Storm of the Undead Read online

  In stark contrast to my best friend, I literally beat the water into submission as I moved through the river like a paralytic buffalo with the palsy. Not terribly kind? Fuck kind, this was the zombie fucking apocalypse and I lacked the necessary proficiency in a critical skill to keep my sorry ass alive. Oh, and if you, safe in your bunker, are under the delusion that if faced with a similar situation, you could ‘rise to the challenge’, allow me to disabuse you. You will not ‘rise to the challenge’, you will sink to your lowest level of training and practice. It isn't so much a lack of willingness as it’s a lack of muscle memory. I knew how to swim, I just didn't do so as often as James, who swam at least twice a week.

  Rocket fire ceased as I reached the bridge pier, slowly breaking the surface next to James we watched the Cobra dip and turn away. The attack helicopter headed off to the east, easing my personal sense of dread, but leaving several questions in its wake.

  “I don't think,” James coughed water and spat, “I want to hang out with you off the boat anymore.”

  “Neither do I,” I wheezed, trying to suck sweet oxygen into my starved lungs. “Not that I really have a choice.”

  “Hey, Finn,” James began, stopped, and then decided to keep going, “maybe next time you could just tell me the plan, then skip the part where we run for our lives across Stuart, and just kick me in the balls.”

  “Keep running your mouth and you won't have to wait till next time,” I snarled, heaving myself out of the river. I turned to offer a hand and pulled my ungrateful friend out of the water.

  “Blah, blah, blah, eat your spleen, blah, blah, kick your nuts into your throat,” James mocked, giving an all too accurate imitation of my voice and cadence. The sarcastic little prick even went so far as to strut back and forth in a grossly over exaggerated imitation of my walk. Watching James ridicule me sparked within me a furious desire to follow his line of thought and remove his spleen through his fucking urethra, then apply my steel toed boots to said anatomy with passionate vigor. That, of course, would have been a childish response to a childish display, and I was above such things.

  I was, however, not above kicking him lightly in the shin as he strutted by.

  Oddly, my gaping asshole of a best friend started laughing and disclaiming his pain at the same time. Yeah, his shin was barking, but he was tickled pink he managed to goad me into action.

  “You done?” I snarled.

  “Almost,” James breathed heavily as he limped around me in a circle. Water poured from the barrel of his SCAR as he moved, and another task added itself to our list of immediate tasks. “Okay, let's go.”

  “Oh, you're not abandoning me to the cruel vicissitudes of fate, you prick?” I demanded in my best posh English accent. Somehow, cursing whilst imitating the upper crust of British society is incredibly satisfying. Though, I will admit that I may be the only person on the planet that thinks so.

  “It's tempting, but if I walk away now,” James dropped his magazine and dumped a small pond of water, “mercs with a serious hard on for dismembering you in the most kinetic fashion possible will hunt your dumb ass down.”

  “Kinetic? Admit it, you've been using the word a day calendar I got you for Christmas last year,” I grinned my best rakish smile. I've been told my rakish grin makes me look more of a smart ass than normal, but I tend to write that off to pure jealousy.

  “It's called a dictionary,” James said. “And you aren't the only person to come out of the educational system able to read, despite their best efforts.”

  “I figured you coming from Kentucky and all, you just painted pictures on the walls with berries and buffalo shit,” I snarked, dumping water from my own magazines.

  “Deer shit you ignorant cow tipping yokel,” James replied, sniffing haughtily. “There aren’t any buffalo in Kentucky. Maybe a little squirrel guts.”

  “Ah, consider me properly schooled in the hillbilly method of penmanship,” I laughed, and tried to still the shaking of my legs. A heavy mix of fear and adrenaline was still coursing through my muscles with intent. My conscious mind may well been determined to show a macho façade, but my survival instinct understood without question how incredibly close to snuffing it we had come. We needed to reinsert ourselves into Stuart proper, but with that gunship flying around we couldn't risk the bridge.

