Run (Book 2): The Crossing Read online

  McNalley was indeed correct when he said that it wouldn’t take long to install the weaponry. They had the pivoting light machine guns attached to pin-swivels in ten minutes, and were working on the Bushmaster belt system for LAV Two when Androwski called Boone on the tactical radio. “Sir, we have far range contact, a mile, maybe mile and a quarter.”

  “How many?”

  “How many people in that town we went through?”

  “Nine thousand.”

  “Then I’m going with nine thousand.”

  “Shit. When the vanguard is half a mile out, hump back to us, we’re almost done.”

  “Copy, sir.”

  Boone surveyed his team. Things were under control. Chris and Anna had loaded three cans of twenty-five millimeter ammo into both vehicles, and all of the 5.56 crates. It was significantly tighter in the crew compartments now, but that was a small price to pay for the goodies they just received. Seyfert was attaching a wiring harness to the chain feeder of LAV Two while Usher examined the Pelican cases. Boone jogged back to the window to engage McNalley one more time.

  “Mr. McNalley, thank you for your help. I have some C4, and will lay a couple of strings to block that narrow gateway if you would like. How can I get you the radio, I would rather not throw it.”

  “You got C4? Coulda blown your way in here after a while I guess, but it would have taken half a day. I appreciate you not trying. Blowin’ the gate would save me a dangerous trip down there, so yeah I would appreciate it. Here.” He dropped a length of clothesline out the window, and Boone attached the radio to it. McNalley hauled it up with appreciation. “You’re gonna lose comms when you get over them mountains to the east. Best take care of yourselves out there, Admiral,” and with that he shut the window without another word.

  A single shot rang out and echoed throughout the facility.

  “Who’s firing? Does anybody have eyes on?”

  “It was me, sir,” said Martinez. “There was a speedy one coming faster than the others up the road. He’s history. Also, it’s time for us to bug, they’re about a half mile out.”

  “Roger that, Martinez, you guys get back here ASAP.”

  When the two scouts returned, LAV Two was buttoned up, but Seyfert was manning a light machine gun in the two-man turret. LAV One was waiting for them with its ramp down. They rushed in and Usher shut the door behind them. Chris passed them both a pair of wireless headphones like you would see in a helicopter. “Stark says that when the Bushmasters start to fire, you’ll need those to save your hearing and listen to commands. It’s gonna get loud.”

  Both LAVs roared toward the gate area. Boone’s voice was already coming through the headphones when Martinez put his on, “…to blow the gate area. This op needs to be most ricky-tick, but only if there’s time to get our folks back in the LAVs. McNalley has some defenses of his own, but I want to give him as much protection as possible.”

  The vehicles stopped between the sixty-foot-tall natural rocks that flanked the gate. The LAVs opened up their rear hatches and Benotti, Usher, Martinez, and Androwski started placing the explosives at the base of the small cliffs. They rolled the plastique out in small bundles, each attached to the others by detonation cord.

  “Okay, we see the horde, back inside pronto!”

  Boone’s command didn’t go lightly, and three men ran back and up the ramps to the safety of the interior of the armored vehicles. Benotti remained outside. Usher gaped at him. “Benny, get the fuck in here, quit screwing around!”

  “Not coming. I’m infected. That little chick with the backpack must have gotten me.” He pulled his shirt collar down and exposed a small scratch that looked like it had been festering for a week. The occupants of LAV Two knew instantly that Benotti was doomed. His lower neck and shoulder were inflamed and red, the area around the scratch was black, and the wound itself was oozing a thick, dark fluid.

  Boone came over the radio from LAV One. “Benotti, what’s happening? We don’t have time to fuck about, they’re three hundred feet away.” Apparently he hadn’t heard Benotti’s confession.

  “I’m humped, sir. The speedy little girl that jumped me scratched me on the neck. I’m dead already. Gimme the detonator and go.”

  “Benny, you can’t be sure, get in the damn boat and we’ll check it…”

  “Due respect sir, negative. I’m done, I can feel it inside me.”

