Dad drives forward again pouncing over more zombies. This time it gets a little harder as a full dozen are crushed under. It feels like a four wheel off-road excursion. Dad plows through the group and drives a block ahead. He gets out, opens the back hatch and yells, “Rondo, get out! Come on boy!”
Rondo, shaken, lying on the truck bed in the back, behind the piles of dog food and his bone, pokes his head up high enough to see. Thankfully, the bags of dog food anchor the water bottles and treats.
“Come on Rondo!”
Of course, he won't come. Dad is trying to get him out, the side near the house. Dad realizes he is going to have to pull him out. He looks back down the street. Fifty or so zombies are running at him.
Dad leaps up, scrambles over the dog food, and grabs Rondo who yelps. He pulls him to the end as the zombies are upon him. Dad kicks at them as they leap onto the truck bed. Dad realizes he doesn’t have his helm or gauntlets on. Dad forgets Rondo. “Damn it Rondo!!!” He hurries through the crashing zombies to the driver's side.
They are grabbing at his face and exposed neck. He circles his arms and shoulders to yank their grips off. He bashes them with fierce elbow yanks and gets back in. Zombies are grabbing at him so that he can not close the driver's side door. He guns it forward and slams against a pile of cars. The zombies go flying, breaking bones as they impact. Dad closes the driver door, impressed it remained on its hinges. Built tough.
He reverses the truck. He has no idea where Rondo is. Could he have run over him? He can’t worry about that now as the horde of zombies is surrounding him. He guffaws in joy as they crash into the truck's tailgate that is still down. They hit it, fold, then get pulled under. A few roll atop but know nothing of holding on and are thrown off. They smash into the piles of cars on each side. Perhaps most of the zombies are not killed instantly but most are gruesomely maimed and are flailing piles of broken, crushed bones.
He continues his slaughter of the horde. He reverses, stops, then revs, letting them collect on the open road between the stacks of cars, and then he drives forward. He realizes its best to go a bit slower during the thick of it, let them sort of pile on, then he speeds up as they fall off and get crushed underneath. As the build up of dead zombies collects, there are a few moments when a tire will give to the mud, no blood, and he'll swerve. The tires crush bone and guts, pulverizing them to a liquid goo. There is splatter like a tire stuck in mud. He loses slight control and smashes into cars. Dad laughs hysterically. On this occasion, a little gruesome insane joy can reinvigorate a frazzled soul.
Eventually, this gruesome entertainment turns into a chore. Dad sighs as he revs up for another slaughter. But he also keeps an eye out for The Horde by checking his mirrors and glancing about. It’s difficult in armor but he twists about as best he can. He can see other zombies coming, but it has become thinner, and the masses are much less. He has lost a few dog bags in the foray but most are still in the truck bed. He never really got above thirty miles per hour and rarely accelerated.
He drives again through a small group. They fall like bowling pin sacks, splattering across the street.
He turns up his street, meanders through the car piles and parks the pick-up in front of their house. Rondo waits at the gate of their driveway, cowering in the corner. Dad is impressed. Rondo begins barking like crazy at all the zombies coming. The girls perk up and wave.
He waves back. He jumps out and hurriedly yanks his helm on. He punches on his gauntlets next. He pulls forth his shield and sword. A few dozen zombies reach him. He yells, “Remember, don't yell back! I'll lead them away, up the street. You just pick some off for me! I'll be back!”
The girls thumbs up as they remain low and aim their 22s. The wife blows him a kiss. Rondo takes off behind the neighbors bushes. No telling where he is fleeing to.
“And don't come out here to get the food! I'll get it with you when I get back!” Dad yells, lopping off the first zombie that reaches him.
The girls begin firing. Their aim is off, but the first few zombies coming up are the faster ones.
Dad hustles up the street, hacking legs and kicking and bashing others back. The girls spot the ones he's injured and shoots these ones as they limp along.
Dad must continue backwards to lead the small gathering away from the house. If he is the attraction, he doesn't want to end their attack in front of his house. He wants to lead them away, somewhere up the street, maybe where the horde took down that apartment. He decides to hustle around the schoolyard perimeter back to that area. It's far enough away that he has to fight a few, then back off, fight a few, then back off.
