by Shane Woods
We all found a place to rest for the night, most of us in the vehicles, Chris sprawled out in a lawn chair he pulled off the wall, and we tucked in for the night as Henry took his first turn on watch.
SEVEN
We awoke as planned, about an hour before the sun crested the horizon. Rich, Chris, and I grabbed a backpack, emptied out the contents, and replaced them with our own. We took three bottles of water each, and enough food to allow us to scrape by for 48 hours. Loading our pockets and weapons with ammo, and, nearly overlooking such an item, I threw a small med-kit in my bag. It was a simple camping affair from Wal-Mart, bolstered with a fire starter kit, a small Purell bottle full of rubbing alcohol, and a basic suture kit and pack of razor blades. I’d assembled a half dozen such kits over the years, though I never expected them to come in handy.
I instructed the wife to keep little Gwen occupied, thinking it better she didn’t realize that I was leaving, to prevent the fit that toddlers are prone to throwing every time a parent walks out of the room.
Melissa stopped me, wrapping her arms around me in a hug, and said in her soft voice, “Be careful, Dad.”
This nearly stopped my heart. I’ve known the girl as her stepfather for around eight years now. Only on Father’s Day has she ever called me Dad, and even then, only in cards, never spoken. I returned her hug and gave her my word in my most self-assured voice.
“No worries, kid. You know I’ll be alright. Love ya,” I said, then moved on to hugging and kissing Jennifer, and repeating the process for little Gwen, who hasn’t quite gotten the concept of a kiss. She instead opened her mouth and left a big smear of toddler drool on my cheek, then let out a giggle.
Returning Gwen to her mother to distract, I turned to Henry. I shook his hand as Rich bid goodbye to Carolyn, and Chris looked typically bored. I told Henry to watch over the rest of them, he assured me he would. Chris damn near rolled his eyes.
“Hey, Jolly-fuckin’-Green,” I said to the large man, “If you’re feeling unloved, Henry can wish you goodbye, just don’t expect an ‘I love you’ from him.”
The big man actually smiled like that was the funniest thing he’d heard all week.
“Hug,” I instructed, jokingly. Chris made a move toward Henry, following the punchline of the joke, and just before the much smaller black man was swallowed up by the tattooed goliath, Henry pushed him back with a jovial shout.
“Hey, watch out now!” he exclaimed. “We ain’t that friendly!” Then, chuckling, he shook Chris’ hand and wished him to be safe and come back in one piece.
We left the garage through the interior door after all of our farewells and made our way out the sliding back door of the small ranch, pushing it firmly closed as Henry followed and locked it from the inside in our wake.
We moved across the open back yard and hopped the short chain link fence onto the next and moved through that one as well. Passing several children’s toys and a cheap wooden playground in the next yard, we came up to the privacy fence of the next property.
I boosted Rich’s small frame up and over, then clambered over after him. After a moment, the gate at the end of the fence opened, and Chris waltzed through. As he eyed us, both standing there looking bewildered at our own overzealous actions, his expression was a mix of judgement and bemusement.
“You get one of those a day,” I shot at him quietly.
His face lit up in silent laughter, and we continued, no gate this time, so we all scrambled over the next section of fence and dropped onto the sidewalk that signified the end of the block. The apartments loomed ahead of us, two brick sentries keeping watch in the early dawn light. I could still see no movement in any of the visible windows, though that may have been impossible anyway due to the way the sun hit the glass and reflected into a blinding glare.
We kept low and fast, and moved across the street, squeezing between a small gap in a hedgerow that bordered this section of the property. We all immediately froze. Not five yards ahead of us stood a figure. Its pale skin, veins visible and arms twitching, it did not make any larger movements. It stood there just staring in the direction of the north building.
Chris began to raise his pistol, but Rich put his hand over the slide, causing him to lower it back down. We looked at Rich to see what he was stopping him for, and he put a finger over his lips telling us to remain quiet. Then he unsnapped the loop around the hunting knife he carried, and approached the creature, moving low and slow. Once he got close, the freak’s head twitched, and we all froze, thinking he had heard Rich regardless of how much stealth he exercised.
