Convoy 19: A Zombie Novel (4 page)

Chapter 4

Sergeant Miguel Ramos checked his mounted gun’s ammunition for the hundredth time. Side arm, rifle, ammunition, aid kit, ammunition, grenades, flash-bangs, ammunition; he checked every detail, every conceivable thing he would need on this mission. He checked his seat buckle, he checked his sights, he checked his helmet, and he checked his dog tags. Then he checked everything again. His pre-mission routine was almost ritualistic - if there was any miniscule detail that might better the convoy’s chances of coming back alive, Sergeant Ramos would find it and incorporate it into his pre-mission routine. After countless operations, he had become nothing short of obsessive.

Long ago, Sergeant Ramos would feel a rush of exhilaration, a feeling of invincibility as he prepared for a mission. He was trained and equipped to make the world of the living dead his personal shooting range. Within a week, however, nearly half the convoy had been lost to accidents, civilian attacks, and the undead. His rush was long gone and replaced by a gnawing sense of fear. He had been quickly forged into a hardened veteran of a brutal war. Whatever happened during the next few hours, someone wouldn’t be coming back. With a sigh, he eased himself into his gun mount and made the sign of the cross over his chest. He didn’t want to go back out there.

“Convoy Nineteen, go!” The signal came through the speakers the same way it had hundreds of times before.

Sergeant First Class Harvey hit the gas, and the convoy sped forward, following his lead. The line of five vehicles passed out of the warehouse, through the chain-link gates ringing the perimeter, and pulled away from the bustling docks and into darkness and mayhem.

The lights of combat aircraft and tracer fire, punctuated by an occasional explosion, shone clearly through the blackness of the night. Gunfire, rocket fire, and detonations echoed over the ocean behind them. The worldwide zombie apocalypse did a great deal to even the disparity between the Mexican military and the United States military, but the disparity was still very significant. The U.S.S. Ronal Reagan Super Carrier battle group was stretched thin from its relief efforts, supply logistics, and civilian support roles, but head-to-head combat against a desperate and technologically inferior opponent was still within its capacity. By now, the Mexican government had been reduced to guerrilla attacks and perimeter raids, but the war still cost resources and lives. Ships and planes would never be rebuilt. Pilots and sailors would rise to join the living dead. The convoys themselves occasionally encountered scouting Mexican ground forces, but the vast majority of hostilities were confined to the waters and air off the coast of San Diego… there was little to fight over on the mainland any more.

“Mexico’s at it again!” Sergeant Ramos’s voice came over the intercom as he turned the gun mount to face the ocean.

Pam and Carl didn’t reply. They both felt that it said something dark about the human race that, as the entire world was being overrun with the walking dead – an aggressor that threatened the very survival of mankind – wars between countries still raged all across the world. In many cases, the warring nations had been long-time allies. Governments and people driven by fear and madness, looked to whatever shred of a life preserver to which their neighbors were clinging. They became ready to kill whomever they had to, so they might take it for themselves… even as the claws of the dead scratched at their throats.

The convoy moved quickly up the highway and the sea battle that raged behind them vanished behind skyscrapers. The San Diego buildings around them were cast in dancing orange hues of flickering yellow streetlights, fires of collapsed structures, and burning vehicles. Long shadows of the shambling dead moved between buildings. The whole world had been boiled down to four things: the road, the vehicles, the city, and the undead.

Miguel had been with Carl and Pam since the beginning of the convoy missions. As Carl vaulted into convoy leadership, he had been happy for his friend, but internally conflicted. Carl was the best driver he had ever known, but commanders did not drive – commanders rode in the back. It had been a tremendous relief when, despite Carl’s promotions, he had elected to remain in the driver’s seat. Carl could not relinquish the steering wheel, and was not quiet about his inability to sit idle while someone else chauffeured him about the apocalypse. Every member of the convoy team breathed easier knowing that Carl was intent on remaining a driver. Carl would never admit it, but Miguel suspected there was another reason he wanted to drive – if he did not drive, someone else would have to. One more team member required to risk his or her life and one less space for the civilians that were being extracted from DDCs.

