Sever, p.12
Sever, page 12
“Thank you!” Shawn almost shouted into the microphone. “Do we go down and like wait for them or what?”
“That’s dependent on your cover and concealment to the highway. The creatures are still out there, so you need to stay safe while you’re waiting for the truck.”
Shawn popped his head up over the wall to assess how far they were from the highway. It was about one and a half football fields away, so it wasn’t too far to jog with the little bit of gear that they had. He sat back down and lifted the radio to his mouth, “We’re going to stay on the roof to observe. When we hear the trucks we’ll run down to the road.”
“Alright, I’ll pass that info on to the drivers. See you soon.”
The radio went silent and he unzipped the backpack. “Let’s pack up everything so we can make a break for it as soon as the trucks come down.”
“Good idea,” Maria agreed as she grabbed the binoculars from around his neck and put them down inside the bag. Then she adjusted the strap on her rifle so it wouldn’t bounce when she ran.
They only had to wait a few minutes until the sound of the big Army trucks’ engines echoed through the plaza. Shawn put the backpack on and cinched the straps down tight. “Okay, that’s them. You ready?” he asked his partner.
“Yeah, let’s go,” she replied. Once again, Shawn found himself following Maria’s lead as she opened the door and took the steps downward.
FIVE
18 October, 1704 hrs local
Wedgewood Golf Course
Allentown, Pennsylvania
“Geez that was a long trip,” Mike said as he stretched beside his Abrams tank.
“Yes, sir. But I got us here alright,” Greeley said with a toothy grin.
They’d made the seventy-mile trip from their last defensive position in New Jersey to their location on the golf course in just over three hours. The time spent in the seat wasn’t the problem, they were used to that; the distance wore on the men. Traveling in a tank—even with the vehicle’s superb transmission and shock absorption—was not the same as taking a trip in a car. It was much more stressful because of the constant monitoring of the systems that was required.
The company commander counted to make sure that all twelve of his remaining tanks were present as well as the first sergeant and the headquarters contingent. They’d need to lager somewhere secure soon to perform maintenance on the tanks or else they wouldn’t be much use to the Army. Frankly, Mike was surprised that none of the vehicles had gone down yet. The giant, hulking beasts were a wonder of modern military engineering, but as such, they needed constant attention and the operators had been hesitant about performing even the most basic preventative maintenance because it made them targets for the roaming zombies.
He hoped that the distance that they’d just added between the last known location of the creatures would give his men—and himself—some confidence that they had a couple of days of relative safety so they could do some work on the tracks. At the very least, they had to do the “After Operation” maintenance listed in the operator’s manual and refill the fluids that one of the first sergeant’s big trucks had been carrying with them since Hoosick Falls.
“Yeah, you got us here alright, Specialist Greeley. Good job seeing those signs too; otherwise we would have gone to the grid that we’d been given downtown.”
On the way south along Interstate 78, there had been hastily-made road signs directing the tank company to go to the golf course. That suited Mike just fine since the open fairways gave them much more maneuverability and standoff distance if they had to fight. He’d called Command the moment that they arrived and learned that they’d be staying for no more than three days as they continued the westward retreat to the mountains.
He called the company’s leadership together and gave the order for half of the crews to begin doing maintenance while the other half stood watch. It didn’t take long for the golf course to look like any other field lager site as the men started their priorities of work and personal hygiene using wet wipes and washcloths.
Unfortunately, it also didn’t take long for the locals to come out and begin pestering his men for protection against the creatures. It got so bad that Mike had to have the first sergeant set up a perimeter guard to keep the bystanders at bay. He didn’t want to react to a situation quickly and accidently crush a civilian who was trying to stay close to the vehicles for defense.
He took the opportunity to call Trinity and the girls out in Honolulu. They’d been there since the morning after his father had called him to warn about the zombies in Philadelphia and he hadn’t gotten very many chances to call her. He’d been skeptical of his old man’s story, but as he’d listened to the older Miranda’s experience, Mike had decided that it was better safe than sorry and sent his family away. A slight hitch in his chest made him pause as he thought about Marcus and Alice Miranda. They’d be long dead by now. He prayed that their zombies had already been killed so he wouldn’t have to face them at some point in the future.
Mike had always been a realist. As such, he pushed aside the emotions. He couldn’t do anything about his parents. He tapped the send button to complete the call to his free-spirited wife. They’d made for quite the pair; he was a straight-edged military man while his spouse was more of a hippie than the neighborhood soccer mom.
The phone rang twice before Trinity picked up, “Hello? Mike, is that you?”
“Hey, baby. How are you?”
“Oh my God, I’m so glad that you’re okay. The president said on the television that we lost New Jersey and that was the last place I—”
“We’re okay. We repositioned to Allentown, Pennsylvania to rearm and refuel. Then we’re going over the Appalachians into the prepared fortifications as a defensive line where we can use our tanks’ weaponry to our advantage instead of sitting along a highway or tunnel.” The ability to talk openly about their plans over the phone or radio was about the only advantage to fighting the undead instead of a human enemy.
