Total Apoc Trilogy (Book 3): Horde Ravaged
HORDE RAVAGED
TOTAL APOC TRILOGY #3
By
TW Gallier
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Rowdy Rooster Publishing
Copyright 2016 by Thomas W. Gallier, Jr.
Cover by
Christian Bentulan
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and locations within either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or locales is entirely coincidental.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Horde Ravaged
Total Apoc Trilogy #3
"Zombies to the left. Zombies to the right," Ralph said. "Zombies dead ahead. Why are we doing this again, Kyle?"
I sighed. Since escaping from our friends in Emory, we'd had the most zombie infested day of the Zombie Apocalypse. Olivia let the jeep roll to a stop. Forest lands pressed up to either side of us. It didn't leave a lot of open space for us to share with those walkers.
Every single one of them turned and started walking toward us. They were so eerily quiet, though they did wail at us sometimes. We called them zombies, but the people in Emory said they were just infected by some bio-warfare weapon. Still, they looked and acted like zombies. Good enough for us.
"Are they breeding in the woods?" I asked.
I had an ammo box full of M16 5.56mm rounds in clips ready to be loaded into magazines. The problem was they were all 20-round clips, but I had 30-round banana magazines. It was easier to just load twenty rounds per magazine in a rush. I was almost finished loading all of the magazines we still had left.
Olivia had a sawed off 12-gauge shotgun on her lap, with a M16A2 in the rifle holder between us. The shotgun was for emergencies, since she couldn't reload while driving. I rode shotgun beside her, with Ralph still on the M60 in back. I think he was developing an unnatural attraction to that machinegun.
"Maybe we should go back to 635," Olivia said. "At least there weren't as many walkers."
That was crazy talk. "You mean go back past those trigger happy people in Emory, fight our way through that huge horde, and then back over to Highway 635 where we last saw the Death Dealers?"
"I said maybe," she grumbled. Olivia put the jeep into first and started down I-50 again. "I hope you have full magazines, because it's time to rock and roll."
The old Korean War era jeep's windshield was divided into two panes. My side was shot out so I could rest my M16A2 through it and shoot zombies. My job was to defend the right side of the jeep, and both Ralph and I tried to clear a path ahead. We still had the makeshift cowcatcher on the front of the jeep, but it'd seen better days.
To increase our stress and misery, it was almost sundown and threatening to rain.
I slammed a semi-full magazine into the M16A2 and racked the charging handle. That brought me a certain comfort. I plopped the steel pot helmet back on Olivia's head, over her backwards Army cap. She really didn't like wearing it.
"Do your best, baby," I said.
"Aww, you're so sweet."
"If you two kiss, I swear I'll shoot you both," Ralph said.
"He's such a romantic," Olivia replied, grinning and shaking her head.
The walkers were getting closer. It looked bad, but we'd gotten through worse. Still, it only took one zombie bite. I pulled my M1911 .45 cal pistol and shot two zombies in the face point blank.
"Hit it!"
The jeep surged forward. Olivia and Ralph let out cries of battle joy. Fighting might excite me, but not in the same way. It mostly scared the bejesus out of me. And then Ralph opened up with the M60.
Ratta-tat-tat-tat! Ratta-tat-tat-tat!
My ears were ringing again. If the fight lasted much longer, they'd go numb. I swear, soldiers coming back from war must've all been deaf. Still, I found a certain comfort hearing him above us firing his M60. Of all the weapons we'd had, it mowed down the living and undead the best.
We were in full Rat Patrol mode again, driving zigzag across the road and medium, shooting zombies, and trying to not get too close to any of them. In just two days in that jeep, she'd gotten pretty good driving it.
"I wanna go home. I wanna go home," Ralph started singing. I slanted a look back at him. Was he going crazy? "Oh lord, I wanna go home."
"Don't quit your day job," I said.
"This is my day job."
We had to be more careful with our ammo after we escaped Emory's little ad hoc army. When we ran out of M60 and M16 ammo, we'd be shit out of luck. I hoped and prayed we made it home before that happened. You know the zombies weren't cooperating.
"Ditch!" Olivia cried, seconds before turning off the blacktop and bouncing through the medium. Okay, it wasn't really a ditch, but we knew what she meant. The jeep was airborne for a brief second when we sped up onto the southbound side. "Wahoo!"
She came down on a trio of zombies. They looked like bloody and battered farmers. One was an elderly man in denim overalls. That may have killed them. No guarantee. Olivia smashed into a dozen of them. The cowcatcher plowed a path through men, women, and children. I avoided looking them in the face as much as possible. It was a thing of nightmares.
As we approached a short bridge over a creek, it was obvious there were too many of them to just drive through. First Ralph lit them up, then I joined in. We mowed them down, but it took more hits to stop a zombie than a normal person. I don't think they felt pain.
"Hello!" she cried as we passed over the bridge and rounded a curve in the road.