“Twelve O’clock! Civvies!” Carl yelled as a semi-truck flanked by four full-sized vans barreled toward them over a rise in the highway. He slowed his vehicle to a stop. Miguel turned the gun mount to face an approaching group of armed men and women.

The other vehicles in the military convoy pulled up to block the road. Specialist Grace began squawking into her headset “Civilian contacts in violation of zone rules four miles east…”

The clatter of gunfire and the clank and pop of ricocheting bullets drowned out Pam’s voice. A motley crew of armed civilians riding in the vans and truck, fired out the windows toward the convoy. In one van, a man wearing gang colors fired an AK-47, and out of the opposite window of the same vehicle, a businessman in a suit took careful aim with an American-made rifle. A woman was hanging out the passenger side of the truck and wildly firing a pistol, while another woman held a shotgun that was far too large for her.

“Fire!” Miguel yelled through his headset, and the armored Humvee column erupted into a flood of firepower that would send any hardened enemy soldier running for cover. However, these weren’t military. They were desperate civilians who saw no other option than fight their way onto the fleet. They had been denied for any host of reasons – criminal records, violent history, or they simply got to a DDC too late and were turned away due to a lack of room.

“They aren’t gonna stop, are they?” Carl asked urgently, watching the vans slow down while the semi was picking up speed. The hulking metal beast loomed larger and larger in the Hummer window.

Pam looked up, distracted from her logistical communications…and her eyes filled with terror. “GET OUT!”

Carl grabbed his rifle before jumping out of the vehicle and rolled behind an adjacent Humvee. Miguel pulled himself out of his gun mount and dove onto the pavement before scrambling for cover. Pam jumped out the passenger side door, laptop in hand, before scurrying behind another car. One hummer mounted with a grenade launcher fired a round that hit the driver side front of the semi, vaporizing the tire and obliterating the suspension. The semi violently shifted left, while its momentum carried it towards Carl, Miguel, and Pam’s empty Humvee. A split second later, the entire weight of the tractor-trailer slammed into the recently abandoned vehicle.

Metal, glass, and sparks flew in all directions. The military vehicle was no match for the civilian monstrosity, but its heavy steel frame and thick armor made for much more than a bump in the road. The carnage of their collision erupted in every direction. Caught between the trailer and the parked Humvee, the semi-truck went the only place it could – up, sideways, and directly toward Sergeant Harvey.

Carl dove out of its path. In the next moment, the semi smashed into the top of the hummer Carl had taken cover behind, crushing the gunner and the crew inside.

The semi-trailer careened through the row of military vehicles, sliding on its side. Loose from its hitch, it pushed aside two other Humvees and smashed a huge hole in the blockade before skidding to rest behind the breach. The Convoy was now split, separated by the wreckage of two Humvees and a semi.

“COVER!” Carl screamed. Two vans pulled up to the convoy’s right and two more pulled to the convoy’s left. The armed civilians fired at any military target they could see, and Carl was -- for the moment -- exposed. Taking aim with his rifle, he let a volley of fire erupt into the driver of the nearest van, who vanished behind a spray of blood that covered the windshield. Without a moment’s pause, he back-pedaled to another Humvee, where one of his drivers had taken up a defensive position. The driver was firing at the attackers while another soldier pulled a badly wounded gunner into cover.

Attacks by civilians were common, but none had been this brazen or desperate. Civilians in mock-military formation poured out from within the four vehicles. Five, then fifteen, then thirty people joined the vicious firefight, laying down an oppressive onslaught. The convoy teams were outnumbered, badly hurt, and squads of militants were closing in around them. Though the firefight was undisciplined, there were bound to be a few lucky shots that would, one by one, dispatch every member of the Convoy team. There was no chance any one of the civilian attackers would make it to the naval base – let alone the fleet offshore. That fact would not save the convoy soldiers’ lives.

