DUSK 2
They’d followed a convoy of armored trailers, jeeps, and three helicopters for almost an hour. They’d circled around and stopped at a point not ten miles from where they had left. For some reason they wanted it to look like they’d come in from the south west instead of the ruined city. Sal wouldn’t have noticed had they not returned to a few familiar roads.
Not a word escaped during the ride over as though they’d been riding in a funeral procession instead of tailing possible hostiles forces. Sarah had taken the back seat where she’d stopped weeping fifteen minutes before. Instead she slumped, resting her forehead on the passenger side window silently letting her tears dry on her face. Sal wanted to tell her not to put her face in such a dangerous position, but he was afraid of how she’d react.
He should have hung back with her.
As the convoy reached its location, a red ball of light shot into the air and arced towards the ground a few miles away. Sal cursed the station wagon for not being equipped with a radio. Apparently, whoever was inside wasn’t supposed to be traceable if they were killed. The bodies had no identification, but Sal figured that was not uncommon. However, the lack of a radio would keep enemy forces from seeing frequencies used. Because the attack on their home had to be well coordinated, Sal doubted that the attackers worked without broadcasted communication, but he supposed it was possible.
“I shouldn’t have been talking,” Sarah said. “I should have been paying attention, but I thought we were safe.”
“Nowhere is safe, honey. It never has been,” Sal said.
He’d wanted to give his daughter some comforting words, but nothing came to him. Throughout his life, he’d usually made Sarah feel worse. He’d tried to scare her away from the research team and she knew he wouldn’t support her relationship with one of his troops.
As the undead mobs grew thicker with every block, the moans strangled the silence. Mutilated faces blurred in the windows and the station wagon rocked as the undead creatures hurled light debris at the vehicle. Before her father could give shout at her, a startled Sarah flinched away from the window.
“Do you think they could give our position away?” Jasper asked, holding a shotgun between his legs.
“I don’t think so, but we won’t be able to sit and watch anything with them clawing at our doors,” Sal said. “I’m going to turn around and see if we find a quiet spot.”
When Sal cut the wheel, the rear end of the station wagon struck one of the flesh eaters, flinging it into a storefront. He imagined the glass shattering, much like it would during a brawl in an old movie. If there were other societies out there, Sal wondered if any of them were producing cinema.
He backtracked for three miles before the mobs thinned. From their position, there were no buildings tall enough give them a view of the party. Aside from the lack of a good view point, Sal did not want to take his daughter back into the field so soon after what happened.
He felt something inside of his head, agreeing with his feelings.
“There’s no way we’re going to see what’s going on. Let’s come back after they’ve left,” Sal said.
*
Sam had told Catherine to help get the sick and wounded ready for transfer and Frank to watch the ground level, while Helen and Jack stayed with Sam on the rooftop. Sobczak had told Sam to let the incoming forces work outside and not to fire a shot, but Sam kept his soldiers ready for an attack or a breach. If this was a double cross, he wanted his forces to die dealing as much pain as they could.
“You sure you don’t want to ride with us?” Sobczak asked.
“I don’t like flying,” Sam said.
Without saying another word, Sobczak climbed into the cockpit of the helicopter where the rest of his entourage waited. The pilot handed his commanding officer the radio receiver.
Below, a convoy of jeeps and trailers of various sizes approached. The smaller ones parked parallel to each other. The twenty foot vehicles were equipped with three escape hatches on the rooftops which opened on all of them, spilling out armed soldiers. As they climbed out, the soldiers each dropped to their knees and moved very carefully away from their exit. Each troop was armed with a hunting rifle and anything that was in their vests.
“They park like that so the undead can’t flip them over,” Sobczak bragged.
When twenty soldiers were on top of the four mobile fortresses, they opened fire on the undead, staring around the doors. Troops had taken pot shots at the undead below, but now all passengers poked blazing gun barrels out of their open windows.
“We’ve worked with flamethrowers and explosives on extermination missions in the past, but they’re too volatile,” Sobczak shouted. “It takes a bit longer, but nothing beats a good boom stick.”
One zombie below stopped playing catch when its partner’s head exploded, preventing it from tossing the ball back. When the crowd by the building thinned to move towards the trailers, two jeeps cut through the mob. The undead scattered and attempted to chase the motorized lunch boxes. Normally, they ignored vehicles if something else had their attention.
Sam jogged towards the helicopter.
“I couldn’t tell you how we figured this out or how it works, but we can attract them with dog whistles. It’s great for leading them into traps and splitting up clusters of them.”
“Dog whistles,” Sam marveled.
In the twenty-two years that Sam had been involved in thinking up tactics and tricks to use against the undead, nobody had thought of something as simple as a dog whistle. If they’d known about this years ago, they may have been able to route the undead from buildings, making salvage runs much less hazardous.
When more dead bodies lied lifelessly in the streets than walked and moaned, the rest of the motorized assault team moved in. Passengers of jeeps blasted stragglers while the trailers exterminated clusters. When nothing was nearby, the side doors of the trailers opened, and maybe fifty troops stormed the pavement. Unlike the crews under Sam’s command, none of the units below held torches. Instead they were all armed with semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. Two men in the front blew on silent whistles, calling the remaining undead into firing range.
“The fun part’s almost over,” Sobczak said.
