The Zone Page 15

  “We’re going to die in here,” Jo whispered hollowly. Looking around at the exit-less walls, the door rattling under the impact of feet and hands, you couldn’t blame her pessimism.

  “Not too likely,” Charlie grunted as he dragged a cardboard shoebox out. “They can’t get through the door.”

  “We can’t either,” Chuck pointed out. I recognized him as one of the six who had arrived last night; he was holding up pretty well, all things considered. Miguel passed around a bag of cheap peppermints which at least cut the taste of dust and sheetrock and got the saliva going.

  Charlie dumped the shoebox on the desk, spilling a collection of battered hand tools. “We go out through the roof.”

  A small pry bar and a hammer and the age of the building made it easier going than it sounded; we had a screwdriver pounded through to open air in no time, and small hole a few minutes later. Charlie was concerned about Ted’s absence; when we had a hole the size of a soccer ball he had Chuck and Miguel boost Jo up to look, but the roof was empty.

  When we got it big enough Jo went out and kicked the edges, helping knock boards loose; Mick followed, and then Miguel. We handed up the ammunition and weapons next.

  “You want to go next?” Charlie asked as the guys double-teamed a stubborn plank.

  I shook my head, staring at the door. “No, I think I’ll stay here a bit.”

  “What?”

  “The roof just means clean air-we still have to get away. You have the keys to the bus?”

  “Yeah, and the keys are in the welding truck.”

  “This is my idea: you guys get on the roof and get set, Jo tells me when, and I open the inside door and stand just out of reach from the bars. They’ll go berserk, and I bet it draws the others in. Somebody fast gets to a vehicle and gets it alongside the building and we’re golden.”

  Charlie shook his head. “That security door ain’t a vault. They put enough muscle on it, and you won’t make it out.”

  “I can drop a couple at the door, impede them. If it starts to go I’ll shut the inside door, which ought to buy enough time to get on the roof. It doesn’t have to be a long time-once a vehicle cranks some will head outside. We don’t get a vehicle we’re dead, damn sure nobody’s going to come rescue us.”

  He sighed. “Lemme take a look outside.”

  I got the chair and desk positioned just so while I waited; if I had to get out quick I didn’t want anything to go wrong.

  Charlie appeared in the hole. “Nearly all are inside, so it might work.”

  “You find Ted?”

  “Yeah.” His expression said it all. “Its going to be a bit, we need to sort out our end.”

  “I’m in no rush.”

  It could work as my end wasn’t too risky provided the security door held for the initial couple seconds until I could screw up the front rank. I doubted I would ever get the inside door closed again, so it was an all or nothing proposition. But I couldn’t see any other scheme; the full mass of the infected weren’t going to get lured outside into our field of fire-they would pull back after losing a few. They were patient and in the shade, while we were stuck on a roof with no water in Texas.

  This was a lot different than my John Wayne optimism setting off on foot on Sunday, or the do-or-die gung-ho attitude of the truck run on Monday morning: the stakes kept getting higher, the odds leaner, the victory smaller. But the tougher it gets, the tougher you had to get. Anybody can be a Ranger when its dress greens, berets, and spit-shined jump boots, but you found out who the Rangers are and who just went to a school when the mud got deep, the ammo got low, and the dark was closing in. High spirits and cool circumstances and being bad-ass fade fast when it gets ugly, but pride will drive you until your feet bleed and your life ends. The mind always quits before the body, unless you are trained and motivated.

  That was what had been pounded into me, anyway. I believed it, although another part of me knew that I could have just slept in today.

  Jo appeared at the hole. “Charlie says in a minute.”

  “Got it.”

  Seconds dragged by; waiting is always the worst. Tension without purpose, stress that called for release. I wanted to do it, I dreaded the start. Mostly I just wanted to do it.

  “Charlie says when you are ready.”

  I put in my ear plugs, flipped the safety off, wiped the lens clean on the holo-sight, twisted the door knob and pulled, all crisply, methodically, unthinkingly.

