When he felt he had rested enough, Stenson crawled over to the front of the clinic. He leaned against a ventilation shaft and looked out over the lot. Thousands of undead were packed into the blacktop. They were moaning, staring blankly off into space, and wandering aimlessly. The gun towers that had once guarded the DDC resembled old stilt houses that rose from a rolling ocean of gray undead. The fence that had surrounded the DDC lay in twisted ruin.
“What are you gonna do with that, Private?” The first real conversation he’d had with the Tierrasanta DDC sergeant rang in his memory.
“That’s my magic bullet, sir!” He had replied with a smile. The sergeant had asked for a daily inventory of all the ammunition in the DDC, and every day Private Stenson had reported all the ammunition he carried on him — including a single Beretta pistol clip containing a single 9mm round. The number stood out in the reports, and eventually, the sergeant had gotten around to asking him about it.
The sergeant smiled and nodded. “Sometimes things get so fucked up that all you have are bullets.”
“Just making sure I have the bullet I need if things get too fucked up, sir,” Stenson replied.
Since that day, other soldiers had taken to carrying “magic bullets.” Some had them on necklaces… others had them on key chains or even bandoleers, but only a handful understood what a magic bullet was. They kept them in special clips that were separate from their combat ammunition.
Stenson closed his eyes and sighed as he rolled up a pant leg to examine his wound. During the morning’s escape from the quiet room and subsequent climb to the music store roof, he had felt the sharp pinch of jaws closing around his ankle. It was barely hard enough to hurt, barely hard enough to break the skin, but it was hard enough. It had only taken a few hours for the tiny gash to spread black spider veins up his leg and numb his foot. Now, his entire lower leg was the same grey-green pallid rubber of necrotic flesh. He had kept the wound secret all day. Doomed as he was, he could still help, and there was no use in scaring everyone.
He sighed, fished a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, and took a deep drag. After he had covered the convoy’s escape, he had fought his way out of the clinic office through a rampaging onslaught of ghouls… without being bitten. He had shot and stabbed his way through a long hallway crawling with undead without so much as a scratch. Finally, he had made it to the music store roof and then to the clinic roof untouched. All that was for naught, however, given the ankle bite he had already received. It felt so unfair that his fate would be determined by such a small thing — a split-second where he was a little too slow… and some random ghoul had been just fast enough.
Reaching into his right pocket, he felt for the hard metal clip where he kept his magic bullet. His other hand reached for his sidearm, popped the empty clip out, and replaced it with the new one. After giving his sidearm to Liam in the quiet room, his first order of business had been to acquire a replacement. It made him cringe to loot the corpses of his comrades, but there had been no other choice. He then proceeded to spend all his ammunition on the defense of the convoy’s escape. Now, only his magic bullet remained.
He took another long drag from his cigarette before tossing the butt into the undead ocean below and lighting another one.
A million doubts ran through his head. What if he hadn’t been bitten? He hadn’t actually seen the zombie bite him, he reflected. What if he was just in some sort of shock? What if he was sleep deprived and making a dumb decision? What if the wound he thought was a bite was merely another gash from slamming into the broken window? What if there was a cure in the fleet? If he just waited long enough, maybe his immune system could fight off the infection.
Stenson closed his eyes and pushed the doubts away. He forced himself to alter his perspective. He was lucky. A lot of people, soldiers and civilians, didn’t have magic bullets. Billions of people all around the world were doomed to walk the earth as monsters. He didn’t have to be, and for that, he was grateful. He had given all he had and succeeded in saving civilian lives — children’s lives. Few people were so lucky.
“Sometimes things get so fucked up that all you have are bullets,” he growled.
With little hesitation, he brought his arm up and placed the barrel of his gun against his temple.
Chapter 27
“Sound off,” Carl ordered through the communications network. When a mere seven voices, including Pam and Miguel’s, came back… Carl felt heartbroken. Every fiber in his body wanted to turn the entire convoy around to pull those he’d left behind — dead or alive — out from the hell the convoy had just escaped. He had lost so many men and women under his command that it felt unfair that even more had given their lives on this last mission. The commander in him knew the futility of turning back and risking even more lives. The world wasn’t fair, and jeopardizing those who had made it through wouldn’t change that.
“You’re gonna want to take Highway 805 to 5. We’ll pass Miramar to the east, but the system says the Miramar STOG is concentrated south and east.” Pam had a map pulled up on her laptop and was working out the best route to San Onofre. San Diego itself was a deadly labyrinth of horrors, but traveling northward past Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, would require more care than usual. When DDCs began running out of space and had been forced to turn away latecomers months ago, military bases like Miramar were inundated by refugees from every corner of California. Thousands of campers, tents, trailers, and mobile homes cropped up overnight with the belief that mere proximity to the military would provide some measure of protection. That assumption could not have been further from reality, and as quickly as a ghoul claimed its first victim, infection spread through the camps like wildfire. A colossal swarm of man-eating carnage rose up to consume not only the refugee communities, but also the military bases they surrounded. All over the country, bases were either utterly abandoned or completely overrun. Miramar was the latter.
Carl nodded and punched the link on his communications network. “In about ten minutes, we’re gonna be passing Miramar on our right. I need gunners to hold their fire until we’re clear.”
“Hold on, let me… MMMMPH!” Miguel tried to pull himself to stand in his gun mount, but he fell back into his seat, gripping his leg in agony.
“Let me take a look at that. Do you have a first aid kit?” A blonde-haired woman sitting in the back of the Humvee asked. A young boy clung to her in terror, but she hugged him in reassurance. “I’m not going anywhere, honey. I’m just gonna help the soldier who helped us.”
Miguel hesitated, but pulled up his pant leg, reached under his seat, and retrieved the first aid kit. His calf was swollen, and it had an odd misshapen bulge to it. With the adrenaline gone from his system, the pain was beginning to take hold.
“I’m Nicole.” The woman said, as she crawled into position to take a look at Miguel’s leg. “This is my son, Vince.” She gestured to the boy. “I’m no Dr. D, but I think I recognize a broken leg when I see one. What’s your name?”
Miguel grimaced as Nicole examined his injury. “I’m Sergeant Miguel Ramos… thanks.” Miguel was not used to having anyone attend to him.
“Mommy, what’s that?” Vince asked. A distant and barely intelligible voice began to echo over the sound of the vehicles.