He gets to the corner and sees men on a balcony. This apartment complex is on the corner, out of view from his house. But now he can see it plainly and it looks different from the others. It has banners of hateful slogans and death chants, body parts of zombies are hanging, and it has an overall deathly pallor to it.
The tattooed and pierce ridden men are cheering and laughing. He gets a moment to look up at the balcony. A group of young men are gathered there. The guys look wasted. They have bottles of vodka and smoke ridden bongs. They are gaunt and shirtless. One is in full black leather with spiky S&M bling. One is smoking a pipe, some kind of strange pipe. They are waving big handguns and various blades.
17. Hell
At each balcony are graffiti like messages: “Welcome To Hell”, “There is No God”, “Anarchy”. Dead bodies are hung over balconies. He looks up at them between bouts of fighting zombies.
One, a wiry drug induced guy, looks down. “Who the fuck are you man!? You think you're a bad ass!?” He speaks with a slight Russian accent but grew up here in Hollywood. They are a mix of burnt out and rough looking men. An old guy hisses a strange giggle. The young man points his gun at Dad.
Dad stands there thinking the guy is just stupid or needs help. But Dad has to contend with several zombies and does so.
The guy takes a hit off his pipe, passing it to another thug with tattoos and piercings. “You some kind of warrior? Huh!?”
No zombies surround their balcony, even as they yell.
“You some kind of warrior, huh? Zombie killer!?”
“He looks like a freak man,” another mumbles with delirious bloodshot eyes.
On another balcony, a naked woman with ragged hair and many cuts reaches down to him. She is mouthing, trying to say something. Several men come to the balcony and grab her, pulling her back in.
Dad decides to head back to the house. He looks down the street. Zombies are rushing up. He advances on them. Gunfire starts from the balcony and hits close, ricocheting nearby. Dad expects a zombie to get hit or drop. But the instant reverberation of impact is within his vicinity and not near the zombies. He continues back. He hears them laughing above but he has to meet the zombies, clear them, so he can move on. He distances himself from their apartment entrance. It is blocked by a car, piles of dead zombies, and weathered furniture.
He ignores them as a dozen zombies are upon him now. Then another gunshot cracks and a hammer blow hits Dad on his left shoulder. He feels a burning numbing sensation and his arm drops. For a split moment, he looks at the balcony of hooligans and sees them cheering and high-fiving. His steps falter as he is slammed by several zombies. He falls back. His left arm is numb. A painful numbing sensation is taking over his body. The zombies leap atop him. He slams against the pavement in his steel armor, feeling his entire body collapse and crack with the weight of himself and the zombies falling over him.
The hooligans yell in joy, pointing and laughing. The one with the handgun fires again but wildly. He is laughing too hard to aim straight. Dad is lying with zombie mouths biting at his armor and pads and gear. He rolls, hindered by grabbing frenetic hands. The punk with the handgun is encouraged to aim better. He looks down his barrel and points it at the pile of Dad and zombies. Dad can see through his helmet, through the limbs, through the flashes of pain, as the punk fires again. A zombie in front of Dad is shot. It ignores
its exploding flesh as it chews on Dad's armor.
Dad grits teeth and kicks as zombies pile on. He bends to one side in his typical ferocity to get up, but then the pain explodes across his shoulder stopping him. It is like electricity numbing his body through his veins and his nervous system. He grits teeth as he realizes that zombie teeth are now clamping down on padded areas of flesh and will penetrate soon. He is in shocking pain. Flashes of burning pain from his shoulder, his calf, his hip, and his sword arm bury his thoughts.
“God please, God,” his flash of pain turns to his wife, his Lena, his Charlotte, then into the cajoling face of the punk who shot him and he grits his teeth again and roars through his helmet. He kicks again, allowing the explosion of pain to pass through him, painfully yes and continuous yes, but through him as opposed to stopping and paralyzing him into shock. He drops his sword and bashes, rolls onto his hurt arm and drops the shield, lifting himself up as zombies are atop him. He pulls out his smaller gladius and jabs at anything zombie: limbs, neck, mouth, eye, or hand. He twirls as more zombies leap at him.
