"You met our mother?" Cody exclaimed in surprise. He looked over at Zack and saw the same expression on his brother's face. "How?"
"Yeah, how'd you meet her?" Zack added, taking a step to be by Cody's side.
"We were some of the poor guys tasked to hold a few blocks of New York City against millions of zombies, boys," Riley told them. "The safe zone had just collapsed and we were set to get the hell out of there when we found her by our truck. Being the upstanding gentlemen we were, we offered her a ride and she said yes."
"Don't forget to tell them about the part where you broke the truck, Riley. You can't leave that out."
"I'm never going to hear the end of that, am I, Cook?"
"Nope," the young Marine said with a snicker.
"Okay, so after we picked your mom up, we got out of the zone as fast as we could. A few blocks later, I was driving, by the way, I hit the mother of all potholes and tore the underside of the truck to pieces. After that we had to walk and fight our way block by bloody block through hundreds and hundreds of zombies."
"Jeez, I bet Mom was scared out of her mind, huh, Cody? Can you imagine her trying to hold a rifle? 'Which end does the bullet come out of again, sir?'" Zack joked while pretending to look in an imaginary gun barrel.
"I wouldn't take that bet, Zack. You'd win," Cody told him and instantly noticed the Marines were all silently staring at them. "What?"
Riley shook his head at them for a few seconds before answering. "You boys really don't know your mother very well, do you?" he said sternly. "She was right there with the rest of us, battling and scrapping for her life as well as ours."
"That's right. There was one time, right before we went down in the sewers, when a zed had grabbed me from behind and was about to give me the bite of death. I'd barely turned around by the time your mother had bashed the butt of her shotgun against the side of his head. It staggered back and then she stuck the barrel under the thing's chin and blew what was left of its brains all over the side of a building," Private Cook told them, pantomiming a gun under his chin.
"Our mom did that?" Cody was amazed. "Wow."
"No kidding," Zack said softly, obviously cowed.
"Oh, that's not all," Riley continued. "The next morning the four of us started heading south and, as hard as I tried, she refused to go with us." Cody had the distinct impression that they'd pissed the men off a little bit by disparaging their mother in front of them.
"Where'd she go?" Zack asked but Cody knew.
"Boston," he and Riley said at the same time. "That's right, Cody. She left the four of us and all the firepower we were carrying to sneak out of New York City and then sneak into Boston. To look for you two." Riley stopped with that but there was an unmistakeable so you'd better check your attitude about her at the fucking door added on with his Marine glare that neither boy missed. Zack swallowed hard and Cody twinged inwardly at the unexpected dressing-down.
"I never would have guessed she could do that," Cody admitted after a bit.
"Neither did I," Zack concurred.
"The zombies have brought out all sorts of things in all of us," Riley told them. "I never thought I'd drive a tank across the country or burn down a major city but I have."
"I want to hear that story," Zack told him eagerly.
"Let's eat first and then we can have story time," Riley answered and the boys agreed.
The small group migrated to the shadows thrown by a handful of tall trees and and settled in for an early lunch. The twins were 'treated' to a meal of military MREs. They inhaled them with the gusto that only someone who hadn't eaten them regularly could have. The Marines watched them dig in as they picked at their own. After the meal was over, Zack and Cody told the men about their journey and then it was time for the Marines' tale.
"So the four of us headed south from New York City," Riley began after a long drink from his canteen. "We parted ways with your mother and tried to make it back to the old safe zone to see if we could salvage any gear from that mess but it was still crawling with zombies. We got no closer than, what would you say, Howard? Half a mile?" Howard nodded. "There were literally tons of supplies just sitting there on the concrete but we couldn't get to them. Bullets, chow, tanks, all of it. Might as well have been at the bottom of the ocean. So we skirted the zone and worked our way south over the next three days. I'll tell you the honest truth, boys, I've never been as happy in my life as I was the second we got off that god-forsaken island.
"Our original plan was to head home to Georgia and check on our families. We knew that it was almost surely a lost cause but, like your mom, we had to check for ourselves. We were traveling along the coast when ol' Cook here finally realized his radio was off."
"Like I told you before, Riley, I thought the damn thing was broken. It hadn't worked since we bugged out of the safe zone the first time," Cook said with playful indignity. They'd obviously had this discussion before.
"As much as we wanted to, we couldn't abandon our fellow Marines like that so we made for Philly as fast as we could. At one point, we even hot wired a city bus. Not quite the same as a tank but it didn't stop for much.