Pam shoved her laptop in her backpack and drew her rifle. Three attackers were creeping up the right side of the highway from around the wreckage of a car. She took aim, pulled her trigger, and the man in front dropped. The other two grabbed their wounded friend and tried to retreat into cover as they fired back at her. The exchange caught the attention of one of the Humvee gunners who had been able to mount his weapon. In a thunder of fifty-caliber machinegun fire, the two men and their wounded companion convulsed like bloody rag-dolls. The demonstration of power gave the attackers momentary pause.

Bullets clanged and popped around the Humvee gunner hunkering down between the armored plates of the hatch. He was elevated and well armored, but drawing fire. Carl looked for anyone firing at the gunner. Wherever the gunner sprayed his torrent of death, attackers dove for cover or died in a violent plume of red mist… but the attackers continued, popping out from their hiding places to take pot shots when they could. Carl looked for anyone who took more than a second to aim, or exposed themselves a little too much…and killed them or forced them back into cover.

Miguel had drawn his pistol and taken position behind the open door of a Humvee. The pistol was effective, but nowhere near as accurate as a rifle – or destructive as the mounted gun he was used to using. Calmly, he took aim at a woman firing a rifle out of the sliding doors of one of the vans. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, he saw a grey, rotting hand reach around from the back of the parked van, grip hold of her shoulder, and jerk her back out of view. He knew instantly what had just happened.

“WDs!” Someone screamed through the communications network. The acronym, Walking Dead, was adopted by the military to sterilize the threat they faced.  Somehow having a military acronym was little less horrifying than calling them “zombies” or “ghouls.” Those were fictional terms for fictional creatures, but these monsters were all too real.

Being distracted momentarily by the firefight, both the military convoy and civilian group failed to notice the swarm of hungry snarling dead closing in on them from all sides. They were drawn to the commotion and the promise of flesh. From between buildings, around trees, over highway barriers, and through ditches, the living dead began to trickle, and then pour into the fight. Slow and stupid as they were, they were limitless in number and ruthlessly persistent. Where a living opponent was out of the fight as soon as they took a wound, the living dead were implacable – shoot them in the chest, they barely staggered, blow their legs off, they would just crawl. Only headshots would keep a ghoul down for good, and a head shot was no simple task in the chaos of battle. The firefight between the military and civilians was now a fight for survival against the living dead.

Chapter 5

Dr. Henry Damico took an extra second to think before scrawling the letter B on the forehead of a little blonde girl. She was no more than six years old. The strong young naval medic who had carried her into triage looked crushed when he saw the mark. His eyes welled up with tears, and he braced himself against the wall on shaky knees.

“She’s not bitten. She’s just a W. Look again!” He pleaded. Two triage security guards stepped forward and lifted her dying body off the gurney without saying a word.

“She’s a B, son. She’s a B,” Henry urged. A human bite was just about the easiest thing in the world to diagnose from a clinical perspective. The radius, the marks left by the incisors and canines…a child could identify a human bite. Emotionally, it was nearly impossible to diagnose someone with the death sentence of having been bitten by the living dead. If the bite itself wasn’t enough, signs of infection became apparent within minutes – blood darkened and became more viscous, flesh grayed, and the veins around the injury would blacken and spider web outward from the wound. If the injury was not severe enough to kill immediately, a person might live for hours or days as mental and physical fatigue took their toll. All the while, the wound would not heal. Eventually, the infection would overcome the victim’s immune system, their vital functions would stop, and they would rise as flesh-craving monsters.

Studies existed but were incomplete. Worldwide health organizations attempts to understand the infection had barely scratched the surface before practical and immediate survival concerns became priority. Infections had been reported simultaneously in dense population centers, as well as remote wilderness and even isolated tribal regions. Some theories suggested that the virus itself was tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years old, and transmitted vertically from parent to child from primitive ancestry. Most, if not every person on earth, was already infected with a dormant virus that had been lurking beneath the human immune system for countless generations.

