Crusade (Eden Book 2) Page 2

  Bear reloaded the pistols with the last of his magazines and fired them out into the crowd. Zombies bobbed up and down as they climbed over their fallen, the hunger and determination in their eyes unmistakable. When both pistols were empty he holstered them and unslung the Commando from his back. He flipped the selector to semi-auto and pulled the stock into his shoulder, sighting and firing. The back of a zombie’s head came undone like a jigsaw puzzle and it slumped to the bridge surface.

  He judged their progress by his distance from the barrels, emptying the Commando, reloading, stepping back a yard or two while reloading. The rain pooled around his feet, mixing with blood and muck.

  Nadjia fell back to a position halfway between the barrels and the cars, taking a knee and resuming her fire.

  When he reached the barrels he took up his morning star and brought it down with a crash onto the remaining full drum. Gasoline jetted out of the punctures as he wrested the spiked head free. He knocked the drum over and rolled it with his foot. Pushing off with all his weight behind it, he watched it spin towards the zombies, gasoline splashing up into the air, mixing with the rain. Two or three of the undead tripped over the barrel and struggled to regain their footing as their legion reeled forward, unrelenting.

  Bear brought the Commando up to his shoulder and patiently fired out another magazine, then turned and walked off towards the vehicles. Nadjia shouldered the 66mm M202A1 Flame Assault Shoulder Weapon and sighted. Bear reloaded on his walk towards her as she fired the first of the rocket launcher’s four barrels. The backblast from the rocket motor licked out almost to the Silverado. The rocket zipped past on Bear’s right trailing flame, impacting the first wave of zombies. A brilliant splash blinded as the M74 rocket detonated, vaporizing the front ranks of the undead. The gasoline drum detonated and a cloud of flame reached to the sky. Smoking body parts rained down on the bridge.

  Nadjia shifted her aim and fired the second and third rockets several hundred yards beyond the bridge. The explosion rivaled napalm detonations. The triethylaluminum agent exposed to the air burned at twelve hundred degrees Celsius. Zombies ignited like dry leaves. Even those nowhere near the points of detonation were seared by the thermal radiation of each blast. She fired the fourth and final rocket into the dark and rain. The light and heat flared in the distance. Zombies wailed as scores of them perished in the annihilating fires.

  Nadjia laid the empty incendiary rocket launcher down and took up her Commando with what remained of a bandolier of ammunition. Bear tossed her his M16A2 and she caught in on the run in the rain, trotting over to the front of the Hummer. Bear stalked over to the Heckler & Koch G3 he had leaned barrel-up against the stone wall of the bridge. Two soaked bandoliers of magazines for this assault rifle waited atop the waist high wall.

  The rocket explosion and gasoline drum had temporarily halted the zombies but now they advanced. The rain quickly quenched the fire. Several of the zombies staggering forward over pieces of their brethren were charred and smoldering, burnt beyond belief but still ravenous, enraged, moving.

  Bear fired out first one magazine then another, the rainfall competing with the barks from his rifle and Nadjia’s Commando. He stopped only to clear a jam then worked his way through one bandolier of magazines. He was nearly through the second when the zombie front ranks passed the spot where the empty barrel rested.

  He signaled to Nadjia and she fell back to the Chevy, clambering atop the bed to fire from first her Commando then Bear’s, reloading when both were fired out then continuing.

  Bear reloaded the G3 and chambered a fresh round, then placed it back against the wall as he had left it earlier. He took up his morning star and considered the throng closing in on him. He squinted through the grill of the splatter mask and looked to the sky but the purple-dappled clouds masked the universe and its secrets.

  He cocked the morning star over his shoulder like a baseball bat and charged their ranks for the second time that morning, uttering a guttural cry of pure detestation, of loathing and something more—conquest. Closing with their ranks he swung the morning star. A zombie’s head disintegrated in a red mist of bone fragments and meat. He swung again, from left to right, smashing two off their feet into the others. They shrieked and bore down on him, attempting to encircle as he slew them where they stood.

  He brought the morning star straight down with both arms, the spiked ball collapsing an undead’s skull in a shower of crimson to the shoulder line. Bear left the morning star stuck in the thing’s clavicle and from his back took the flanged mace. He lofted it to shoulder level and swung left and right, sweeping blows that brained zombies and sent them staggering backwards, melting down.

  He grabbed an obese zombie by its neck with his gauntleted hand. Manhandling it he wielded it as a shield at his one side, momentarily staunching the press of zombies. With his right hand he swung the mace, felling undead. They pressed on, a veritable wall of necrotic flesh, purple pools of blood under bruised skin, many naked, their bare feet marbled blue and ivory. Others wore the clothes of their former trade—mechanics, maintenance men, soldiers, highway road crew members—all once human beings.

  As Nadjia fired into the mass of undead she watched them close around Bear until she had lost sight of him in their midst. She resisted the urge to aim into the crowd and instead concentrated on the zombies pressed against either side of the bridge walls, lest one of her bullets strike the man she fought with.

