Sever, p.24
Sever, page 24
Bocanegra’s don’t quit, we face our problems and deal with them to the best of our abilities. You’ll either sink or swim, but you will never quit. That’s what her father always told her. She’d faced adversity her entire life and surviving the zombie outbreak was just one more stumbling block in a long line of hardship. Her parents came over from Cuba in 1981 as part of the so-called “Mariel Boatlifts.” She was born in Florida while her parents waited processing through the large refugee camps that the American government had established for the immigrants while they weeded out the criminals and mentally insane that Castro had sent over as part of the exodus from his country.
Her father spoke very little English when he first arrived in America, but he’d been able to find work at the docks and eventually made friends with the owner of the company over the years. When the opportunity to move to New York and oversee the operations of a new expansion came up, Papa was the owner’s designee to shepherd the shipping company’s rising reputation.
Life in New York City had been hard for Maria since it always seemed like she was the new kid. Her father continued to promote within the company and they moved to a nicer area of the city, again causing her to be the new kid, but even worse, she was now a Hispanic kid in a white school and felt totally alone. Her father had told her that there were two options in life: She could either sink or she could swim. It was that simple, downhome message that resonated with the thirteen-year-old girl and she decided to swim.
She dove headfirst into her studies and joined honors clubs, even playing a few sports here and there. By the time everything was said and done, Maria had graduated as the salutatorian for her high school class and gotten a major scholarship for college. Her father became ill with cancer during her first year and she immediately flew back to New York to be with him. Even as he lay dying in the hospital bed, he reiterated the one mantra that had sustained his lifestyle and became her way of life. Bocanegra’s don’t quit. We either sink or swim, but we don’t quit.
He died after a very short time in the hospital. Maria’s mother told her that he’d been sick a long time and had hidden it from his daughter and coworkers. He didn’t want them to think of him as weak or feeble and had worked up until the very end. He never quit—and neither would she.
Maria held up once again while Shawn coddled Katie. “Let’s go! We have to be less than four blocks from those lights,” she whispered when they caught up to her.
Katie smiled at her and replied, “I’m trying, Maria. I really am. I’m just not used to all of this physical activity.”
She snorted softly and then, “Okay, keep trying your best. We’re almost there. Once we’re safe with the Army, then you can rest.”
Maria could clearly see the girl nod in the light of the full moon. Fine, maybe I should cut her some slack. If she’s trying her hardest, then that’s all I can ask of her.
They walked slowly for another couple hundred feet and then the roadway ended in a massive fifty-foot drop off. “Holy shit!” Maria exclaimed loudly in surprise. She regained her composure and in a quieter voice she said, “If the moon hadn’t been so full, then we might have just walked right off into the…” She paused as the sound of rushing water far below confirmed her thoughts before continuing, “Into the river.”
Shawn walked up beside her and peered into the darkness. “I guess the bridge is out, huh?”
Maria thought about how they’d be able to get across in the darkness. She could see small segments of the bridge protruding from the water’s black surface, but not enough to allow them to cross safely without swimming most of the way. Plus, she had no idea how strong the river’s current would be. They could get separated and swept away if it was moving fast.
“Hey guys,” Katie’s small voice penetrated the darkness. “Come over here and see.”
They walked several feet off to the side where Katie stood. When they got there, she pointed at a bent and twisted sign that let them know that they were looking at the Lehigh River, but there wasn’t any other information. “See what, Katie?” Maria asked.
“The bridge sign. It says that this is the Lehigh River.”
“So?”
“I think the river is pretty slow this far south,” Katie said. “It starts up in the mountains, but we’re so far away from there, that we should be okay crossing it.”
“And how do you know that?” Maria probed.
“It’s just something I remember reading somewhere. I don’t know, maybe it was on a piece of garbage along the highway. With the bridge out and the river valley between those lights and us, we need to cross. I can’t swim very well, but if it’s slow and shallow, I’ll be okay.”
Maria couldn’t argue with her logic, so they went back to the edge to determine the best route down the embankment to the river below. After a few seconds of examining the remains of the bridge’s jagged concrete and rebar foundation, they decided that trying to make their way down along the old road’s path would be nearly suicidal so they walked around to where the trees once lined the sides of the road and the steep hillside leading to the river bank. It was tough work climbing over all of the downed trees and debris, but they eventually made it to the bottom.
“The river isn’t as wide as it looked from up there,” Shawn remarked. “It looks like it’s about the same distance from home plate to second base. That’s only, what, 120 feet?”
“Something like that,” Maria replied as she stared at the water rushing by. “But the river looks like it’s moving pretty fast to me.”
“Maybe if we walk up and down the bank for a little ways, we’ll find a place that doesn’t look so deep,” Shawn suggested.
