The early evening was already cold with a biting wind that found its way into all of the openings of Maria’s clothing. It wasn’t anything that she wasn’t used to as a lifelong resident of New Jersey, but it still took her breath away after the warmth of the deli. They crept along the front of the building until they get to the corner and Shawn risked a quick glance down the side of the building toward the east. They were still alone so they ran across the road toward what looked like the beginning of a residential neighborhood.

  They jogged down the middle of the street; it made more sense to keep in the center of the road to give them the most reaction time from either direction. Within a couple of blocks, they came to a T-intersection and they went left. Before long, the stress of being out in the open combined with the light physical exertion of jogging overcame the evening chill and Maria felt sweat dripping down the crease in her low back where her muscles came together and then sliding between her ass cheeks.

  The road they were on curved in what Maria thought was almost due south direction and she wished that they had some sort of map. For all they knew, they could be on a loop that would feed them back westward out onto the road near the strip mall where they’d spent the past few days. Maria reached out and tapped her silent running partner when they reached an intersection. “Where are we?” she whispered.

  Shawn nodded and pulled up his gait. He lifted the cheap flashlight that they’d procured from the deli and shined it on the street sign; they were at the corner of Lake Shore Drive and Berlin Road. “Okay, what does that mean?” Maria hissed.

  “I know there was a lake in the southern part of town,” Shawn replied. “I saw a map at the Army headquarters the day I volunteered to fight so they’d evacuate Annie. I wish we had a map or something now though.”

  “Do you know if this road curves back to the east, or can we keep following it until we get to a highway?”

  “I don’t know,” he muttered. “What we need is a damned car! Do you think any of these houses have one in the garage?”

  “Maybe?” she answered with a shrug.

  He seemed to contemplate going to one of the houses and then reconsidered. “Where do the zombies go at night?”

  “I don’t know, man,” she said quietly. “What are we doing?”

  “As long as we don’t end up going back the other way, we should keep going. We’ll find a place to rest a few hours before the sun comes up since that’s when they seem to be active. Maybe there will be a car that we can use.”

  Maria nodded and then realized that he couldn’t see her in the darkness. Instead, she said, “Okay. Let’s get going, then.”

  They started up their slow jog once more and after thirty minutes, they passed by a large firehouse on the right. Shawn stopped them. “We should go in there. I bet they’ll have maps of the area.”

  “Good idea.” She unslung the M4 rifle that she carried and followed behind Shawn. White letters on the front door indicated that they were at the Lake Parsippany Volunteer Fire Department. Her partner pulled gently on the doors and to their surprise, they weren’t locked. The air didn’t smell like any of the dead creatures were inside, but with the weather being so cold, they likely wouldn’t rot as fast, which would help to keep the smell to a minimum.

  Once the door closed behind her, Maria called out softly, “Anyone in here? We’re survivors.”

  They waited a full minute before Shawn turned and twisted the lock home in the glass door behind them. They proceeded slowly into the firehouse, calling out that they were uninfected and asking if anyone was around. It would be stupid to get shot by a jumpy refugee taking shelter in a firehouse; it would be even more stupid to stumble into a nest of zombies with no way out. They had to go somewhere in the night, Maria reasoned, but where?

  The building was vacant, so they secured the back doors as well and searched the dispatch room for a map. Just as they thought, there was a map of town on the wall. It turned out that they’d somehow gotten off of Lake Shore when the road continued straight and ended up on Halsey Road. The firehouse sat about a half-mile from Highway 202, which ran north and south on the far west side of town.

  After another few minutes of searching, they found a folding tri-state map, which covered New Jersey, Pennsylvania and parts of New York. “Okay, we have a choice to make,” Shawn stated once they’d looked at the map.

  “Shoot,” Maria replied.

  “Okay, we know that the Army went southwest to Allentown and then they’ll jump further west after that,” he said as he jabbed his finger into the map near the Army’s new defensive area.

  “Yeah?” she prompted.

  “Do we try to follow the Army or do we head due west down Interstate 80 on our own to get over the mountains as quickly as possible?”

  Maria shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “You’re in charge, Shawn. You make the decision.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. We’re a team, nobody’s in charge. I think we should go due west. The zombies are following the Army and we know that the noise attracts them. We may be able to slip on by without the zombies knowing that we’re there.”

  “Yeah, but the Army means safety.”

  “Does it? I mean, yeah we’d be safer if we were with them, but if we have to fight our way through a gigantic mob of zombies to get to them, what kind of safety are they providing? We would have already done all the hard work—if we even survived.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. What good would it do them to travel all that way if they just got caught on the wrong side of the creatures? “Okay, you’re right. So what does going due west get us?”

  Maria tried to make out the pictures on the dispatcher’s wall in the poor light of the flashlight while Shawn pored over the map. Smiling faces of young men in their heavy flame resistant jackets stared back at her. She idly wondered how many of them were still alive and how many of them were now part of the massive zombie horde that marched steadily westward.

  “Alright, if we stay roughly on Interstate 80, we’ll be about thirty miles north of Allentown. I’d be willing to bet that they’ll be mostly massed near the sound of the guns—we’re betting with our lives, really.”

