Pandora 2: Death is not an Option (21 page)

Dill was about two thousand feet ahead. Crouching down behind a large Chevy Suburban, he watched as two zombies reached into the shattered driver’s-side window of a Mini Cooper and came back with pieces of flesh, which they immediately shoved into their gore-splattered mouths. So intent were they on consuming their meal, they never noticed Dill sidle up behind them with his KA-BAR combat knife at his side. One of the ghouls, a woman in a filthy, gore-soaked pantsuit and with long, matted, blond hair that was stuck to her skull, had stuck her head inside the window and was chewing on the dead driver’s face. Her companion, a thin man in a ripped, gray suit, was trying to stick his arm past her for a piece of the driver. Silently moving behind the suited zombie, Dill drove the knife through his temple. When he fell, he banged into the female ghoul. As she was pulling her head back out of the car, Dill stepped up and shoved the blade into the base of her skull. She collapsed, half in and half out of the automobile.

Wiping the blade on the zombie’s pants, Dill stood up and sheathed his knife. He had just started walking again when he heard
a strange sound. At first, he thought it was a feral cat. The third time he wasn’t so sure. He took a couple of steps toward a clear part of the road, and then he heard a scraping sound. From around the front of an old station wagon came a little boy in blue pajamas. He couldn’t have been more than six years old. His parents probably tried to escape the city at night and dressed him for bed, hoping that he’d sleep through the ordeal. He imagined that they must have been stuck in the huge traffic jam and either someone turned or they fled the car and were attacked. The catlike noise he was hearing was the small boy’s hissing growl. His little face was pale, almost white. The dull, milky-eyed stare was aimed right at Dill. There was just a torn, shredded sleeve where his right arm should have been. The little zombie bared his teeth at Dill as he started shuffling forward. It broke his heart, as he could see a spray of freckles on his waxy cheeks and the gap where his front teeth were missing, never to grow in again.

Shaking his head, Dill said softly, “Oh no, come on. This is just too fucking much.”

As the impish creature came at him, he put his foot against its chest and pushed. The little zombie fell on his back. Hissing even louder, he got back up.

“Please, just stay down.”

As the zombie again came at Dill, he pushed him down one more time. When he started to rise again, a sudden anger surged through the ex-Navy SEAL. Not at the boy but at the entire situation he was forced to be in. Dill stepped forward and slammed the butt of his rifle down on the zombie’s skull. Once. Twice. Now he lay still. Dill turned abruptly and walked away. If he stared at that little boy any longer, he would break down.

Reaching the turnoff for the road that would take them all the way to Naples and the west coast, he stopped. Taking a small pair of folding binoculars from his harness, he looked all the way down the highway. To his vast relief, it looked clear of any zombies. He walked over to look down from the overpass. There was a large number of undead roaming around below. Looking around, he spotted two ramps leading from the turnpike down to the streets below.
If we don’t cause too much noise
, he thought,
we could get through without drawing them up here
. He nodded his head.
Maybe this will work
.

Dill jogged easily back to the waiting group. He informed them of their good luck in having a clear road ahead of them.

Rube, who was watching him, noticed something was off. “You run into any zombies along the way?”

“Nah.” Dill shrugged, hesitating slightly.

“You sure?” Rube pressed.

Dill looked at him, annoyed. “I said I’m good. I just want to grab a water and chill for a sec. It’s hot as hell today.”

Rube put his hand up. “Okay, I’m cool.”

There was a long silence as everyone sipped the water and looked at his or her feet uncomfortably.

Dill and Rube were leaning on the van together, sipping water and staring off into space. Wanting to break the mood, Rube smiled slightly and said to Dill, “Hey. Remember that guy Dale back in Kandahar? Big blond dude?”

Looking down at the ground, Dill started to smile. Then he chuckled, “Yeah, Dale. Dale Saunders. Wow! That was a real wild man. Had the spotter…What was his name? Jeff something…Kandinsky. Jeff Kandinsky.”

“A spotter?” questioned Luke.

Dill was still looking down and smiling as he reminisced. “Dale was our main shooter there.” He looked up. “Sniper. Jeff would be the lookout and cover his six. They were always together.” Dill tapped Rube’s arm with the back of his hand. “Remember? We called them Chip and Dale. Like those cartoon characters.”

Rube was chuckling now also. A big grin was on his face. “Oh yeah.” He laughed. “Dale was nuts, man. But funny. Oh, shit.”

“Remember when our team caught that Taliban leader?” asked Dill.

Rube was rolling in laughter now. Everyone was listening raptly to the story.

“What happened?” Max asked, smiling.

“Well,” started Dill, now laughing heartily himself, “like I said, old Dale was a wild man. We’re holding this joker, waiting for a bird to bring in this spook so he could take him off our hands and in for interrogation. But while we’re waiting, Dale goes in to see if he can get anything out of him. Ha-ha. The guy won’t budge. A real hard-ass. He spits at Dale, calls him and his mother every name in the book.” Dill is laughing hard now. “And some that never even made it to the book. So Dale walks back out, and he’s royally pissed. Just then, we see the bird coming in with the CIA spook aboard, and we run over to greet him when he lands. Ha-ha. All except Dale. While we’re all
by the landing zone making nice to James Bond, Dale strips off all his clothes, puts a canvas sack over his head, and goes back in and beats the shit out of the terrorist fuck.

