him, he asked, "Corsairs, you ready to move?"

"Get us the hell out of here!" Marshal cried from the back.
 

"Guess that's my answer," Alex said turning back to face the bay door in front of him. "Let's go."

Alex jammed on the gas and the wheels spun and squealed before aging purchase. The humvee caught traction and lunged forward towards the large bay door, gaining speed quickly before slamming full force into the corrugated metal door.
 

The door to the auto bay screeched and buckled as the humvee slammed into it. Metal ripped and the door tore from its tracks and the humvee flew through into the world outside.
 

Bodies slammed off the front of the humvee, heads slamming onto the hood, others being thrown from the path of the speeding vehicle. The humvee continued forward on its destructive course leaving broken and mangled corpses in its wake. The second humvee followed close behind and was saved from the brunt if the force by the first humvee. As the lead humvee passed, other zombies stepped into the open space left only to be rammed and thrown aside by Shawn in the second humvee.
 

"Shit!" Hayden cursed as the head of a zombie exploded on the hood of the lead humvee, its brains splashed on the windshield. Almost comically, the windshield wipers flipped on and cleared the mess from their view.
 

"We're going to need to wash this car," Alex smirked as another zombie was pulled under the humvee. The vehicle lurched as the tires ground the body into the dirt. "Are the others still behind us?" Alex asked, not daring to take his eyes off the road in from of him too look.
 

"Still there," Hayden called from behind Alex. The mass of zombies had thinned significantly and it was now zombies drawn by the sound of the vehicles that were drawing the zombies to them. Alex eased his grip on the steering wheel and chanced a look out the gore covered windows to the scene around him.
 

Zombies were shuffling out of the alleys and from in between houses, slowly making their way toward the road that Alex and the others were traveling. The loud engines of the humvees were a beacon to the dead, taking their attention away from where they were to focus solely on Alex and his team. It gave him an idea.
 

"Liam, give me the radio," he asked and took the handset from his friend. Pressing the transmitter he spoke to the men following. "Hey, I know what I'm about to propose is going to seem, uh, really stupid at first, but hear me out." Alex looked to Liam and gave him a sly smile.
 

"These things are drawn to the humvees like a moth to the flame, right? Well, what if we helped out a little by drawing some of them away with us?" Alex released the button and waited for a reply.
 

"Are you fucking serious?!" came the reply over the radio. Apparently the idea wasn't going over to well with the men in the other car.
 

"I second that," Marshal chipped in from the back seat.
 

"You would," Liam barked back.
 

Alex pressed the button to explain further. "Think about it, will you? These things are slower than we are and we can drive through most of them if we have to. All we really have to do is slow down a little, just fast enough that they can't catch us, but slow enough that they will keep following. We just lead them out of town like the Pied Pipper."
 

Silence greeted Alex from the passengers in his truck and from the humvee behind him. A moment later, the radio crackled and the doctor's voice came through.
 

"Let's do it Alex. These people could use some help."

Turning to look into the faces of the men with him, Alex asked the question again. "Well?"
 

Each man nodded in turn. Only once, as if the effort to do so was immense. "Okay," Alex said returning the handset to Liam. "Let's see what we can do."

-----

Alex's plan worked, and far better than he actually thought it would. On the Corsairs drive out of Farifield, TX they were able to draw off hundreds of zombies that were wandering the streets or harassing the citizens of the town. Once they had reach a suitable distance away from the town, Liam suggested that they burn the deaders as they walked. They filled a bottle with diesel lit a rag that had been stuffed into the neck. Lobbing the cocktail as hard as he could, the bottle smashed into the lead zombies, instantly covering them in burning diesel.
 

The hordes of dead continued to follow the humvees as the flames spread through them. The team could hear popping as parts of their bodies exploded as trapped gases heated and erupted through their rotting skin. The front ranks of the dead toppled as they succumbed to the raging fire serving to blockade those behind and spread the flames as the mob continued forward.
 

Alex pulled the humvees to a stop about one hundred yards away from the flaming mass. The heat from the burning bodies was intense and could be felt by the men in the trucks even from that great a distance. The line of bodies spread to the left and right as some of the dead tried in vain to find a way around the blockade of bodies, only to be overcome by the flames, further widening the choke point. Sporadic fires flared to life in the trees and vegetation around the perimeter of the burning horde and quickly spread in to the surrounding area.

"We may have caused a big problem," Liam said quietly to everyone in the car.
 

Alex shook his head slowly at the thought. "Better the fire than the walking dead. The fires will go out. The zombies," Alex paused for a moment thinking. "The dead, the dead will never stop."

Liam looked to his friend with concern on his face. "What do you mean by that?" Liam asked. "There will be an end to this, Alex. Someday, somehow, there's going to be an end. You've got to have hope."

Alex shook his head again. "My hope is back there at the farm, Liam. And right now," he stopped and looked in the mirror at the ragging fires behind them. "Right now, I can't see any way that this is going to turn out good."

Liam snorted a bit. "You know, man. You have always been the pessimist. Look behind you," he said and pointed out the back window. "We just took out a few hundred of those things. In one fell swoop. We can do this..."

"Something is going to go very wrong with this, Liam," Alex interrupted. He looked down at the steering wheel in front of him. "I have a bad feeling."

"Hey, do you think we could get out of here?" asked Marshal from the back. "That fire's starting to get a little close."

Liam shot the man a dirty look across the back of the seat. "Keep your panties on, Nancy. We're going." Liam turned back to Alex and said, "Why don't you let me drive? You could use a break."

Alex shook his head for the third time. "No. No, I'll drive. It'll distract me some from my pessimism." Alex threw the car into drive again and pulled back into the middle of the road on their journey south.

