by T. W. Brown
“What was it that you and Kevin kept saying while we were grabbing everything this morning?” Heather asked, but only paused for a second before answering her own question out loud. “The rules don’t apply.”
Cary looked at the girl with a raised eyebrow and a puzzled expression. She was saying something and right this moment, with his entire body thrumming from the overload of adrenaline, he didn’t have a clue what. But it was important somehow. Well, he’d sort it out later. He could hear the distant rumble of approaching vehicles. He looked up at the long stretch of road; Kevin had disappeared. A glance back towards Heath revealed a few zombies already stumbling out of the ruins, coming to investigate the new sound.
“Good thing they can’t run,” Heather said, checking the setting on the pistol-gripped shotgun she selected from the ones at their feet.
“None of us would’ve lasted a week if those things could run.”
“I’ve never seen any of those films,” Heather shrugged.
“Yeah,” Cary moved to the front bumper with his shotgun and took a peek at the approaching convoy, “well, now you’re livin’ them,” he whispered.
Kevin took a deep breath. The bitterness of dirt and cornstalks was all he could smell. He considered that for a moment. That meant the wind was blowing towards Heath, not from it. Funny how his senses and abilities of observation seemed to grow every day. By his best reckoning, it was mid-August. This nightmare had begun in mid-April. That meant, at the most, they’d survived four months so far. So much had happened so quickly.
His mind flashed through the highlights…and lowlights. One of the focal points of the debates he, Cary, Mike, and Darrin used to get into when fantasizing about the zombie apocalypse was over how fast it would overwhelm society. Kevin had always argued that society would endure and that it would only be a disaster, rivaling the mortality rates of the Black Plague. He’d been so wrong. The Romerophiles were much more accurate. People had simply refused to believe what was staring them in the face. Or trying to eat their face more likely. And the impact on first-responders had actually been grossly underestimated. Events had unfolded much too quickly.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been so surprised. He thought back to the world he’d known; it was rude, crass and self-centered. Hell, nobody said “please” or “thank you” anymore unless they were Canadian. And the phrase “excuse me” well, that had actually become a rude retort rather than an apology. Everybody was so engrossed in their own lives, even if it was at the expense of those around them. Children were suing their schools over the “Pledge of Allegiance” instead of just sitting it out. Coaches couldn’t bench their athletes without parents coming out of the stands with clenched fists. The world had gone to Hell-in-a-handbasket.
The rumble of the approaching vehicles shook him out of his thoughts. He could ruminate on the downfall of humanity later. Right now he needed to focus. He considered the vehicles as they turned down the long stretch of road that would take them to Heath. A large pick-up with a snowplow blade led the way, although they’d pretty much cleared this path long ago. Next was a large flatbed. It was obviously for whatever items they expected to haul out of town. That was followed by a school bus that had been transformed into an urban-assault vehicle. It was loaded with men who were probably well armed. The last two vehicles were military-style Hummers. Both had ominous and frightening .50 caliber machineguns. That might be a problem if even one survived the blast. Just one of those guns could mow down his entire cornfield in minutes.
He flipped up the red safety cover on the toggle-switch and tried to gauge his estimated blast zone. If Cary did his job right, this had the potential to go very well. The lead truck passed by where the makeshift bomb was hidden. That had been the first test; would they notice if something was out of place or if the ‘landscape’ had been altered. The answer to that appeared to be a big negative.
“Now,” Kevin breathed, willing Cary to implement his role in the operation. Nothing. Seconds seemed to pass, each one allowing the caravan to slip past what he considered to be the optimal place for his bomb to inflict the most damage.
Boom. Boom.
Two shotgun blasts came almost on top of one another. Exactly as he hoped, the third vehicle slammed on the breaks. He couldn’t tell from his position if the vehicle had actually been hit, but it had stopped. The vehicles behind it did likewise in an accordian-like manner, all bunched up.
Kevin flicked the switch. There was a brief pause, a moment where he was filled with dread. He’d failed. He’d wired something incorrectly. Then…a huge explosion roared, sending a pillar of flame and smoke skyward. He’d greatly misjudged the power of the blast. A wall of heat rolled over him and his ears rang, drowning out all sound.
Somehow, he’d ended up on his back and now found himself staring up at the clear blue sky. Only…it was speckled with…
“Oh shit!” Kevin rolled to his left as a jagged piece of metal plunged deep into the ground where he’d been only a moment before. All around him, a deadly rainfall of debris, including the entire axel of a large vehicle—the school bus—came crashing to earth.
Kevin smelled smoke, not just the acrid smell of his explosion but something else. Something like hair! That’s when his mind finally registered the burning sensations on his head. Both hands came up. When had he lost his leather hat? He began patting at his head, tamping out the places where his hair had actually caught fire. Looking around, he saw debris everywhere, not all of it metal.
There were parts. Body parts. Directly in front of him, a blackened...was that part of a leg?...lay in the furrow between tires and some jagged metal. Taking a breath, and immediately choking on smoke that was growing thicker by the moment, Kevin tried to sit up. He felt dizzy and his insides felt as if some giant had scooped him up and shook him like a salt shaker.