"We stopped getting reports from them about two hours before we reached the city and took that as a bad sign. When we did arrive, we scouted the place out and found that they'd been overrun. In hindsight, we should have just left right then and there and been done with it all but we didn't. There was just too much stuff laying around for us to not grab what we could.
"We started looking around and found enough crates of bullets to fill an Olympic swimming pool, enough food to feed an army, somewhere around three dozen Humvees, and," Riley pointed to the slab-sided tank resting a short distance away, "that baby right there." I knew we had to take her because nothing says fuck you to a bunch of zombies quite like a tank. It might only be a prototype but the important parts work and that makes it the baddest thing on the planet."
"What Riley isn't telling you guys is that he had hot Transformer sex with the tank he loves so much while we did all the grunt work," Howard told them with a grin.
"Not quite," Riley laughed and rolled his eyes. "Anyway, we had the Humvee loaded full of supplies and I'd just gone over the tank and checked it out when we got a short burst over the radio. There was a pair of Marines trapped in a building near the edge of the lot and we went to help. As it turned out, both those assholes were bit and turned on us a few minutes after we fought our way to them. That sucked. What sucked even more is that we ended up getting trapped in the same damn building.
"Fast forward a few days again and I'm a little tired of being stuck in a cramped building with these guys and their horrible body odor. There was a stockpile of helicopter fuel a hundred yards away from us and we decided to say the hell with it and use it as a very large diversion. If it happened to burn down the football stadium behind us, well, I was okay with that. We shot the barrels and let the fuel spread and then tossed a thermite grenade and whoosh! That fireball must have been a mile high.
"I don't know if zeds can actually be afraid of anything, but they sure didn't like the approaching sea of fire. They crawled ass and we hauled ass back across the parking lot and got the hell out of there. The fire was licking at our backsides the entire way. By the time we were out of the city and looked back, I'd say at least half of it was ablaze."
"Holy shit, that's awesome," Zack said.
"I won't lie, it kind of was," Riley admitted.
Cody leaned back in the grass an put his head on his hands. "How much do you know about how all this started, Mr. Riley? I mean, we know what the news told us but I doubt they told us anything important. Or maybe even remotely true."
"We probably don't know a whole lot more than you do about how it started since we aren't wearing any general stars on our sleeves, Cody. That said, I'd put money on a scientist, a government scientist, that is, messing up somewhere or playing with something he shouldn't have."
"That's the same thing I figured. Any idea how it spread around the world so fast? I don't see how it could get as far as it did so fast."
"Ah, that's easy," Riley told him. "We put it there."
"Huh?" Cody sat up bolt-straight.
"I don't have any solid proof for that but I know it's true."
"Why? Why would we do that?"
"You think Uncle Sam is going to sit back and let one of our enemies or whatever we're calling them these days make a move on us while we're down and dealing with a zombie outbreak? Hell no. So China got some zombies, Russia got some zombies, and you'd better believe those nut jobs in North Korea got some zombies. From there it just spread like wildfire. Probably not one of their better ideas."
"Wow," was all Cody could say.
"It's a mind trip, isn't it?"
"Yeah, that's for sure." Cody's mind boggled at the thought of over one and a half billion zombies roaming the Chinese countryside. And then there was another billion something in India..."I think I need to walk that off," he said, getting to his feet and wandering a short distance away.
"Is your brother going to be okay, Zack?" Riley asked softly.
"Yeah, he'll be fine in a little while. He just needs time to work through all that or whatever he does."
"Your mom said he was the the thoughtful twin," Riley said as they watched Cody stroll through the parking lot.
"What'd she say about me?"
"A lot of things, actually," Riley laughed. He stood up and stretched.
"Oh yeah? Like what?" Zack followed him to his feet.
"Don't worry. Most of them were good." The man turned his head so Zack couldn't see the smile that broke out across his face.
"Whats that supposed to mean?"
"Don't worry about it." He ruffled Zack's hair playfully. "Hey, do you want to help me check the loads on the fifties?"
"Do I?" By the tone of Zack's voice, it was easy for the world to know that was the dumbest question he'd ever been asked. "Sure I do! Can I shoot one, too?"
"Maybe. Come on, kid." Riley started for the tank first and Zack fell in step beside him.
Cody had parked himself on the hood of a car a few yards away from the tank and half-listened as Zack peppered the young Marine with question after question about the workings of the metal behemoth. He quickly decided that the man had the patience of a saint or else he would have told Zack to zip his lip long ago.
