That guy went flying backwards like he’d been shot out a cannon. Pulling his own legs up and looking behind him Kyler saw the man had been yanked out by yet another of the freakishly large Zombies. The Zombie was cradling the screaming man like a baby in his monstrous arms. Kyler watched with horror as the big Zombies face struck lightning fast down on the screaming man’s abdomen. When the Zombies head came back up it dragged a long dangling hunk of flesh and organs. The Zombies face was filled with ecstasy as its victims blood poured down the front of its body.
Kyler was still mesmerized by the look on the tall Zombie’s face when the truck jerked again. Kyler felt the shift as they began moving forward. Around him people, Zombies and bodies all started tumbling towards the open back doors. Whoever was driving had decided it was time to leave now. Whoever was driving also wasn’t too concerned about the people back in the trailer as they continued accelerating with reckless abandon. Accelerating and then suddenly whipping back and forth like the driver was an Olympic skier reliving his downhill slalom days.
Kyler felt someone pawing at him and reflexively lashed out. He pulled his M-16 up and aimed it at the person who’d been pawing at him. It was a skinny man with crazy eyes. Probably one of the opioid addicts that made up a large portion of the labor pool.
“Give me your gun man. C’mon. If you’re not using it let me.” The skinny man begged. He was rubbing his shoulder where Kyler had punched him. Rather than answering the man Kyler shot the Zombie that’d stumbled over to take a bite out of the drug addled looter. The guy screamed thinking Kyler was shooting at him. Once it dawned on him what had really happened, he sobbed and began thanking Kyler over and over again.
Ignoring the thanks of the addict Kyler got up and tried to make sense of the chaos in the trailer. People were screaming and attacking the handful of Zombies who were in the back. The huge Zombie had worked his way all the way to the front of the trailer. He was breaking peoples bones and ripping them apart as he waded through them. Kyler saw people taking swings at the monster, but it just shrugged off the crowbars and baseball bats. Kyler made sure he had a round chambered and started working his way through the crowd towards the front of the trailer. He didn’t think the huge Zombie would be able to shrug off a few rounds right to its head.
The whole scene was straight out of a low budget psychedelic horror flick. The electric lanterns the refugees had strung up in the trailer were swinging all over the place. People were running in front of them so often it was causing a strobe effect. Demonic shadows covered the walls. It was complete bedlam. Every direction you looked someone was trying to murder someone else. Kyler focused on the giant. The ferocious Zombie was shrugging off a group of men who were attacking with everything from baseball bats and crowbars. One man had a concrete block he was swinging around. You had to admire that guys enthusiasm.
Watching the monster reach in and pick one of the men up and rip his throat out while being beaten by the others Kyler said screw it and started blasting away. The big Zombie shrugged off the first couple of rounds before throwing the man to the ground it’d just picked up. It looked around before seeing Kyler standing tall and pouring lead into its body. The Zombie took a few tentative steps towards him. Somehow it was surviving shots to its head. The thing must have a skull like an armored truck. Kyler stepped forward screaming in terror and rage. One of his bullets went in through the giants eye socket. The bullet entered and scrambled the brains of the beast. Only a few feet from Kyler the monster finally collapsed lifelessly to the ground.
Kyler spun around. He was in a full-on blood lust. He looked for other Zombies to kill. He wasn’t sure but, in the darkness, and flickering lights it looked like the fighting had died down. Here and there he saw men walking around smashing the heads of figures lying on the blood and corpse covered floor of the trailer. The man in front of Kyler raised a blood covered bat in the air and yelled in triumph. Behind him others started doing the same. Kyler raised his M-16 in the air and joined in. Screaming with the sheer joy of being alive.
As the adrenaline wore off the men started working on dumping the bodies that littered the trailer. Anyone who’d been bitten or scratched was told to jump for it. No one wanted to kill someone who might not be infected but no one wanted to take any chances with their own lives either. The men asked to walk the plank off the end of the trailer did so without any hard feelings. They all knew what was at stake. Most of them were happy that they were being given this chance. In a normal situation a member of the Brotherhood would’ve walked around and shot each of them in the head. Jumping out the back of a moving truck was a great alternative compared to that.
The men in the trailer looked to Kyler for guidance. About twenty had survived the battle unbitten. No women had survived. Kyler pushed the image of the women he’d helped get up into the trailer earlier out of his mind. They had stood out in his mind as there’d been less of them in the looter crew than men. Supposedly because the men were kept on a leash by knowing their women would be killed if they didn’t perform well as looters. Kyler wondered what was going to happen to the spouses of all the men dead from this cluster. He ordered the men to get the trailer cleaned up as well as they could. Then he had them do a more thorough check of each other in the trailer to verify no one was hiding a bite. He hoped he’d gotten people to be honest by giving the ones who admitted to a bite the chance to jump for it.