A muffled popping sound made its way through the thick haze that wouldn’t release its gripping hold of his skull. Something had grazed one cheek leaving a stinging trail on the left side of his face. Some of the nearby cornstalks fluttered, but not together as if in a breeze. Kevin glanced down at the wide, browning leaves and tried to make sense as a hole about the size of his pinky appeared in one.
He staggered forward, one step after another as the world seemed to tilt suddenly on its side. Kevin’s eyes rolled back in his head as he plummeted gracelessly to the dry, dark earth.
Cary watched the vehicles close. They still seemed so far away, but Kevin had emphasized that it had nothing to do with damaging the oncoming vehicles. His job was to hopefully get the lead one to stop and close up their ranks. Still, he saw the two Hummers at the rear and had no doubt that those .50 cals would punch right through this car they were using as cover. If he waited just a couple of extra breaths, he might be able to hit the driver of the lead truck and bring it to a stop in between the trailer and the overturned Lexus. The deep trench-style ditches on either side of the road here would keep those big-ass machineguns out of play long enough for him and Heather to beat feet out of here.
“Cary?” Heather asked, pointing to where Kevin had told them to wait for the lead portion of the convoy to reach before opening fire, obviously upset that they’d past it.
“Move out,” Cary said slowly. Then, one more breath and, “NOW!”
Together they both popped up. Heather could see two people sitting in the cab of the truck. They weren’t close enough for her to clearly see their expressions, but she could see enough to recognize exaggerated O’s where both of their mouths were. Cary’s shotgun roared, startling Heather enough to move her finger to reflexively pull the trigger.
Following Cary’s example and remembering everything Mike and Kevin had showed her about the shotgun, she jacked another round, getting a strange sensation at the power as the spent, red casing ejected, tumbling end over end through the air. She pulled the trigger again only barely registering that the lead truck had slammed on the brakes just as
Kevin had hoped and predicted. She didn’t actually hear the second shot from her or Cary’s weapon.
A huge explosion lifted Heather off of her feet and threw her backwards. She landed at an awkward angle, headfirst with her feet in the air in the ditch on the left hand side of the road. Unable to slow her momentum, her feet came over and she ended up face down. Suddenly everything went dark, and her entire body was wrung of every bit of oxygen.
Cary grinned wide when, a split second after he fired, he saw a spider web race across the driver’s side of the windshield. He paused, just a little too pleased with himself. He heard Heather let off another round.
Oh no you—
His mind began the thought, but before he could finish, a hellish explosion shattered it. A wave of energy and heat hit him squarely sending him flying. Up and back he flew, his eyes un-able to stay open against the blinding flash. He slammed hard into the side of the long-since gutted delivery truck which rocked from the combination of the impact and the blast, but settled back on all four wheels. Cary’s inert body collapsed beside the vehicle, unconscious and oblivious to all the debris crashing around, sometimes only inches from him.
Am I dead? Heather wondered. Lifting her head slightly she winced in pain. A new sensation at her neck introduced itself and received an answer from practically every other part of her body. It was as if this one pain sensation had brought to life all the others that she’d been blissfully unaware for the last several seconds.
Blinking her eyes a few times, she could make out a blurry pocket of light, like the exit of a tunnel, a few feet away. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she got her hands underneath her body and pushed up. Her head hit something solid with a painful thud. This caused her arms to bend, and once more she collapsed, face down. That small impact on her body was agonizing, and Heather lay still, listening to somebody close by. It took her a moment to realize it was herself.
Determined to reach that hazy, blurry light, Heather reached out with her hands and crawled forward. Inch by inch she crept on her belly, gritting her teeth against the pain. Her efforts were finally rewarded as she reached daylight. Several smells assaulted her senses at once. The most dominant being that of burning hair and flesh.
Her ears still rang a bit, but she could hear the roar of the flames even from the distance she was from the inferno. She struggled to her feet and was stunned by what she saw. A huge crater was in the road and extended outward to the fields on both sides. Ten yards closer and she and Cary would’ve been crispy critters. The car they’d been beside was now upside down, no sign of the guns they’d had in place to pick off any survivors. It was clear that wouldn’t be necessary. The lead truck, flat-bed, and bus were blown to oblivion. Both Hummers had been tossed aside and were in flames. There was the curious sound that reminded Heather of the popcorn machine at the movie theater, but it sounded like the batch was almost done. That sound was occasionally echoed by a ting of something hitting something metal.
Heather glanced back towards town. What she saw wasn’t good. How could so damn many of those things still exist after all the raids and fires, not to mention the vast numbers that she and the guys had put down. She needed to find a weapon, then Kevin and Cary…preferably in that order.
Climbing out of the ditch, she swooned just a little bit and looked down where she’d been. The hood of what was probably the truck she’d been shooting at lay across the ditch. She swallowed hard, noticing all the debris laying around, including a long piece of steel the size of her arm that was jutting out of the ground right near the marks made from where her body skidded into the ditch. Had she not flipped over…
She shook her head slightly and winced at the pain, not only between her temples, but in her neck. It was as if she’d slept on it wrong, only a hundred times worse. The moans of the undead were starting to make themselves heard above the fire. It was time to move. Looking around, she wasn’t pleased to see that the cornfields were going up in flames, and those flames seemed to be headed towards their farmhouse.