Maria sighed. This wasn’t supposed to be so hard. Why was the bridge out? Even more confusing, why was the entire town bombed to smithereens? She could maybe understand it if they’d been walking across corpses all day long, but there’d been less than fifty that she saw and a whole lot of zombies that seemed intact enough to kill them; hardly worth the devastation that the Army or Air Force or whomever had done to the place. She’d seen firsthand how accurate shooting of small, individual weapons did the job that grenades and artillery couldn’t do. All that stuff did was make crawling zombies instead of walking zombies.
Behind them, higher up on the slope, a twig snapped. The resulting noise echoed across the silent night like a gunshot.
“What was that?” Katie asked.
“Someone’s up there,” Shawn answered truthfully.
“Or something,” Maria amended.
“Okay, I don’t think we have time to find a shallow crossing spot,” the group’s leader said. “We need to go across now!”
“You think so, Shawn?” Maria asked sarcastically.
“Guys, maybe I was wrong about the water. It looks really deep… and fast,” Katie amended.
Several loud thuds and more twigs breaking indicated that a large group was now coming toward them. Their heads whipped back along the path that they’d used to get down to the river and as one, they peered into the darkness. At that distance, the moonlight allowed them to see several man-sized forms stumbling and falling down the slope. “I think they found us,” Shawn said.
Maria didn’t wait to see what his suggestion would be. She knew that he would try to find some alternate way around the situation because of Katie—a way that would likely get them killed if they waited around too long. He was smart, but not good at snap decisions, so sometimes she had to take matters into her own hands. She started wading out into the water.
“Hey, where are you going?” Shawn asked.
“Across. I suggest you do the same. Put the river between us and them and make it to those lights.”
“Can they swim?” Katie asked with a hint of panic in her voice.
Maria continued to splash out into the water. “I don’t know. But I know that I can and that I’m faster than those things.”
Shawn harrumphed behind her and then his feet flapped into the water too. “Come on, Katie. Let’s go!”
“I can’t. The water is too fast!”
Maria stopped then and turned around. She was about one third of the way across and the water was up to her mid-thigh. If she were closer, she would have slapped the girl across the cheek to knock some sense into her. “Katie! Get your ass out here or you are going to be zombie food,” she screamed at the girl in an effort to galvanize her into action.
It worked. Katie stepped off into the water, protesting about the cold, but at least she was moving. Maria turned and continued to make her way across. She made it to about the halfway point when she stepped off a ledge into the middle of the river channel and sank into water deeper than her head.
Cold water filled her nostrils as the river churned above her, twisting and turning her body as the water rushed by. She began kicking her feet and used her arms to pull herself upward. Her head broke the surface to the sounds of Shawn’s shouts. She swam away from his voice since he’d been behind her and soon, her shoes began to scrape against the muddy bottom.
A few more feet of swimming and then she tried to stand. The water was once more just above her navel and the woman stood up. “Shawn, the deep part is only about ten or fifteen feet across,” she called.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied but then realized that he was easily fifty feet upriver from her. The fact that she’d been swept that far downstream in the short distance meant that the water was extremely fast. “The current is really strong though, be careful!”
“Okay. I’m about where you were when you disappeared,” he answered. Maria hoped that all the yelling they were doing wasn’t just attracting the zombies on this side of the river, but at least they would be separated from the ones that she knew were pursuing them on the other side.
Katie’s small form continued out to where Shawn stood and the older woman could tell that they were talking, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. “Shawn, behind you!” she shouted.
A group of twenty zombies had emerged from the wreckage behind him and begun stumbling toward the river. Katie shrieked and clutched Shawn in a death grip. Maria could see Shawn shaking the girl and decided that she was going into shock. It’s up to me.
She unslung the M4 that she’d carried the entire way since Parsippany, New Jersey and hadn’t fired it since they fled that day that their rescue truck was overrun. She’d been afraid that the loud report would just draw more of the creatures to their location, so they’d relied on stealth and quiet to stay safe. The time for sneaking around was gone, her two companions were in danger and exposed in the middle of the river.
Maria used the pistol grip to pull the stock of the rifle firmly into the pocket of her shoulder like Sergeant Lumsey had taught her in New Jersey. The current tugged at her body, threatening to unbalance her, so she knew that firing close to Shawn would be out of the question, but she would sure as hell shoot at those things farther away. She wished for something to rest her front hand on so she could have a steadier shot, but there was nothing available. Everything that the noncommissioned officer had drilled into them came crashing back to her. She widened her stance to steady her upper body and went through the motions to control her breathing.
She peered through the small combat scope mounted on the weapon’s rail system and the first zombie appeared. It was less than two hundred feet away and the scope’s red dot bisected its head. Maria squeezed the trigger and the rifle bucked slightly against her shoulder. She’d known what to expect and she was able to reacquire the sight picture almost immediately because she’d had the rifle tight against her body.
The one she’d shot was down, floating in the shallows on its back where it had pitched from the force of the round. She mentally congratulated herself and moved to the next target. Another hit. The third round impacted on the rocks behind her intended target as she missed. She did a quick mental check of shooting fundamentals and decided that she must have jerked the trigger too hard since the round went wide to the right.
