Harry looked at Aubrey, “Well?”
“Collect these local guys, now we need them alive more than ever. Have Ella do it, she hasn't really been that useful anyway.”
Ella folded her arms and responded acidly, “Don't let her talk to me like that! Make her go clean up this mess, she is the one who didn't tell you they were coming into town!”
Aubrey looked levelly at Ella, “Ella, I do not have time for this shit. Can you control thousands of zombies from five hundred miles away? How about even one zombie from a block away?”
The other woman sputtered and pointed, then Harry intervened, “What Aubrey means Ella, is that your talents would be better served running down the ten or so people with the guns, I am sure you can get them here in one piece for us to…play with. Just take care of this for me would you? I need to have a few very stern words with Aubrey and then her and I need to finish up this other little problem that I haven't had a chance to tell you about. So please, could you run these humans down?”
Ella folded her arms across her chest, Aubrey pointedly ignored her by closing her eyes. Finally Harry cleared his throat and asked, “Please dear?”
“I don't have to bring them all back do I?”
Sighing Harry said, “I supposed you can play with one. Only one! Pick someone young and stupid looking and make sure he isn't damaged so much that we can't pick his brains if we need to bring him back to health. Just in case he knows something.”
Smiling Ella said, “Okay Harry! I will do it! You can count on me.” Beaming the woman pointed out a couple of super zombies who were still holding the doors open and said, “Come with me boys we are going after some bad guys!”
The doors silently closed and Aubrey cracked one eye and said, “She is high maintenance.”
“A bitch too. I think our experiment is about over with her.”
“I hope she brings some of them back alive. We will need the energy, we can kill them and question them afterward. I wonder what would happen if we drained their blood out and then fed it to them, would the energy from their own blood be enough to bring them back? We know the blood holds onto it longer than it takes for someone to die.”
Harry shook his head, “You come up with the damnedest things. We can try it. We will, unless we need it too badly.”
Chapter 44
“Something has changed.” Max said, bringing the group to a halt with an outstretched arm.
“What?” asked Stewart, taking bullets out of her borrowed police belt and reloading her pistol.
“The local zombies are not acting like anyone is really controlling them. It is more like a mob again. Some of them, up ahead of us, seem to be getting it together, but the ones behind us aren't doing much more than standing there.”
“So we go back?” Stewart asked skeptically.
Shaking his head Max said, “No. Even moving like typical zeds there are more than we can handle.”
“So why are you wasting our time stopping us?” asked Stewart taking aim and shooting a zombie that was getting too close. “That is the place up ahead of us, I think. The Art Institute?”
“Hey Ruben!” called Max, “Are they in place yet?”
“No word. I will ask.” said Ruben, the old man was huffing and puffing from his exertions in keeping up with the squad. He and the three other old men, all over sixty, were red in the face and while Max hated to admit it, they were slowing the entire squad down. Behind the soldiers on the street the mob continued to press forward slowly, like an ocean of rotted humanity. Every once in a while a faster zombie would launch out of the crowd behind them, a couple of times these zombies had come within feet before being shot.
Slinging his rifle, Ruben pulled up the walkie talkie and sent out a coded signal, it was responded to immediately, “Yes! They are in place.” Listening intently for a moment Ruben waited for the sounds to end, then keyed back a brief message, “They think he is in the Art Building, they saw a woman and a bunch of supers heading our way. Plus there are a bunch in the park ahead of us.”
“Alright, let's go, we run by, fire into the art institute, toss in a bunch of grenades and high tail it out of here.”
“We are slowing you down.” Ruben said as much to Bill as to Max.
“Yeah, you old geezers better suck it up and get moving, we can't afford to coddle you anymore.” Bill said.
Ruben looked at him for a moment, the laughed, “You're one to talk sergeant!”
Behind them several fast zombies made a break for them all at once. The three older men, Dan, Kirk and Larry were tired and caught off guard by the rush. Dan went down with two zombies tackling the man as he fought to cock his rifle, which he had just reloaded. Stewart gave a yell and charged back into the whirling melee, shooting her pistol as she went.
“Keep those motherfuckers back!” She yelled at the other men, “Fire now, fire!”
The other members of the squad crouched down and started firing into the walking dead that got close to the four people fighting in the street. Dan came up, he was missing his helmet and had a stream of bloody pouring down one side of his face. He still had his rifle and finished cocking it then let loose with a fully automatic stream of bullets at the zombies closest to him.
Ruben pushed Max, spinning him around to face up the street in front of them.
“Goddamn.” Max said softly. “They were just fucking with me. They must have known I could see them or something.”
Ahead of them running at full tilt towards the two men was a crowd of zombies.
“It's the goddamn zombie Chicago marathon!” Max said.
Ruben grunted and went to one knee and began firing into the crowd, “Shut up and shoot, there are only a few hundred.”
Max raised his shotgun and aimed before firing when the first zombie was twenty yards away. His shot was close enough to put a few pellets into the zombie nurse's brain and she tumbled heels over head, her white stockinged legs briefly flying into the air at head height. Max laughed, “Did you see that?”
“I saw.” Ruben said, picking his targets carefully, “Feel free to talk about it when we get our shit out of this mess Max. Fire faster.”
Bill turned and saw the group heading towards them, then yelled, “Into the park, now!”
The four older men were free of the zombies behind them, but most of the squad was still firing in that direction before Bill's yell.
“Bill, we can't go that way! There are a ton of zombies in that direction!” Max shouted continuing to fire his shotgun. The men of the squad were already disappearing into the well spaced shrubbery, Bill grabbed Ruben and Max by the shoulders of their jackets and pulled them off the street, over the sidewalk and into the greenery with little help from either man.
“Bill! Zombies!” Max said between firing his gun at targets behind them.
“I know Max, how far?”
“Two, three blocks maybe.”
“Good. What the fuck?”
Bill slowed down, which gave Ruben and Max a chance to reload and evaluate their situation.
“Another goddamned train track? How many trains does this place have?”
“Look!” Max said pointing to the west, “We can get to the building under the street there.” The street between the park where they were at and the art institute was raised to clear the train tracks and the designers had left the area underneath it open, the paths from the park led to another area of greenery next to the building.
“Where did all those fuckers come from Max?” asked Ruben panting heavily.
“They were moving slowly to fool me, I thought we had enough time to get clear of them, when they all started moving quick I knew I'd been had.”