  “Can we find a car?”

  “That should be very high on our priority list. The map says we’ve only gone about two miles and I’m already exhausted.”

  Maria glanced at her watch. “It’s just after midnight, should we keep going or stay here until tomorrow?”

  “Dammit! I wanted to get out of town tonight, but it makes sense to stay here, since they’re bound to have tons of supplies and we’ve already cleared the place. We can leave as soon as it’s dark tomorrow night. We might even be able to find a couple of real backpacks if we search around.”

  They searched the firehouse together, neither of them wanted to be alone in the large, dark building. In the firefighters’ quarters, they found a few changes of clothes that would fit them in a pinch, including a couple of sets of female clothes, and from under one of the beds they dragged out an old duffle bag that they could fill with food or the clothing that they’d pilfered.

  The bathroom yielded the tampons and pads that Maria had desperately needed as well as some minor pain relievers and a fully stocked first aid kit. The little blue kit gave Shawn an idea to search the trucks for a backpack. They found a large bag topped full of medical gear that he dumped on the floor. He picked out the more basic medical supplies to take with them since neither of them knew how to use any of the specialized equipment and took the backpack so they could fill it with food.

  The kitchen was a veritable cornucopia of foodstuffs. They jammed the bags full of canned goods, energy bars and unspoiled crackers. Maria even grabbed a can opener and a small saucepan that they could use to cook their canned food in if they found themselves out on the road somewhere. It was an unspoken admission that they may be on their own for a long time, far away from other people.

  The last thing that they did was to go back to the garage where the fire trucks sat. They found some heavy-duty flashlights with good batteries, thick gloves and the firefighter jackets. The coat’s thick material would be good to help keep them warm and act as a tough barrier for protection against the zombies’ teeth.

  “Do you think you could drive one of these things?” Maria asked as she slapped the side of the bright red fire engine.

  “Uh, no way. They’re standard transmission and I can’t drive a stick.”

  Maria suppressed the joke that she wanted to make and said, “Damn. I was hoping that we could just take off in one of these. We’d be unstoppable.”

  “Probably not the low-key vehicle that we need.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m tired and the sun is gonna be up soon. Are you ready for bed?” she asked.

  He nodded and they trudged back through the firehouse and up the stairs to the sleep quarters. After they’d done their business and gotten cleaned up with a combination of bottled water and wet wipes, they chose beds that were next to each other, but as far away from the door as possible and settled in for a restless day’s sleep.

  SEVEN

  22 October, 0847 hrs local

  Wedgewood Golf Course

  Allentown, Pennsylvania

  Chaos Company began firing at the oncoming horde. The creatures walked into the line of fire with zero regard for self-preservation or tactics. Rounds from the tanks’ machine guns tore into them and they died by the hundreds.

  “Keep up the fire, boys! Remember to alternate between you and your wingman,” Mike shouted into his microphone to keep the company firing. Less than thirty minutes prior, they’d gotten word from the scouts who were stationed on Highway 78 that the creatures were about a mile from where the tanks sat. In that time, the last few truckloads of civilians were evacuated away from Allentown to the next interim staging point outside of the state capital of Harrisburg.

  The military’s analysts had determined that the hordes from New York had joined with the creatures moving southwest from Maine and the remnants of those from between Philadelphia and the dead city of Baltimore to form a massive army of the undead. It made killing them en masse easier for the Air Force, but it also created a massive hammer that could smash through just about anything the defenders on the ground put together.

  The intelligence weenies seemed to think that the large zombie army was following the US Army as it fought a delaying action, moving slowly westward toward the defenses being assembled in the passes and on the opposite side of the mountains. Besides spreading out, the zombies hadn’t deviated from their course, choosing to follow the military and attacking them nonstop.

  Mike’s tanks were topped off with military-grade JP8 fuel and filled to overflowing with ammunition before the support elements departed as escorts for the civilian trucks. He thought about the ragtag train of civilian and military vehicles traveling to the next staging point. Allegedly, the state authorities had already begun the evacuation of Harrisburg before the first of the refugees from Allentown were set to arrive, but he didn’t have any faith that the system worked as smoothly as they’d been briefed that it would. He’d seen too much “efficiency” during this war to believe that Harrisburg would be any less of a clusterfuck than the last two jumps had been.

  Another thing that gave him pause was how long they could actually hold against the creatures. They’d been able to set a decent defensive perimeter in New Jersey during the month that the zombies had swarmed northward up the coast, but they’d only taken four days to move from Parsippany to Allentown and now the defenders were already preparing to move again once the transports were gone. Did they have time to delay the zombies long enough to set up a new perimeter?

  Harrisburg was only about sixty miles away and if the Chaos Company tanks couldn’t delay the creatures long enough, they could potentially be there in two days. They needed more time for the ground defenders to get into their trucks. Actually, what they needed was more tanks. One of the Blue Platoon’s tanks went down for a cracked engine block yesterday so it would stay where it was with the crew using it as a defensive platform for as long as they could before they had to bug out.

