The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde

by Spears, R. J.

  A shot came from near the truck. Someone answered with shots of their own from Donovan’s group.

  Jones pushed himself up to one knee, letting his bad leg trail behind him and fired off two shots. He looked at Jo and said, “Get going.”

  She pounced to her feet and immediately started running back toward the convoy. She felt the anticipatory tingling in the center of her back in the spot she was sure a bullet would land at any second.

  She sprinted toward Donovan’s people, most of whom were laid across the ground, taking cover from Stanz’s bullets, but one was running at her. In the chaos, she couldn’t tell who it was right away, but quickly recognized the man as Tyler, the man who had been bitten by the zombie. He had a pistol in his hand and a determined look on his face.

  “Don’t come this way,” she shouted.

  He acted like he didn’t hear her and just kept chugging towards her.

  Gunshots sounded behind her, and she would have sworn she heard the sound of a bullet buzz by her head, sounding like a pissed off wasp. In response, she ducked low but just kept on running. She did add a little zigzag to her path, hoping that helped reduce the chance of being shot.

  “Tyler, get back here,” Donovan yelled past Jo as she ran toward him.

  Jo reached the edge of Donovan’s people, most of whom were face down in the dirt. As soon as she got there, she went to one knee while swiveling around possibly to target whoever was shooting. What she saw was Tyler standing about forty-feet away from the truck, blasting away with his pistol without a seeming care about his own safety. It was apparent that he wasn’t really aiming. It was as much an act of defiance as anything. Some would later call it suicidal.

  Whoever was shooting had a new target, standing boldly out in the open, and they changed the direction of their fire. Bullets churned up the dirt around Tyler until one finally hit home, tossing Tyler onto his back where he didn’t move again.

  A woman somewhere behind Jo yelled Tyler’s name several times before her screams turned to tears. The woman’s pain cut deep into Jo’s soul as she aimed at the muzzle flashes of the shooter, but by the time she did this, he had moved.

  Muzzle flashes came from the right side of the truck, but Clayton was kneeling in that direction, so she didn’t feel comfortable taking a shot. No use getting collateral damage.

  “He’s moved to the other side of the truck,” Clayton yelled to Berry. “I’ll put an end to that shit.” He squeezed off three quick shots and said, “Take that, mother fucker.” The figure jumped behind the cover of the truck. In another instance, Clayton might have just opened up, but the truck was someone’s ride out of here to safety. Shooting it to pieces was just a bad idea.

  Clayton yelled, “You’re good to go, Berry. I’ve got you covered.”

  Berry got to his feet, leveled his weapon, and started toward the truck as Clayton fired two more shots, locking Stanz in place behind the truck. Just for good measure, Clayton fired a shot in case Stanz felt like peeking out from behind the back corner.

  “Stanz!” Berry shouted. “You need to stand down.”

  Stanz shouted from behind the truck, “No way, Berry. You’ve sold us out. Those people will kill us as soon as they get a chance.”

  “Why did you shoot Zelanski?” Berry asked as he crept forward, his weapon aimed at the back corner of the truck.

  “I...I…I’m sorry about that,” Stanz said. “It was a mistake. I was aiming at the other people.”

  Clayton just shook his head. This was the B-Team at best. They can’t shoot for shit.

  “Well, you killed Zelanski,” Berry said. “He is dead because of you.” He continued toward the right side of the truck.

  Stanz was quiet for a few seconds, but then he screamed, “No, it was you. We wouldn’t have been here if you hadn’t given us up. I’m the only one looking out for us. Not you.”

  Clayton let his aim drift from the right side of the truck to the left. He thought he caught a glimpse of movement back there, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. Something told him to stay on the left, but that left Berry unguarded. He finally decided that Berry had a gun; he could handle himself.

  “Stanz, I’m giving you one more chance,” Berry said as he closed on the back of the truck.