The thing’s head twitched a few more times, and it remained there, once again still as a statue, aside from the occasional muscle spasm. Rich covered the remaining few feet between he and it, and, drawing his arm back, swung the blade tip-first in a long arc. The blade found its way right into the side of the creature’s skull, and it began to drop instantly. Rich wrapped his arms around its mid-section in a bear hug, and followed it quickly to the ground, dropping it soundlessly in the grass. Then he retrieved his blade from the thing’s skull and motioned us forward.
We regained formation, myself in the lead, followed by Rich, and Chris covering our rear. Approaching the side of the building, I checked around the corner to the front once, then disappeared around the corner, the other two in tow, Rich’s hand on the middle of my back as he followed to let me know he was right behind me.
I reached the front door of the South Building. It was a pair of doors actually, set into metal frames with large panes of glass in similar frames on each side. A second matching set of doors was set about ten feet behind this one, allowing access to the building. The first set swung open easily, and we made our way inside. The second set proved to be locked, and I could see why when Chris tapped my shoulder and pointed to the card reader on the interior wall, with an intercom system set into the wall next to it, a list of apartments and corresponding buttons next to the speaker.
I moved to the pane of glass next to the door, turned my Remington so it was butt-first, and was about to break the glass when we heard a short burst of gunfire, followed by two single shots. All shots were muffled, whether from distance, or location, we couldn’t tell. All three of us froze and listened, trying to split one ear between the outdoors, and the other to the interior of the building we were trying to enter.
A few moments later, we heard another short burst of automatic weapons fire. Rich motioned to the north building. I glanced at Chris, who shrugged, and Rich did the same. Not wanting to be left out of the club, I shrugged as well, and we made our way back outside into the sunlight.
We once again moved low and fast, away from the front of the south building, and up against the iron fence surrounding the pool between the driveways. Looking through the bars of the fence, the area looked still and clear, and we broke cover, again moving low, and took up spots on each side of the front entrance to the north building. It was a disaster scene.
Somebody had driven a Honda Civic straight through both sets of front doors. The charcoal paint of the car was splattered and dripping with blood, the dark, nearly black blood of the freaks. More blood, as well as the bodies of at least ten infected littered the scene for a good ten yards all around the entryway’s exterior. Scattered liberally as if they were confetti, were the empty casings from several calibers of firearms.
Taking a couple of quick peeks inside, we decided the immediate scene was clear. Making our way to the back of the car, peering through the smoke of the wreckage, the hallway in both directions looked just as lonesome. Good.
I bent down and inspected many of the rounds at our feet. 9mm, probably a pistol. Several much larger rifle rounds lay around, composed of two more varieties. .308 was scattered sporadically, as well as what appeared to be one empty ten-round magazine. I shrugged to the other two as I set it quietly back down on the blood-soaked carpet. The final, and most prevalent, was casings from a 7.62X39. Considering the amount present, I took a guess, and whisp
ered “AK-47” to my friends. Almost as if on cue, another choppy burst of full-auto fire echoed down from the floors above us.
“Ok,” I said in barely a whisper, “Weapons hot, clear each room and hallway. Don’t fire unless they threaten us directly. Chris, cover our backs. Rich, you take lefts, I’ll keep right.”
The other two nodded, and we made our way quietly over the wrecked Honda and into the first hallway. We swept a long combination in both directions of two- and three-bedroom apartments. All were basic units, with nothing left alive in them. The bodies of a half dozen infected were scattered throughout the floor, dark plumes of blood spatter, brain tissue, and skull fragments littered walls and furniture behind where each corpse lay. The carpet was doing its level best to soak up ever-expanding pools of freak blood, and the whole place smelled of copper and iron, and the cordite scent of burnt gunpowder hung in the air.