Another one is shot by the guy on the balcony, who laughs hysterically. It was intended for Dad. For another split moment, as several zombies are grabbing and holding on to him, he is able to look through his tilted helm up at the balcony. The jostling hooligans are laughing as the guy fires again and again. Zombies drop or flinch next to him. Then the hand gun jams and the guy's happy crazed face turns into anger and bitter annoyance. He smacks the gun, tugs at the slide that is open. A bullet is jammed.
The others want to shoot but the young one stops them. He yells that he wants to finish Dad. He keeps hitting his jammed over-sized handgun. In their drugged state, they lose focus and a sense of time. It is enough time for Dad to flee.
Dad runs along in a delirium, in whatever direction he can, almost blindly as the searing lightning flash of pain pulsates through his sweat and tears. He is running with zombies still clinging. He is trudging up the street back to his family, to them. It is like a dark tunnel. He can see them holding each other in fear, fading far away.
The hooligans stare down in awkward silence. Then in excitement, in a crescendo of madness, they realize he is getting away. The others pull out guns and begin firing at Dad and the dog pile of zombies. Some throw their empty bottles and cans. They are laughing hysterically and cajoling and gesturing in the most crude and vile ways for Dad to die a horrible zombie raped death.
Dad in his pain and blindness ignores the gunfire or is unaware of it. Zombies are shot around him and drop. He is crouched over, trudging away from them. He heads back down the street in front of the school, but he is at the far end, away from his house. It is so far. He can only think of home. And them. But it's so far away.
He stands upright, banging into cars, running around them, twisting off zombies, swinging at anything that moves. Twirling, falling and exploding into pain, he lumbers in a delirium, crashing along a car with steel armor. Bullet shots explode zombie flesh, glass and pierce the metal of cars all around him.
His run is awkward in his dizzy state. He runs with blood and sweat dripping along his face, tears intermingling, not of crying but of pain and loss. His wife, his Lena, his Charlotte, oh his Charlotte! He flails his gladius with his one good arm at a zombie in the neck, a zombie in the mouth, a zombie on the leg. He can't tell anymore. He can't tell if he is killing zombies and new ones charge in, or if his swings are just cutting the same ones again.
He crashes into a car and leans against it exhausted from the pounding pain. Zombies push up against him, biting at anything. The gunfire is far behind. He can see them as distant shadows atop a corner balcony, firing shots at him from half a block away. He can hear and sometimes feel their gun shots impact nearby. He can't tell where and what they hit. A flashing thought crosses his mind, he doesn't care. Maybe it is better to give up now. He will see his family in heaven. He doesn't want to see them in that dark tunnel far away. He wants the pounding pain and the exhaustion to end. He is comforted to know that his wife and daughters know he tried his best. He tried his best. They’ll forgive him. He tried his best. The darkness surrounds him.
He can't look anymore at his family, an image receding in his dark tunnel vision to a far far away place that he can not reach.
He faints, falling to the ground. He lies there as a zombie bites down on his helmet. He can see the teeth and black tongue and grotesque gums, all of it clanking, screeching against the metal of his helm, slithering along to bite flesh. He wants it all to stop. He accepts it.
He can not see as Lena rushes up with blade swinging. This time there is no fear but determination, as she hacks into the neck of the zombie with part of her blade hitting her father but on steel.
The truck drives up and his wife jumps out.
“Get up,” his wife tugs at him. He, in a drunken state of pain and anguish, can see flashes of images: of Charlotte in the back, firing past him with her 22, Lena dealing with the zombies close by, and his wife ordering him to get in the truck. He wonders why she is positioned comfortably on a pile of dog food. Does she think she's a sharpshooter or something? He slowly rotates his head toward the balcony.
