Later that evening, we gathered our bags and we readied to leave. I put my pack on my back and held a knife as Jones opened the front door. One by one we crept out into the evening air. The route we took led us to the side of the house where Thompson’s body had lain. I hated he chose that route and with each step I cringed.
Decency and common sense would tell me not to look as I pass, but I had to look. It would only take a second to glance over and though I fought the urge not to look, I looked. Thompson was gone, not one trace of him remained other than the blood smeared sidewalk on which they tossed him.
I looked and kept moving, watching our rear for zombies. Though we heard them, we didn’t see them. We made our way up the road and followed it. Charley tried to get an abandoned car to run; the dead battery dashed our hopes.
Ahead, a truck with a half-eaten body hanging out the passenger’s side door. I couldn’t tell by looking at him if the poor soul drove the truck. We stood guard during Charley’s hopeless attempt at starting the truck. Another dead battery and to make matters worse, it sat on its rim, missing the left rear tire. I can only imagine the poor soul making his getaway in the truck and the back tire blowing out on him. It seems his luck ran like ours. Hopefully we would fare better than he.
We wasted enough time on cars and decided not to make another attempt. We needed to get away from the area. The camp was close and if we hoofed it, we could get there before it got too late. I kept my position in the rear and kept searching for stray zombies. All it would take is for one zombie to see us and alert the rest. Like I had done in the store, my knife was ready to fly into the skull of our would-be betrayer.
Further up the road we stopped. I caught up to them to see what everyone stared at, a building not far from us, a police station. Two cars were out front and both looked drivable, meaning no visible damage.
“Are we going to go down and take a look?”
“Yeah,” said Jones. He looked around the area for zombies. “I don’t know how much time we are going to get but we should take a look.”
Brittany, Jones, and I were soldiers. Charley was our wild card. He could handle himself in a fight, but he was the unknown factor we had to work with. I eyed him to see how nervous he was. His iron jaw made me angry.
“All right,” said Jones. “Baker, Dushell, flank out and stand guard. Charley and I will go in. If it’s clear, we’ll signal and then you come in. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Let’s go.”
Brittany and I left together. We went first and split up halfway to the building. She went left and I went right. I hid behind a tree and watched the guys creep toward the station house. Charley checked the first car while Jones checked the other. Jones looked over at Charley and then to us. Jones held his finger to his throat and motioned like he was slicing his throat, no hope of using the cars. Carefully they approached the door to the station and crept inside.
I checked all around for zombies and then checked on Brittany. She waved, the coast was clear. With that, I resumed watching the door and waiting. Occasionally I checked the area, for the most part my attention focused on the door in front of me. After what seemed like hours, Jones came to the door and waved us in. With a last look behind me, I ran after Brittany. As I passed the car nearest the door, I saw the remains of a severed finger looped around a key ring. The finger was skeletal and the key was in the ignition, turned to the run position. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the rest, with the dried blood all over the car; obviously someone had tried to make their getaway and was pulled from the car. No doubt kicking and screaming.
I dismissed the images forming in my head and went to the police station’s door. I entered last. Blood smeared the walls and I would be hard pressed to say that they were only blood stains. Overturned desks, stray papers, and objects littered the floor.
Jones held a sawed-off shotgun and pointed it at me. “Bang.”
“Funny, ha ha.”
“Relax, Baker, the room’s cleared. You look like you are walking on eggshells.”
“It pays to be cautious, isn’t that what they beat into us?”
“Yeah, you are right about that. Catch.”
Jones threw me the rifle. I caught it and examined it. It had slimy goo on the barrel. Other than that, perfection.
“I pulled it out of the hands of a copper. Both his legs are missing and the rest . . . let’s just say I hope he was dead when it all started.”
“Thanks. Any bullets?”
It had been missing for a while, but it was back. That evil mischievous grin I had come to expect from him. He always held something back. He held up a policeman’s belt. Green slime covered the belt. It dripped and reeked. That belt was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I smiled ear to ear and grabbed it before he changed his mind.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say. You can thank me properly later.”
Jones winked and turned around. I don’t know if he turned so fast to keep me from responding or if for another reason, I know gratitude welled up in me for his kindness. That “thank me later joke” is big all over the world and most people take it with ease. I’m the type of person who responds to statements like that when I should laugh and go about my business. Jones was saving me more embarrassment and with me, there was plenty.
