Zombie Road , Simpson, A. [best authors to read TXT] 📗

at the air. Long moments passed and when his arms began to tremble under the strain of holding the bike, they screamed as one, launched themselves for him. Xavier jerked the bike upright, threw a leg over the saddle and twisted the throttle. The permanent magnet Tesla motor put out almost 400 horsepower, enough to launch a car to sixty miles an hour in a neck snapping three seconds. The bike was a stripped down, two wheeled version and a quarter of the weight. It took a delicate hand on the throttle. In his panic, Xavier wasn’t delicate.

The bike shot forward, jerked out of his grip and he tumbled off the back. The machine climbed halfway up the container wall before crashing back down on its side. It smashed into the leaders of the horde then started quietly spinning in circles on the concrete, the throttle stuck wide open. It knocked some down, some tried to attack it but the rest ignored the wildly rotating machine and reached for the boy with the wide eyes and look of surprise on his face. Xavier sprang to his feet, ran for a stack of containers and grabbed the bars on the doors. He jumped as high as he could and scrambled the rest of the way up using the rods and handles. He rolled over on his back breathing heavily when he made it to the top but didn’t stay down.

The big fifty’s mounted on the train added their slow heavy thunder to the gunfire from the M-4’s, the screaming of the men running for the rail cars and the bone-dry roar of the undead as an endless horde ran in off the streets. Thousands of the undead had ran for the explosions and fires on the far side of the city but thousands more had been in a frenzy, lost in the twisting streets of Ensenada. They’d heard the keens of hunger, the popping of gunfire and smelled the unwashed bodies of the sailors. They surged through the alleys and narrow streets, found the port and added their own dry screams to the hunters running down the bike.

Xavier was trapped on top, high above the screeching mob below. He looked around desperately, tried to see a way out, a way down. He had to get back to the train but there was no way to get through the horde, the battery for his bracer was small, it would only last a few minutes at most. It could never cut a path through the mob. He spotted the crane they had passed on the way in, maybe he could make his way there and drop down on the roof. He saw a path along the tops of the containers that would lead him to it and started running. He hoped he could make it before they left. He hoped someone saw him.

The navy men and women poured off the destroyer, their boots loud on the gangplanks, and ran for the train. For the open doors welcoming them to safety. Hollywood and Bridget urged them onward, yelled for them to keep moving to the upper levels first, to hurry, hurry, hurry! They surged inside and ran, they tripped and fell and picked themselves up and helped the weaker members. The only thing keeping them on their feet was fear and adrenaline. Thousands of them had been packed on the three-hundred-man boat without food for four days. They had only had a few drinks of water the entire time and had slept sitting up, back-to-back. Some of the sailors took a knee and started firing at the first of the horde running in. They emptied their magazines then joined the rest of group crowding into the rail cars.

The more they fired, the more undead followed the sound. A wall of them ran straight at the bedraggled sailors and when Scratch and Stabby opened up with the machine guns to slow them down, bodies splintered and imploded. Bridget and Hollywood swung up to the roof, ran for the front of the train and started laying down their own fire over the heads of the gunners below them. Gunny watched the destroyer empty, saw the last men running down the gangway with a bulky case and had one hand on the brake release, the other on the throttle. Griz was in the other engine doing the same thing, waiting for the command to give full gas and plow their way through the masses.

Gunny hadn’t seen the bike come back and hoped the kid hadn’t gotten himself killed. He should have circled around as soon as he led the horde off. He should already be back inside and ready to slam the ramp closed. The horde was almost on top of them. The wall of lead they were throwing at it was killing hundreds but there were thousands and they kept coming. Kept stumbling, falling, getting up and shrieking their dusty blood hungry screams. Scratch and Stabby went through belt after belt of ammo as Hollywood and Bridget emptied magazines and slapped fresh ones in as fast as they could. The smell of gunpowder filled the air along with the haze of gun smoke and sprays of black blood. Hollywood and Bridget, from their vantage point on top of the train, tried to kill the fastest runners streaming past the piles of carcasses but they saw the tragedy coming and there was nothing they could do about it. A few hundred of the sailors were still sprinting for the ramps and some of those were already starting to close, the men cranking them up before the horde could get inside. The undead fell into the running men, drove them to the ground and more screams of fear and pain filled the air. Bridget tossed her AR when the last magazine emptied and rolled over the edge. She grabbed the ladder, slid to the catwalk, pulled her pistols and jumped over the rail, fire spitting from both guns.