Rolling Hunger Read online

  Intense was a good descriptor for the lean ex-Ranger, one that was mirrored in his hard blue eyes and the set of his jaw. He was sitting in the passenger seat of Gnome-1, the center vehicle, the barrel of his M-4 resting on the still of the open window, watching the small screen of the GPS unit. “Six to all, we dismount in oh-five, over.”

  In their early, pre-corporate days the Gnomes had captured seven high-quality Motorola portables from FASA groups, enough to equip the primary corporate officers; only days old the Corporation was struggling with every possible shortage of weapons and equipment. Gnome-1 and Gnome-2 had CB radios, and Gnome-1 also had a Cold War-era RT-1439 military radio issued by the DSR so they could communicate with the regional controllers.

  As the others checked in, their voices whispering in via the earpiece, Marv tapped the GPS. “We’re stopping in half a mile,” he advised.

  “Yes, sir,” Associate Phillip ‘Whiz’ Tinkler nodded. Whiz was a good-natured young man from New Mexico who had worked retail before things went to hell. He and his family had been returning from visiting in-laws in Arkansas when the outbreak caught them in northern Texas. Whiz had worn the inevitable nickname that came of a last name like ‘Tinkler’ with a world-weary acceptance, and had recouped what dignity he could by labeling his gear with ‘The Wiz’. Marv figured this was far from the first time he had gotten a similar nickname.

  As a group, Marv didn’t have a lot to work with in terms of experience or training: JD had served in the Navy, Brick had served in the Polish Army and as a contractor in Afghanistan, and he had one ex-Marine amongst the new-hires. He was hiring civilians, throwing them into uniform and going to war with insufficient weapons and equipment. It would be a joke, except that it wasn’t. The six guys who had come out of the Florida run with him were just ordinary guys (except for Addison, who was in a class all by himself) who stepped up when men were needed, and he expected that the new-hires would do the same.

  That was why he cracked down on appearance, military formalities and protocols: if he could get them to believe they were soldiers they were on the road to being soldiers.

  At least the Associates were volunteers and highly motivated. Most were not much over twenty, jazzed over the idea of being contractors (Marv had strictly banned the word ‘mercenary’), and nearly all without close family ties. Young and enthused, they were aping the Hollywood war movie roles they liked best, which explained the plethora of nicknames.

  Marv prayed every night that he could break them in and train them sufficiently before they ran into something serious, and spent his every waking hour planning and preparing.

  “Up there,” Marv pointed. “Just pull onto the shoulder.” He keyed his throat mike. “Six to all, dismount.”

  Marv intended to have six shooters per truck, two in the cab and four in the cargo bed, sufficient to defend the vehicles while leaving room for salvage or rescued people, and two spares so they could rotate people out to stay behind to rest or recover from wounds or injuries. At the moment, however, there were only seventeen Gnomes, not counting Chip’s and Bear’s girlfriends who were permanent base-duty staff.

  They disembarked smoothly enough, moving away from the vehicles into a loose perimeter without bunching up too much; daily training and drills, even when on operations, were a standard feature of the YGAT Corporation experience, as Chip liked to describe it.

  Executive Officer Jefferson ‘JD’ Davis nodded approvingly to himself as he swung out of the cab of Gnome-3. The pro wrestling promoter’s stint in the Navy hadn’t conferred skills that translated well into the challenges of this environment, but it had taught him the importance of action drills. The handsome ‘face man’ of the Corporation was fifteen years removed from his Navy days and there was gray in his meticulously groomed hair (he was one of the few Gnomes not to have a Marv-approved buzz cut), but his six foot two inch frame was still as toned as when he had wrestled for Florida State.

  A successful career working the wrestling circuit as a promoter and agent had developed his people and administration skills, and Marv was only too happy to dump the staff work and PR responsibilities onto JD’s capable shoulders.

  “What’s the plan?” he asked as he joined the former Ranger at Gnome-2’s front bumper. hitching his H&K G36K so it rode better on its three-point sling.

  Marv stowed his binoculars. “Leave six with the trucks, take the rest forward on foot and scout the place. Unless the zeds are there in mass numbers the ground element will take them out.”

