by Smith, S. L.
As Sara scanned the street, she half-noticed the still-functioning chicken trap on the other end of the street. It had turned into a massive hill of zombies, like a slowly-putrefying Indian burial mound. Isherwood hadn’t bothered to remove the bodies. The pressure of zombies stacking on top of zombies had provided the chickens, not only with a food source inside their surprisingly sturdy cage, but with a water source, as well. Sara grimaced, and a chill vibrated down her spine, as she thought about what Henny, Penny, and the rest’s diet must now consist of.
Luckily, the increased numbers of zombies ambling down Delaware Avenue didn’t notice the Smith family until the last buckle of the last car seat clicked into place. But it didn’t matter.
At the sound of the last click, Sara, too, moved into action. She slid the little black button on the butt of Emma Claire’s annoying furry red “Tickle Me Elmo” toy into the “on” position. She hurled it into the road like a hand grenade. As it landed, the toy started jostling back and forth on the asphalt as the tickle mechanism began vibrating. Then, the toy’s little voice started echoing across the deathly stillness of the street. It did its job perfectly. Every zombie up and down the street, even those still trying to scramble up “Mount Zombie” to get at the chickens, turned towards the toy.
At the sound of it and nearly simultaneously, the engines of a truck and another, newer CRV roared to life across the street. It was Sara’s Aunt Tad and Uncle Jerry in the truck. They lived right across the street from the Smiths. And, two houses down, in the driveway of the great house Isherwood’s great-grandfather had built, his grandmother and aunt starting inching backward towards the road.
In a flash, Sara was in the CRV. Isherwood was behind the wheel and already holding the button down to open the car’s sun roof. Sara slid the compound bow across the length of the black plastic dashboard, and took a pistol from Isherwood’s outstretched hand.
“Whoa, mommy!” Emma clapped, as Sara pulled herself up through the sun roof to stand there as the human turret of their improvised tank.
“You remember to get down if it gets too bouncy, okay?” Isherwood nervously reminded his wife.
“Got it, babe.” She said, checking the clip and snapping it back into place. As she did it, Isherwood noticed that her hands were no longer trembling.
The CRV slid out from the driveway and the two other vehicles slipped into line behind it. They let Isherwood’s grandmother and aunt drive in the safer, middle position of their caravan. Aunt Tad leveled a shotgun out of her passenger window as Uncle Jerry drove the truck at the end of their line.
CHAPTER TWO: SANCTUARY
Even when their situation had seemed more tenable, Isherwood and Sara had been planning, along with their relatives along Delaware Avenue, to move to a safer location. “What we really need is a castle!” Several nights ago, Sara and Isherwood had been whispering together, killing time before their shifts began for the night watch.
Isherwood had laughed and then wondered aloud at the suggestion, “A castle?” A memory of a dream flashed through his mind.
“Yeah, you got one of those stashed away?”
“Well – but you’re right, you know. Castles were made to survive a prolonged siege, and that, one day, is probably coming. We may not have Windsor Castle in St. Maryville, but we do have some options. The Edward Jones building is solid brick.”
“Yeah, there’s the Parish Jail, too. Or even Angola,” Sara suggested.
“You’re right. We’d probably have to clean those places out. Angola might be packed with eight thousand zombies in stripes and ankle irons. But, they’d have plenty of enclosed space for farming, orchards, …”
“Even ranching,” Sara added.
“They’re sort of like modern castles, but … but what if? … hey now, I think I’ve got something. There’s a gothic castle of sorts just a couple blocks from here. Thick doors, solid brick, high windows, lots of enclosed land, multiple buildings, kitchens – can you guess?” Isherwood’s eyes gleamed as he turned to his wife with his little riddle. He laughed as she muddled her face in confusion.
“The church, of course,” Isherwood grabbed his wife by her shoulders and shook her.
“The what?”
“It needs protection from those things, too. They’ll just desecrate the whole thing.”
