Wheels and Zombies (Book 1): Ash Page 6

  A soldier grabbed the frame of an open window. One of the crazies clung to his leg, but the soldier managed to hang on. He screamed as the crazy’s teeth sunk into his calf. His pants ripped along with the skin and tendons underneath. Within moments, the soldier’s arms started to tremble, and his head twitched to a side. His jaw stretched open, further than I had ever seen. Growling, he scrambled through the window. Screams erupted from inside while the bus drove on.

  My heart slammed inside my chest, hoping, praying Angie’s words had been truthful when she said the crazies had no taste for cancer patients. Then another thing she had said rocked my mind. She had said they might attack if agitated. I looked up at the bodies pouring down the ramp. They seemed to qualify as agitated.

  Desperate, I searched around me for something. The vehicles were gone, although there were still soldiers firing their weapons. Pipes leading up the wall caught my attention. Maybe I could climb one of them. The thought alone nearly shut my body down, but I had to try something. Unable to reach the pipe, I used Gary’s bed to push myself off to get some momentum going. All it did was set Gary rolling towards the crazies. I looked down and saw the brakes to my gurney locked on the tiny wheels. Angie had put on the brakes. Violently cursing, I hung over the edge of the gurney.

  “You about done, kid?” a voice said. My head snapped up. Combined with the lessening, but still loud gunshots, I hadn’t noticed Angie by my side.

  Out of a strange combination of desperation, fear, and relief, I shouted at her, “Don’t call me a goddamned kid!”

  The gunfire drew closer around us. Without a comment on my little outburst, Angie turned to the men. Five of them came running as if trying to escape hell. The crazies behind them surely made it look as if creatures that clawed themselves out of the debts of hell were chasing them. Mid-run they would swirl, draw their weapons, and fire uncontrolled rounds at the oncoming onslaught. They hit everything, torsos, legs, shattered windshields of parked cars, but none of them seemed to remember to add a headshot. Angie and Jonesy had remembered when we first came across the crazies. These men acted like Burke, and it would get them killed.

  “Get your shit together,” Angie shouted. “Aim for the heads.”

  The men either didn’t hear or were too scared for it to register. Angie grabbed my arm and swung me over her shoulder like a wounded soldier. I managed not to hit my head on the butt of the rifle that hung across her back. She must have acquired a new one. Avoiding the rifle, I grabbed a handful of her armored vest to hold myself steady.

  Boots were pounding, and I watched the stretcher disappear into the shadows. I could still see Jarrod lying there on his gurney. He seemed frozen like Gary, but I knew his reasons. Maybe they had given Jarrod something to keep quiet like me. I hoped so.

  Between the shouts and rapid automatic gunfire, I heard a crash. Hanging over Angie’s shoulder, it wasn’t easy to differentiate anything except for the rifle on her back and her butt. That made me visualize my own butt sticking out, and I shoved the thought aside. I lifted my head and saw Gary face down on the asphalt. Crazies awkwardly stumbled and fell as they tried to hurdle the toppled gurney. Unsteady legs trampled Gary’s body as if he were a rug. I looked away and focused on Angie’s ragged breathing and spitting commands.

  “Get inside,” she shouted. I thought she meant the hospital, but we passed the door with the milling crazies behind it and headed for a small shed-like building. Bodies and boots closed in on me, but I kept my head down and couldn’t see who was who or what was what. Shouts and gunshots hammered my ears until I was sure they would leave permanent damage. A door slammed closed, and the gunshots stopped.

  Heavy breathing filled the tiny room. Besides two soldiers, Angie, and me, the room had a desk with a computer. In the corner sat a small table with a coffee maker on top and an extra chair. A rack with keys hung on the only wall without windows. I didn’t wish to inspect the other sides of the small guard post because I knew the windows would show the rage-filled faces of the crazies with their funky white eyes.