The highway looked packed wall-to-wall with zombies. I couldn't see any way we could get through that horde alive. They were also blocking the entry to a smaller county road. It was our only hope. Olivia turned off the highway, drove over the service road, and skirted the woods.
"Light them up," she said.
"What if there are even more walkers on that road?" Ralph asked.
"Then we are fucked," she said.
That was the understatement of the day.
I stood up, holding tightly to the windshield and emptied my magazine. And another. And another. And then we slammed into the horde at 30 MPH.
Ka-Boom!
The whole jeep was jolted. Ralph was slammed into his weapon, letting out a pained groan. I was clutching the windshield tightly, but still received a painful jolt. Yet zombies went flying to either side. That jeep sliced through them. Ralph and I fired as fast as we could into the nearest zombies.
"Made it," Olivia cried as we turned into the much smaller road. It was paved with asphalt, a black ribbon in the near darkness. Within a hundred yards we broke free of the horde and faced open road. "Damn!"
"Holy crap," I said, plopping back in my seat. "How are you doing, Ralph?"
"I've been better," he said. "I think I broke my breast bone."
We were hauling ass down the road. Driving west, the sun was below the treetops but was bright. It made me think of when people die and head to the light.
"We're off the highway," Olivia said. "Are we officially lost now?"
"Probably," I said. "As long as we're heading in the general direction of home we're still good."
We rounded a bend and the forest gave way to farmland. Olivia rolled to a stop atop a hill and we looked at the sunset. Not a picture perfect sunset, either. Everywhere we looked were columns of smoke, fires, and devastation. It looked like a war scene in a movie.
"Man, that looks totally horde ravaged," Ralph whispered.
I nodded. "And home is on the other side of all that."
Chapter 2
It started to drizzle as we drove. That's not so bad while standing around or walking, but it can get miserable fast in an open jeep. Thank god it was summer. I could only imagine what it would be like in winter.
"See that water tower to the north?" Ralph called from the back. "Rally point."
Olivia and I nodded. In the moments we weren't fighting, Ralph liked to read the Army manuals and SOPs he stashed in the jeep back at the armory. He learned a few helpful things, like rally points. Every so often we had to designate a new rally point, which is where we'd all go if we became separated in a fight. Something like that would've never occurred to me. The Army thinks of everything.
"Do we want to find a safe place to spend the night, or power on?" Olivia asked.
I was almost finished loading my magazines again. I went back and finished filling up all of the ones with just twenty rounds, too. So I wasn't really paying much attention to our progress or surroundings.
I looked around. We were back in forest land. The region was a patchwork of woodlands and farmland. I didn't see any place to stop and rest, so was a little confused as to why she brought it up.
"Why? Are you tired?"
We were still many hours from Plano under perfect conditions. The jeep wasn't very fast, so we were doing good at 45 MPH. I was used to driving home at 70 MPH plus, so it was hard to judge how much farther we had to go in the jeep. Plus, zombies and other survivors would also show us down, yet I was loath to stop when we had an open road. But we couldn't afford her falling asleep at the wheel. We could share driving duties if only Ralph and I could drive a standard.
"Duh. I've had zero sleep in almost three days," she said. "You're not sleepy?"
"I'm more scared than sleepy," I replied. "But yeah, I'm exhausted."
Admitting it made me really feel it. We'd been running on adrenaline most of the past two weeks. I couldn't remember the last time I got a full night's sleep. Since the shit hit the fan, we were lucky to get a few hours sleep.
The best place, and maybe the only truly safe place, to sleep was an island. Zombies would not wade or swim across water. The chances of finding an island on the open road was nil. So we'd have to sleep in shifts.
"This road is pretty clear of zombies," Ralph said. "I haven't seen one since we left the highway, so one of the houses here might work."
We'd passed two house set well off the road. Houses were few and far apart on that old road. The next one we passed was a burnt out double wide.
"Hey now," Olivia said, slowing down to a crawl. "My dream home."
It was a big custom brick home set way back in the woods. I probably wouldn't have noticed it if not for the gravel driveway. The lot was cleared of underbrush, but they left most of the trees. With the lights off it was hard to see from the road in the dark.
"Let's check it out," I said.
Olivia turned down the driveway. The tires were loud on the gravel and set my nerves on edge. If there were any zombies or survivors in that house then they knew we were coming. She stopped just short of the house.
"I think it's deserted," Ralph whispered.
"Only one way to find out." I got out with a finger on the trigger. Yeah, I was a little jumpy. "Turn the jeep around in case we have to get away fast. Come on, Ralph, let's scout it out."
Ralph grabbed his weapon. It was an M16A2 with a M203 grenade launcher attached below the barrel. Ex-army infantryman Mike Carter referred to it as a M203, so that is what we called it. I wasn't sure what the Army actually designated it as, but M203 was good enough for us.