Carlie Simmons (Book 3): The Way Back (10 page)

Chapter 25

Eliza emerged from her teal sleeping bag
and looked around. Willis was already up and standing watch to her left, his
foot keeping the door slightly ajar. As she slithered out from her bedroll, she
immediately grabbed her Sig-Sauer pistol and shoved it into her belt. Eliza
stood up and pulled on a winter jacket that they had scavenged from an RV a few
days earlier and walked over to Willis.

“Morning, Eliza.”

She nodded at him. “Is it my imagination
or is it getting colder? Last night was chilly.”

Willis thrust his chin towards the window.
“That mountain range in the distance only had a little snow on it a few days
ago. I think winter is rolling in heavy now at the higher elevations.”

“I was so used to the heat of Tucson that
I forgot what wintertime felt like. It’s only mid-October though. Do they
usually get snow here that early?”

“I once did an evasive driving course in
Salt Lake City south of here and it snowed on us in September. The western
states are always unpredictable given all the mountain ranges and canyons which
seem to create their own unique weather systems.”

“How much further to Fort Lewis from our
present location?”

“It’s another 400 miles,” he said,
squatting down by the baseboard to grab a can of pinto beans laid out next to
their backpacks. “We need to commandeer another vehicle and be on our way
before it gets any colder.” He tossed her the can and then glanced back through
the miniscule opening. “Grab some breakfast and then we can be on our way,” he
said to her. “I saw a police impoundment lot on our way over here yesterday.
Those vehicles may be our answer if they haven’t had their fuel tanks tapped
out already. Besides, isn’t it time you learned some vehicle acquisition skills?”
he said with a grin, passing his hand through her hair.

“You know, if I had asked you about any of
this stuff a month ago, you would’ve said something like, ‘Sorry, that’s for
Secret Service eyes only’ or some James Bond shit like that. Now I can’t get
you to shut up about it,” she said, kissing him on the cheek in between a
spoonful of beans.

“Yeah, well, a month ago I wouldn’t have
even looked your way except to make sure your personal space was secure and now
I’m thinking about treating you to a proper date when we get to Fort Lewis—strictly
off the books, of course.” He paused and pulled his eyes away from her. Willis
reached forward to grab his MP-7. “We should get packed up. While you’re
grabbing some chow, I want you to run through your dry-fire pistol drills and
then your knife-fighting moves again. Remember that the novice practices until
he gets it right while…”

“While the expert practices until he can’t
get it wrong…I know…I know,” she said, smiling at him as she tossed the empty
bean can in the corner.

Willis was standing near the door, which
was partially ajar, letting some cool fresh air into the otherwise stagnant
storage compartment, when he heard the muffled sound of a woman shouting.

He opened the metal door an inch further
and peered out. A lady clad in jeans and a green sweater was running down the
hill to the west, heading towards town. Her stumbling gait revealed her fatigue
and she kept turning back over her right shoulder and screaming.

Behind her were three men on ATVs. All
three were dressed in mismatched cowboy jean jackets and camouflage fatigues.
Mounted on the handlebars of each rig were M4 rifles. As the woman crested the
hill and ran down the gravel road away from the weather station where Willis
was standing, she lost her footing and somersaulted down the opposite side,
landing in a thicket of rabbitbrush, her long brunette hair getting tangled in
the branches.

The three men sped up and came to a halt
before her then disembarked from their vehicles. They surrounded the young
woman, who was backpedaling in terror as she squealed for help. She was
clutching the right side of her ribs, which revealed a splatter of blood.

Willis had already stepped outside the
door with his rifle and scanned the area to his right side and rear for other
hostiles. He moved up to a low boulder on the left side of the road, kneeling
on one leg and aiming his rifle. As the first goon slumped forward with a rear
headshot, the next man was struck in the side of the jaw, swiveling his torso
as another round caught him in the neck. Willis saw the third figure, an
overweight thug with long sideburns and a green bandanna, turn and pull out his
pistol. Before the man had raised the weapon, Willis planted two rounds in the
right shoulder region. This caused the portly figure to topple backwards into
the shrubs.

