The Passenger (Surviving the Dead) (11 page)

The swarm flooded across the front half of the town with depressing speed.
The rest of the ghouls moved around me, hunger driving them after the scattered settlers fleeing into the night. The urge to devour was rising in my own flesh as well, and would have taken over if we hadn't looked up at just the right time.

There he was. Feet dangling from the roof of a one-story building, back sitting against a partial wall behind him. Greasy hair surged with faint orange highlights as the swarm moved toward the pile of bodies the stranger left below his perch. Rhythmic as a heartbeat, his face glowed again, and he laughed to himself.

Rage like an exploding star surged through me. My body locked onto him, ignoring the dead and dying at our feet. Our hands swept upward in a clumsy attempt to grab the stranger's foot, but the distance was too great.

He laughed again, playfully wiggling his feet as he dropped a small crystal into the pipe sticking out from his fist. The
lighter glowed, his breath sharp as the smoke hit his lungs. My body didn't give up, still swiping as the stranger grinned down at us.

“Gideon,” the man said to himself, surveying the carnage. “You
sure know how to throw a party.”

Eventually my body gave up trying to catch him, submitting
to the hunger. Its feeding, for once, didn't even register to me. I had thought being trapped in my own walking corpse was the worst thing imaginable. This man—Gideon, apparently—showed me how wrong I was. He was worse by miles.

Feeding would keep my body going, terrible as it was. Gideon needed to destroy, to hurt, to burn his way across the earth. My body did things because it had to. This monster did them by choice.

For that, he was going to pay.

F
OURTEEN

Ethan brought Hicks along for his tracking abilities, but as it turned out, he needn’t have bothered. The broad swath of coagulated body fluids, crushed plant life, trampled detritus, and the occasional discarded body part made it obvious which way the horde had travelled. Ordinarily, they would have taken it as a warning and given the horde a wide berth, but there was just one problem.

It was headed straight for Broken Bridge.

After setting out from the U-trac, they picked up the massive trail just before sundown, and not wanting to get caught in the open after dark, took shelter for the night on the roof of a long-abandoned gas station. Zebulon’s nephew, Michael, tethered the horses in a tire shop across the street and stayed the night with them. They expected to see infected wander in during the night, but surprisingly, none appeared. While convenient, Ethan found the lack of ghouls disturbing. As far in the red as they were, and as much noise as the horses made, they should have seen at least a few. Despite the calm, he got little sleep that night.

His party struck camp at first light and followed the destruction for eight miles, hoping against hope their fears would go unrealized, until finally they crested a low hill less than a kilometer away from their destination.

In the valley below, Broken Bridge was in ruins
.

Zeb—a
s he insisted everyone call him—sat quietly astride his horse, sadness creasing the lines of his weathered face. Ethan lowered his field glasses and felt his shoulders slump. The first steady hammerings of a migraine began thumping at the base of his skull. 

“See any movement do
wn there? Anybody alive?” Zeb asked, his voice tight.

Ethan shook his h
ead, suddenly feeling tired. “Movement, yes. Anything alive? No. I’m sorry, Zeb. Did you have friends down there?”

The old lawman
’s jaw twitched as he nodded. “Better go down and see if there’s any survivors.” He touched his heels to his horse’s flanks and the animal slowly began descending the valley.

“There are
still a lot of infected down there,” Ethan called out.

Zeb
drew a weapon from behind his saddle that looked like the mother of all meat cleavers. It had a three-foot, single-edged blade half as wide as a man’s palm, a two-handed hilt wrapped in athletic tape, and a simple brass crossguard. Dark ridges, whorls, and hammer marks spiraled up the oiled steel, wide at the spine but growing close and clustered near the edge.
Folded steel. Somebody forged that by hand.

“
Feel free to stay here if you want, Sergeant. We’ll catch up with you when we’re through.”

Etha
n glared at Zeb’s back, biting down a sharp reply. He turned to his men, motioning them forward. “Come on. There might be someone still alive down there.”

The others frowned, but followed.
As they drew closer to the town, Ethan got a better look at the materials comprising the twenty-foot wall surrounding the outpost. It was built from a random hodgepodge of railroad ties, hand-cut logs, telephone poles, masonry, wide steel plates, and crushed vehicles like the kind found in junkyards. Surrounding it was a partial secondary wall of cargo containers with breaks for the main gate and a smaller service entrance around the side. The main gate looked to be intact, save for a collection of scorch marks and bullet pocks of varying sizes, indicating the town had been attacked more than once. He wondered what level of force it would take to overrun a place so heavily fortified.

