Convoy 19: A Zombie Novel Page 5

  “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.

  Chapter 6

  “I didn’t finish the flame on the side of ‘The Beast.’” Jenny sat cross-legged in the passenger seat of the large powerful pickup truck. She was in her early twenties, and flaunted an unbelievable body with short skirts, midriffs, and low-cut tops, but her mannerisms were those of a child. Her blonde pigtails and pouty lips only accentuated a girlish demeanor.

  Billy sighed. “That’s fine. We don’t need flames on the sides.” His one true love, his pickup truck, with over-sized tires, raised suspension, and a ‘The Beast’ decal on the back window had gotten him laid more times than he could count in the past couple of years. Jenny was among the hottest he could remember, but easily the most stupid, and that was saying a lot. She was the kind of drama magnet you kept around to let everyone know who you were. Nothing too long term, just fun, but she happened to be the chick he was nailing when the dead started rising from the grave.

  “But it doesn’t look cool!” Jenny sulked.

  Billy and all his friends were truck guys who worked dead-end day jobs so they could pour every dime they earned into their beloved vehicles. They spent their nights trolling the streets, picking up girls who wanted a ride in a monster truck. Billy would have traded anything to be stuck in this undead hell with any one of his buddies instead of this simpleton, but they were all dead now. She had been nothing but a burden, a food-eating, water-drinking chatterbox, who simply could not stay quiet for more than thirty seconds at a time. As he hatched his survival plan, he had been obligated to include her, choosing bad company over no company in this endless nightmare. He often wondered if he had made the right choice.

  “Speed bumps don’t care about cool, sweetheart.” Billy began piling pillows on top of Jenny. The term ‘speed bump’ had risen from his friend’s first encounter with the undead. It was something of a sick rush to run the undead down, and they had delighted in gruesome demolition derbies on the streets of San Diego. He had heard lots of terms for the undead in the last year, but he preferred ‘speed bump’ because it reminded him that, behind the wheel of The Beast, he was the powerful one. Outside that steel monstrosity, he was just as weak and pathetic as all the people he had seen get torn to shreds.

  “But what if someone sees us?” Jenny replied. Even with the apocalypse swallowing the entire globe, Jenny simply lacked the capacity to think outside her very small world. She still read trashy celebrity gossip magazines that were months old, and flipped through style magazines commenting on how fat the stick-thin models were, and how awful their hair or makeup was. Normally accustomed to holding a dozen or more conversations on her cellular phone via text message and social networking, she had arrived at the conclusion that her friends were not talking to her out of jealousy. She was oblivious to the fact that digital communications had diminished and then stopped before the cellular networks went completely offline. Billy wondered if she could even comprehend that most of the people she knew were now dead and wandering about as animated corpses.

  Billy stuffed the last pillow on top of Jenny, and slammed the passenger side door in her face a bit harder than he had intended. The unfinished flame she had painted with acrylic matte paint on the side of his truck stared back at him. While he designed and built a steel battering ram from an old snow plow that had been sitting in his garage, he needed to keep Jenny occupied long enough for him to zone out and focus on his work. She mentioned that she enjoyed art, so he had tasked her with the very important job of painting flames on this side of his vehicle. It killed him to watch her deface his gorgeous blue chrome paintjob with her crude painting skills, but it had worked. He had hatched and executed the first step in his master plan superbly without her disruption. A large ram now sat mounted on the front of his vehicle.

  Without Jenny’s constant chattering, the moans and wails of the dead outside pierced the garage walls. For months, he and Jenny had slept on a grease-stained ma
ttress in the corner, their personal effects scattered about haphazardly. There had been more than enough gasoline to power the generator during that time, but it had still been important to ration. Food was scarce, but he had gathered what he could before barricading himself within his workshop.

  About two months ago, he had come to the conclusion that self-reliance was no longer an option. It was time to move to one of the Defensive Detention Centers that the government had set up. Supplies were running low, so he drove his monster truck through the ghoul-infested streets of San Diego to the nearest center.