“But we can’t just –”
“Oh no!” Isherwood’s face went suddenly pale. “Do you think Monsignor’s still alive in there? Oh Jeez! I don’t think I could kill his zombie. But what if he’s alive? He could’ve probably used our help a long time ago.”
“Calm down, Smithy,” Sara had shrugged off her own confusion as she watched her husband own confusion fester. “We’ll get to that soon enough. It really is a great idea. There’s probably five or six acres inside the fences.”
“Yeah, and the river would be at our backs, cutting off the directions we could be swarmed from.”
“And the river means fresh water and fish – you know, I bet there’s an old well on the church grounds, too.” Sara was nodding vigorously now. Her little spiral notebook – her “Idea Book,” as she called it – had even appeared in her hands.
“The main church building would be like the strong room of the castle, the castle keep. It would be …”
“… Sanctuary,” Sara smiled.
*****
The caravan of vehicles turned west onto Fifth Street, turning left out of Delaware Avenue. The dead turned slowly in the direction of the passing cars. They began stumbling towards the cars just as they disappeared from view. They then began following in the direction of their fading engines.
Isherwood had planned to drive along the narrower side streets to avoid any large groups of zombies, but they would still need to cross New Roads Street. Only a block from their homes, they passed along the southern edge of the town cemetery. It was several acres of marble and granite vaults, like a scale model of the city of Rome. Ironically, there were relatively few dead shambling through the graveyard. Even the dead, it seemed, respected the dead.
It was a short drive through downtown St. Maryville to reach their new location, but none of the others, besides Isherwood, had yet witnessed the devastation beyond Delaware Avenue. Isherwood had gone on several scavenging runs down to the grocery store at the other end of Delaware Avenue, but even he had not ventured far from home, not wanting to leave his wife and babies alone for long.
They were all struck by the patches where the destruction had been most severe: the burned out hulks of an old Victorian home and several crashed vehicles. There were several looted store fronts. A telephone pole had collapsed across New Roads Street. Smoke was still rising from Maggio Oldsmobile, one of only two car dealerships in town. Even despite obvious signs of burglary, the car lot was still full of seemingly untouched rows of vehicles. Isherwood was eyeing the trucks as they passed by. It was a Jeep, though, that he had always wanted, but he had always needed something more family-friendly.
“Whoa!” Sara yelled as their CRV suddenly bounced into the air and something soft scuffled under the vehicle. “Watch out, Smith. If that thing had bounced onto the hood it might be chewing on your ear right now.”
“You’re the only one that gets to chew on my ear,” Isherwood said, attempting to cover up his momentary loss of focus. He hadn’t even seen the zombie that he had hit. As his attention returned to the road, he began to notice that the dead were pretty evenly spaced around the buildings and in the roads. There were no denser pockets. It looked like they had spread out purposefully, as part of some kind of predatory behavior, like a dragnet. As he checked behind their caravan, he noticed that the zombies that had started following them were starting to coalesce into larger groups.
“What are you doing now? This isn’t the way?” Sara observed from her perch. They were passing by a surveying company and the newspaper building. The streets were studded here and there with abandoned vehicles, but less so on the side streets. It was as Isherwood had planned, bu
t the side streets could get narrow in a hurry.
“Make a circling motion with your hand to tell the others that I’m taking us around a couple extra blocks to lose our tail. And check out the church and especially those gates as we pass by, okie dokie?” Isherwood was trying his best to keep his voice even, but the panic was beginning to feel like a fist rising up his throat.
“Maybe you should drop me off now, so I can have the gates ready to open when you pass back through?”
“No, Sara. I’m not risking it. We’ll make one more pass. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even have a welcoming party next time around, a live one.”
They skirted the edge of the church property and headed back north up Poydras Avenue, then turned west on Seventh Street to avoid the clustering dead they may have provoked on Fifth Street. They looped back south again passing by the local high school and elementary. On the far side of the school, Isherwood noted for future reference, was the local library.
