Chapter 16
Out of the eight men in Carlos’s squad when they began the mission, only four were left. Yuan was the just the first to die. Marco lost his life when a stray zombie walked through his panicked gunfire and took a bite out of his cheek. Kovald, the big Swede, died when his rifle jammed at the worst possible moment, and a trio of hungry zombies took him down and ripped out his throat. Chen, the other soldier from China, took a moment to rest against an abandoned car, and the zombie hiding inside jumped out and got him.
But considering what Carlos had witnessed and heard in the past four hours, he thought his squad was doing pretty good. According to Yuri, some of the other squads had been annihilated completely. All morning, Mikhail led them from one dangerous situation to the next, until it felt like they had killed thousands of zombies. But no matter how many they saw, there were always more. So far, they had been remarkably fortunate, but every minute they stayed in the city, Carlos knew his chances of survival dropped a few percentage points. But he refrained from asking Mikhail if they were going to be airlifted out of the city any time soon, because he was worried about what the answer was going to be.
They ran full speed down a garbage-strewn alleyway with Mikhail in the lead, only to stop dead when more zombies appeared at the other end. Carlos could not open fire because his own weapon was jammed as well. He desperately tried to get it unjammed, but a spent bullet casing remained fully stuck in the chamber. He slung the useless weapon over his shoulder and drew one of his Desert Eagles.
“Back!” Mikhail boomed. “Get back!”
“We can’t go back the way we came!” Yuri said.
Carlos dared look behind them, and at the far end of the alley, more zombies were stumbling after them. They just managed to escape a huge mob crowded right in the middle of the street, but everywhere they ran, they found more zombies.
“Damn it!” Mikhail roared. He pushed past Yuri and the others and kicked at a narrow door leading to an adjacent building. It smashed open, the deadbolt ripping off a chunk of the wooden frame, and Mikhail ushered the men inside. He grabbed Carlos by the shoulder before he could go inside.
“Come, help me with this,” he said, pointing at a nearby dumpster.
They pushed the dumpster in front of the door and then climbed over it in order to get inside. They were in a narrow entrance to the kitchen of a restaurant. Propped up by the door were some boxes as well as a bag of rock salt and a snow shovel for use in the winter. Mikhail propped the shovel up under the broken doorknob and braced it against the opposite wall.
“Won’t hold for long,” Mikhail muttered. “But the bastards won’t be able to push on the door with dumpster there.”
“Are we gonna hide here?” Carlos asked, trying not to sound hopeful.
“Not for long,” Mikhail said.
They went into the kitchen, where Yuri and the other remaining soldier, a Nigerian named Timon, were waiting. Timon was taller than the other soldiers by several inches, and he bumped his head on the bright silver pots and pans hanging from racks on the ceiling. The kitchen looked clean and unused, so Carlos guessed they only served dinner. Sadly, they would not be getting many customers this evening.
“Clear?” Mikhail asked.
Yuri nodded bluntly. “Yes, clear.”
“What are we gonna do?” Timon asked, his voice harsh. He gripped his assault rifle like a drowning man clutching a life preserver, his face dotted with sweat.
“Come on,” Mikhail said, walking out of the kitchen and into the dining area. Yuri cast a suspicious glance at the others and followed him, and then Carlos and Timon followed as well.
Mikhail paused by the doorway into the waiting area and peeked around the corner. Carlos crept past Yuri and Timon and looked out as well. Through the restaurant’s large front windows he could see more zombies outside. Middle-aged men and women, teenagers and even children, most of them wounded and bloody, with open mouths and deranged eyes. They moved past the restaurant like curious window shoppers.
“We cannot stay here,” Mikhail said quietly.
“It’s safe here,” Yuri argued. “You think we should go back out there? You’re out of your mind.”
Carlos was surprised that Mikhail allowed Yuri to say something so directly insubordinate. They were soldiers after all. It was their duty to obey their commanding officer. As long as Mikhail did not instruct them to do something insanely stupid or obviously suicidal, Carlos was willing to follow orders. But with half of their squad killed off and no reinforcements coming to relieve them, maybe Mikhail was willing to let Yuri’s insubordination slide for the time being.
“If we stay here, we are trapped,” Mikhail said calmly. “If they see us and come in, we cannot get away from them.”
“Then all we have to do is make sure they don’t come in,” Yuri said.
Mikhail scoffed. “They will come in. If we stay here, we will die.”
“He’s right,” Carlos said. “Can’t you hear them?”