CHAPTER NINE

Hard Choices

The humvees continued south on the back roads of Texas without much incidence throughout the day. Travel was slow due to the number of cars that littered the roadway. On several occasions Alex was forced to navigate off the road in order to bypass a particularly nasty snarl of cars. The team was lucky that they did not have any recurrence of the previous days events.
 

The Corsairs' only real problem arose when they were approaching the city limits of Bremond. A massive tangle of cars blocked the road and surrounding area into the city proper. The team pulled up short of the blockade and exited the vehicles so as to figure out how to deal with the new obstacle.
 

"What the hell happened here?" Shawn asked as he made his way around the vehicle to join everyone else.
 

"Not sure, but it looks like someone did this on purpose, maybe to keep people out..."

Trapper screamed and fell forward clutching at a his chest. The gunshot sounded a fraction of a second after.

"Get down!" Donovan yelled and pulled Shawn and Luke down behind one of the humvees. Trapper writhed on the ground, crying and grasping at a growing pool of red spreading across his chest. He was yelling something unintelligible. Dr. Cahn raced out towards the dying man.
 

"Doc, get back here!" Alex yelled and ran out to meet him. Gunshots cracked in the distance. Rocks and dirt kicked up around the two men as they reached the injured man and pulled him back to the safety of the humvees.

"Contact. Southwest. Second story of the white building," Shawn yelled out and popped around the back of the humvee to provide suppressing fire on the sniper. A second gunman took aim on the party and opened fire from the southeast, trapping the men in a crossfire.
 

"Fuck!" Marshal yelled as blood ran from a wound in his shoulder. "I'm hit!"

Dr. Cahn glanced over at the man and quickly dismissed his need for attention. "You'll live, Marshal. Now get those shooters off us!"

"What do you need, doc?" Alex asked in a hurried voice.
 

"I need for you to get those snipers off us so I can work. Now go!" Dr. Cahn pushed Alex away with a bloodied hand. Alex scrambled to the side of the second humvee where Liam was working on stemming the blood flow from Marsha's shoulder.

"They shot me," Marshal whined.
 

"And if you don't shut the fuck up and start shooting back, I'll finish what they started. Liam," Alex barked, "we need to take those guns out. Where are they?"

"Not too sure," Liam answered as he finished tying the make shift bandage around Marshal's wound.

"Ow, that hurt," Marshal cried. Liam pulled the knots tighter. "Stop it, god dammit!"

"Then do it your fucking self if you're going to bitch about it, pussy!" Liam yelled back. "Here," he said, shoving the man's carbine back into his hands. "Shoot something," and he pointed towards the buildings that hid the snipers.
 

Marshal mumbled under his breath as he pulled himself up to his knees. "Mother fucking, son of a bitch," he cursed and pulled the trigger on the Kriss Super V. "Shoot me, will you, cocksucker!"

"I think you hit a nerve," Alex smirked with more humor than he actually felt. "Well, let's shoot something." Alex and Liam popped their carbines over the hood of the humvee and took aim at separate rooftops, trying to find the source of the second shooter. Their own rifles popped as they opened fire.

In between gun bursts, Alex could hear the doctor behind him desperately trying to save Trapper's life. "I can't stop the bleeding," he cried as he worked furiously in the dirt to get at the wound. "I can't get to the bleeder."
 

Rod, tears streaming down his face, knelt by the doctor's side. His hands were shaking almost as much as his voice. "Wha...what do you need?" the boy asked, his question barely understandable. "What can I do?"

"Get back in the humvee," Dr. Cahn ordered the boy. "It's dangerous out here." As if on cue, two shots kick up dirt and rocks in front of the doctor. "Get back in..."

Rod's face exploded in a wet cloud of blood, bones, and brain matter. His body wavered momentarily where he had been kneeling next to the doctor before falling forward onto Trapper. There was a ragged gunshot wound in the back of the boy's head.

"No!" Dr. Cahn screamed and pulled at the boy's body, turning him over. "No!"

Hands grabbed at the doctor and he was pulled away from the boy's body. Alex held him behind the humvee, preventing the man from entering the crossfire again. "He's dead," Alex yelled in his ear. "They're both dead!" Trapper Lainey's body now lay still in the road, his eyes glassy and vacant.
 

"We've got to get out of here!" Alex shouted at his team. "Liam. Shawn. Get in the humvees and get them fired up. Everyone else inside. Let's move!"
 

Each man moved without hesitation and the trucks roared to life, belching thick black smoke from their exhausts. Dr. Cahn lunged for the bodies, but was caught quickly by Alex and dragged back against the humvee.
 

"There's nothing you can do about them, doctor. Not get your ass in that truck." Dr. Cahn stole at look at the two bodies lying lifeless in the road. Thick pools of blood spread around them. The doctor looked back to Alex, tears swimming in his eyes, and nodded his head once before climbing into the waiting humvee.
 

The two drivers slammed on the accelerators and cut the wheels hard. The humvees spun around, spraying dirt and rocks behind them as they fled from the area. One last shot rang out from the city of Bremond.

-----

Silence once again engulfed the team as the sped away from the ambush in Bremond. Dr. Cahn cried silently in the back seat. Most of the men were in shock, expecting that they would be dealing with the walking dead, but never anticipating that survivors of the outbreak would attack them.

Liam found and navigated the group down a narrow, almost imperceptible trail through what was once a sprawling ranch. The trail brought the team back to within sight of the city of Bremond, but allowed them to pass by without incident. Despite this lack of hostilities the second time around the city, all of the men held their breath and waited for the shooting to begin again. They were thankful that this trip was uneventful.