Zombies! (Book 4): Nowhere To Hide

by Merritt, R. S.

  The Zombie warbled out a primal yell and poured more strength into its legs to charge even faster when it noticed Kyler walk out into the middle of the road. Kyler had anticipated the Zombie getting excited when it saw him and wasn’t too worried about the extra noise or the Zombies increased vigor. He wasn’t too worried about it until he heard a chorus of answering screeches coming from the road behind him. It sounded like a lot more Zombies than he’d thought would be close by had already descended on the wrecked jeep. Pushing that thought out of his mind he focused on taking out the Zombie running at him. Once he had that one down, he could disappear into the woods and cower away while the rest of the Zombies came storming down the road.

  The Zombie charging at him vaulted into the air like a Kangaroo on crack. From a distance of over twenty feet away the Zombie had jumped straight for him. Kyler stood there holding the tire iron in his hand with his mouth open in shock. He was trying to figure out what to do to combat the Zombie acrobat who was about half a second from crashing into him. Not having a better answer, he swung the tire iron hoping to hit the Zombie in the head.

  He hit the Zombie in the shoulder. If Kyler hadn’t been still recovering from almost being burnt to death, he might have had more luck trying to knock a screaming Zombie out of the air. The Zombies forehead smashed into the side of his head sending him and the Zombie spiraling down to the ground. Kyler felt like he’d scored a small victory when the Zombie smashed into his head on the opposite side from where Diamond had smashed him in the face with a baseball bat. That victory was short lived since when he hit the ground it was with the side of his head that was still slightly swollen from the baseball bat trailer park incident.

  The same gumption that’d kept him dragging his aching body through the apocalypse until now made him open his eyes and deal with the pain instead of just lying on the ground and trying not to puke. Like the Zombies weren’t bad enough on their own there had to be super Zombies wandering the countryside as well. Knowing the Zombie wouldn’t be wasting time licking its wounds and knowing he was going to be useless with a tire iron against the Cirque Zombie he pulled out his pistol. Ignoring the pain from opening his eyes he pointed the pistol in the direction of the growling he heard coming at him. Not caring about the noise, he yanked on the trigger of the pistol as fast as he could.

  The Zombie collapsed into him with a few new holes in its head courtesy of his lucky shooting. Ignoring the addition of even more bodily fluids to his horror film hero look Kyler tried ripping the backpack off the dead Zombie. Now that he’d eliminated the threat, he allowed himself to worry once again about the effects of the noise he’d made shooting the pistol. He could hear those effects screeching as they came down the road from the direction of the abandoned jeep. They were probably a curve in the road and one small rise from being able to see him. He gave up on the backpack and wobbled on unsteady legs into the woods. Once he’d gone in deep enough to be out of sight, he threw himself miserably into a pile of pine straw. He spread himself out on the ground behind the cover of some bushes and trees panting while the bugs feasted on his sweat, gore, and blood covered body.

  A few seconds later he heard the screeching Zombies rush by his hiding place. He was happy they went rushing by and were making a ton of noise. He felt like his labored breathing would be able to be heard from a mile away. He was paranoid the Zombies would decide to stop in the middle of the road and do their weird listening thing. He focused on his breathing and slowly got it back under control. The Zombies were still rushing past. He could hear the screeching of the leaders as they kept running down the road. He wondered how long they’d run before deciding they’d missed out on whatever human had been dumb enough to shoot a gun off around a massive Zombie herd.

  He’d expected the Zombies to move past allowing him to get up and try again for the pack he’d risked so much for. Twenty minutes later he was forced to admit to himself that wasn’t happening. The tide of Zombies streaming down the road didn’t seem like it was ebbing anytime soon. His head pounded. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been more miserable. Thanks to his decision to try and take out the camo clothed Zombie to snag a pack that may or may not have had some useful stuff in it he was now going to have to wander through the woods again versus walking down the middle of a nice smooth road.

