These Dead Lands: Immolation (16 page)

“Hit ’em if you have to,” Hastings said over the radio.

As soon as he had spoken, the .50 began firing. Tharinger blasted a path through the dozen or so reekers in his vehicle’s path. A few of them were killed, and the rest just staggered beneath the force of the heavy impacts, ignoring the incredible damage the big bullets caused. Even though he had seen it before, Hastings was still impressed that an enemy could have an arm or a leg blown off and still keep coming. It served as a gruesome reminder that there was no negotiating in the new war. Fear was nothing to the reekers. They only existed to feed or to spread whatever infection they carried. There would be no ceasefires, no truces, no peace plans. The war would end only after the dead—or the living—had been eradicated from the face of the planet.

There was no order to the battle. The .50 cal sliced a path through the zombies, and the vehicles rushed through it. The pickup Hastings drove bounced up and down as it rolled over several corpses, some of them still moving. Not slowing at all, he toed the accelerator and urged the pickup onward, its tires spinning momentarily as they shredded flesh beneath their treads. Sandwiched between the Humvees, he couldn’t do much, so he just drove, keeping his eyes on the vehicle ahead of him as it bulled through the reekers, sending them flying. After a minute or two, Tharinger stopped raking fire across the zombies near the Humvee and started reaching out farther, hammering the corpses that stood in the road. The zombies tried to close in the gaps after the Humvee surged past, so Hastings slalomed the loaded pickup from side to side, slamming into the walking cadavers and keeping the passage as wide as he could for the following vehicles.

One zombie managed to grab the driver’s side mirror, and Hastings dragged it along as it pressed its pallid face against the tempered safety glass, blackened tongue lolling. It disappeared when the mirror suddenly snapped off, and he felt the pickup shudder as the left rear tire rolled over the corpse. Ahead, more corpses danced as .50-caliber rounds slashed through them, taking arms off at shoulders and pulping skulls. The Humvee rolled right over the organic mess, and Hastings found the on-the-fly switch and dropped the truck into four-wheel drive. Off to the right, he heard the muted thunderclaps of 40-millimeter grenades going off, and he glanced over to see a herd of zombies being blasted into shreds by Guerra’s MK19. It was a beautifully gruesome sight.

They drove and fought for almost half an hour. After the first ten minutes, the guns fell mostly silent, as it was more efficient to just mow the corpses down with the heavy Humvee in the lead and save the .50-cal ammo for more precarious circumstances. Hastings was surprised to see just how many zombies there were—the number was somewhere in the low thousands. Even though the Humvees had full tanks and the pickups weren’t bad off in the fuel department, he began to wonder just how they would be able to pull off a rescue if one of the vehicles suddenly died. All of them were taking a pounding, the lead Humvee more than the rest, but Hastings’s pickup was already battered and beaten. A glance in the rearview mirror showed that Ballantine’s truck was in better shape—Hastings couldn’t blame him for being more conservative, since his family was aboard—but it would never pass muster as a show truck.

Hastings knew they would lose a vehicle. It was just a matter of when.
We’ll just have to deal with that when it happens.

The sun climbed higher in the sky, revealing more of the fields and meadows around them. Zombies seemed to be everywhere, sometimes in dense packs like roving herd animals, other times spread farther apart. All of them seemed to be headed in mostly the same direction—west. That didn’t matter much with regards to the road movement he and the rest of the troops were undertaking, since their plan was to head dead south on Route 26, toward Rome. While the most direct route would have been to take Interstate 81, Hastings and Ballantine both felt it would be best to avoid what would likely be a complex and chaotic snarl of traffic, survivors, and zombies around Syracuse. And they knew that civilians would look to them for assistance they could not provide, which would slow them down even more.

Hastings had no problem with that, though the change in him certainly registered with him on a clinical level. Three weeks ago, he had viewed the American people as his charges, civilians who needed to be protected at all costs. The fall of New York and the death of his family had changed that. All he cared about was getting through the rest of the day. Fort Indiantown Gap was over three hundred miles away, and they were hardly taking the direct route. He had enough to worry about.

“Six, it’s getting clearer up ahead,” Hartman radioed. “Zombies are thinning out. Over.”

They were back in deep farm country, where only isolated farmhouses sat, apparently empty and desolate in the brightening morning.

“Roger that. How’s your Humvee holding up? Over.”

“Took a lickin’, but keeps on tickin’. Over.”

“Roger. Stay with it. We’re all with you. Over.”

“Roger that, Six.”

*

Sticking to the
back roads, the small convoy wound through the rural countryside of western New York, angling toward Pennsylvania. Many times, they encountered zombie groups that shambled mindlessly along the road or, just as often, across it. The lead Humvee would slow just enough so that it wouldn’t get damaged as it rolled right through the mobs, crushing the reekers beneath its armored weight. Hastings’s pickup bounced over the wriggling corpses, and somewhere in one melee, it lost its right side mirror. He didn’t lament its passing all that much, though it did make maneuvering a little more difficult.

Near midday, they were progressing down a narrow rural road. They hadn’t seen any reekers in over an hour, and everyone thought that was a welcome relief. Over the radio, Hastings warned the soldiers to remain vigilant. The Humvee ahead of him began to slow, and Hastings nailed the brake pedal with his right foot.

“Hartman, what’s up?”

“Traffic ahead,” Hartman responded. “Most of the road is blocked. We’re going to need to dismount and move some cars out of the way.”