One of the guys jerks his head back. There is a small red hole in his forehead. His eyes go weird, and then he keels over the balcony. She fires again. The rest duck then fire wildly. Charlotte keeps firing. Another hooligan grabs his arm in pain and yells in anguish. The rest in panic scramble back inside the apartment. Charlotte switches from balcony to zombies nearby. She shoots a couple, switches magazines, then aims at the balcony again firing at any movement. She could care less who they are.
Lena swings at an oncoming zombie. She absorbs the impact with her plastic shield, sidesteps as the zombie falls, then she uses perfect form to slash down at the fallen zombie's head.
His wife, in her tight leather and sport pad armor, less than a third of his weight in steel armor, somehow raises him up and he stumbles to the hood of the truck. A zombie crashes into them. It bites fiercely on her back armor pads, tugging at them with its bile black teeth.
“Lena!” his wife yells.
A short blade comes slashing down, hacking fiercely at the zombie and thankfully, off mom's armor. The armor seems to be working quite well. Lena has to slash at another on her Dad. A few harmless clanks off his steel armor only encourage him to know she hits hard.
“Lena, don't kill your father!” his wife grunts. “Come on!” She tugs at him and he slumps onto the hood unable to move. Blood is riveting out of his left shoulder but pales in comparison to the black blood bits from zombie splatters.
“Mom! Go! Now!” Lena cries out as she steps back, slicing zombies. Mom pushes Dad up one last bit. He is able to do a mild leap to help. He is splayed like a dead deer on the hood.
“Oh God, he's heavy!”
Charlotte fires past them at incoming zombies. She casually drops out the mag and gets another. Lena hacks and slashes furiously at legs as she meets oncoming zombies with her shield. They leap up and like a matador, she lets their momentum turn her but she is unrelenting in the slashing of legs. Zombies are crawling all about her, reaching up for her. She dispenses the closest ones quickly with head strikes.
Mom leaps into the driver’s side and reverses the truck slowly as Dad lies there sobbing.
Charlotte pops in another mag. “Grrr! Only 10 stupid shots! Freaking Democrats!”
The hooligans return on the balcony.
Charlotte empties the mag into them. The shots impact in that small pinging way that a 22 caliber does. Though hard and deadly, they are still light. The hooligans laugh it off, cursing her from afar. Some are getting braver and shooting back. Thankfully, they do not have the concept of aiming. Charlotte does.
She tosses the 22 and picks up the AR-15. That is a different caliber gun altogether. The hooligans see her arsenal suddenly upgrade. She fires with aimed explosive cracks. There are small explosions across the balcony: pots explode, windows shatter, and pl
aster crumbles. A punk's head explodes. Another punk's foot is ripped in half. The hooligans retreat again.
The wife reverses back to the house, where thankfully, there are no zombies.
“Charlotte, to the roof! Hurry!”
Charlotte salutes over her hockey helmet and rushes back inside with the 22, AR-15 and the pack of mags in her school backpack.
Lena trots down the street. A zombie chases her. She lets it hit into her shield as she swings and slices low on the knee. She backs up as it falls, unable to support itself. It crawls awkwardly, jerking. She retreats quickly. She leaves a dozen zombies crawling behind her. She rushes to the truck, now parked by their home.
They pull him off the hood. He suddenly awakes and is able to stumble along with them up the driveway. They get past the Rav4 and hustle down the driveway.
“My family, my family,” Dad mumbles in delirium. Lena and Mom share a look.
Charlotte sets herself up on the roof with the 22 and smiles. The stumbling zombies are wonderful targets. She takes them out, one, maybe two shots. A few runners make it to the gate, banging to get in. Charlotte, under the sheet like a miniature sniper, slowly crawls up to the edge of the roof, looks down, pop, pop, pop, three dead zombies.
Dad limps along, supported by Lena and his wife. They reach the back and he collapses on the ground. They look desperately at him.
“I've been shot, shot. I've been shot,” Dad exhorts in heavy breathing.
“Were you bit Dad? Were you bit?” Lena sobs.
“I don't know. I don't know,” Dad sobs.
His wife busily undresses his armor. Lena begins to take off her stuff, but her mom stops her. “No Lena, stay ready in case any get through.”
Knight of the Dead (Book 1): Knight of the Dead Page 16