“Go without me!” Lassiter shouted.
“We can get you out of there,” Mason shouted back as he put bullets into the brainpans of two zombies, taking them out of action for good, but that still left too many more.
“No, you can’t,” Lassiter said, but by this time, some of the zombies had noticed him and had pivoted to head in his direction. “Run for it.”
“Use your grenade to clear a path,” Mason yelled over the heads of the zombies.
“I could get either of you,” Lassiter said as he pulled up his rifle and started blasting away. Four zombies fell, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
All three men thought if Donovan and Mason made a run for it, Lassiter would be trapped, and that could mean the end of him. With the zombies filling the area, they might not have a choice, not if they wanted to live.
It was coming down to decision time, and everyone knew it.
“We’ve got to leave,” Donovan shouted Mason after taking out two more zombies.
“No, we have more time,” Mason yelled back, but he could smell the stench of the zombies because they were so close.
“No, you have to go,” Lassiter screamed in their direction. “You have to save yourselves.” To emphasize his point, he stepped back into the doorway and started to pull the door shut.
That was when there was an eruption of gunfire off to the left. Bullets streamed into the mob of zombies. Heads exploded, and bodies sprayed blood into the air in geysers of red.
When the three men looked in the direction of the shots, they saw a small group of men pouring bullets into the zombies. Standing among the men was Howie, wearing a determined scowl and firing away.
Although they always looked in a perpetual state of confusion, small clusters of zombies broke from the whole mass and went toward a different target. Some went for Mason, some for Donovan, and some for Lassiter. The largest contingent went for Howie and his men because they were making the most noise.
Slowly, Howie’s men whittled down the different clusters of zombies, blowing off heads, shooting off knees, and obliterating faces. When most of the zombies were down, Howie moved in among their bodies and said, “Boys, clean up the rest with your hand weapons.”
The men shouldered their weapons and moved in among the dead. With axes, clubs, baseball bats, and other destructive handheld weapons, they crushed skulls and flattened heads and generally beat the last breath out of the zombies. It was grisly and brutal work, but they did it quickly and without complaint.
“So, that’s the plan?” Howie asked as all the men grouped up. “Play that loud shitty music and draw the deaders into the middle?”
“Yep,” Mason said.
“What’s the plan now?” Howie asked.
“Same as before,” Lassiter said as he stepped into the center of the group. “We head for the walls and escape out the sides.” He turned to Howie and asked, “You in?”
“It’s just as dumb as it was when you first told me,” Howie said. “So, no.”
“This place is going to be flooded with zombies,” Lassiter said. “You could die in here.”
“And you could die out there,” Howie said.
Lassiter looked down for a moment but then raised his head and said, “Point taken, but I’d like it if you and your men came with us.”
“Too bad we can’t have everything we want,” Howie said, but then yanked up an arm and pointed to the west. “Zack, you and Billy take those two coming in.”
The two men, presumably Zack and Billy, went to meet two zombies shuffling their way. In short order, the two men dispatched the incoming zombies, but in the distance, a much bigger herd of them were on their way.
“Well, I can’t spend all day here, trying to convince you to come with us,” Lassiter said.
“Good, because you can’t,” Howie said.
A Bee Gees song spun up on the CD player and blasted from the speakers, their falsetto voices filling the area. If there had been any music more inappropriate for a specific place and time, not one of the men could have picked it out.
“Who in the name of all that is holy picked this damn music?” Howie asked, his face puckered up as if he had just eaten ten lemons.
“That’s Bonds,” Lassiter said, shaking his head. “I didn’t have time to look for anything different.”
Howie shook his head in commiseration and said, “Well, we’re heading back into Irvine Hall. If your plan works out, come and look us up there. We’ll be in the basement hoping these bastards leave us alone.”
There was a long pause, and Lassiter said, “Sure will, and thanks for coming to our rescue.”
“What are friends for?” Howie said with a wry smile.
“I have another favor to ask,” Lassiter said, and his expression seemed to say it pained him to even ask.
“What? Wasn’t saving your ass enough?”
Lassiter sucked in a breath and said, “We need a lookout to let us know when all the zombies are in the center of the Sanctum.”
“And you can’t stay to do that?” Howie asked.
“Eli’s dead,” Lassiter said.
“Oh, man,” Howie said, and the chip on his shoulder melted.
“Yeah, I need to lead our people out the south side.”
“Sure,” Howie said, and it was as if he were a different man. The defiance was gone. “I’ll watch from the top of Irvine.” He patted the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.
“Thanks,” Lassiter said. “I really mean it. If you hadn’t come along, I would have been trapped in there for God knows how long.” He pointed to the building he had just fought his way out of.
“I guess the clock is ticking,” Howie said. He turned away from Lassiter and shouted to his men, “Let’s head back.”
The men didn’t need any coaxing. It was becoming abundantly clear that the place was going to be full of zombies soon. Standing out on open ground was a deadly thing to do. The men grouped up and, at a slow jog, they moved along the front of a building, turned a corner, and were gone.
