NO!
I dropped my rifle, scrambled back down the slope, and got as far away as I could before I was violently, gut-wrenchingly sick. I heaved up everything inside me and kept going, dry-heaving, ribs cramping, abdomen trying to tear itself apart.
Finally, the seizures subsided and I managed to crawl away from my own bile before I collapsed and lay on my side, gasping for breath. A few moments later, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey,” Blake’s voice said. “I’d ask if you’re okay, but I think the answer is pretty obvious.”
“Can’t …” was all I could manage to croak out.
“Come on, Caleb. It’s not safe here. Let’s go back to the Humvee. We’ll wait there for the others.”
I followed him, barely conscious of where I was going, dimly accepting my rifle and slinging it over my shoulder. Blake helped me into the passenger’s seat, then climbed in, cranked the engine, and turned the AC to its highest setting. After a few minutes, the cold air blowing in my face started to make me feel better.
“Sorry about that,” I said, feeling a flush come up my neck.
Blake shook his head. “Don’t be. If I’d stayed a few more seconds, I wouldn’t have been in much better shape.”
“That makes me feel a little better.”
“Man, I’ve seen some things, but that …”
“Yeah. No shit.”
“How the hell we gonna get past that?”
“I’m sure the good captain will think of something.”
We waited with no further conversation until Dad, Mike, and the two combat engineers came back down the hillside. On the way down, one of the soldiers hesitated, turned to the side, and heaved his guts behind a pine tree. The others waited, faces stoic, until he had mastered himself and started on his way again.
Back in his vehicle, Dad calmly and in detail explained the situation on the interstate. Morgan told him to stand by, presumably to confer with his staff, then came back on the radio and requested we return to the convoy.
“Roger that,” my father said. “En route. Recon one out.”
*****
The first time you see heavy artillery fire on a target at close range, you never forget it.
Like the others in the convoy, I waited at a good safe distance for the fireworks to start. Morgan’s men had scouted the various access roads until they found a flat approach on a narrow two-lane. The Abrams and two Howitzers took point, the Bradleys backing them up, APCs waiting the wings in case infantry support was needed during the crossing.
I sat in a Humvee with Blake and Sophia at the rear of the column. My father, Lauren, and Lance were in front of us. Tyrel and Lola waited behind, Mike bringing up the rear in his truck. Dad had loaned his Ram to a trio of pregnant women from the RV encampment so they could escape the discomfort of the deuce-and-a-half they had been riding in.
Travis had observed the transaction, and afterward offered Dad a handshake and a tight-lipped thanks. He did not look in my direction.
Later, we sat on the road eyeing the woodlands around us for signs of infected and waited. There was just enough bend in the road I could see the armor as they rolled forward, stopped about two-hundred yards from the teeming, screeching mass of infected frothing through the twisted metal obstructing the interstate, spread out, rolled to a stop, and aimed their guns.
The radio crackled to life. “All stations stand by. Engaging in three, two, one …”
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM
The projectiles traveled so fast there was no distinguishable difference between the thunder of shots and the detonation of high explosives. When the smoke cleared, there was a massive dent in the derelicts blocking our path, cars blown on top of other cars in twisted, broken heaps. But the way was not clear. With surprising speed, the crews reloaded, passed along another warning, and then fired in tandem.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM
The shells pushed the wreckage back further, but not enough to allow the convoy to cross. So the crews kept at it, firing, issuing warnings, and firing again. It took eleven rounds of three-gun bombardment before they finally blasted a lane wide enough to allow the convoy to pass.
The ordnance obliterated the infected closest to the target area, while those standing farther away were either disabled or sent hurtling through the air. Ghouls poured into the gap from all directions, making it obvious we would have to move quickly to get clear.
“All stations, listen up,” Morgan said over the radio. “I want Bradleys Alpha and Bravo to push up the edges of the path and make sure the heavy armor can get through. Once you’re across, Alpha face east, Bravo face west, and annihilate anything undead that comes your way. All other armored units, clear the road ahead until all non-armored vehicles and civilian transports are safely through. Acknowledge.”
After a hasty stream of affirmatives, the first two Bradleys behind the Abrams drove around it and shoved the few remaining cars blocking the path out of the way. Once done, they crossed the highway, drove on top of clusters of tightly packed sedans, and aimed their TOW missiles, chain guns, and M-240s toward the approaching infected.
“And to think,” Blake said beside me, “there was a time people thought Bradleys were a waste of money.”
The Abrams and Howitzers crossed the cratered expanse of I-20 first, Bradleys and APCs close behind, then the HEMTTs, troop transports, Humvees, and finally us civilians in our collection of vehicles.
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that Morgan chose to make sure his most valuable assets made it across first?” Sophia said. “It’s like we poor useless civilians were just an afterthought.”
The Humvee bounced and jumped as we floundered across the gaping holes left in the wake of the artillery shells. There were a couple of worrisome near-stalls, but finally we cleared the highway and picked up speed on the flat two-lane beyond.
“We made it across, didn’t we?” I said, turning to look at her in the back seat.
Sophia looked at me skeptically, then went back to staring out her window. Looking past her, I watched the two remaining Bradleys open up on the approaching horde with their M-240s and chain guns.
The effect was devastating.
At close range, a 25mm chain gun can penetrate tank armor. During the first Gulf War, Bradleys were credited with more kills on enemy armored vehicles than their vaunted Abrams counterparts. So needless to say, firing such a powerful weapon into a mass of necrotic flesh at less than fifty yards was nothing less than gruesomely spectacular.
The dead did not simply fall down. They did not jerk a few times and continue shambling onward as they did when hit with small arms fire. Rather, they flew apart as if someone had implanted several grenades in various points of their anatomy and set them off at the same time.
An arm flew in one direction, a leg the other, a torso disintegrated into a red and black pulp, a head flew apart like a melon blasted with a shotgun at point-blank range, limbs pinwheeled through the air to land dozens of yards away. And because the tungsten rounds were so heavy, and traveled at such high velocity, they didn’t just go through one infected, but several of them, their trajectories being thrown off only after bursting through a dozen or more corpses. There were hundreds of TINGs, PANGs, and POCKs as errant rounds hit doors and wheel hubs and engine blocks. Shrapnel and ricochets sent parts and pieces of ghouls flying in all directions.