As the undead mobs approached the infantry, the jeeps flanked them, laying down the back rows of zombies. The ground troops and gunmen on top of the trailers opened fire, silencing the moans forever. Before long, the ground units split off into groups of five and checked the piles of corpses for anything that was not quite deanimated. They piled the dead into pyramids, which they set ablaze.
“We’ll help you pack if you need it,” Sobczak said.
*
The gunfire had stopped hours ago. Helicopters had taken off and flown into the distance and Sal had caught a glimpse of the convoy riding away in the distance. Whatever they left behind had been populated and was hopefully abandoned. Whatever it was, Sal figured it wouldn’t be hard to find.
They’d found a deserted parking lot where a shopping center had once stood. One of the shops had collapsed as though a truck had been dropped on the roof. Bricks had sprayed the inner edges of the parking lot, but most of the rubble was inside of the foundation. Any local undead had likely vacated the location for the populated building down the street.
Unlike before, they hadn’t left the station wagon. Sarah still slumped in her seat, barely responsive. She’d seen people die of illness and had lost friends who had participated in outside missions, but her reaction told Sal that she hadn’t seen someone close to her die a violent death in her lab job. Sal was relieved that she hadn’t faced this sort of danger before, but her inexperience would make her more vulnerable and slow down Jasper and himself. Again, he cursed himself for not kicking her ass back into the dormitory building.
As the station wagon rolled onto the street, Jasper asked: “Are you sure they’re gone?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Sal prepared to run down any moving corpse in the street, but found none. He wondered if they were all still by the place that had just been vacated. If that was the case, then maybe their destination wasn’t deserted. As they approached, the streets still lacked the corpses that should have populated them.
“It’s a little too damn quiet,” Jasper said. “You think they followed the convoy?”
“Their attention spans are too short. As soon as the last truck was gone, they’d have forgotten what they were chasing and went home. We should be seeing them right now.”
“You think there was an extermination party?”
Sarah’s head shot straight up when she heard the word “extermination.” Sal wondered if she was disgusted by the insertion that the creatures had never been human or excited by the thought of the monsters who’d killed her lover laying vanquished in the streets.
“Shit!” Sal said, when they reached their destination.
Several piles of charred bodies formed pyramids in the streets in front of a fortified structure. There must have been hundreds or even thousands of corpses. To dispose of that many bodies, the attacking force must have had at least a hundred troops, and if they’d destroyed this many undead, the ammunition used was hardly a fraction of what they had. Back home, they’d given up on extermination parties because they expended ammunition faster than it could be produced.
Sal turned his attention to the fortress. The front door was a sixteen by twenty foot metal gateway and all of the other first story doorways and windows had been sealed with metal bars and wooden boards. The building had been designed to hold out the undead, but not to hold off an armed assault.
“Is it safe to walk around?” Jasper asked.
“As safe as anywhere.”
Sarah’s mouth opened and froze for a second, then closed. Sal wished he hadn’t made the comment.
“Sarah, we need you to come with us. Are you up to it?” he asked.
His daughter nodded.
“This place doesn’t look like it’s supposed to hold a large number of settlers for a long time. There should be a quick way to open it from the outside.”
Opting for speed instead of stealth, Sal parked the station wagon outside of the doorway and got out.
“Jasper, until I tell you to get out I want you behind the wheel. If anything happens, drive off.”
“Do you think anything is going to happen?”
The front gate was a horizontal partition of metal, which was chained to the frame. The chain was secured by a padlock, which Sal considered smashing but decided not to. Destroying the lock might show that someone was there. Instead he inspected the front of the building in search of the key. When the search led to nowhere, Sal decided the risk was worth the treasure and rammed the lock with the butt of his shotgun until the metallic latch snapped with a ping. After unwrapping the chain, Sal slid the door opened, grunting as he pushed.
A fleet of trucks and other vehicles awaited inside.
“Sweet holy shit!”
Jasper opened the driver’s side door and stood, gaping at the find. Sarah stayed in the car until Sal waved them over.
“We’ll be able to get everyone out with this,” Sarah said.
“Let’s take a quick look inside and take what we need. I’ll drive off with one of the trucks, but I want to keep it somewhere hidden. I don’t know if we’ll be able to sneak everyone out yet.”
*
Lenux hadn’t appeared since the morning, but Ty knew he wasn’t alone in his quest. Though he had a spiritual guide, Ty had no idea what his quest was or if he was getting closer to achieving his goal, but he was content. He was alive and on a path to glory. If Lenux spoke the truth, Ty would become a leader in the order.
Awaiting further instructions, Ty drove back towards the main road which led the rest of his unit to death. As he drove through the sparse crowds of undead, Ty did not bother to steer around them, but attempted to smash every lone corpse with his grill instead. He had a feeling that he’d need to destroy the station wagon before he returned home.
Any guilt of what he’d done to Jud had left hours ago, replaced by fear and anticipation. He was going to be the one to report the city to Reed. He was going to receive glory and honor for his find and his finds to come.
Ty remembered the blond in his vision, so thin and pale. She looked as though her frame would shatter under his fist. He wanted to make her bleed. When he reached an unpopulated road, lined with open farm land, he pulled into a driveway and closed hi eyes, letting the images play on the lids.