  “The trucks are tall enough so that zombies are easy meat,” JD pointed out mildly.

  “Yeah, but our guys will have to face the infected on foot sooner or later. The quicker they learn that you don’t need armor or height to win, the better.”

  “Good point,” JD conceded, having already figured the Ranger’s plan; Marv’s attitude towards training and preparation was no secret. “How about I take the ground element?”

  Marv looked surprised. “Why?”

  “Same concept: these guys need to learn that they can survive without Marv the Maniac holding their hands. They need to learn that I’m a real leader, and I need to become a combat leader.”

  The former soldier stared at him for a moment from under the bill of the black Ranger patrol cap he wore, and then suddenly grinned, instantly looking much younger and not at all like a homicidal maniac. “Did any of your guys get a contract that didn’t require lubrication?”

  The promoter shrugged good-naturedly. “It’s a cut-throat business.”

  “I don’t doubt. I’ll keep Addison and four Associates, you take the rest. If you’re not absolutely sure you can win, pull back and we’ll go in with the trucks. Better to do it the easy way than to lose a fight.”

  “Got it.” As he moved down the line of trucks JD felt a little flutter in his stomach. He had seen no small amount of anti-zed action getting to Texas, and the Gnomes had tagged more than a few in their initial salvage operations, but Marv had always been calling the shots. Part of the reason he had decided to violate one of the Navy’s core rules by volunteering was that he, JD, needed to learn that he didn’t need Marv holding his hand, either. JD was old enough to look into the mirror and realize that two diamonds on the collar of a uniform did not make him a leader or a soldier in and of themselves. He had to prove to himself and to the rest of the Gnomes that he could live up to the image.

  “Everybody’s tough in the pre-match meets,” he reminded himself. “Time to get into the ring and see what is what.”

  After Marv chose the four Associates who would be staying with the trucks JD issued his orders. “Everyone pair off with a senior member, except for Chief Winters. The rest stop is a half-mile east of us, out of sight behind that rise. Chief Winters will scout ahead and the rest will close and engage the zeds based on his report. Keep all weapons on safe, and no firing without my permission. If the numbers are right we will take them out using melee weapons. Stay in pairs, maintain intervals, and be alert.” He surveyed the faces. “Guys, we’re going to rescue people; years from now you’re going to be able to tell your kids that when 618 hit you weren’t some scabby refugee, that you were a badass who took the war to the zeds, who saved people. Remember that we are not fighting Human beings - we’re putting down infected meat, so forget what it looks like or what used to be and just do what needs to be done. Any questions?”

  Master Chief Operator Dyson Winters eased through a clump of scrub brush and took a knee, bow ready. A clean-cut young man in his late twenties whose sun-bleached blond hair looked white in its fresh buzz-cut, Dyson was regarded as one of the physically strongest Gnomes (only Brick eased him out of the top title) and undoubtedly the most dangerous with his bare hands. Before the outbreak Dyson had had a dojo in Atlanta teaching mixed martial arts and caged fighting techniques, and fought in his own right. An expert bow hunter, he was commonly tasked with scouting missions and recon duty, and was a frequent volunteer for dangerous missions.

  In th
e restructuring of the initial small band of survivors into a corporate force he had given up his opportunity for a captured assault rifle, instead being issued a folding-stock MP-5 that JD had initially carried. The smaller weapon let him carry his compound bow in a soft case on his back for quiet work without being burdened by too much bulk. The bow and all its accessories (a twelve hundred dollar package) wasn’t heavy, but even in its case it often made handling a full-sized rifle awkward.

  The rise wasn’t very high and the brush wasn’t very thick, but it was sufficient for Dyson’s purposes; adjusting his binoculars, he surveyed the scene. To the east of his position was the rest stop, a simple one-lane parallel drive with angled parking, a brick restroom facility, and a few covered concrete picnic tables.

  The state highway was blocked by a snarl of vehicles just east of the east entrance to the rest stop; from a cursory examination of the tangle of wrecks Dyson guessed that an infected subject had turned to full zed in a Trailways bus, and over the next few days the resultant mob of infected subjects had successfully attacked vehicles trying to pass the bus to either side. Other drivers had taken to bypassing the snarl by going off-road, several bogging down for good in the ditches.

