Free Convoy 19: A Zombie Novel by Mark Rivett Page B

incapacitate any living target. The undead had only one vital organ: the brain. Re-training one’s self to fire at the relatively small and difficult-to-hit cranium was the first hurdle a soldier had to conquer in the war against the living dead. In the heat of the moment, it was easy to forget that, while a few shots to the chest of an attacker were sufficient to drop any living target, the undead were anything but.
    “Okay, let’s get out of… oh… my… God!” Miguel stopped short, and his eyes drifted over Pam’s shoulder.
    Pam followed his gaze toward what he was looking at.
    “My baby! Please! Help my baby!” A woman in a tattered dress, her head bloody and her arms bandaged, limped towards Miguel. With her was a child on a leash that was clearly one of the living dead. The monster scrambled about with feral eyes and gnawed on a blood-soaked gag in its mouth. The flesh of its wrists was torn down to the bone from the zip-ties that bound them. Behind the child, a handful of injured people stumbled out from the wreckage of the overturned semi-trailer. Scores of them had been packed in like sardines – refugees hoping to find solace at the Naval Base. Many were bruised and bloodied from the crash, unprepared for their transport to be used as a motorized battering ram. At least a dozen of the “passengers” were bound and gagged, and wiggling about on the ground. They strained against their bonds, in a vain attempt to feed on the living.
    A year had passed since news outlets first informed the world of the undead epidemic. Nonetheless, it was not uncommon to encounter people who did not understand that their reanimated friends and loved ones were lifeless beasts. Despite the fact that the living dead were bloodthirsty and mindless shells of flesh and bone, they were still sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. It was world shattering to witness the death and reanimation of a loved one, and not everyone had the willpower to accept such a horrible reality. Some people would restrain their infected relatives and hope for a cure. They cared for their living dead indefinitely, traveling with, and even attempting to access safe zones with cannibalistic companions. Often they would kill or even die defending their “families.”
    “What do we do?” Specialist MacAfee, communications expert from another car, rushed over to Pam.  He fired his rifle into more of the approaching undead.
    Pam looked about to assess the situation. The walking dead were pouring in around them. The highway was choked with moaning corpses, and the bodies were piling high. Sergeant Quinn had been laying down an oppressive torrent of firepower from his mounted gun, but had been forced to stop by the ghouls swarming his vehicle. Over a dozen clambered over one another to reach him, and a howling press of monsters now obscured the entire car.
    The civilians that had attacked the convoy were fighting in their own life and death struggle… and they were losing. One van had already loaded up and peeled away. The rest were being overrun by the undead, their occupants screaming in agony as they were torn to shreds by dozens of snapping jaws.
    Pam punched the communications link on her helmet. “Convoy 19, get to your vehicles and continue east! Air support is on its way. We can’t help these people.”
    Carl heard the order through his headset. He crawled to the open driver’s-side door of a nearby Humvee, and fired his pistol into the head of an approaching ghoul. It fell next to the corpse of one of Carl’s fellow soldiers. It was Private Logan – he had been crushed below the waist by the collision with the semi. Carl looked into the face of another man who had died under his command… and sighed. Taking aim, he put a bullet into the head of Logan’s corpse. Carl had lost so many men and women under his command. This one, at least, would not reanimate to attack the living.
    He pulled himself into the driver’s seat