Katie’s screech caused her to break the cheek-to-stock weld that had been drilled into her. The girl ran toward the zombies and Shawn called after her. He started to follow, but Maria yelled, “Shawn, leave her! There’s nothing you can do!”
His indecision was almost palpable. She could see that he wanted to go after the girl, but to do so was akin to suicide. Finally, he turned and dove into the river to begin swimming toward her. Maria grinned in spite of the situation. He’s smarter than I am. I bumbled into the river and got disoriented; now he’s in control of the direction he’s going.
She refocused on Katie splashing back toward the shallows. What was she doing? She shot another of the creatures before Katie got too close for her to shoot any more of them. The girl had turned parallel to the riverbank and sloshed through the thigh-deep water as the zombies fell into line, trailing behind her. She was going to make it! The water slowed the creatures and she was gaining separation on them with each step.
Then something odd happened. The zombie closest to the girl fell to the side and began to float slowly downstream away from the group. Then another creature fell. Before long, the girl was running on the rocky shoreline with none of the zombies left to follow her. She disappeared behind the jagged stump of what must have been a massive tree before the bombs knocked it over and Maria couldn’t see her any longer.
Maria brought her rifle up and used the scope to look at the corpse of the first zombie where it floated idly in the shallows because the river hadn’t pulled it into the main channel. There was a hole in the side of its head leaking a thick black fluid. She checked a few more of the bodies; all of them had the same injury—a single bullet hole in the head.
She turned quickly to the slope behind her that led out of the river valley and back toward the lights that they’d been trying to make. There was a sniper up there somewhere with a silenced rifle—a damned good one at that.
Shawn’s splashing brought her attention back toward the river. The sniper’s actions were out of her control; they were exposed down in the valley and if he wanted them dead, then they would be. “Over here!” she called softly to Shawn as he made his way across the channel.
He climbed out of the deep and turned to the far bank. “Where’s Katie?” he asked.
“She got away into the wood line.”
Shawn ran his hand over his forehead and up into his hair to wick the water away. “She refused to swim. She was okay with wading, but I don’t think she knew how to swim. When she saw you disappear under the water, she just shut down and refused to go any further. The zombies were less threatening to her than the water.”
“Well, she got away because of somebody up there,” Maria said as she pointed across her body toward the ridgeline above them.
“Yeah, let’s hope the man upstairs keeps her safe,” he replied, misunderstanding her.
“No, not because of God,” Maria muttered. “There’s a sniper up there, killed like eight of the dammed things while you were swimming across.”
He turned quickly to peer up into the darkness. “Are they on our side?”
“I don’t know. They definitely aren’t on the side of the zombies and they haven’t shot us yet, so we should go up there and see who they are.”
A bright flash of fire above them indicated where someone was. The light was followed by a hollow thumping noise that drifted down and then the far bank exploded in a loud detonation.
Maria turned to see smoke on the bank and several more zombies making their way across the rocky expanse. Then another explosion sent several bodies flying. Whoever was above them also had some serious firepower besides the sniper rifle. The sounds of the detonations echoed down the river valley for several seconds before silence once again descended across the city.
She hoped Katie would be alright, but at the same time, she was furious at the girl. Why had she agreed to cross the river if she was so terrified of the water? Why hadn’t she just told them; they could have found another way around the river if she’d only opened up and told them about her fears. Now she was stuck on the eastern shore with a lot of zombies coming in. Maria wanted to feel bad for the girl, to mourn her loss, but for some reason she couldn’t make herself do so.
Shawn tapped her on the shoulder and she turned back toward the opposite side of the river where a man in an Army uniform had emerged from hiding up along the top of the bluff. He waved at them to come up. Shawn grasped Maria’s hands and they interlocked their fingers before they walked out of the water to face whoever was up there. Once they emerged from the water together, they continued to hold hands, relying on each other for support.
*****
31 October, 2139 hrs local
Rocky Mountain Manor
Denver, Colorado
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Ryan Wilson declared as he leaned back on the sofa. Recently, he’d taken to sitting directly on the couch with the smaller inner circle of his National Security Council. It made the setting more intimate and he felt that it facilitated more open communication than with him sitting behind his desk or at the head of a table.
“I wish I was, sir,” Rob Griffith answered. “Our Texas offices received word from Ozona, a small Texas town about a hundred miles from the border.”
“Wait. Ozona, Texas?” Kelly Flannigan asked incredulously.
“Yeah, why?” the Homeland Security Secretary enquired.
“I’ll be damned. The Crockett County Commissioner was a consultant for us when we went into Washington to recover the Declaration of Independence last spring.”
President Wilson was mildly interested about this aside, so he let it go for the moment. “What in the world would the commissioner of some backwater county in Texas possibly have to offer the FBI about zombies?” General Zollman asked.
“His name is Grayson Donnelly,” Kelly answered. “He was one of the only survivors from Indianapolis. Grayson led the defense of a small community within the quarantine zone for more than half a year. They became really good at striking out against the zombies there and creating a safe zone around their base.”