Dr. Damico had read early reports assigning responsibility for the virus “awakening” to everything from government biological warfare, pharmaceutical companies, and even God. Who or what was actually responsible was completely unknown, and it would likely remain so. What was known was that something somewhere changed. Now, if you died—even of natural causes—you would reanimate as a near-mindless, flesh-craving monster. The world was not fighting an epidemic or a virus; it was fighting for survival against the rise of the living dead. Thus far, it had been a losing battle.

The big picture was impossible to put into perspective in these life and death moments. Henry couldn’t imagine what the army medic had gone through to bring this little girl to him. His fatigues were bloody and he had a bandage on his own arm. He had completely invested himself into saving this little girl, and now the cold reality was that she was doomed. She had been doomed before he had ever taken her in his arms. As triage security picked up the little girl and carried her away, the medic followed with a teary-eyed plea for mercy. One security guard had already drawn his silenced .22 pistol, while the other laid the child on a bed concealed by a blue, bloodstained curtain.

Despite the chaos of wounded soldiers, civilians, and the frenzy of emergency medical staff, the occasional pop of a silenced pistol cut through the clamor like a knife. Countless corpses lay in body bags piled high in an adjoining storage room. While the doctors and nurses were doing one job, the security staff was doing another behind bloody blue curtains and thick metal doors, ensuring the dead would not rise again.

At least twenty people lay on gurneys or sat on the floor of the triage area. They had bandages on their wounds and letters written in permanent red marker or clumpy lipstick on their foreheads. Nurses bustled in and out, tending to the most grievously wounded first and making time for the less seriously wounded when they could. The stench of blood and feces permeated the air, and the sounds of wounded – cries, moans, and occasional screams—could be heard along with the orders of medical personnel working against the clock.

While the Mexican military engaged the American naval fleet off the coast with air and sea power, small but fast squads comprised of mixed military and gang personnel raided the American civilian vessels that crowded together for protection. Yachts, sailboats, and rafts, armed with whatever small arms the people on board could find were no match for heavy machine guns and assault rifles. Despite the Navy’s best efforts to protect the civilian fleet, casualties were painfully high. Army Black Hawks would hunt for raiders, raiders would hunt civilians, and civilians could do nothing but group into small flotillas for protection – even if that protection was the hope that when the raiders came, they would come for someone else. Mexican attack craft that had eluded Naval defenses would speed up to a civilian vessel, hook chains to it, and drag the boat, people, supplies, and all—screaming back to some unknown fate.

While the American military did what it could to protect resources and people, medical personnel were tasked with ferrying civilians in need of medical treatment to vessels that could provide it. A less obvious – but equally important – duty of the combat medics was to ensure any zombie outbreaks within the civilian fleet were contained before they spread out of control. Henry could imagine the tension in those moments pulling up to a yacht riddled with bullet holes. Would everyone be okay? Would someone have been killed and then reanimated to attack everyone else on board? Were they walking into a nest of ghouls lingering below deck and waiting for someone to stumble aboard? Or, maybe some confused civilian would just open fire on them as they approached, thinking the raiders had returned.

It was a terrifying and deadly business in the waters outside San Diego. The wreckage of ghost ships meandered about, while haunting moans carried on the wind. Pockets of living dead floundered about in the ocean until they were swallowed by the waves.

Private Tobias examined the wounds of a navy gunner who had burns over a large part of his body. The gunner was nearly naked: his clothes blown off by the force of the explosion that had mauled him. He lay silently in a morphine-induced sleep. Dr. Damico nodded as Tobias scrawled the letter O on the man’s forehead. The gunner needed immediate attention, but he could be saved if treated quickly.

Audrey held the hand of a young man in his early twenties. The young man had been shot in the arm and was frightened, but he was a W. He had received the first aid necessary to keep him alive, and he was not in need of immediate care. The bullet in his arm could wait while doctors and surgeons attended to the much more grievously wounded.

