The Inroad Chronicles (Book 1): Legion Seed

by Erickson, Brian

  Mr. Langford needed to take one more step, and he could wrap his hands around Jackson’s throat. As he took it, he walked right into the gun’s muzzle and hit it with his forehead without flinching.

  Jackson felt Mr. Langford’s fingertips brush his neck and squeezed the trigger. At such close range he fell straight back as the contents of his head washed the floor in crimson while spraying Mrs. Langford’s face and chest. While the sight of blood was enough to shake Jackson to his core, what scared him worse was when he saw that it had sprayed Mrs. Langford’s eyes, and she did not so much as blink. She continued forward completely oblivious to the blood and her dead husband lying at her feet. Without looking down she stepped on his chest and walked over him and her heel dug into his skin and made something pop. She neared Jackson and her lips peeled back into a snarl, exposing her crooked brown teeth.

  Jackson squeezed the trigger and put one round in the center of her chest. She stumbled back but maintained her footing and started forward again. Impossible! His teeth snapped together as he clamped his jaws shut and fired repeatedly, riddling her torso, and she slumped to the floor. For a split-second Jackson breathed a sigh of relief then gasped as she got back on her feet. He fired several more rounds, but she stood up again.

  After the two volleys, he had lost track of the number of cartridges spent, and his mind raced to figure out a way to bring this thing down. Dark, red blood oozed from the holes in her chest and stained her clothes in patches of scarlet. She took another step and Jackson peered down the gun’s sights, but he aimed slightly higher this time. He squeezed the trigger and his last bullet exited the chamber and tore into her throat.

  Chunks of tissue and bone flew out and left a gaping hole in the back of her neck. Whatever part of her brain that still lived relied on her spinal column to send signals to the body, and with most of her neck decorating the floor, along with segments of her vertebrae, she collapsed. Lying there paralyzed, she still moved her face and bit into the air at nothing.

  Jackson gazed at the carnage and winced as he placed a hand on his stomach. “Oh my God.” He ripped off his gas mask and ran to the kitchen sink and spilled everything in his stomach into it, but hardly any food came out. When he finished, he collapsed on the floor against the cupboards, sweating profusely and spitting to get the taste out of his mouth. His eyes, half-shut as he panted, watered profusely. After a few seconds, he opened them and wiped the tears away with a trembling hand. When he stood up, Jackson wobbled a little on his legs and steadied himself on the sink. He looked at the gas mask and then away, but the expression on his face showed that his thoughts were aimlessly lost.

  His eyes brushed over Mr. Langford’s body and then onto Mrs. Langford’s, where her head sat off to the side still barely attached by a chunk of flesh, and then it dawned on him—the answer to the problem. Both of ‘em took head shots to bring down.

  It could have slipped past him if he had shot them both several times in the body. However, Mr. Langford had put his own head directly in the line of fire and express delivered the problem’s solution. He saw Mrs. Langford’s jaws still working, stubbornly chomping away, and knew that he had to destroy the only part left alive after whatever had caused this horror.

  Realizing this ignited revulsion for this abomination sprawled out on his floor. Red faced and shaking with fury, Jackson lifted a thick, wooden cutting board off the counter and slammed it into her head. The blow did damage, but he still saw the mouth moving and brought the board down again and again until the head cracked open. He went into a rage, livid at everything: his invaded home, his scared wife, killing, his unborn child coming into this kind of world, and feeling threatened. The emotions poured out in screams of agony. Every time he raised the board over his head and saw an eye twitch, anything, he slammed it down again until hush washed over the mangled remains, and the head stirred no more.

  Jackson dropped the blood smeared cutting board, fell back on the floor, and pushed himself away from the macabre mess. Breathing rapidly and wheezing, his eyes clenched up and squeezed out streams of tears that rolled down his blood speckled skin. He pushed himself up against the wall with head hung low and openly wept.