It was much the same through the entire floor, until we reached the last apartment. It was decorated with muted colors, and furniture that, while tasteful, looked like it had been purchased forty years prior. The walls were decorated with the basics of a lone senior’s dwelling. A few cross-stitch images, with pictures of children and adults alike thrown in. A pile of yarn at the end of an aging green sofa, knitting needles left lying on the coffee table beside a pair of reading glasses and a small army of prescription medications. The whole scene appeared as it should, until we got to the bathroom. The crumpled body of an elderly lady lay there, and at first glance, we passed her off as another dead infected, until Rich quietly pointed out the distinct lack of blood seeping from her eyes. He pried one eyelid open and reported that the pupils were fine, not dilated, no broken blood vessels. This lady was not infected, but she was killed all the same, hiding in her bathroom. Christ, she lived a long, full life, only to be gunned down in the midst of the end of the world.
Shaking the scene from my mind, and doing my best to regain my stomach, I motioned for my friends to follow me up the stairwell to the next floor.
We moved the same as we had thus far and swept each room of each apartment in turn; Chris hanging back within view of the front door while Rich and I pushed onward into every dwelling. Another burst of fire, this time a heavy semi-auto BOOM interspersed with the quieter pop of a handgun, sounding much closer.
“Next floor up,” I said to the others. “Let’s go meet whoever’s keeping the neighbors awake. Y’all ready?”
Rich nodded slowly, Chris uttered a firm “Good”, and we made our way into the next stairwell. This time, instead of pushing straight through the door, we checked, ensured the hallway was clear, and sat quietly with the door open, listening.
We heard a small chorus of voices.
“Dude leave it. We’ll come back.”
“Fuckin thirsty.”
“He’s right, building first, beer later, dipshit.”
“What the fuck ever. Fine. It’s gone.”
I couldn’t make out much more, as they seemed to be an apartment or two down. I had the brilliant idea to make our presence known. Shrugging off my backpack, I opened the top flap and retrieved a bottle of water. Setting the bag next to me, and readying my shotgun, I sent the bottle flying down the hallway. It hit the floor, careened off of a wall, and rolled to a stop about a third of the way down.
Immediately a voice spoke up from the second apartment on the right.
“What the fuck? I thought we cleared this floor?”
“Go check it out!” instructed a second, slower voice.
I called out, “We’re friendly, don’t shoot!”
“Yeah, fuck you, dude!” called back the first voice, then said something I couldn’t decipher to his friends. He was met with a chorus of “STOP” and “No, wait”.
The asshole didn’t listen, as his head peeked out of a doorway to look down the hall in the direction the bottle had landed. His head then swiveled in my direction. It was pretty dark in the hallway, and I couldn’t make out much aside from a full head of dark hair, and the shoulder straps of a white tank top.
“I said we’re friendly, don’t fire!” I challenged.
“Yeah well I’m fuckin’ NOT!” the man shot back and strolled out of the doorway. I called it previously, there was an AK-47 being used, and this guy held it at the low ready as he walked.
I wasted no time at all. I brought my 870 to bear, clicked on the light, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. Then, the world slowed down.
Almost as if watching from a third person, I checked my gun. The slide was locked, indicating it was ready to go. As I stared at my gun for just a moment of panicked confusion, I realized the safety…the damned safety…was still engaged. I’d cleared two whole floors already with my damned safety on! What an asshole!
While I tried figuring out the gun I’ve shot a hundred times, the man recoiled in surprise from my light. He took a step back and began bringing his own gun to bear. Firing as he started to raise it, rounds chewing up the carpet in front of me, he ceased his backward step and stood firm. I clicked the safety off of my own weapon as I shouldered it, though through the pulse pounding in my ears and the cacophony unleased by his Kalashnikov, I could never tell you if the small safety device actually clicked.
Squeezing my now very much alive trigger, I sent a load of double-ought buckshot down the hallway, peppering the guy in the thighs just as I could feel- literally, feel- a couple of his rounds pass under my right armpit. He started flailing backward, yelling, and I worked the pump of my gun to send another load of lead his direction. The second blast took him right in the chest, throwing him back with the force of a linebacker.
