by Mike Fosen
Stephen gave a little cough. “Uh, I got to go help Mike with his demonstration.” At that he exited from the truck and then ran even faster when her laughter followed him out the doors.
* * * * * * * *
Watching the latest wave of infected come into decent rifle range, I told Jack to give the order for those that were good shots to start thinning the herd.
Shots cracked out and echoed off into the distance. The shuffling horde continued to inch its way closer, forever undeterred.
Clicking the selector switch to semi-auto, I began helping out, rapidly burning through the first magazine. As I slapped the bolt forward on the next, I noticed Stephen had joined the party.
“I miss anything, Mike?”
I looked over at him over the stock of my rifle. “Yeah, while you were gone, a terrible virus began to turn people into mindless cannibals.”
“Very funny asshole,” he countered, and began shooting, putting the Aimpoint reticle on their heads and squeezing the trigger while trying to match my tally of infected before they were all decimated.
Finally, as the last of them went down, a ragged cheer went up. Jack was walking our way with a huge smile, which quickly turned into a frown as two familiar figures intercepted him.
“A fantastic victory, Captain. I never doubted that you would prevail,” Councilman Lewis crowed.
Sgt. Henderson, slightly out of breath from the brisk walk, pulled up his falling pants. “Yes indeed, fine victory.”
“See you back at the ambulance, Mike,” Stephen said and took off.
“Leaving me hanging again?” I responded, but he was already gone.
Jack stopped by me and shook Lewis’s hand. “It would have been rough if Mike and Stephen had not shown the men their knowledge of zombie warfare tactics. I think we would have been finished days ago without their help.”
Lewis frowned. “Well, we are fortunate to have them, aren’t we? It’s a shame two of their cohorts left and stole some of our supplies. Well, keep up the good work men.”
Lewis did an about face and almost collided with Sgt. Henderson who was standing at attention right behind him.
“Will you get out of my way, you idiot?” he hissed through clenched teeth then stalked off with Sgt. Henderson in tow.
“I think your boss is stuck with the idea that he is running for office not fighting for his life,” I mentioned to Jack, who shook his head in frustration.
I grabbed ahold of his shoulder and stopped him from leaving.
“Listen, Jack, soon you’re going to have a real problem on your hands.”
“What else could go wrong now?”
I pointed out into the killing field at the pile of fresh corpses. “If the infected keep coming at us at this rate, it won’t be long until the pile of bodies begin to make a ramp for them to walk right up and into our perimeter. The walls here are not as high as to the south, and we don’t have any extra cars left inside the perimeter to stack up.”
Jack’s face went white as it dawned on him what I was talking about. “Oh shit…any ideas?”
“What about the front end loader?” I asked. “With it we could scoop the corpses up and pile them elsewhere for disposal. This should actually have already been done to stop diseases.”
“Sadly, that is not an option. We ran out of diesel today, and Councilman Lewis has refused to authorize another fuel run.”
I looked at Jack in shock. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I’m afraid not, friend. Since your group arrived, Lewis has been acting really weird," he replied. "As if he was thinking you were trying to oust him from his position of authority.”
“I’ll get to the bottom of this,” I said. I’d heard enough. “Where’s he headed now?”
“Probably back to his office with his cronies, where it is safe,” Jack replied. “They spend a lot of time up there and as you guessed, keep all the best food and other goodies for themselves. Have him hand over more ammo and firearms as well. We’re running short on both.”
Jack was giving me the ammo count when he stopped talking and stared to the west. Sure enough, the field was filling with fresh zombies.
“They must finally be running out of other places to eat,” Jack said dryly.
I turned and jogged back over to the ambulance where Stephen and Mattie were joking about Stephen's hasty retreat from the ambulance earlier.
“Hey you two, pay attention. You might have to head back to the barrier wall sooner than you want to. There’s been a steady stream of those infected bastards all day. It appears to be picking up again already."
“How bad is it?” Stephen asked.
“Worse than you think,” I replied. “And right when we need more of everything around here.”
I detailed how the ammo supply for the guards was low with the main bulk of it still under Lewis’ control. I also filled him in about the corpses piling up and the front end loader being out of fuel. As the list went on, Stephen’s eyes just got bigger with disbelief.
“What the hell is that idiot thinking?” he said. “We have tried to avoid and ignore him, but nothing has changed. Remember that entire diesel stockpile sitting at the armory a few blocks away?"
“Don’t remind me,” I said sadly. "Like all dictators, he’s willing to trade lives for power."
Jogging down the main hall running through the upstairs of the school, I noticed three or four of the cops I used to work with outside of Lewis’ office. They were all smoking cigarettes and got real quiet as I walked up. I attempted to enter the office, and the oldest one, Marvin, put a hand on my chest to stop me. Looking first down at his pudgy hand, I then looked him in the eye.
“You might want move your hand while it still works," I growled at him.
“Um...sorry Mike... you can’t go—”
“Save it, Marvin. Now move or I’ll open the door with your face.”
For an old man, Marvin could jump.