“When can you come to Hawaii?”
Mike sighed. He didn’t want to get into a fight with his wife on one of the rare occasions that he got to call her. “I can’t come until we defeat the zombies. If my tank company hadn’t been there, a lot more people would have died.”
“You aren’t a superhero, Michael. Somebody else can do this, you need to come to Hawaii and take care of your family. The girls need you… I need you. You’ve done enough, we need you here.”
“Jesus, Trinity! I can’t even fly there, okay. The Chinese or the Russians would most likely shoot down the plane. They’re both trying to keep the virus trapped in America before it gets loose. I’m stuck here until we beat this thing.”
She was quiet for a moment and he could tell that she struggled to hold back her tears. “Do you want to talk to Brooke?”
“Yeah, put her on,” he said. Hearing from his three-year-old daughter would brighten his mood. It had started getting sour when the civilians came around and got worse as his wife refused to listen to reason. If men like him—a whole lot of men like him—didn’t stand up and stop these things, then they’d lose the country, maybe even the entire planet.
“Hi, Daddy!” the little girl said into the phone.
“Hey, baby girl. Are you taking care of Meadow?”
He allowed himself to become lost in the conversation with his little girl for a few minutes of peace.
*****
18 October, 1709 hrs local
Lanidex Plaza
Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey
Shawn and Maria reached the first floor and raced across the office space toward the door. The two remaining members of the observation team were ready to get picked. Their military point of contact had told them that the plan was to defend on the far side of the Appalachians where the creatures would be forced to go through the passes, canalizing them into easily manageable smaller groups instead of the large mass spread across a wide front. The humans would wipe out the zombies and then counterattack to take back the East Coast. After that, they’d spend months, maybe even years combing through the countryside in order to ensure that every one of them were gone.
Maria reached the door first and twisted the lock to open it. “Wait!” Shawn hissed from behind her.
“What?”
“We need to check to make sure that the way is clear.”
“We were just up on the roof, Shawn. There’s nothing out there. Let’s go!”
He started to protest, but she was already pushing the door open. “Dammit!” he replied and rushed after his partner.
The night was getting darker as they raced around the corner of the building toward the highway. Shawn hoped that the trucks knew which building that they’d been in, otherwise it would increase their run by almost another hundred yards to come up parallel to the next building along the road.
Leaves crunched loudly under their feet as they ran across the small grassy area between the plaza and Highway 287. Too much noise! Shawn’s mind screamed. They sounded like a herd of elephants and if there were any of the creatures around, they would zero in on the sound instantly.
It took them far longer to run the distance than Shawn thought it would as they finally burst out onto the pavement. The trucks’ headlights shown weakly in the early evening light and he cursed as he realized they were still almost fifty yards away.
Shawn and Maria had expended almost all of their energy in the flat out sprint from the building and adding another run would likely put them over the edge of exhaustion. They started jogging slowly toward their salvation in the trucks when the eastern side of the road erupted in movement as thousands of zombies appeared from the far side of the road.
Shawn shouted out a warning and raised his hunting rifle to fire into the crowd of advancing zombies. The men in the trucks saw them as well and opened up with their machine guns. The creatures had timed their attack perfectly. Before the observation team could make it to safety, the undead completely ringed the trucks.
The men in the trucks fired wildly in every direction and rounds chewed up the ground around Shawn. “Maria, watch out!” he cried.
She didn’t hesitate as she dove into the ditch in the direction that they’d come. Shawn paused for a moment to see if the trucks would make it out of the ambush, but it was too long. He was hit hard from the side and his rifle went tumbling down into the grass where Maria had fled. The dead hands of one of the zombies clasped onto his jacket sleeve and yanked him back the opposite direction toward its open mouth.
Shawn pulled his arm through the sleeve and turned out of the coat. He felt his backpack with their meager supplies and the pictures of Shana slip off as well. He chose to save the pack by dropping his rifle and grabbing it with both hands. Once he was free, he took off at a sprint after Maria.
The crashing of the leaves ahead told him where she’d likely gone and he yelled for her. The noise stopped and he pushed ahead blindly.
“Stay right there, Shawn,” Maria said from the darkness.
“We’ve got to get back to the building!” he shouted.
“Were you bitten?”
He thought about her question and then felt his arm. It didn’t feel damp from blood loss and there wasn’t any pain. “No. It grabbed my jacket and I lost my gun.”
There was a shifting in the leaves and then she said, “Okay, come on.”
Shawn jogged forward and felt his way into the end of Maria’s rifle. She had it leveled right at his stomach. “Are you sure that you didn’t get bitten?”
“Yeah, I’m—” the crackling of dead leaves behind them near the highway propelled them into action. They forgot about checking Shawn for zombie bites and ran back toward the building that had been their home for the past several days.
He pulled up next to her, panting. “Can we make it back… To the office?”