  An infected was gripping the bars and shaking the security door when the interior door swung open, a chunky Asian male in a one-piece jumpsuit and patent loafers that were grimy and blood-splattered, his skin gray and greasy and splotched with sores. The door frame was working, the anchoring bolts coming loose from the constant assault, but it was holding. For the moment.

  He let go with that howling wail that rattles around inside your spinal column talking to nerve clusters that still think in terms of clubs and flint axes, and then I put two into his belly to make sure everybody knew I was here; I didn’t want him dead since he was blocking a lot of access to the door. I stepped up on the chair, blew up a skull behind him, the flashlight confirming that the room was filling up fast. Some blackish blood was flecking his lips but my Asian buddy was still straining at the bars, along with a couple arms reaching past him, so I put one through his left elbow, shot two of the arms reaching around him, and nailed another head in the crowd. I wanted them working on the door, but not too efficiently.

  Jumpsuit may have had only one arm to work with, but he was straining hard to overcome the resistance of bolts and latch, with some blood leaking out the entry wounds in his gut but not nearly as much as should be. I nailed another head shot and then carefully tagged jumpsuit in the right lung. The blood at his mouth got a bit frothy, but not much; he was still attacking the door with complete absorption, if only one arm. The look in his milky eyes reminded me of a shark’s: no emotion, no passion, just bone-deep programming. Whoever used to live in that skull was long gone.

  Gunfire erupted up above and I quit with my research and starting shooting heads, leaving jumpsuit in place, allowing more to press forward, hopefully giving the rest the impression of meaningful activity and holding everyone’s attention. It wasn’t fast shooting but it was steady; I was trying to kill enough to keep up forward movement without killing so many that they started backing out of the field of fire.

  Jo yelling finally caught my attention; she was making a ‘come-on’ gesture so I put one through jumpsuit’s forehead and stepped from chair to desk to file cabinet and then a clumsy scramble onto the roof where Charlie was blasting away with a shotgun and Chuck was helping Jo step over the roof’s edge onto the roof of the bus. He tossed the case of shotgun shells after her and hopped off himself.

  The bus was alongside the building, amidst a heavy scattering of dead infected; a shotgun thumped from inside the bus, firing out. Charlie was thumbing shells into his weapon, tears on his cheeks. “You OK?”

  “They got Mick. Miguel made it to the bus the second try.”

  It took the air out of me. The others were strangers, but Mick…shit. I got four infected before I saw the tracer, and three more afterward. By the time I had the second mag in there weren’t any more in sight-they learned eventually.

  I thumped Charlie’s shoulder. “I need to get the truck. I’ll get on the roof, and if Miguel can back it up a bit I’ll get it.”

  “I’m done,” Charlie snapped fresh rounds into his weapon. “This is it. Screw it. This isn’t worth the candle.”

  “OK. Tell Miguel to follow the truck; I’ll drop it at my place, and we’ll get you guys out. I’ll drive the bus back.”

  Miguel did a good job: I was able to hop from the bus to the roof of the truck, scramble down the folding ladder, Mick’s combat build, and get into the cab before any infected popped out. While I was moving Charlie put a half-dozen rounds of buckshot into the hole in the side of the building on spec to let them know we cared.
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br />   I wasn’t going to be doing any sizeable rescues by myself, but having the bus might create options that otherwise would not exist. I could hand it off to a rescue group, or maybe find other like-minded fools and try again. I really didn’t have a plan at the moment, but I wasn’t passing up on options.

  I parked the truck in its usual spot and left my gear bag in place but grabbed the Berretta from it, and the rifle case as well. I gave the bus a ‘wait one’ gesture as I gimped into my place. It had occurred to me that the troops might be grabbing extra weapons, so I dropped my tac vest, M-4, and Glock on the couch; upstairs I discarded my tactical shirt and pulled on a navy turtleneck I used to wear under my body armor on cold nights. Downstairs I grabbed a 870 riot-length pump shotgun and an empty bandolier, stuck the Berretta in the back of my belt, took a couple flex cuffs, and headed back outside.