Upon reaching
the shattered expanse of bridge the town was named for, it didn’t look to Ethan as though the horses could make it across. The bridge—one of those ugly old concrete and steel monstrosities built back in the 1950s—had long ago been destroyed, undoubtedly by a retreating military force during the early days of the Outbreak. Since then, it had been replaced by a rickety-looking wooden span with nothing but two lightly tensioned ropes for support. It looked barely strong enough to support one person, much less a full-grown horse laden with a rider and kit.

“You gotta be fucking
kidding me.” Ethan heard Holland’s Boston accent behind him. “Hey Zeb, you know another way across this river? ‘Cause no fucking way am I walking over that bridge.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Zeb’s deputy, Hedges
. “We’ll show you the way.”

Branching off
where the highway met the river, Ethan noticed a footpath curving down around the ravine. At first glance, it didn’t look as though it led to anything except a narrow beach at the water’s edge. But after looking for a moment, he saw what Hedges was talking about—another bridge.

Smaller and
narrower than what had once spanned the river, it was nonetheless sufficient to support the weight of the horses, although they would have to ride single-file. The smaller bridge was built in the shadow of the larger one, lower along the embankment, and covered at the edges with camouflage nets. The span in the middle had been painted to resemble the water with remarkable attention to detail, while the edges were surrounded by a small forest of cattails. If anyone happened by and didn’t know what to look for, the bridge would be easy to miss.
So the suspension bridge above is just a decoy. A trap. Clever. Makes me wonder if the main gate is really a gate at all.

There were a few infected splashing around in the water as they crossed.
The river flowing below them was low, only coming up to the walkers’ waists. Upon seeing Ethan’s party, they began to shamble forward, tripping and falling below the surface only to rise up with water pouring from their open mouths.
So much for refilling our canteens.

“Hey bossman,” Hicks said behind him.

Ethan turned. “Yeah?”

“Want me to kill them walkers?”

“No. They’re trapped; it’s not worth the ammo. Besides, we’re gonna have our hands full once we get across the river.”

Hicks grunted, and they moved on. Ethan stayed well back from Hedges
’ mount and its constantly whipping tail as they walked along. The horse was nervous, clearly not happy about being so close to the undead.

Soon enough, they
crossed the water and began traversing a set of switchbacks that led up to Broken Bridge’s service entrance. Above them, ragged, wheezing moans began drifting down from the top of the embankment. Ethan drew his axe from its harness and turned to his men.

“All
right, guys. Hand weapons only for now. We need to conserve ammo. Hang back for a bit and let Zeb and his men clear a path, then fill in the gap and start busting heads. Wear your PPE, and don’t forget to maintain intervals. And for God’s sake, give Cole room to swing. I don’t want to have to radio for a medevac.”

The big gunner grinned as he reached a hand over his shoulder
and drew his bar mace. He had purchased his massive, medieval looking weapon from a blacksmith who plied his trade near Fort Bragg. Cole’s mace had cost him 200 rounds of 9mm ammunition and a case of bourbon—an exorbitant sum—but by his own admission, it had been more than worth it. When armed with his heavy three-foot weapon and given room to work, he was a human engine of destruction.

Ahead of them, Zeb reached the top of the ravine, spurred his horse, and sprang forward with a shout. His wicked blade rose and fell as he sped by a walker, splitting it
s head down the middle like a melon. He tore his weapon free and guided his horse toward the next target. Behind him, Hedges and Michael split up, both drawing weapons similar to Zeb’s cleaver. In a few seconds, all three were out of sight over the hill, but Ethan could hear their shouts and the dull thuds of steel striking dead flesh. Ethan tied his scarf over his mouth and nose, slipped his goggles over his eyes, and looked behind him. His men had already done the same.

“Up the hill!” he shouted
, his voice slightly muffled. “Time to go to work!”

They increased their pace, breaking into a jog. As they cleared the rise, they saw the three riders circling the main force of the horde, closing in toward
the center in a whirl of horseflesh and steel. Around and around they rode, arms rising and falling rhythmically, each stroke smashing a walker’s head and sending it tumbling to the ground. Ethan was momentarily impressed at their practiced coordination, but the feeling dimmed when he realized the horses would be useless in the close confines of the town. Picking up speed, he ran to his right, angling toward a smaller group of undead closing in from the north.

