The Renegades 2 Aftermath (A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Thriller) Read online

“From the dead. Your friend Specs suggested luring them into a truck. We just let them out when we got past the walls. Kind of like having an extra hundred men.”

  “Smart idea.”

  “Yeah, I thought so.”

  Back on the ground we shot our way out of the building and faced off against the remaining Crips that had taken up behind two overturned trucks.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Fuck that. I want their blood,” Elijah spat back.

  “It’s not worth it, the Z’s will finish them off.”

  The Tongan Crips had dwindled in size from two hundred down to just over a hundred. Bullets were flying back and forth between both sides. I was still trying to figure out where the others had gone when I spotted them. They were rounding the far side of the building.

  I nudged Elijah. “Listen, I’ve got to get something from over there, you think you can cover me?”

  “You got it.”

  “You got a knife?” I asked.

  He pulled one from the sheath around his leg.

  Elijah shouted to ten of his men to provide cover by using one of the armored trucks to get me over to the middle of Temple Square, and another to provide additional cover. I was literally going to have to expose myself to retrieve the cure from the president’s mutilated body. I wasn’t sure what scared me more, getting shot in the head by a stray bullet or having to cut into the flesh of our nation’s commander-in-chief. No amount of hiding behind the truck was going to keep me from the Crips that had fanned out. Elijah tossed me an assault rifle. I hopped into the truck and one of his men swung it around and floored it. Bullets were pinging off the steel, and creating cracks in the ballistic glass windows.

  I shot a glance at my watch. We had less than an hour to get over to the airport.

  As I came up behind the pole that the president had been impaled on, I grimaced. Dry blood streaked the white paint. I tried not to pay attention to the carnage around me, and bullets zipping past my head. I stayed low and had to hope that the two armored trucks would at least block the continual rounds. I glanced up at his face. His head was upright. The pole had been jammed up inside of him and out his throat. Completely unnecessary, barbaric even, but that was Domino. He knew it would send a clear message to everyone.

  I looked around his hip for a mark. It was hard to tell what could have been an injection, and what was just bruising from the battering that he’d received. Then I saw it. It was like a bee sting on his left hip. I took the tip of the knife and jammed it inside the flesh. The smell made me gag. As I looked away but continued to slice down I saw Kat in the distance with the others. She was looking directly at me. I’d never felt so uncomfortable, and yet I knew it was what had to be done.

  The skin peeled back in one large chunk until I caught sight of the titanium container. It was tiny, no bigger than my thumbnail. To think that held the cure was astonishing. I was just in the process of pulling it out when I felt a bullet nick my skin. It had sliced through the top of my shoulder. I reeled back and began unloading round after round from my assault rifle in the direction of where the shots were coming from. Elijah must have seen I was in trouble as he gestured for them to pull the truck up in front of me. I reached up and pulled out the titanium capsule, skin tissue and all, and pocketed the lot.

  After which, I hightailed it back towards Elijah. A lot of his men had already died fighting. There couldn’t have been more than half of the fifty still alive. He gave a signal to them men, but most ignored him. That was something about gangs. Their ego was huge. This was going to continue until they either won, or died.

  But for us, it was over. It had to be. We only had thirty-five minutes before the choppers would arrive.

  “We’ve got to go.”

  Elijah grabbed me by my wrist.

  “Is that it?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It’s the cure.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  BLACK HAWK DOWN

  Salt Lake City International Airport was located west of Temple Square. It was a fifteen-minute drive on a good day but this wasn’t good. It was fucking awful. The sound of gunfire could still be heard echoing in my head as half of us dived in an armored truck driven by Elijah. In the back were four of his men, the rest remained. Maybe they had a death wish?

  Up front I rode shotgun. Every few minutes I would cast a glance in the mirror to make sure Dax and the others were still following. On the way I brought Elijah up to speed on how we’d come to learn about the cure. He asked me if I thought it really held a sample that could rid us of the epidemic that was sweeping its way around the world. I told him I was full of as many questions as him. But if it was real, it was now our responsibility to get into the hands of those who might be able to end the horror.

  For a few minutes it seemed as if we would make it, that the war we had just left behind would become a faint memory, but that was only wishful thinking. I had turned my head to look in the side mirror when the glass was hit with a bullet. It smashed into pieces and what remained dangled by a thread of cable. Elijah floored it. The engine roared.

  “Those Tongans don’t give up,” he yelled before banging on the metal behind us to alert his men. The station wagon with the others came racing past us. The back window was now gone, and the rear door was riddled with holes. The sound of gunfire could be heard from behind us. Elijah’s men had flung open the door and unleashed a furious amount of ammo at the Jeep full of Crips.

  “How far are we now?” I asked.

  “At least another ten minutes.”

  “Shit.”

  For a moment I thought I couldn’t even assist them as armored trucks weren’t built for luxury, they were made to keep the occupants safe. So the windows couldn’t be opened. I didn’t even have a seat, I was crouched down on the metal floor leaning back when the gunfire started.

  So I did the next best thing. I yanked on the handle closest to me and opened wide the side door.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Elijah asked.