  ✹✹✹

  Kathleen stood rigidly down in the basement staring up at the floor having tried for the last several minutes to follow the action since the first gun shot rang out. Every foot step, even the sole of a shoe scraping the floor, could be heard. Subconsciously she wrung her hands, and swelled her wide eyes every time a sudden noise vibrated the floor boards. Upon hearing the first gun shots she had looked over at one of the AK-47’s sitting on the table several times, and nearly charged upstairs with it. Then she had flinched when she heard something crashing into the floor repeatedly, from below it resembled somebody smacking water with the broad side of a paddle. She fidgeted while standing in place but could only keep looking up.

  She always thought that going stiff with fear meant falling into a catatonic state where everything ceased to matter with no more data coming in, but it did not happen that way. She stood there for seconds or minutes, she could not tell which, with a million thoughts racing through her mind, cars whizzing past on a freeway, but she could not grasp one, not a single decision, and simply did nothing.

  Finally, Jackson slowly came through the door holding a stuffed bag. Kathleen exhaled so forcefully that his head shot up with a start. Only then did she realize that she had hardly breathed since the commotion started.

  Jackson walked down the stairs still encased in shadow, but his voice sounded unmistakably troubled as he spoke. “Kat, I saw the Langfords, but they weren’t quite themselves.”

  “What happened? Is that blood?”

  ✹✹✹

  Ron stepped into his dark stairwell in a shooting posture with the gun pointed at the dark beyond. However, he immediately cursed himself for running out to fight in such haste, because he left his Tavor with the night vision scope behind. Just keep goin’. As he took the first tentative steps up he could hear the creatures banging on his door and felt relief at the noise since that meant the barrier still held. He knew they would get in eventually, and it fueled him to press on and prevent that from ever happening. He reached the top of the stairs and could see a crack of light stabbing into the house every time the pack hit the door. Ron looked down at his M32 and slowly slid it out of the way and let it hang at his side. Instead he reached for the AA12 shotgun and flicked off the safety.

  Ron stood still for a couple seconds in front of the door and realized that he left himself in an untenable position if his strategy consisted of letting the things inside and trying to pick them off. The logic behind leaving the bunker in the first place was predicated on keeping intruders out of the house. If he had a chance of fulfilling that desire, letting them in automatically undermined it, switching it to a measure of last resort. Ron did not feel that he had reached that point just yet, but strained to think of what else to do. His mind scrolled back through volumes of tactical and strategy books he had read. Despite the chill in the air, he felt his shirt sticking to his back, hot breath clinging to his face under the mask, and beads of sweat dotted his head, but a sense of calm rose from his gut and washed over him as he formulated a plan. The wisdom he had gleaned from veterans who talked about military tactics, gun classes, and survival experts replayed in his mind. He broke the situation down into its basic components and began to build it back up again to a simple, workable form.

  Attack or defend? Attack. Frontal assault or flanking maneuver? Flank. Exit the back door.

  He ran to the back door and looked through the window and gave his eyes time to wash over all the trees and bushes for any signs of movement. He bit his lip when he saw a few more of them moving in from adjacent yards. He watched as they staggered into the back yard and disappeared along the side of the house. When they had passed, he scanned over the yards and foliage again one last time and breathed a sigh of relief.

  He assumed that the pack would ju
st as well try to break down the back door but, obviously, had lost the cognitive ability required to search it out. Even more importantly, their hive mentality stretched so far as to cause the ones that might have approached the back of their own volition to join the group at the front instead. With all these thoughts, Ron's claw-like grip on the shotgun relaxed, and the ache that was starting in his hand subsided, despite the concerns swirling in his head; concerns that his targets were stupid individually, but they would amass into large groups when alerted to compensate for that shortcoming. And his only real answer to this was guns, and clearly guns attracted them. But it was the only way, especially having to do it alone. He shivered and his eyes hardened into a steely glare as he laid his hand on the doorknob and slowly twisted.