  Angie had shrugged me off her shoulder and forced me to crawl under the desk. With trembling hands, she pulled at my hospital gown to smooth it over my legs. It was the first time I’d seen anything that resembled fear in her. That scared me. The hard lines on her face felt more reassuring, although her jaw clenched.

  “Why did you bring the science project?” one of the soldiers said. Angie’s hands balled into fists and whipped her head around to face him. I couldn’t see her expression, but the man reacted by dropping his eyes to the ground and lowered the helmet on his head. As if something had swept over her to change her resolve, Angie's shoulders straightened, and she readied her weapon.

  The other soldier kept attempting to load his gun, but his shaking hands kept him from sliding the clip in. Unnerved by this, Angie got to her knees, grabbed the clip, and slammed it in. Just about then, fists started to pound on the windows.

  I forced myself to look but wished I hadn’t. Pale faces with mouths strung open wide and funky white eyes pounded the glass with bloodied fists. The plain wooden door shook from the pressure of the weight of bodies outside the room. A firm hand pressed my head down.

  “Just stay down and keep calm. They won’t go for you if you don’t agitate them, remember,” Angie said in a whisper, her voice calm and reassuring. Glancing sideways, I could tell her expression was tense.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” one of the men started to chant. I didn’t look up to see who it was, but I figured it to be the one having the trouble loading the rifle. The thumps on the glass increased. A loud crack froze the movement of air inside the small room. We all held our breaths, and I imagined a few prayers were said for the benefit of the glass. Unfortunately—without effect.

  A fist plowed through the window, leaving the hand cut and bloodied. Bodies pressed against the glass until it shattered. Angie and the two soldiers opened fire. I clamped my hands over my ears. More glass shattered, and one of the crazies dove nose first into the room. Angie stomped a foot on its back and then aimed her gun at its head and fired. One of the soldiers screamed as clawing fingers grabbed his uniform and pulled him into their midst. His handgun clattered to the ground near my feet. The man screamed and screamed while the other soldier fired his weapon in a desperate attempt to free his friend. Angie pushed him to a side and fired her gun. The screaming stopped.

  Angie pulled a tight circle of a constant spray of bullets. One of the crazies made a grab for the remaining soldier and pulled him close. A man the size of a football player, with arms as large as an average person’s legs, jerked the soldier off balance. The man’s enormous jaws opened and stretched. I reached for the gun on the floor by my feet. It was my intention to shoot the football player, but he already had his teeth sunken deep into the soldier’s neck. The soldier’s body twitched without much of a struggle. Blood gushed down his neck. His eyes flung from side to side, pleading for someone to save him. The short bursts of Angie’s automatic rifle hammered in my ears while I watched the color fade from the soldier’s eyes.

  When the eyes had drowned inside that funky white fog, the football player released the soldier as if he had lost his appetite. The body twitched, and the irises swimming behind the fog seemed to focus on me. I swallowed hard at the sight. My hand trembled, and I added my other hand to steady the gun. The soldier stretched his jaw as if he was using it for the first time, and then snapped it shut. His nose went up into the air, and a bloodied hand reached out to grab me. I didn’t wait to see whether he liked what he smelled. I pulled the trigger.

  The shooting in the room stopped. Angie turned to face me. Her eyes fell on the gun before they trailed the barrel to the soldier and then came back to me. I jumped at the discharge of her weapon. Angie had shot another crazy too close for comfort before she dropped to her knees. My gaze had returned to the soldier with a hole in his left cheek. Unlike the blood gushing from his neck, this looked like a black, oil-like substance that seeme
d too thick to be blood.

  Without consideration, Angie pulled the gun from my hand while shoving me back underneath the desk. She pressed in after me with the dead soldier’s body in tow. She used the body to hide us, but even underneath a desk, we should have been visible.

  Several crazies plowed over the windowsill into the room. They struggled to stand on top of the pile of arms and legs of the fallen. Moans that seemed to emerge from dark caves sent shivers down my spine.