"What kind of shells are you carrying for the big gun?" Cody heard him ask.
"We've got a few high-explosive shells, a couple penetrators just in case, but lots and lots of beehive rounds." Zack must have made a questioning face because the tanker explained. "They're pretty much like giant shotgun shells. They come out of the barrel and sound like a swarm of angry bees right before they shred to pieces anything that happens to have the misfortune of being in front of them."
"That is the most awesome thing I've ever heard," Zack said and Cody grinned. Good old Zack, Cody thought as he heard more than he ever wanted to know about the inner workings of the tank.
"Can I shoot the machine gun now?" Zack asked earnestly after he'd listened to a long-winded talk about something that went right over Cody's head. Something to do with turbines and gear reduction.
Riley looked at his fellow soldiers and they just shrugged. "Why not?" Howard answered. "We've got bullets for days," he said, pointing to the large crates strapped to the top of the turret and the third between the fuel drums on the back of the turret.
"Looks like your birthday came early, Zack. Hop on up here." He directed Zack into place and knelt close by. Cody could see a grin so large that it threatened to split his brother's face in two as he got ready. Riley told him to aim at the building and Zack did, fingers tensing tightly as he waited for the okay to blast the Walmart to pieces. "Go for it."
Zack did. Repeated whump whump whumps filled the air as he sent dozens of rounds screaming into the front of the store. The glass shattered into thousands of tiny pieces and fist-sized chunks of concrete exploded out of the wall as he raked the gun across the facade. Spent shell casings clattered to the ground beside the tank. When the belt finally ran dry, Zack's face looked like he'd just come off the world's biggest roller coaster.
"So how was it?" Cody asked him, unable to keep a straight face while looking at Zack's infectious smile.
"I...I could die happy now," he replied, leaning against the back of the cupola in supreme satisfaction.
"There's clean underwear in your bag if you need them."
"I just might. Wow, thanks, Riley. That was incredible."
"No problem, Zack. Now help me change the belt and we'll call it even." Cody turned away and missed Zack trying to manhandle a box of ammunition that weighed almost as much as he did while he pulled their map out of his back pocket and spread it out over the car's hood. His fingers were busy tracing along the route he'd highlighted when he felt someone behind him.
"Oh, hey," he said as he turned around. Riley was standing there. Behind him, Zack was poking around the Humvee with the other Marines.
"Hey, Cody," Riley answered. Cody studied his face and could see that he was conflicted about something. The young man opened his mouth once and shut it before he said anything.
"What's the matter, Mr. Riley?"
"Cody, part of me is wishing that I didn't tell you that we ran into your mother a little while ago."
"Huh?" Cody was perplexed. Why wouldn't he want to tell him good news like that?
"I was going to ask you the same thing I asked her when she left us, that you and your brother are more than welcome to come along with us. I'd prefer it if you did, actually. I've always had this nagging feeling that we let her go off to her death. There's a lot of zombies between New York and Boston."
"We can't, sir. If she made it to Boston, she'll see our note and go to my aunt's farm. We have to be there."
Riley sighed. "I know, Cody. I want to tell you that you're making a mistake but I can't. I can't see the future. You might make it out there with no problems and we might not make it to the next county." Riley leaned against the side of the car and crossed his arms over his chest.
"I know our mom would appreciate your effort as much as I do, sir. If we didn't think there was a chance of meeting up with her again, we'd go along with you."
"She's a lucky woman to have kids like you boys, Cody," Riley told him.
"Thank you, sir."
"I wish you'd change your mind but I know you won't." Riley put a hand on Cody's shoulder and squeezed gently. "That said, since you won't go with us the whole way, what about we take you to right about here?" He pointed to the spot where Cody's highlighter diverged from the highway they were on and headed west.
Cody's face lit up. "I'll have to ask Zack but I think that will work."
"He can ride in the tank if he wants."
"Zack's in," Cody laughed. "I don't even need to ask him."
"Good. I guess I can live with that," Riley told him as Cody started refolding the map. "Do you two have anything left to do here? I want to get to that fuel truck as soon as possible."
"I think we're done here. Whenever you're ready, sir."
Cody stuck the map back in his pocket and went to share the news with his brother. He pulled Zack away from the soldiers and told him of Riley's offer, playing it slow and cool, before mentioning that he could ride in the tank.