As Willis stood and re-examined the
surrounding countryside for other hostiles, Eliza burst past him and ran down
the hill towards the woman, her rifle slung on her shoulder.

The disheveled woman was crawling away
when Eliza came up alongside her.

“Hey, it’s OK. They can’t hurt you
anymore.”

The woman tried to get up but tripped on
some loose gravel and plunked straight down. She was holding her side and
moaning while retreating against a pile of rocks. She reached back and grabbed
an oblong stone, raising it up. Eliza stepped back and motioned with her hands
that she wasn’t a threat.

The woman glanced over at the three men
slumped on the ground. She started to lower the rock when she saw Willis
standing over the injured thug in the bushes.

“We’re not going to hurt you.”

The woman lowered the rock and began
fluttering her eyelids as she began to faint and slump backwards. Eliza rushed
forward and caught the woman before she collapsed. She was pale and struggled
to lift her head as Eliza tried to support her limp figure. 

“Where did you come from?”

The woman slowly raised a grimy finger and
pointed to the east. “You have to go. There are more of them coming. They’re
luring more zombies back this way again.” She sat up, wincing as she held on to
her side. “They’re coming.” She gasped in air and tried to speak as her chest
quaked with spasms from her internal injuries. “Get to Yakima. You’ll be safe.
Tell my people there that Jennifer told you to…to come.” The woman’s eyes
became glassy, the irises reflecting a passing cloud overhead.

Eliza looked behind her and saw Willis
standing with his boot on the injured man’s shoulder, asking questions. The man
was clearly in pain but only responding with racial slurs and threats about
what his friends would do to him. Willis slid the heel of his boot along the
man’s throat. Eliza averted her eyes and then heard a crunching sound as the thug
went silent.

Willis walked up beside Eliza and squatted
down. “We need to get out of here ASAP. Let’s use those ATVs to head back
towards town to the police impoundment lot I mentioned. From there we’ll see
about acquiring another vehicle and being on our way.”

As the woman lay lifeless in Eliza’s arms,
her long brunette hair fell back from her face and shoulders, revealing a
leather collar around her neck identical to the one that she had seen on the
mutant that killed General Adams.

Chapter 26

Shane tapped the surface of his scratched
wristwatch and looked at the time:
0820
—
we should be good on fuel for
another hour and arriving at the federale airstrip by then. Let’s hope that
place is still intact.
The last three hours since they left their island
sanctuary near Cancun had seen them flying over desert landscape that was
interspersed with burnt-out cities, homesteads, and entire regions devoid of
human life. The endless trudge of the undead flowing over the countryside
below, like currents of hungry fire-ants, provided the sole indication of
movement in the arid topography. If any people were alive, they were deep in
some wilderness bunker or in an underground lair in the city. It looked like
the dead still ruled the daylight hours and man had been reduced to a low-level
scavenger dwelling on the fringes of their once great urban centers.

The scenes below reminded Shane of many
missions in war-torn nations in Africa but this time there were no eager
village children rushing through the streets awaiting military aid. This time
only the undead provided a skyward gaze as they greedily pawed at the air.

By mid-morning they had reached an
abandoned airstrip that was nestled in a valley choked with Saguaro and Organ
pipe cactus, their columnar forms the only signs of life in the otherwise
barren region. As Matias circled the region, they saw a small Quonset hut
hangar, two Cessnas, and a tan jeep.

“Looks good so far,” said Shane. “Now
let’s hope there’s fuel and no tangos, eh.”

The helicopter landed softly on the
helipad near the rear of the tarnished metal hangar. Everyone hopped out and
formed a defensive perimeter around the platform while Matias checked on the
gas pumps.

“These look full but they’re locked.”

