The Last Marine
Chapter 31: The City’s Throat

Chapter 31: The City’s Throat

The groan of the heavy bay door sliding open was the only sound in the pre-dawn stillness. It felt like the opening of a tomb. The riot van rolled out of the auto shop’s dusty sanctuary and back into the wounded city. Inside, the small band of survivors was quiet, each lost in their own thoughts. The two other adults from the clinic, Ben and Clara, sat huddled in the back, their faces pale and drawn. The children were quiet, a silent pact of shared trauma passing between them.

Quinn drove, his eyes constantly scanning the blighted landscape. He navigated the van through the maze of industrial streets, his movements precise and economical. They were a self-contained, armored island, moving through a sea of death.

Their route toward Interstate 95 took them past the skeletal remains of the city’s last organized defenses. They saw a FEMA station that had been set up in a high school gymnasium. The words "SHELTER" and "HOPE" were still spray-painted on a banner above the entrance, a bitter, mocking epitaph. The grounds were littered with overturned cots, discarded medical supplies, and the still, silent forms of both civilians and government workers. The infected had torn through it with savage indifference.

Further on, they encountered a military checkpoint that had been established to control access to the Grant Memorial Bridge. Sandbag emplacements were torn apart. A burned-out Humvee sat askew, its doors peppered with bullet holes from the inside out. The bodies of soldiers in combat gear lay where they had fallen, a testament to a battle that had been lost swiftly and brutally.

"They never stood a chance," Hex said quietly from the passenger seat, his voice flat. It was a confirmation of what they already knew, but seeing the evidence with their own eyes extinguished the last, foolish ember of hope that some larger force was still fighting. There was no one coming. There was only them.

The van could not navigate every street. Many were completely impassable, choked with a tangled wreckage of cars and trucks. Twice, they had to stop, hiding the van in a secure alleyway while Quinn and Hex proceeded on foot to scout a path.

During one of these scouting runs, they found themselves forced to use the rooftops. They moved across the flat, gravel-covered expanse of a series of connected commercial buildings, a vantage point that gave them a terrifying god’s-eye view of the city. Below them, the infected moved in slow, meandering rivers through the concrete canyons.

"We need to get to that intersection," Quinn whispered, pointing to a cross-street two blocks down. "From there, it looks like a straight shot to the on-ramp."

They found a fire escape and descended back into the labyrinth of alleys. As they rounded a corner, they froze. A large horde, at least fifty strong, was shuffling down the main street just ahead, their collective moans a low, chilling hum. They were trapped. The alley they were in was a dead end.

"Back," Quinn mouthed, pushing Hex behind a large, overflowing dumpster. They pressed themselves into the shadows, their hearts pounding. The horde was passing the mouth of their alley, so close they could smell the cloying, sweet scent of decay.

Suddenly, a lone infected, a shambler that had gotten separated from the group, turned and began to wander down their alley. It had not seen them. It was simply drifting. But if it made a sound, if it spotted them and let out a cry, it would bring the entire horde down on them.

Quinn knew what he had to do. He drew the 9mm pistol from its holster. A gunshot was out of the question. He waited, his body coiled like a spring. The infected shambled closer, its vacant eyes scanning nothing. When it was five feet away, Quinn moved. He lunged forward, clapping a hand over the creature’s mouth to stifle any sound, and drove the blade of his combat knife up under its jaw, severing the brain stem. It was a silent, brutal, and perfectly executed takedown. The creature went limp in his arms, and he lowered it gently to the ground.

Hex let out a breath he did not realize he had been holding. They waited in the tense silence until the last of the horde had passed.

Before they moved on, Quinn noticed something lying near a dead soldier propped against the wall, the same soldier whose corpse had hidden them from the horde. It was a small, waterproof journal. Quinn picked it up. Most of the pages were soaked with dried blood, but the last entry was legible, written in a frantic, spidery scrawl.

I-95 is a parking lot. They funneled everyone there. We tried to hold the overpass, but we couldn’t. It’s not a road anymore. It’s a meat grinder. God help us. They’re coming over the walls.

Quinn showed the journal to Hex. "A chokepoint," Hex said, his face grim. "The military tried to create a safe zone on the highway and it got overrun. The whole area is going to be one massive cluster."

The knowledge was a cold weight. They were heading directly into the heart of a failed evacuation, one of the city’s biggest dead zones.

They made their way back to the van through an overgrown city park, a patch of green that had begun to reclaim the concrete. Lena, seeing her chance, had everyone get out for a moment while she searched the undergrowth.

"Here," she said, holding up a plant with broad leaves and a familiar, pungent smell. "Wild garlic. It’s a natural antiseptic. And edible." She found a patch of dandelions. "The leaves are bitter, but they’re full of vitamins." It was a small, vital find, a reminder that even in a dead world, life, in some form, persisted. She gathered what she could, her knowledge a different kind of weapon in their arsenal.

They got back in the van, their mood somber. They now knew what lay ahead. As they drew closer to the interstate, the evidence of the failed evacuation was everywhere. Suitcases lay open on the sidewalks, their contents spilled out. Cars were abandoned at strange angles, many with doors still hanging open.

And the number of infected visibly increased.

They were drawn here, to the promise of trapped, easy prey that had congregated on the highway days ago. The low, constant moaning that had been a background hum was now a steady roar. They clogged the side streets, a sea of bodies drawn to the city’s main artery.

Finally, they saw it. The on-ramp to Interstate 95. It was a wide, sweeping curve of concrete leading up to the main highway. But it was not empty. It was a solid, writhing mass of the dead, a river of bodies packed shoulder to shoulder, stretching up and out of sight. It was the throat of the city, and it was completely choked with the plague.

Quinn stopped the van a block away, the engine idling. They stared at the scene in horrified silence. The journal had not been an exaggeration. It was an understatement.

"So," Hex said, his voice barely a whisper. "That’s our way out."

Quinn gripped the steering wheel, his gaze fixed on the impossible, impassable wall of bodies. Their plan had been to plow through. But this was not a roadblock. This was an ocean.

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