Survivors (15 page)

True to Harris’s memory, the Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles was just across I-80, less than a mile from where the group came up out of the water.

They lay on their bellies, taking turns looking through the binoculars and feeling the wind go out of their sails.

“Have I already mentioned that I do not like this?” asked Rico.

“Man, shut the fuck up,” Wendell said. “We’re about to get us some wheels and get off our goddamn feet, all right?”

“Whatever you say, Pollyanna. What I want to know is, how are we going to get in there and back out in one piece?”

Wendell sighed, dropping his chin to his chest.

Harris knew Rico had a good question; directly across US-283 from the museum stood a giant Wal-Mart whose parking lot looked like a war zone. Cars were crashed into each other, burned out and overturned metal husks littering the black pavement, and the sun was on its way down. In the utter still of post-Morningstar Nebraska, the group could hear the stirrings of infected in the wreckage of the parking lot.

“I don’t care how good the prices are,” Allen said from the back. “I don’t want to go to Wal-Mart today.”

“Bet your ass,” Stiles said. “How many people do you think bought it in there?”

Harris looked west at the sky. “However many are in there, or in the parking lot, we’ve either got to backtrack and find someplace safe to bed down for the night, or try to slip past.”

Hal shook his head. “Why are we even using the freeway? If we cut across there”—he pointed at a parking lot full of tractors and back-hoes—“we should come out in the museum’s lot. Shouldn’t we?”

“No room to move,” Stiles said. “If there are any infected in that lot, we’ll be hemmed in on all sides. At least on the asphalt, we’ll have someplace to run. Or, limp, in my case. Lots of shadows, too . . . plenty of places for an infected to lie in wait.”

Ron got a light in his eyes. “Well, what if we sent a runner around the back of the Wal-Mart? Someone that could make a lot of noise—”

“I tried that once, remember?” Stiles said, pointing at his wounded leg. “Look what it got me.”

“It got you bit, but it bought us the time we needed to escape Hyattsburg,” Ron said.

“No,” Harris said, shaking his head. “There are no heroes here today. We’ve already lost three people. I don’t want any more blood on my hands before the sun sets.”

That subdued the talk for a couple of minutes, but every second that passed brought the sun that much closer to the horizon, and everybody knew it.

“We go,” Harris finally said. “We’ll go quietly and in single file. Rico, you have the best eyes at night, so you head us out. I’ll follow you, then Hal. Katie, Ron, Stiles, Wendell, Allen. Hillyard, bring up the rear. Watch where you put your feet, and keep one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you. If there are any sudden stops, we don’t want a train wreck. Ron, you keep a hand on Katie and one on Stiles, since he’s got his hands full. Any questions?”

“Like how come we don’t have any night-vision gear?” Allen muttered to himself.

“I heard that. Now line up, and let’s get the hell over there.”

Everyone linked themselves up according to plan, and they headed out to cross I-80. The overpass was almost as badly jammed as the Platte River bridge, and the group stuck close.

“Where are they?” Allen asked in a whisper.

Wendell, immediately in front of him, shot back a dirty look. “They’re back on the bridge, eating my deckhands. But shut up anyway.”

Allen bit his lip. He nodded, and they continued across the overpass.

Rico stepped off the shoulder and into the deep grass on the eastern side of the highway, across from the large parking lot. He held his MP-5 at the ready but kept the safety on; Harris knew the incident at the bridge had carried its lesson to him. Stepping carefully, he moved the group ahead, first bringing his back foot up to the heel of his front foot, and then advancing the front foot again. Walking that way, the group made slow, torturous progress toward Heartland Road.

“Holy shit, we’re gonna make it,” Allen breathed at Wendell, who turned back again.

“I told you, shut the fu—
argh!
”

Wendell lurched back, almost pulling Stiles and Allen to the ground with him as he flailed his rifle butt at his right boot. Attached there, teeth sunk deep into leather, was a quarter of an infected. Besides the head, which was busily gnawing at Wendell’s foot, there was part of a torso and half an arm, which spun circles in the air, slapping a stump on the calf muscle in front of it.

Its mouth full of government-issue leather, the infected couldn’t moan its findings to all its brethren, so the group relaxed. Except for Wendell, who was still stabbing down with his rifle at the head, which refused to let go. Allen did fall then, both hands clamped over his mouth suppressing a mad giggle.

“Stop it,” Stiles said, moving over to poke Allen with his Winchester. “Quit that laughing right now. You think you’re the only one that wants to get ahead?”

At that, Allen turned a dark red and rolled onto his face, coughing into the grass, and Stiles started giggling, too. Rico looked back, a smile creasing his face, and soon Allen’s laughing fit had spread to everyone in the group.

Except Wendell, who was unable to dislodge the tenacious infected from his shoe.

“Come on, you motherfuckers,” he bit out. “Will someone give me a hand here?”

Allen fell into another fit. “He, he’s already got a head, n-now he wants a hand!”

“Oh, fuck you,” Wendell grunted out, lunging and swinging his rifle butt at Allen instead of the infected.

“All right, all right,” Allen said, getting to his feet. “But just this once. I don’t want you to become too dependent on—”

“Will you just fucking do it?”

Allen reared his left leg back to boot the side of the infected’s head.

“Not again,” Rico said, catching his boot. He tilted his head in the direction the head might have gone, and Harris saw in the brush a square of metal. Laughter died down quickly, replaced with somber expressions. Rico let go of Allen’s leg and, from the ditch next to the fence of the farming equipment yard, pulled a speed limit sign.