  To avoid getting lost he was going to have to stay close enough to the road to tell where it was without being close enough to risk a Zombie spotting him. Basically, in the middle of the briars that separated the road from the deeper woods. Walking through the woods wasn’t a huge deal during the daylight. Once it got dark though, he’d be stumbling along blindly through a forest that may or may not fill up with a bunch of Zombies looking for a place to snuggle for the night. If he stumbled into a pile of them, he’d wind up becoming a midnight snack.

  Refusing to feel sorry for himself he began crawling backwards deeper into the woods. He was lying a little too close to the road to feel comfortable standing up yet. Once he’d reverse slithered far enough away that he judged he should be invisible from the road he used a tree to painfully pull himself to his feet. Pissed off that everything about his life seemed to be constantly turning to garbage he began laboriously moving in parallel with the road. The journey made even more arduous by the thick weeds and briars. He belatedly remembered he was carrying a knapsack full of drugs and stopped to pull that off his back and sort through it. He looked longingly at the bottles of oxy and prescription pain killers but settled on just taking some Aleve he found in a little pill bottle at the bottom of the bag. He also downed a few antibiotics he found because everything about the apocalypse was pretty much gross and covered with germs.

  He figured with all his other problems he needed to try and avoid becoming an oxy addict. Which got him to wondering about some of the things Kia and Diamond had let slip and why they were out gathering all these drugs in the first place.

  Chapter 4: Hammer Time

  Kelly looked up from the coloring book her and Zoey were working on at the sound of squealing tires drifting in from the road outside. Caitlyn was already rushing over to the window to peek out.

  “It’s a white pickup!” Caitlyn hissed loudly over her shoulder.

  Kelly whipped her finger around in a circle and pointed at the back door. Caitlyn and Myriah gathered up the little kids and were at the back door almost before Kelly had her rifle pointed at the front door. They stood by the back door waiting for the signal to take off. Caitlyn was holding a pistol fiercely. She was determined not to let those men get their hands on her little sisters again. Her belly was doing flip flops and her palms were sweaty. She felt like she may puke from the fear gripping her, but she stood tall and ready.

  Kelly swallowed down her emotions watching Caitlyn guarding over her little sisters. She settled her rifle against her shoulder and moved towards the front windows to make sure there was only one vehicle. She needed to see if they were coming towards the house or if they’d sent men around the back. Caitlyn or Myriah would be checking out the backyard to see if they could see anyone moving back there. The squealing tires were the only reason Kelly hadn’t already led them all out the back door. Why would the Brotherhood come in like that instead of moving in quietly?

  Kelly was rewarded a second later by someone knocking on the window. She waited for the other window to get knocked on since that was their standard signal. Instead the front door flew in as if someone had shot it with a cannon. A man barreled in yelling something and Kelly reflexively pulled the trigger. A couple of shots rang out and the man went flying for the ground. The next man came through the door yelling for Kelly to put down the gun. She started to shoot at him before realizing it was Randy waving his arms around like crazy.

  “It’s dad! It’s dad!” Myriah had run in yelling at her too.

  Who had she shot? With her stomach knotted up in worry Kelly rushed over to the man bleeding on the floor and helped Randy stuff a decorative dish cloth over the man’s bleeding
arm. Tony looked up grimacing in pain.

  “Totally forgot to knock on the other window, right? My bad” He said while trying to get up.

  “We’ve got to go. Get the kids in the truck. I’ll take care of Tony.” Randy said to Kelly. He didn’t bother whispering. At this point they were going to have a zillion Zombies attacking them before the Brotherhood even got here. As if to cement that thought a screeching Zombie burst through the front door and threw itself at Myriah. Myriah jumped backwards and Kelly shot the Zombie in the torso a few times. The Zombie fell to the ground screeching and spinning around in a circle leaving a whirlpool pattern of blood on the tiled kitchen floor.

  “Go!” Randy yelled. All the girls seemed to have been hypnotized by the actions of the Zombie bleeding out. Him screaming at them broke them out of their trance. They all rushed for the door as a group. Kelly and Caitlyn led the way with weapons ready as more screeching erupted from the direction of the street.