Scanning carefully, she finally saw a heap next to a Happi-Tyme delivery truck; Cary. With a slow limp, each step seeming strangely similar to the gait of the approaching horde of zombies, she made her way towards the vehicle through the smoldering wreckage strewn everywhere. She was halfway across the road before realizing that a lot of the “debris” were human body parts.
Kneeling beside Cary, she was relieved to see his chest rising and falling. The sight of fresh blood dripping down the delivery truck’s side had given her more than a little concern. Looking him over, nothing seemed…out of place. She could see the sheen in his hair from the open wound. Seeing the headsized dent, it wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened.
“Cary?” She patted him on the cheek, getting no response. “Cary,” she said more fearfully. “CARY!” she yelled, slapping him across the face. The man moaned and his eyes fluttered open just a bit like a car that wouldn’t quite start the first time, she gave it another try.
“…don’t,” Cary mumbled, finishing his last thought out loud.
“Wake up!” Heather urged. “We gotta move!”
Cary blinked a few times rapidly and moved, trying to get his eyes to focus on the face above his. He moaned again, the sound pounding in his ears seeming strange and a bit off.
“You have to get up,” Heather urged. “They’re getting closer and we have to move before they catch sight of us.”
“Shaw?” Cary asked
“No,” Heather leaned down looking under the delivery truck, back towards town, “worse.”
Cary slowly tested his neck, turning his head, first right, seeing a black cloud rising from the huge crater and all the burning wreckage around it, then left. He could see the reason for Heather’s sense of urgency. They were coming in droves from Heath, all of them funneling onto this long stretch of lone blacktop.
“Help me up.” Cary extended one arm. Heather stood, then carefully helped pull the somewhat shaky man to his feet.
“We need to find Kevin.” Heather’s voice was a little fluttery and, at first, Cary thought she was trying not to cry. Then he got a look at her.
“Holy crap!” he breathed. “You look like you’ve been dragged behind a four-wheeler through a mud pit”
“Yeah?” Heather looked up at him through the hair that had fallen into her face. “Well, people in glass houses.”
They turned away from the steadily approaching horde of zombies—their moans were growing louder—and made it to the lip of the crater, using as much of the road debris as possible to stay out of sight.
“Hold on,” Heather said motioning for Cary to stay put. She hurried back the way they’d come until she reached a smoldering section of what looked to have been the flat-bed. She knelt and came up with a large black revolver.
“Whatcha got?” Cary squinted, his vision still blurry.
“I think it’s a .357.” Heather flipped out the cylinder and emptied the contents in her hand, rolled them around a bit, then reloaded the weapon. “Five rounds.”
“It’s a start,” Cary shrugged and slung an arm back around Heather’s shoulder as she returned, stuffing the gun in her pocket.
“How far up was Kevin?”
“We’ll need to skirt the crater,” Cary answered. “Can’t well get past it. As much as I hate the idea, we’ll have to split up and find him.”
“What makes you think we’ll have to find him?” Heather asked.
“Because, if he was okay, he’d be looking for us already.”
Heather nodded and led the way, helping Cary navigate his way down into the ditch. She fought to hide her pain and only really showed it when she craned her neck to get a glimpse at the zombies closing in steadily. Her greatest worry came when climbing up the other side of the ditch. Cary had a lot of trouble, and she had very little in the way of strength to offer when it came to helping him up.
Finally, they were able to duck inside the rows of co
rn. Now they had a new problem. The field was on fire and seemed to be catching fast. Fortunately, the blast had sent the burning debris arcing over the front part of the field. Still, they both knew they had only moments to search for Kevin, then they’d have to leave. To make matters worse, the wind was effectively blowing the flames towards the farmhouse. Already there was a wide path of smoke between them and the house thick enough to practically obscure it from view.
“I’ll skirt the front,” Cary said. “You go in a bit and start heading away from the direction of the farmhouse. If you find him, don’t yell. Come to the edge of the row and get my attention.”
“I wouldn’t yell,” Heather grumbled.
“No,” Cary gripped her arm firmly before she ducked between the tall cornstalks, “you probably wouldn’t have, and I should give you the benefit of the doubt. Now go.”
Heather ducked down the row and made her way in a few yards before turning left and plunging into the next row. She couldn’t force the smile off her face. For the first time, she felt like one of the team instead of the helpless little girl who needed watching over and protection. She looked both ways, wincing at the terrible pain in her neck that went down between both shoulders and seemed worse when she looked right than when she turned her head to the left.
Row by row, she pushed through. Each time, she turned her entire body. First left, back towards the road, then right. She repeated this four more times when, just as she was beginning to worry about the sounds of the cornfield really starting to catch, she stepped through to find Kevin was sprawled face down to her left only a few feet away from the end of the row. He’d fallen between stalks, and was sort of on his knees, his stomach stretched over the rise that the corn grew from.