I pushed the door open and first thing I saw was Sgt. Henderson reclining in a chair with his feet on the desk next to him.
Lewis was reading a report of some sort trying to look busy.
“Jack needs more ammo, and hand out the surplus firearms to the refugees,” I said. “We really need the extra help today.”
“Absolutely not,” Lewis said. “I will not have a bunch of trigger happy rednecks shooting at everything that moves. The perimeter has been holding fine."
Glancing over his shoulder, I observed through an open door a supply room that was once a teacher’s lounge filled with some of the items I was requesting, stacked up in neat rows.
“I don’t have time for this bullshit,” I said and started to move around the desk.
Lewis, face purple with rage at my lack of respect for his authority, started to stand in protest.
“You’re not going anywhere assho–!”
That was as far as he got before my fist was introduced to the spot between his eyes. The sound of crackling nose cartilage and him slamming back into his seat hard enough to spill him over backwards was sweet indeed. Sgt. Henderson made it as far as putting his feet onto the floor to get up to intervene but sat back down as I turned to him.
“Just sit there and make sure he doesn’t choke on his own blood.” Lewis’ eyes were rolled up in his head and he was snoring loudly. I bolted into the next room and grabbed two large metal .50 caliber ammo cans and started for the outer door. Seeing Marvin and the others, I shoved the cans into his hands and told him to take them out to Jack at the west perimeter tower. Not waiting for a reply, I ran back and grabbed two more of the large metal cans. Looking around the room, I saw that Lewis had managed to save a lot of the good stuff for himself. High end liquor, cigars and food stuffs all set aside for himself. I would have to deal with that later.
I handed off several more cans to the others in the hallway, and by the time I got the remaining ammo out to the perimeter myself, I was puffing and out of breath. I dropped the ammo cans nex
t to Jack, and he looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Man, I hate to run! “ I said, gasping for air.
“You know you are bleeding?” Jack replied.
Looking down, I dismissed the blood and wiped it on my pants. “It isn’t mine.”
Jack waited for an answer but shrugged after he didn’t get one. “Thanks, Mike, I will see to it this ammunition gets handed out right away.”
I explained where Lewis kept the ammunition and had Jack send several men to get the rest of it.
“I’ll get them on it!” he replied over the growing gunfire.
Guards from the other shifts began to show up and joined in the fight. With no rest for the wicked, I too was back in the fight. The new ammunition was having the desired effect, and the shooting was beginning to pick up. Soon I was awash in violence as a stream of zombies continued to arrive all around us. They were a cross section of former America. I tried not to, but if you looked at their clothing you could often tell a lot about their former lives. I shot former McDonalds’ employees walking along still wearing their drive through headsets, mechanics still covered in grease, garbage men, office workers and nurses. There were car wash attendants stumbling alongside construction workers still wearing their tool belts. School children came at us, along with nursing home residents and every age group in between. The elderly were probably more agile than they had been in years.
The battle intensified. I stopped to take a breather and twisted open the cap off a bottle of water. As I tilted back my head to take a drink from a water bottle, I saw that daylight was fading. Peering at the horizon, I could tell there was an ominously dark storm front moving in very fast from the west that was making night fall much earlier than normal. Faint rumblings of thunder could be heard in between the cracks of rifle fire and shouts from the people fighting on the barrier wall.
That damn moaning sound was getting annoying as hell. We had been at this for hours at least.
I grabbed Stephen as he hurried past me to deliver some more ammunition to guards on the raised platforms. This work was made more difficult than it needed to be due to the fact that Sgt. Henderson had never bothered to sort the ammunition. Most of it had been taken from sporting goods stores and just thrown into cans, the different calibers all mixed together. But there was a lot of it thankfully.
“Hey!” I told Stephen. “The sun is going down soon, and there is a thunderstorm moving in. We need to get the portable lights up and running soon! Go tell Jack to get someone on it immediately.”
Stephen yelled for me to go do naughty things with my mother but I knew he would get it done. I headed back to our ambulance to grab my bat and shield. Inside the rear of the shadow-filled ambulance, I picked up my bat.
“Now where is that damned shield?”
Outside I heard the steady gunfire and shouts for help on the line. Then a cry of pain...sounded like someone may have got bitten! In the background I heard several portable light plant engines fire up. One must have started up nearby, for there was a sudden increase of light that lit up the back of the ambulance. Now seeing a corner of the shield poking out from under my backpack, I grabbed it and hopped out of the ambulance. The wind had picked up in the few minutes I was in my truck. Smoke from the gunfire began to whip away from the killing fields and mix in with the smell of the zombies. I paused a moment to make sure my backpack was ready to go as well.
Before closing the top I stuffed in the Dark Tower book I had taken from the library. The damned book was just starting to get good. I would hate to lose it…might not ever find out what happens.
With the arrival of the wind came a sharp temperature drop. I ran to the wall and hopped on top of a flatbed semi-trailer to see what we were up against.
I dropped my rucksack and bat with shield onto it, then looked out and down Glenwood Street to the west of our location. Something did not sit right.
