“Mount up!” I shouted, as I waved my left arm overhead in a circular motion. The parade square was thick with the acrid stench of diesel and I coughed heavily as I raced to the main gate with Sid Toomey in tow. I could hear the loud clank of the hatches on the APC’s and I glanced over my shoulder to see the headlights blinking from both vehicles, confirming that everyone was accounted for and ready to go. We’d placed five shaped explosive charges on the door, designed to detonate outwards - we’d have sixty seconds from the time we pulled the ignitors until the charges would blow, one every ten seconds, so we’d have to haul ass back to the carrier.
I blinked a few times and drew in a deep breath as I pulled the small sliding hatch on the main door to the right and peered outside to see what we were in for once the charges detonated. To my front no more than ten feet from the peep-hole was a small gaggle of creeps. The one closest was shirtless. The dull grey skin on his torso was pulled tight – like the skin itself was receding back into the creature’s skeleton. A massive gash stretched from its left shoulder down to its right nipple exposing the rotting layers of tissue beneath and I could make out its ribs through the wound.
I was about to close the hatch door when the monster slowly looked up at the peep-hole. A thick, cloudy blue-grey film gave its eyes an unearthly appearance. It was like staring into the eyes of a statue; cold, empty and forever lifeless. The skin on its face was puffy and I noticed a thin stream of yellowish liquid dribbling out of a wound on its right cheek.
Even through the thick wooden door, the foul stench of decomposition filled my nostrils, threatening to cause my breakfast to wind up being spewed across the door. The monster lurched forward followed by a small gang of rotting husks, so I place the barrel of my carbine into the viewing port and fired off three quick rounds that tore the top of the creep’s head clean off. It dropped like a wet sandbag.
I closed the sliding hatch and then glanced back at my APC as I gave a thumbs-up – Doug Manybears, my driver, gave me one in return and pulled the driver’s hatch down over his head. The plan was that Doug would plow through what was left of the blasted doors as soon as I took my place in the crew commander’s hatch. Sid would climb into the turret and open up with the .50 caliber machine gun and the smaller GPMG. Both guns fired in tandem through an electronic solenoid, and the barrels were bore-sited to fire at whatever Doug saw through his visor-mounted scope.
I slipped my left index finger into the pull ring on the first ignitor, and then glanced back at Sid.
“You ready for this?”
“Are you done daydreaming? I thought I lost you there for a minute.” he said, nervously, as he dropped to a kneeling position and cocked his rifle.
“Yeah, I’m good. Here goes nothing,” I said, and pulled.
My nostrils filled with the pungent smell of burning powder as the safety fuse hissed and spat flaming embers and melted plastic onto the floor. Quickly, I pulled the rings on the other four ignitors and ran like hell to the back of my carrier. Sid dove in after me and we pulled the doors shut, slipping the combat locks over the door handles. I crawled over the other three people in my carrier and grinned at Jo as I climbed into my crew commander’s hatch.
“Cover your ears!” I shouted as I glanced at my watch. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one …”
The vehicle pitched sharply as the first charge exploded, followed shortly by the other four. I peered through my periscope as I adjusted the microphone on my helmet, and saw a minivan-sized hole through a plume of smoke and burning wood. But that was nothing compared to what I saw next.
It was like we’d opened a door into hell. No sooner had the smoke from the explosive charges cleared when a huge swarm of the monsters poured through the opening like water through a spillway. Sid opened up with a series of controlled bursts from the turret guns, and the inside of the carrier quickly filled up with the smell of cordite and burning gun oil.
I grabbed the radio switch dangling from my helmet and pressed the push-to-talk button.
“Go! Go! Go!” I roared into the mouthpiece.
I felt the vibrations of the engine revving up behind the engine panel beside me and then our APC lurched into gear. I grabbed hold of my periscope handle and pushed my face into the rubber-coated visor as the ten-thousand-pound armored fighting machine barreled through the door, smashing through the monsters like a wrecking ball. We bounced heavily as the eight twenty-two-inch tires bounded over rotting bodies and debris. My carrier was clear of the building.
“Hard left!” I shouted, spotting a clearing between a pile-up of smashed cars. The carrier swung sharply and our bodies tilted to the right as Doug made the turn.
My radio hissed and squawked in my ears. “Ark One, this is Ark Two – we’re clear of the building and right on your tail, over!”