Maria’s arm shot out and said, “Its right here. Let’s get inside!”
They felt their way around the building and it temporarily blocked out the sounds of their pursuers… It was getting darker by the moment and Shawn’s hand slid over the rough block as they ran to help him stay close to the safety that the building provided.
The walkway ahead darkened with the shadows of the creatures as they emerged around the side of the building. Maria made it to the door and pulled on it in desperation. It didn’t budge.
“Fuck!” she screamed in frustration. They’d gone to the wrong building.
*****
19 October, 1121 hrs local
Perdido Cove RV Resort
Pensacola, Florida
Asher checked his watch, it was almost noon and Rachel was still asleep somehow, even though he’d done all the driving. They’d driven more than eleven hours the previous day down the eastern coast of Georgia and then began heading west once they reached Jacksonville. When they finally made it to Pensacola, the girl had directed him to drive the ten miles from the interstate to the Perdido Key barrier island where they’d stayed in the RV park overnight. Asher had almost collapsed from the exhaustion of driving so far with the camper and had been grateful for the stop.
Last night, Rachel had petitioned him successfully to stay the entire day in Pensacola. He didn’t want to admit it, but they needed a break from the constant planning and traveling. She was brand new to all of this and he wasn’t anywhere near as young as he needed to be to keep up the sustained operations. She wanted to go sit down near the water and relax a little and he agreed that they were probably far enough south and west from the danger area out on the little island that they could afford to stay over for an extra night.
During the trip, he’d constantly monitored the announcements from the Emergency Broadcast System and everything seemed to be still north of Washington. There were some sketchy reports of the creatures being seen in Virginia, but the area was sparsely populated after the nuclear detonation, so it was hard to determine if those reports were accurate. The military units surrounding the city had been overrun and there was no one nearby to keep the zombies trapped behind The Wall, so it made sense that the creatures were likely in Virginia also.
Those reports were hard for Rachel to understand, but he’d been able to read between the lines. All it took was some patience and a significant force could be snuck behind the units around the city. The Army had likely been engaged to their front and then got rolled up from the side or the rear. He’d told Rachel about what he’d learned from his old buddy Hank Dawson about the creatures doing the same thing in the initial outbreak, taking out three or four of the refugee camps before they were stopped. The military had been able to make use of sonic pulse cannons to suppress the creatures and dispatch them before the outbreak spread beyond targeting the refugees.
He’d told her about his team in DC. They had the futuristic-looking sonic pulse devices with them when they infiltrated the city, but they’d never had a legitimate need to use them. Because of the four-hour recharge time, he’d made the decision to hold off on their use at the time, but hindsight being what it was, he could have used it successfully when they had to fight a defensive battle just to get into the National Archives.
Telling Rachel about the cannons had reminded him to try calling his friend Hank again. Since the retired Delta operator lived in Florida, Asher wanted to see if they could possibly stay the night before continuing their westward trip, but the man had been smart. The moment that he’d heard that the zombies were in Philadelphia, Hank Dawson flew his family to their timeshare in Honolulu 4,500 miles away.
Emory still had the survivor website and Hank had his retirement paycheck for income, so they didn’t even need to get additional jobs to continue being able to make ends meet. To Hank—and to Asher—it made sense. He’d fought against an army of the Type Ones and lived to tell the tale. Asher was positive that there were some more of the originals left in the city, the Type Twos were just too stupid to act in a concentrated manner the way they had when they’d went after Allyson in the apartment building. Plus, the way they’d snuck out of DC into Pennsylvania convinced him that there was at least one of the creatures pulling the zombies’ strings.
“Mmm… Good morning,” Rachel murmured from the bed beside him, interrupting his thoughts.
He looked over. Her lithe, naked body was barely concealed underneath the blanket. “Morning,” he answered. “Did you sleep alright?”
She stretched her arms above her head and the covers slipped down to expose one of her light pink nipples. “Mmm hmm,” she said without covering back up, they were long past that awkward phase anyways.
Rachel sat up and glanced over at the curtained window. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon. You want some coffee?”
“Yes, please. I must have been exhausted. What time did we go to bed last night?”
He pushed himself up off the mattress so he could make her a cup of coffee. “Um, sometime around one or two.”
“Last night was so nice… baby.” Asher could tell that she had hesitated a little before she tried the nickname on for size.
He turned and handed her the half-full cup of coffee but held it out of reach until she gave him a kiss. After she’d accepted the cup he sat back down beside her and picked up his own mug from the floor where he’d placed it without worrying about Boomer getting into it—she hated coffee. “So we’re at the beach, what do you want to do before we have to leave tomorrow?”
She took a long sip from her coffee and then said, “I want to go for a walk along the beach. It’s too cold to go swimming but I bet it’s just lovely near the water.”
“Alright. Boomer will love it,” he replied. “We’ll have to give her a bath in the shower once we get back, though. We won’t want that wet, smelly dog in the cab of the truck with us.”
She nodded in agreement and then asked, “How long have you been awake?”
