CHAPTER TWENTY
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
—“The Charge of the Light Brigade,”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
We barreled into Clifton Forge like a trio of teenagers hitting our first club armed with fake IDs and loaded up on White Claws.
It would have been glorious in any other situation.
Right past Rainbow Gap U.S. 220 split, just like it showed on the map. If we took the road to the right and followed it, we would have eventually linked up with I-64 and headed back toward campus, none the wiser. However, the goal wasn’t for us to get safely back to campus just yet. No, we needed to distract Dale and his men by any means necessary because the only way the oversized Suburban filled with the governor, her kids and husband, the security contingent, and Kayla were making it to the mountain was via I-64. Which meant we couldn’t go that way at all, and draw King Dale and his guards into town. Getting the governor away safely was the main goal here. That, and staying alive.
So instead we followed a narrow two-lane road along on the left. Sister Ann clearly did not know the road well because we suddenly made a sharp right turn, wheels squealing as she stomped on the brakes. Temple let out a series of muffled curses as he flew across the back of the BearCat.
“Sorry!” Sister Ann shouted as we drove slowly over a bridge. Below I could see the twisted remains of railroad tracks half-submerged beneath the river.
“My fault. Forgot to remind you about that turn,” Temple said as he extricated himself out of toppled ammo boxes. I almost said something about them going off before remembering that it would probably take more than the boxes falling over to start making rounds go off accidentally.
“Officer Atkins said one of those pits was located at the outdoor amphitheater, yes?” Sister Ann confirmed as the song continued to blast out from the speakers. No shamblers came running toward us, though. I had to give King Dale credit. He’d done an admirable job cleaning up the shambler problem in Clifton Forge.
He’s keeping them penned up and using them to sentence people to death, a tiny voice in the back of my head reminded me. My admiration died as quickly as it arrived.
“Yeah. He said the outdoor one, not the big one,” I called out loudly. “Whatever that means.”
“Keep going down Main and then angle right,” Temple shouted from the rear. “Look for Garlynda’s Dance Studio. After that, turn right once past the post office. It’ll be on the right side. It’s on the backside of the Masonic Theatre.”
“Why not turn early?” I asked, half-turning in my seat. Temple’s face looked a little gray in the dim lighting.
“Right turns are easier than left.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
“Trust me, girl. Been driving these roads since before Sister Ann was born.”
“All right. You heard the man, Sister.”
“How many vehicles followed us, Madison?” Sister Ann asked as she accelerated down Main Street. I lowered the window and leaned out to get a better look.
“Looks like all three of them, ma’am.”
“Send the message. Tell them the way is clear, and to get up to the campus as fast as possible.”
“No, ma’am, not yet,” I told her. She looked at me sideways.
“Not yet?”
“Too early. We need more chaos and mass confusion in town before we release the turtles, ma’am. Uh, with all due respect.”
She nodded once, slowly. “I believe you are correct. Are you prepared?”
“I’ve made my peace with God, Sister, no doubt about it,” Temple declared. “Now I’m just out to exact a little vengeance.”
“Not the healthiest response I’ve ever heard,” she said before shrugging slightly. “I’ve heard worse, though.”
We turned right at a partially burned-out building that I assumed had once been a dance studio, judging by the sign hanging precariously above the front door. All the glass windows had been broken out. It was a sad sight, but one we didn’t have time to dwell on as Sister Ann suddenly slammed on the brakes. The BearCat slid a second time in almost as many minutes, only now we came to a full and complete stop.
“There,” Sister Ann said in a quiet voice. I turned and saw the reason why she’d stopped the vehicle so abruptly.
Between the burned ruins of Garlynda’s and another brick building were two chain-link fences coupled together to block an alleyway. They’d somehow jimmied two additional fences to stand on top of the others, making the barrier over a dozen feet high. Inside the fence dozens, if not a hundred, shamblers were pushing against it. With the heavy concrete barriers blocking the lower edges of the fence, though, it wasn’t budging at all.