  That was the fate of a family travelling west: they had hung up their mini-van trying to get across the ditch; The family had reacted fast, fleeing successfully to the rest rooms in the nearby rest stop and barricading the door. They had the unbelievable luck to be able to raise the DSA regional controller, and that luck had held: help was within response distance.

  “Three to Five, over.”

  “Five to Three, go ahead.” JD sounded a bit eager.

  “Five, we have about thirty cold ones at the point of contact, another fifteen plus wandering. Best approach is to flank north and use the building as cover, over.”

  “Five to Three, received. Meet us three hundred yards north of the road on your feature, out.”

  As he slipped along the crest of the rise heading north he returned to the topic that had been bugging him for weeks: his fiancé Anna. At the onset of the outbreak he had been managing a fighter at a bout in Florida and she had been visiting her parents in Maine. One reason Dyson had agreed to assist Marv and his crew on the desperate run across the South was because he had figured that Uncle Sam would have enough gratitude to either get him on a flight to Maine or to get Anna to Texas.

  He had been half right: they had gotten her a seat on an Air Force transport which had been scheduled to fly from Maine to Minot Air Force Base, and from there down to Texas. Had being the operative word: the plane had developed engine trouble on the way and was going to divert to Saint Paul; on final approach a FASA team had a near-miss on the plane with an old Blowpipe SAM. The damaged transport had diverted a second time and tried for Grand Forks Air Force Base but had to set down on a highway mid-way across Minnesota.

  Air Force Base Defense personnel had rescued the passengers, but now she was stuck at Grand Forks AFB and there was no word on when or if a civilian engaged to another civilian would be able to get a flight down here. Uncle Sam’s gratitude, the Georgian had discovered, had a pretty short half-life.

  “OK,” JD kept his voice down: the Gnomes were gathered at the back of the restroom building. “We take the zeds out first. Dyson, get on the roof and watch for any surge, be ready to provide covering fire if we need it. Chip and Brick stay at the south corner of the building so they can’t flank us, and the rest pair off and go to the north corner. Bear, you spook ‘em. Any questions? Get your game faces on, boys.”

  Senior Chief Operator Chip Wilson wished for the thousandth time that he had taken a job driving trucks for the State. He was no hero, no mercenary, and definitely no badass. But Sylvia Santiago, his hot Cuban girlfriend, thought he was a tough guy and that the Gnomes were heroes, and that meant sooner or later he was going to get ripped up by zombies or gunned down by FASA grunts. Done in by a Latina hard body: they ought to put that on his tombstone.

  At six one Chip was the second-tallest Gnome, just topped by JD, and easily the biggest, being big-boned and pretty overweight. Years working on a moving truck had meant that he was strong and overweight, and in fact he now weighed less than he had at the onset of the outbreak, but in his mind he was still the pudgy geek he had been in high school.

  His face was too round to be handsome, although he had to admit his new buzz cut made him look less amiable than he actually was. Easy-going had been his life before the outbreak, moving households by day and performing heroics at night in Skyrim, WOW, and similar haunts. Now he moved salvage and faced danger for real and wanted nothing so much as to go back to the old days.

  Except for Sylvia, who somehow saw something desirable in an overweight over-tall geek. He would resent her for getting him killed, but she was simply too hot for him to harbor ill-will.

  Brick slapped him on the shoulder, and the big Gnome nodded bleakly. Brick wasn’t fooled by the new haircut: he knew perfectly well how scared Chip got, and yet he always partnered up with him. Brick was another reason Chip hadn’t gone over the hill: you don’t get friends like that often.

  Ivan ‘Brick’ Lischensky was a Polish immigrant who had been assigned as Chip’s partner in the moving company, a taciturn man in this thirties who had served in the Polish Army and as a security contractor in Afghanistan to raise money to immigrate to the States. He looked a bit like the actor Daniel Craig, if Craig was shorter, tougher, and had the upper body strength of a stevedore

  Brick was the Gnome’s chief mechanic, a skilled man with tools or a welding torch. Unlike Chip he was as tough as they came and unfazed by anything, and the big Gnome was grateful for his presence.

