Zompoc Survivor: Exodus (6 page)

Chapter
6

The Ashes of Faith

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

~ Benjamin Disraeli ~

There is a sound that an explosion makes that is nothing like what you hear on TV or in the movies. Explosions don’t have this long, almost crackly sound that goes on forever. It was more of a
whump
that I felt in my chest like a kick from a giant. The truck rolled to a stop as the heat washed over me, and I watched a ball of fire roll into the sky. Porsche’s door opened below me. When she got out of the truck, her head turned up to the orange column of smoke and fire that climbed into the night. One hand went to her mouth, then she turned back to me.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Dave, I’m so sorry.” Something in me tried to die as I watched the building burn, but another part refused to let it. Rage and pain fought each other to get out, but one thing beat them both down: denial. My brain refused to believe Maya was dead. Pure defiance drove me to grab the M-4 and jump out of the bed of the truck. Porsche stepped in front of me and put her hand on my chest.

“Dave, don’t do this to yourself,” she said softly. “She couldn’t have survived that. Nothing could have.”

“Denial is the first stage of grief. You don’t want to get in the way of that. Not now. Not with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because the next stage is anger. Now either come with me or stay here, but whatever you do right now…don’t stand in my way.” She stepped aside to let me pass. The sound of her truck starting came from behind me as I walked up the driveway into the parking lot. Employee parking was on the right side of the building, and I followed the concrete to where I knew Maya normally parked her car. Broken glass and smoldering bits of debris crunched under my feet as I prowled the side of the building. Most of the cars were on fire, their interiors belching out black smoke and orange flames. The paint was scorched black on all of them, so I was forced to look at the body styles. Minivan, SUV, sedan, another minivan, a compact, all blazing away in the darkness. Behind them, the building burned too, consuming anything that wasn’t brick. Movement from inside the building caught my eye, and I saw the silhouette of something vaguely human shaped moving through the flames. It moved toward the windows, then fell into the fire around it. I shuddered as I watched another one walk toward a hole in the wall, then fall into the flames. Something had survived the explosion.

As I realized I was near the end of the row, I started to feel a bit of dread. As much as I wanted to believe she’d somehow survived, or had the foresight to leave before the place blew up, I knew that was hoping for a lot. She’d come in late for a shift, so her car was probably parked near the end of the row. My stomach started to sink as I went. Porsche’s truck crawled along behind me, illuminating the ground in front of me. When I came to the empty space, hope made my heart skip a beat. Without thinking, I stepped into the empty spot and stared at the ground, as if I could somehow see Maya’s car being parked there. I checked the last two spaces beyond it, and didn’t recognize either car as hers. Her car wasn’t here. My hope was that she hadn’t been here when the building blew, either.

My leg tingled for a moment before I realized my phone was vibrating in my pocket. I slung the M-4 and dug for it. My fingers trembled as I pulled it out and looked at the front screen.
Amy,
it read. Seeing Maya’s daughter’s name made my heart crumble as I put the phone to my ear. What was I going to tell her?

“Dave, do you know where Mom is? She’s not answering her phone!” I heard her say frantically before I could even say hello.

“Amy, what’s wrong?” I asked. Telling her that her mother was most likely dead could wait a few minutes, and all I had left was the stupidly obvious.

“Dad’s freaking out. He picked me up from school early, and when we got home, he turned out all the lights and grabbed one of his guns and he keeps looking out the window. Dave, I’m scared.”

“There’s something going on, Amy. Are there strange people walking around in your neighborhood?” I asked.

“I don’t know, he won’t let me get near the windows. He just told me to go to my room and stay there. What’s going on Dave?” For all that she sounded scared, she didn’t sound like she’d completely lost it. She was a lot like her mother that way.

“It’s some kind of outbreak,” I told her after a few seconds’ thought. “It’s a disease that makes people into cannibals. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Grab your go bag and whatever else you can carry. We’re getting out of town.”

“I don’t think Dad’ll like that. He’s all ‘I pay my taxes, where the hell are the police?’ and stuff.” Her impression of her father was funny enough to get a chuckle out of me.

“Well, what do you want to do?” I asked. There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the line before Amy spoke again.