  Miguel racked the door for me and had the bus in gear before I was up the steps. I grabbed a box of shells from the case and a soda from the cooler they had bungee-corded into the seat behind the driver and sat in a seat across from Charlie.

  “Miguel’s leaving too,” the musician wiped his glasses. “Too much shit. You still staying?”

  “Yeah,” I took a long, greedy pull at the soda. “Man, I needed that. I can’t rescue anyone by myself, but I can lurk on high points and cull the herd. If my knee was better I would go with you and find an outfit on the perimeter that needed an extra hand, but a grunt who can’t run is a dead grunt.”

  “To hell the hero business,” Charlie slumped in his seat.

  “We got a bunch out, people who wouldn’t have made it otherwise. We wasted a bunch of infected, which might have improved the chances for other survivors. Hell, we were eating breakfast-how were we supposed to know that some asshole would panic and crash into the bar after leading a mass of infected straight to us?” For an instant the image of the driver getting pulled out that hole flashed before me and then I dismissed it: he wasn’t one we needed to remember. “It could have just as easily been you or me. Probably will, before this is all over. But Bob and Mick bought it because they were helping people, and that counts for something.”

  Charlie grunted, but after a moment he straightened up a bit.

  I broke open the box of shells and filled the bandolier. After a while Charlie passed me a cell phone and car charger. “Here, you might need this.”

  “Remote Control Halo, right?”

  He grinned tiredly. “Yeah. We thought it might get us laid.”

  “Did it?”

  “It was junior high. We went from being losers to being losers in a band. Still, we rocked some garages, and some girls did hang out. We learned, mostly about bands and music, some about girls.”

  We rode in companionable silence for a while, the battered city rolling past on both sides.

  “Checkpoint up ahead,” Miguel called back.

  The case of shells was on a front seat along with a couple boxes of 9mm, one of the Winchester riot guns I had liberated along with the truck, and a cut-down weapon I had noticed earlier, a stainless M870 with a brushed finish to cut glare with the barrel expertly cut even with the magazine tube and the stock replaced with a slightly flared hardwood grip. Chuck, Miguel, and Charlie had shotguns. I held the weapon up. “Anyone else want this?” There were no takers. “I have a feeling they’re going to be seizing excess weapons and ammo, so stock up now.”

  Chuck held up a hand and I tossed him a box, then one to Charlie; Miguel’s pockets were bulging. I loaded the cut-down, grabbed a full box and headed to the rear of the bus where I used the flex cuffs to strap the cut-down and the box of shells out of sight under a seat.

  “Man, you are an even mix of paranoid and preparation,” Charlie shook his head. “Like a Boy Scout with issues.”

  “Good luck,” I offered him my hand.

  “You too.” He grinned a bit. “You really going to keep mixing it up, huh?”

  I shrugged. “It’s the only thing in my life I haven’t screwed up. You gotta play to your strengths.”

  “Its been real, Martin. Glad I met you.”

  “You’re a scholar and a gentleman, Charlie. Go with God.”

  The checkpoint was a line of cars parked nose to tail across the highway; trenches had been dug and filled in a nearby field, burying points for infected, I assumed from the quantity of blood smeared across the blacktop in front of the cars. They waved us to pull over and a detachment boarded, all soldiers, but I could see men in police uniforms and civilian clothes manning the barricade as well.

  The detachment was from the First Cavalry Division, a Captain, a Lieutenant, a Staff Sergeant, and one lonely Specialist; the ranks suggestive of men whose loved ones were safe on Fort Hood or elsewhere.

  The Lieutenant explained that those exiting would be checked for exposure to the virus and then transported to a collection point. “Is Rescue Team 71 still operative?”

  “Yes, sir.” Old habits. “I’ll be taking the bus back in.”

  “All right. Those exiting the Zone may retain personal weapons but excess ammunition and government-issue arms must be turned in.” He gestured towards me. “This includes you.”

  Right again.