  That is where he met Queen Bitch. He glanced over to his workbench where the pamphlets she had given him lay. “Your Home is Your Castle” – a how-to on constructing barricades and obstacles to the undead, and “Meals for a King” – essentially a guide on rationing and water purification. At first glance, they contained the basic information anyone would need to survive on their own. In reality, their language and content had been carefully crafted to appeal to anyone with an independent streak. They did their intended job well, and placated an irate public turned away by the DDC doctors. His blood boiled. Billy knew when he had been played.

  He remembered sitting in a waiting room after he had been inspected for bites, Dr. Kelly Damico across from him. She wore that smug superior look every smart bitch did when they saw a chance to screw over a guy like Billy.

  “Your skills as a mechanic would be extremely valuable…” She had said raising his hopes for DDC access before dropping the hammer “but your background check indicates you have some sexual assault charges and… a couple DUIs… and drugs?”

  “That’s bullshit!” he had screamed. It enraged him that he should be condemned to die outside a DDC for some pot, some beer, and some dumb bitches who didn’t know the price of a ride in his Beast.

  Things escalated from there and armed guards had to escort him out. Jenny was already waiting for him, sucking on a lollipop that doctors would normally have given a child.

  “Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do?” Billy had screamed in anger as they left.

  As they drove away, he had made a point to drive down every ghoul that he could. That was when his plan was born – if the DDC wouldn’t open its doors, he’d just drive them down.

  He climbed into the driver’s side of his truck and began layering pillows on top of himself in a way that balanced safety against his ability to drive. Smashing through a brick wall at forty miles an hour would be no picnic, but—with a little luck—the staff would be too preoccupied with the huge hole in the wall and hungry ghouls to notice he and Jenny simply blending away into the crowd of refugees. Every plan required a little luck to work, but—other than that—it was perfect.

  “I’m hot!” Jenny whined.

  “Here,” Billy handed her a small purple stuffed dog filled with beans.

  “Yay!” She hugged the animal.

  Billy looked over and a laugh burst from his lungs. Next to him sat a twenty-something woman, makeup caked on with an airbrush, press-on nails like purple sabers, covered in pillows with her face and arms peeking out, playing with a stuffed dog. The absurdity was too much.

  “Don’t laugh at me!” Jenny scowled.

  “You look so fucking stupid.” Billy continued laughing.

  “Fuck you! Don’t call me stupid. See if you get any later.” Jenny threw the stuffed dog back at Billy and her arms disappeared into the mass of pillows.

  Although he couldn’t see her, he knew she had her arms and legs crossed in anger. He had seen this look a number of times, particularly when she wanted to flaunt her most powerful weapon over him – denial of sex. The thought of her glowering made him laugh harder.

  “I mean it! Your boy, Eddie, never laughed at me or called me stupid. Maybe I’ll go see what he’s up to,” Jenny threatened.

  Billy closed his driver’s side door and started his truck. The rumble of the engine filled the garage with a satisfying fullness that drowned out the howls from outside. “Eddie’s dead, you retard,” he mumbled beneath his breath.

  Billy pressed on the gas and plowed through the garage door. Splintered wood and metal exploded in every direction, and the zombies on the other side were run down beneath his enormous tires. The battering ram had passed its first test superbly.

  The night was dark, and the roads were dense with abandoned cars and debris. Automatic streetlights illuminated the streets with a dull yellow glow that cast the lurking forms in silhouettes. Dozens of undead leered at the titanic metal Beast that rampaged through their ranks. They moaned and staggered in pursuit, but just as they had become aware of the thing in their midst, its tail lights had disappeared up the street.

  A few moments passed, and Billy’s guilt got the better of him. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to laugh at you. You’re gonna make lots of friends at the DDC.”

  “I’m gonna be the hottest chick there,” Jenny stated confidently. She was always concerned with whatever was the coolest or hottest. All other women, even friends, were mere rivals.

  “You sure will be!” Billy encouraged her. He had to admit, she was pretty hot, but being hot in this new world wasn’t exactly an asset. With any luck, she’d find some refugee or guard to climb on top of and then she’d be that poor schmuck’s problem. Right now, he’d be happy to trade a year’s worth of screwing Jenny for a full stomach and someone to talk to with half a brain.