  I gripped a silver handle on the inside and leaned out to return fire. At one point the vehicle swerved and I nearly found myself spitting asphalt. After numerous shots hit the driver of the jeep, the vehicle behind us swerved sharply and flipped sending all five of the occupants to a brutal grave. Smoke and fire erupted making it hard to see what was coming up from behind it. For a brief moment there was relief but it was short-lived when charging through the smoke directly behind them came an armored truck.

  “Is that ours?” I heard one of Elijah’s men shout.

  A return of gunfire answered that.

  Now had it only been gunfire, I would have felt relatively safe. I mean for God’s sake we were in a vehicle designed to withstand bullets but that wasn’t to be the case. When I spotted one them readying the RPG I knew we were in a whole shit load of trouble. I slammed the door closed. The men in the back must have seen it too as they were unloading round after round in a desperate attempt to kill the Crip before he fired.

  It was futile. We didn’t hear the sound of it approaching, only its impact.

  The next thing I knew my world had been flipped on its side. The screech of metal, golden sparks flying, and smoke became all I could hear and see. I must have been knocked unconscious because when I awoke the truck had come to a standstill. The sound of fire flickering, amid the heat and black smoke, was disorienting. I immediately felt pain. There was a deep gash on my leg from where metal had torn into it.

  “Johnny, give me your hand.”

  I looked up. It was Elijah reaching down to me. I stretched out my hand and clasped his with what remaining strength I had. Pulled up and out of the steel frame I had a better view of what had happened. The station wagon was pulled to one side, all of them were out with their weapons still in the ready position.

  Not far from the truck we were in, I noticed the armored truck that had been in pursuit. It was down in a ditch, the back was open, and bodies lay sprawled on the
grass. Whatever had gone down had occurred while I was out cold.

  Izzy came rushing over and gave Elijah a hand in carrying me to the car. Halfway there, a fear came over me. The cure!

  “Hold on. Hold on.” I reached into my pocket. I let out a sigh of relief. It was still there. The fear of losing the cure, the one thing we had risked our lives for, overwhelmed me. I could see now why it had been injected into the skin. There was less chance of losing it, and even less of it being stolen. Had one of the scientists self-injected it before the president did? Hopefully I wouldn’t need to do that. I glanced at my watch. We had ten minutes until the choppers arrived.

  All nine of us piled into the station wagon. It was a tight squeeze and yet I don’t think anyone was thinking of comfort at that moment. Elijah hesitated at the door. He looked back towards the road where bodies lay motionless. The blast of the RPG had instantly killed his men.

  “Elijah, we need to go,” I said.

  “Hold on a second.” He ran towards the armored vehicle that had followed us. For a moment we lost sight of him in the darkness. A few seconds later he returned carrying the RPG they had used, along with a live round.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “We might need it.”

  “Yeah, if we were in fucking Afghanistan,” Specs hollered.

  He stopped at the door, taking one final look at the carnage, smoke, and fire. All around we could see Z’s making their way towards us. The place would be swarming in a matter of minutes.

  “Elijah,” Dax shouted.

  He slid in and Baja gunned it out of there. We zigzagged our way around abandoned vehicles and the dead. We hit our fair share of Z’s on the final stretch.

  “There they are.”

  I looked out the window, above in the smoke-filled sky I saw the anti-collision lights on the helicopters. They were hovering in the distance.

  “Can’t this thing go any faster?” Jess yelled

  “I’m giving it everything it’s got.”

  “What a piece of shit,” Ralphie added.

  “Hey! Respect the wagon, bitch,” Baja replied.

  I wasn’t paying attention. All I could think about was getting out of the city. We burned rubber on our approach into the vast parking lot. As we came over a rise in the road, our sense of hope was soon diminished by what we saw next. Among hundreds of cars were countless Z’s. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.

  “Holy shit,” Elijah said, his jaw dropping.

  “Why the fuck are they here?” Izzy asked.

  “When the shit hits the fan you’d want to get out fast. Return to your family. Who knows?” Specs added.

  The car idled at the top of a steep decline as we took in the sight. The vehicle wouldn’t stand a chance, we would be crushed if we even attempted to make our way to the airport building.

  “Where are they going to land?”

  There was barely any space for a vehicle let alone two choppers. They looked to be your typical military Black Hawk helicopters. In the distance we watched as they came down directly above the building.

  “They’re gonna try and land on the roof,” Dax said.

  “Can’t they see us?” Jess asked.

  “Flash the lights,” I said.

  Baja tapped the high beams several times, hoping they might spot us. Now maybe they saw us, maybe they didn’t. Who knew what they could see from their vantage point. That’s when we realized what might have made them second-guess coming over to where we were.

  “We need to move, there are too many Z’s coming,” Elijah said, looking through the smashed-out rear window frame. I looked back. They were pouring into the airport from every angle.

  “What do we do?” Baja asked.

  Dax was quiet. I’d never seen him at a loss for words.

  “Dax.”

  He stared absently.

  “Dax!” Baja screamed. “What do we do?”

  “How the fuck should I know. Why are you asking me?”

  The others looked at each other.

  “Go around the other side,” Elijah said. “One side has parking, behind the building are planes. There’ll be more room.”