“I think that’s our cue to get the hell out of here,” Mason said.
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Donovan said, and the three men went in motion, moving at a run toward the north wall.
Chapter 105
Picking Up Strays
“What the hell is that music?” Kent asked, and there was no mistaking the distaste in his tone.
Jo leaned forward, cocked her head, and listened for a moment. “Well, I think that is ‘Disco Inferno,” she said.
“Who listened to this shit?” He asked.
“Before my time, but I had an aunt who was really into it,” Jo said. “She taught me how to do the Hustle.“
Something banged down hard on the roof of the Humvee as Jo guided them to the north wall. She knew it was Henry because he was manning the .50 caliber, but she had no idea what he wanted. Still leaning toward caution, she slowed and asked, “What does he want?’
A second later, Molly said, “To our left, Henry saw some people.”
“Where?” Jo said, slowing down even more.
There was an exchange between Henry and Molly, and she related the message. “Henry said he saw three people a block back, just as we crossed the grassy field.”
“Is he sure it’s people?” Jo asked.
Molly took a moment to ask Henry, then said, “Absolutely.”
Jo let out a long sigh, and under her breath, said, “We don’t have all the time in the world, you know.” But she put the Humvee in a long arcing turn and took a side street back into the Sanctum, making sure the MAV was still following them. She came up on a second turn and cut around another brick building when she saw something that almost took her breath away.
Tottering down the street were three people -- Doc Wilson, Karen Gray, and Sergeant Nathaniel Jones. Jones was limping badly with Doc Wilson and Karen holding him up on each side. Neither the doctor nor Karen Gray were all that big, and it looked like it was taking everythi
ng they had to keep Jones upright.
Jo hit the gas and sped toward the trio. She skidded the Humvee to a stop. When she got beside them, she jumped out and said, “Nate!”
She rushed over to Sergeant Jones and embraced him, taking on all of his weight.
“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” she said, her head buried in his chest.
Surprised, Jones almost chuckled and said, “Yeah, I wasn’t sure anyone would see me again, either.”
Jo stepped back but kept her hands on his sides to make sure he stayed aloft. Her eyes went up and down his body, taking in all the new bandages. “What happened to you?”
“It’s a long story,” Jones said.
Doc Wilson stepped up beside Jones and got a shoulder under his arm, “Yes, I’m sure it is, but shouldn’t we be moving to a safer location?” He waved his arm to the east, encompassing a horde of zombies surging into the center of the Sanctum, drawn in by the horrible disco music pounding out of the speakers.
A look of realization came over Jo’s face. “Oh, yes, of course.”
The MAV rolled up beside them, and Clayton popped his head out of one of the portal openings, “What the hell is up with this detour?” But he quickly cut off any more questions and said, “Hey, Sarge.”
Jones nodded his head toward Clayton.
Jo turned around and looked to Clayton and said, “Looks like we have more passengers. We’re packed to the gills. Can you take anyone on?”
“Well, the plan has Kent with me,” Clayton said. “I might be able to take on one more.”
Jo spoke up quickly and said, “Sergeant Jones and the doctor can go with me in the Humvee. Kent and Karen can go with you.”
“Let’s make it happen and happen fast,” Clayton said.
They quickly practiced a Chinese fire drill with bodies moving out of and into vehicles. Karen Gray didn’t look all that comfortable getting in the MAV, but she must have realized that the situation wasn’t in her control any longer. They were giving up the Sanctum, and the psychic shock of that was still settling in.
Once everyone was where they were supposed to be, both vehicles headed for the south wall to hopefully escape.
Chapter 106
The Unknown Unknown
Donovan, Mason, and Lassiter moved along the Sanctum’s deserted streets, keeping a constant eye on the west and east, watching for the dead. While they had hoped the music might draw the dead to the center of the place, zombies were unpredictable creatures and roamed in unpredictable ways.
They came to a cross street when Mason let out a sound, halfway between a hiss and a hushed whisper. Then he said, “To the right.”
When Donovan and Lassiter looked in that direction, they saw a small mob of the undead wandering aimlessly.
“Why aren’t they going toward the music?” Lassiter asked.
“Who knows?” Donovan replied. “Maybe they’re deaf?”
“Or hate disco,” Mason said.
None of them laughed out loud, but both Donovan and Lassiter smiled despite the danger.
The three men stood at the corner of a building, watching the progress of the zombies through the windows of a parked car. The group numbered around thirty and were still a half-block away, but there was no telling where they were headed as they meandered down the street.
Donovan looked to Lassiter and said, “You know the lay of the land. Which way should we go?’
Lassiter looked around and surveyed the landscape, taking in possible new routes of escape. None of them looked good with the zombies wandering in the area.
“We have to backtrack a block, cut west, then head south,” Lassiter said.
“I hate going back,” Donovan said. “Can’t we just make a run for it?”
“We could, but the faster we move, the better chance we have of being spotted,” Lassiter said, then added, “Plus, we don’t know if we might run into another group, even bigger.”
“There is that,” Donovan said.
