He looked down at Nuggets. The dog looked back up at him.
“You think we should check it out?”
Nuggets wagged his tail.
Chapter 53
Mike
Full forty minutes and countless stops later, John’s team finally got close to their destination. The gate would only be a block or so down the road once they turned the corner up ahead. The Humvee had come to a stop once more. Not because there were more zombies on the road, but because of what they could see, sitting nearly sideways in a levy.
It was the other Humvee.
“Any trace of them?” John asked from the back seat. “Hang on, I’m going to have a look up top.” He reached for the hatch.
Mike and Abi scanned the surrounding area. The driver’s side door as well as the backseat door had been left wide open. There appeared to be no bodies directly around the vehicle.
“I think that at least a couple of them got out, Abi,” John suggested.
Just then, John popped back down into the back seat. “Yeah. Looks like you’re right. It also looks like they were chased.”
He pointed further to the right of the abandoned vehicle and down the adjacent street. Several more bodies lay there. It was the opposite direction of the school, so it made sense to John that they had gotten away but were being chased.
“I hope they managed to hole up somewhere safe,” John added.
“Should we follow that trail?” Mike asked.
John shook his head, although neither of his companions could see it. “No. Not yet. We’ve got to check that gate out first.” He tapped Mike on the shoulder twice, indicating that the veteran should get their vehicle moving again.
They drove past the Humvee as they turned the last corner. John was all business, asking Mike to keep her steady and popping back out of the hatch. Mike could hear him lock the bolt and attach the ammo drum to the SAW. He could understand why; at least a dozen zombies were located between them and the gate.
Abi checked the second Humvee as they drove by. “The vehicle is empty. Looks like all of them made it out!” she said excitedly, adding in a more somber tone, “There is a whole lot of blood in there, though. At least one of them must be hurt.” She said something else, but just then the sharp staccato sound of the M249 drowned her words.
Mike kept the vehicle moving forward slowly as John blew away zombies with short blasts of his weapon. They watched the humanoid shapes become unrecognizable, literally falling apart under the barrage. It became somewhat mesmerizing. The sun was almost dead ahead and cast a golden light on the approaching shapes. Fluids and other projectiles flew from the shapes, catching the rays and appearing to cast a black rainbow.
Thankfully, it was all over quickly. Mike pulled to a stop close to the gate and the trio cautiously got out of the safety of the vehicle.
Mike felt instantly exposed, the moment he stepped out. He left his door wide open in case he needed to retreat in a hurry. The others did likewise. They scanned the area for a movement before approaching the gate. The temporary silence was broken as Abi shot a crawling figure, and John took out another zombie as it stepped around the wall and through the open gate.
“The damn latch is all bent, so it won’t stay shut,” John remembered, pointing at the culprit with his M4. “Any ideas, guys?”
“Yeah,” Abi said behind the two men. “What we need is another ice cream truck!”
BREANNE LOCKED EYES with a zombie. It was close, only about eight feet away, so she could see more details than she wanted to.
The eyelids had dried up and pulled back, and the eyeballs themselves had shrunk in the sockets. Breanne figured they were only kept in place by those ropes of nerves and stuff that led to the brain.
I dunno, I’m no doctor. She excused her own ignorance and continued with her observations.
The whites had turned a dark shade of grey, and Breanne was sure that she could see mold or rot setting in, giving certain areas of the eyeball a slight green tinge. Those pupils though! Breanne knew that the zombie was truly seeing her. Some form of intelligence still dwelt in there, and that thought scared her.
The zombie lunged at her with arms outstretched, only succeeding in smacking into the wall and crashing to the gravelly floor.
Well, actually the roof, Breanne corrected herself. She looked over at Bill and BB. They sat stock-still in the middle of their little perch, trying to avoid attention. Their perch was the top of the very doorway they had used to get onto the roof of the warehouse.
“It’s called a bulkhead,” BB mentioned as they scrambled up it.
“I don’t care what the fuck it is called. Just shove harder!” she had yelled down at the soldier pushing her backside in an attempt to lift her into Bill’s outstretched arms.
They sat, huddled in fear, on that tiny metal roof since then. It was anything but comfortable. Breanne had complained about how hot the metal was. BB had said something about flashing, but Breanne hadn’t been interested.
She did apologize for her crankiness once they were all up there, but that peace only lasted a few minutes, as her roof mates berated her for moving close to the edge and stirring up the locals.
“Do you really think that those things are not aware of us? They fucking followed us into this building and onto the roof, for God’s sake!” was her snarky reply.
So, Breanne had a closer look at their enemies. About a dozen zombies lumbered around the roof, mostly facing their perch. They would stretch out their arms, reaching for her, when they caught sight of her. It made Breanne feel like she was in a rock band.
Hello, Cleveland! The thought escaped before Breanne could shut it down.
The