Already, there was muffled banging noise coming back from the kitchen, as the zombies tried to force open the door, partially blocked by the dumpster. It might take half an hour, but Carlos knew that the zombies would eventually get the door opened up and come flooding into the restaurant. And when they did, there was nowhere for Carlos and the others to hide.
“We’re trapped here already,” Carlos said. “How are we gonna get out without getting killed by those things?”
“The roof,” Yuri said quickly. “We can get on the roof.”
Within minutes they found access to the roof, through a horizontal doorway built into the ceiling of one of the numerous supply closets. Yuri knocked over and pushed away cardboard boxes full of napkins and tablecloths and climbed up on some pipes along the wall. He reached up and yanked on the lock.
“Just shoot it off,” Timon said impatiently.
“The zombies will hear it.”
“Who cares? They already know we’re here.”
Yuri climbed back down and raised his rifle. He took careful aim and fired at the lock. It took two shots to blow it apart.
One by one, they all climbed up through the narrow doorway. Mikhail was the last to come, and he closed the closet door before he went up. As he did so, they heard the back door smash open, the shovel clattering to the floor. Mikhail quickly lifted himself up, and the others pulled him through the doorway to the roof.
The roof was flat and covered in white gravel, dotted with a few metal tubes and large exhaust fans from the kitchen. The gravel crunched under Carlos’s feet as he walked to the edge and glanced carefully toward the surging crowd of zombies below.
He could smell them. It was still bright outside, and the sun beating down on their dead flesh did not help. Carlos guessed that he should be thankful that it wasn’t the middle of summer. Even so, he detected the faint whiff of decay coming from the crowd. He wondered what the crowds of zombies would smell like in a few days, or even in a few hours. Then he wondered if he would even be there to notice, or if he might have already joined them by that time.
He tried to put that thought out of his head. Mikhail, meanwhile, trudged to the other side of the roof and looked out across the street. Yuri joined him.
“You think we can get to it?” Yuri asked.
“Might be able to,” Mikhail said. “I don’t want to stay up here.”
Carlos and Timon walked over to them and saw what they were looking at. Parked across the street at the next intersection was a city trolley car, sitting empty. The trolley rode on metal tracks embedded in the street, and large rods on the top of the car hooked onto power cables strung up on telephone poles parallel to the street. It looked like the trolley had stopped to pick up passengers and then been left there. For the moment, the zombies were not close by the trolley car, having moved closer to the restaurant.
“I don’t know, man,” Timon grunted. “That’s a long way from h
ere.”
“It’s just across the street,” Yuri said.
“Tell that to all those zombies down there. It might as well be five miles.”
Mikhail rubbed his chin and looked at Carlos. “Are you out of ammunition?”
“No,” Carlos said. “The rifle jammed.”
“Let me see it.”
Carlos handed over his assault rifle and Mikhail spent a few moments trying to unjam it. Giving up, he dropped it onto the gravel disgustedly. “Give Yuri and Timon the rest of your rifle ammunition. Timon, give Carlos your pistols.”
Timon gladly took two magazines from Carlos’s backpack and then handed over his Desert Eagles. “With pleasure, sir.”
Suddenly, there was a steady hum from up in the sky above them and then a loud thudding sound. Carlos looked up, shading his eyes from the sun.
“There!” Yuri said, pointing.
An Umbrella helicopter flew toward them, soaring over the rows of buildings, with a huge freight container hanging below it from the tow cable. Yuri waved his arms but Mikhail merely reached out to stop him, staring grimly at the flying chopper.
“What is it carrying?” Carlos asked.
Mikhail shook his head. “Don’t know. I don’t like it, either.”
They watched the helicopter soar over their heads and off in the other direction until it disappeared behind a tall building and went out of sight.
Yuri shook his head and busied himself with reloading his rifle with one of the magazines taken from Carlos. He took out all his ammo and tucked the magazines into his front pockets for easier reach. Mikhail, meanwhile, continued to look toward the abandoned trolley car.
“What if we distracted them?” Carlos asked. “We could go over to the other side and just start yelling to get their attention or something.”
Mikhail shook his head. “No, I think there are too many. If we make noise, we will only attract more and more. They would come from everywhere.”
“Yeah,” Yuri said. “I already thought of that.”
“What then?”
Carlos was happy to stay on the roof for a little while, if he had to be completely honest. The last thing he really wanted was to climb back down and face all those zombies again. But the longer they stayed on the roof, the more zombies would come, and pretty soon they would have a crowd of thousands to deal with, instead of just a few hundred. If they wanted to make a break for it, now was the time.