“That’s . . .” My voice trailed off as the shamblers began to turn on one another. I had no problems with killing shamblers, or someone else doing it. Or even letting a bear kill one for me. This, though? The sight was something else entirely. Before I even knew what I was saying, I gave the order. “We wanted chaos? Break it down.”
“No arguments from back here,” Temple said as the song came to an end. Since I’d set it up on a loop, the guitar riff kicked on again as Sister Ann revved the big engine. She slammed it in gear and the BearCat lurched into the chain-link fence. It bowed but did not break. The shamblers that had been pressing against the fence were thrown backward. One didn’t get back up, though the others did.
Sister Ann backed up a little farther this time and repeated the process. This time the fence came tumbling down. More shamblers went flying, and even more came boiling out from the outdoor amphitheater beyond. Reversing the BearCat, Sister Ann dragged part of the fence stuck to the makeshift grill back with us. It caught on a fire hydrant and came unstuck, thankfully. I wasn’t about to get out and wrestle it off with shamblers swarming around like they were.
“They’re here!” Temple said as he popped open the turret hatch and stood upright with the Garand. He popped off eight shots in rapid succession before a loud ping! echoed in the back. Ducking back down, he grabbed another one of his strange clips. “Got one of their engines!”
Sister Ann slammed the gear into drive and floored it. The big block engine roared and the BearCat lurched forward, barreling through the growing crowd of shamblers that were free now. The small pickup truck Temple had taken out of commission had two men in back, both armed with shotguns. Fortunately for us, they were too busy trying to hold back the swarm of shamblers that had parted around us and fixated on the smaller target they could see in the open.
The other two trucks that had chased us from Rainbow Gap tried to pin us between them, but the BearCat was simply too heavy for them to do anything but scratch our paint job—which ticked me off a little. The elementary school kids had spent a lot of time drawing on the BearCat.
“Hey!” I shouted as the bigger truck on our left slammed into us a second time.
“Trying a pit maneuver on something this big moving this slowly? Amateurs,” Sister Ann muttered as she turned the corner, passing what appeared to be a burned-out post office. The smaller truck on our left misjudged the turn and jumped the curb, nearly taking out a streetlight in the process. The bigger truck backed off when we made the turn, giving us a little breathing room. It didn’t last because accelerating uphill was not something the BearCat was designed to do.
In a park a little lower than the road I spotted what looked like an outdoor theater stage. Surrounding it was tall fencing reinforced with those concrete roadblocks that prevented shamblers from knocking them down. Mounted on top was some really nasty-looking razor wire, with a rotted shambler body stuck in one spot. At the base were more dead shamblers, a few of which looked as though they’d been partially eaten. Revulsion welled up inside me.
“This is the kingdom that Appalachia Rex promises,” Sister Ann commented, somehow reading my thoughts. “This is what we’re trying to stop by getting the governor back up to campus.”
Instead of responding, I cranked up the stereo louder. I didn’t think it could go higher but somehow the wireless speakers managed. Slash started in on his mid-song guitar solo as the smaller pickup truck tried to sideswipe us again. Instead of continuing straight ahead at a steady speed, though, Sister Ann stomped on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left. The front end of the BearCat slid on the street, following Sister Ann’s guidance. The smaller pickup didn’t stand a chance as the much heavier SWAT vehicle pushed it into the large front windows of a building.
“Shamblers are catching up!” Temple hollered down into the cabin. He continued to use the Garand with surprising accuracy. Shamblers were dropping everywhere. The old dude could shoot.
“So is King Dale!” I replied loudly over the stereo as I spotted the self-proclaimed King of Appalachia riding in the larger pickup truck. He had a massive revolver out but fortunately wasn’t shooting at us quite yet. Like us, he seemed more preoccupied with keeping the shamblers at bay than trying to shoot actual humans.
For now.
Quickly rolling down my window, I started helping Temple out as best as I could. Two were beneath his line of fire, so I put three rounds into both of them as the BearCat bounced on a piece of broken sidewalk.