“Hicks, you’re with me. Cole, you and Holland break left. Make sure Zeb doesn’t get blindsided.”

“You got it.”

Hicks
gripped his heavy, short-handled spear and followed Ethan as he ran toward the eastern wall. There, a loose knot of about a dozen undead waited for them. Slowing his pace, Ethan spun his axe around and swung the spiked end at the lead ghoul’s temple. It connected with a satisfying
thunk
, making the walker go stiff for a moment before collapsing. Beside him, Hicks ducked under a walker’s reaching hands and thrust his spear upward, moving with the casual grace of long practice. His weapon pierced the shallow skin under the ghoul’s jaw, penetrated upward through its soft palate, and cleaved its rotten brain until the point stopped against the top of its skull. With a quick downward jerk, Hicks freed his spear and turned to look for his next victim.

The two of them
kept at it, Ethan killing ghouls with wide swings of his axe, and Hicks dispatching them with quick, precise spear thrusts. Every few seconds they backed off, circled their undead assailants, picked new targets, and moved in to put them down. All the while, they kept in mind the golden rule of fighting the undead: keep moving, and don’t get greedy.

As they fought, Ethan took note of the walkers’ condition. The corpses were fresh, probably not dead more than a day or two. Their clothing was in relatively good shape, as were their shoes, and their wounds were still red and raw, not blackened and crusty.
Townspeople,
he thought.
The horde that killed them must have moved on.

From the corner of his eye, Ethan saw
another small horde emerge from the town’s shattered service entrance and start toward the circling horsemen. Holland and Cole moved to intercept, weapons at the ready. Cole carried his heavy bar mace as if it weighed no more than a twig, while Holland, unable to wield heavy melee weapons due to his slight build, deftly spun a pair of long-handled hatchets.

When they reached the walkers, Cole began swinging his mace in a steady figure-eight pattern, each downswing cracking an infected skull like an eggshell. Slowly, he plodded along, keeping his weapon moving and leaving a trail of grisly, twice-dead corpses in his wake. Holland circled to his right, his hatchets whirling. Unlike Cole’s juggernaut brute force, Holland relied on speed, disabling the walkers with fast, precise slashes to knees, ankles, and hamstrings before dispatching them with overhand blows to the backs of their necks. When other walkers got too close, he knocked them over with a display of kicks that would have made his old Tae Kwon Do instructor beam with pride.

After a grueling few minutes of fighting, Ethan and his men had elimin
ated the smaller hordes that wandered out of the ruined town, while Zeb and his riders had cut down the main force. Once the first wave was down, Ethan ordered his men to back off, take some water, and catch their breath. Zeb’s crew followed, giving the secondary horde time to clear the gate, and giving their horses a chance to rest.

“
You boys doin’ all right?” Zeb asked. He was still fresh, having done his fighting from horseback. Ethan’s men were winded and sweating, but far from finished. Hard living and harder training had kept them all in good shape.

“We’re fine,” Ethan said. “Nobody got hurt
. Let’s try and keep it that way.”

The
trailing edge of the second horde began to thin out, indicating that most of the ghouls who were capable of finding the gate had already done so. Ethan and Zeb held their men back, letting the walkers gain distance from the wall and congregate on open ground. Ethan had learned through hard experience that fighting in the open played to the strengths of the living—mainly speed and mobility—whereas close quarters combat gave an advantage to the dead. Just as he was opening his mouth to order an attack, Hicks held up a hand.

“Hey, hang on a minute boss
,” he said.

Ethan stopped, and
looked at him expectantly. The stringy Texan’s gaze drifted over to the ravine, a slight smile forming on his scarred face.

“Zeb, you mind if I borrow your horse for a minute? I got an idea.”

The lawman glared skeptically, then shifted his attention to Ethan. “Sergeant?”

He shrugged. “Hey, your horse, your call.
”

Zeb frowned, but dismounted.

“All right, what’s the plan?” Ethan asked.

“Y’all just head for the woods and hide.
Zeb, keep an eye on me. When I signal, one o’ y’all ride out and take this horse back to the trees with you.”

Zeb looked at Hicks, then at Ethan, then back at Hicks. “Son, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”