Run (Book 2): The Crossing Read online

  Rick looked at Boone. “I don’t like that so much.”

  Chris paused in his cranking. “What’s up?”

  “Keep working, but stay on your toes. The diner team isn’t checking in. Seyfert, maintain cover on the LMG. Stark, sit tight. Rick and I are going to check on the diner team.”

  Rick looked uneasy as he and Boone moved toward the open diner doors. “Why wouldn’t they check in unless—?”

  “Either they can’t hear me or they can’t send.” Boone tried to contact them again to no avail.

  “Maybe we should—” Gunfire from the diner area cut him off.

  7

  Dallas and Anna were packing chips and packaged cookies, along with giant, industrial-size tins of soup into three huge, green duffel-bags. They already had canned corn, beans, maraschino cherries and a large can of peppers. They also got a case of Mountain Dew cans, and a thirty pack of Bud Light. Usher was checking doors, while Martinez covered the scavengers with a suppressed MP5SD3.

  Usher nudged open a pair of café-style swinging doors that opened into a corridor which overlooked a huge parking lot on the far side of the diner, and down an embankment. He swung his tactical light in both directions, one a dead end, the other ending in another set of swinging doors thirty feet away. Both directions held no undead, but then he looked into the parking lot. There were hundreds of cars and trucks parked down the hill out of sight of the front of the diner. Some undead were stumbling around, but the number of vehicles was just too much for the amount of zombies.

  “Oh shit.”

  The door to his left swung open, and a swarm of dead faces looked at him with hunger in their blood-red eyes. They came through the doors, moaning and grasping at him.

  Rather than open fire, he hurried back through the door yelling, “Out! Out! Back to the LAVs!”

  Martinez raised his weapon, “What’s—”

  “What the fuck do you think? Move!”

  Dallas shouldered one of the packs, but Anna couldn’t lift hers. Dallas was reaching for the second one when Usher screamed at him, “Are you out of your fucking mind? They’re right on us, leave it!”

  Dallas dropped his bag and pulled his shotgun from his back. Anna, Usher, and Martinez were already across the large kitchen, and Dallas was making for the exit when the back doors swung open and the dead poured in. There were too many to count.

  Usher held the door for Dallas and the Texan sprinted across the tiles, dead in tow. Usher switched to single shot and fired into the crowd, felling the front three creatures. Their dead friends piled over them, but some tripped, slowing the others but only slightly. Dallas fired the shotgun into the throng, and the boom was earsplitting even in the large room. He hurried through the door and Usher followed him out. They ran through the diner, only to find Martinez and Anna firing into another horde. More dead were coming from in front of them.

  Usher frantically looked for an exit, as Boone’s voice came over the radio, but the SEAL had no time to answer. “In here!” he shouted, and ran behind the diner bar to another door. It was the only direction that no dead came from. They all followed him into the manager’s office, Dallas, Martinez and Anna pushing the heavy metal desk in front of the door. The room was approximately ten by ten and the only way in or out was the door they came through.

  “Fuck!” shouted Usher, who then pressed his throat mic “Sir, shitloads of Limas! There’s hundreds of cars out back! We’re trapped in a small room off the south side of the diner.”

  Thuds from many fists came from the other side of the door.

  “Now what?” demanded Anna.

  “I…I don’t…” Usher looked around quickly, but there was no secret passage to safety. He switched his weapon to full auto and fired into the ceiling. Dust and insulation rained down on them, and Anna put an arm in front of her face.

  Usher jumped up on the desk, reaching for the ceiling joists. He pulled himself up enough to look into the unfinished attic of the diner. Dropping down satisfied, he used the butt of his rifle to break out remaining pieces of sheetrock, and then he and Martinez pulled enough down for them to get through. Usher looked to Anna. “You first, then Martinez, then Dallas, come on!”

  Anna slung her weapon over her shoulder and used Usher as a ladder while Martinez pushed her by the legs through the joists into the area above. Anna could hear gunfire from outside over the wails of the dead below her.

