About a Woman, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

by Mark Clodi

  The women nodded and paid unusual attention to the lecture as Mike when on to show each of them how to load, unload and put each gun on 'safety' and take each gun off as well. Then he turned the unloaded weapons over to them and made each of them tell him how to do everything he demonstrated. Through trial and error the women became familiar with the guns until Mike felt comfortable enough to have them try firing them. Dora said they should move behind the changing room and fire towards the back yard.

  Mike went back into the kitchen and rummaged in the trash, bringing out a few bottles of various things to use as targets. Behind the changing room there was a wood pile and Mike took a few of the split logs back and set them up about forty feet away. He positioned them in front of a small mound of dirt left over from the pool construction and put a jar on top of each log.

  "Now, you need to aim low. If a bullet hits the wall it could ricochet, which means bouncing back, we don't want to be hit by bullet, or have one damage the house or something. So for the first time you fire, keep it a little low until you figure out where the bullet is going." Mike explained how to use the sights on the rifles and how the pistols used a similar system. He cautioned them that the pistols would not be as accurate as the rifles, because it was easier to get a line on a target with a longer barrel.

  He picked up a shotgun and then lay down on the grass and propped it up with another chunk of firewood. "The steadier you can keep the barrel the more accurate you will be." With that he squeezed off a shot and shattered one of the jars of salad dressing, knocking over the piece of wood it has been sitting on as well. "See? Slow and steady, take your time and exhale before you pull the trigger, never take your eyes off the target."

  The women were still recovering from the loud sound the gun had made when it went off. With Dora conspicuously rubbing her ears.

  "Yeah we should use earplugs, but I didn't see any over there around the safe."

  "Oh, like little orange bits of foam, right? Roger has some in the garage, for when he is cutting wood. I'll go get some, it's better than being deaf after this session of shooting."

  Dora went to the garage and looked around for a few minutes before spying the package of foam ear inserts hanging off of the pegboard behind the work bench. She brought them outside and handed them out to the others. Mike had replaced the bottle he had shattered with another and had Paige lay down in the prone position to fire her first shot. Dora looked at the young woman and thought to herself that some people just were not designed to lie down on their stomachs; she started to giggle and stopped herself. The other two didn't notice, so that was one advantage to having the ear plugs in. Paige's first shot missed, but her second one was dead on. Mike had her fire until she hit all the targets, Paige took nine shots to hit six targets and Mike seemed very pleased. He went and set up new ones and then it was Dora's turn to lie down and fire the shotgun.

  Mike was loudly telling her to go slow and breathe slowly and she thought Paige said something too, but when she looked over her shoulder the woman just pointed at Dora's bare ass; Dora hadn't thought to put on anything under her shirt yet. Shrugging her shoulders Dora looked downrange and slowly let out her breath then squeezed the trigger. The recoil of the gun surprised her, but she hit her target on the first try. In fact she knocked all of her six targets off with six shots, although one was not broken; Dora had hit the log out from under it, causing it to topple unharmed into the grass.

  Mike was still very pleased and they progressed to standing and firing the shotgun, then moved on to the rifles and finally they tried to shoot the pistols. They practiced for over an hour, loading, firing until the last round Mike had set aside for the training was gone. Finally the practice was over and Dora pulled out her ear plugs and tossed them towards the woodpile, the others did the same.

  "That took longer than I thought it would." said Dora.

  "Yeah and you get better the more you practice, but we don't have a lot more ammo to practice with, so I think we are done, you'll just have to get better fighting zombies. We have to aim at the head, if Ned was right anyway."

  "That is what he said. Should we check the news and jerky and then get some dinner going?" asked Paige.

  "Absolutely! And I promised wine!"

  The trio came around the side of the changing room, with Dora leading and she stopped dead in her tracks, pushing the other two back. Between them and the house were several people. Dead people. Zombies were invading her back yard.