  He exited the back door taking soft, slow steps, crouching low along the wall behind a row of bushes. When he rounded the corner on the side, he saw one of them walking only a few feet away with its back to him. He raised the butt of the gun as high as his head and smashed it in the back of the skull. It fell forward and writhed around, and he bashed it several more times in the face until its forehead broke open, and it stopped moving. It made little more noise than the meaty thuds produced as the skull caved in on the creature’s brain. Ron raised the gun to his shoulder and shot glances ahead and behind after it stopped moving, but all remained still. His heart throbbed in his chest, and he wanted to rest but forced down the urge and continued alongside the house. He reached the corner and slowly peeked around with one eye. Ron scanned the yard with a granite gaze and quickly moved back as one of them, still walking in from the road, almost spotted him. He looked again once it reached the house, and saw that he had an open yard with which to work. As he took deep breaths his hands squeezed the gun until his knuckles went white. I sure hope this is all of ‘em, please no more.

  As Ron stood on the side of the house about to charge forward, he never could have known that one of the undead, still several properties away from the back lawn, walked toward the house. A patch of trees partially obscured it, but the creature had seen Ron open the back door and proceeded toward it. The distance hindered its progress, but through hunger it persevered and trod on.

  The undead still banged on the front door as one focused unit, about to breach it completely. Ron took a deep breath, “God help me,” and ran out to the middle of the yard behind the pack. One of them, a big male at the rear, tilted its head back and sniffed the air. Ron could see its large nostrils flaring. It caught his scent and slowly turned around revealing its dead, still eyes. Ron aimed just as it began to let out a guttural hiss that alerted the others. One by one they stopped striking the door and turned to face him. Ron froze for a second as he stared at the twisted faces with still, dead eyes and rotting skin facing him, just as the pack started moving forward. Oh shit! This is it! Ron felt his hands tremble, and he stilled them by squeezing the trigger, unleashing the gun’s bitter rage.

  Buck shot thundered out of the barrel at a furious pace. The wretched beasts only knew a single direction—forward—and they walked one by one into the onslaught. Buckshot tore heads apart, and the remains flew back on the ones behind. Ron kept the gun aimed above their necks and moved it from side to side slightly as the power of the AA12 ripped them apart.

  He had them bottled in a nice, tight group, and they did not possess enough intelligence to spread out. He felt a sense of relief at the ease with which the undead practically dispatched themselves by staying in front of the gun, until he detected movement out the corner of his eye. He looked over and saw another one approaching from his right. He turned and aimed at it but lowered the gun immediately. Too far, dammit! The mob pressed forward, and he backpedaled looking right and left as he did so. He felt a chill run down his spine and turned around, waving the gun into empty space. Then he turned right, left, and behind again swinging the gun in wide arcs as he went, breath pounding in his mask. Shit! Don’t lose it now! He turned back to the group and gasped when the first one’s hands nearly brushed his shirt. He sank his foot into its gut and sent it reeling backwards until it dropped to the ground butt first and started to get back up. Ron raised the gun and looked down the barrel and pulled the trigger three times, and the shot sideswiped two more heads and opened them up. The last two pulls of the trigger made hollow clicks.

  Ron quickly dislodged the drum from its housing and saw only empty slots. Again he dawdled and kept staring at the drum with a blank stare. He dropped everything and changed over to the M32. The first monster stopped and paused for one brief second and stared at the grenade launcher centered on its chest as if some faint memory cried out a warning from the dark of its pending demise. Ron let a quick grin escape before he stepped back and fired two quick rounds into the remaining mob. When the explosions ripped them in every direction, the area turned into a cloud of rosy vapor that hung over tattered and torn bodies, laying as they landed in contorted, bloodied heaps. The blood mist settled to the ground and the grass reminded Ron of morning dew after a frigid autumn night. Only the scarlet mist settling over the blades of grass took that beautiful memory and morphed it into hate and disgust that such a comparison could be made now.