Jared came over and glanced at the hefty
padlocks securing the main activation lever that was at the base of the pump.
“These would take me some time to pick even with the right tools. What are the
chances of locating the keys?”

“Let’s find out,” said Carlie. “Matias—you
and Pavel stay here while the rest of us check out the hangar.”

The half-moon-shaped structure was two hundred
feet long by eighty feet wide and made of corrugated steel that was bolted to a
cement slab. It had one main bay door wide enough for a plane to fit through
and two doors beside it.

As Carlie approached she peered through
the dust-covered security window. “I can’t see anything.” She grabbed the
handle and turned it while the others prepared for a dynamic room entry. As she
yanked on the handle and began to push the heavy door in, a rotund creature
with wrinkled cheeks flung itself at her. Its ulcerated face was yellow with
oozing red sores. It snapped its mouth viciously at her as she slammed the butt
of her rifle into its hip, causing it to spin towards Jared, who quickly thrust
his fixed blade into the side of its skull.

“Shit,” Carlie yelled as she looked
through the doorway to see a half-dozen creatures rushing to the entrance. She
reached back and grabbed the handle, yanking the door shut. “What are those
things doing inside there? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Probably the flight maintenance crew or
mechanics,” said Amy. “Maybe they were trying to make it to a plane here and
got infected?”

“We need those keys,” said Shane as the
zombies inside slammed themselves against the door frame, rocking the
corrugated panels to either side.

“Jared and I will go around to the other
side and see if we can sneak in that way while you keep them distracted here,”
Carlie said.

After trotting around the back, Carlie
slowly opened the elephant-gray door to peer inside. She could see the cluster
of creatures still frantically pawing at the door on the far side of the
hangar. She looked back at Jared while lowering her rifle. “We can’t risk using
firearms inside as there are probably a lot of volatile fluids we could set
off.” She slid her machete out and coiled her arm into a fighting position
while getting ready to open the door further.

Jared grimaced as he withdrew his blade. “If
I never had to slice open one of those rotting cantaloupe heads again, I’d be a
happy man.”

“Such is life, eh?”

Once they were inside, they slid past a
truck and made their way along the left wall, ducking between oil drums and crates
of airplane parts. Thirty feet from the zombies was a wall-mounted cabinet with
a clipboard beside it. Using hand signals, Carlie motioned back to Jared for
him to move forward while she provided cover. He lowered into a hunch and crept
over to a workbench then up to the white cabinet. It was locked so he slid the
tip of his blade under the lip of the door and began prying. A second later,
the flimsy lock broke, causing the door to swing open, sending a few dozen keys
clanking onto the floor. The six creatures immediately stopped clawing at the
door and turned with interest towards Jared.

He looked back at Carlie who tilted her
head and smirked. Without hesitation she lifted a heavy lug-wrench off a nearby
table and used an overhand serve to fling the chunk of steel at the nearest
zombie. The yielding flesh on its forehead made the sound of a fist sinking
into dough, the beast quickly collapsing onto the gritty cement floor. Jared
was busy scooping up all the keys while Carlie began engaging the others.

“A little help in here,” she shouted as
she whacked another across the top of its skull, removing four inches of its
dome like it was a lid on a sugar jar. Shane and Amy burst through the door and
attacked the others, dropping one each with overhand machete strikes to the
back of their putrid heads. Then Shane shuffled forward like a fencer, moving
after a lanky creature wearing greasy coveralls that was headed towards Jared.
Shane grabbed a steel mallet off the workbench and vigorously slammed it down
on its cranium, which made the sound of a tree branch splintering.

Carlie had just finished slaying the last
beast when Shane walked up to her, tossing the goopy mallet aside. “You know we
could’ve skipped you two sneaking around and just done this from the get-go,”
he said, grinning.

“Don’t look at me—it was boy genius over
there who wanted to try a new lockpicking method.”

Jared stood up with a palmful of dusty
keys. “The end justifies the means, my fellow castaways.”