  The door had broken in, and filthy hands were reaching through the shattered jamb. The desk was keeping the door mostly closed, but even with the combined weight of Martinez and Usher, it was slowly sliding away from the door. Dallas put his foot on the end of the desk and heaved forward, it didn’t move back toward the door, but it stopped moving away. Martinez jumped up with Usher pushing him from below and Anna pulling from above. He made it up and noticed that there was no floor up there, just joists with sheetrock screwed to them and pink insulation stapled to the tops of the cross members. He kicked a bigger hole as Dallas made his way up.

  Usher pushed Dallas’s giant ass, and as he did so, the desk jolted forward two feet spilling him on his side, his head toward the door. A hand raked down on his face, digging furrows into his cheek and forehead and scratching his eye. Blood welled up and he pulled away from the thing that almost had him, rolling to the end of the desk. Dallas still had his legs dangling, and two of the dead had grabbed his pant leg. He kicked for all he was worth and one let go, but the other had latched onto his leg with both hands, its torso half in the room. It was trying to pull a size twelve boot to its mouth.

  Blood dripping from his shredded face, Usher fired a burst into the creatures, and the one yanking on the Texan was destroyed, letting go. The desk had begun a steady slide into the room as Dallas was pulled to safety, and a deceased grandfather crawled over the desk coming for Usher. The boom of the shotgun from above made Usher’s ears ring, but he was thankful nonetheless. All three of his friends in the attic were firing into the crowd, the dead half plugging the door with their numbers.

  Usher fired another burst into the horde, and in one motion jumped on the desk and leapt for the opening. Dallas and Anna caught him and started hauling him up as Martinez fired into the sea of lifeless faces. Usher’s ascent stopped abruptly. His weapon had snagged on the ceiling between the joists, and the sling was around his shoulders. Try as they might, they couldn’t pull him up. He looked at Dallas pleadingly as the things filed into the room and grabbed his legs. He kicked and flailed, but there were fifteen of the dead in the room now and they all grabbed him, biting and pulling. He fell into the crowd as Dallas screamed, “No!”

  Martinez tried to shoot him, but he disappeared screaming under a mass of the things. His friends could only see the backs of the creatures as they knelt and reached over each other to get to the man. The screaming didn’t last long. The creatures piled into the room until they were packed tightly. Those who couldn’t get to Usher’s more tasty bits reached toward the hole in the ceiling and the three terrified humans.

  Anna fired a few rounds until Dallas put his hand on her arm. “Won’t do no good kid, there’s too many.”

  “Bullshit! I’ve got fifty rounds, and so do you and him,” she thumbed at Martinez. “We can blast them as they come in the room, one at a damn time ‘til there are none left! If there are more than that then we’ll use your rebar if we have to.” Her words were underscored by muffled gunfire from outside.

  “We won’t have to do either,” Martinez interjected. “We have two armored vehicles outside remember? Boone, come in, this is Martinez.”

  “Wait one, Martinez, we’ve got issues.”

  “So do we,” he replied, but not into the radio.

  The gunfire slowed to sporadic shots, and Boone came back on the comms two minutes later, “Usher, SITREP!”

  “He’s gone, sir. We were surprised and got swarmed. Anna, Dallas, and me are in the attic above the diner. We can’t get out, but they can’t reach us.”

  “
Dammit, how many? Are you sure Usher’s dead?”

  “Yes, sir, and there are dozens, maybe a hundred or more, I can’t tell from this vantage point.”

  “Okay, sit tight, we’ll figure something out. For what it’s worth, there were quite a few out here as well, they came from your area.”

  “Roger that sir, we’ll wait.” Martinez looked around and saw a trapdoor to the floor below about twenty feet away. Stepping on the joists so as not to put his foot through the sheetrock, he arrived at the folded ladder and noticed the knotted end of a string that was used to pull the unit down. He pulled it up and cut it off with his knife. “Dallas, can I borrow your club?”

  The big man pulled out his rebar and held it out to the sniper as the man gingerly stepped his way back. “Anna, could you hold this please?” He handed his SR25 to her and let his MP5SD3 dangle on its single point sling. He walked to the inside of the peaked roof, and using the end of the rebar, he began to chisel away at the plywood in the roof. He started at a roof rafter and began to break his way through the plywood joint. It was slow going, but he eventually moved the plywood away from the rafter enough that he could see the underside of roofing shingles. Prying the plywood up, he used his knife to poke through the tar shingles and could see sky.