I checked to make sure my gun loaded properly and followed him, throwing the policeman’s belt over my shoulder. It reeked to high heaven. It was my protection and for that, I would ignore the smell. I walked behind Jones, guarding his six. The rifle felt good in my hands and with it, I had renewed hope for our survival.
Jones went to the desk and with him on one side and I on the other, we rifled it for anything useful. Nothing was there. The room had several desks. We divided up and searched them all. While Jones left them were they lay, I turned them upright to make searching easier. An upright desk felt better somehow. I found a box of ammo in one desk. I shoved it into my pack. It wasn’t the ammo for the shotgun. I was hoping one of the others found a weapon for it. I continued my search by going into a conference room to search there. The room held nothing useful. On a side table were radios. I turned one on and heard a hissing sound from it. Though it thrilled me to know that it worked, I left it, believing it useless. Brittany carried a small radio, it took a nine-volt battery and we never came across one. These had batteries that wouldn’t fit her radio.
Jones met me with an evil grin again, when I came out. He held up his treasure. He found two more batons so he and Charley could now swing two of the sticks each during our next zombie encounter. Jones put them in his pack and we both left to go check on the others in the back of the station.
We descended stairs into semi-darkness. Light shone through several small square windows. The area we were in was the jail section. I read the words on the overhead sign. Before us were several cells. We couldn’t see the front of them because of the wall we faced. My heart skipped a beat thinking someone was in the cells, left trapped after the zombie attack. I raced around to the front of the cells and saw they were all open. Various body parts were scattered among them, prisoners.
Brittany was there. She stared absentmindedly at the cells. I saw a gun in her hand and it excited me. Thank god we found weapons. “Britt?”
“Hey.” Brittany turned and smiled at me.
“What are you doing?”
“I was trying to figure out how they got them.”
“The cells are open, Britt. They walked in and got them.” My friend scared me.
Brittany turned to me with a confused look. Her forehead riddled with tension. “Zee.” She held up keys on a giant key ring. “I unlocked the cells. They were locked when we came down here. Unless they were zombies and smashed themselves trying to get out, how did the zombies get in to get them?”
The look of confusion she held spread to me. I wondered how long she had been staring at the cell contemplating her riddle. Was she
finally cracking? What did it matter? I put an arm around her and turned her away from the cells. Her face lacked color and plain white was not a good color on her. I walked her away while Jones looked at the cells.
Around the corner we stopped. Charley tried desperately to pry open a metal gun cabinet. He saw us and took a deep breath. And then he took out his baton and started hitting at the lock on the cabinet. The horrible sound it made echoed. Charley threw his weight into every blow and eventually the cabinet tired of the assault and revealed its treasures.
Everyone gasped as we saw the bounty in the cabinet. Inside its steel doors stood rifles. They were nowhere as good as army issue, but they were rifles, semi-automatics. Charley picked up a rifle with a long clip attached to it, obviously his choice of weapon. At the bottom of the cabinet were more clips. He scooped up the clips and put them in his bag.
Jones chose a Dillinger and a rifle. There were only a few bullets for the Dillinger. I knew from our talks around camp he loved that gun and as soon as I saw it, I predicted it would find its way to his pocket.
Brittany grabbed a rifle and tossed it to me. I barely had time to position myself to catch it and not drop the one I carried. She chose an identical one for herself and found two spare clips. I read the writing on the inside panel of the closet and discovered we possessed confiscated drug artillery.
We checked our weapons, proud to find them. We didn’t get a chance to celebrate our find, we heard a zombie howl. We flew into army mode. While the others double-checked their weapons, I managed to halfway shove the rifle into my duffel bag and fastened the belt around my waist. We secured our packs and ran toward the door. If zombies were on the move, this dungeon was the last place we wanted to be, it was a death trap.
Racing up the stairs, we met our first zombie. Jones was in the lead and shot it. “We got to get out of here, now!”
Jones led and we followed. I let the others go first and guarded our rear. I had no idea why I had done it, this was survival time and I was in survival mode. I told myself not to do it again and continued behind the others. Into the fading light we went. Zombies were coming from the south, the direction we wanted to travel. Jones began running in the opposite direction, away from the camp, away from Simon. It wasn’t that many of them. “Wait!”
“What?” Jones asked after stopping.
“There is only a handful, we can take them out.”
Jones assessed the situation. He looked at us all, we were more than willing. “All right, let’s do this.”
I didn’t have time to count zombies. My best guess would put their number at forty. Taking them out and continuing made perfect sense and would get us to the camp tonight. We dropped our bags and loaded up.