  Usher nodded and handed him a double-click detonator. He nodded at Benotti, turned the striped door handle and pressed the yellow button. The ramp started to rise and Usher reached into one of the pockets of his tactical vest. He got a small package out and tossed it to his friend just as the ramp closed. Turning towards the other riders in the LAV, he noticed they were all looking at their shoes.

  “Godspeed, Benny,” Boone said through his throat mic, and the vehicles started to move forward.

  Benotti looked at the package that Usher had tossed him and smiled. He opened it, popped three huge pieces of grape bubble gum into his mouth, and leaned against the yellow gate near the guard house, watching his friends depart.

  “Don’t plow into them yet,” Boone told Stark, “let’s open up on them first to keep them off us for a while. I don’t want to gum up the wheels.”

  Usher climbed into the two man turret of LAV One and turned on the M242 Bushmaster chain gun system. It came on with a hum, and a small heads-up display came up over a green monochrome view screen. The things were sixty feet away when he asked permission to fire.

  Boone was also looking through a view screen. “Light ‘em up. Concentrate fire in the center and we’ll go through the three hole.”

  Even with the headphones on, the cannon was incredibly loud. The twenty-five millimeter high explosive, incendiary rounds turned the vanguard of the living dead horde into a flaming mushy pulp in five-round bursts. After the second burst, half a thousand of the densely packed creatures were destroyed, or so damaged that they were useless, and there were small fires where the things’ clothing had begun to burn from the incendiaries. Everywhere the tracer rounds were sent, a column of dead exploded thirty deep in a straight line, the ones in the back falling like dominoes, and the first few unfortunates simply liquefying in a spray of gore and bone from the chest up.

  LAV Two had moved up on the port side of LAV One, and Seyfert also fired into the crowd. Short bursts with his light machine gun from the open turret blew off limbs and destroyed craniums. Many of the undead tried to rise after being knocked over only to be trampled down by their hungry brethren trying to reach the canned food in front of them. Seyfert wasted no time and kept firing at chests and heads.

  The vehicles gave deep diesel grunts and moved forward, the twenty-five millimeter firing to the front. LAV Two fell back in behind LAV One and they drove in a single column. Seyfert spun left and right in his turret and tried to take out anything that got too close, but there were so many creatures that the pocket created by the Bushmaster began to collapse, and some reached the sides of the LAVs. The uncoordinated and lumbering dead were immediately knocked away by the speed of the moving vehicles, and in a moment they were through the horde, one fast creature running after them. Seyfert sighted her and gave her a short burst of 5.56 rounds. She collapsed, and he got back inside and shut the turret hatch.

  There weren’t nine thousand undead as first surmised, but Seyfert did mental calculations to come up with about three thousand. More than half wouldn’t be getting up, but some on the ground still moved, and others were untouched. The mobile ones stumbled after the LAVs, or made their way in the other direction toward a sure meal; the sailor waiting patiently.

  Benotti watched them come, leaning against his gate and blowing bubbles between coughs. He harrumphed and shook his head, “Well this sucks.”

  They didn’t take long to reach him, maybe three minutes, and when he could make out individual men, women, and children he swore out loud and taunted them. “C’mon fuckers, come get some! You bitches like Italian food? I had
a shitburger this morning, hope you like the taste of it!” As the first of the significantly smaller swarm, an older man with horrible wounds on his face and neck, reached for him, Benotti spit his gum out, flipped him off, and double clicked the detonator paddles.

  More than a mile and a half away, Usher witnessed the spectacular explosion on his rearward monitor. His disciplined manner allowed him two words of farewell. “Bye Benny.”

  5

  Salt Lake City was burning. The highways and bridges outside the city had been bombed with high yield ordnance, probably to stop people from spreading the infection west. The city itself was covered by a dark smog, the smoke from the fires unable to escape outside the ring of mountains. It was impossible to tell if the military had destroyed the city or if it had been the dead, but the city was in ruins.

  Several of the taller buildings (there weren’t that many) were obscured by the smoke, and the streets were awash with corpses, walking and not. At the western end of I-80, just north of the city, was a huge plywood sign with scrawled block print telling folks to turn back, or subject themselves to medical inspection. It was evident that a military outpost had been hastily set up here as two medical trailers and an olive drab canvas tent sat vacant. Two Humvees were present, one with its hood up. Concrete barriers stood resolute across the highway. A white tent sheltered the remains of an aid station. Cots, some with still squirming victims strapped down, became visible when the wind blew the bloody flaps of the tent open.