  “This is our way out if they can’t get to us,” he spoke into his tactical radio. “Boone, can you get to us if we can get to the roof?”

  “Affirmative. Can you make the roof?”

  “I think so, we have to do some cutting and breaking, but we can get out.”

  “Be careful. If you can’t access to the roof, I’m going to use the bushmaster to blow a hole in the fucking wall, and I’m going to drive an LAV up their asses.”

  Anna smiled and looked at Dallas. “Hardcore SOB huh?”

  “Can you two help me push this plywood?”

  Dallas and Anna joist-stepped to where he was prying the roof. “I’ll use this, you two push.” Martinez used the rebar against the rafter to pry the plywood. It was extremely difficult as the roofing shingles were nailed to each other, and acted as a spring, pushing the wood back as they pushed it forward. In addition, the roofing nails were poking through the wood, the pointy ends toward them, so they had to find a safe place to carefully position their hands to avoid being stabbed.

  They heaved hard, and the wood moved outward perhaps eight inches. Martinez pushed as well, and as all three pushed with all their might, Dallas slipped and fell backward on the joists. The plywood slid in Anna’s hands, and she was raked across the palms by the roofing nails. She howled and pulled her hands back, and the plywood snapped backwards pinning Martinez’s arm between the plywood and the rafter. He yelled as well, long and loud.

  Dallas and Anna got back to pushing, and Martinez got his arm out. He cradled his left wrist with his right hand. It was already beginning to swell.

  “Broke it,” he yelled. “Fuckin’ broke my wrist! Shit! Fuck!” He gritted his teeth, and continued swearing and cursing. Blood dripped from his arm in fat droplets that splattered on the insulation paper.

  “Screw this,” Dallas hollered aiming his shotgun at the roof. BOOM! BOOM, BOOM! Eight inches of clear, blue sky could now be seen through the semi-darkness of the attic. Dallas grabbed his rebar from amidst the insulation, and began to hack at the hole to make it larger.

  As Anna inspected an injured wrist, Dallas broke a hole large enough for him to fit through. He pulled himself up and began throwing torn roofing shingles off the roof so no one would slip on them.

  There were dozens of bodies newly strewn about the truck stop parking lot. Seyfert was firing sporadically with the light machine gun two lots over, but nobody else living could be seen. Anna and Dallas helped the injured sniper on to the roof, and the three of them surveyed the carnage below. Several undead were making their way toward the LAV, and more seemed to be coming from the diner. Dallas pinched his throat mic. “We made it t’ the roof, an’ we can see Seyfert blastin’ the dead-uns, but where’s everybody else?”

  “We’re in the LAVs. I can see you on the roof through the monitor. There’s a wall of windows under the overhang in front of you. Move to your left about fifty feet, and there’s solid wall, no surprises when you jump down. Wait until we get over there, and you can all land on the LAV and climb in through the turret hatch.”

  “Got it. We’re gonna need some meds, Martinez is hurt.”

  Boone’s voice was hard. “Bitten?”

  “Nope. Smashed his hand. Might be busted, but he ain’t bit.”

  “Alright, we’re coming now, move left until you’re in front of our nose. We’ll come in sideways and you jump down. Martinez first, then Anna.”

  The three on the roof moved to the designated spot, the armored vehicle rumbled toward them. The LAV spun sideways and ran up on the curb, knocking over a Pedestrians Crossing sign and reducing a wooden bench to splinters. The top hatch next to Seyfert flew open, and Boone popped his head out, searching in all directions before lowering his weapon back into the vehicle and motioning for the three to come. Dallas helped Martinez down, and Anna was next. Gunfire erupted again as Dallas made his way from the roof to the hull of the LAV. He snapped his head up to see a small army of the living dead headed toward them from across the tarmac.

  “Sir, there’s lots. Request permission to cease fire, I’m wasting ammo.”

  “Good call, Seyfert, quit firing. We’ll button up and bug out.”