  “Leave me dude.” Tony said. When he’d tried to stand up, they’d figured out Kelly had shot him in the shoulder and the foot. The shoulder had been a grazing shot that was bleeding way too much. He’d caught the other round directly in the middle of his foot. Ignoring his request Randy pulled Tony into a fireman’s carry and stomped after Kelly and the kids. The fireman’s carry put a lot of pressure on Tony’s shoulder making him cough out a string of curses. He continued to yell for Randy to just leave him or at least let him walk on his own.

  Kelly and Caitlyn shot a couple more Zombies who appeared out of the darkness on the way to the truck. Once there they packed the kids into the front cab and climbed in to wait for Randy. Kelly standing outside on the driver’s side moving the rifle side to side as she revolved in a tight little circle looking for more targets. Randy caught up and threw Tony into the bed of the truck. Tony’s cursing momentarily overriding the sounds of the Zombies encroaching on them from all sides. Kelly jumped in the driver’s seat and executed an insanely horrible three-point turn in which she managed to take out three mailboxes and almost get stuck in the mud.

  Randy had been kneeling in the back of the truck. He’d almost gotten thrown out at the wild driving. Tony was bashed around mercilessly screaming in pain. Randy lay in the back of the truck listening to the wheels trying spinning around trying to find traction in the ditch Kelly had reversed them into. A pair of arms appeared over the side of the pickup followed by a Zombie hopping in with them. He shot it and it collapsed into the pickup. That Zombie was followed by two more who he also shot. The damn things weren’t dying fast enough though.

  When they were being chased down the road you could just pop off shots at the Zombies in pursuit. As long as you hit the Zombie somewhere on its body it probably wasn’t going to be able to keep chasing you. The same technique didn’t work as well when the Zombies fell into a truck bed with you. Hands grasped at him and Tony. Teeth tried to rip through his boots as he kicked out at the grinning faces of the nearly dead who were still struggling to bite them. Covered in blood and gunk in a living nightmare Randy continued to fire his rifle into the bodies of the Zombies in the truck bed with them. At some point another Zombie jumped in as well. Randy didn’t even remember shooting that one but when his fear diminished enough to let him assess the situation, he determined there were four dead bodies in the back with them versus the three he remembered shooting.

  “You get bit or anything?” Randy asked a pale looking Tony.

  “No. Good shooting. My foot hurts like a bitch though. What’s up with your wife and shooting me in the foot?” Tony responded. He was trying to keep up their normal banter, but the pain was breaking through his smart-ass façade.

  Randy slid over to check out Tony’s foot. He had to kick the pile of Zombie bodies down towards the tailgate to be able to get to Tony and his wounded foot. He finally got in a position where he could look at Tony’s foot in spite of Kelly’s crazy driving. It felt like they were riding in the back of a truck with a massively drunk midget who couldn’t see over the dashboard driving them down the road and the road was covered in ice.

  Tony’s boot was soaked in blood. A perfectly round hole was in the top of the boot right in the middle of his foot. A jagged, much larger, hole was in the bottom of his boot. This was beyond band aids and antibiotics. Tony was probably screwed from a foot perspective. His shoulder seemed fine so that was good. Randy decided to just focus on telling Tony how great his shoulder looked.

  “My foots wasted isn’t it?”

  “Let’s worry about your foot later. There’s a pretty good chance we’re going to die in the back of this truck tonight anyway.”

  “That does put it in perspective. Hand me my rifle and sit me up and get rid of all these freakin corpses dude. They’re leaking more grossness into the bottom of this nasty cess pool we’re riding around in.” Tony was looking with disgust at the congealed blood and who knew what other fluids that were sloshing around in the truck bed with them.

