We Are Still Here

by Jimmy Bird

  The feeling of sadness I felt, slowly turned to rage. I looked over at James and wanted to hit him. I wanted to beat him until he died. I wanted to cause as much pain to him as his people had caused me, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to remind myself why we were there in the first place. Our goal was to kill Robert. I figured that if he died then his people would most likely die with him. The thought of them dying brought a smile to my face.

  My sister pulled up next to me and noticed my smile, “What are you so happy about?”

  “A wonderful thought just popped into my head.”

  She frowned, “What thought?”

  I ignored her question.

  Instead, I pointed to our left, “Go to that parking lot over there and hide. Try to blend the car in with the others over there so that it won’t trigger their suspicion of a trap. The cars filthy as it is, but we don’t need to tip our hand. I’m hoping that once they see this car inside the gate and James in a zombie state would be too much for Robert handle. With his emotions running rampant, I’m hoping that he would throw caution to the wind and charge into the base looking for us. It’s what I’m counting on.”

  Wide-eyed, my sister asked, “Are you sure that you want to go through with it?”

  I nodded my head, “I don’t think that we have much of a choice. Robert will not stop until we’re all dead. Now, hurry up and park. Robert could already be on his way here.”

  I watched as my sister drove over to the nearby parking lot and carefully parked between two abandoned cars. When she stopped, I shifted my own vehicle into drive and slowly drove towards the gate. As I got closer to the gate, it seemed like a million cautionary thoughts began running through my head. I ignored them all. I knew that I needed to do this because if I didn’t then Robert wouldn’t stop looking for us. Correction, he wouldn’t stop hunting us.

  When I was about ten feet away from the gate, I pushed down hard on the gas. Within seconds, I hit the center of the gate, forcing it to swing inwards.

  The gate wasn’t as tough as I thought it would be. I figured that it would be reinforced with something like steel, but it wasn’t. Not even close. Maybe, the military thought that their guards and on duty personnel would be enough to stop anything that tried to come through. I guess they were wrong.

  As soon as my front bumper hit the gate, I expected to hear that distinct loud metal to metal crunching sound. Instead, it made a loud thump sound that kind of went away the further I went in. Unfortunately, it was loud enough to get the zombies attention. I made sure that I didn’t stop until I was close to the nearest building.

  Once I stopped, I reached over and used my machete to cut James loose. I made it a point to make sure that her hands and feet were free. I knew that in order to convince Robert that we were somewhere inside hiding, he was going to have to witness his cousin moving around outside. I hoped that leaving the car doors open would help sale the trap. Crap, I just thought of something. We probably should have left some of our supplies in the car to help with our rouse. Oh well, I guess it’s a little too late for that now.

  I quickly undid James’s seatbelt and noticed that he was barely breathing. His breathing was kind of gurgled. I looked up and noticed that a large group of zombies were close to surrounding us. They were about six feet away.

  I knew that I didn’t have time to get out and run to the other side of the car, open the door, and pull him out. Instead, I had to open it from the inside and push him out.

  I leaned over the center console and reached over his waist to grab the door handle. I was about to pull on it when I noticed that I couldn’t hear him breathing. Fearing the worst, I looked up and to my right. What I saw would haunt my dreams forever. James looked like one of those dead people out of those old horror movies.

  As you can imagine, his skin was very pale and looked it was kind of thinning in places. His skeletal mouth was opening and shutting. It was as if he was trying to talk, but I couldn’t hear what he was trying to say. That wasn’t even the most disturbing part. His eyes were wide open, and kind of blood shot as he stared at me. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to curse me, plead for his life, or bite me.

  Something on his shoulder caught my attention. I had forgotten that he was still wearing the clothes that he had been shot in. It meant that the back of her clothes was stained red from all the blood he had lost. It also meant that the seat was covered in blood.

  Man, I screwed up. I couldn’t even set a trap right. If Robert was able to trace us to the supercenter and figured out what happened there, then this trap was a bust.

  I froze as my mind raced to find a solution to my problem. I knew that Robert was a good tracker and was smart. So, how could I still make our trap work?

  I slowly sat up and looked around. My mind was working in overdrive trying to figure it out. To make matters worse, the zombies were almost upon us.

  I glanced toward my left and noticed the building door. That was it! I could cut my way through the zombies and make for the door, or at least make it seem that we had made our way to the door. I can make it seem that James had been shot and was attacked trying to follow us to the door. It could work. I just needed to open the driver’s side rear door.

  Without a second thought, I reached over James and pulled the handle and pushed at the door at the same time. I was able to open it a few inches. I quickly sat back up and looked at James. He was still staring at me. I felt a little bad for what I was about to do, but not bad to stop.

  I lied to James, “I’m sorry.”

  I pushed on his left shoulder. He rolled out of the seat and landed hard on the ground but didn’t move or make a sound.

  I turned to my left and grabbed the door handle. I took a deep breath and pulled on the handle. I used my shoulder to push on the door. When it was almost completely open, I jumped out.

  I reached back inside the truck and grabbed my machete which had been in the seat next to me. I could feel how close the zombies were and instinctively turned around, swinging my knife at the closest zombie.