"Well hell yes we can do that," Zack exclaimed and nearly hugged Cody before he caught himself. "I mean, yeah, that sounds like a good idea." A chorus of laughter came from the men standing near the Humvee.
Five minutes later they were moving out. Cody was riding in the smaller Humvee while Zack was sitting proudly in the turret beside his new hero, Riley. They kept the pace rather slow to conserve the few remaining gallons of gas in the tank but Zack didn't care. They could be moving along at a snail's pace and it wouldn't matter to him. He watched the landscape roll by, one hand laying lovingly on the barrel of the fifty-caliber monster in front of him.
The fuel tanker was just where the other Marines had said it was, sitting in the parking lot of an abandoned shopping center. Riley told the driver to pull as close to the truck as he could while he had Cody and the Humvee run ahead to scout the area. "It's going to take a while to fill this beast as well as the extra fuel tanks we strapped to the back," he said. "It would suck incredibly hard to be surprised while we have our pants down."
Cody left with Howard, who he had decided was his second favorite of the men, and raced ahead. Howard drove and put Cody in charge of the pair of powered binoculars. They had just stopped at the crest of a small hill and Cody was standing on the hood and looking around when his jaw dropped.
"Where did they come from?" he asked incredulously, pointing at the mass of zombies that was trampling everything in their path as they trudged out of a line of trees. He handed Howard the binoculars and squinted into the distance.
"I'm more worried about where they're going," Howard replied. They watched as the throng steadily advanced toward the rest of their small team. A few seemed to look in their direction, and an even smaller number began shambling their way, but the vast majority of them were on their way to Zack and the others.
"Not good." Howard pushed the binoculars back into Cody's hand and ducked into the Humvee to grab the radio. "Hey boss, looks like you guys are going to have company in a few minutes. Lots of company."
"Copy that, Howard," Riley's voice said through the radio. "Think you can slow them down for us?
"I don't think we're carrying that much ammo on the Hummer, boss."
"That many, huh? Just get back here and give us a little support. We've got the beast's tank about a quarter full. If we can't top off the tank and barrels here, we'll just have to do it somewhere else."
"Roger that, Riley. We'll be back in a minute." Howard hung the mic back on its hook and slid into the seat. "Let's go, Cody. We have to go babysit the big boys for a while."
Cody hopped down and buckled up as the Humvee leaped forward. He tried to do a quick count as they drove past the herd of zombies but gave up. It was like trying to count individual locusts in a swarm. The similarities between the zombies and the locusts gave him a chill. They pulled in beside the tank with a squeal of tires and burnt rubber.
"How long do we have, Howard?"
"I'd say five minutes."
"Maybe even less than that," Cody interjected. "It looks like they're moving faster than they did before," he added when the group looked at him. "When I was looking at them through the binoculars, they didn't seem to be as uncoordinated as they used to be."
"So what are you saying, Cody? Are they evolving or something?"
"I hope not. I really hope not," he told them gravely.
The men continued pumping fuel from the truck as fast as they could, each aware that a wall of undeath was inexorably walking their way. Cody heard them first and pointed to the end of the street. Though he'd heard it a hundred times by now, the low wail of the zombies still made his skin crawl.
"How's it looking, Cook?" Riley asked as he stood in front of the tank.
"The main tank is full and we're working on the spare drums on the back now."
"Forget them. Gas up the Humvee and we'll top them off later."
"Right." Cook moved the hose from the spare tanks to the smaller vehicle and turned the nozzle on.
"Do you think all those zombies heard their buddy calling for help the other night?" Zack asked, hand resting on his pistol's grip and flexing.
"Unless his call carried dozens of miles, I doubt it. They'd have been here already if they did. This just makes me think that they smelled us. Whatever they were doing on the other side of those woods, they knew we were here and decided to come get a bite to eat. And to answer the question you're about to ask, yes, I still think he was calling for help. There just wasn't anyone around to come save him."
"They're going to need someone to save them from us," Zack said as he patted the tank's massive track."
Everyone's attention was focused to their front as the horde neared so no one noticed the zombies that approached from behind. There were far fewer, twenty or so, but they caused a disproportionally huge amount of havoc for their number.
Cody heard the first one and fell as his feet tangled when he turned turned. He went down in a heap and barely managed a pained yelp as a warning. Zack and the Marines wheeled around and found the zombies in their midst. Someone yelled "oh shit," before the fight began.
"Cody!" Zack screamed as the zombies joined them.
