Dane’s trail was easy enough to follow.
Despite being the very same road the Black Berets had traveled originally, everywhere she looked zombies were being pulled out of hibernation and drawn to the pack like a magnet. She simply went in the same direction the walking corpses were going.
There were all kinds—men and women and children zombies, plainly-dressed zombies, formally-dressed zombies, policemen zombies, postal worker zombies, even a zombie in full football gear, minus only the helmet. However, no matter what gender, race, occupation, or age they were before becoming infected and reanimating, they were all pretty much the same now.
—Wrinkled, with blue skin.
Some of them had wounds that would be fatal to a living human. One had an exposed ribcage, another was missing both its arms, and another had a large gash running from its ear all the way down to its waist. These injuries might have been received when they were still alive and could have been what killed them, or the injuries might have been sustained after reanimating, which meant they didn’t feel the pain at all. Either way, it certainly wasn’t slowing them down today.
And Courtney didn’t bother slowing down either. Any dead person getting in her way was promptly rammed with the bull bars. This humvee was very familiar to her, after all, so handling it felt much more natural than any of the others she had driven.
The further she went the more tightly packed the zombies became. Eventually she had to forsake ramming them in favor of simply going around. It was quicker than climbing a pile of disfigured corpses.
The trail eventually led back to Wakefield. The sun was only shining through the narrow alleyways now, highlighting the heads and shoulders of the zombie citizens and proving that the day was coming to an end. This was what she had feared; that Dane would take his army down Main Street and amass hundreds of more recruits. None of the zombies here were lying down anymore. All of them were on their feet, staggering after the more nimble armored zombies Dane had previously outfitted. Courtney could see the vanguard about fifty yards up the road, but the ordinary zombies following them were packed shoulder-to-shoulder on Main Street. It would be impossible to ram her way up to the leader.
Leon pointed and said, “I don’t believe it. Look at that.”
Courtney’s eyes followed where his finger was pointing until she saw what he was indicating. She couldn’t believe it either—parked off to the right of the street in downtown Wakefield, out of the way of the undead parade, was the second humvee—the same one Dane had stolen.
Leon screwed a silencer onto his handgun and started rolling down his window. He said, “Get alongside it. Let’s get this over with.”
Courtney steered their humvee past the masses of walking corpses and slowly pulled up next to the other humvee. Leon had his Socom aimed out the window. She could see the red targeting laser pinpointing a dot at the approximate area where someone’s head would be if they were sitting normally on the driver’s seat in the other vehicle. However, once she got fully in line with the second humvee, they both could see very clearly that no one occupied it.
“What the hell?” Leon said. “Where could he have gone?”
By now they had drawn unwanted attention from a few dozen zombies in the procession, and these zombies were currently straying from the herd to come pound on the windows on the left side of their vehicle, trying to get at the humans inside.
Courtney gave them a glance, then again focused her attention on the second humvee and the missing messiah. Besides, she knew from experience that the windows of her humvee were shatterproof. The worst those zombies could do was hold the vehicle under siege.
“Would Dane be walking?” Leon asked.
Courtney looked over the hood of their humvee and beyond the heads of the mob of dead people migrating down Main Street. She knew zombies didn’t look upon Dane as a viable source of food, so she figured maybe he had decided to play George Washington and lead them into battle himself. However, she could still see the armored zombies at the vanguard and Dane wasn’t with them.
She realized he would probably want to be someplace where he had full view of the procession. He would need to guide the pack leader with his remote control and make sure it didn’t lead the herd into any crashed semis or flooded areas caused by the dam break at the Indian Run Reservoir.
Peering through the windows of both humvees, Courtney caught sight of a fire escape in the alleyway next to the building beside them. The stairs went back and forth up several flights, then a ladder at the summit went the rest of the way to the rooftop.
That must have been where Dane went.
Courtney pointed and said, “There.”
Leon looked and saw the winding fire escape for himself. He followed it up with his eyes, gulping when he reached the very top. He uttered, “More heights.”
She asked, “Are you ready for this?”
“Now or never.”
He handed her a Socom modified with the laser sight and silencer she was accustomed to. She slipped it in the holster on her right leg, then attached the scabbard containing the wakizashi to the V-shaped strap on her left leg. She slid three extra loaded magazines for the handgun into the slots in the back of her belt. Finally she grabbed another rifle and slung it over her shoulder. All she lacked was a visor and a beret and a glove to replace the one missing from her left hand and she would once again be perfectly outfitted as a Black Beret was meant to be.
Ready to go, she glanced out her window and saw the hundreds of hungry corpses waiting for her on the other side. Some of them were trampling the others so they could press their faces to the glass and stare at her. They hadn’t yet ventured to the area between the two humvees on Leon’s side of the vehicle.
She said, “I think we’ll go out through your door.”
He solemnly replied, “Good idea.”
Leon readied his weapons, then lifted the handle and threw the door open. Courtney followed him out and they immediately dashed around the second humvee and into the alleyway. The mob of zombies that had strayed from the herd staggered after them, but the ones in front were put down with a single shot each from Courtney’s silenced handgun, the red dot on their foreheads replaced with a gaping bullet hole. As they fell it caused the ones behind them to trip and stumble, effectively slowing them down.
A lone meter-maid zombie was blocking the fire escape. Rather than waste a bullet, Leon tossed the ghoul over his hip. Once it landed on its back, he planted his metal heel in the creature’s skull, then scraped off the gooey residue on the stairs. Courtney figured it must have been like therapy for Leon for everything he had already been through.
They ran up the noisy metal fire escape, leaving the streets behind.
Like so many dead cities, gaspless moans and the stench of decay were everywhere in Wakefield. It certainly wasn’t the most pleasant place to fight for humanity’s right to live. Nevertheless, Courtney knew that in the event of an apocalypse any field of Megiddo would have to do.
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