  Dozens of black and twisted hulks of burned vehicles were blocked in by two immobile M1 Abrams tanks, the barrels of the huge guns pointing toward the city. The hatch on one of the behemoths was wide open, and there was blood all over it and the exterior of the machine. The other was crawling with fifty or so living dead beating bloody fists on the Chobham armor. Most were ordinary people clothed in Western garb with cowboy boots, but many others wore military camouflage fatigues or doctor’s scrubs. This outpost had been overrun.

  Boone passed his binoculars to Rick, and Rick to Dallas. Three others pairs of binocs also surveyed the scene, less than five hundred meters away. Some of the dead had already begun to shamble toward the LAVs, but most remained with their eyes on the prize, and continued in their futile attempts to gain access to the tank.

  “What’s the plan, sir?” Rick asked Boone.

  “Well, there’s nothing in the city we need, but those Limas pounding on that Abrams tell me that there’s someone alive inside. We’re not leaving him to die in that tin can.”

  Martinez unslung his SR25 sniper rifle from his shoulder. “I’ll take the twenty on the right.”

  Rick opened one of the Pelican cases that they had affixed to the outside of the vehicle. He pulled out one of the new weapons they had acquired at the weapons depot back in California: a Thor Weapons Systems XM408E sniper rifle, of which there were two. Cole grabbed its twin before Dallas could appropriate it for himself.

  “Drive your tractor, hillbilly, this is mine today. I already stripped and zeroed this bitch. That’s what I was doin’ when I dry firin’ her in the boat, and was shootin’ them cans yesterday.”

  All three men took their time setting up on the road. Cole coughed, the dust and smoke in the air momentarily too much for his lungs. “Jesus they look like ants from here.” The new rifles had attached bipod stands, but Martinez’s SR25 had to be rested on an empty diesel can with a fatigue jacket on the top. The twelve-times magnification ballistic scopes cut the distance down considerably, but the area of effect inside the scopes was small. “What’s this wire?”

  “Gotta admit,” Rick contemplated, “I have no idea. It looks like an ear bud for a Walkman.”

  “Huh.”

  “Okay, the thirteen I can see coming up the road are your target practice,” Martinez told the other two shooters. “Right now they’re a little under a quarter of a mile away, so you won’t need to account for too much bullet deviation. Wait until they’re three hundred meters out and aim about an inch above the bridges of their pus bag noses. Don’t fire until I tell you, but I’m going to take a few shots now.”

  Rick looked quizzical. “You’re not going to use the suppressor?”

  “No need. They know we’re here, I don’t want to burn out the suppressor through overuse, and the cold-loaded rounds and barrel length actually hurt the shot.”

  Martinez took a deep breath, let half of it out, and squeezed the trigger. The top half of the head of a zombie that looked like a macabre Elvis Presley popped up in the air and the thing dropped to the ground. The sniper did this six more times before he told the other two men to follow his lead, “Remember, don’t yank on the trigger, squeeze it. Squeeze it like a tit, like you were caressing a nipple. Slowly curl your finger back until it fires. There are seven left, Rick start on the far left and work your way in, Cole, start from the right.”

  Rick squeezed his trigger and the leftmost zombie keeled over. He sighted the next one and missed. Then missed again. “Damn.”

  “Feel the shot, don’t let anything bug you.”

  Cole fired and missed, but scored a hit on the next try. Unfortunately the creature got right back up. “What the hell?”