  “Fuck that bridge shit,” James said, taking note of me staring blankly at the structure above us.

  “This is getting complicated, fast,” I mumbled. “I hate complicated.”

  “No shit, I've noticed,” James stated, changing his voice to what he thought sounded like a Neanderthal. “Finn smash. Finn like pretty girl. Finn hump pretty girl. Finn hungry, Finn eat small animal. Nom, nom, nom.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Yeah, yeah, come on,” James started walking.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You worked out a lot of plans before this shit started,” James said over his shoulder. “But I’ve been doing some thinking since it began.”

  Then James uttered the most terrifying words I've ever heard from him.

  “I have a plan,” he smiled broadly, teeth practically gleaming.

  Chapter Eight

  WTF?

  To say I possessed a few concerns over James’ plan would be to belabor the obvious. This was, after all, still south Florida, home of the resurgent alligator population. In fact, the ancient species of practically unkillable eating machines had recovered so well during their stay on the endangered species list the state was forced to start a limited hunting plan to curtail their invasion of residential neighborhoods. Why does this matter you ask? It matters because James’ admittedly clever plan centered around he and I swimming across the St. Lucie river, submerged beneath flotsam while breathing through specialized snorkels he’d fashioned a few days ago. According to his plan we would just float along beneath the flotsam, in this case debris from El Rapo’s airborne assault, until we reached the other side. The whole transition would likely take several hours of patience.

  Brilliant, except for the rampant alligator population. Not to mention various other hazards, such as water moccasins, eels, barracudas, and just plain bad luck. Christ on fire, this must be what it's like for other people to hear my plans. Sliding beneath the surface of the river I resolved to be more understanding of others reservations next time I laid out an idea.

  Our flotsam appeared to be the remains of an immensely expensive cabin cruiser, most of which hid beneath the surface. Thankfully, the wreckage was buoyant enough it didn't immediately sink as we latched on. Conversely, so much of the wreckage was submerged James and I weren't able to conceal ourselves entirely. Close inspection would reveal our ruse and shortly thereafter a fusillade of twenty millimeter rounds would dismember the both of us. No illusions of recovering from that wretched end entered my mind. Mainly because, at the time, I didn't want to consider the dynamics of my separate body parts inching back towards one another as the bioengineered emergency medical organism struggled to preserve my dumb ass. Some things are too horrible to contemplate.

  Seconds stretched into minutes and the relative silence closed in on me, driving me close to the edge of panic. I couldn't see much of anything nor hear anything. For all I knew, the goddamn helicopter was circling above us at that very moment, El Rapo laughing his ass off as he prepared to rain fire and death on us.

  How the fuck was he still alive?

  The question flared across my stressed brain in big, bold type, pushing everything else aside. From what little I understood my own survival was simply a genetic fluke, a googolplex to one long shot. Skipping over the part where I put a bullet in his demented head, was it possible someone out there had perfected a vaccine based on what happened to me? How would that even be possible? Wouldn't a sample, a copious sample, of my blood be necessary? Thinking on it, I realized I'd left enough blood across Jupiter and Stuart to fill me back up twice over. Not exactly a calming notion. If someone had been so inclined, I doub
ted it would have been particularly difficult to collect a sample sufficient for that purpose, and maybe a researcher with way more brains than me could have isolated the key to unlocking the base organism the zombie virus was based on. Okay, maybe that's what happened, but that would have taken place after I'd already killed that little shit. Think, Finnegan, think. How could that prick have survived?

  Then a scenario popped into my thick Irish skull.

  Uhlanis and Eddie Hernandez must have saved the bastard. Uhlanis had been the site commander and Raven Team were nominally under his control. For arguments sake, let's say I blasted El Rapo in the dome, but the bullet hit at an angle and ricocheted off without splattering the shit he called brains across the asphalt. In comes the cavalry on a chopper and whisks the fucker away while Uhlanis and Hernandez stay behind to clean up the mess. Then after saving the piece of shit some lab coat wearing idiot decides it's a good idea to turn a sadistic cocksucker into a genetically altered super killer, and turn him loose on the world.