  Stanz wasn’t going to give Berry any more chances and slipped around the other side of the truck. Unfortunately for him, Clayton had that side of the truck covered. Berry paused before stepping around the back of the truck then pounced around it only to find Stanz not there.

  Stanz must have heard something and made a quick about face to head around the back of the truck.

  Clayton said, “Peekaboo,” and squeezed the trigger on his rifle. The bullet struck home, hitting Stanz in the chest and spinning him around. He looked like some sort of human top, his arms out and the weapon flying free. This spin only lasted a revolution and half before he fell to the ground. Clayton locked his aim on Stanz, but the soldier lay still.

  A second later, Berry came around the back of the truck, his rifle aimed at Stanz, but it became immediately obvious that Stanz was no longer a threat.

  Chapter 38

  Out of Time

  Jo watched as Clayton stood and started toward the body of the soldier he had just shot. He still trained his rifle on the body just in case. Berry stepped out from behind the back of the truck and cautiously moved toward the body, too.

  “What the hell have you gotten us into?” Donovan shouted from behind Jo.

  “I think Clayton and Berry have taken care of it,” she yelled in his direction but continued to watch as Clayton and Berry converged on the body. Clayton stuck out a foot and nudged the downed soldier’s leg, but there was no response at all. Both Clayton and Berry let their rifles fall to their side. Berry’s head hung down, and his shoulders slumped.

  Something must have happened off to their left because their weapons shot back up. Jo followed the trajectory of their attention and saw a soldier sit on the side of the road. The soldier had to brace both of his hands on the ground to stay upright. Berry took off for the soldier, but Clayton turned back toward Jo and raised his hands up from his side in a “what the hell” gesture.

  “We have a person dead and one wounded,” Donovan hissed out. “You call that taking care of things?”

  “It was just one soldier,” she said.

  “Does it matter?” Donovan said. “I should have never trusted them.”

  She stood and started toward Donovan. “Berry risked his life to take that soldier out. So did Clayton.”

  “A lot of good that did us,” Donovan growled. “Tyler is dead.”

  Jo wanted to say that Tyler was a short timer. She wanted to say that Tyler had, for all intents and purposes, committed suicide by running out in the open like that. She kept her mouth shut, though, knowing that nothing was going to assuage Donovan’s anger. Better to let it just run its course.

  “The coast is clear,” Berry shouted back to Clayton.

  When she looked toward where Berry was, she saw him helping a soldier to his feet. Even from this far away, it was easy to see a flow of blood streaming down the soldier’s forehead. There was no telling if it was a gunshot or some other wound, but Jo guessed it wasn’t from a bullet. Clayton moved toward something off to the side of the road. He stopped and called back to Berry. Berry slowly let the soldier he was supporting fall back to the surface of the road. The soldier put both of his hands to his head and rocked back and forth.

  She heard footsteps coming from behind and saw Mason heading their way. She let her gaze glance over the people lying across the pavement and off the side of the road on the grassy slope. Some were just raising their heads, while others were cautiously pushing themselves up to a kneeling position while they peered down the road to see if the coast was truly safe.

  “Mason, you should have never brought them back here,” Donovan said.

  Jo jerked around and watched Mason standing with his head down. She knew, even from the little t
ime she had spent with the man that he would say nothing to defend himself, so she knew she had to.

  “Donovan,” she said loudly, drawing his attention away from Mason, “you need to take it down a notch.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Donovan spat out, his face contorted in rage. “You don’t have one of your men dead.”

  She moved into his personal space and said in a flat and even tone, “Mason and Del did what they thought was best. If you think my people haven’t suffered at the hands of those soldiers, then you had better take your head out of your ass. They occupied the Manor for days with us as their captives. They intimidated us each and every day. They took one of my best friends outside in front of all our people and forced him to fight two zombies barehanded. This was after he was nearly beaten senseless by their commander. When, by some miracle, he beat the two zombies, that same commander took out his pistol and shot him in the head. Right in front of me. I know what sons of bitches these soldiers can be, but whether these soldiers are all that bad -- which I don’t think they are, doesn’t really matter. We need that truck. We have an agreement to give them the SUV. Nothing is more important than getting out of here.” By the time she finished, she was breathing hard. “And don’t think about attacking those soldiers. This was a case of one person going off the deep end.”