  “You must have grazed her, try to—”

  “The TA-52 Target Assist System is an electronic range and deviation calculator that is calibrated for each weapon during the initial test firing phase prior to shipment from the Thor manufacturing facility.” All three men turned to look at Anna, who was reading from a small pamphlet. “Simply plug the tactical earpiece pin into the electronic receiver input at the base of the ballistic scope and turn the pin clockwise to activate the…” She noticed that they were all looking at her. “What? You said you didn’t know what the wire was so I looked in the case.” She shook the little booklet. “Big instruction manual, duh… Turn the pin clockwise to activate the holographic targeting reticule, then sight the target center mass. The smaller green dot in the reticule will move to auto compensate for deviation, elevation, target speed, and certain atmospheric conditions. Adjust the weapon such that the green dot covers the red. A sonic indicator will sound single tones as the firing solution is calculated. Three rapid tones will sound when a firing solution has been acquired. The weapon is now ready to fire. Depress the firing mechanism within one point five seconds or the algorithm will recalculate. Uh… those are the quick instructions, but there’s a bunch of stuff in here on calculations and recharging the system batteries and recalibrating and stuff.”

  Cole was still staring at her, but Rick already had the ear piece in and was aiming. He fired and dropped his target. He adjusted the barrel of the rifle slightly, and fired again, and again, and again. Each time the weapon fired one of the undead dropped.

  Boone was looking through his binoculars again. “Holy shit.”

  “Bullshit is what it is,” complained Martinez. “Now an eight year old can be a professional sniper with zero training or discipline.”

  Rick looked at him and stuck his tongue out.

  Cole attached his earpiece, and soon all the approaching zombies were down. “Way better practice than soda cans. Zombie noggins are the best way to practice. Not that I need it with this thing.”

  Rick stood and brushed grit from his shirt and pants. “Shall we see who’s in the tank?”

  Boone nodded thoughtfully and pulled out his radio. Switching frequencies, he spoke to the tank, “This is Lieutenant Commander Boone of the US Navy calling to the Abrams on I-80 outside of Salt Lake City. Is there anyone alive in the tank? Please respond.” Repeated attempts went unanswered.

  “What’s the plan then?” demanded Dallas.

  “Shit. Kill the Limas and get the person out of the tank.”

  “Thought you was gonna say that.” Dallas pulled his rebar from his belt. “You boys is pretty good with them rifles, cover me.”

  Boone raised his eyebrows. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ll go down there and make some noise. Pus ba
gs see a free lunch and come run… ah walking. You guys shoot em.”

  Usher stepped up. “I’ll go with him for close cover, sir.”

  “Alright. Sniper team take out any approaching Limas. Runners would have been on us already. Seyfert you’re on the LMG for support if necessary. Everybody else in LAV One, with Stark. Andy, you man the Bushmaster, but stay off unless ordered. I’ll provide close cover for the sniper team. Forward team, stay in the center of the road, and drop if we radio you to do so.”

  Everyone hustled to follow orders, and in short order Dallas and Usher cautiously advanced toward the dead city. The first of the dead turned toward them about two hundred feet short of the tank barrier.

  Dallas cupped his hands in front of his face and shouted, “C’mon pus bags, we’re over here!”

  The result of his shout was instantaneous. Dozens of blood red eyes turned toward them, and the things climbed down from the tank. The undead formed a procession following their attentive friend.

  “Ya know, Ush ole buddy, this seemed like a great plan when we was way back there, but I ain’t too fond of it no more.”

  “Agreed, let’s get scarce.”

  Both men started backing up, and they had moved maybe sixty feet back toward the LAVs, keeping pace ahead of the zombies, when they noticed a disturbance in the center of the oncoming horde. Several of the dead were pushed aside and some fell. Two in the front fell forward as a large shape in fatigues came hurtling through them, barreling them over.

  Usher dropped to one knee raising his MP5SD3. The former soldier came swiftly, and Usher fired when it was fifty feet away. He hit it in the chest and stumbled back but didn’t fall. It let out a scream and kept coming. Usher fired again, hitting it center mass with the same result. “What the fuck!” He raised his weapon higher and sighted on the thing’s cranium as it continued to scream and run at them. He fired but missed his headshot. “Fucking suppressor!” Firing three quick shots, he saw the infected spin and fell down. It was up quickly and running again, screaming. Dallas started backing up, but Usher remained on one knee and switched to automatic fire. He gave the infected a short burst, the creature’s head jerking back, and the thing fell down and stayed down. It was ten feet away and Usher got up and walked toward it. He kicked it in the ribs and nodded. “Body armor,” he said and looked up. The approaching crowd was closing. He trotted back to where Dallas was and both of them made a slow return to their friends.