  I glanced at my trembling hands as images of the dead soldier hauntingly flashed across my mind. Unable to make them stop, I clasped my hands together on my lap. Angie’s hand slipped over them. Her eyes told me she had her own problems keeping her head cool. Her breaths came in quick bursts as did mine, and I figured her heart was pounding as fast as mine.

  Neither of us dared to move with the crazies milling around while they moaned and sniffed the room. When they finally settled down, Angie spoke in a low whisper. “You okay?”

  My heart was caught in my throat. I sensed I might not be able to control the volume of my voice and nodded instead. Angie shifted her position, a painful grimace on her face. The way she sat angled underneath the desk must have tortured her back.

  “Listen,” she said and then hesitated. “What happened back there … I didn’t want …” She broke off.

  “It’s okay,” I said when I found my voice. “I understand you didn’t have much of a choice.”

  “No, that’s not it—I’m not part of this,” she said a little too loudly. One of the crazies stirred, and we both held our breath. Frustration was evident on Angie’s face. When the air settled, she resumed.

  “This thing is a lot bigger than you know, and I wish I could explain, but there are things …” She let out a huff of frustration. “I’m not the kind of person to ship people off to their death for the sake of science.”

  I watched as her intense eyes bore into me. “I'm actually with the FBI,” she said. “My partner and I, we're searching for evidence to prosecute the ones responsible for releasing this virus.”

  “I know,” I said. Angie looked at me with an astonished expression that made me smile, releasing some of the tension in my arms.

  “You knew I was with the FBI?” she asked.

  “No, but you saved me—I’m here, right?” I said and narrowed my eyes at her. “Who’s your partner? That tall dude with the bright eyes?”

  Angie nodded while she spoke. “Yeah, his name is Mars.”

  “Like the candy?” I asked, confused.

  Angie slumped while a breath of air rolled over her lips.

  “You’re something else, you know.” She looked around for a minute as if she needed to check if the crazies were still in the room.

  “I have an older sister,” she said. “She and my mom live on the West Coast.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “I remind you of her.”

  “Nah, you remind me of me,” she said with a smirk. “I think I know now what she had to endure.”

  | 9

  After a while of sitting in one of the most awkward positions I had ever found myself in, Angie decided to peek around. The remaining crazies in the small guard post had resumed their foot-to-foot shuffle and had averted their attention. Within the same moment, Angie had poked her head out from under the desk, she retreated back in. Her wide eyes and pale face were self-explanatory. It didn’t prevent her from voicing her discomfort.

  “This is one major cluster-fu…” She swallowed the rest when she caught my glare. I couldn’t contain a grin.

  “Aren’t we supposed to walk straight by them?” I asked. If the crazies didn’t have an interest in us—and they seemed calm for the moment—then we should be able to pass them.

  “Don't you mean I'll do the walking and carry you,” Angie replied. I gave her a dirty look, but she spoke again before I could retort.

  “They seem to be stuck in the windows.” At the frowned look I gave her, she gestured out the desk.

  With some pulling and tugging on my legs, I managed to pull myself up and out to peek around the room. Angie was right. The crazies had gotten themselves stuck in the window frames. Now they were just hanging there, squashed like three or four hot dogs in one bun. The crazies would hang there until Christmas as long as nothing drew their attention.

  “I’m not going to crawl over them,” I said as I lowered myself down.

  Angie shrugged. “We’ll have to think of something.” With a grunt, she shoved away what remained of the soldier’s body we had hidden behind and slipped out from underneath the desk. She stayed low to the ground. One of the crazies must have caught her movement because it shifted with a moan. The others reacted in the manner of synchronized swimmers. Their nostrils flared for a moment, but then they settled down into their idle positions.

  Simultaneously our gazes shifted to the door where we could hear a soft thumping. Inside the tiny space, dead bodies covered the floor, and almost-dead bodies balanced on the windowsills. The crazies had us surrounded. I eyed up at Angie.