  Billy continued to plow through the zombie-infested streets in his unstoppable truck. The gas-guzzler had just enough fuel to get them to their destination. After that, it would be a shame, but she wouldn’t be worth the rubber in her tires. She’d be dead, but she’d have given her life for his.

  “So remember, once we’re there, just get out of the truck and blend into the crowd. There will be lots of people so it shouldn’t be hard. Do you understand?” Billy asked.

  “Let’s hit that base!” Jenny pressed play on the truck’s sound system and began dancing in her seat. Rap music rumbled through the vehicle and the powerful speakers drowned out the sound of ghouls banging against the truck. In the silent city streets, the commotion would carry for miles.

  “You are so fucking stupid.” Billy whispered beneath his breath. It wouldn’t matter if she understood the plan or not. Once they were in the DDC, he would find somewhere to hide and lay low. Whatever notice this moron brought onto herself through her own attention-needing stupidity, would be her own problem.

  Billy looked ahead, and the DDC loomed in front of him atop a hill. With a confident nod, he pressed on the gas and began to accelerate toward the side of the building – a brick wall of the attached record store. This was going to be all too easy.

  Billy imagined himself one day—maybe a couple months from now—after he had integrated himself into the refugee population, cornering Dr. Damico some place private…some place quiet. Then she’d learn who was really in charge.

  “Try to keep me out? You don’t know who you’re messin’ with.” Billy sneered. He focused on the music store wall before him and pressed the accelerator.

  A strange rattling sound barely audible above the rap music caught his attention.

  “Pretty!” Jenny pointed out the window and smiled back at him. Billy glanced over to see what she was looking at.

  From atop a fenced off guard tower at the front of the DDC, a rhythmic series of yellow flashes streaked through the parking lot toward them. The truck’s line of approach and the tracer’s line of fire converged a few yards from the wall Billy was speeding toward.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good plan,” Billy thought. In a heartbeat, the sounds of bullets puncturing his truck cut his music off, and the inside of the cab erupted into a torrent of red gore and screams.

  Chapter 7

  The streetlight shining through the window illuminated the clock on the wall across from the cot where Dr. Kelly Damico lay. Unable to sleep as usual, she watched the minutes tick by while listening to the sounds of a San D
iego overrun by ghouls. Distant gunfire, explosions, the occasional scream, and the ever-present moan of the undead sang through the night. The clock read 11:00 pm, then 12:00, now 1:00, and she was no closer to being able to sleep than she was the hour before. Her mind drifted between the patients here at the Tierrasanta DDC and the husband that she missed with all her heart.

  Months ago, when the city wasn’t completely overrun, the DDC guards would open fire on dense packs of undead to thin their numbers. Now, it was best to avoid shooting at all, remain as quiet as possible, and hope the hordes of ghouls outside would ignore activity within the building. So when shouting and the thunder of gunfire from outside shattered the relative quiet, Kelly sat bolt upright in bed.

  A loud crash shook the building and Kelly gasped. Was there an explosion? Had someone set off a grenade? She hurried to the window and peered through the blinds into the fortified lot below. Rifles in hand, guards were running from their posts toward the DDC entrance.

  Kelly looked over to Dr. Thomson’s cot. He wasn’t there, but that was hardly unusual. While Kelly’s insomnia kept her lying awake in her cot staring at the clock, Dr. Thomson’s insomnia motivated him to wander about the DDC.

  She slipped on her shoes and rushed through the clinic’s upper level. The area designated for the youngest children and their families was lit by dim blue nightlights. She felt the eyes of terrified mothers and fathers on her as she moved through a back hallway that led to the roof of the music store. “Stay here!” She whispered. “Stay quiet!”

  The sound of gunfire outside was joined by gunfire from the ground floor.

  A shaft of blue moonlight cast through a crack in the door at the end of the hallway. The roof of the music store provided an excellent vantage point from which to observe the area around the clinic. Kelly shoved open the push plate of the door and slipped outside.

  The humid night air had been cooled by the recent rain, and reflective puddles collected on the gravel roof. The DDC commanded an impressive view of the city: moonlight, streetlights, and fire light, cast San Diego in a bizarrely beautiful twilight apocalypse. The rank putrescence of the city’s dead wafted on the breeze, mixed with the stench of rotting trash that had collected for months.