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.

The M-240s wreaked their own brand of havoc on the infected’s legs, blasting them to pieces the same as I had seen in the brewery parking lot back in Blanco. However, despite the hail of lead and tungsten, only the first few ranks of undead went down. The horde behind them was so large the Bradleys’ onslaught did little to halt their advance. It was like trying to hold back an avalanche with two bulldozers. Realizing they were doing nothing more than buying themselves a few extra seconds, the Bradleys reversed, turned up the road, and fled with the rest of the convoy.

By that point, Sophia had turned around to watch the show. As the Bradleys gained on the column and Morgan broadcast an order to pick up the pace, she turned and looked at me, her face pale and drawn, lips pressed tightly together.

“They just don’t stop, do they?” she said. “It doesn’t matter how many of them we kill, how many we blow up, nothing scares them. They just keep coming.”

I reached back and clasped her hand, feeling the tremor in her grasp. “We have a few advantages over them, Sophia.”

“Like what?”

“Well for one, we’re smarter than they are. We’re also faster, we can use weapons, and we can build fortifications. They can’t do any of those things.”

“But what if that changes? What if they get smarter? What if they start to remember things?”

I thought about it, and felt a cold black dread well up inside me. I let go of Sophia’s hand and sat down in my seat.

“We just have to hope that doesn’t happen.”

THIRTY-SIX

Two days later,

Near Boise City, Oklahoma

 

There are times when you sense trouble coming. When you see its shadow darken your sky, and your hackles go up, and you reach for the nearest sharp object.

It happens in the sleeping mind, beneath the surface, where we understand the patterns that connect the ebb and flow of life and events. Where we perceive the symmetry of probabilities and execute the intuitive calculus of expected outcomes. Within this hidden depth, we understand the mercurial animal that is human nature and how it creates its own cause and effect. If we are careful, and wary, and keep our eyes open, we can sometimes deduce the problems before they catch us. We can strike, dodge, parry, and set traps.

There are also times when trouble catches us by surprise.

*****

The slow, tedious slog up the Texas panhandle took its toll.

It takes a lot of food to fill over a hundred hungry bellies, and we were three days into a road trip that under normal circumstances should have taken no more than two. So out of necessity, anytime we saw someplace that looked uninhabited and could potentially be a source of food, we stopped and raided it. Doing so kept us fed, but also slowed our progress and cost the lives of two more soldiers.

The deaths happened at a trailer park in the middle of a small town too insignificant to have its own sign. We passed it on the highway, and after a few minutes of observation, one of Morgan’s staff sergeants deemed it abandoned. The usual crowd—Dad, Blake, Mike and I—accompanied two squads of regular infantry to the park. (Tyrel’s leg was still healing, and Lance had taken it upon himself to make sure none of the soldiers got any funny ideas about our womenfolk. Consequently, the four of us had become Morgan’s de facto outriders.)

The regular troops waited while we zipped through the trailer park and fired a few rounds in the air before returning to their position. That done, we gripped our weapons and watched for movement. Other than a slight breeze to mitigate the blazing midday sun and air rippling upward from the hot pavement, we saw nothing.

“All stations, Recon One,” Dad said into his handheld. “You are clear to move in, but take it slow. Keep your eyes peeled, and be ready to bug out on a moment’s notice.”