  “Now what?” I asked. She lifted her shoulder in a shrug and opened her mouth to speak when a shot rang out. We both cringed reflexively, but it was the body of one of the crazies that went down with a thump. Thick, black blood oozed from his cracked skull. Bam! Another one went down.

  “Here, zombie, zombie, zombie. Here, zombie,” someone called out.

  Angie and I both looked at each other in shock and spoke his name in unison: “Chuck!” The biggest smile flew across her face. It occurred to me that he called the crazies zombies, which didn’t seem like a bad thing to call them. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  Another shot and another body went down. Enticed by the sound, or if their flailing nostrils were any sign, more by the smell of something good, the crazies or zombies started to stir. Chuck repeated his call while one by one the zombies entangled their limbs from one another.

  My smile grew, but Angie’s face turned dark.

  “What is it?” I asked. Frustrated, she grabbed a rifle from the ground and started to check the dead soldier for ammunition. Angie had to wait for the rapid gunfire to die down before she could answer my question so I could hear.

  “What does that idiot think he’s doing?” she said through gritted teeth. I watched the zombies struggle and wriggle themselves out of their idiotic positions with a ferociousness that a brick wall wouldn’t be able to stop. It made me realize what Angie feared. It wasn’t Chuck she worried about—he would eventually be able to just walk out of here—but Jonesy wouldn’t be able to flee from them, and the shooting would attract the zombies to his position. Two more shots rang out followed by a ding and the soft sound of sliding doors. Angie grinned.

  “Maybe he isn’t that stupid.”

  Jonesy had fled using the elevator. Not wasting our opportunity, she extended a hand to help me out from under the desk. She picked me off the floor, and with a grunt, she sat me down on the desk. My eyes darted across the small room to take in the carnage. Bodies of all sizes surrounded the small building. Most were ripped to shreds by a barrage of bullets; some still moved.

  Angie checked the door. Widening the opening showed none of the, I guessed, zombies that had besieged the guard post.

  Back inside she scooped me from the desk. I felt grateful that she hadn’t decided on the over-the-shoulder position. When we stepped around the building, my mouth dropped open.

  As if he were Moses himself, a wall of shuffling bodies parted for the old man with an oxygen chart—and a walker.

  “Chuck!” I called out, delighted to see him. His chest heaved, but he made his way to us with strong strides.

  “Jeez, I thought you’d bought it before you showed up here,” Angie huffed out. Chuck looked up with a crooked smile, and I felt relieved to see his wrinkled face.

  “We thought the same of you,” he said.

  “Nice ride,” I said, pointing at the walker that held his oxygen cart in a basket. Chuck smirked.

&nbs
p; “How did you know we were here?” Angie asked. He chuckled at that. A mischievous smile clung to his face.

  “That friend of yours won’t be too happy with you,” he said and then broke out in a coughing fit.

  When he caught his breath, he told us how when we hadn’t exited the building, he had forced Jonesy back inside at gunpoint.

  “We gained access to a security room when your buddies evacuated. That thing had more screens than an electronics store,” he said, exasperated. “We saw everything that happened and thought you might need a hand.”

  “That we did,” Angie said.

  Chuck explained that he had acted as a decoy for Jonesy and simultaneously had urged the zombies to follow him. Once Chuck had succeeded in drawing them away from the guard post, Jonesy had no trouble taking them out. After clearing a path, Jonesy had fled to the security room on the second floor using the elevator. From there he could follow our progress. Now all we had to do was wait for the zombies to calm down and ride the elevator up to the second floor. We could have taken the stairs, but Chuck wasn’t up for it.

  Jonesy faced us, arms crossed, jaws tight when the elevator doors slid open on the second floor. Bodies drilled with holes covered the hallway floor. At least six had found their end near the elevator with several more lying dead further down the hall. All the while, Jonesy just stood there leaning casually against the wall with his sunglasses still perched on his nose. This could mean anything, but I feared the worst. Still, I felt relieved to see him. Besides, he didn’t aim his glare at me.