“No guns,” said Jones. “That will only attract more of them. Let’s go hand to hand. We take out the fast ones first and the rest will be a snap.”
Jones passed me one of his batons. Brittany already had her pipe up and Charley followed Jones with his batons. The first of the zombies came screaming at us. I was ready for battle. Since we would be swinging, I stepped away from the others to get more maneuvering room. I intended to swing wildly. A tall almost human zombie was the first to come at me. I leaped into the air and with a baseball swing, I cracked its head open. It fell to the ground and I whacked it again to finish it. The next, a rounder short zombie came low at me. I stood up, kicked it, and knocked it down. It took three whacks to silence it.
Not waiting for the next to attack me, I attacked it. I launched myself into the approaching zombie with a battle scream. My baton high over my head, I brought it down with a crushing blow. After it, I moved to the next and slipped like those crazy girls in the movies chased by the killer monster. How ridiculous could I be? I rose and stood my ground. I thought it best to wait and let them come to me. We cleared the way in no time and were ready to proceed forward.
None of us had fallen and dead zombies with splattered brains lay at our feet. No one cared about the green splatter on our clothing. Our reluctant imprisonment made us stronger and angrier. Did I mention our nickname was the Screaming Eagles? Maybe we should call ourselves the Angry Eagles. Anyway, we were successful and another step closer to the camp. We marched forward over a rise and saw the road.
My heart sank.
It seemed we would never complete our ill-fated trip. Ahead of us on the road were zombies, dozens and dozens of killer zombies. One of them in front saw us. It stopped, and like the scene out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it pointed at us, opened its big mouth, and let out the most god-awful sound imaginable.
The chase was on. They ran at us with vigor, howling.
“We can shoot them,” Brittany suggested.
“We don’t have enough ammo for that. They would get us while we changed clips.” Jones made his decision. He hollered, “Run!”
We turned around and ran as fast as we could. I was carrying a heavy backpack, a duffel, a rifle in one hand and had just shoved a bloody baton in the duffel of the other. It was a marathon run and at first I had no idea where we were going, but then it looked familiar. We were going back to the safety of our two-story house.
We went through a back alley and then between two houses. Jones stopped and took a knee. He opened his pack and lit a Molotov cocktail’s wick. He threw it at a house to his left and then another at the house on his right. Flames roared. We kept moving and when I looked back, a zombie was going into one of the burning houses. It lit up like a torch. It turned and stumbled into several others and lit them. The rest halted and howled as we continued to safety.
As we neared the house, zombies were in the doorway, I had left the door open, not thinking we would come back. Jones was in the lead and he stopped, dropped to a knee and took out one of two zombies in view. He aimed and got the other. They ran for the door and stopped at the threshold.
I was bringing up the rear and had put considerable distance between myself and the zombies. I made it to the door and we entered together. Like we thought, zombies invaded our home.
I counted six, all tall and human looking. I looked into the eyes of one of them and barely saw red, he was new and strong. He might have been one of the runners we saw earlier. If he was, he would hold a grudge. The zombie I saw came at me. I shot him.
Before I could aim at another, several gunshots went off and they all lay dead at our feet.
“Lock the door.” Jones ordered.
Brittany locked it and like before, Jones and Charley pushed the couch in front of the door. “We have to check the rest of the house.”
Jones glared at me when I said it, perhaps he was about to give that order. “You two go that way and we will take this way.”
Brittany and I went toward the kitchen and left the rest of the house to them. I didn’t care who searched what as long as we searched. We didn’t find anything and went upstairs to search. From my new belt, I had a penlight flashlight. I used it on the hall, it had no light. I shined it ahead of us. Brittany and I were a team and searched two of the upstairs bedrooms.
We heard a commotion and raced to another. Passing our large bedroom, we saw no one and continued to the last small bedroom. A zombie lay on the floor of the small room, Charley and Jones were smashing its head in with their batons.
“What happened?”
“It snuck up on us,” said Jones.
Charley added, “It was in the closet. We went to the window to check on the zombies and it came at us.”
“Yeah,” said Jones. “It knocked him down and he came at me.”
“Where are your guns?” Brittany said.
“We left them in our room.” Jones’ face turned red. “We thought if we found one we could clobber it and keep the noise down.”
“I guess it showed you, huh?”
“Watch it, Baker.”
I stood at attention and saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
Chapter Seventeen
Zombie Zora Page 16