  When the team was safely inside, the LAV departed, leaving the undead mob behind. They reached LAV One and opened the back hatch to add some diesel to the tank. Three cans later, they transferred some personnel, and shut all the hatches. Fifty or so dead were shuffling up the road toward them from the rest area. The LAVs headed east. As they passed the far side of the diner, the rest of the team noticed a hundred or so vehicles out back in a huge parking lot.

  “Piss poor recon,” Boone said angrily. “I killed him. I killed him for pork rinds and Cheez-Its that we didn’t even get. He was our God damned corpsman.” He sat down on the bench hard.

  “They killed him,” Anna said pointing at the monitor, “not you.”

  “Thanks, but no. He was my responsibility, acting on orders from me. The blame is mine.”

  8

  Salt Lake City may have been on fire, but Cheyenne, Wyoming was gone. Simply gone.

  There were craters and lots of rubble, but not much more, and no free-standing buildings in the city proper. Whatever had hit this city had completely destroyed it.

  “Dammit, we need to find something,” Rick said angrily. “He’s bad off.”

  Androwski and Seyfert had both been cross-trained as corpsman, the Navy’s medics, but neither was as experienced as Usher. The SEALs had given Martinez what medical assistance they could. Androwski had shaken his head at one point and spoken low to Seyfert. Shattered was the word Martinez had heard.

  Seyfert had used a syrette of morphine on Martinez’s shoulder to counter-act the intense pain. They had also tried to give the injured man a broad-spectrum antibiotic from Usher’s back-up medical pack in the LAV, but when it came to injecting him, Martinez had stopped Androwski. “Allergic to cillins and mycins. Need a flaxin.”

  An IV hung from the bulkhead of the LAV, the line ending under some tape in Martinez’s un-injured arm. Seyfert had given him Narcan, a drug to counter the morphine’s respiratory-depressing effects, and Phenergan, an anti-nausea med that would also increase the pain-reducing effects of the morphine.

  Martinez raised his pasty face to look at Rick with some flare in his eyes. “I’m fine.”

  The man’s face belied his words. He was the color of rancid cream, and he was shivering. His forearm and wrist were swollen to three times their normal size. Both were so purple they were almost black, with yellow bruises blotching the area. His condition had deteriorated significantly during the four hundred fifty mile trip from outside of Salt Lake City to Cheyenne.

  The trip, which would have taken less tha
n seven hours when the world was still alive, had taken the better part of three days. The US military had been diligent in destroying roads and other infrastructure during the plague. The idea was probably to contain the contagion by not allowing travel, but as far as the group in the LAVs knew, the plan had failed, as they hadn’t come across a single living person in any of the small towns they had been through since leaving Ben to his fate in Salt Lake. They had seen plenty of dead folks though, both ambulatory and not. They had gotten more diesel in a town along the interstate, and this time Boone had circled the gas station twice before using the pumps Chris had appropriated from the truck stop. The diesel tanks on the LAVs were full, and the cans were almost there as well before the dead showed up in force. They had bugged out without incident.

  Then they came across the destroyed roads. The tarmac simply ended, and for quite a while there was no interstate, just broken shards of asphalt and twisted guard rails. The carnage didn’t end at the interstate either; the secondary roads were also destroyed, and there were huge craters making passage slow overland. They had skirted the highway as much as possible, but in some places it was extremely difficult to get by without using I-80.

  Now Martinez had a fever, and Cole, who also had some corpsman experience but claimed he was not a medic, surmised that the broken bones in Martinez’s wrist or forearm had cut into some blood vessels. He was bleeding internally. His fingers looked like fat, black sausages, and the pain must have been extreme, but Martinez didn’t give a shit about it because the morphine had kicked in. Cole told Boone and Rick that the fever meant probable infection, and if they didn’t fix the issue, Martinez could lose his hand, or worse. Androwski and Seyfert both nodded in agreement. The bandages that had been on his wrist and arm had to be changed twice, the tightness and swelling restricting the blood flow in his arm.

  The occupants of the LAVs popped the rear hatches and Boone unfolded a map as they assembled around him in a semi-circle. He held the map on the hull of the LAV.