“Grenades,” Mikhail said simply.
Each of them took out all the grenades they had left, which did not amount to many. The squad members were only equipped with five grenades each, and Yuri had already used several of his. Twelve grenades remained among the three of them. Mikhail added two of his own and they crouched down to make their plan.
Timon knelt down along the roof edge and aimed his rifle down into the crowd. Carlos and Yuri held their breath as Mikhail pulled the pins on the grenades and tossed them one by one down to the street below. Just as he finished, he swung his own rifle up.
The grenades detonated like an enormous string of firecrackers and Carlos flinched as the building seemed to shake with the proximity to the impacts. The entire sidewalk was immediately cleared of zombies as they were blown up or blown away. Bodies launched across the street and a grisly spray of body parts flew into the air. Smoke and blood hung in the air for a moment as debris and gore rained down on the street.
Carlos and Yuri were over the side in a moment, hanging themselves off the edge of the roof and then dropping to the demolished sidewalk below. As soon as he hit the ground, Carlos whipped out his pistols and opened fire on anything that still moved. Dozens of zombies were lying on the ground nearby, their bodies smashed but their brains intact, and some of them were trying to get to their feet or crawl in his direction. He shot them all in the head.
Gunshots rained down from above, blasting the zombies who were far enough away from the explosions not to be knocked over. The covering fire gave Carlos and Yuri time to move away from the restaurant and run out into the street. Yuri blasted into the thinned crowd with his rifle, while Carlos tried to take more careful shots and conserve his ammo.
“Come on!” Yuri shouted.
Mikhail slung his gun over his shoulder and jumped down off the roof, not bothering to climb halfway as Carlos and Yuri did. He hit the bloody pavement and rolled to his feet. Timon came down right after him, but he did not land as well. His foot struck the edge of a broken section of pavement and bent his ankle when he landed.
He cried out in pain and stumbled to his feet, limping badly. Mikhail grabbed him and hauled him forward as Carlos and Yuri provided covering fire. Together, they managed to shoot down most of the zombies that got anywhere near Mikhail and Timon.
“Go!” Mikhail yelled. He shoved Timon off to Yuri and spun around, blowing away a zombie that managed to get close. The body lurched backward as a spray of bullets tore through its head and neck. Mikhail walked backwards, firing until his gun clicked empty. He ejected the magazine, snapped a new one into place, and continued firing without missing a beat.
Carlos turned and opened fire on a smaller group of zombies coming down the street near the trolley car. Yuri dropped Timon and swung his gun up to blast a few of them as Carlos reloaded. He snapped clips back into both pistols and continued to fire. He tried to shoot each zombie in the head with one shot in order to use as little ammo as he possibly could.
He ran forward and kicked open the trolley car door. Yuri pulled Timon back to his feet and blasted a path for them. Mikhail came up behind and continued firing. The entire street seemed to echo with the sound of constant gunfire.
Yuri pushed Timon into the trolley car and he managed to crawl up the steps. Yuri jumped on and just stepped over him, running to the back of the car to shoot any zombies coming in that direction.
Carlos stayed at the door, shooting more zombies as Mikhail got on board as well, and then jumped into the car, closing the doors behind them.
They must have killed more than a hundred zombies, but there were hundreds more where that came from. Within seconds, a huge crowd of zombies was surrounding the car as Mikhail fidgeted with the controls, trying to get it running. Zombies swarmed around the trolley car and began pounding on the door. Some of them began reaching in some of the open windows.
Yuri raised his gun to just open fire through the windows, but Carlos stopped him. “Don’t shoot the windows,” he said. “Just close them to keep the zombies from reaching inside.” He and Yuri went through the entire car and slid closed all of the windows, pushing out the zombies’ clawing hands.
Mikhail pulled the throttle back and the trolley car roared to life, lurching forward so fast that Carlos fell backwards into one of the seats. Zombies standing near the front were either knocked aside or just run right over, their bodies cut in half and then crushed under the rails.
“Oh, man,” Yuri said, looking out the back window at the disgusting trail of gore left behind. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Timon leaned back in a seat and breathed a sigh of relief, holding his injured ankle up. “After everything we’ve seen today, you’re just gonna be sick now?”
Carlos walked up to Mikhail. The trolley car roared down the avenue, running over any zombies that dared to get in front of it. Cars and trucks parked on the tracks were smashed aside by the roaring trolley car.
“So where are we going?” he asked.
Mikhail shook his head. “Anywhere but here.”