I pressed the push-to-talk button. “Ark One, roger. Keep a distance of twenty meters behind me. You’re weapons free in controlled bursts but only if we become surrounded. Stay within your prescribed arcs of fire left and right of my position. Over!”
“Ark Two, roger that!” the radio hissed.
Smashing out of the armory was the easy part. We still had to navigate through streets filled with monsters and the burned husks of automobiles as far as the eye could see. The carrier pushed on and I swung my periscope left and right to survey the war zone that had once been the very heart of the city. The office buildings stood like towering sentinels, lonely reminders of wealth and power from a time and place that was still fresh in our minds.
The explosion was attracting the attention of hundreds of creatures, shambling menacingly through the twisted metal. Their mouths hung open, dripping gore and offal onto the pavement. They could surround our fighting vehicle ten deep for all I cared. We were safe inside and there was nothing they could do to get at us. The powerful engine would push us through the sea of creatures as easily as a plow pushes through the snow after a blizzard.
I glanced at my map of the downtown core. We’d decided on a route that looked reasonably clear of obstacles back at the armory, but that was from my vantage point on the northwest tower. I hailed Sid Toomey on the intercom. “Sid! We gotta get to Third Avenue and it’ll be smooth sailing onto the bike paths. There’s a wall of creeps blocking our route out of here – at least a hundred of them. Can you spot another way out? I don’t want to burn out your gun barrels.”
“Roger – clogged up, Ark One. I’ll swing the turret around and see if we can … HOLY SHIT!”
I spun my periscope around to take a look at what Sid was seeing. Dozens of the monsters were hurling themselves from the office building in front of us. The carrier backed up a few feet as I watched monster after monster plummeting to earth from smashed windows more than ten storeys above us.
“Hard right now, Doug!” I shouted into the microphone. “Get us the hell away from this building - I don’t want one of those things landing on us!”
“Roger that!” Doug replied in my earpiece as my body pitched sharply to the left and I grabbed onto the engine panel for support. Within seconds we were barreling across a green space littered with decomposing bodies. Some moved but most didn’t, and the ones that did move - well, Doug Manybears took great pleasure in grinding them to pulp underneath the wheels of our APC. I caught a glimpse of Cruze’s carrier to my left. She was keeping the prescribed twenty meter distance from me, so I swung my periscope to the twelve o’clock position and gazed out in hopes of finding a clear path to the river. I was just about to swing the periscope right when everything went black. Doug hammered down on the brakes as a monster dressed in a tattered police uniform slid off the front of the carrier and onto the ground. Doug tromped on the gas pedal, crushing the zombie beneath us.
“Where the hell did that thing come from, Sid?” I shouted into the microphone.
The radio squawked loudly in my earpiece and then Sid made a grunting sound. “It probably crawled across the hull to the front of the carrier when we stopped a few blocks back. I must have missed it. Hey, I see a clear path to the river, Dave. Do you see it?”
“No – it’s pretty much obscured from where I’m at,” I shouted back. The vibration from the engine made my voice sound like I was a robot. “What have you got?”
Sid was silent for a moment. I could hear the electric motor of the turret engaging the driving gear behind me, so I knew Sid was spinning left and right to get a clearer view.
“If we keep going straight for another five hundred meters or so we’ll hit another green space that looks like it leads to the south side of the river. I can’t tell what’s past that - it’s all low ground, but I’m pretty sure there’s a railroad track down there. Does the map show anything in the low ground?”
I tapped Doug on the head and told him to stop as I switched on a lamp and stared down at the map. I ran a shaking finger ahead of where I thought our position was to the green space Sid was talking about. The railway line cut right through the low ground, just as Sid said, but it was an area thick with woods and undergrowth. Also, the railroad track was a big obstacle for an eight-wheeled vehicle - each rail had to protrude a good five inches above the wooden railway ties, and there would be a sharp embankment on either side of the track. Our vehicles’ independent suspension might get wrecked if we hit the tracks too hard, and there was also the possibility that we’d wind up with a flat tire.
I peered through my periscope to get a real time view of the route ahead. Six months’ worth of uncut grass waved in the breeze and I could see countless pillars of smoke towering up into a blackened sky. Not a bird could be seen anywhere in the distance and I thought for a moment that if I popped open the hatch, the air itself would poison my lungs.