  "Fuck!" Dora whispered loudly as she manhandled the other two behind the small building. "Where the fuck did they come from?" Thinking for a moment she then looked at Mike and Paige, "Tell me one of you latched the gate when you came in?"

  They looked at each other and shook their heads, with Mike saying, "It doesn't swing shut on its own?"

  "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! No it doesn't fucking latch on its own!"

  "Sorry Dora! I didn't know!" said Paige.

  Dora was about to utter a scathing remark, then stopped herself, remembering she was the reason they had to come through the gate in the first place, the anger left her and she said, "It's my fault not yours. I am not mad at you. I locked the fucking front door, which is why we had to go through the gate. I know the damned thing doesn't always latch. I am just mad at myself. I should have known. Mike, tell me you have more bullets."

  He shook his head, "We shot them all. The rest are on the table. Did they see us?"

  "I don't think so." Dora said shaking her head, "They must have heard us firing the guns. I didn't know they could hear us."

  "What do we do?" asked Paige.

  Dora peeked her head around the corner again, one of the zombies was shuffling their direction, it had obviously seen them and was only about twenty steps away. Quickly Dora counted the others, three were gathered at the back patio sliding door, unable to get in, another two were standing by the pool, looking the grill intently. There was another one coming in from the side of the house too. The gate was not visible from where Dora was standing, but she was sure it was still open. Ducking back she said, "One of them is coming, he saw me. There are six others, two by the pool, three by the back door and one coming in from the side of the house. We need to get to the table and get some bullets, then get the god damned gate shut and kill the ones who are in the yard. If there are any more out in the street we better take care of them too, I don't want a mob around the house, what if they draw more?"

  "Okay so how do we do this? Do you want to be a distraction while I race for the ammo?" Mike asked.

  "Uh, maybe me and Paige together on this side of the changing room. We'll tackle this one and make a lot of noise, you go out from the other side when we tell you to and run for the table around the far side of the pool."

  "Okay, we'll keep it simple. After I get the bullets I'll yell for you two to run. You go that way," Mike pointed at her neighbors to the west of her property, "Run behind the shed and make your way back towards me by sticking close to the wall so you won't be in my line of fire."

  "We aren't defenseless either." Paige bent over and picked up a stout piece of wood off the wood pile. "We should be able to take the first one out with a few good whacks, right? I mean this is heavier than a pool cue or the table leg."

  "Okay, let's do this." Dora said.

  Chapter 13

  Dora and Paige went around the side of the shed almost at the same time. They moved several paces away from it and the zombie who was closest immediately headed their way. The ones coming in from the open gate started shambling their way too, the others had not yet noticed the living in the yard behind them and kept batting at the glass door or looking at the grill.

  "Hey dead people! Over here! Can you hear me?" shouted Dora.

  "Hell yeah they can hear us! Look they are turning this way!"

  "Yeah brilliant idea, firing the guns in my backyard, huh?"

  "Who knew?" Paige asked. She took a swing at the lead zombie, catching him behind the ear and stripping a patch of gray h
air off of the old zombie's head.

  "Shit you hit like a girl!" Dora said, immediately letting out a small "Oops!" as her own blow did little damage to the other side of the things head.

  "It ain't as easy as it looks, huh?" Paige's second blow crushed in the top of the things head and it went down and stopped moving.

  The melee had lasted all of six seconds and yet both women, hopped up on adrenaline, were panting. The next zombie was still a good twenty slow paces away and they moved a bit further towards the side of the yard to draw them over, Dora also wanted to see the gate, when it came into line she was horrified to see that beyond it was a mass of zombies, all trying to get through the bottle neck at the same time.

  "There must be twenty or thirty of them! We gotta get that gate shut!" Dora said.

  "One thing at a time, okay, keep 'em coming towards us so Mike can run for the ammo."

  "What is going on?" Mike yelled over at them.

  "There are a bunch more trying to get through the gate, we gotta hurry or we are going to be up to our ears here soon!"