Both schools were surrounded by chain link fences and gates. It was a sturdy enclosure, though not as sturdy as the church’s old wrought-iron fence. The church fence had even been reinforced over the years. It was also tall. Taller than he was, Isherwood knew that much. It may even be seven or eight feet. Not only was it tall, each rod of the fence was capped either with a spear point or the more decorative fleur-de-lis at intervals.
“All the gates I saw were padlocked, Smith.” Sara informed her husband.
“That’s what I saw, too,” he grimaced. “Looks like St. Christopher’s gonna hafta bail us out of this one.”
They were now driving along the northern fence line of the church. Another hundred yards or so, and they’d be at their entrance.
“What’re we worrying about? We can just leave the cars parked outside and get ourselves in for now – come back for our cars once the crowds scatter.”
“What?” Sara said, dismayed. “What’re you thinking? We’re just gonna toss our babies over that fence? Even if we could get that babies over, what’s your Gran gonna do?”
Isherwood looked crestfallen. “We’ll just have to bug way out of town and come back. But, who knows what could happen? We may never get another chance at this, Sara.”
“There’s the gate again,” Sara said quietly. They could both see that nothing had changed. No one had appeared to help them, and something even worse had happened.
“Well,” Isherwood said, his voice staring to shake. “Looks like a welcoming party showed up after all.” All their driving around and apparently stirred up the hornet’s nest. Instead of the zombies being spread out and aimless, there were groups of zombies and they were converging on them from all sides.
“Crap,” Sara said, no longer whispering. She took in the full three hundred and sixty degree view, stepping back and forth on the cloth seats of the CRV. “We gotta get that thing open.”
“We gotta go, Sara. Now, while we still can.” Isherwood tried pulling her down in to the seat. Just then, they jumped as the car windows rattled. It was Aunt Tad with her shotgun, firing the first salvo.
“Smith!” Sara suddenly called out. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“Something just peaked at us from the far side of that shed. Take this, Smithy. Give me cover. We’re getting in right now.” She pushed his 9mm back into his hands, and then, sitting on the roof of the car, swung her legs out. Isherwood next saw the blur of her butt as she slid down the windshield and bounded off the hood.
“Your bow!” Isherwood called to her, putting the CRV in park and closing the driver side door behind him. “At least take your …”
“Watch out, Ish!” Isherwood spun on his heels as his aunt called to him from inside the second vehicle. The first pack was almost on him, but he was looking around for a pillow to silence the shots.
“Screw it,” Isherwood said to himself. “Come on cue ball.” He walked right up to the first zombie, and, taking it by the neck, shoved its head into the one behind it. He put his pistol to the first skull and fired. The heads clacked together like billiard balls and then exploded.
Sara could hear her husband going to work behind her. She grabbed the bars of the gate and shouted, “Get over here and help us!”
The smallish shadow again came peeping around the far side of the shed. “Tattoo! I can see you! Get your butt and your keys over here.” She growled the last words, using a register of her voice only accessible to mothers.
Shamefaced, a short man stepped into the light. He was just standing their fumbling in his pockets, trying not to look at Sara. “GET YOUR BUTT OVER HERE, TATTOO!” Sara said rattling the iron bars of the gate, every bit the mother bear protecting her children.
The little man scurried over to the gate. His feet and legs seemed to know what they were doing before the rest of him did. The keys kept slipping from the man’s small plumpish hands. After two failed attempts at opening the gate, Sara took the keys. The man shrunk in size as though the keys were the single most significant part of his personality. He faded backward slowly, turning his focus toward the oncoming calamity.
Isherwood was moving quickly through the oncoming zombies, darting from pack to pack. He was counting rounds. He didn’t remember if he had pressed that extra sixteenth bullet in both his magazine and backup magazine. The last thing he wanted to hear was that terrible empty clicking sound of being out of ammo as one of those things began to wrap its fingers around his throat or worse, get a nip of his clothes. After the thirteenth round, he was about to dart into the midst of a pack of three zombies. He was now clear across the road and ditch that ran along the back of the church. The next pack of zombies had just stumbled through a line of privet bushes which marked the edge of a parking lot the church shared with a Masonic Lodge.