My ears now pretty much useless from the sounds of two large guns being fired together in such tight quarters, and relying totally on sight, I could make out yelling, but not voices or what was being said. No sooner had the first guy hit the ground, a plume of blood leaving his lips as his breath burst out of him, then two more appeared. They came out of the room at a run, nearly side-by-side, and opened fire on my doorway at the end of the corridor. I ducked my head back inside as rounds filled the space I’d just occupied, impacting the door frame and shredding the metal of the door itself. I motioned for the other two to open fire as I covered my ears, trying to regain a bit of that sense of sound.
Rich and Chris ducked back in, and no rounds followed them. I could hear yelling from down the hall, but still could not entirely make out what was being said.
I looked pleadingly at Rich, who cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled to me, despite our four-foot space between us.
“He said cease fire!” Rich shouted. “He wants us to drop our weapons! I told him we won’t!”
As the ringing in my ears began to subside, I thanked Rich for the relay of information. Rubbing my ears made it feel like my sense of sound was coming back, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was a mind trick, but Rich’s next words were much clearer despite them being directed down the hallway, instead of shouted directly to me.
“You drop your weapons!” he called. “Your guy started it!”
Then, a very familiar voice shouted back, “Yeah, he was an asshole, but, fuck, man!”
I listened to the exchange, and as my hearing started nearing normal, it dawned on me.
“Rich, shut up for a second,” I told him, and was met with an angry glare. “Nah man, I know who that is,” I explained.
Rich sat back against the wall, relenting.
“Hey, you fuck!” I shouted from around the shattered door frame, “We’ve got hookers wrapped in cornbread!!!”
The next short moment was filled with nothing but confused looks from my friends, and some murmurs from the other party. Finally, an eruption of laughter that I knew so well echoed down the hall.
“Scott?” the man said, “Dude you fuckin’ shot Seamus! You killed him!”
“Who the fuck is Seamus?” I asked, and then to my team, “Guys, lower your weapons. He’s a friend. A damn good friend.”
Rich and Chris ey
ed each other for a moment, then lowered their guns. I stepped out from the doorway, side-stepped the body, and began walking down the hallway. My life-long friend then stepped out from the second apartment, with a grin stretching ear to ear.
“Tony-fucking-Harris!” I exclaimed, embracing him in a bear-hug. “Holy shit dude, you’re here! You’re alive!”
“Man, I’m glad to see you!” he shouted, returning the hug. “Who are these guys?”
“Oh, right, that’s Rich, and the ogre is Chris. They found us at my house. Decent guys,” I explained to him. “Jennifer and the girls are held up in a hideout down the street with Henry.”
“Nice, man! Everybody healthy?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, dude,” I answered. “Doing fine. We were going to make this place home like you and I always talked about.”
“Yeah, same here,” he replied, then called behind him, “Hey Dave, it’s Scott! And Willy, you too!”
“Dude!” I said, happily, “Dave’s here?”
On cue, Dave walked out of the apartment, letting out a near perfect Tommy Chong impression, “Nah man, Dave’s not here,” and embraced me in a hug that matched Tony’s.
These were all very manly hugs, by the way. We’re not pussies or anything. Don’t judge.
Tony, Dave, and I have been friends for years. No, we never grew up together, in fact, I didn’t meet Tony until we were both adults slaving away at the same dead-end job. I met Dave about six months later. They were a stark contrast to each other. Tony, a bit shorter than myself, stocky, ex-Army infantry, and a beer guy to the core. Dave was taller than either of us, but rail-thin, long dreadlocks, and I’m pretty sure the guy keeps a bag in his pocket that stays magically filled with pot. Some kind of ancient genie trick, I guess. However you chop it, these two were buddies. Near permanent fixtures in my house every time I came home from driving across my half of the country. Many drunken, friendly nights would be an understatement.