Audrey would run off to do her duty in the triage center, assigning W’s, O’s, X’s and B’s…and every few minutes, would return to the side of the young man who shook with terror. She needed him as much as he needed her, and in this living hell, someone to hold onto was priceless. “You’re gonna be okay. You’ll be just fine. There’s a new group coming in, and I have to help them. I’ll be right back.” Audrey would say something like this each time the sounds of another emergency team rushing down the corridor toward the hospital became audible.

Dr. Damico closed his eyes for a second and wished he could hold the hand of his wife, Kelly. It had been far too long since he had seen her, and a worry nagged at the back of his mind. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

“Aaaaahooooo FUCK!” Private Tobias screamed.

Henry’s eyes shot open to see a charred black soldier latching hold of Tobias. The burned monster gulped down a bloody chunk he had ripped from Tobias’s forearm, even as it pulled itself onto his victim for a second bite. Tobias struggled against his attacker as blood erupted from his arm. The patients in the triage center screamed in horror, and a nurse bolted from the room. For a moment, the world was locked in helpless horror, as the scene of a young soldier fighting for his life against a mindless attacker that he had only been trying to help unfolded.

It took no more than a second for half a dozen security personnel to dive into the situation. Four men dragged the struggling ghoul behind the curtain where it would be put down. Two more attended to Private Tobias. Fear and silence underscored the tension in the room. Everyone knew what a bite meant. Everyone looked at the person beside them and wondered how accurate the letter on their forehead was. The idea that any patient brought into the hospital could die and rise again was something everyone knew, but did not fully understand until this moment.

“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit! I’m fucked!” Tobias collapsed to the ground gripping his arm.

Dr. Damico rushed over to talk to him, and to make some attempt to comfort him. It was instinct. Rationally, he knew Tobias had been bit and there was no hope for him. It was an act of will to choke back empty words like, “You’ll be okay, shake it off.” Or “It’s nothing, get a bandage.” Death was that quick. One second you were helping who you could, the next you were doomed. It could have been anyone.

“Stand back, sir.” A security guard blocked Henry’s path. He eyed Private Tobias suspiciously before turning back to Henry. “It’s not safe.”

Henry gaped helplessly for a second. He knew there was nothing he could do. He should simply go back to his triage work, so that the people who could be saved would be saved. Instead, he reached into his pocket, retrieved his security badge and waved it in the guard’s face.

The guard looked at the badge, back to Henry, then back to the badge before moving out of his way.

Henry bent down and put his hand on Private Tobias’s shoulder. “Is there anything I can do for you? Anyone I should talk to?” He had only met Tobias a few hours ago, but a part of him felt responsible for the young man.

Tobias sobbed for a minute before regaining his composure. “If… if I could. I mean, can I finish up here? It’s not serious. I’m not dead yet.”

Dr. Damico was unable to speak, choked up by this soldier who knew he didn’t have much time left, but refused to submit until the last possible second.

“That’s not a good idea.” One of the security guards attempted to exert some authority over the situation.

Dr. Damico thought for a minute. It wasn’t a good idea. Private Tobias could bolt out of the room and hide somewhere in the ship. The infection would take him, and other lives would be in danger. He could attempt to fight his way out. He could even die here, reanimate, and attack the hospital staff.

“I need to tell the guards to shoot you if you attempt to leave the triage area. When we’re done here, do you know what happens?” Dr. Damico asked Tobias as he began wrapping gauze around his wound.

Private Tobias nodded.

Dr. Damico stood up straight and addressed the dozen security staff that had gathered around him and Private Tobias. “The Private can continue work until we’re done here. After that, you guys are in charge. In the meantime, Private Tobias is going to do his duty.”

The officer in charge of the security personnel nodded. He had empathy for the situation. Given the hell that they existed in every second of every day, the least he could do was allow a fellow soldier the dignity to spend his last moments of life doing what he could to help. He and every soldier under his command would want the same. “Keep an eye on him,” he ordered, “but let him work.”

The sounds of another emergency team rushing down the hall toward the hospital began to grow louder. Audrey, Private Tobias, and Dr. Damico steeled themselves for another round of triage.