Dead Surge (12 page)

“Yeah, let’s find out what the others are shooting at. Maybe they got lucky.” I walked away and Charlie held back, adjusting the sling on his rifle. I was about fifty feet away when I turned back and meant to say, ‘You coming?’

Only what I said was, “Charlie, behind you!” I couldn’t shoot. I could only watch helpless as a little zombie boy, running like a fiend from Hell, burst from his hiding place and raced for Charlie’s unprotected back.

Had it been anyone else but Charlie, they would have died, myself included. Charlie dropped to one knee, pivoted around. In the same motion, he unslung a tomahawk and had it swinging just in time to smash it into the snarling, hissing face of the little Z. I had never seen Charlie move so fast in the entire time I had known him, and for a second I had to wonder if he hadn’t been taking it easy on me all these years of practice.

I almost congratulated him, but I choked off the noise when a second zombie raced out of hiding, and launched itself at Charlie. Charlie was stuck trying to remove his ‘hawk from the dead boy’s head, unable to stop the little bastard. His hands shot forward to ward off the Z when suddenly she was hurled back, her head blasted apart by a .45 caliber bullet.

We jogged over to where we thought the shots had come from, and skidded to a halt as four rifles came up to zero in on us before we were recognized. Sarah and Rebecca came over to see the two of us, and Duncan and Tommy were looking over a pair of small forms on the ground.

“What have we got here? A couple blocks from here, we found two more.” I said.

Duncan answered. “These little guys were hanging around this building, not sure why. We thought they were living until we got close enough, and Tommy saw they had been bitten on the arms.”

Sure enough, they were both sporting matching bite marks in their upper arms. I found that to be odd, but this whole situation was turning into one big WTF moment.

“Wonder why they were hanging around here?” Sarah asked.

In answer, a door to the building, which was the town hall and community center, slowly opened. Charlie and I stood in front of it, but the rest of the crew spread out to have clear fields of fire.

Out into the open came a very thin figure, looking extremely haggard, yet very much alive. He still wore his weapons, but he looked like he hadn’t slept in a while, and his last meal was a distant memory. His eyes were clear, which helped, and they locked right onto mine.

Chapter 26

“John Talon, I presume?” said the man, stumbling over and standing by the little corpses. He looked down and shook his head. “Hope you got the other two.”

It took me a minute to recognize the man, given his appearance, but it was still a shock. “I’ll be damned. Richard Loftuss. What the hell is going on out here?”

Richard shook his head. “Those little fuckers had me bottled up in that building for the last week. I managed to kill three of them, but the rest stayed out of sight, and I didn’t have the ammo to hunt the rest of them. They wouldn’t let me sleep, banging on the doors all night long, and I had no shot at them when they did.” Richard took a deep breath. “Anyone else make it away from the camp?”

Charlie shook his head. “We killed everyone over there, they had all turned.”

Richard hung his head for a minute, and then looked up at me. “You can’t blame me for running. They were tearing us apart before I knew what was happening. I had gone to the riverside to piss, and suddenly the place exploded. Screams and shots, and glowing eyes running everywhere.” He shook himself, and took a step back. “I fell into the river and made for the other side, hoping I could at least open up on the bastards from the riverbank. By the time I got to the other side, it was all over. I ran like hell for the town, figuring to rally the people here and make a stand.”

Duncan spoke up. “What happened to this town?”

Richard shook his head. “They were gone when I got here. No idea where anyone was. I got chased all the way from the river, and by luck found this place open. Most of the horde moved on, those four stayed to get me.”

“I was about at the end of things when I heard your shots and figured… Aaahhhh!!!”

Richard screamed as one of the little corpses suddenly lunged and locked its teeth onto his ankle, tearing at the flesh and spilling blood onto the street. Richard fell back, rolling away from the zombie, while Tommy fired from the hip, hitting the zombie in the head and killing it for good.

“Let it go. Happens sometimes,” I said. I went over to Richard and squatted down by him. He was gripping his ankle and gritting his teeth. He had calmed down, somewhat.

“Go figure. Hold them off until rescued, then they play dead until someone gets close.” He was breathing heavy, and I knew what was coming.

“Sorry, Richard. Can you tell us anything about what we’re dealing with here?” I asked.

Richard smiled sickly and shook his head. “Your man’s screw-up killed me. Go to hell.” He suddenly pulled his gun and pointed it at Duncan. Charlie’s bullet took Richard in the head and he fell back, his life spilling out of a new hole in his head.

I stood up and looked over at my crew. Duncan was shaking his head, Charlie was frowning, Rebecca and Sarah were looking worried, and Tommy was poking the other zombie with his rifle.

“Well, we actually have a few more answers than we did, and we know what we’re dealing with for sure. We’ve got to find some place to hole up for the night, if these things are in the area,” I said.

Duncan spoke up. “John, I’m…”

I cut him off. “Don’t apologize. He should have known better. For all his help, he should have stayed at his camp and died there.” I was angry at Richard’s selfishness, and angry at the situation. “We need to find a place to spend the night, and we need to talk, but this isn’t the place.”

I walked away from the scene and Sarah stepped in beside me, with Charlie and Rebecca behind us, and Tommy following. Duncan brought up the rear, after taking another long look at the mess on the ground.