  As she reloaded she watched many zombies knocked back and tumble to the ground. Bear stalked from their midst. A flare in one hand kept the zombies back. The mace swung in his other as he cleared a path to his assault rifle. He took it up and fired into the horde closest to him. When the magazine was expended he took up the remaining bandolier and crossed the bridge to the front of the Hummer.

  He leaned one hand on the hood and caught his breath. Nadjia’s steady fire zipped by overhead. Bear sighted down the barrel of the G3 with his good eye and fired, caving in the nose and mouth of a zombie, the bullet punching out the back of its head and into that of one behind it.

  He retrieved the Stoner M63 Light Machine Gun from the rusted roof of an old vehicle. A box-contained 150-round belt magazine was affixed. He clambered atop the pile of bodies at its low point and stood with the M63 in both hands, the stock pressed tight to the side of his hip. Bear fired at the wall of zombies pressing in, reaching for him. He sprayed ammunition left to right and back again. The Stoner fired more than seven hundred rounds a minute. Plumes of blood erupted from heads and shoulders. A mist of it filled the air to be battered down by the rain. Dozens of the undead dropped in their tracks.

  He took his finger from the trigger when the weapon was empty and dropped off the pile of bodies, hustling back to the car, taking a second box-contained belt of ammunition and affixing it to the M63. Bear moved to his left and scrambled atop the bodies there. The ranks of zombies were looking for him where they had last seen him. They were taken by surprise when he unleashed the Stoner a second time. A hail of 5.56mm lead ripped through their front lines. Zombies crumbled in scores to be stepped on and stepped over by the ones behind. Shell casings streamed out of the light machine gun, lost amid the bodies and blood and rain on the bridge.

  The Stoner emptied, Bear lay it down and hopped off the bodies, confronting half a dozen zombies that had gotten around the heap of undead and now came for him. Their mouths cracked, their hands groped. He grasped the first by the sides of its head and jerked violently, tearing the creatures’ head from its shoulders. The body dropped and he pitched the head at the next closest zombie, knocking it from its feet.

  He brought the mace into play and closed with his foes. A mighty swipe of the ancient weapon permanently dented a skull. He took a step forward and snapped a booted foot into the chest of an undead. The creature lifted from the ground and slammed down on its back. Bear brought the mace down, braining the zombie he had knocked from its feet. He adjusted his aim and split the head of the one he’d kicked
in the chest.

  A zombie grabbed onto his mace and roared. Bear let the weapon go and punched the creature with all he had. The brunt force trauma killed it where it stood. He looked up to see the undead had scaled the bodies packed one atop the other and started down towards him, some walking gingerly, others tumbling head over heels, regaining their feet when their falls stopped. Bear snatched up his mace and made for the Hummer and Chevy, for Nadjia and the bundle.

  Bear grasped the grill and clambered atop the front end of the Hummer, his leg slipping once on the rain slicked hood. He stood and looked down upon the mass. The rain pounded their heads and shoulders. He turned and retrieved one of the two weapons he had placed on the roof of the Hummer earlier that morning. He raised the second Colt Commando and sighted down on the zombies gathered around the hood, pressed against it by their sheer numbers. He fired. A flap of skull lifted off a pig-tailed ghoul. They reached for him with rotting hands. Rings not removed had long ago cut into dead bloated fingers. As long as he stood with his ankles close to the windshield he was out of their reach, and able to fire methodically with deadly accuracy.

  By the time he’d burned through a bandolier of ammunition the zombies were heaped around the front of the Hummer waist high, temporarily stalling the ones behind which had to clamber over the fallen. Bear laid down the Commando and retrieved the second weapon from the roof of the SUV—a ten foot long Chinese spear. He stepped to the front of the hood, careful of the rain that made it slick. The zombies in the front rows let out a voracious roar as they saw him step close.

  Bear wielded the Ji with both hands and drove the crescent blade through the skulls and heads of the nearest undead. They twitched and dropped and those behind them climbed over the fallen to get speared themselves. The red horsehair tassel hanging where the blade met the shaft soon hardened from all the blood it was immersed in.

  Lightning flashed and lit the scene. Nadjia thought Bear looked like a fisherman at sea, harpooning into the waters around his skiff.

  As the pile of bodies around the Hummer expanded, he was able to step off the hood of the sports utility vehicle and onto them. They provided a cadaverous scaffolding.

  Nadjia sniped on the zombies with the Model 85, perched atop the hulk of another abandoned vehicle. The rain pounded the rusted metal under her. She guarded her and Bear’s backs as zombies from the surrounding countryside followed their ears to the battle, stumbling across the bridge behind them every now and then.

  Bear lost his grip on the Ji when it lodged in a convulsing zombie’s eye socket. The thing disappeared under the feet of the ones behind and around it. He drew the Colt Python and fired it out into the crowd, broke the cylinder, reloaded each individual chamber, snapped the cylinder shut, and fired it out a second time. He holstered the .357 and swung down into the crowd from atop the mound of bodies, clobbering heads with his flanged mace.

  He felt something on his boot and looked down. A zombie with the side of its head caved in had latched onto his foot and was gnawing on the blood soaked leather of the boot. He yanked his leg free and brought his foot down with all his might, popping the beasts’ skull and grinding it into the dead beneath.