“I want us to get out of town.” Her voice was thick with emotion. I felt bad for asking her to make that decision, but it was her life, too.

“Then get out there and tell him that. And tell him to aim for the head if any of the infected come at you.”

“Infected?” she asked.

“You’ll know them when you see them. Now go. I’ll be there as soon as I can!” I closed the phone.

“What is it?” Porsche asked from her truck.

“That was Maya’s daughter Amy. I think there are infected in her neighborhood. We need to go get her.”

“What about your girlfriend?” Portia said.

“Her car isn’t here. I don’t know where she is. If I had to guess, I’d bet she would be trying to get to Amy.” I started to go to the truck when something grabbed my right foot. I stumbled and managed to catch myself on my left foot, then I felt something clamp on to the back of my right ankle. Pain spiked up my leg as I looked back to see the red and black upper half of an infected gnawing on my foot. Tattered bits of charred fabric clung to its body, and I could see the band of half melted metal around its left wrist that I figured was a wristwatch once upon a time. I clawed the pistol out of its holster and drew a bead on the top of its head. The gun bucked in my hand, and bits of bone and half-cooked brain matter splattered across the concrete. The muzzle blast was like a slap against my leg, but the pain in my ankle let up.

“Dave!” Porsche yelled as she jumped out of the truck. She was at my side in a heartbeat. I reached down and pulled at my pant leg. It slid up to reveal a thick half-circle of purple on the outside of my Achilles tendon. I twisted my foot to see its mirror image on the inside. I twisted my foot to look at the other side again, then back.

“You’ve been bitten!” she cried as I looked closer. There were no teeth marks, and no blood. I looked at the infected corpse’s mouth and saw no white behind the charred lips.

“Actually,” I said with a relieved chuckle, “I’ve been gummed. Saved by modern dentistry.” My leg hurt like hell, but the bite hadn’t broken the skin. Still, I wasn’t about to take any chances. I pulled out my pocket knife and cut the bottom of my pant leg away to get rid of any saliva. Once I’d cut the cloth free, I got to my feet and limped toward Porsche’s truck.

“So, you’re not infected?” she asked from beside me. I shook my head and climbed back into the bed of the truck.

“Didn’t break the skin. So unless it transmits just from contact, I’m okay. Let’s get out of here. The next one that crawls out of that place might not be so dentally deficient.” She hopped into the cab pretty quickly at that.

“You sure you don’t want to ride up here?” she asked through the back window. “It might be easier on you.”

“I’m sure. I like having the wind on my face. I’m like a dog that way.” I pulled the nearly spent pistol magazine from my left cargo pocket and thumbed the last round out of it before I stuck the mag back. The other reason I preferred the back of the truck to riding in the cab was the better vantage point. I could look around in a full circle, and I had an unobstructed field of fire.

“Okay, it’s your ass. Where to next?” she asked as she started the engine.

“Brentwood Street. It’s just the other side of Glenstone,” I said while I pulled the M9 out of its holster. The mag dropped into my hand, and I pressed the round I’d stripped from the other magazine into this one to bring the magazine’s count back up to fifteen, with number sixteen in the chamber.

“That goes right past Battlefield Mall. That’s kind of the opposite of avoiding crowds isn’t it?” Porsche asked as she backed up.

“Yeah, we’re going to have to thread the needle there. St John’s is a little ways north of there, too. Of course, the cemetery is just on the other side of the road, so that’s convenient.”

“Let’s hope we don’t need that.” She pulled out onto the road and wove her way back toward Sunset, heading the wrong way down the split causeway. Shapes began to emerge from the darkness as the fire drew infected to it like moths. We stayed on the road until it rejoined itself, then followed our own treadmarks back into the grass. When we reached the spillway under Campbell, Porsche barely slowed down. A couple of infected jumped over the railing at us, but hit the cement with grisly crunching sounds as the driver’s side mirror snapped off in a shower of sparks. When we burst out the other side, we left a few infected picking themselves up from a cement faceplant on the other side as well. Only one got to its feet. The other three limped along on legs that bent in a couple of extra places. The mostly whole one could
run
though. Porsche got us back on the Greenways trail, and Flash the Infected Sprinter came up with us. I could hear the slap of his feet against the concrete over the hum of the truck, and a rhythmic grunting. We were pulling away, but not fast enough. The minute we slowed down, he’d be on us. I needed to slow him down or kill him.