I grabbed the radio handset and clicked the toggle. “Ark Two … how’s your field of view?”
The radio hissed for a second and then I heard Cruze’s voice. “If you swing left, you’ll see the fourteenth street overpass. We can’t go through there - it’s filled with smashed-up cars.”
“We’re just in front of Millennium Park. Can you see if there’s a way to cross over Sixth Avenue? If we get past that, we’ll avoid the train tracks and we can cruise along the river bank until we hit the spot to ford the carriers across.”
“One sec,” she shouted back. The sound of the rumbling engine filled my ears and I glanced back over my shoulder to check on Jo. She was huddled in a corner against the back door with a poncho liner draped over her tiny frame, and she threw me a wide-eyed smile along with a big thumbs-up. I gave her one back, and then turned to look out my periscope again.
The radio squawked. “Dave, just swing left and you’ll be directly in line with Sixth Avenue. From what I can see, it’s a hell of a mess of smashed cars, but I think we can push through.”
Cruze’s view was better than mine. I tapped Doug Manybears on the shoulder and yelled into his ear. “Swing left and then straighten your wheels. Go slow as hell - we’re going to try to push through to Sixth Avenue. After that just follow my lead and we’ll be on the paths alongside the river.”
His helmet bobbed up and down and the vehicle lurched forward. The smell of diesel and engine oil clung to my nostrils as I slid the periscope left and right, all the while keeping a sharp eye for obstacles that wouldn’t be in Doug’s field of vision. In minutes, my APC was crossing Sixth Avenue with the riverbank no more than a two-minute ride away. I felt a .50 caliber shell casing hit the back of my neck as the twin guns in the turret opened fire in a short burst of loud pops that I could feel in my fillings.
“What are you shooting at, Sid?” I shouted into the headset.
“Just a trio of creeps in the bushes along the river, no probs.”
“Conserve your ammo! Three creeps aren’t a threat to this boat and we have to take the long view. You’re our eyes and ears - you’ve got a three-hundred-sixty degree traverse. Can you see Cruze?”
I heard the turret spinning and then Sid said, “About thirty meters behind us – they’re being chased by a mob of about two dozen.”
“That’s not a problem,” I said, eyeing the river bank. “The current is pretty damned fast and the rocks are slippery as hell. Once we ford the river, they’ll be swept downstream.”
“Roger that,” said Sid. “We going to head to the crossing we’d planned? There’s a few good spots I’m seeing about ten degrees to the northwest. The north bank of the crossing is just crab grass and dead brush.”
I glanced down at my map. We were about two kilometers short of our planned crossing site and the contour lines for the north bank showed a gradual slope that stretched west for about four clicks. We’d have little problem climbing the forward slope and then we could coast westward until we were out of the city, assuming there weren’t any major obstacles.
It looked too easy, and that gave me a slightly sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Still, it was a way out of the city core and it didn’t vary too much from our original plan. I tapped Doug Manybears on the shoulder. He glanced back at me and I signaled to drive another hundred meters. He gave me a thumbs-up and I pressed the PTT switch.
“Ark Two – we’re going to halt on the forward bank of the river – prep your section and seal up the back doors and firing portals with gun tape. The river should be shallow enough to cross without going into amphibious, so keep your props off and use your trim-vane only if necessary.”
“Roger, Ark Two,” Pam Cruze replied.
I removed my headset and climbed to the back of the APC. Jo was still hunkered down in the corner with her poncho liner pulled up over her chest.
“All eyes on me!” I shouted as the APC came to a squealing halt. “Seal up the doors and firing ports, we’re going to cross the river as soon as you’re done.”
Kate Dawson immediately went to work, pulling long strips of dark green tape off of a pair of rolls that had to weigh about five pounds each. She stretched each strip across anything that looked like it might let in water as Jo scrambled across a case of ammunition to get out of her way. I motioned for Jo to come up to the crew commander hatch, so that she’d be clear of Dawson, and then I crawled around the turret and sat down in my crew seat. Jo hopped onto my lap and threw her arms around me. “How are you holding up, kiddo? Do you remember what your job is for now?”
She nodded amiably and said, “I’m in charge of bullets for Sid an’ Kate. Oh – an’ I’m in charge of passing out water and food.”