  The noise of the helicopters, the rumble of our vehicle, and the lights were attracting even more Z’s on the outskirts of the airport.

  “Elijah, we’re not going to make it through. That road is closing up,” I said.

  “Just do it. Now. We don’t have any other option.”

  Baja looked back at us. A look of helplessness.

  “Now!” Elijah yelled.

  The station wagon surged forward, Baja hit the pedal to the metal. Each of us readied our weapons and prepared for the worst. The road wound down into the parking lot. The route we were going to take was around the outside. It was less crowded but it still had more than enough Z’s to stop us. In the distance I saw the helicopters land, several military personnel jumped out and were firing at Z’s that had made their way onto the roof.

  “Hit your horn,” I yelled.

  “No, you’ll attract them,” Dax said.

  “We need to be sure they know we’re here.”

  “I’m pretty damn sure they do. We’re the only vehicle in the lot with lights on.”

  Baja didn’t wait for Dax’s approval. He hit the horn and the Dixie Lee sound blasted out in all its glory. We jerked forward each time as the vehicle started plowing into one Z after the next. One bounced off the windscreen, smashing it.

  “I can’t see shit,” Baja yelled.

  Dax and Specs who were in the front began kicking the crumpled glass out, until it disappeared. Now the vehicle was unprotected in front and back.

  “Head in that direction,” Elijah yelled. Gunfire erupted in the car, causing our ears to ring as Dax and Specs tried to clear the way ahead of us. It was pointless, there were just too damn many and the car was moving too fast. One flew up onto the hood of the car. With no window to protect us, it reached in. Its jaw snapped. Specs drove his knife into the head. The fear inside was palpable. This was the most insane decision we had made since this whole fuckfest started.

  Rounding the building, we could see multiple Boeing 747s docked up against jet bridges. Luggage vehicles were stationed throughout, clothing scattered all over the place. In one area bodies were piled up high

  “What now?”

  “Head towards that stairwell.”

  Several of the planes weren’t using the enclosed jet bridges that most people used to board planes. They had mobile stairwells that led up to the exit. There was no way we were going to be able to get into the building and make our way to the roof, there were just too many Z’s. If we stayed inside the vehicle we would eventually be overrun.

  Baja slammed the brakes on in front of the stairwell that led up to a jet with its exit door open. We immediately jumped out and followed Elijah. I’m not sure why we were placing our trust in him other than the fact that he knew the area and out of all us he seemed to know what the hell he was doing. That’s the thing about stressful times. There will always be one who manages to stay level-headed. In this moment it was Elijah. We ascended the steps two at time until we reached the opening.

  “Get inside.”

  “What are you doing, Elijah?” Dax asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  I rushed inside with the others and began opening fire on the Z’s. I had shot one and was in the process of leveling up for another when I saw Elijah raise the RPG towards a Boeing in the distance. Seconds later an explosion erupted, and the shock waves could be felt.

  “If they don’t know we are here — they do now.”

  But that wasn’t just his plan, he had used it to lure the Z’s in the area away from us. To draw them to the far side of the airport building. Flames licked up the side of the Boeing. A giant hole could now be seen.

  Elijah fired at several Z’s that were making their way up the stairwell.

  Inside the plane the others were moving down the aisles c
learing out those that had made a home inside. Ralphie and Specs went up front doing the same.

  “Get in, Elijah.”

  He stumbled back into the plane and I yanked the door closed, sealing out the fast-moving Z’s.

  “Now what?” Jess asked in a panicked state.

  “The front of the plane.”

  We moved forward until we arrived inside the cockpit. I glanced at the countless dials, switches, and handles. Seeing the thick windscreen glass, Dax and I began firing at it until it was riddled with holes. Climbing up, I used the butt of the assault rifle to bang out the glass. We each clambered out onto the nose of the jet, and made our way up to the top of the plane. The glow of the burning plane provided more than enough light to see. Still, the fear of sliding over the edge into the mass of Z’s waiting below had all of us nervous. Carefully standing to our feet we began waving with both arms, and yelling as loud as we could.

  “Hey!”

  We fired rounds into the air. Seeing us, the pilots raced back towards the two Black Hawks and took off. Within a matter of seconds, they were getting closer. Wind whipped at our clothing the nearer they got. Now whether it was a malfunction or pilot error, we’ll never know but one of them was in trouble. We heard an alarm, and then in an instant it turned on its side and came down hard. A fiery explosion erupted and our hope diminished.

  NORAD

  It was like someone had kicked us in the gut. We watched as flames, and black smoke filled the air above the crash. Z’s immediately ascended upon the mangled frame. Their bodies caught on fire as they reached for the now dead occupants.

  As the other Black Hawk got lower, we crouched down so we wouldn’t get blown off the plane. It hovered inches away from the top. Several special ops personnel hopped out and waved us forward. Izzy took Kat. They were the first to get on board. Ralphie followed suit with Jess and Dax. By the time I made it to the helicopter I could immediately see that not that all of us were going. It could only carry up to eleven occupants plus two crew members. There were nine of us, six special ops soldiers, a pilot, and copilot.