She paused, he looked like a living man, his uniform was a little dirty, but it was standard issue military. His gun, however, was not, it looked like a new shotgun taken off the shelf of an outdoor merchandise store. The zombie was about Katie's age and he turned towards her to reveal a bloody furrow through his hairline above his right eye. He saw her and tried to swing the shotgun around, but Katie fired on him first, it took two shots, the first glanced off of his cheek, blowing out part of his tongue and several fragments of teeth. Her second shot caught him right in the bridge of the nose and he stopped moving.
Randy moved up and quickly fired into two separate zombies dropping them both, then the soldiers in the rental company opened the door and headed towards them. Randy crouched down and covered them, Katie, closer to the vehicle, covered Randy's back and kept her eyes peeled for encroaching zombies that might try to sneak up from another direction. She also noticed that one of the two soldiers was lagging behind, as if injured.
A super zombie rushed out at the slow soldier, Randy's pistol barked and the balding man in a business suit jerked spasmodically before one of the bullets caught him in the ear. Katie heard footsteps behind her and turned to see a smart zombie sneaking up on her with a baseball bat.
“Little pig, little pig, let me in…” the zombie muttered coming towards her, “I know you are there you naughty little swine. I'll…”
Katie's shot blew through its cheek and sprayed the windshield of the car behind the SUV with black and red flecks mixed with bone and hair. The first soldier jumped into the driver's side door, the wounded man rushed to the door behind the driver and Randy called 'shotgun' and took the front seat next to the driver. Katie had just enough time to claw the door behind Randy open, jump in and then slam it closed before the car lurched forward into another zombie.
The man beside her was holding her gun on his lap, his own rifle was pointing at the cargo space behind them.
“Tucker?” he asked, Katie nodded, “I'm Lewis, glad to meet you.” Lewis dug around inside his fatigues for something, coming out with a box of ammunition, passing it over he said, “I brought these for you.”
Katie grabbed the box and was just about to say 'thanks' when the window on the other side of Lewis burst in, peppering them with glass. Lewis's helmet hit Katie in the face with enough force to make her see stars.
“Fuck!” The other soldier yelled, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Bullets peppered the car and Heath turned a corner and headed towards a bridge on Lake street. They left the gunfire behind, but Lewis was hit, he was slumped over and not moving. Katie pushed his body back against the seat and evaluated him.
“Christ. Was he bit?”
The other soldier looked over his shoulder, veering dangerously in the street, “What?”
“Was Lewis bitten?”
“No, some zed winged him with a shotgun, he'll be okay….What?”
“Dead.” Katie said simply. “Came in over his armor, under his helmet.”
“Fuck. Alright I am taking Lake street up to Michigan, then down towards the Archicenter.”
“You better park us somewhere away from it, they said the target was around there, we need to get close and move into position carefully.”
“I will get us within five blocks and won't take Michigan all the way down. Will that work?”
“I don't know Chicago that well, we were supposed to be picked up on the other side of the canal, so this is beyond what I memorized for the mission.”
“No worries honey, I'm a native, I grew up here.”
“At least they sent us a good guide.”
“The right men for the job. I suppose it is just 'Man' now, isn't it? I am Heath.”
“Where are all the zombies Heath?”
“Headed towards Iowa, don't worry though, there are still a shitload of them here. This guy Max said there were more than he could count, if you believe in that sort of stuff.”
“Voodoo magic?”
“Yeah, but Draper said it seemed to be real. He couldn't pin point zeds for us, but he knew where they were and he had some way of telling which ones of them were stronger than others.”
“You talked to him?” asked Randy.
“No, he was up on the engine with Draper. Draper seemed impressed with the guy. Hated to leave him like that.”
“What is going on?”
Heath smiled, “Me and Lewis, we volunteered for escorting you to the target. You wanna guess how much they told us about their mission?”
“Nothing.”
“The zombies can't get it out of us if we don't know it in the first place. You know how they took over the anti-aircraft and missile battery?”
Randy and Katie shook their heads, but Randy ventured, “Torture?”
“No, not at all. They killed some military guys, then brought them back, then made them smart again, then sent them after the battery.”
“What? How?”
“We don't know, but if they bring you back they can control you. Like those zeds back at the car lot, the slow stupid ones were being used to draw our fire so the smarter ones could get into place. If a zombie eats enough other people, it gets smarter, they went over it before we left, showed us a video of a captured one they fed blood to, a lot of blood, it got smart. There were other videos with other captured ones, pairs or groups of them, it worked the same way for all of them. The intel guys got some of them to talk and demonstrate some things, so this isn't conjecture. Here we are.” Heath pulled the SUV over to one side of the street and parked it. Taking the keys out he paused, then turned and put them back into the ignition. “For luck.” he said to Katie with a shrug, “You never know if someone else will need the ride.”
Randy said, “That way, right Heath?”
“Yeah.”
“Good then we will go through the buildings so we aren't exposed so much.”
“I like that plan. Zombies with guns give me the creeps.”
“As opposed to normal zombies?” Katie asked as Randy broke into a large office building in front of the car.
“Normal zeds are okay by me.”
“Hey you left the turn signal on.” Katie said, noticing the lights blinking on the car.
“Yeah, I'm stupid like that. Forget it. Let's get moving.”
Chapter 40
“Did you see that?” asked Harry.
“I saw it.” Aubrey replied.
“What does it mean?”
“I don't know. Maybe one of our own is working with them.”
“No, we could sense that.” Harry said. They were both tracking the living humans and the mob of zombies in the city. This was difficult at times because the buildings did get in the way, so they only caught glimpses of the living. Their fellow dead were not so hard to track. What piqued their interest was that when they sent their zombies around to the north side of union station, the humans had very clearly backed away from them, before they were in sight.
“How many do you count? I have ten.”
“I think you are right, ten guys, moving pretty slow too. The slow zombies won't catch them, but they aren't
