The sound of a dozen consecutive pops from above coincided with each of Carl’s attackers falling to their knees before collapsing face-first onto the pavement. Carl looked up in confusion, and his eyes found a young soldier who stood perched in the corner of the second story office window. Most of the undead that surrounded the soldier were preoccupied with consuming fresh victims. The rest had their attention focused on the escaping soldiers and civilians.
“Stenson!” Kelly Damico screamed from the convoy.
“Get her out of here!” Stenson shouted at Carl. He stood, slammed the butt of his gun into the face of a walking corpse, and changed the magazine of his rifle. Some of the nearby ghouls began to turn their attention towards the Private.
“Stenson! Come on!” Kelly Screamed. A sergeant yanked her inside his vehicle and slammed the door. Two walking corpses reached for the space she had just occupied, but they only stumbled into the car window to leer at her menacingly.
Carl jogged over to Miguel and Pam, gripped Miguel under his arm, and hauled him to his feet. “We need to go!”
Pam holstered her sidearm and wrapped Miguel’s other arm over her shoulder. She shouted into the communications network. “We need a driver in every car!”
The soldiers had retreated to their vehicles. Four mounted guns were now splitting fire between the zombies accumulating on the fence, and the zombies pouring out of the DDC. The mass of bodies pressing against the fence was immense, and over a thousand hissing faces howled at the convoy as portions of the fence began to collapse. The vanguard of undead scrambled over the battered obstacle toward the vehicles.
“It’s giving way!” Someone screamed. The chain links stretched like a fish net, and the struts shrieked as they were pressed to the breaking point.
A civilian woman helped Miguel into the lead Humvee, and Pam dove inside behind him. Carl ran to the driver’s side, opened the door, and was about to get in when he stopped. He glanced around, oblivious to the impending danger, as if he was searching for something.
“Let’s go!” Pam screamed through the communications network.
A series of gunshots rang out from within the vehicle, and Carl turned to see Miguel pointing his rifle out the driver’s door. Carl turned back around in a daze to see three corpses crumpled on the ground behind him.
“Wake up, Carl!” Miguel shot his commanding officer an angry look. He never had to raise his voice at Carl. Carl was the type of leader he admired, the type of leader whose focus and caution had saved his life more times than he could count. Something had changed though. Carl seemed distant, or a step or two behind real time. “Carl! Get in!”
Tortured metal screamed over the dissonance of rampaging undead, and a huge section of the fence tumbled over. It was followed in quick succession by another and another. An ocean of undead poured toward the convoy. Carl took one last look at the second story office window where several of his men lay dead. The young soldier, Private Stenson, who had remained behind to cover their escape was nowhere to be seen. Carl took a deep breath, nodded silently, stepped inside the vehicle, and closed the door.
“Let me in! Please! Let me in!” A woman cradled her bleeding arm that had been mauled by several bite marks. She banged on the passenger side window. Carl locked the doors and shifted the vehicle into reverse. The woman stumbled forward, tears streaming down her face.
“Help her!” a child in the back yelled.
Carl ignored the plea, revved the engine, and brought the convoy to face the mass of approaching dead. The bitten woman was engulfed by the lead pack of ghouls. They then slammed against the Humvee windows and leered at the living within. They pounded on the armored trucks with angry fists. Civilians screamed, and machine-gunners closed the top hatches to make the vehicles impregnable. Carl sighed as he spoke, “I’m… I’m pushing through! If I get stuck, someone pushes from behind…”
“NO!” Pam’s face took on a look of terror. She pointed to a narrow alley behind them that was between the DDC and the adjacent building. “Go that way!” The memory of their last desperate push through a swarm of undead was all-too fresh in her memory. If a vehicle broke down this time, there was no help — no air support, no recovery team, no reinforcements. They would be on their own… and that would be a death sentence.
“Okay, disregard that last order. Follow me!” Carl floored the gas, and the vehicle zoomed forward. It smashed into packs of ghouls as it went. He had full faith in Pam, and he also had no wish to relive the bloody mayhem of the previous night. It had cost too many lives. He jerked the wheel sharply to make a U-turn, and plowed up and over a sand bag fortification. The tires squealed, and the Humvee plowed through more undead. He led the convoy back around to face the alley.
He stopped the truck for a moment. “It’s gonna be a tight fit.” Carl said to the other drivers.
“Buckle up!” Pam added.
The Humvee roared forward. With two simultaneous bangs and a shower of sparks, the right and left mirrors were shaved off. Garbage cans and lingering undead alike were crushed beneath the armored vehicle’s bulk as it built speed.
“Where does this go?” Carl asked, noting that the chain link fence at the end of the alley was looming larger and larger as he approached.
Pam didn’t answer, but she bit her bottom lip.
“Specialist?” Carl asked with a growl.
As the vehicle reached the end of the alley, Carl got his answer. The Humvee crashed through a rusted metal fence and over a ledge that overlooked a small city park. The engine howled, and the vehicle hurtled through the air. Civilians screamed in terror as they felt themselves in free-fall.
The drop was nearly two stories, and the landing was hard. The three-ton vehicle loaded with passengers slammed into the ground with a bang before skidding forward and taking out a child’s swing set. Miguel groaned in pain as he held his leg, and Carl glanced in his center mirror.
“Keep moving when you hit the ground. We don’t want to land on top of each other,” Carl said through the communications network. He continued to press on the gas, and he plowed forward through the playground.
“Hit the ground?” a questioning voice came back over the network.
Four more Humvees, one after another, shot from the ledge into the park below. They drove forward before sliding to a halt. Dust settled, and the crews sat silently for a moment, collecting their wits. Their endurance was taxed, and their adrenaline was wearing thin.
The cacophony of the undead hordes atop the hill echoed through the San Diego streets. The handful of undead that had pursued them through the alley slowly trickled over the edge and tumbled to the ground.
Pam opened her laptop and began typing. She pretended to be oblivious to the stare of disbelief that Carl and Miguel had fixed on her.
“Unprofessional, Specialist Grace. Very unprofessional.” Carl spoke over the communications network to let everyone else in the convoy know that it was not his idea to take the escape route through the alley.
“San Onofre is… um… that way.” Pam awkwardly pointed behind her and up a side road that sat perpendicular to the alley that had just ejected the military vehicles.
“Hey, Pam, can we get a warning next time you decide to take the convoy base jumping?” Someone from another vehicle joked over the network.
“Seriously…” Carl shook his head and sighed as he pulled the convoy onto the road and began driving in the direction Pam had indicated.
“At least we didn’t have to drive through that mess of WDs,” Pam shrugged.
Chapter 25
Dr. Henry Damico set his small suitcase at his feet and sighed. He was not a materialistic person, but in packing for his trip, he realized that all the clothes he owned—indeed all his worldly possessions—were now stuffed neatly into what amounted to a carry-on bag. Had he considered he would never see his home again, he would have packed for something more than a weekend trip. It seemed absurd to yearn for the small luxury of being able to choose from more than three outfits. Already the threads were starting to fray, and the knees of his pants and elbows of his shirt were almost worn through.