“And what are you not supposed to do?”
“Leave the carrier or go anywhere by myself,” she said flatly. “Don’t worry too much cuz I know you have other stuff to take care of, but I do have a question.”
“What’s that?”
Her face turned beet red. “What if I have to pee?”
Well crap. How could I have forgotten something as simple as that? I hadn’t taken into account how long we’d be hatches down as we exited the city. It could be as long as a day or more until we’d be out in the open where we could actually get out of the vehicles and stretch our legs.
“Um – canteen cup, Jo,” I said, as my face reddened.
“But I can’t go if people are watching!” she protested loudly.
I smiled at her and nodded slowly. “Remember that poncho liner?”
“Yeah.”
“Just throw it over yourself so that nobody can see you. And don’t spill any on you, okay?”
She nodded. “What if it’s number two?”
“Do you have to go number two?” I asked, hoping like hell her answer was going to be no.
She shook her head. “I went before we left the army.”
“Armory,” I corrected. “Good then. And Jo, that was a really smart thing to ask me. I’m sorry I didn’t think about it before we left.”
She kissed me on my right cheek and gave me another hug. “That’s why you have me here – to help you think about stuff you never thought about. I’m going to go back to my spot now.”
I lifted her around the turret cage. “And don’t stick your hands outside the firing ports, Jo. I mean it!”
“Okay, David!” she shouted as she crawled back over the ammunition case and into her corner.
Doug Manybears emitted a loud grunt from his driver’s compartment. “That was real sweet, Dave. I’m getting all misty over here.”
I smacked him on the back of his helmet and peered into my periscope. “She’s eight,” I said, as I looked down on the river. “I can’t even conceive of how all this is registering in her … oh, my God. This can’t be real!”
I thought six months of battling the living dead had prepared me for anything but clearly I was wrong on that account. The river was full of bloated bodies. Some were decomposed beyond recognition, their bony limbs reaching skyward to a God that had forsaken them, while others were fresh kills. Their torn corpses reanimated, only to find themselves swept away by the rushing current.
And this was where we were going to cross the river.
Sid Toomey’s voice squawked in my headset. “I wonder where they’re all coming from.”
I pressed the talk button. “Somewhere … everywhere. The city, the outskirts … Cochrane and the foothills. Maybe they thought that creeps couldn’t swim and they used the river as an escape route.”
“Yeah well they didn’t make it, did they?” said Doug Manybears.
I clenched my jaw tightly as Ark Two’s nose appeared out of the corner of my eye. The trim vane, a six-foot-long sheet of armor, slid up from beneath the nose, so I reached over and pulled the switch for ours. I could hear the hydraulic pump inside the engine panel humming away as the trim vane popped up, blocking my view.
“Okay, Sid,” I shouted into my microphone. “You’re navigating - I can’t see past the trim. Please get us across in one piece!”
The turret spun to the twelve o’clock position. “I’m on it. Doug! The forward slope is about forty degrees – take it down at crawl speed.”
The nose of the carrier pitched sharply. I held on tight and glanced back at the rest of the crew. Dawson peered out of her firing port as Jo dug her feet into the crew seat to keep herself from sliding forward. In seconds we’d leveled off, a sign we were in the cold water of the Bow River. At this point Dawson closed her firing port, choosing instead to sit quietly, her eyes staring blankly at the floor of the carrier. The look on her face speaking volumes, too. She’d seen what I’d seen only moments earlier.
“There’s so many of them,” she said. “They’re all dead – everybody is freaking dead!”
I looked back at Kate and gave her a slight nod. “Keep it together, Kate. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her combat shirt.
“Good,” I replied. “Take a look out the back and see where Ark Two is.”
She scrambled to the viewing ports on the rear doors and peered out to the rear of the carrier. “Cruze is in the water – about fifty feet behind us.”
“Right on!” I shouted. Just then, Sid Toomey’s voice flooded my headset.
“Hang tight – we’re going out of the water in about ten seconds and then we’re going to head up the river bank. Doug, lower your trim vane – my job is done.”
I spun my periscope back to the twelve o’clock position and pressed the talk button. “You’re not done yet, Sid. Have an eye for obstacles on the top of the river bank because you’ll be the first one to see them.”
“Roger that!” said Sid.