  "We aren't already? Maybe we should just get out of here, go around front and make a bunch of noise so they will follow us there instead?"

  "Paige, I could barely get over the gate, and that was with Mike's help and the gate is only six feet high! These walls around the yard are eight feet, no way I can do that."

  Paige looked around, noticing how all of the trees were short, not more than four or five years old. There were no piles of junk in the yard either, other than the wood pile behind the changing room there was nothing they could use to climb over the back walls. She got a determined look in her eye as she turned to Dora, "We bash a few, get their attention, climb up the wood pile and get on the roof of the changing room, they are too clumsy to climb up there."

  "Good idea, I knew I picked you for a reason!" said Dora.

  "You picked me? Hah! I only came along because I knew you would be dead without me. I felt sorry for you." Paige swung at the second zombie in line. The other members of the living dead were lining up nicely and the door and patio were almost clear of them now, however a large number were still pouring in from the open gate.

  The women clubbed the second zombie together, handling them two on one was easy, things were going to get harder in mere moments when they would have to handle two or three at once. Paige took a step back, Dora matched her, and the next two zombies were upon them. Dora recognized one of the women, it was an older middle aged woman with stringy blond hair. She lunged forward at the last second, causing Dora's swing to hit her in the back instead of on the head. Dora used her off hand to push the woman's head back and of course the zombie tried to bite that hand. Screaming in fear Dora ran backwards three or four paces, which left Paige to deal with two zombies alone.

  "Back off Paige! Run!" however Paige held her ground, swinging a viscous upper cut into the jaw of the first zombie, an older man with no shirt and enough hair on his chest to qualify as fur. The old man fell over backward from the blow and Paige swung her club down on Dora's zombie from behind. Through some misfortune, the woman had her hand up and Paige's blow caught it in the arm. The zombie woman didn't slow down a bit, even with her arm bent in the middle of the wrist and white bone gaping out of the wound. The woman turned to go after Paige and trod over the body of the shirtless man to get to her. Dora stepped up and bashed the blond haired woman over the head when she turned.

  This left Paige's second zombie free to act and it lunged forward and toppled the woman down. He pulled her down to her knees and pressed his head into her stomach. Dora grabbed Paige by the arm and jerked her backward. The motion pulled her away from the zombie, but Paige lost her hunk of wood, it toppled end over end until it landed on the grass between the women and the next zombie, where it acted as a meager wall.

  As Dora helped Paige to her feet, they watched the lead zombie's foot step down on the piece of wood, its ankle twisted sideways and the man toppled into the shirtless, hairy zombie, which had just regained its feet. Both of them went down again and another zombie, one that looked about twelve years old, tried to walk over them and also ended up on the ground. Both women giggled at the pile up, then Dora said "All we have to do is throw wood in their way!"

  "Yeah, my wood! I already miss it."

  This set Dora off to giggling again and they fell back further. Paige, with a perplexed look on her face asked "What's so funny now?"

  "I'll bet you miss your wood! You poor girl!" she laughed again as they continued their retreat. Paige shook her head slowly from side to side, the smile didn't leave her face, but she said nothing in response to Dora's needling.

  The women watched as Mike raced to the back patio table and grabbed several boxes of ammo and ducked into the kitchen. Dora looked at Paige "Uh, was that the plan?"

  Paige grabbed the woman and started hustling forward in an arc around the back yard, "He has to reload the guns, right? Let's get to the changing room."

  They raced around the side, but because of the rectangular shape of the yard they ended up closer to the zombies than either woman expected. Paige tossed a couple of pieces of wood on to the top of the shed and scrambled up the stacked pile to get onto the roof. Dora, followed tossing her own club up first, she had almost made it to the top, when she felt a cold hand grasp her ankle and start to pull her down.