The wind, which had picked up, was now starting to make large trees bend and creak. And it had brought something else with it as well.
I couldn’t place my finger on what made my cop hunch scream in warning. The crash of thunder in the distance was slowly getting closer, as did the number of zombies that were assaulting our wall. To conserve ammo I let the others shoot while I cleaned up any stragglers that got through to my section of the wall with the bat.
Now as dusk fell and with the approaching storm overhead, rain began to lightly fall and picked up into a steady downpour. Wind pushing the rain at a sharp angle made for a slippery footing on top of the vehicles we stood on. Finally, the current wave of infected was destroyed, and I stood there catching my breath as others reloaded magazines and rifles while they had a spare moment. I tilted my head back to let the rain quench my thirst. Looking down our lines, I saw that everyone that was willing to fight was now on the front, manning the barricades that surrounded the safe zone. You could feel the urgency of the situation at hand. You could see it in their faces. They had known this moment was coming since they had arrived here, little by little, person by person, over the last week. I was proud of the fight many were putting up on such short notice in the worst of circumstances. Even Holly, the liberal young woman we had rescued at the Aldi's grocery store, was now standing on the roof of an old Ford Bronco, holding a small Ruger .22 rifle. Robert was there as well, shotgun at the ready. Troy Lundell was farther down, surrounded by firefighters. Still… many hundreds more just waited in the relative safety of the school building itself for someone else to save them.
I was sure that was what Lewis and Henderson were doing right now.
There it was again. My mind snapped back to the present. That loud roaring of thunder clouds that seemed closer than ever only had one problem.
Where the fuck were the flashes of lightning? Something was just not right, I could taste it.”
The adrenaline dump that hit my body felt like a kick in the balls. My head snapped forward, and I looked out into the darkness. The lights we had could not shine very far out into the kill zone due to the driving rain. Now as I struggled to see past the edge of the lights, shadows began to form and dance.
Maybe the movement is just trees moving from the wind?
I shouted for the others around me to be quiet.
As silence fell, the storm churned and flowed above us. The clouds thickened and the wind picked up yet again. The thunder now seemed right on top of us.
“Where’s the lightning?” I heard someone ask.
It dawned on me that these were not sounds of the storm we heard closing in.
What we heard was the roar of our death coming from the throats of thousands of undead.
I felt my blood run cold as out of the darkness a horde of undead thousands strong rolled into sight, roaring for our blood.
“Fuck me!”
29
September 14
Day 20
Texas, USA
The reports coming in from the weather satellites showed some nasty storms far to the north, and Matvei was glad that as of yet they had not run into any bad weather themselves. Fighting the infected proved to be hard enough as it was, and Matvei didn’t need any more problems. He was having a bad enough day already. He drank a cup of black coffee and waited for a situational update over the radio. Everything had been going according to plan up until today. Communications had been flowing in all day, and the word from his main elements had been encouraging. The group sent to Houston arrived early and managed to already secure a large area and take on some of the locals for labor. Texas had a large Hispanic population, and they seemed to be more willing to help than the whites. The latter seemed to be regarding them as an invading army rather than a rescue party. The one thousand man contingent proceeded cautiously into the Dallas metropolitan area and was completely intact, having mowed down any and all opposition from the infected.
Word from the smaller groups was just as good. The Brownwood and Brownfield contingents arrived and were augmented by the local gang population. T
he Brownwood location received a large contingent of allied MS-13 gang members from the Dallas area. Matvei didn’t like the gang but needed the bodies for now. They were reporting widespread destruction in the Dallas Metro area. Attempts at quarantine and refugee camps had failed, with any survivors heading for the hills. The two contingents headed for New Mexico were set to arrive shortly and reported no difficulties.
This morning all of that changed. Hector reported to Matvei just after dawn that their force in Brownwood spotted a large military convoy moving west down Highway 67. They appeared to be a ragtag assortment of soldiers but were at least a thousand strong. They had heavy equipment and were doing everything right, sending out reconnaissance parties and flankers. Matvei ordered his men to lay low and hoped the convoy passed through town. That didn’t happen.
How did they know we were there? Matvei now asked himself.
Either way, his people were now taking a beating at the hands of the U.S. Army.
The MS-13 gang was the first to make contact, having very little respect for the soldiers. They attempted to set up an ambush on a patrol but instead got cut down themselves. A pair of M2 Bradley fighting vehicles tore them up pretty good. The mercenaries had a much higher level of respect and tried to pull back. After pitched small arms fire, they found their escape route cut off by a group of IAV Strykers. That was the last update Matvei had received. He spent the next half hour waiting anxiously for an update before Hector was again able to make contact.
Matvei heard heavy machine gun fire and explosions in the background. He angrily grabbed the radio to find out what was happening.
“My orders were to lay low!” Matvei screamed into the radio.
“We tried, sir,” the voice responded, “but those bangers started tearing into the locals something fierce. There were dozens of reports of rampant raping and killing done by those little punks. I think the convoy was just passing through, heading west, but the locals managed to get word to them.”