As Isherwood darted over to the still-stumbling zombies, he realized the group coming through the privets was still growing. “The packs are growing!” Isherwood called, turning back to Sara and the caravan, but his voice was drowned out by the ka-blam of Uncle Jerry’s shotgun.
Isherwood cursed before he could bite his lip closed. Uncle Jerry’s shotgun blast had knocked the head off one of the nearest zombies. The next two in line had staggered backward, as well. The spray of steel shot had also nicked Isherwood. He fought back the instinct to rub his calf in pain. “Watch your choke on that thing!” Isherwood grunted, as he tapped the button on the grip of his pistol to switch out magazines. He took out the next five or so that were scrambling through the bushes, and was forced to begin retreating backward, as a near-solid line of fifteen ghouls staggered through the line of bushes all at once.
Luckily, Sara and Isherwood both knew the church and the gates well. It was one of the main reasons why they had eventually decided to go through with this plan. Sara had found the key she needed after grabbing the over-sized key ring from Tattoo, but it was tricky work. She was working blind and backward, reaching through the bars of the gate to turn the key in the padlock. She heard a satisfying click inside the Master-Lock and exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
Isherwood had retreated from the bushes along the Masonic Lodge and was busy knocking out two smaller packs that were staggering toward them from Main Street. He was careful to guide the falling bodies into the ditches on either side of the road. Otherwise, the growing piles might block the caravan’s only escape route. As he looked up from dropping a middle-aged woman zombie – once a Districts Bank teller, he thought – Isherwood saw that two gangs of zombies further along the road were the thickest mobs yet. They were staggering nearly perfectly abreast, filling the entire width of the road, like a brigade of gray confederate soldiers.
Just as Isherwood was about to call out a warning, he heard the blessed sound of the iron gate’s old brass wheels creaking along their tracks. He looked back to see Sara smiling at him broadly, as she pushed the gate open with her shoulder.
“Get in the CRV. I’ll cover you,” Isherwood called to her. He was free to retreat
backward into the safe zone he had created, even as solid lines of the dead approached from two out of the three remaining directions. At his back, he heard Sara slam the door and shift the CRV out of park. He thought he might have heard his little girl start crying for him, as his little family ark rumbled across the tracks of the gate into the quiet and safety of the church parking lot beyond. The second CRV and Uncle Jerry’s truck were quick to follow.
In his excitement, Isherwood had lost track of the spent rounds in his second and last magazine. It was either twelve or lucky number thirteen again. It didn’t really matter. He would need another whole magazine to take out even one of the mobs coming at him.
The line of zombies approaching from the Masonic Lodge were nearer than the confederate hoard approaching from Main Street. He called to them, “Hey, over here. Can’t you jerks walk straight?”
He was calling to them from the turn in the roadway. Isherwood had seen in a flash that he would be home free if he could just guide the line into the ditch lining the roadway. They would eventually mound up creating their own bridge, but it would take time. True to form, the dead responded to Isherwood’s insults, and he began retreating towards the gate.
A thought flashed across his mind. He sure hoped they were covering his back, because he had lost any awareness momentarily of what stood between him and the gate. It was still clear … wasn’t it?
Isherwood spun around to see an unwelcome face and snapping jaws.
Thwack!
The thing’s head lurched to one side as a rifle shot cracked in one side of its skull and exploded through the other half. Bits of rotted brain and skull fragments sprayed across the road, even as the zombie was thrown down by the force of the impact, almost somersaulting sideways.
The next sound Isherwood heard was the creaking of the gate’s brass wheels along their track. “Get in here, buster,” he heard his Gran call to him. “That was too close.” In another moment, he was watching the faces of the dead press in harmlessly against the iron fence. The fence stood solid. The rotting arms were reaching for them through the bars, groping desperately at empty air.