In seconds the nose of the carrier pitched up sharply and I held on to the front of Doug’s driving seat. The engine protested loudly as we crawled up the embankment, but only for a short moment before leveling off. We pushed on for about fifty more feet until I heard the radio hissing in my ear.
“Ark Two is clear,” said Sid. “Give me a minute while I do a three-sixty so I can get my bearings.”
“Take your time.” I poked my head into my periscope. Waves of heat from the engine rose over the hull, giving everything a blurry appearance. The ground was carpeted with acres and acres of fallen poplar leaves, only they weren’t yellow and gold, they were black and brown, probably poisoned by the poor air quality or low level radiation. .
Sid gave the crew commander seat a small kick, so I turned around to see his head poking down below the turret. “There’s a pretty big gaggle of creeps bearing down on us,” he said grimly.
“How many?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” he replied. “There’s a ridge up ahead and I’d peg it at maybe fifty or so. Want me to open up on them?”
We had a good supply of ammunition, but I remembered Sgt. Green’s first rule of combat: don’t waste a single bullet. At the same time, I didn’t want the carrier to get bogged down with the monsters as we climbed to higher ground. Then an idea came to me. We knew that the creeps were attracted to sound, light and movement. We had five crates of smoke grenades and six grenade dischargers on the sides of each carrier. Rather than waste bullets, I decided to create a diversion. I pressed the PTT button. “Ark Two, fire three smoke grenades onto the riverbank. I have a hunch the creeps will be attracted to the smoke and it should clear them off the crest of the hill.”
“Will do,” Pam Cruze replied.
Sid spun the turret to his left. “Smoke’s on its way!” he said. “Good call, Dave. The creeps are following it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Give me a boot as soon as the area is clear and we’ll move on.”
“Yup.”
I glanced back at Kate who was keeping close watch on our surroundings from the safety of her viewing port. Jo was hidden underneath her poncho liner but reappeared after a short moment with a canteen cup full of pee. She gave me a helpless look, so I crawled between the turret cage and the engine panel into the back of the carrier.
“I’ll take that,” I said as she happily handed me the canteen cup. I opened a firing port and carefully dumped the contents out of the carrier, then wiped out the cup with a rag.
“Thanks, David,” she said, her face beet red. “I didn’t want it to splash on me cuz it’s like a rollercoaster back here when we’re moving.”
“I know,” I said, as I tightened a bungee cord around the cases of small arms ammunition just above her head. “I want you to wear your helmet back here at all times, okay? It’s going to get even bumpier and stuff always falls onto people when you’re going cross-country in these things.”
She nodded as she placed the SPECTRA helmet on her head and I allowed myself a small chuckle when I saw that it came down past her nose.
“I can’t really see anything,” she said.
“Good,” I replied. “The less you see of what’s out there, the better, kiddo. Trust me.”
Jo put a dirt-smeared hand on my knee and exhaled heavily. “I’ve already seen lots of bad stuff. How come we’re stopped?”
“We’re just checking out our route and then we’re going to get moving,” I lied, not wanting to tell her about the wall of creeps on the ridge ahead.
She pushed the helmet up to her forehead and her eyes narrowed. “I know what’s outside, David,” she said fixing me with her gaze. “Sid was doing a lot of shooting and I know that you have to shoot them in the head. Did he get them all?”
My heart sank a little at her question. Jo was eight years old and thin as a twig. Her red hair hung limply onto her shoulders and her heavily freckled face was smeared with dirt and grease. She should be playing with freaking Barbie dolls and experimenting with makeup and costume jewelry, not sitting in the back of an armored personnel carrier surrounded by bullets and grenades. She shouldn’t have to live in a world that had been transformed into a living nightmare – none of us should.
“I want you to listen carefully to Kate, okay?”
Jo nodded, the helmet bobbing up and down on her forehead. “Don’t worry, I know the rules.”
“And what’s the number one rule?” I said with a note of warning in my voice.
“Don’t ever get out of the carrier by myself,” she said with a groan.
“What’s rule number two?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t stick my arms out of the firing holes.”
“And rule number three?”
She blinked. “What’s rule number three?”
I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her bony shoulders. “Your brother is never going to leave you. Ever.” I whispered in her ear.
She hugged me back and said, “That’s what big brothers are for, aren’t they?”