A new disco cut hit Bonds’ playlist, and it was about a boogie wonderland of some sort.
“The sooner we get away from that, the better,” Mason said. “I’m beginning to think I might want to take on fifty deaders rather than listen to this music any longer.”
“But this song does have a good horn section,” Lassiter said.
Mason looked askance at Lassiter and asked, “You like this?”
“In high school, I played the trumpet and can appreciate a well-played instrument,” Lassiter said.
“Can we table the music critique and get moving?” Donovan asked.
Both men agreed, and they backed up, then headed west for a half of a block when they saw a herd of the undead wandering with purpose toward the sounds of a singer encouraging women to shake their ‘groove thing.’ Lassiter led them into a service alleyway, and they had a clear path to the north wall with no sign of the one group of disco-hating zombies.
This section of the Sanctum had been the easiest for the engineers who constructed the wall surrounding the place. Boyd Hall was a four-story dormitory that ran half a city block. The engineers and construction crew only had to build short sets of walls between the two adjoining buildings.
Like many of the buildings on campus, it had a barn-style roof with an entryway that featured a three-story tall overhang supported by tall white columns. A wide expanse of grass with a concrete walkway bisecting stood between the men and the building. Several trucks were parked haphazardly on the lawn. Some even with the doors open, obviously left that way by people in a hurry.
To the three men, the place looked empty, but they knew better. If Henry’s master plan was being followed, a contingent of people was clustered at the back of the building waiting to escape out the exits facing away from the Sanctum.
They took long looks to the east and west, looking for any deaders that might have wandered in this direction. Mason put a hand on Donovan’s arm and pointed to the east. A lone zombie stumbled along the street. From what they could tell, its head looked as if it had been badly scorched with darkly charred skin. All of its clothes had been burned off with red and sloughing skin hanging down.
How it even saw where it was going was a thing of dark miracles or bad mojo.
“What do we do about that one?” Mason asked.
“Ignore it, I say,” Donovan said. “We can dash inside, and it’ll never catch up to us.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Mason said, and he let out a long breath.
“Ready?” Lassiter asked, picking up on Donovan’s simple plan.
“Yep,” Donovan said.
The three men took off for the front of Boyd Hall, judging the distance and how quickly they could make it to the building. Seventy-five feet. After what they had been through, it was a proverbial walk in the park.
Just as they started forward, Donovan spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. When he looked that way, he saw four zombies shambling their way from the east.
Donovan said, “We’ve got company.”
The two other men looked to the east and saw the zombies ambling toward them.
Mason said, “Well, boys, in a sprint, they always lose.”
The three men ran across a narrow parking lot at a jog. They quickly came upon the parked trucks and dodged around them. Just as they were about to pass around the last truck, Mason grunted and fell to the ground.
Donovan only barely caught the motion, but he slid to a stop on the grass. When he turned around and saw it sticking out from under the truck. A crawler.
These were zombies whose legs had been so damaged that they were forced to use their arms to propel themselves along. In most cases, they were harmless, but there were times when they were very dangerous, and this was one of those cases.
They had the element of surprise on their side. This one must have been a weight lifter before it was turned because it had a very strong upper body with arms that looked like tree trunks.
When it snatched onto Mason�
�s leg, it brought him down hard, knocking the air out of his lungs and stunning him. In other words, in those few seconds he was down, Mason was basically defenseless.
The zombie saw its chance for a meal and pulled itself forward on its arms, moving over Mason’s legs. Donovan pivoted while lifting his rifle, but he felt like he was moving in slow motion. He saw the zombie push itself off the ground and then watched as the creature opened its mouth. Then it descended onto Mason’s thigh, biting deeply.
If Mason had been stunned before, the pain from the zombie’s bite sent shock waves throughout his body. Blood oozed around the zombie’s teeth as it sunk them deeply into his flesh.
A day late and a dollar short, Donovan got his rifle aimed and fired. His first bullet struck the dead thing in the shoulder, but his second hit it in the temple and blew its brains out onto the ground. The zombie fell lifeless onto Mason’s legs, but the damage had been done.
Chapter 107
Final Prep
Jo guided the Humvee into the parking lot in front of Park Hall, then hit the brakes, maybe a little hard and a little too fast. Clayton was riding hot on her tail, and the quick stop surprised him.
“Shit,” he cried out as he jerked the wheel to the left.
In avoiding the back of the Humvee, Clayton crashed into a pickup truck and knocked it ten feet across the parking lot. Gardner still hadn’t learned his lesson and was tossed across the cabin of the MAV, flying ass over elbows, and ended up in a pile behind the front seat. His feet stuck up in the air and over the back of Clayton’s chair.
Clayton ended up draped over the steering wheel, and when he set up, his head hit Gardner in the feet. He let out a slight yelp of pain, turned around, and shoved Gardner’s feet off his seat. Gardner flopped over and groaned.
Being conservative and more than a little nervous, Karen Gray had put on her seatbelt. The crash ended up pressing that seatbelt into her abdomen, knocking the air out of her lungs.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 44