  It happened to be a woman dressed in old business attire. Her clothes were stained and full of holes. The left side of her neck had a huge chunk missing as well as her arms.

  I hit her outstretched damaged arms close to the left elbow. The knife was sharp enough that it went smoothly through to her right elbow. The momentum was enough that she staggered towards her right. The next zombie was a few feet behind her.

  Glad for the momentary break, I leaned over the seat towards the passenger door handle. I grabbed it and quickly pulled on it to close the door. I immediately turned around and began swinging my machete wildly. I knew that I needed to cause as much chaos as I could. Robert needed to see that we had to fight our way inside the building.

  The woman that I had cut her arms off had regained her balance and was beginning to turn around. I swung my blade at her neck. I felt a little resistance when the blade connected with her spine, but not much. Her head went with the momentum of the blade while her body stopped moving and dropped to the ground.

  The next zombie looked like he was dressed as if he had been a high-ranking officer. His uniform was stained and had holes all over it, but it still had the uniform bars and stripes on it. I immediately felt guilty for killing one of our fallen heroes, but I had no choice. I raised my knife and stabbed him straight through the nose cavity. He stopped moving and dropped to the ground as I pulled my knife back to me.

  The next zombie looked like one of the guards from the front gates or something like that. I noticed that his right hand and side arm pistol were missing, but somehow, he still had his rifle slung around his shoulder. It looked like his hand had been chewed off around the wrist. It kind of made you wonder what had happened to him.

  I swung my machete and caught him just below his lower jaw, at a downward angle. I wish I could say that my knife cut straight through, but it didn’t. It hit the bone and stopped. I wasn’t sure if the blade was starting to get dull from al
l the hacking I had done or if it was something else. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to worry about it because I was quickly getting surrounded.

  I pulled my knife back and began to turn towards the next uniformed zombie. I stopped in mid-turn when I noticed that the guard I had just cut hadn’t dropped to the ground like the others. I looked over and saw that his head was laying sideways on his shoulder. You could see how deep my knife had cut into the guard’s neck. Odd, it looked like the shoulder strap was the thing that had stopped my knife from completely cutting the guards head off.

  It was weird looking at the guard with his head sideways. You could see the muscles and bone. His eyes stayed focused on me while his mouth kept opening and shutting. I could see his dark stained teeth.

  Knowing that I didn’t have much time, I lifted my right leg up and kicked his left knee. I heard more than felt the cracking of his knee as it buckled under his weight. Without a scream, he went down.

  I turned around and noticed a female military officer. It looked like she had been through a nuclear war. Not only was her uniform stained with holes all over it, half of her looked burnt. It looked like her right side was the normal sickly-looking zombie side while her left side had been put in a grill for way too long. She reached out towards me with both hands. Her right hand was dirty, stained, and cut up while the skin around her left hand looked like it had melted to the bone.

  I focused on the movement behind her and realized that close to half of the zombies were burnt, some were burnt more than others. I couldn’t help but wonder what could have happened here. I imagined that since this was an Air Force Base then somehow the fuel must have exploded during the zombie attack. I started to become lost in my own thoughts when something in the back of my mind told me to focus. I needed to focus.

  I blinked a few times and noticed two hands, one torn up and the other kind of melted. I quickly remembered where I was and reacted. I swung my knife and cut both of her hands off, followed immediately by a swing to her stomach. Her intestines dropped to the ground. I kick her directly in the right knee. With a cracking sound she fell over.

  I turned and cut the next guy’s head off, followed by cutting some civilian’s left leg at the knee. The headless guy’s body immediately fell to the ground while the one-legged guy was able to stand a little longer before falling over.

  I went at the next person, as so on and so forth until I was at the door. Without thinking, my stupid butt reached out and grabbed the door handle. Let me tell you, that was a mistake.

  As soon as I pulled on the door, it seemed like dozens upon dozens of zombies were standing in the lobby. They were standing shoulder to shoulder in a packed room, like they were a package of sardines. I guess most of them noticed the movement of the door and turned immediately to lunge at me.

  I jumped backwards, just out of the closest zombie’s reach and turned to run away. I quickly stopped when I realized how trapped I truly was. The zombies that I hadn’t killed were working their way towards me, either by walking or crawling. I could even see James making his way towards me.

  The sight of James frightened me. His face took on that pale zombie feature while his eyes had that glazed overlook in them. He was missing skin on the lower left side of his jaw, exposing fresh blood-stained teeth. It looked like some excess skin was hanging from his jaw. From where I stood, it looked like the skin on his right arm was missing, exposing the muscles and tendons. It looked like he was walking with a limp, but it was hard to tell since he was walking behind other zombies.

  I knew that I couldn’t run directly for the gate, otherwise, they would follow me out and the trap would no longer work. Thinking quickly, I turned and shut the door behind me, trapping the zombies once again inside. I turned to my left and ran down a sidewalk that led towards another building. I was hoping that there was something over there that would help me escape, something that would help get their attention.

  I followed the path blindly around the next building, hoping that I wouldn’t run into anymore zombies until I could figure out how to safely escape. I turned the corner without stopping, praying that nothing was there. Luckily for me, it was clear.