  Most of the people were up on their feet, looking more than a little unsettled. Something in their expressions said that they didn’t trust even the ground to hold them up any longer.

  Donovan looked down at his feet as if searching for something then brought his gaze up to look at her. “I hear you. I really do, but I can’t think that any one of my people might not change their mind and go off the deep end, too.” He looked to Mason for confirmation.

  “I think we just go with the deal and the hell with them,” Mason said.

  “And that’s why they’re parting ways. We’ll take the truck, and they can head out in some different direction.”

  “It sure doesn’t taste good going down,” Donovan said.

  Mason started to say something but stopped when a woman at the edge of the group said, “Oh my God.” Each of the words was drawn out as her voice rose in pitch as she made her way through the short and declarative sentence.

  Donovan let out a long sigh, turned to look back over his people, and said, “What is it now?”

  Casey had her back to Donovan and was slowly backing up toward Donovan while, at the same time, fixated by something off in the distance from the direction they had come from. The road stretched on in a long straightaway, rising slowly in elevation until it reached the top of a rolling hill in the distance before disappearing from view. Only this time, it wasn’t the fact that it dropped over the hill that caused it to not be seen. Something dark and moving was coming over the hill in a giant, shambling mass. The top of the hill was just about a half a mile away, but it was covered in mottled and moving shapes, bobbing up and down.

  To Jo, it would have been incomprehensible had she not seen it before at the farmhouse, but still, it took about four seconds for her mind to wrap itself around this oncoming conglomeration. Her mind tried to tell her that it was a swarm of over-large insects, but it knew that wasn’t right. Then it attempted some mental gymnastics and told her it was some sort of murky flood waters flowing over the crest of the hill. In the end, the mind is good at recognizing patterns, and the reality that a massive horde of zombies was pouring over the top of the hill snapped into focus like someone lifting the proverbial curtain on the stage.

  “Is that them?” Donovan asked, but his voice seemed to have lost all substance.

  “Holy shit,” Mason said.

  “Yes,” Jo said, her tone emotionless and empty. “We’ve got to get going. Now.”

  Troy had copied Casey retreat, but his legs visibly shook with each backward step he took. “They’re coming. All of them.”

  Something overtly swelled within Donovan, and he put both his hands to the sides of his mouth and yelled as loudly as he could, “EVERYONE! We need to get moving. Now!”

  Nearly all the people stood in or around the road transfixed on the amorphous mass filling in the spaces along the top of the hill in the distance. Gaps in the trees filled with dark forms, all of them trudging along.

  “Now, people!” Donovan said.

  Casey turned away from the approaching horde and looked to Donovan and asked, “What do we do?”

  “I figure we have about twenty minutes before they get to us,” Donovan said. “The first thing we need to do is get that truck up to the tractor and siphon the gas from the tractor’s tank into the truck’s. If we can’t do that fast, we’re sunk. Casey, get Drew and get the tractor ready.” He stopped and looked to Jo. “Can you get the truck? I’ll get my people ready. Mason, check on whoever was wounded and see if they need help.”

  “On it,” Mason said, and he and Casey headed down the road.

  “I’ll get the truck,” Jo said, still feeling as if her body weren’t her own. Her first few steps felt as if her feet were numb and disconnected from the rest of her body, but with each step, she found the feeling ebbing away, replaced by a manic energy that threatened to push her into a run.

  She slowed down when she saw the SUV rumbling down the road at her. She stopped when she saw Del behind the wheel. His face seemed blank as he stared down the road past her. She got this strange feeling that he just might pass her by, but he pressed on the brakes and slowed as he got to her, still looking down the road.

  He brought the SUV to a jerking halt, stuck his head out the window and asked, “What’s the plan?”