  “Hey, over here,” Master Chief Operator Leslie “Bear” Mapplethorpe waved at the nearest zombie, a battered-looking male in filthy overalls. “Brains right here.” The infected staggered around, its stiff clumsiness proclaiming it to be fairly new to the zombie business, and let go with a moaning wail that sent shivers down the biker’s spine before lurching at best speed towards the hard-faced man standing at the corner of the restroom building.

  Bear had given up his pony tail (more because he was concerned about a zed getting a grip on it than anything else) and his denim biker’s vest (on duty, that is), and now looked like a very tough soldier. Bambi liked the new look; she said that with his brooding dark eyes and strong jaw he looked like the old photos of Civil War soldiers. The biker humored her whims, but he wasn’t unpleased with his new look.

  He let the zed get in close and then knocked aside its pawing hands with his shield, stepping in to plant the beak of his war hammer through the thing’s forehead, dropping it like a sack of potatoes. It was eerie, he thought for the hundredth time, that the zeds could soak up incredible damage without acknowledging it, but inflict damage to the brain or spinal cord and they dropped without a twitch or a sigh.

  The hammer was a little over two feet long, a high-carbon steel rod with a grip of para-cord wrapped between two large washers welded in place to keep the hand from slipping up or off the grip. The business end was a three-inch spike welded at a right angle to the haft, a vicious-looking alloy shard shaped like a chisel. A large steel nut had been welded opposite the spike, and two inches of haft extended above the spike and had been ground into a dull point.

  The shield, actually a square buckler, was a plate cut from the body of a 50s era car or from metal highway signs with steel bar stock reinforcements, an arm loop, and a steel bar grip. Since the zombies were single-minded and would not grasp the fact that their attacks were being parried until the third or fourth failure the design had proved surprisingly effective. The front of the shield had a laminated image of Moogie himself, the plaster yard gnome Doc had kept from their first fight as a team back in Florida, and who still resided with the Corporate rear echelon.

  Brick had made ten shield & hammer sets back when they were on the run across the south, and another ten sets while they were getting the corporation set up. Only Dys
on, who carried a shorter roofing hammer because of his weapon load, and Addison, who preferred a British Army ice axe, didn’t carry the Pole’s handiwork.

  Bear waited as the zombies, alerted by that awful rally cry, shuffled towards him; the Gnomes had learned that if a zombie lost sight of its target it often lost interest, and they would not pursue if the target was significantly faster than they were. It was a frequent subject of debate as to how mindless the zeds actually were.

  As the lead infected closed Bear sidestepped along the restroom wall, leading them on.

  “Stick around, don’t be a wuss,” Dyson said from overhead.

  “Bite me,” Bear responded without taking his eyes from the infected. “This ain’t my rodeo. You got a count?”

  “Looks like thirty-two still upright, but you know there are always stragglers and holdouts.”

  “That should do it.” Bear turned and walked briskly around the corner banging his hammer against his shield. “Showtime, ladies,” he grinned as he passed through the line of Associates waiting just around the corner.

  Chapter Two

  Whiz planted his hammer in the skull of the first zombie to round the corner, a gray-skinned man clad in rags, and gagged at the noise the beak made as it pulled out of the ruined skull.

  “Slap the arms aside with the shield like we practiced and plant the beak!” JD yelled. “Don’t tap. Don’t just knock, split that damned skull. They’re not Human, they’re a meat suit for a virus. This is no different than stepping on a black widow spider, just do it and go on. Hit ‘em! Hit ’em! Sauron, quit slapping at it and put your back into the swing! Yes, just like that!”

  Associate Charles Hubbard planted his war hammer’s beak into the half-bald pate of an elderly Hispanic woman and dragged out a large portion of her brain as he jerked the weapon free. Blocking with his shield, he bent at the waist and vomited over his boots. Bear hustled over to the chunky red-haired young man’s position but Charles just shook his head and swung at the next infected as it closed on him.