White Wasteland by Jeff Kirkham (best color ebook reader .txt) 📕

The zombie guy laughed. “I don’t know if it’s an actual cop or not, but he works for the cops,” he pointed toward the titty bar. “That guy’s been—what do they call it?—deputized?” He let out a high-pitched squeal. “The gangbangers don’t come within five blocks of here. Too much competition, I guess.” The guy with the baseball cap finally moved their way.

Evan wasn’t ready to palaver with the big dogs, so he motioned for Jake and they drifted away from the line of people and toward the outside of the block. The guard didn’t follow.

As Evan and Jake completed their circuit of the block, Evan began to lose faith in his original plan—to disband the crowd by force of arms. His mission was to create a safe corridor down State Street, and this knot of zombies would threaten anyone from the Homestead passing down State Street.

Disbursing the zombies might make the pawn shop safe, and as much as Evan wanted to be the hero of the hour, the cop thing gave him pause. He had no idea as to the strength of the enemy force—assuming that the cops were even the “enemy.”

He needed to recon the inside of the encampment to see what they had before engaging in a conversation with the head honchos. If he walked into the ring of fire now, he might never walk back out. If he approached them in broad daylight with his full force, the enemy might overrun them just to take possession of their weapons. If there were three hundred armed zombies inside the titty bar and the surrounding structures, he needed to know before making his play.

The whole situation gave Evan the willies. He liked having solid intel before a raid. Who didn’t? But the guys he’d seen that morning shadowing the girl didn’t even have guns. The zombie with the 30-30 had definitely been on the job, though. Guard duty meant organization and organization meant command and control. Command and control meant that whoever was running this place was not to be treated as a zombie.

The angel that sat on his right shoulder whispered in his ear. He said that Evan shouldn’t wade into anything he wasn’t one hundred percent prepared to wade back out of. Even a ring of shanties demanded respect from a professional and guards with guns were worth double.

Evan resolved to go in shallow later that night, as deep into the ring of shanties as they could without losing sight of the exfil route. They’d creep into the block during stand-to, the darkest, coldest part of the night right before dawn. They’d get a look and then decide if they should assault or withdraw.

One way or another, he needed to solve this bump in the road. He couldn’t call this corridor along State Street secure with a zombie-infested Titty Bar of Doom right next to the route. He had to either resolve the threat or scrap the mission.

At three a.m., the canopy overhead sparkled moonless, which meant the night was colder than a pimp’s heart. When it was this cold, Evan despised his bump helmet. He needed the damned helmet to carry his NVGs, which meant he couldn’t wear his favorite cashmere beanie. As his team made entry into the little alleyway, he felt like he’d snap an ear off if he bumped a wall.

Evan held back as his team slid into the alleyway. When he had the willies like this, he played by the rules; commanding from the middle of the team instead of blazing out front.

“We’ve got two tents and a few pairs of boots sticking out. Fires are all cold.” Colton, his youngest guy, radioed from point.

“Take ‘em.” Evan radioed back.

His four guys split the tents and pounced on the sleeping zombies. No shots were fired, but there was a bit of kicking and scuffling as they rousted the zombies out of the alley and onto the street. The confused zombies ran past Evan into the night while he tracked them with his IR laser. If he ID’d the pederasts from that morning, Evan planned on nabbing them. The three who ran past looked like skinny teenagers. He let them go.

His team edged past the tents. Ten yards later, the alley opened up onto the center courtyard. Evan moved up as his guys stacked at the corners.

The courtyard was a big parking lot surrounded by commercial buildings. It’d obviously been the loading/unloading area for the businesses that ringed the lot. Now, it resembled a street bazaar in Calcutta, full of tents, junk and smoldering fire drums.

Gooseflesh stood up on Evan’s arms. This was the missing middle of his recon loop and, in terms of an assault, it was a tactical turd. The right thing to do was to back out, proclaim the mission a failure, and let Mama Tanya at the pawnshop know that he couldn’t neutralize the threat.

In the alternative, they could dig into this turd with their full force in a night or two—break it up into chunks and roust out the big boss. For sure, this wasn’t the crew he needed to assault the sleeping Turkish bazaar. He didn’t have enough guys and he would definitely want the Ferret and a dude on overwatch.

Evan felt pretty certain that the asshats who stalked Reagan-Truman-Harvard would be in here somewhere. A place like this would attract pedos like a dog shit burrito attracts maggots. But there was no way to tell if the zombie warlord had thirty armed zombies or three hundred armed zombies. He counted six, cinderblock buildings. One or all of them could be holding a butt-load of fighters.

Colton, on point, looked back at Evan for direction, obviously eager to push into the space. Young guns didn’t know enough to be scared.

Four dumpsters lined the walls by both corners. They made for an easy bump—where Evan’s guys could duck into the courtyard without overcommitting. It seemed like a better call than backing off and calling the