The command station was also gutted, and none of the electronics were in place. Some variations of this vehicle had pretty sophisticated gear. This one had next to nothing left. Someone had left a plastic drink holder duct taped to a space where electronic readout equipment should have sat.
Scott came hobbling out of the truck, firing as he limped. I hit the side door and kicked it open.
“Here!” I screamed.
He made a beeline for me and slammed into the seat so hard he gasped. He tossed the gun in the back and slammed his door shut. We were safe, for now, as there was no way for the things to get in.
I pulled forward a few feet, jammed the gear in reverse and, with a rending screech, tore free of the beat-up Humvee.
We roared out of the camp and made for the open road. The ride was bumpy, and I felt around for straps or something to hold me in the seat. Before long, we hit pavement and I stopped the Humvee. He leaned back and breathed deep. The air probably tasted like the best champagne in the world.
“What a cluster fuck,” I muttered.
“We had it, man, but that asshole had to spoil things.”
I stared out the window at the road ahead. Trees had grown here, long and lean, and branches hung over the road, creating a canopy. A power wire had been pushed down.
“What was I thinking? Dragging you guys into this. Now Jack is dead.”
“We signed on to help. We knew the risks. It could just as easily have been me back there, dead, with half my fool head gone. But I’m alive, and so are you.”
I sighed.
“Look, man. It’s done and nothing can undo it. You gonna live with guilt your whole life, or are you going to channel it and make Jack’s death count for something? All the deaths, for that matter. We started this thing, so let’s figure out a way to finish it.”
“Are you crazy? I can barely move. Do you think we can just roll back in there with machine guns and shoot them all? We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Was he thinking about a suicide mission? I felt so miserable it almost appealed to me. But that would be a selfish way out. I owed it to Katherine to let her know I had survived. She would wonder for a long time, otherwise.
Scott crawled out of the chair and went in the back of the vehicle, climbed the small ladder, and poked his head out. He was up there for a while, fiddling with the weird gun. Then he dropped back down with a big shit-eating grin on his face.
“I have an idea.”
I stared at my bloody hands on the wheel of the vehicle. The knuckles on my right hand were bruised and torn. My left hand shook, and the pinky was bent at an odd angle. Probably broken.
“Erik, we have to go back anyway. The food and water is in the truck. Not to mention the ammo.”
I shook my head. I felt like I was coming out of a bad nightmare. “Yeah.”
“And the people still in the cages … Are we going to just leave them?”
Scott put his hand on my shoulder, and I looked back at him. His face was a bloody mess, and his hair was caked with dirt. We made a fine pair. I patted his hand like an affectionate uncle. He grinned and looked at the ladder. Following his gaze, I wondered what he had up his sleeve, and then he told me.
We roared into the camp the way we had left—like the devil himself was on our heels. This time we were bringing hell. I had wanted to destroy the base before, but now I would do it for real. Scott maneuvered next to the smashed Humvee. It was surrounded by the dead, but he rolled down his window and went to work with the AK-47.
I turned my unique gun on anything that moved. Scott had worked out the device. He followed the tubes to the blue barrels then back to the weapon. After messing with it, he discovered there was a tiny propane tank on the end that provided the spark. The barrel was nothing less than a flamethrower.
I turned the dial and let a little gas leak out. There was a sparker next to it. I clicked it a few times, and a blue flame appeared. The weapon had a couple of gauges on the side, so I messed with them until I had a good stream, then I triggered the gun. Fire leapt out and consumed the first pair of zombies near the side of the truck. They staggered away, now walking torches. I was hoping to set Lee on fire, but he was gone. They probably dragged his body back to feast on.
A search of the vehicle had turned up a couple of other weapons. I took a worn but well-oiled MP5 and had a few mags lined up near the flamethrower.
I set to clearing the immediate area while Scott dragged boxes from the back of the Humvee to our vehicle. He tossed me a large bottle of Gatorade, so I took the top off and drank warm but clean water out of it, draining it in a few massive swallows.
I turned the gun on one of the dead that had grown interested in Scott. His head exploded backwards, and his body slumped to the side, just like that. Another body to add to the list.
It only took a few minutes to move our supplies. If the rear door had been able to slide down, it would have been faster. The impact of the Humvee had damaged the rear too badly.
I slid down to help move things around, then we took our positions again.
“Ready?”
“Damn right.” I nodded.
We started at the rear of the camp. Our path was littered with the dead. When we came across them, we ran them down and kept going. I shot the few I had to, but I wanted to work from the rear to the front.
We approached the destroyed hut. The corrugated metal was pushed aside, thanks to my escape. I almost felt a sense of glee when I turned the flamethrower on the opening and set it for full stream. Fire raced down and roared into the space. It was so loud that I couldn’t hear any screams from those below. I let the fuel run for a few minutes until I was satisfied the place was sanitized.
It took most of the day to clean house. We worked from the other end of the camp, burning away any of the dead we found. Sometimes they came at us en masse, which made it easy to destroy them. When each section was cleared, Scott jumped out of the truck and freed any prisoners that were still in cages.
The stench of burning flesh tested my gag reflex. It filled the air, and I knew it would haunt my nightmares for years to come.
The survivors sat in what space they could find in the vehicle. A couple of the men took guns from our stash and joined in the massacre. We rescued a few children who couldn’t have been older than ten or twelve. I wondered why there were no others in Haley’s age range. Then it hit me: they probably took the older ones to convert to ghouls—which I had just destroyed.
The cleansing, as I thought of it, was a success. We left a mountain of scorched bodies in our wake. By the end of the battle, we had a tattered army of a dozen or so men and women. The younger members of the crew sat on the floor in the cramped vehicle. What seemed like a huge space before was filled with the wretched remains of the camp. Weary faces munched on the remaining protein bars. They drank what little water we had, and a few even broke into the energy drinks.
I stayed on the ladder for a long time, gun aimed at the opening to the camp so I could kill any stragglers. The flamethrower was just about out of fuel. I would have to work out the formula they used to create the custom device. It had been one of the most effective weapons since I came back to the world.
“You going to come down?” Scott called from the front. He popped out of the vehicle with the AK-47 slung down low. “I think I have this thing working.”