  That left him with eleven tanks to face millions of zombies as they marched westward from the East Coast. True, the Air Force had been pounding the shit out of them with conventional bombs, but the mass of zombies seemed unstoppable. Evidently, the president had learned the lesson from DC that nuclear weapons didn’t work against them beyond the initial blast and had banned the military’s use of nukes. The intent was to keep the land usable for the eventual re-habitation by humanity.

  Mike watched his gunner decimate the creatures in front of him in the tank’s monitor. Sergeant Gilstrap fired the coax at face level of the lead zombies and the rounds carried through, killing those behind them. “Sir, are you gonna get in on this fight?” his gunner asked.

  “Shit, yeah. I was just thinking about our situation,” the commander replied and grabbed the CROWS joystick to activate the large remotely-operated .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the top of the turret. He slewed the gun left to right to ensure that it was working properly and adjusted the crosshairs in the computer display to head height of the zombies several feet behind the leaders. That was the plan that they’d worked out, the smaller 7.62-millimeter machine guns would cut down the front ranks while the .50 cals took out the ones further back. The rounds from Mike’s gun would easily carry through five or six of the creatures, effectively decimating the attack.

  He feathered the trigger to fire short bursts and the Ma Deuce spit out rounds at 2,900 feet per second. Mike traversed the CROWS slowly back and forth across the crowd in front of his tank to maximize the effectiveness of the weapon. In his monitor, entire groups of the creatures collapsed in heaps, but the ones behind continued to press forward, climbing over their fallen comrades.

  His headset crackled and the voice of the female radio operator from the headquarters filled his ears. “Be advised, fast movers will be on site in less than one minute. Ensure that you are properly secured against thousand-pounders. Out.”

  Mike stopped firing the .50 cal and spoke up on the company frequency, “The Air Force is going to drop one thousand pound bombs in one minute. You should already be buttoned up, just double check that your hatches are fully locked.”

  He switched off his microphone and continued to fire into the horde. Mike couldn’t do anything about the positioning of his men without potentially giving away their high ground on the golf course to the creatures. He just had to hope that the Air Force dropped toward the back of the mass of writhing bodies and not near the front. They were more than 1,500 meters away from the group, but if the pilots misjudged and dropped too early, even the M1A2 Abrams wouldn’t be able to withstand a direct hit from that type of bomb; the overpressure alone would turn the men’s internal organs into jelly.

  Mike’s eyes registered the explosions a half second before the sound wave hit and scrambled the tank’s monitors. The vehicle rocked slightly as explosion after explosion slaughtered the zombies that they’d been firing at. After several seconds of almost constant explosions, the sound of the jets’ afterburners kicking in reached his ears as they veered hard toward the north to hit the next group.

  The Chaos tanks were far enough away from the impacts that he didn’t hear any shrapnel hitting against the tank. But Mike knew that the troops on the line didn’t have overhead cover; they only had layers of concertina wire stretched in front of them for protection. Those poor, magnificent bastards.

  The optics on the CROWS compensated for the displacement and came back on line. Where there’d been a mass of zombies easily almost a mile across, there were now twisted, broken bodies as far as the camera’s lens could see. Mike had no idea how many that meant had been killed, but it was easily in the tens of thousands in an instant.

  Amazingly, things continued to move across the engagement area. Mike zoomed the camera in and scanned the ground where the bombs impacted. The creatures’ bodies had been shredded by the explosions, but they continued to struggle toward the human defenders. If their brains remained intact, then broken bones and missing limbs didn’t stop them in their unending quest.

  He breathed a slight sigh of relief as he heard the faint, single-shot rifles of the infantrymen begin to fire. They were shooting the creatures that continued to move toward the defensive line, posing the greatest threat to the defenders. It was only a matter of time before the wire was breached or everyone ran out of ammo, and then they’d fall back and repeat the process again somewhere else.

  For now, the men and women who defended their homeland could be proud that they put a major dent into the zombie population as they continued their slow, devastating advance westward.

  *****

  23 October, 0714 hrs local

  A&P Food Store, New Jersey Route 10

  Randolph, New Jersey

  The creatures couldn’t see very well in the darkness. Maria had figured that out the first night after they left the firehouse. They’d watched from the second floor living area to make sure the way was clear before making their move. They made the mistake of not searching their surroundings before they tried to leave the building and got into trouble. They went down the stairs, carrying their new bags full of pilfered gear and walked out the front door, directly into two zombies wandering near the street.

  The creatures heard Maria’s sharp intake of breath when she saw them and they instantly turned to come toward the noise. There were bushes lining the walkway that they ducked behind and the former executive was certain that the creatures would have seen them, but they didn’t and continued walking toward the back of the firehouse toward where the noise had echoed.

  They likely would have been able to stay hidden from the zombies indefinitely if Shawn hadn’t had to shift his position because his thighs were tired from crouching like a catcher in a baseball game. The noise attracted the two zombies once again and they had to run or risk getting caught. They made it about ten feet before the sudden movement caught up with Shawn and he got light-headed and stumbled. Maria pushed him behind a large tree, but it was well in sight of the creatures pursuing them.