She decided to talk to Mark about his feelings later. For now, facing six Iranian soldiers barreling toward her new home, she needed the killer.
“Remember,” Sidney said. “Hold your fire until they’re past us, then take out the four in the back. I’ll focus on the driver. We’ll both go for the passenger if they survive.”
“Got it.”
They waited in silence for the next thirty seconds as the truck continued to roll up the road. Then it was in front of them, passing by within twenty feet of their position. All four of the men in the back were huddled down against the cold. Sidney knew that Iran was a desert country with a few mountains, but most people lived in the cities. This was probably the first time any of them had ever seen snow.
And it would be their last.
“Let’s do it.”
Mark didn’t say anything. The machine gun barked out his reply. The first few rounds were low, chewing into the tailgate, but he moved the weapon, bringing the tracers up to the bed where the four men hadn’t had time to react to the shooting. Sidney watched in disbelief as he raked the weapon slowly across the men. Calm. The kid was a killer.
The truck sped up, then veered off into the corn field. “Dammit!” she groaned, standing. The engine revved loudly, carrying the truck away.
They rushed down the road to the point where it had gone into the corn. Broken stalks clearly showed where the vehicle had gone. Sidney could see the truck pushing its way through the corn slowly, no brake lights indicating that it was stopping anytime soon.
“I think you might have hit the driver too,” she said.
Mark shrugged. “Probably.”
There was no happiness reflected on his face. The youth wasn’t looking to her for praise for a job well done. More concerning, there was no remorse for the fact that he’d likely killed five or six men either. He was simply a blank slate, showing no emotion. It was creepy.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He jutted his chin toward the truck, now several hundred yards away. “We going after them?”
She looked back to the truck. It was slowing and going less than a couple of miles an hour now. She brought up her binoculars and peered at the truck. She couldn’t see any movement. “I don’t know,” she replied. “We should watch for a few minutes, make sure they’re not trying to lure us in.”
“Okay.” The boy sat down cross-legged, cradling his machine gun. He stared blankly toward the truck.
Sidney shook her head and returned her attention to the binoculars. The truck had finally rolled to a stop. A head lolled listlessly in the driver’s seat, but that was all she saw. The others had either fallen off the truck or had slumped down inside the bed.
She was indecisive about what to do. On the one hand, she knew they needed to go out there and make sure they were all dead before they called in reinforcements or returned to their base. On the other, she wasn’t a trained soldier. She’d learned how to ambush small enemy elements, not how to attack a group that would be prepared for another attack.
“I don’t—”
She stopped as the field around the truck came alive. Several of the infected emerged from the corn stalks and began grabbing at the bodies to tear meat from them. The dry, hoarse screams of the creatures drifted across the plains.
All around them, the cries were answered.
“We need to go. Now,” Sidney said, turning to help the boy up.
They began jogging slowly. There was a house a quarter of a mile up the road that Vern had cleared and declared as a safe house in an emergency. This was about to become an emergency. The infected who were simply surviving on the dried up corn were going to make their way toward that kill site for the meat.
“We need to speed up,” she said.
“I—I can’t with this gun,” Mark grunted.
“Here. I’ll take it.”
She took the machine gun from him, surprised at the weapon’s weight. It was much heavier than she’d expected. The gun, combined with all the ammunition in his backpack meant that Mark must have been carrying an extra forty pounds. He was just a kid.
Sidney’s biceps burned from carrying the weapon and her fingers were numb. The screams were louder now, coming from all sides. The house was only a few hundred feet further.
She stumbled. The heavy barrel caught on the hard asphalt below the snow and Sidney fell. Mark turned and raced back to her. He pulled her to her feet and she tried to retrieve the machine gun, but her fingers refused to cooperate.
“Leave it!” Mark hissed, pulling her arm.
The machine gun was their best hope at fending off a crowd of infected, but he was right. The weapon was too bulky, too heavy for either of them to carry while they were running. Their bodies simply weren’t capable of doing it. The weapon sat discarded in the middle of the road and they ran.
She risked a backward glance. Already there were infected streaming across the road toward the sounds of the feast. She prayed that none of them looked toward the house.
They veered off the road into the yard. The house sat on a small square of uncultivated land a couple hundred yards across with a giant tractor shed in the back. The front door would be locked, but the back door was secured up high where the infected couldn’t accidently unlatch it.
“Oh shit!” Mark exclaimed. He’d rounded the corner before her. The scream of an infected made her heart sink. There was one in the yard behind the house.
She came around the corner and saw Mark holding her rifle across his chest to keep