That put him in a rough place when a man was dragged in front of him who’d tried to hide a nasty looking bite on his forearm. A disgusted looking man dragged the bitten one over. The others gathered around looking down on the man with zero sympathy. Kyler got it. He felt the same way these others did. This guy had decided to risk all their lives by walking around with an obvious bite on his arm. There was no way he wasn’t turning. He should’ve jumped or asked someone to put him down. The man looked up and started to explain himself. Kyler put a bullet through his head and motioned for the body to be thrown out the back of the trailer.
Once all of that was taken care of, they all settled down to see where they ended up at. It was out of their hands now. None of them had a clue who was driving the truck they were in or where that person was taking them. Kyler wrapped the rifle sling around his hand to keep anyone from taking it from him. He put his head back against the side of the trailer to try to get some sleep.
Chapter 20: Going Toe to Toe Tag
Randy jogged down the hallway towards the door to the garage. He caught up with Kelly and the kids by the garage door. No one had any lights on, so they were all standing around in the dark. Randy was glad for that. He didn’t want anyone seeing the guilt he could feel written on his face. He felt like he’d just ran over the family pet. Only worse since he’d taken a human life in cold blood. He figured he’d have time later to feel better. Right now, all that mattered was getting his family out of this city and away from the Brotherhood. If he had to leave a parade of dead bodies all the way to the state line, then that’s what he’d gladly do.
“You hear anything out there?” Randy asked. He was hoping either Tony or Kelly had been listening through the door to try and see if they could hear anything happening in the garage. He wondered how late it was. He knew it was dark outside, but he wasn’t sure if the sun had just gone down or if it’d been down a few hours. All of their sleep schedules were so screwed up at this point it was almost impossible to know what time it was without looking at your phone or a watch.
“Not much. I thought I heard some voices when I first opened the door, but it stopped almost as soon as I opened the door. I haven’t heard anything else since then.” Tony answered in the dark.
“What should we do?” Kelly asked. It was the million-dollar question. They didn’t have a lot of good options. They could try and find a window to climb down to the street from or they could go through the garage. If there was a third option, it was escaping all of them.
“We could hide and wait for them to leave?” Caitlyn suggested.
“I’ve got extra ammo the Brotherhood guy I ran into earlier donated.” Tony pitched in.
“That’ll help.” Randy said. “Anything else anybody can think of?”
“We’ve still got the van a couple floors above us.” Kelly reminded him.
“I was thinking about that, but my problem is we’d have to drive it through town and the streets are blocked up like crazy. I think once we hit the ground we just move as fast and quiet as we can. Caitlyn can carry Doreen and everybody else can buddy up and we’ll just try to get to the edge of the city to find someplace to crash as fast as we can. Unless we find a vehicle somewhere along the way that miraculously starts up with no issues. If we run into any Brotherhood on the way out of here that we can’t take out quietly we’re screwed. We don’t want to draw more Zombies here with a bunch of gunshots.” Randy said. He was thinking out loud trying to work out the best path forward.
“Maybe me and you go out first and clear the way. If we’re lucky we may be able to take out anybody in our way without making a ton of noise. Then we come back and grab everybody and make a run for it. I’m with you. If we need to start shooting, then we probably aren’t getting out of this place tonight.” Tony said.
A little more back and forth led to them all agreeing the best plan was for Randy and Tony to scout out the garage. Best case they found a clear path and they were able to make a run for it. Worse case they got into a firefight with a platoon of the Brotherhood and there was no chance any of them were going to survive the night. Randy figured they’d wind up somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. He was really hoping the needle landed closer to the nothing exciting happening on the way out of the garage. He’d rather avoid the side of the spectrum where they all went down in a blaze of glory followed by a wave of Zombies snacking on their bullet riddled remains.
“If we’re not back in less than ten minutes you should start working on a plan B.” Randy said giving Kelly a quick kiss. He went down the row kissing Myriah, Caitlyn, Zoey, Doreen and Ali all on the tops of their heads. Or at least he thought he did. They could’ve been midget Zombies standing there for all he could tell in the complete pitch black of the hallway. Zoey had been scared of the dark before all this happened. Darkness no longer even ranked on the scale of things to be scared of. The resilience of his girls gave him strength. He was beyond proud of them. Proud of how they’d adapted and survived and taken care of one another. How they’d reached out and accepted Ali and pulled her right into their tightknit little family. Randy felt the weight of the responsibility to be worthy of being the father to these incredible little girls.
“There’s no plan B. You both get your asses back here safe and sound. We’ll all walk out of this freakshow together.” Kelly answered.
Randy gave her a salute then realized it was too dark for her to see him and felt like an idiot. He needed to get his act together. He put his game face on. He shoved the feel of his girls hair to the back of his mind. He set his worries about everything else aside and tried to just focus on the task at hand.
“Let’s go.” Randy said simply to Tony.
Randy pushed the door open slowly trying not to make any noise. They went into the small open area on the other side of the door. They’d talked about locking the door behind them, but it’d become pretty obvious how the Brotherhood scout had slipped in on this level. The part of the door with the bolt in it had been completely pried off. Randy moved quickly to the other side of the garage. They’d left their packs back with the kids choosing just to carry weapons with them to try and up their stealth and speed. Stealth and speed being relative as Tony was limping along on a foot with a fresh bullet hole in it.
