The world had changed so drastically in the week and a half I’d spent behind the safety of our walls. The streets were desolate, like a ghost town in a spaghetti western. I half expected to see tumbleweeds rolling across the street in front of us. The buildings we passed each told a story of their own. One strip mall looked untouched by the savage events, while the next was a charred husk and barely standing. Its bare-bones frame looked like a blackened skeleton.
Everything was gray and colorless. Even the dried blood, once bright red, had turned a brown muddy color after it dried and baked in the sun. I held my palm up in front of me, cradling the sunlight like it was something to be held. It was the first truly clear and tropical day since the storm. A small glimmer of hope welled inside of me, finding meaning in this gift from Mother Nature. Maybe things would be okay after all.
It was more than two miles before we saw our first reanimated corpse. Impaled on the wreckage from a motor vehicle accident, its skin hung off its body like it was two sizes too big. As we passed, its arms reached up to us like a baby begging to be coddled.
A few hundred feet later an emaciated dog ran from an unmoving corpse. Its muzzle, covered with blood from the abdomen of the body it had been feasting on, was in stark contrast to its tan fur. Without human intervention, pets would be forced to find food for themselves. The scene sent a flurry of new thoughts through my head. Were animals susceptible to the infection? I had no answer, but was curious what would happen to the dog. The last thing we needed to deal with was a pack of undead dogs knocking at the door. After Santa Barbara Boulevard ended, we turned left onto Cape Coral Parkway and headed to the bridge in search of the missing truck.
“An M4’s magazine holds thirty rounds.” Seth reached under his seat and handed me a tactical vest. “You’ve got six spare magazines.”
I could tell they were loaded because the vest was heavy and cumbersome as I maneuvered it onto my torso. The gravity of what we were about to do hit me as I slid my arms through the vest. Lieutenant Dan went over the plan again. We parked about a klick away from the truck, I now knew that a klick was equivalent to a kilometer or pretty close to a mile, and headed to the bridge on foot. It was unlikely we would find the men kicking back and catching some rays by the tanker, but it gave us a starting point and hopefully would provide us with some clue as to what happened and where Jake was.
I was surprised by how few walking corpses we came across. Empty streets meant they weren’t dropping dead on their own. They had to be moving. The problem was, the only time I saw them moving was when they had a target in sight. Living, breathing targets. The truck stopped moving and Seth put it into park and killed the engine. Two Humvees stood abandoned nearby. The team hit the ground and was immediately on alert.
Fanning out, with guns at the ready, we began walking to the bridge. It wasn’t lost on me that the men kept me in the center of their protective circle. Adam fell into step beside me. No one spoke. Bayonets had been affixed to each of our weapons. Our orders were clear. Silent kills unless absolutely necessary.
We knew the zombies were attracted to smell and sound. Smell, we couldn’t do anything about, but we wouldn’t give them the benefit of hearing us. When faced with one or two at a time, we could easily take them down without guns. I mean easily in the sense of physical stress. Psychologically, I still struggled with killing. I even felt a bit of remorse for Lena.
The entrance of the bridge loomed before us like a gaping mouth. Seth’s hands began moving in rapid succession like he was having a Tourette’s attack in sign language. With eyes so intensely focused on the group, his hands moved like he was cranking a handle. This was answered with a thumbs-up from the men. So, I followed suit, deducing this must be him asking if we were ready to move.
He shimmied up about ten feet and pancaked himself behind a minivan, looked around and patted his head. He pointed at Sanchez and brought his thumb to his eye like he was looking through a spyglass. The group, myself included, just following the leader again, moved up to Seth and stopped. Only Sanchez continued past him, crouched low and weapon at the ready.
Seeing my obvious confusion, Seth then tugged his ear, patted his forearm, made a finger twirling motion, and followed it up by sticking his finger up his nose. I was totally lost; I could almost feel the question mark bouncing over my head. Every man in uniform had a shit-eating grin on their face, attempting to maintain composure and not laugh. Mouth agape, I snapped my head back to Seth with the realization that he was completely messing with me. He stood there, hands on hips, and chest puffed out in pride at his little practical joke. I won’t lie. It was damn funny. Completely the wrong time, but a well needed tension breaker.
Back down to business. Seth made a few more gestures, too fast for me to see, much less understand. But the soldiers clearly did, and they split into two teams. One covered our front, and the other flanked us as we began moving again. I heard the wet squishing noise of knife penetrating brain as they dispatched any undead that got close.
We kept low, using the cover of cars in case there was a horde waiting for us. It was a good thing the bridge had three lanes, giving us some breathing room between cars. As I passed their windows, I found myself looking inside. Some were empty; others entombed the undead as they made feeble attempts to free themselves. Windows were smashed and dried blood, cracked and flaking from the elements, covered the bridge in large splatters.
The trek to the fuel tanker was a quiet one. We had come into contact with only a handful of undead. As we neared the truck, I noticed a change in the blood. It was still tacky. Flies swarmed the area and their buzzing made my skin crawl.
“Sir,” I heard one of the soldiers whisper. I immediately jogged to where he was standing. On the ground lay what had once been one of our men. Clad in shredded fatigues, he looked up at us vacantly as his jaws snapped. The force of his jaw clamping down caused his front teeth to shatter, and the broken pieces had fallen into his throat. His body didn’t move. I suspected that was largely due to what little was left of him. They had picked him clean. Both legs were gone and his central mass was an empty cavity down to his spine. I wondered how long they feasted on him until he turned and if they kept on eating him even then. His hand still clutched the radio. This was the voice of Echo One we’d heard the day before.
I searched the area and found no sign of Jake. Five other men were discovered, completely devoured. They too had been picked clean, but they had gunshot wounds to the head. Someone had shown these men mercy. Was it Jake? Echo One reported being cut off from the Humvees, which meant there were only two paths they could have taken: across the bridge, or over the side and into the water. The end of the bridge was gone, just missing. Someone must have blown it to try to keep the virus from spreading; which side had done it was a mystery.
A small inkling of hope welled up in me as I contemplated the possibility that the other side of the bridge was untouched. But as I looked further into Fort Myers I saw the same scene of destruction and chaos we’d faced in Cape Coral. Buildings still burned, and it was eerily silent. That narrowed it down to the men jumping from the bridge. Of course, this assumed they hadn’t died and joined the new regime of the dead.
The sounds of struggle cut through my ruminations, and I heard someone yelling. “Jesus, get him off me.” One of the dead soldiers had been lurking under the fuel tanker and grabbed Sanchez by the ankle. Adam was closest and plunged his bayonet into its head, killing him for the second time.
“Are you okay, man?”
“I’m fine.” He was shaken, but looked okay. He stormed away from the group mumbling something in Spanish.