“This is starting to get a little exciting!” Sister Ann hollered as Slash continued his wicked guitar solo. We swerved around the downed tree on the sidewalk and smacked into a shambler that had wandered into our path. Sister Ann slowed, then backed up as another shambler ran toward the BearCat, howling the entire way. I waited until it was closer before putting three into its chest. It dropped with the grace of a sack of potatoes.
“Yes, ma’am!” I shouted back and fired at another shambler that stumbled into view. The howling was growing louder by the second. So was the guitar riff. The governor’s speakers were freaking awesome. I really needed to find out where she got them. There had to be someone around who had a set and didn’t need them anymore. “You know what the difference between a villain and a supervillain is? It’s all about presentation!”
“I should never have let you watch that movie!”
“It’s animated and rated PG!”
“Still . . .”
“It’s so quotable, though!”
“Incoming! Right turn! Hang on, Temple!”
I jerked as Sister Ann threw the wheel hard. The BearCat sideswiped a small truck parked next to what used to be the Clifton Forge Public Library. For a brief instance I thought we’d turned too sharply as the BearCat started to tilt before it settled back down on all four wheels. I exhaled as Sister Ann stomped on the gas. The engine roared in response and a plume of black smoke erupted behind us. Any shamblers back there probably just sucked down twenty pounds of exhaust and would maybe die from carbon monoxide poisoning. Probably not, though. Still, the thick cloud of black smoke was glorious. I shot another shambler nearby just for good measure and switched out the now-empty magazine for a fresh one. The BearCat lurched forward. Sister Ann turned the wheel hard and barely missed another ruined car. She slammed on the brakes, nearly throwing us into a slide as nine tons of carefully constructed and heavily armored Hell on Wheels tried to stop before plowing into a third vehicle.
Apparently, Clifton Forge was where every car in Alleghany County had come to die. The Catholic Church was simply ensuring the vehicles stayed dead.
“Careful!” Sister Ann barked at me as I leaned back out the window for a better angle. Two quick shots dropped another shambler that had begun gnawing on one of its dead compatriots. Or doing something else. I didn’t want to dwell on the difference for too long.
“I am being careful!”
“You are not being careful!”
“Oh-em-gee! You sound like the first boy I snuck into my house when I was fourteen!”
“Madison Coryell!”
“What?”
Sister Ann pinched the bridge of her nose. It took her a few seconds to regain control of her breathing. “Holy Father, I beg of you. Grant me the patience—”
“More shamblers incoming!” Temple shouted, interrupting her prayers. Some of them from the holding pit back at the theater had managed to follow us and were trying to climb into the BearCat. Fortunately, all the doors were locked and secured. The ballistic glass was holding so far, even with the heavy impacts it’d taken since we started this merry little joyride. One or two figured out the steps, but they were rewarded with headshots whenever I had a good angle. Up top, I could hear Temple shooting at shamblers unseen.
“Oof! That hand cannon Dale’s got is a beast!” Temple added as an enormous boom echoed along the narrow street. Apparently King Dale was joining in on the fun.
Sister Ann’s gaze drifted toward me. “If we survive this, Maddie, we need to have a little chat about honesty during discussion hour with the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.”
Ah, damn it, I thought. That’s going to take a week, at least.
Shifting the BearCat into reverse, she drove back over a few of the shamblers we’d already run over once. The ones that had made it on top of the engine hood slid off, howling with rage the entire way down. Checking my area, I spotted one I hadn’t shot yet. I was going to put a few rounds into it before noticing that its legs had been crushed by the heavy armored vehicle. Even if the shambler survived the damage, it wasn’t going to get far.
I shot it twice anyway. It was time for a reload and I figured a fresh magazine would be fitting for the next wave of shamblers.
“Smaller truck’s gettin’ swarmed by them zombies!” Temple yelled down at us. “Engine’s dead. Poor bastards!”
Sister Ann’s face was pinched. “Madison . . .”