“We all get back, Dale’s with us now, and we open the door so the CIA could take their man, and he’s lying there groaning, all beat to shit. ‘What the hell is this?’ the spook starts yelling. ‘No one’s supposed to touch this guy but us! I want to know who did this, yada, yada, yada.’ Well, we all figured it out, but we said, ‘I don’t know. I guess he fell off his chair.’ Well, the CIA ain’t buying any of this shit, and they line us up and ask Mr. Taliban, ‘Who did this to you?’ He just screams out, ‘I don’t know, his head was covered.’ ‘Well, what rank was he?’ ‘I don’t know; he was naked.’ I’m telling you, we’re all pissing ourselves trying not to laugh. So the spook, exasperated, says, ‘You don’t remember anything about him?’ Taliban thinks for a second and says, ‘Yes, yes, wait…he was circumcised.’ I’m ready to lose it right there when Dale yells out, ‘Wait, we need to do a lineup like on those cop shows.’ Dale steps over to him, drops his pants, and waves his junk in his face. We all run over and do the same thing. Waving them around his face yelling, ‘Does this look familiar?’”

Laughing so hard that he can barely stand, Rube sputtered out, “I swear to God, I think Dale actually slapped him on the nose with his johnson.”

By now everyone is laughing hysterically, even Ana.

“Oh, man,” said Dill, wiping his eyes. “Oh, man, like I said, Dale was a wild man. Ohhh shit.”

Still chuckling, everyone got ready and prepared to mount up again.

“Hey, Dill,” Ana asked, “whatever happened to Dale?”

Dill looked at her. Then, getting ready to take over the driving, he said softly, “Nothing. About a month later, he stepped on an IED, and it blew him in two. He died in my arms trying to stuff his guts back in.” He took a long, slow breath. “He was a wild man, though.”

Regina and Malik sat in her SUV inside of the garage. “I have half a tank of gas,” she noted. “That should be enough.”

“Once we meet everyone at the rendezvous point, we’ll see how transportation works out,” added Malik.

“I hope they all made it,” said Regina forlornly.

“Me too,” said Malik. “We couldn’t see what was going on in the restaurant, but it sounded like pure chaos.”

“I wonder if they know we’re alive,” Regina said. “Think they’ll wait?”

Malik sat still for a second and then nodded his head. “Yes, I think they will.”

She started the vehicle up. They had done that last night. Took a few times, but it finally started. They ran it for about a half hour to juice up the battery.

“All right,” she said, “open the garage doors, and let’s get going.”

Malik got out, walked to the doors, and grabbed the manual override. He pulled it, walked over, and reached down for the handle. Right before he lifted, he thought he heard some scratching sounds.
Oh shit
, he thought.
It’s now or never
.

Grabbing the handle with both hands, he squatted down and swiftly raised the door all the way up. Two very surprised zombies were standing outside. They watched the door go up with puzzled looks. That ended when they noticed Malik. These two, one a middle-aged man in jeans and a Daytona Speedway T-shirt, and the other an older woman with the side of her face missing, seemed freshly turned. As Malik ran back and jumped into the SUV, they ran after him. The man almost caught Malik, but he was just a second too late. He alternated pulling on the handle and smashing his face into the passenger-side window. He would widely open his jaws as he hit the window, seemingly trying to bite his way through the glass. Soon the window was a mass of blood and broken teeth. The woman running behind him spied Regina sitting behind the wheel and, turning, jumped on the hood of the vehicle. Pulling herself forward with the two windshield wipers, she started beating on the windshield, growling and snarling.

Regina, after a stunned moment of inaction, threw the transmission into drive and stepped on the accelerator. The large SUV sped forward. The female zombie had just gotten herself to a kneeling position on the hood when the SUV shot out of the garage. The top of the garage door struck her on the back of the head and rammed her face into the front windshield hard enough to break through the glass. The other male ghoul was caught between the side of the car and the side of the garage and was crushed, leaving his mangled body rolling down the driveway.

Roaring down her street, the SUV veered right and left, trying to dislodge the zombie from the hole in the windshield, but she was stuck tight. Regina was trying to concentrate on the road and not hit anything, but all she could see was the angry, bloodied face gnashing its broken teeth in the air as it tried to take a bite out of its prey that was so near yet so far. Her wide, rolling, milky-white eyes had pieces of safety glass sticking out of them. They must have traveled on for a
half of a mile while trying to jar her loose. Finally, Malik yelled, “Stop the car!”

Regina slammed on the brakes, and the rolling SUV skidded to a halt. Malik opened his door and ran out. He grabbed the flailing zombie by her ankles and yanked her out of the glass and off the hood. Leaving bits of flesh hanging from the glass around the hole, she fell in front of the vehicle. Malik quickly ran back and jumped inside. They had just seen her hand rise to grasp the hood ornament and pull herself up when Regina hit the gas again. With a couple of bone-jarring bumps, they ran her over and sped down the road. Malik looked behind them and saw several undead coming at them from the front lawns of the houses. It was going to be a wild ride.

Tommy and Sean were walking up the middle of the street, leading the group toward their destination. They were in a residential section now and about halfway down the block when three people suddenly appeared from around the tall hedge of one of the houses. Everyone froze. They all raised their guns at the three strangers before they saw it was a very frightened husband, wife, and ten-year-old daughter. The father had his arms around his wife, and their daughter was clinging to her mother for dear life. The mother looked horrible. She appeared to have been beaten. Her face was bruised and had long scratches running down her cheeks. Worse was the bloodied bandage that was wrapped around her arm.

“Please,” the man pleaded, “please, let us go.”

The mother looked dazed, and the little girl was near tears.