  Staring at the sky, distorted by the surface of the river, my blood ran cold. For that prick to still be alive was bad enough, it was infinitely worse for him to be alive and able to heal wounds in the same fashion I could. Since running Raven Team into hell on a Red Eye express, I'd faced, and killed, most of two more KnightStar teams, but only by being a devious bastard and in the end they had managed to kill me. Of course, the whole being killed thing didn't take. On some future battlefield a literature loving psychopath and I were going to clash in an epic fight, one I would likely lose in an epically spectacular fashion.

  Don't be a drama queen.

  Fuck. Off.

  No, stop being such a whinging little child. You will face El Rapo again, and you will finish the job you started.

  Fairly confident, aren't you?

  Why shouldn't I be?

  Because that fucker is a trained soldier with fuck only knows how many years experience killing commando wannabes like me. There it is, okay? An ugly truth, but the truth nonetheless. I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.

  Aw, should I cue the violin and serve up a platter of cheese? It might go well with all this fucking whine coming out of your suck hole.

  Wait, what?

  Yes, your enemy is a professional soldier. He has the advantage of experience fighting other soldiers in less than ideal conditions. You, by contrast, are brawler that doesn't know when to lay down and die. Over the past decade you have acquired specific skill sets which make you a prime candidate for guerrilla warfare, and, in case you missed this little thing called the Afghanistan war, guerrilla fighters are far more difficult to defeat than frontline soldiers. This is your strength, it is your edge against a man trained to fight a conventional war and then tasked to massacre civilians by his PMC overlords. Think, adapt, and attack with authority.

  Adapt and attack with authority against a Cobra?

  After how many years of building helicopters?

  And just like that I could see a helicopter airframe, different from a Cobra, laid bare in my minds eye. Its strengths, its weaknesses, and the actions necessary to bring most any chopper down. The missiles and twenty millimeter cannon gave the aircraft an aggressive edge, but it was still just a helicopter with all the foibles inherent in the type. With some tinkering, some brass balls, and some technical know how we might be able to swat the Cobra out of the sky.

  Maybe.

  Three hours later, James and I walked out of the river. We were water logged, exhausted, and hungry, but I had a few ideas in case our friend returned. All I required could be found at our local Home Depot. It wasn't until I spotted James’ concerned expression that I realized how disturbed I must appear. Oh, well. It wasn’t like he hadn't seen me look that way before. Usually a few minutes before someone called the cops on me.

  “After we acquire an MRAP,” I smiled more broadly, “I’ll need to make a couple stops. I have a couple ideas in case a certain attack helicopter decides to take a run at us again.”

  “Suddenly remember where to find a few shoulder launched Stinger missiles?” James demanded. Again, he went through the process of dumping water from his weapons.

  “Not quite,” I admitted. “Never cared for the politics of the only guy I ever knew could bring them in. Dude was way, way, like Pluto way out there.”

  James stood in place and stared blankly at me as if he couldn't tell whether I was joking or not. So much for two decades of friendship giving him clarity into my soul. Of course I wasn't joking. A man, whose name I still won't tell you, I met in Tampa proved himself more than capable of putting his sausage like fingers on nearly anything your twisted little heart desired. Up to, and including, shoulder fired missiles. Mostly though, he imported copious amounts of LSD for the club scene in Ybor City, where LSD competed with Ecstasy, MDMA, for most used and most often overdosed. Ah, the joys of college age chemical experimentation ending in a pool of your own vomit. So glad I skipped it.

  “We should move,” James said slowly, then pointed over my shoulder. Reluctantly, I turned to face a shambling mass of undead. I say mass because they were less numerous than a horde, but larger than a group. Yes, I am aware that the numerical value assigned to either description is somewhat nebulous. So what? If you don't appreciate my use of descriptor it's very simple, drag your bunker dwelling ass out into the light of day, risk everything on a long shot, and then write about it yourself using whatever descriptors you fucking like.