  He turned from the myriad undead and dismounted the mound of bodies, moving perpendicularly away from the Hummer across the bridge towards one of the stone walls. A zombie staggered towards him from the pile of undead, its stomach cavity decomposed, gaping at him. Bear punched a leathered hand into its midsection, felt for what he was looking for and yanked two feet of its spine out. The undead’s head hunched into its shoulders, its mouth fell open, and the thing dropped like a sack of potatoes. He cracked the next closest zombie over the head with the section of spinal column and it too fell.

  He reached the wall. Nadjia’s bullets whizzed by overhead. Earlier he had placed a twenty foot pike against the wall, where it met the road, and he picked this up now. He climbed on top of the wall and turned to face the first of the zombies that had managed to ascend their dead. He thrust the pike with both arms, stabbing and spearing, piercing their craniums and destroying them. In time he moved along the wall until he stood parallel with the crush. They gazed and gawked at him with edacious mouths open, hands reaching, the incessant moaning audible above the pounding of the rain. Bear stood atop the wall and speared them until the sky darkened more and his arms grew tired.

  There was no more lightning that day.

  The purple clouds went completely black and the rain continued. Nadjia approached the vast pile of dead corpses and climbed over it to stand at its peak. The zombies below now had two targets to glare at and motion for. She loosed a stream of fire on them from the flamethrower she wore strapped to her back. Those caught in its flame shrieked and tried to escape but were held in place by the impenetrable barrier of the ones behind. She sent more jets of fire into their midst and they burned where they stood, screeching and twitching, the rain failing to abet their cause.

  When the flame thrower emptied, she left it among the dead bodies and scrambled back down to the Hummer where Bear waited. Most of the earlier action had taken place directly in front of the vehicle or on its driver’s side. Bear was able to unlock the passenger doors and she clambered, exhausted, into the back seat. Nadjia pulled the door closed behind her and her shoulders slumped. She breathed heavily.

  He sat in the front passenger seat. His prodigious frame filled most of the front of the vehicle. He had removed the splatter mask and pulled the coif down. His bald head glistened with sweat. He unlaced and removed the gauntlets from his large gnarled hands.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Have you been injured?”

  “No.”

  He nodded.

  There was a thump and she looked to see an undead pressing itself against the driver’s side of the Hummer, open palms splayed over the window. She unholstered her 9mm and placed it in her lap.

  She fought back exhaustion and watched Bear in the front seat. He reached into the saddle bags he carried and took out a bottle and a zip-lock bag full of formula. The bottle was filled three quarters of the way with water from a brook they had camped beside the night before. He opened the baggy and retrieved the measuring spoon buried under the formula. He measured meticulously and was careful not to let any of the formula or the bottle come into contact with the vast amounts of gunk and muck clinging to his body and armor. He closed the bottle and capped it, shaking vigorously.

  A zombie had gotten on top of the hood. It dropped to its hands and knees and leaned over to look in on them. Bear ignored it as he picked up the swaddled form from the seat. He spoke to the bundle in a gentle voice, cooing. The zombies circling their sanctuary moaned a dirge in the dark. Spent, Nadjia’s eyes closed and she fell off to sleep.

  Hers was a troubled slumber that night. One filled with memories of a life past and passed, of people and places and times that would never again be, of loving brothers and a kindly father affectionately called Baba.

  She woke to a boom. For a moment she forgot where she was and was almost happy, but then lightening flashed in the sky and she saw zombies, dozens deep, ringed the car in which they rested. The thunder crashed and she gathered her senses. In the front seat he was already gearing up, securing the coif and gauntlets in place.

  She couldn’t see much from the back seat of the vehicle with the darkness outside and all the zombies massed about, but she could tell the rain had not abated, though the sky did look somewhat lighter this dawn. The zombie looking in on her had lost everything of its face from the nose down. It stared at her, blinking, its tongue moving in the hole that was once its mouth.

  “Pass me the chainsaw,” Bear said. “Please?”

  Nadjia dug around in the back of the Hummer, among the weapons and crates Bear had placed there the day before, until she found his chainsaw on the floorboards next to her. She handed it up to him and he took it with both hands, gently less he disturb his precious bundle. The white cord
of his iPod ear buds poked out from under his coif.

  “Please hold the little one.” He passed the bundle back to her and she took it with all solemnity.

  Noticing movement within the SUV the zombies outside pounded on the hood and sides. Bear affixed the splatter mask and pulled the starter on the chainsaw. Inside the confines of the SUV the rattle was deafening. Bear wasted no time sawing through the roof of the Hummer. A few zombies that had settled there screamed as the saw blade cut through them, pitching them off the vehicle into the crowd beneath. Watery ichor dripped from the roof onto his splatter mask as he worked. Sparks from where the saw met the roof showered the interior of the SUV. Nadjia turned her head and averted her gaze.

  When she looked up he had most of the roof off the vehicle, revealing the interior to the outside world. The rain and thunder buffeted them. He stood on the front seats and wielded the chainsaw, shearing through the zombies scaling the hood. Nadjia lay the precious bundle down on the seat next to her and stood, bringing the Colt Commando into play. She fired down into the ranks of zombies on either side of the Hummer.