Cody was trying to get to his feet but he was too slow. The zombie he'd seen and reacted to was on him, already leaning forward to drop on him. He screamed as it dove in, somehow managing in his terror to get his hands on the zombie's chest and keep its gnashing mouth away from him. He struggled against the thing's weight, trying to throw it off, when he saw a giant boot fly in from his left and connect with the creature's head. He heard its neck snap as it fell away.
"Get up!" Riley shouted over the din of battle and yanked Cody to his feet. He shoved the boy behind him and up against the tank as he emptied his sidearm into another three zombies that dared come too close. They fell as the sound of three assault rifles and a shotgun split the air. The rest of the small group of zombies collapsed in bloody heaps. There were more coming, not as many as in the main group, but a sizable amount.
"Cody! Are you okay?" Zack asked, rushing over to his brother's side and looking him over.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I just fell and it was on me so fast." Cody was surprised when Zack wrapped him in a hug. He hugged back.
"Good. I was scared I'd lost you for a minute." Zack looked almost uncomfortable saying those words.
"The hell was all that shit? Where'd they come from?" Howard bellowed as he put another round into a twitcher.
"Did they just fucking ambush us?" Cook added in as he slammed a new clip in his rifle.
"They better not have," Riley said. "That would be a very bad thing but we'll worry about it later. For now, let's get the hell out of here. We have enough gas to go a couple hundred miles." During the small battle, the large group of zombies had closed within a hundred yards, stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. They loaded themselves into their vehicles and cranked the engines. Oily smoke belched from the tank as it began to thrum.
"Load some beehives," Riley called down into the bowels of the tank from his perch as it began to rumble forward. "Stay behind us," he yelled through cupped hands to the Humvee and got a thumbs-up in response. Finally, he leaned to his left and yelled "shoot anything that fucking moves," in Zack's ear.
"You got it," Zack replied with a terrible smile.
They pulled away from the tanker and roared at the zombies. Riley gave the order to fire the main gun and a second later a buzz saw ripped through the undead. Zack's eyes widened as he saw what had been a hundred zombies turned into a pink mist as thousands of pieces of metal tore into them. Riley traversed the turret and fired again and again. Zombies fell by the hundreds, either cut to pieces by the shells or shredded by Zack and his machine gun.
When they had run through the horde, Riley ordered the loader to give him a high-explosive round. He centered the computer's crosshairs on the fuel truck and fired the shell a split second later after it did the calculations. It streaked across the distance in less than two seconds and impacted directly in the center of the trailer. A fireball erupted and shot skyward while the shock wave from the blast knocked everything flat within a hundred yards. Streamers of flaming metal and chunks of zombies rained down where they'd been less than ten seconds ago. Cody could feel the heat on his face from where they sat.
Cody counted up the surviving zombies and whistled. A double handful were all that remained from the untold number that had set upon them. "Wow."
"Shit, that's nothing," Howard said from the driver's seat. "If we had just one of our Cobras flying with us, you wouldn't see anything bigger than a zombie McNugget laying out there."
Cody had the vague idea that a Cobra was some sort of helicopter. He'd ask Zack later to be sure but he was still impressed by the damage they'd dealt. The Marines dismounted and starting sniping the leftovers, dropping them like stones with a shot to the head. The situation now taken care of, the small group took off again, heading down the highway at a leisurely forty miles an hour.
They rode through the rest of the morning and early afternoon with little adventure before Cody saw the markings for the westbound highway they wanted. Riley pulled the tank to the side of the road and Cody and the Humvee stopped beside it.
"You're sure I can't talk you boys out of this?" he asked as they huddled in the middle of the road.
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Riley," Cody told him. "We've got to get to the farm."
"I thought you'd say that but I had to try. Be careful, okay? Promise me you'll stay safe and watch each other's backs."
"We do and we will," Zack said, shaking the man's hand. Cody shook it next and hugged Riley before he could stop himself.
"Sorry," he whispered.
"No problem, Cody. Stay safe." The twins said their goodbyes and gave their thanks and began walking after the sun. The four Marines stood and watched as they walked up the ramp and disappeared from sight.
"You think they're going to make it, boss?" Cook asked idly.
"I can't say for sure, but I sure wouldn't bet against them."
First, if you clicked on the story and automatically went to the newest chapter, you might want to go back one since this was a double post. I've been wanting to do a double chapter for a while now and this seemed like a good time to do it after last chapter's psuedo-cliffhanger.