The Dead Come for Us

Chapter 4

The concrete channel was now a trumpet of the damn.

The roaring wave of bodies, pouring out from the subterranean intake tunnel, was not a relaxed herd of people but a compressed piston of flesh, teeth, and thrashing limbs.

Packed shoulder to shoulder, those in the back trampled those in front and their screams blended into a single, throbbing tone which rattled the fillings in Mac's mouth.

"UP! UP the slope!"

he roared and didn't wait to see if his order would be obeyed before grabbing Rose by the loop of her backpack, pulling her bodily up the steep, forty-five degree incline they'd just dropped down.

Lola was already going, her boots sliding but still finding purchase on the slippery, moss-covered concrete and she was firing her pistol behind them with rapid bang-bang-bang shots completely lost in the all-encompassing roar behind them.

"Isaac! Move your feet!"

Mac yelled, the muscles in his arm bunching as he propelled Rose towards the chain link fence that formed the rim. Isaac was struggling to climb but the panic had set deep into his joints, and he slipped, his knees hitting concrete.

The iron crowbar slid five feet down the incline, spinning right at the front edge of the oncoming swarm and Isaac instinctively lunged backward after it. "Leave it!" Mac screamed,

"I need it!"

Isaac yelled back, his fingers closing on the iron just as the front line of infected hit the base of the slope below him. A turned construction worker, his orange vest tattered and dark fluid stains soaked through it, sprang up from the mass, and his hands three fingers torn off by concrete

scraping-clutched onto the ankle of Isaac's jeans, dead weight trying to drag the teenager back down into the grinding gears of the human avalanche below.

Without a thought Mac slung his shotgun over his shoulder, slid down the incline and drove the heel of his boot into the infected worker’s face, the skull caving with a wet, hollow crunch and breaking the grip; he snatched Isaac by the collar of his jacket with both hands, planted his boots in a tight joint expansion, and hurled him upwards with a guttural roar of exertion.

"CLIMB, GODDAMN YOU!"

Mac snarled, his lungs burning as the metallic, hot breath of the swarm washed over him.

They scrambled over the chain link fence as the first bodies began slamming against the barrier below.

The steel posts groaned, the metal mesh bowing out under the weight of dozens upon dozens of bodies, pressing, pushing, and crushing the ones at the front until the mesh links began popping free from the aluminum loops with loud, sharp metallic pops.

Street level again.

Whispering Pines had become the meat grinder and any semblance of suburban safety had vanished completely.

"Can't use the canal anymore, we're on the asphalt,"

Lola said, slamming a fresh magazine into her pistol, her eyes burning with an angry protective fire as she glared at Mac. "You nearly pulled Isaac down into that, Mac! You're trying to play us like chess pieces when we're drowning out here!" "I broke him off, Lola! He went back after a piece of iron!" Mac snapped back, his tactical mind scanning the surrounding houses.

"Isaac, if I tell you to drop your gear, you drop it. Your ego will get your sister killed." "You told me to cover our six! That it was my job!" Isaac yelled back, his voice cracking with an uneven blend of adrenalin and shame, his chest heaving and his grip still clutched around the crowbar.

"You told me it was my responsibility to keep my weapon! I was keeping my weapon!

"ENOUGH!"

Lola hissed, stepping between the two boys as Rose huddled against her, her ears covered to block out the cacophony of sirens and screaming.

"Look around you; we don't have time for a debrief." The street was an obstacle course of burning cars and strewn merchandise.

A smashed minivan was upended against a telephone pole, its horn stuck on a continuous maddening shriek which acted like a flare drawing any infected within three blocks of its position.

From the front yards figures were already emerging, neighbors that Mac had been grilling just last summer and who were now sprinting towards them, single minded and hungry.

"House line," Mac commanded, his words ending the argument as it was issued with squad leader authority. "Cut through between the garages; avoid the open asphalt, keep eyes on the roofs.

" They ran in a high speed, manic dash through manicured lawns now splattered with dark, pressurized fluid and horror had a personal nature; through a bay window Mac saw the silhouettes of a family he knew backed up against the glass as the interior of their home disintegrated into chaos.

He forced his eyes forward; there could be no room for empathy, only survival. They reached the end of the cul-de-sac and a narrow pedestrian easement led toward the commercial strip mall located on Route 286.

The highway was only six lanes and if they could cross it then there would be the train yards on the other side of it; miles of empty space and heavy steel structures with many line of sight-blocking opportunities.

Mac brought the line up to the corner of a brick garage and peaked around. The commercial avenue was a graveyard of steel. Cars were stacked, bumper to bumper, with the doors open and the windows shattered, and thick, black oily smoke from a burning delivery truck filled the air and reduced visibility to thirty yards.

"Smoke is our cover,"

Mac whispered, checking his shells. "Straight across; don't stop for anything; crawl if you fall.

" They darted out from behind the garage into the thick, sulfurous air of the main road, the burning truck blasting intense heat onto Mac's face.

They ran in single file between stalled sedans and jackknifed semi-trucks as car alarms screamed at them.

They were halfway across the six lanes when the wind shifted. The wall of black smoke dispersed to the south and uncovered the family stranded in the middle of the vast expanse of gray asphalt.

A hundred yards up the road was a huge, dense collection of infected milling around an overturned bus and the single turned transit police trooper at the front of it, his uniform torn, his chest smeared with blood and his milky, unseeing eyes locked onto Mac.

The trooper let out a piercing, high-pitched scream that echoed through the commercial buildings and in an instant the entire crowd of over a hundred infected at the bus pivoted like a single, liquid organism and charged, a wave of ravenous fury picking up speed down the open asphalt toward the family.