  "Paige!" Dora screamed. The younger woman turned and grabbed Dora's hand, pulling her hard, but the zombie would not let go. Dora kicked ineffectively, bouncing her bare feet off the thing's face and shoulder. This zombie was a younger man, probably sixteen or seventeen, Mike's age. He was wearing only dark green boxer shorts and they were torn open in a way that left nothing to the imagination.

  "Hold on, Dora!" Paige said and then let Dora's hand go, she then turned around and hefted a chunk of wood in her hand, she threw it at the man's head, where an end struck it right square on the nose, ruining an otherwise good face. The thing might not feel pain, but having a three pound piece of wood hitting it in the face must have jarred it in some manner, because it let go and fell backward. Dora pulled herself up and turned around to look at the zombies milling about in her yard. They kept coming and were starting to build up at the back of the shed. The mob moved up and stomped on top of any who fell, which they all did when they reached the pile. Thus, the pile was getting higher as each pressed forward. Dora estimated there were now around forty zombies in her yard, with more streaming in from the open gate. Gunfire started in the street in front of her house. It was a rifle, Dora recognized the sound. Then a pistol started firing. Then everything stopped.

  "You don't think…" She began, but a rifle started firing again. "What is he doing?"

  "Getting to the gate from the front I bet. Get your club, we gotta knock heads."

  The women began smashing the heads of the zombies that came close, this stopped the zombies from getting to them, but added to the pile, making it easier for the others to reach them. Fortunately the zombies were only able to get up on back side, where so many of them had fallen. On the other sides the zombies just pressed close and jostled each other, not able to reach up or threaten the women.

  The gun fire continued, abating periodically, before resuming again. After what seemed like an hour of time, the firing started coming from the side of the house near the gate. The women smashed heads until Mike appeared in the yard. He moved forward, but didn't wade into the crowd of zombies. Instead he angled off to one side and when he was close enough he yelled, "Catch!" and tossed up a pistol.

  Paige recovered it and Mike retreated back into the house to reload, several zombies followed him. Paige took slow aim at the zombies closest to the bath house and fired one shot at a time, which drew the zombies back towards them. After nine shots the pistol was empty, but by then Mike had reloaded and was using the grill as a place to steady the rifle he was firing. In minutes the slaughter was over. There was still some movement on the ground, zombies whose heads had not been fully dest
royed, Mike tossed up a box of ammo for Paige and another pistol to Dora. The women climbed down on the pool side by hanging and dropping from the roof.

  "Well that went well. Thanks Mike you did a great job." Dora leaned over and hugged the young man.

  "Yeah, I think we need showers again. You two are splattered, uh, more like coated in blood." said Mike.

  "You aren't much better yourself." said Paige looking Mike over. "What do we do with these? Some of them are still moving."

  Dora pondered it over for a minute then said, "You know I think we better pull them out one by one towards the back, make sure each one is fully dead. I would rather not have them in the yard, but what else do we do with them?"

  "They're gonna smell." Mike said.

  Dora shrugged. "Better out there then around the pool. Could we bring them out front?"

  "Uh. There are more out there. They just kept coming. I cleared a path, but there were lots of them. Maybe we can wait until tomorrow, maybe they will go away?"

  "Fine." Dora said with resignation in her voice, "We drag em back here and put a cap in any of them that are still alive. At least they are easy to kill."

  "I don't know Dora. Out in front. Well I missed one. Took two shots at him, he moved like…well, like us. Fast, he ran away when I started firing. None of the others ran away, they just came forward no matter what."

  Dora looked at Mike, trying to figure out if he was putting them on, she decided he wasn't and said, "That's…not good."

  "No." he answered.

  Chapter 14

  Moving the bodies back to the back fence took them almost an hour and a half. They had killed thirty seven zombies in the back yard. Mike said he had probably killed that many in the front too, and when the women looked out the front windows there were still dozens of them wandering around in the street and on the front lawn. After the noise stopped they did begin to disperse, but not quickly. Some of them looked at the house in a way that made Dora uneasy.