He handed it to Hillyard, who gripped the sign and twirled it in his hands. Measuring, he laid the end of the 55 on the infected’s neck and stood on the other end of the sign. With a squelching sound the metal sign bit into the dead man’s flesh. Right away it met resistance, and Rico had to stand on the sign with Hillyard to get it to go through the spine. Breaking past, it went through with a rush. Satisfied, Rico laid the sign down and held up the unanimated head by the hair for Allen to see.

“We quiet now, fool.”

The sliding gate in front of the Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles was closed and locked. Razor wire, newer than the rest of the fence, was looped along the top of the gate and all along the front. The metal and the asphalt in front of the gate were all burned and greasy, and Hal knew what had been happening there, remembering the mound of cremated dead in Abraham.

“Might be trouble here,” Wendell said. “This gate is still closed, and there ain’t any dead around, littering up the place.”

Harris tightened his jaw. “If there are people here, then maybe they’ll help us.”

Allen turned to the Commander with a look on his face. “How do you figure?”

A grim smile grew on Hal’s face. “It’s a military museum, right? People who put these things together are known for supporting the troops, kid. And if they know we’re toting along a possible cure for all this mess . . .”

“Hoo-ah,” Stiles said. “I love being a bargaining chip.”

“Hey,” Hal said, abashed, “that’s not—”

“I know, I know,” Stiles said, waving the retiree off. “It’s just a bit more responsibility than I’m used to, is all. You people act like I’m the second coming or something.”

“Might be,” Hillyard said quietly. “Back from the dead . . .”

“All right, all right,” Harris said. “Stow it for later. Right now, we need a way into this place that won’t get any of us cut up.” He reflected for a moment. “Or shot up. Any ideas? I’m open to suggestion.”

“You don’t want to get shot,” a new voice rasped from the encroaching darkness, “you keep your hands away from those guns.”

The sudden stillness in the group was as if each of them had been turned to statues. Slowly, very slowly, Allen let his MP-5 hang by its belt around his neck. Just as slowly, he put his hands up.

“We come in peace,” he said.

A soft click answered him. “You better.”

Soundlessly, the razor-wired gate began to pull back. Hal, looking down, saw that it ran in a well-greased track instead of on wheels. He nodded in appreciation. “That’s a good idea, right there,” he said. “Keep it quiet on the way in and out.”

“Right,” the voice said. “Everybody in, and put your hands up like the smart boy there. Nice and quiet, and real slow.”

“I can’t keep my hands off my rifle,” Stiles said, one hand in the air. “I’m kind of using it.”

“Hop.”

Grumbling, Mark Stiles slipped the strap of his rifle over his head and hopped toward the gate, hands up in the air. As soon as they had all filed in, the gate began to slide closed again.

“Well,” Hal asked, annoyed. “Where to now?”

Silence greeted him. Then the returning sound of crickets.

“How do you like that?” Allen said. “We let one guy get the drop on all of us, and then he doesn’t even stick around to gloat.”

“Shut up,” Harris said. “He’s still there.”

“Too right,” the voice said, this time from the shadows inside the perimeter of the fence.

“And who says he’s alone?” said another, from behind the group.

A pair of men, dressed in matching khaki fatigues, came out of the shadows on either side of the gate, each brandishing an assault rifle. The man on the left of the gate looked to be in his mid-forties, square of shoulder and slim. His military haircut was showing streaks of gray on the sides of his head, and there was some gray showing in his neatly trimmed beard. He held an M-16 on the group. From the other side was an older man, a mane of shaggy white hair barely held back into a ponytail that draped over one meaty shoulder. In his hands was an AK-47.

They approached the group on tangents to each other, overlapping their potential fields of fire without stepping into each other’s way. The easy method by which they corralled the group of survivors showed that they had done this before and were supremely confident in their ability to deal with threats.

“Everyone thataway,” the younger man said, gesturing deeper into the museum grounds. They started moving, and the two men followed at an easy pace, tracking each of the survivors in turn with the ends of their rifles.

“There’s no need for this,” Harris said as they marched forward. “All we came for—”

“Shut up,” rasped the younger man. “It’ll keep until we get inside. We try to keep it quiet out here, you understand?”

Lips tight, Harris nodded and continued forward.

They came to a roll-up door. The older man clicked the radio he wore on his lapel twice, and there was a metal sound on the other side. Quickly and quietly, the door came up on a dark interior and the survivors were ushered inside.

Upon seeing the yawning gulf of shadows, Rico gulped and lowered his hands. “No way,
vato
. No more dark and scary places for me.”

The younger man stepped up behind Rico and placed the barrel of his rifle in his back. “Hands up and inside, Jack, or I drop you.”

“Nah-ah,” said Rico. “You already said you guys like it quiet.”

The older man grinned and unsheathed a kukri knife from his back, the wicked and curving blade gleaming in the dying light of the day.

“Come on in, Rico,” Allen said. “Show ’em how we play nice.”

Raising his hands again, Rico entered the building.

Once the door slid all the way shut, lights came on, filling the long warehouse with blazing fluorescence, and the survivors got their first good look at the men that had captured them.

The younger man, Stone by the name on his shirt, was powerfully built. The old-style BDU shirt he wore was tight at the shoulders and loose at the waist, and when he moved, he did it with the grace of a jungle cat. Under the harsh fluorescent light the gray in his beard and high-and-tight haircut stood out, more so than under the fading light of day. Strapped to his side was a sheathed machete on the left, a black .44 revolver on the right. As he watched the group, muscle bunched at his jaw.