  While I was running along the sidewalk, I noticed ahead of me there were a few small round greenish looking balls just off the sidewalk. They couldn’t have been more than a few feet away, lying just off the path in the wild grass. Could those be grenades? I mean, they looked like grenades. If they were grenades, then that could be why some of the zombies were burnt.

  Since zombies were naturally slow moving, I had opened some space between me and them. The closest zombie was around fifteen yards away or so. Thinking that I had more than enough time to look, I stopped and examined my find. They indeed looked like grenades and there seemed to have been quite a few spread out in the tall grass.

  I reached down and picked one up. I couldn’t believe my luck. These could be the answer to my problem.

  I slid the first one in my right front pocket and put my machete into its holster. I slowly reached down to grab two more when I heard automatic gunfire. It sounded like it was coming from the direction of the gate. I just hoped that it wasn’t from my group.

  Regardless, since zombies were sensitive to noise, most of them had turned around and followed the automatic gunfire. Wait a minute, automatic gunfire? It meant that it wasn’t my group because we didn’t have any automatic rifles. We were forced to abandon ours when Robert’s group came to my father-n-law’s house. Nonetheless, whoever it was took all but ten of the zombies away.

  I slowly stood up and slid the grenade from my left hand into my left front pocket and shifted the remaining grenade from my right hand to my left. I used my right hand to pull my machete back out from its holster. Without even realizing it, the remaining zombies had gotten really close to me.

  I needed to know who was here in the yard with me, whether it was a potential friend or foe. The only safe way to do that was to quickly and quietly kill the zombies. I knew that the sooner I took the zombies out, the better.

  I glanced behind me to make sure that nothing was there and began to slowly back up. I wanted to give up enough ground so that whoever was there wouldn’t get curious enough to come over and look. When I was sure that all ten were out of sight of the shooters, I stopped giving up ground and began to attack.

  I planted my feet firmly and swung my machete at the closest zombie from right to left. I caught him just under the jaw, in the upper part of the throat. I guess his muscles and joints had deteriorated because the back part of the jaw bone dropped down while the front stayed attached. The zombie opened the upper part of his mouth exposing damaged stained teeth. It wasn’t until he shut his mouth that it looked like the front part of the jaw was only holding on by the skin. It was truly a gruesome sight.

  The zombie kept coming towards me, his mouth slowly opening and shutting. I lowered my center of gravity by widening my stance. I took a baseball type of swing by shifting my weight from my left foot to my right. I was trying to get as much power as I could in my swing. I caught him just below his left kneecap. My knife cut cleanly through his knee causing him to fall to his left side.

  Ignoring him, I shifted my attention to the next zombie and swung my knife. The blade caught him just above his left shoulder. I swung with such force that it took his head clean off.

  I took a step and swung back to my right. I also caught the next zombie just above the shoulder. His head also came off.

  The next zombie was much, much shorter. She must have been under five-foot-tall because she didn’t even come up to my shoulders. Her height was a slight disadvantage to me. With me being six feet tall, I knew that I was going to have to lower my swing radius just to try and hit her in the neck.

  I tried to accommodate my swing by lowering my center of gravity again. Only this time, I didn’t shift my weight as I swung from right to left.

  I’m not sure if I just misjudged her speed or her height or the combination of both be
cause when I hit her with the blade, I hit her in the mouth. I swear the cut made her look like the Joker from the old Batman movies. She must have had her mouth open when I hit her because I clearly missed her teeth. The cut didn’t even go deep enough to hit her ears, but it was close.

  I quickly realized that the remaining five zombies were closing in on me fast. Without much thought, I just reacted. I kicked at the short zombie just to give me space to fight.

  I ended up kicking her around the chest area. The sudden kick caused her to fall backwards. I was shocked on how easily she went down and decided to do it to the rest. As you can imagine, it didn’t go so well.

  The next zombie was a good six inches taller them me. I knew that I couldn’t kick high enough to knock him backwards, so I went for his left knee.

  The zombie moved towards me at the same time, causing him to sort of catch my right foot between his left hand and thigh. I know what you’re thinking. How could that be? Zombies don’t have that type of brain function. While that may be true as far as we know, we still can’t rule out chance or unlucky breaks.

  With a firm grip on my ankle, he continued to take a step towards me, causing me to become a little off balanced. I decided to go with his momentum and height as I jumped up with my left foot.

  My gamble worked when I caught him on the right side of his face with my shoe. The sudden attack was enough for him to let go of my right foot and stumble slightly backwards into the zombies behind him. My own momentum caused me to fall to the ground.

  I looked up and noticed that the tall zombie was still a little off balance, but still on his feet. While on the ground I quickly decided to use the old floor sweep technique. I kicked the back part of his left foot with my right. Could you believe that it didn’t work? I’m not sure why but maybe, it was because of the zombies behind him.

  Once he regained his balance, he began to come at me again. As you can imagine, I’m not the type of person who gives up easily. I was still lying on my side and figured that I didn’t have enough time to get back to my feet. Thinking as quickly as possible, I decided to go for his feet again, only this time I would kick his ankle.