The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(97)
They came to rest just short of the treeline, the Buell’s engine purring between their legs. Steve’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the outer wall. It wasn’t the zombies that bothered him. The lab’s main gate was blocked. A Humvee had collided with the burned-out hulk of what looked like a semi’s tractor. The trailer must have continued forward, turning over as it slammed into the two vehicles. Bright, icelike pools shone where fire had melted parts of the aluminum walks. Can’t get in that way. Steve glanced over his shoulder at Naomi. “Time to use the service entrance.”
The neuroscientist actually cocked her head. “There is one?”
Steve couldn’t help but chuckle. For someone so smart, Naomi sure could be dumb. Steve licked his finger and placed it dramatically in the wind. “Let’s find out.”
The lab was completely surrounded. He’d expected that. There had to be, what, a few hundred shuffling and groping at each side of the hexagonal perimeter.
“I can’t see another gate!” Naomi shouted over the bike’s roar.
“We’re not looking for one!” Steve shouted back.
There! A spot where the living dead had crowded against the wall. Maybe there had been something on the other side: a living survivor, a wounded animal, who knew, who cared. Whatever it was had been tasty enough to entice enough Stinkers to crush some of their buddies against the naked cinderblocks. The pressure had created a solid mass of compressed necrotic flesh, its shallow angle allowing the still-mobile Stinkers to literally walk up it and over the wall.
The “ramping” must have happened at least a few hours ago. The original prey had long since been devoured. Only a few ghouls now stumbled or crawled over the undead ramp. Some of its parts still moved: a waving arm or a clicking jaw. Steve could have cared less about them; it was the mobile ones still slouching over them he worried about. Just a few. He nodded imperceptibly. No problem.
Naomi didn’t react when Steve aimed the bike’s nose at the ramp. Only when he gunned the engine, did she look straight ahead to his target.
“Are you—” she began.
“Only way in.”
“That’s crazy!” she screamed, loosening her grip on his waist as if to leap off the Buell.
Steve’s left hand instinctively shot out, holding her wrist and pulling it to him. Looking back at her terrified gaze, he flashed his signature grin. “Trust me.”
Wide-eyed and chalk pale, Naomi could only nod and hug him with all her might. Steve turned back to the ramp, continuing to grin. Okay, Gunny Toombs, this one’s for you!
The Buell took off like a rifle bullet, Hansen leaning into the howling wind. Five hundred yards… four hundred… three…. Some of the zombies near the ramp began to notice them, turning and stumbling towards the oncoming crotch rocket. Two hundred yards… one hundred… and now they were massing, grouping into a small, but tight swarm blocking the ramp. Without flinching, Steve swung the M4 out of its worn leather scabbard and with eyes still fixed firmly ahead he bit down hard on the weapon’s charging handle. It was a move he’d only tried once before, that night his Harrier had crashed outside Fallujah. The impact had broken one arm and both legs, but not his warrior’s spirit. He’d tried using his teeth to cock the automatic carbine. It’d worked then, and damn if it worked now. The first round clicked reassuringly into the chamber.
No time to aim. He’d have to shoot from the hip. Crack! The closest one’s left eye disappeared, a reddish brown cloud exploding out the back of its head. Steve might have commented on his marksmanship, if only there was time. Crack! Crack! Two more went down, falling like puppets with their strings cut. This time he smiled. Still got it.
The path began to open, but at the blinding speed they were traveling, would it open fast enough? “Oh my god!” Naomi screamed.
With barely half a dozen bike lengths to go before they hit the ramp, Steve squeezed the M4’s trigger, spraying a fully automatic burst of copper-coated tickets to hell. Kiss Satan for me, Steve thought. Or my ex-wife, whichever you see first.
The carbine clicked on empty just as the last zombie fell, and with a soft crunch and a bang, one hundred and forty six horses thundered onto the ramp. With the Buell’s wheels tearing up its putrid surface as they went, Steve and Naomi catapulted clear over the fence.
“OOOH-RAHH!” Steve shouted, and for just a split second, he was back in the cockpit, shrieking over the Iraqi desert, showering fire and death in a star spangled storm. Unlike the AV-8 jump jet, however, this machine couldn’t be steered once airborne.
The Buell’s front tire smashed into the parking lot asphalt and skidded on a puddle of human remains. The impact catapulted both from the custom leather saddle. Steve tucked, rolled, and slammed against the tire of a smashed Prius. The hybrid’s driver, armless, faceless, stared down at him from the open driver’s door. Too bad the “save the Earth” car couldn’t do the same for its owner, he thought.
Steve sprang to his feet. He could see Naomi lying several yards away. She was face down, unmoving. Shit. The bike lay in the exact opposite direction. No way to tell if either of them was alive.
The moans and stench hit him like a one-two punch. He whirled just in time to see the first of the zombie horde begin to slouch towards them. Where the hell was the M4? He’d felt it slip from his grasp as they hit, heard it skitter across the hard surface. It must have gone under a car, but which one? There must have been several hundred vehicles still in the parking lot, which also meant that there must be several hundred undead former owners still on the grounds. No time to worry about that now, and no time to start looking for the weapon. The ghouls, about twenty of them now, advanced slowly towards Naomi’s motionless body.