“Grab her! Pull her!” someone shouted.
Kelly’s face was beet red under the strain of holding a grown man’s weight. “I… can’t…”
Dozens of hands reached through the window after Private Stenson. Pallid faces mashed together like a wall of hungry death. They snarled and snapped after the prey that was slipping from their grasp.
Stenson kicked and scrabbled up the side of the building. A second civilian reached down to grab him, then a third. Within seconds, he had been pulled safely to the roof.
“Damn, you’re heavy!” Kelly huffed and puffed with her hands on her knees.
“Thanks.” Stenson placed his hand on her shoulder. “You saved my ass.”
“Don’t mention it.” Kelly stood up and arched her back, a look of pain on her face.
“Every WD in the building is in that back office,” Stenson mustered.
“Good,” Kelly replied getting to her feet. “We have to go back down there.”
Chapter 16
The mounted guns atop the Humvees poured devastation in 360 degrees. A chorus of nightmarish howls rose to a crescendo, and hundreds of shambling dead surged toward the convoy. Children screamed in terror at the sound of gunfire and rampaging undead. Within seconds, the street was filled with thousands of blood thirsty monsters. Gore exploded around the vehicles as .50 caliber devastation cut through the host in a constant stream of annihilation.
Barely a minute passed before the first voice came over the network. “I’m low…”
“Me too…” another voice answered.
“Close the hatches!” Miguel shouted as the guns went dry. The vehicles plowed forward through the throngs of moaning horrors. The heavy military Humvees rocked violently under the relentless onslaught. They were buried beneath the dead within seconds.
“I’m pushing through,” Carl announced. The military had two protocols for being surrounded by a swarm of endless zombies. They could push through the mass and hope their vehicles endured, or teams could hide inside their impenetrable armored vehicles and wait for rescue. The latter wasn’t an option in this case. Aside from having limited rations among the crew, there were nearly a dozen children in each vehicle that would require food and water as well. They wouldn’t last a day when the California sun turned their vehicles into ovens. There was also the possibility that a rescue mission might not be mounted at all.
Carl pressed on the gas. His four-ton vehicle plowed forward. Ghouls bounced like rag dolls over and around the car. The chorus of moans grew louder as they drove deeper into the heart of the swarm.
“Control, Convoy Nineteen has encountered a STOG. Request air support three miles west of…” Pam shouted into the communications network.
The convoy initially had physics on its side, but Carl could already feel it turning against him. Every cadaver that bounced off the vehicle took a fraction of his momentum away. The powerful engine roared, but the tires began to slip and his speed dropped.
“Richards, push me!” Carl ordered.
“What?” Richards’s voice came over the network confused.
“Push me! Hurry! Before I lose all my momentum!” Carl pressed on the gas but could feel his tires slip. His RPMs were holding precariously in the red.
Carl’s vehicle jerked forward as the Humvee behind him slammed into his rear. The force of the two vehicles together slowed the loss of momentum, and they pressed on.
A gentle buzzing sound rose into a thundering drone above the moans and growls outside. Out of the horde rose a plume of dust and debris. Miguel looked out the window past the faces leering back at him. “A Super Cobra!”
“Convoy Nineteen, this is Air Zero, remain on your current heading. Do not stop. Things are gonna get worse before they get better.” A voice came over the network. A marine helicopter hovered overhead, pouring streams of Vulcan Cannon firepower into the undulating mass. “We’re going to try to thin things out for you, but there’s a lot of WDs down there.”
“Barona, you need to push Richards! I’m getting bogged down again,” Carl ordered.
With another bang, Carl’s car flew forward. The three vehicles pushed together as one, their engines roaring in unison, their tires grinding relentlessly onward onto a street now slick with gore and limbs. Undead howled and clawed at the vehicles as they were crushed beneath the unstoppable armored trucks.
Progress slowed to a crawl, but they continued advancing. The Super Cobra above cut huge swaths through the swarm—slowing the onslaught, but an ocean of howling undead came at them like a deluge of claws and fangs.
“It’s starting to clear!” Pam shouted.
“Keep pushing!” Carl ordered.
“You’re almost there, Nineteen. Keep it up.” The Super Cobra pilot’s voice came back over the network.
Carl floored the accelerator. His Humvee plowed into a small clear patch of freedom. “We’re out!” A highway onramp ahead occupied by a handful of ghouls came into view beneath a tattered black billboard.
The sign read, ‘Hope,’ in white letters next to an image of a glowing crucifix. Some church had, perhaps in the closing days of the apocalypse, wanted to spread an inspirational message. Carl smiled but his joy was short lived as he veered up the ramp and onto the highway.
Graffiti came into view — letters added to the sign in blood-red spray paint created the word ‘Hopeless.’ Thick red streaks ran down the sign from the paint and pooled at the bottom like a puddle of blood. Carl frowned as he accelerated. Optimism was all too rare in this new world, and destroying a heartwarming message like that seemed wrong.
“Ah… SHIT! Something’s wrong.” Richards’s voice came over the network.
Carl looked in his mirror to see the middle vehicle rolling to a stop, smoke pouring from its engine. He stomped on the brakes, threw his vehicle into reverse, and headed back towards his team.
Pam immediately shouted into her headset. “You still up there, Air Zero?”
“Still here, Ninteen. What’s up?” The pilot’s voice came back.
“Gonna need you to lay down some heat on that onramp back there. We have a problem,” Pam responded. “We have a breakdown.”
“On it…” The sound of the war machine hovering into position above them was small comfort, as the vanguard of the multitude behind them began to stagger up the onramp.
Miguel swung the Humvee door open as it came to a stop and stepped into a nightmare. Guns and rotors from the Super Cobra drowned out all sound in an oppressive rumble. The undead scattered through the immediate area, turned, and locked eyes on the convoy team. Rotting corpses slithered and slunk from behind broken-down cars and over the concrete median.
A nearby ghoul in a biker’s jacket and Harley Davidson t-shirt stumbled toward Miguel. Miguel took aim, fired, and the monster fell. Even the sound of his rifle was barely audible in the roar. He slung his gun over his shoulder, moved to the rear of his vehicle, and unraveled the heavy coiled chains.
Sergeant Quinn, Specialist MacAfee, and Private Barona emerged from their rear car. They fanned out over the highway, popping off shots into the shambling mass. The helicopter above poured firepower into the onramp. Huge arcs of carnage cut through the swarm, but it continued relentlessly up and toward the disabled convoy.
Private Richards and Sergeant Ornstein emerged from their broken-down vehicle firing their weapons. As quickly as they could drop a roaming corpse, three more took its place. The host was building by the second.
Pam and Carl climbed atop their hummer. They used their elevated position to cover their compatriots. With careful, precise shots, they picked off the undead that approached the convoy’s flanks. The corpses piled up in heaps of two and three, then four and five. A moat of bodies began to build around the convoy.