  They confiscated my Beretta and Charlie’s, and the unclaimed riot gun; the ammo we had on us we kept, but the stuff on the front seat went into government service. The Captain eyed my shotgun with its tactical light, but let me hang onto it. I wasn’t prepared to argue as all four men looked ground down, tired, and very capable. A couple nights holding the line would insure that those still at their posts were the hard core, the real soldiers. The fakes and screw-ups would be dead or running. Leaving my M-4 behind had been a very good choice.

  The bus was a bear to get turned around and my knee did not like operating the clutch, but I managed to get going back the way we had come without stalling.

  Heading back, I thought about the weapons and ammunition: I had liberated the Winchester riot guns from the armored car place, the shotgun ammo had been burned off yesterday, and some of the .357 also, with some fired off today and the rest left at the Wheel; of the doper guns, the Tec-9 had seen good service yesterday, and was at the Wheel; the Desert Eagle was still on Mick’s body, the Taurus was in the Wheel, and the Berettas had been drafted. Most of the ammunition had been fired off, less what I had stashed in my gear bag.

  Funny how it all worked out. I got those shotguns out a locker where they sat for months from the looks of them, then they had roved all over town seeing pretty heavy usage, and now two of them were bound for parts unknown while the third would see action tonight.

  It was interaction in motion: Sunday I ran into Mick and Charlie, and we got Tina out; I learned a lot about conditions from them. I got the truck, and contacted Charlie and his crew and together we rescued my ex and a bunch of other people over the course of the day, and took out a lot of infected.

  If only Charlie hadn’t put the Wheel down as the site for our team, such as it was, the panicky asshole in the station wagon wouldn’t have made a run and ended up leading them right to us, not to mention opening the way for them. Such is how things go; Team 71 might still exist, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to put my address down as its extraction point. If ever I got the team going, we would have to set up meeting points. Lessons learned, at too high a cost.

  I gassed the bus up at the same convenience store I had broken into before; the power was still on. While the pump ticked away I added a case of motor oil and packets of fuses to the bus and loaded up every full propane cylinder they had. Like it or not, I was going to have to plan for a lot longer stay than I had expected. I also took their entire stock of bottled water, a sturdy two-wheel dolly cart I found in the back room, and all the batteries they had, regardless of size. I was official again, and requisition and scrounging are honorable military skills.

  Parking the bus was an issue; like the truck, I didn’t want it to provide a climbing point for infected, but I was also thinking about panic-blin
ded idiots crashing into otherwise solid walls. I parked it adjacent to my place on the road leading to the elevated roadway, about two feet from the curb; an Olympic-trained infected couldn’t make that jump, and the bus would prevent anyone coming down the road from ramming my building. The alley was too narrow and the parking lot too short, so other than the front I was pretty safe from assholes with cars.

  It was thirteen hundred when I parked the bus but it seemed like a week since I met up with the guys at the Wheel. Bob and Mick and quite a few others had been alive then. What a day.

  No infected were in sight, so I used the dolly to move my stuff to the front door and then left the dolly in the ever-more-burdened truck. I stashed the propane cylinders in an empty dumpster in the alley across from my place; I wouldn’t need them fast, and fire was a concern of mine. The two on the roof were more than enough for a while.

  Once inside, buttoned up, and the new stuff, including the cut-down shotgun, stowed, I took a long shower and put a hot pack on my knee over an ace tube support. It was really talking to me, but this might help. Downstairs, I sorted through my supplies and decided against using any more of the mini propane cylinders as decoy bombs because they fit my camp stove and the lantern I bought at Alan’s place, and when the power went down the ability to cook and boil water would be more important than the handful of infected they would take down. I stacked them by the door, planning to transfer them to the dumpster next time I went out.

  The receiver and laptop weren’t hard to unpack, and they were up and running in short order. Instead of making contact I sacked up all the boxes and packing from the technology and gathered up the rest of the trash, except for the empty water and soda bottles; I had never recycled a thing in my life, but times were hard and getting harder. I rinsed out the bottles and filled them with tap water.

  The times were changing, and not for the better.

  Chapter Nine

  I grilled another pair of steaks and ate one on the roof with curly fries and canned green beans. Mick’s loot was the only food that wouldn’t keep if I lost power, so it was going first.