“Got it,” I said, swallowing nervously. This was something I’d been afraid of. Sister Ann was having an easier time dealing with the shamblers than I’d thought. She still held life precious, though, and the idea of uninfected men and women being turned was not something she could handle. Which meant we needed to save our enemies. Even if they were doing their best to capture us and . . . stuff.
Some things were best not to be dwelt upon. Grabbing the door handle, I waited until she suddenly slammed on the brakes. One shambler that’d stuck in the brush guard went flying backward, tumbling five feet away before finally stopping. It tried to get up but it was clearly too injured. Popping the handle, I slid out the door and immediately put a round into the shambler’s head. It stopped moving immediately. Turning, I swept to the rear of the BearCat and began looking for targets.
“Girl, are you crazy? Get back inside!” Temple yelled at me before firing from the other side. The Garand made its distinctive ping and the shooting abruptly stopped. “Damn it! Reloading!”
“Gotta save as many as we can, sir,” I shouted, and began to shoot every shambler I could lay eyes on.
It was as though a weird calm came over me. I’d only felt like this once before, and it’d been on the field during a heated game against Greenbrier East. During the game, I just felt completely unstoppable after Sister Narcisa had inserted me in at center. The other team had no answer for anything we did, and I had scored with ease, dominating the center and keeping the ball in our possession for almost the entire game. It’d been a bloodbath, and field hockey at the high school level really doesn’t have a mercy rule. All of us had been in the zone, and poor Greenbrier had been left picking their teeth up off the field after.
The same feeling washed over me now: absolute calm with a healthy dash of confidence. From this range I’d have to try in order to miss a shot. I knew the shamblers swarming the truck were going to die by my hand and, God willing, every one of King Dale’s men would have the chance to run away. The only question that remained was which would happen first.
The nearest shambler had two broken legs but was still doing its best to crawl toward me. One shot and it twitched, then stopped moving. Stepping around it, I focused on the four trying to pull the hapless men in the rear bed of the truck down.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
Four shots, four dead shamblers. The men in the back were scrambling away from the edge, looking at me with bloodshot eyes. None of them appeared to be wounded, and none were aiming their weapons at me. This was a positive sign.
“Go home and take care of each other! Stay safe! And quit trying to chase us!” I ordered as I turned Baby’s barrel toward the front of the truck. A shambler had managed to shatter the passenger-side window and was grabbing the screaming man inside. A single shot to the head took care of that infected. The man inside was sobbing and screaming. There was blood splashed across the front window—probably his. Unfortunately there was nothing I could do for him. More than likely he was infected, but I didn’t have time to do anything for him. He’d change eventually, and then maybe he’d become my problem—if he didn’t bleed out before then.
More shamblers appeared from back near the amphitheater. This town was too small to stay ahead of the shamblers for long.
“Run!” I yelled at the driver of the truck, who was desperately trying to shove his door open. Dead shamblers were piled up next to it and he was having a heck of a time getting out. Finally he crawled out the window and tumbled messily to the ground, somehow rolling to his feet without accidentally shooting himself. His trigger discipline sucked. Needing no further encouragement, he bailed on his buddies and hightailed it up the street. They weren’t too far behind him.
Shots rang out behind me. Temple was back in action, and dropping shamblers as fast as he could shoot. Backing away from the truck, I watched as the passenger of the truck stopped screaming and slumped over. Promising to say a quick prayer for the dead later, I turned and hurried back to the BearCat.
Ping!
Temple was out of ammo again. The Garand was surprisingly efficient when it came to letting the person shooting it know that it was empty. He ducked down out of sight just as I came alongside the armored vehicle.
“Couldn’t save them all,” I told Sister Ann. “Saved most, though.”
She bowed her head. “Even though their intentions weren’t pure, we will pray for their immortal souls.”