  Together, we slipped away from the mass of shamblers, one sprinting forward while the other covered the undead. As soon as the runner reached cover, he turned to cover the advance of the other. On and on we went until we crouched in the shadow of a copse of trees across from the county jail. One MRAP sat proudly on display behind the ten foot tall, razor wire topped chain link fence surrounding most of the building. The Sheriff clearly prized this behemoth as he went to the trouble of having his likeness airbrushed onto one side of the thing, right before the word, sheriff’s. The association of image with title was nauseatingly obvious. Despite the blatant aggrandizement the vehicle seemed spotless, even the tires appeared to have been waxed.

  The second MRAP was, well…less tidy. As in someone covered the truck in feces, set that on fire, let it burn out, covered it in feces again, then doused it in gasoline before setting fire to the whole mess again, and then thought it was probably a good idea to pile the corpses of the undead on the bonfire in order to increase the overall maggot gagging stench not wafting through the air, but marching towards us like the Wehrmacht on Poland.

  It wasn't as bad as the Stenchasaurus Rex, but I could feel saliva coating my throat in anticipation of my stomach contents being forcibly ejected. If it were at all possible to do so I intended to locate, and never release, some form of gas mask/air filtration hood. Molecules of roasted shit and zombie were, even as I stood there, invading and assaulting the delicate membranes within my nose, and the demented mental image my brain produced was enough to flip the switch in my stomach from process to reject. Bile and partially digested food stuffs erupted forth, sailing through the air in a glorious arch which ended on the charred skull of what I hoped had been a zombie.

  “Oh, you bastard,” James choked before adding his unique mix of biological material to the mix. However, unlike me, James did not have the curtesy to direct his expulsions away. No, the prick tried his best to vomit all over me. I skittered sideways at a velocity approaching the speed of light.

  “That's it,” I snarled. “You can fucking walk home.”

  Deliberately not looking back, I marched up the chain link fence and started climbing. Near the top I slid a pair of dykes from my vest and carefully, very goddamn carefully, began to cut through the razor wire. Why bother dicking around with razor wire ten fucking feet above the ground? Because, if I cut through the fence at ground level there would be a gaping hole in our perimeter while the two of us monkey around with getting the MRAP started, and while James and I beat our respective primate brains
against the reinforced armor of the truck ten thousand undead assholes would slip through the wide open gates of Mordor and bite our asses off. That experience path isn't on my to do list today, or ever.

  Obscenely sharp razor wire dropped to swing past my tender flesh with each snip of the dykes, my testicles drew further up into my torso with each near miss until I swore I could feel them hovering just beneath my thundering heart. At this rate I would be speaking in a falsetto for the next decade.

  I will say this, having seen it up close I thought the addition of a few thousand yards of razor wire around the outside of the gunwale of the Churchill might add an entirely new and more terrifying level of security. All you really had to do was brush up against it the wrong way and before you knew it the precious red stuff pumping around inside your body would be pumping out of your body. I knew this firsthand because I made the mistake of brushing against a strand of razor wire as I climbed up and over the fence. It sliced straight through my shirt and left a six inch long cut across my left arm. Briefly I wondered whether the guards of this facility had coated the razor edges with some form of nerve toxin to ensure that anyone foolish enough to attempt escape would be unable to move from sheer agony. The cut burned like my arm was on fire, and the nerve endings dipped in acid.

  I admit the pain caught me somewhat off guard. So much so I may or may not have achieved ground level much sooner than desired. Yes, okay, I fell off the goddamn fence and fell ten feet to impact a concrete walkway. As per usual my best friend was there to laugh in the face of my pain, and take pictures on fucking digital camera he removed from a ziplock bag, son of a bitch.