Randy had a machete in one hand and an assortment of military cutlery shoved in his belt. Tony was carrying his trusty crowbar with him. Both of them had rifles and pistols and ammunition strapped to them too. They’d made a conscious effort to push the guns out of the way and focus on their hand weapons.
The garage seemed deserted. They walked out of the little room they’d been in and stood on the garage deck letting their eyes adjust to the meager amount of light available. They were squatting down beside a van parked in the handicap space by the door when they heard whispered voices.
“He probably just forgot to check in. Guys not the brightest.”
“Or, he could’ve gotten captured by those people we’re chasing or one of those weird ass locals who lives here.”
“If it’s somebody with a gun or a nest of Zombies that got him, we need to go silent now. Trucks on the way down and then we’ll see what’s up.”
Randy and Tony plastered themselves to the side of the van. It sounded like the men talking must be standing right in front of the van. They’d heard at least three distinct voices. The men in front of the van went silent and once again it felt like they were all alone in the garage. This time they knew that feeling was false. Tony was looking to take Randy’s lead on how to play this. Randy was the closest to the front of the van. It was Randy’s family standing behind a broken door about twenty feet away from these yahoos. In Tony’s mind that meant this was Randy’s call.
Randy leaned against the van. He knew the smallest stupidest mistake right now could get them all killed. The side of the van shifting, an errant sneeze, a knee popping, pretty much anything that would alert the men standing mere feet from them that their targets were squatted down basically right on top of them. The sound of a truck rolling up and parking on the other side of the van made enough noise that Randy could move his leg a little bit without worrying about the guys hearing him. The way he’d been sitting he now had a foot that’d fallen asleep to add to the list of why this sucked.
The sound of doors being quietly opened. Randy noted there was no flash of light or beeping noise when the doors opened. These guys had obviously disabled those Zombie attracting features. He was thinking there were now at least five heavily armed men who were prepping to search the floor Kelly and the kids were on. The men didn’t seem to be wasting anytime either as they all began drifting quietly towards the door. Randy was praying Kelly had heard the sound of the truck parking and pulled the kids back into a room and hidden. Not that it would matter considering these guys were bound to stumble across the dead body of their teammate in the hotel. Which was lying next to the dead body of Carl now. Randy hadn’t even considered hiding Carl’s body. He felt a pit form in his stomach thinking about the kids seeing it. He thought that may be worse than having the Brotherhood find it.
A dim light appeared by the door and Kelly stuck her head out to look around. Randy realized they must’ve gone over the ten-minute mark he’d told her to worry about. Her plan ‘B’ sucked in a major way. The men in the front of the van reacted immediately. They charged towards the door. Kelly pulled the door to shut it. One of them jammed his rifle barrel in the door.
Randy charged. His adrenaline drove him. Seeing someone attack Kelly awoke his animal instincts. His machete came down hard on the bug shaped face of the first soldier. He could barely even see his enemy. Some part of his brain told him the bug faced head was probably because some of these guys were wearing night vision. He left the machete embedded in the screaming soldiers skull and pulled out a knife from his belt. He leapfrogged onto another of the soldiers and held on like he was trying to get a piggyback ride. His knife rising and falling like he was auditioning for the shower scene from Psycho.
He rode the bleeding body of the man he’d jumped on down to the ground. From out of the darkness someone stepped forward and kicked him hard in the face with a steel toed combat boot. His neck snapped backwards, and his mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood. His knife was lo
st somewhere on the ground. He attempted to grab the leg of the guy who’d kicked him and was rewarded with a hard kick directly to his crotch. Tears coming out of his eyes he fought the urge to roll into the fetal position to shield himself from the beating. He managed to almost get his pistol out of the holster before it was kicked out of his hand. Lying on the ground with the world spinning around him he was kicked a few more times in the face.
Tony was fairing about the same on the other side of the van. He’d cut left to take out the guys who were standing in that direction. He’d gotten a knife into somebodies stomach before catching an ax handle across his face. The group of guys they’d charged into were obviously used to handling themselves in situations like this. Tony collapsed to the ground in a sitting position. Knowing it was a horrible idea he tried to stand back up. He got about halfway up before losing his balance and falling back to the ground. He’d barely had time to enjoy the pain of smacking his face into the bumper of the van when the ax handle guy whacked him again a few more times.
The man who’d been wrestling Kelly for the door won. He flung the door open and grabbed Kelly by the hair to fling her to the ground. He never even saw Caitlyn standing in the corner with the M-16. She shot him in the chest a couple of times then stepped around the door frame and started blasting away. She let go of the trigger after letting loose a barrage of bullets since she had no idea where her dad and Tony were. The muzzle blasts were blinding her and killing her hearing all at the same time. She ducked back into the hallway with her mom as whomever was standing outside decided silence didn’t matter anymore. The invisible assailant lit up the little room Caitlyn and her mom had just been standing in.
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