I brought the M-4 up and tried to sight in on him with the scope. Between the bouncing of the truck and the way his head bobbed around, there was no way I was going to get a clean kill without wasting a ton of ammo. Orange light from the streetlamps filtered through the trees, and I could make out that Flash was wearing a white lab coat over a suit coat, slacks and loafers. In the dark, it was hard to tell much more than that. The truck angled left, and I lost sight of him for a moment. I risked a moment I didn’t really have to look over my shoulder at the path in front of us. We had under two hundred feet of straight-away left, and I was guessing only half that in lead time on Flash. When I looked back, he had rounded the curve and was headed our way.
Why are some of them so goddamn fast?
I wondered. Most of the ones we’d seen were slow, like you’d expect from the walking dead. It was why they were called the “walking dead” after all, right? But a few were crazy fast. Like the ones from the hospitals. A half formed theory started to spin in my head.

“Slow down!” I yelled over my shoulder as I flipped the M-4 to burst mode. The truck’s engine dropped a pitch, and Flash started getting a lot closer a lot faster. Suddenly calm, I brought the rifle up to my cheek again and tried to place the red dot on Flash’s chest. When he was close enough that I was pretty sure I’d hit, I pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked against my shoulder and muzzle flare blotted out everything in front of the scope for less than a second. When I brought the barrel back down, Flash was tumbling along the trail about a hundred feet behind us. He slid to a stop, and I reached back with my right hand to slap against the glass. Mentally I counted off three rounds.

“Stop!” I called. The truck slowed and stopped. Behind the infected doctor I’d just dropped, I could see the rest of the ones who’d jumped after us limping along slowly. There was no way they were going to catch up to us, but I couldn’t just leave them up and walking around. I thumbed the fire selector to single shot and took aim at a man in bright red workout gear. My first shot blew the left half of his head away, and I went to the woman in a miniskirt and a tight blue top behind him.
Four,
I counted as I stroked the trigger. She lurched at the last second, and I missed cleanly, then adjusted and fired again. She dropped on the second shot, and I went to the next one.
Five, six, seven,
I added to the count as I put a bullet into the head of a kid with his hat skewed sideways. It took three shots to hit a guy in jeans and a black concert t-shirt, bringing my shot count to ten. Recalling Nate’s coaching on one of my weekend trips up to Wyoming, I took a long, slow breath, then brought my sites down on one of the last two. He lurched along, and after a couple of steps, I could predict his rhythm. The gun bucked against my shoulder, and he went down.
Eleven.
The last one rounded the corner, a woman in nurse’s scrubs. My breath caught as I saw a flash of black hair like Maya’s. Was it her?
Too skinny, too tall, no tattoo on her arm.
My finger stroked the trigger, and she went down.
Twelve.

Finally, Flash started to move. His head came up and he slowly pushed himself to his feet. The front of his white lab coat was stained dark with his own blood, but when he started moving, it was with the slow, lurching movements of the six infected I’d just killed. I put round number thirteen through his forehead and turned to Porsche.

“Alright, let’s go,” I said with a sense of satisfaction. She gunned the engine and the truck surged forward. We sped across the road and back onto the grass again. From both sides of us, I could hear screams and the occasional gunshot from a distance. The road to our right was eerily quiet, though. I kept my eyes on the line of cars as we sped along the concrete trail. The line was more random now, and there were gaps in it that hadn’t been there before. A few cars showed body damage, and more than a couple of them were burning. As we passed a dark colored Volkswagen, I could see someone inside, flailing at the glass. There was a pop and the almost musical tinkling of glass as the driver’s side window shattered, then the sound of an enraged, inhuman scream ripped through the night. Even as I felt a shudder run between my shoulder blades, I put the new knowledge into a spot in my head, and gave it a name. The fast, feral infected were ghouls. The slow ones were zombies. The most frightening thing was that the ghouls still seemed to be alive.