I’m going to go downstairs and drink a cup of coffee. Then I’m going to take my .38 special and join my wife and son. Sometimes, things get so fucked up there aren’t any solutions, and all you have are bullets.
Chapter 1
“Almost home,” Sergeant First Class Carl Harvey whispered under his breath, as he accelerated his military Humvee through the dark, rubble-strewn city streets. The windshield wipers, moving at full speed, barely cut through the torrential downpour that was so uncharacteristic of San Diego weather. Carl leaned forward in the driver seat struggling to lead his convoy of military vehicles home. The interior of the hummer was a noisy cacophony of confusion. Terrified sobs and screams from the civilians who sat in the back of his vehicle, mingled with the constant squawking of communications across the combat network. The .50 caliber machine gun mounted above him drowned the havoc in sporadic thunder and death.
A swarm of living dead was close behind. Carl had often wondered at the horrifying phenomenon that drove undead to gather in groups. Individually, they were dangerous, but easily dealt with. In groups, however, they could work themselves into frenzy. Hundreds, even thousands of rotting cadavers sprinted after the convoy like a ravenous marathon.
Agitated for long enough, a boiling swarm of zombies might pursue prey for miles until they were distracted. Carl knew that if he were to stop driving, the howls of the hungry dead would raise to a crescendo as they engulfed the convoy. He blinked away the mental image and pressed on the accelerator.
Harvey’s responsibilities as point driver — the lead vehicle of the convoy — were measured in split seconds — instantaneous judgment calls that led the convoy through the mayhem of a city consumed by the undead. A wrong turn, break down, even a flat tire, would cost lives. Having grown up in northern Michigan, he had learned to drive in an unforgiving crucible of weather that was encouraged and supported by a culture and family that loved everything about cars. Now, as the country struggled to survive a living nightmare of death risen to devour the living, he couldn’t help but remember the blizzards he had experienced in his youth. A relentless, high-intensity storm, where no one respected the law, cars being abandoned and debris littered every inch of the road. On top of all that, an armed hostile civilian or flesh-eating monster could, and often did, jump out at you at any second.
Carl Harvey was in his late-twenties, but the stress of the last year had aged him. His dirty-blond hair was cut military short and was beginning to show flecks of gray. His jaw was always covered in stubble. He walked and talked as if he was half soldier, half truck driver, and extended a cool aura of confidence that made him a natural leader. He was the kind of man that made other soldiers believe that, whatever shit the world threw at them, Sergeant First Class Harvey knew what he was doing, and he would get you through it. Aided by the obscenely high attrition rates among the convoy teams, he vaulted quickly through the ranks.
“Approaching Interstate 8, five miles east of US Naval Station. We’ll be home in no time boys.” Specialist Pamela Grace sat in the passenger seat speaking into her headset-mounted microphone. A laptop computer sat on a dashboard-mounted tray in front of her. Her words seemed to calm the civilians somewhat. As point vehicle communications expert, she was connected to an extensive network of communications, satellite feeds, and minute-by-minute reporting. This gave her a picture of how to get the convoy where they needed to go, without leading it straight into a roadblock, hostile civilians, or a swarm of flesh-eating dead who would stop at nothing to consume the living.
With a gentle spin of the wheel, Carl expertly turned his Humvee up an onramp onto a yellow-lit highway that would lead them to their destination. The machine gun fire gradually dropped from a sporadic thunder to a periodic rattle.
“What’s that?” Pam covered her microphone and sat up abruptly.
“What? SHIT!” Carl quickly pushed down on the accelerator before he slammed into a dozen figures huddled on the highway. Gore and body parts launched in every direction, smearing the windshield with thick gouts of blood. The civilians in the back screamed in horror.
Convoy drivers had been trained to neither slow down nor swerve, but rather to accelerate when something — living or dead — crossed the path of their moving armored vehicle. Swerve and you risk losing control or crashing; a very bad thing in the best of circumstances, a death sentence in most. Slow down unexpectedly, and you risk being rear-ended by the Humvee on your tail, ending up with a carcass on your hood, or giving an armed attacker with nothing left to lose that extra second he needs to put you in his crosshairs. It was best to use the Humvee’s kinetic energy to plow through anything that didn’t have the wherewithal to stay out of the convoy’s way.
The force of the impact jolted the rain-soaked gunner out of his mount. Sergeant Miguel Ramos dropped down into the cab from his position and cursed. “What the hell?”
“More dead. Civilians know not to cross into the street by now,” Pam assured them both. As the situation across the country worsened, one of San Diego’s main arteries, Interstate 8, had been blocked off for strictly military purposes. The road served as a valuable pipeline connecting the various pockets of survivors scattered around the city to the US Naval Base. The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, Nimitz-class supercarrier, and its accompanying battle group floated offshore collecting supplies and refugees. For over two months, the battle group had been filled with survivors from every reachable corner of California. The convoys were an essential component of a much bigger picture, whose focus was to survive an Armageddon no one had anticipated or planned for — the rise of the living dead.
“There comes a point when the threat from the walking dead is greater than the threat from us,” Miguel grumbled curtly. He made the sign of the cross over his chest, pulled his stocky body back into the gun mount, and resumed scanning for targets. As the lead gunner, he was responsible for defending the convoy from constant onslaught — a job that seldom lent itself to looking at the bright side of things. No one knew how many unlucky innocent civilians found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time when a convoy passed by. The saying “from behind a .50 cal everyone looks the same”, was common among gunners who would return to the Naval Base with the gnawing guilt in the back of their mind about something they had seen on a mission. Was that shadow an animated corpse or some teenager running for his life? Was that an attacker or someone trying to flag the convoy down for help? There were millions of questions like this that were probably best left unanswered.
The six-vehicle convoy had been making trips to and from the Naval base all day and well into the night, each time loaded up with civilians and supplies from Defensible Detention Centers. DDC’s — as they were called — had originally been set up as medical screening clinics all over the country when the outbreak first hit. As the outbreak grew, the clinics became more like detention facilities where those that had been screened were urged to remain to avoid infection. When the centers began to overflow with desperate people, the military had stepped in to provide security and supplies. Now that the entire country — indeed the world — was beset by the incomprehensible epidemic of cannibalistic undead, the decision had been made to evacuate the North American continent. Every convoy trip into the hell-torn streets of San Diego had cost lives, but had also saved countless more with the food, medical personnel, and supplies they brought to the fleet.