“Maybe later?” I suggested as another group of shamblers came staggering up the street. These ones looked to be in rougher shape and clearly weren’t the dominants of the pack trapped in the amphitheater. I leaned out the window and took a shot at the lead. I missed, but hit the one next to her. Mentally shrugging, I refocused and tagged the lead in the leg. It howled in rage and pain, dropping to the street. The followers descended on her without mercy. “Ugh. Gross.”
“There’s always time to pray for someone, Madison.”
“Even in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?”
“Especially then.”
I sighed and shot another shambler in the chest. This one dropped and didn’t move. “It takes a special kind of lady to do that.”
“You’re on your way to becoming a great lady.”
I snorted derisively. “I’m no lady.”
“You are a lady and you will show some class!”
“But—”
“I will hear no argument from you! Say it!”
“Right now?”
“Yes! You are a classy lady.”
“But I’m—”
“Say it and believe it!”
“I’m a lady . . . ?”
“That sounded more like a question than a statement, Madison Coryell,” Sister Ann admonished as I spotted a shambler who’d noticed the idling BearCat and began heading toward it with decent speed. I waited until I had a clear shot before putting two rounds into it. They did the trick and there was one less shambler in the world.
“I’m a lady.”
“Now say it with pizzaz! Convince me!”
“I am a classy lady!” I shot another shambler. Its head snapped back as the round impacted right above the bridge of its nose. Talk about a quality shot. “Classy is, like, my middle name! I’m a classy freaking lady!”
“And don’t you forget it!” Sister Ann said and accelerated the BearCat down the street, leaving the swarm of shamblers in our exhaust.
“Verpiss dich und stirb, shambler!” I screamed as we turned a stray shambler to mulch on the rusted brush guard. Sister Ann didn’t say anything about that one. Either her German was rusty or she didn’t speak it at all. Or maybe it didn’t count because it wasn’t in English? Hard to say. It wasn’t something I had the time to dwell on at the moment.
“Another shambler! Two o’clock!”
These things were like freaking cockroaches. I tagged it in the shoulder with my first shot as we closed the distance. It spun around, making me miss the next two shots. No matter. After a deep breath, I squeezed off a fourth. This one felled the shambler just as we passed by.
“Hahaha! Got you, you bastard!” I shouted gleefully as another shambler was crushed beneath the heavy front end of the BearCat. How had some many managed to get ahead of us? Just how many shamblers were lurking in the town?
“Language!”
“Sorry, ma’am!”
“You didn’t sound sorry!”
“I kinda am!”
“You’re impossible sometimes, Madison.”
“Okay. I really am sorry.”
“I hope so. Watch it! Right! Right!”
“I see—Oops, totally did not mean to shoot that one in the crotch!”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about that. Just stop trying to—”
Thumpthump!
“Sister Ann! Quit trying to run over everything!” I told her, half serious.
“I’m not trying to! They keep running out in front of me!” she protested loudly. Slowing the BearCat down, we took the turn onto another side street. In front of us was the main street we’d come in on originally. Other than the railroad tracks directly ahead, Main Street was the only way out of town. King Dale was probably certain that he knew what we were up to by now—destroying the fighting pits. There was no way he could possibly imagine what our real plan was. We’d caused too much chaos for him to be worried about anything other than shambler control, and stopping us.
“More incoming!” Temple shouted from above. He ducked down inside and looked at us. “That . . . is a lot of zombies.”
“I think it’s time, Sister Ann,” I murmured as the batteries on the speakers finally died. Governor Lenity-Jones had warned me that full power would drain the batteries quickly. I just hadn’t thought they would go that fast.
She glanced over at me and nodded. “On your call, Maddie. It’s your plan.”
By now, it was a safe bet that every single shambler roaming around in the town of Clifton Forge was on our tail. King Dale and a few of his most loyal followers were staying nearby, trying to stop us while avoiding the shamblers at the same time. We had everyone’s full and undivided attention.
All according to my makeshift and totally not bonkers plan. I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. I clicked the radio on. It was already on the prearranged channel. Phase Two of Maddie’s Really Stupid Plan was a go.
“Let’s do it. It’s time to release the turtles.”