Hastings let the pickup drift into the left lane. He saw an irregular line of six or eight cars, SUVs, and pickups scattered across the roadway ahead. There had been an accident, and that had apparently led to a massacre. Some vehicles had tried to reverse course, but it hadn’t worked out. A couple were stuck in deep ditches on either side of the road, their doors open. The asphalt was stained with dried blood the color of rust, and shell casings gleamed in the bright sunlight. All sorts of things were strewn across the road—canned goods, some weapons, even a crushed box of diapers.

“Eyes out,” Hastings ordered. “Shooters, exit the vehicles and conduct a perimeter survey. Make sure the civilians remain in the Humvees. Guerra, you stay with the nineteen.” He brought the pickup to a halt, put it in park, but left the engine running. The last thing he wanted was to be caught up in a swarm of reekers while sitting behind the wheel of a pickup that refused to start.

He grabbed his M4 and pushed open the driver’s door after first taking a long scan to ensure there were no walking corpses near. The area seemed to be clear, so he stepped out of the idling GMC and brought his rifle into a low ready position. Birds chirped, and a gentle breeze wafted through the trees, making leaves rustle and branches sway. Flies buzzed around the remains of mortal combat.

Hastings eased forward, alert for the sounds of approaching reekers. He examined the ground as he approached, expended brass cartridges tinkling underfoot. The hollowed-out remains of a man lay off to the side of the road. The corpse was motionless, and its dust-filled eyes did not move when he got close. The man’s extremities had been gnawed off and his body cavity ripped open and emptied. Even the man’s face had been assaulted, his lips and nose bitten off. A Glock handgun lay nearby, its slide locked back, exposing an empty breech. The weapon was covered with a patina of dried blood.

Not far from the man lay an overturned infant car seat, the kind with the handle that could be used to lug a baby around. The seat’s bright, cushioned interior was smeared with blood and particles of flesh, the straps still pulled tight to hold a child that was no longer there. The car seat had served as a feeding bowl for reekers, the protective shell ending up as a prison for the infant. The man had probably been trying to make a run for it, carrying his child’s car seat in one hand, his pistol in the other. He had barely made it across the road before running out of ammunition.

But at least he tried.
Hastings felt there was more than a little honor in trying to defend those you loved.

“We’re not going to be able to go around this,” Ballantine said.

Hastings turned and saw the big sergeant first class standing by one of the abandoned cars. The glass in all four doors had been shattered, and a dried gruel of blood and tissue coated the sills. A dead reeker lay at his feet, swarming with flies and maggots. Ballantine had sealed his facial armor, leaving only his eyes exposed. Hastings had left his in the truck.

Hastings turned and looked toward the head of the wreck. Reader and Tharinger were creeping forward, weapons at ready, in full battle rattle, their facial armor in place and blast visors in position. They were checking for reekers hiding amidst the carnage, but Hastings doubted they would find anything. The zombies didn’t hang around after they’d fed; they just kept moving, looking for new prey.

“We can’t pull around on the other side?” Hastings asked. On his side of the road, a deep drainage ditch was blocked by one of the pickup trucks that had apparently rolled over and left a wake of scattered items: packaged food, backpacks, and the splintered remains of some wooden chairs.

“Negative. Got another ditch on the other side of the road. Humvees might be able to make it but not the pickups.”

Hastings nodded. “Okay, we’re going to have to move these vehicles off to the side of the road. Make a passage big enough for us to squeeze through.”

“Might be able to scavenge some more goods, too, if we have the chance,” Ballantine said. “These all look like gas burners, so we can get some more fuel for our pickups.”

“Roger that. Let’s get going.”

Reader turned and waved his hand in the air. Tharinger was standing back, his M4 up and shouldered, pointing it at the front of the overturned pickup ahead. Hastings hurried forward with Ballantine close behind.

“What’s up?” Hastings asked Reader.

“I think we found the cause of the accident,” Reader said. “Check out the front of the truck.”

The soldier’s body language told Hastings he needed to be careful, so he stepped forward and edged around the front of the pickup. Thrashing about inside the remains of the grill was a reeker. Its back had been broken in the collision, and it was trapped inside the folded sheet metal and fragmented grill. The reeker looked at Hastings with rheumy eyes and barked out a gurgling snarl, reaching toward him with one raw hand.

“Well, is anyone surprised that a zombie caused it?” Ballantine asked. “They probably drove right through a herd of them. I mean, no one’s left alive.”

Hastings pulled out his brain bar and bashed in the zombie’s skull. Lifeless at last, it sagged inside the embrace of metal and plastic.

“Let’s get the road clear and get the hell out of here,” he said.

*

Even with the
Humvees pushing some of the wreckage out of the way, it was tough going. The soldiers had to tear apart some of the wrecked cars with their bare hands to get them mobile enough to push off the road. They only needed to make an eight-foot-wide passage, but the damage done to most of the cars and trucks made that a difficult mission.

Adding to the delay were the usual things, such as bathroom breaks for the kids and the fact that two soldiers needed to stand watch at all times. The civilians couldn’t really help much—Diana was tethered to Kenny, and Kay Ballantine had to keep her two boys entertained. That meant one soldier would be manning the MK19, which was in the rearmost Humvee, while another stood bounding overwatch—moving through the formation with his rifle at ready, just in case the dead might appear. The growing heat of the day didn’t make the tasks any more pleasant, not to mention the smell of ripening corpses. Flies buzzed everywhere, and Hastings wondered if there was any chance of contamination from the bodies. Every time an insect flew past or landed on his uniform, he couldn’t shake the dread that it might be carrying the virus that killed the living and reanimated the dead.