  “Other than we need to get the hell out of here?” she asked.

  “Well, yeah. Specifics would be nice,” he said.

  “Get out and let me drive this down to the soldiers,” she said. “You get our truck and make sure the sisters, Madison, and Ryan are ready to go.”

  He opened the door, got out, but left the door open for Jo to get in. “Let’s do this as fast as possible, okay?”

  “There’s no other way,” she said as she got in the SUV. She jammed the transmission into drive as Del took off running for the truck. She cut the wheel hard and turned it in a tight arc then headed down the road toward the soldiers and the truck.

  The tires screeched as she pulled the SUV to a stop behind the group of soldiers standing at the side of the road, all of them looking down at the body of another soldier.

  Jones was back on his crutches, and he looked back her as she jumped out of the SUV.

  “We need to get moving,” she said, her voice displaying a little vibrato.

  “What--” Jones started to ask, but he caught the flow of zombies in the distance, and he stopped mid-question. He shook his head back and forth as if he could shake away the reality of what was on the way, but it didn’t work.

  “Berry,” Jones said. “We need to get moving.”

  “For fuck sake, give us a minute,” Berry said, his voice a little hoarse. His back was to Jones. “Reedy is dying here.”

  A soldier named Gardner knelt beside another soldier, who was flat on his back. The label on his jacket said ‘Reedy.’ Beside the label was an ugly black hole with blood seeping around the edges. The man’s eyes were glassy, and they peered up into the sky, but it seemed quite clear that he wasn’t seeing anything unless it was the life beyond this world. His chest rose with some effort, and the breaths were far apart.

  “I don’t think we have a minute,” Jones said.

  “Sure, we do,” Berry said as he swiveled to look back to Jones. “Stanz not only knocked the shit out of Navarro, but he shot Reedy. He’s taking his last breaths here and--”

  Berry stopped this time and did a double take as he looked past Jones and Jo, taking in what had nearly taken the breath away from Jones. “What the hell is that?”

  “That’s the horde,” Jo said. “And Jones is right. We need to get out of here.”

  “No, no, no, you’re right,” Berry s
aid as the dreadful truth of what was approaching sunk in. “Gardner, get Navarro to his feet. We need to get out of here.”

  “But what about Reedy?” Gardner asked as he looked up, his eyes rimmed with the redness of recent tears.

  “This is a tough call,” Berry said, trying to avoid looking at Reedy, “but we have to focus on the living.”

  “He’s not dead yet,” Gardner said. “We just can’t leave him here.”

  “He’ll be gone soon,” Berry said. “If not, we just might have to give him a push into the next world.”

  Gardner’s face blanched at the thought, and it was certain to anyone there that he didn’t have the stones for that job.

  “Don’t worry,” Berry said. “I’ll take care of it if the time comes.”

  Gardner visibly relaxed but then looked back to Reedy, and his shoulders fell again.

  “Time to go, Gard,” Berry said in the soft voice.

  Gardner slowly started to push himself to his feet, but it looked like he didn’t have the strength. Berry reached out and hooked Gardner under one of his arms and gently helped the man to his feet.

  “Help Navarro to the SUV,” Berry said. “He’s not all here after the knock upside the head Stanz gave him.”

  Gardner started off in the direction of Navarro. His first few steps weren’t all that steady, but he seemed to gain strength with each step.

  “Where’s Clayton?” Jo asked.

  “In the truck, getting what ammo he can,” Jones said.

  “Leave some for us,” Jo said.

  “They probably won’t see that as part of the deal,” Jones said.

  Jo brought up a hand and scratched her forehead then said, “Well shit, if we had more time, I’d renegotiate.” She paused then looked at Jones. “Are you sure you want to go with them?”

  Jones pursed his lips for a moment then said, “No, I’m not, but I have to do it. I have to make up for turning my back on them.”

  “You didn’t do that,” Jo said forcefully. “You were standing up for us. For what was right.”