We piled into the vehicles and drove away from Hastings, leaving behind Richard Loftuss and his killers. The sun was nearly down, and I wanted to find a place to spend the night safely. I didn’t know where the band of little zombies was, and I wanted to make sure we weren’t on a collision course.

Sarah wanted to talk when we got into the vehicles, but I shook my head. I was realizing we had made one right move and several wrong ones, but since we knew what we were now dealing with, we had to make the right moves, and we needed to do it as a group.

Chapter 26

I drove on Route 34 for about fifteen miles until I found what I was looking for. On the south side of the road was a grain elevator complex, and four huge silos were standing like silent sentries over the plains of Iowa. We were just north of Red Oak and Red Oak’s airport, but I wasn’t interested in the town this evening. I had no idea if Red Oak was alive at all, and I wasn’t going to go exploring in the night. We had about twenty minutes left of daylight and we still had a lot to do.

I pulled the truck into the complex and around to the silos. I drove the truck right into the middle of the four towers, having barely enough room to pass through the south two of them and parked, giving Charlie enough space to park alongside me. The two vehicles took up most of the space in the courtyard of the silos. Above us, grain chutes crossed each other from tower to tower, forming a large X above our heads. To the north, we could see the road we had just left. To the west were just fields, and to the east and south were the maintenance buildings and control centers. A brick tower on the south reached up to the night sky, nearly as tall as the silos themselves.

As I got out of the truck, Sarah made a comment about feeling as if she was at the bottom of a well, but Charlie nodded approvingly at my choice.

“Good control of access points. Four bottlenecks that we could hold for a long time. Nice one,” he said.

I shrugged. “When in Iowa…” I motioned for everyone to gather around, and I spread a map onto the bed of the truck. It was the one with the black circles. “Here’s where we are,” I said, pointing to a spot outside of Red Oak. Red Oak was one of the black circles, and it was a concern, because it was one of the larger cities in the area. “We have to figure that the band of little zombies has been through this area and are fast moving east. Chances are they aren’t after anything specific. They are just building their army with more and more little ones. That would explain why the only ones left in the last towns were adults.” There were murmurs at this, but I pressed on. “What I think our best course of action right now is to get ahead of them, warn the towns to re-fortify against the threat, and maybe get a chance to strike at these things.”

I put away the map and Charlie and Sarah nodded. Tommy had that look on his face and Rebecca was thoughtful as well. Duncan was the first to break the silence.

“What I don’t get,” Duncan began, “is how these little bastards came into being in the first place? It flies in the face of everything we know about the zombies.”

Before I could answer, Rebecca spoke up. “Actually, it doesn’t,” she said. “We’ve known for a long time that the virus took out the host and reanimated the body. One of the things we’ve also known is the older the host at the time of infection, the slower and more limited it was. The younger the host, the faster and more capable.”

We all nodded and waited for her to go on. We were familiar with this stuff, Rebecca continued. “The thing we didn’t realize was the body resisted in layers when it came to the brain. Typically, the brain will shut down non-functioning systems in an effort to save itself. This isn’t new. However, what happened was the layers were responsible for different aspects of a person’s development. The deeper the destruction, the less capable the zombie. What I think happened with these zombies, and is happening with the ones they are infecting, is the layers aren’t being completely stripped away, and what’s left is infected, but relatively intact.”

I had to speak up. “Okay, you lost me in the layers, there. What are you saying?” Charlie nodded in agreement. Apparently, he was lost, too.

Rebecca smiled. “Okay, think of a brain as being capable of certain things based on size. A lizard is capable of limited functions, no learning capability, and no emotion. A cat has limited functions based in instinct, limited learning capability, and limited emotion. A dog has increased functions, superior learning capability, and the ability to feel true emotions. What I think happened with these zombies is they have had much of their brains wiped out, but a good portion remained, albeit infected. They are probably as smart as cats, but unable to feel any emotion. They are exhibiting pack behavior, and probably have a leader.”

We all let that sink in. It fit with everything we had seen so far, and possibly gave us a chance to predict future behavior. It seriously changed the rules of engagement, and we would have to hunt them, while being hunted ourselves.

Duncan suddenly spoke up. “The school!”

Sarah looked over. “Explain.”

Duncan smiled. “Remember the school in Glenwood that looked like it had been occupied, but a door was open? Anyone want to bet that’s where our little band of marauders came from there?”

Duncan had a point. During the Upheaval, a lot of schools had been used as safe points for keeping kids out of harm’s way. It wasn’t inconceivable that a group had been holed up at a school, got infected, turned, and eventually figured out how to get out of the school.

“No bet. My guess is we need to skip these towns here, move as fast as we can to find an uninfected town, and start the warning process. Then we can alert the army and get them out here. The only thing we have going for us at this point is we’re able to move faster and we have the river to keep them from Illinois.”

We broke apart and went to our various places to rest. Sarah and I stayed in the truck while Duncan and Tommy slept in the van. Charlie and Rebecca went up to the tower across the way, with the notion of being in a high spot in case of attack.

Chapter 27

In the morning, we got back on the road and moved into the town of Red Oak. Red Oak was a big town with a decent sized population. The upside was it had weathered the Upheaval pretty decently, and a lot of people from surrounding areas had come here for protection and to escape the isolation of the farm country. Instead of a fence or border, they had gone the route of everyone being responsible for protection, and had built observation towers around the town to warn of any dangers. They relied on communication and everyone doing their part. You couldn’t live there if you didn’t want to contribute or participate.