  Ron relaxed for one fleeting second and tensed up again when he remembered the other undead approaching from the right. He turned and drew his pistol. His hands had stopped trembling, and he easily laid the creature in his sights as he held half a breath, squeezed the trigger, and watched the lone bullet spit a rouge wad from the base of the creature’s skull as it took one final skewed step and fell flat on its face. Ron turned around quickly with a start and waved the gun around wildly, then rotated in a circle studying every yard and gap between houses with eyes of fire. He breathed easier when he saw only houses, grass, and trees and let his arms drop to his side.

  Ron looked back at the vanguard which had collapsed into a trail of cadavers, and the irony struck him that it made him feel glad that, despite all he had just destroyed, his own life remained intact. Only a short while ago, he could not have foreseen such a thing comforting him.

  The battery of buckshot had sprayed blood and flesh throughout the alcove. It looked like a set piece from a slasher movie after an unsuspecting teen walks into a slaughter. Ron had a strong stomach, but looking at the sanguine puddles and sprayed stains with little bits of decayed body made his stomach churn. The word, “revolting,” dropped from his lips as he looked away.

  His eyes wandered down to his guns and he gazed at them as a smile brightened his face. He nodded, and each time he exhaled his shoulders relaxed. Then he turned toward the front door and grimaced as he planned the method by which to reenter the house there to make sure that nothing saw him use the back door.

  ✹✹✹

  Ann leaned forward in the chair with her face buried in her hands. Beside her the monitor showed the dark pools of blood that now dominated the entrance to Ron’s house, only slightly obscured by the tiny droplets that had sprayed the lens. She heard a sound upstairs and looked up with a start. With a loud gulp and a sigh, she wiped tears away from her eyes and dabbed at her runny nose with her sleeve. How could he do that? No matter what's wrong them, that was mass murder. Her head whipped over toward the door as Ron cranked the handle and stepped back inside.

  Blood covered him from nearly head to toe, since he had to force open his soiled front door. He shut the bunker door and left behind a red hand print running to the floor.

  Ann looked at him with the apprehensive stare people have when a crazy person invades their space, and suspicion clouds their thoughts for fear of an erratic explosion. She could not rationalize a difference in the acts he had committed, and the manner in which murderers and rapists operate. She had witnessed similar brutality a hundred times in films, but real life bore no resemblance. With those thoughts stampeding through her mind, she remained silent, but kept her eyes trained on him above a rigid frame, ready to run.

  Finally, Ron, having noticed how she looked at him, broke the awkward silenc
e with his hands in front of him. “I’m okay, Ann. I’m okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I got rid of ‘em.” To fully appreciate Ann’s perspective, he needed to see himself at that moment in a full length mirror to note his maniacal appearance, defiled clothes, and vermilion skin, accentuated by large caliber weapons dangling at his sides. He looked into her hard eyes and knew that he might never convince her of the necessity of his actions.

  Ann sat with her legs crossed, arms folded over her chest, and her lips were sealed shut. She stared at him for a while before speaking. “Ron, I might as well just lay it out on the table. What you just did leads me to question your sanity. Look at you! You’re covered in blood like some sort of gun toting butcher. What the hell is wrong with you? This isn’t the Ron I’ve worked with for the past five years.”

  “Of course it’s not. Who brings their real personality to work? Nobody’s the same. Listen, you don’t understand what those people, if you can call ‘em that, have become. They’re not human anymore! I was just tryin’ to…” He paused and swallowed his words and then continued in a lighter tone. “I was only trying to protect us. More of them will come you know. The ones I just shot followed the noise of the chainsaw and gunfire. I don’t know how many more are around, but noise attracts them.”

  “That’s not the point, Ron. I’m talking about your response. Some people start acting strangely and you pick up a couple of handheld cannons and create a massacre inside of one afternoon.”

  “They were trying to kill me!” Ron closed his eyes and shook his head. “You didn’t see them, Ann, not like I did. You’re just lookin’ through a camera like some sort of Big Brother making judgments based on half the facts. If you saw them, you would have done the same. They’re dangerous.”

  “So what’s wrong with them? You must’ve seen one of them do something if you know they’re dangerous.” She tilted her head to the side and kept her arms crossed.