  In the front of the truck Kelly was driving like a mad woman. Zombies seemed to be popping out of the trees from every side. She was rocking the high beams because she’d completely given up on stealth. Smashing into a Zombie at fifty miles per hour and having it go through the windshield was a very real possibility if she didn’t have light to see by. If that meant the Brotherhood saw them coming or more Zombies were alerted to their presence, then so be it. She yelled at Caitlyn to check on her dad and nodded when Caitlyn opened the window and had a brief exchange with Randy before giving her mom a thumbs up.

  The other kids were all silent except for the occasional sob. They’d gotten so used to having to keep quiet no matter what that it was normal now. It turned out the only thing you needed to shut up talkative little kids was a Zombie apocalypse. Kelly would’ve been a lot happier just letting them stare at random you tube personalities on iPads instead. She remembered when she used to worry about that screwing her kids up! Not for the first time she wondered how scarred all this trauma was going to make them. What kind of an impact was it going to have on them? Her jaw set as she slowed down to drive around yet another Zombie running straight at them down the middle of the road. She needed to focus if she was going to ensure her traumatized kids got the chance to grow up into dysfunctional adults.

  She turned hard at an intersection slinging Tony and Randy into the pile of corpses in the back. Those two were also going to be dealing with some massive PTSD following this drive. She looked around the bullet holes in the windshield to try to see what was up ahead. She was trying to navigate side roads to bypass the Brotherhood. She’d noticed the bullet holes already in her windshield as soon as she started driving but tried not to think too much about how they got there. If she put too much thought into the bullet holes, she’d have to consider what the sticky liquid was she’d sat in and could feel all over the back of the headrest.

  Up ahead she caught a glimpse of bright red that looked like brake lights. She looked over at Caitlyn who was staring straight ahead. When she saw her mom looking at her, she said that she’d seen something up ahead too. Myriah was busy watching her dad and Tony dig themselves out of a pile of dead bodies in the back of the truck. Mentally tagging their ride as the trauma truck Kelly pressed the pedal to speed up. If the Brotherhood were around here, then they needed to move as quickly as possible to get out of the area. The truck accelerated quickly with its big hemi powered engine roaring to life.

  A Zombie sprang out of nowhere and smashed into the driver’s side window. Kelly shrieked and let go of the steering wheel for a second. The truck veered to the side and a tree took off the passenger side mirror with a loud snap. Kelly swung the wheel to get them back on the road. They ended up doing a hundred eighty degree turn in the middle of the small two-lane road. The truck skidded to a stop with Kelly’s foot on the brake pedal and her eyes as big as saucers. She found herself facing back the way they’d come. She could see a stampede of Zombies flooding the small road and rushing towards them.

  K
elly moved the gear shift into reverse and slammed her foot down on the accelerator. She was staring at the video display in the dashboard and feeling super thankful for whatever rich redneck had been able to fork over the cash to get all the upgrades in this truck. In the back of the truck Tony had passed out from blood loss and Randy was closing his eyes tight and hoping for the best. The ride so far had been extremely rough and dangerous. He couldn’t believe they were now barreling down this narrow road at night pursued by a mass of screeching Zombies in reverse. He didn’t see how it could get much worse.

  A loud pinging noise reminded him to never wonder how a situation could get worse. He thought at first that they were running into more stuff then the back windowpane exploded, and he realized they were taking fire. He yelled through the shattered windowpane for everybody to get as low to the floor as they could. Then he cast aside his fear and doubts and put his M-16 to his shoulder and looked for muzzle flashes. Completely ignoring the erratic reverse ride, he unleashed a stream of fire at the area he saw the next muzzle flash come from. They were being shot at from where the road ended in a T-section up ahead.

  “Speed up!” Randy screamed through the busted back window. He knew Kelly was already going way faster than she’d consider sane. Considering the large number of Zombies bearing down on them and the need to engage the enemy as quickly as possible though he needed her to put the hammer down. He needed her to put the hammer down and somehow avoid losing control and killing them all in a fiery crash. The truck went from flying backwards at an insanely unsafe speed on the wet road to a speed approaching suicidal. Kelly must’ve figured out what the pings were too and knew this was their only chance. The quicker they could take the enemy the quicker they’d stop being target practice.