by S. Ganley
"CALVIN!" He called out even as he adjusted him aim for a headshot.
Two rifles blasted at the same time, Garrett ending the zombie in front of him with a pair of rounds through its face while a longer sustained burst from further behind him blasted a string of rounds at knee level. Calvin had chosen to go for the legs instead of taking a risk at missing the head. The gamble paid off as half a dozen heavy slugs pummeled the zombie’s legs, both knees were completely shattered and the legs instantly lost their ability to support the body sending the zombie sprawling face first onto the ground just five feet short of Doug. Even as it hit the ground it started crawling forward at an unbelievable pace in a desperate bid to reach Doug who had already trapped himself beside the large air conditioning unit and the back of the house leaving him trapped and almost within lunging distance of the zombie. Garrett couldn't risk a shot from his location for fear of hitting Doug and Calvin's aim was now blocked by the large air conditioning unit. Miranda realized the predicament and whirled around towards the zombie. Running up behind it she spread her legs wide, placed one to either side of its body and positioned herself directly over its back. Without a moment’s hesitation she fired a single shot dead center into the back of the zombies head and blew its brains out through a ragged hole in its face.
"Move! More coming from out front!" Calvin shouted to the rest of the group as he slammed home a fresh magazine into his rifle and resumed laying down a lane of suppressing fire into the front yard.
Garrett darted past Miranda and grabbed Doug by the arm pulling him out of the small corner he had backed himself into besides the house. Garrett shoved Doug out in front of him and towards the yard between Cameron's home and his own. "Lead the way Doug, don't stop for anything." He glanced over towards Miranda who nodded her understanding that he wanted her to continue looking after the man and make sure that he kept moving forward.
As Garrett rounded the house he saw exactly what Calvin was dealing with in the front lawn, the number of zombies had swollen to somewhere in the twenties as they raced towards them from points all over the neighborhood. The gunfire now attracting them like moths to a flame. Garrett ran a few feet past Calvin and then took up a position alongside him and added his own controlled and measured fire into the mix. Together they were knocking down zombies like bowling pins one after the other, but more and more kept appearing from different directions in front of the house and with each one or two they knocked down the ones behind managed to get even closer before they could adjust their aim onto them. Miranda and Doug passed behind them taking the lead towards Doug's house. First Calvin and then Garrett dropped out of the two man rank they had formed and continued following Doug's lead turning every few seconds to blast away at any zombies that managed to get too close. After his rifle clicked on an empty chamber for the second time since they had left the back door of the house, Garrett started to worry that they were burning through their available ammo at an alarming rate. Between the two of them he guessed they had another three full magazines, Miranda would have the few rounds remaining in her pistol and one additional full reload. There was more ammo back at the Ranger's station but they still needed to get all of them safely there and even then what they had stored there might be all that they would be able to get their hands on. Calvin clearly had not come to the same conclusion as his rate of fire continued as if they had a never ending supply of rounds. Every time he pulled the trigger it was for at least a count of two, sending out anywhere from four to five rounds at a time while the weapon was set to full automatic. Garrett switched the selector on his own rifle to semi, which would only fire one round with each pull of the trigger.
"Conserve ammo Calvin! Three mags left." He shouted in between their combined shots.
Garrett punctuated the point with two well-aimed shots one closely after the other resulting in dual headshots and two less zombies out of the countless millions still hungrily roaming the world. Calvin caught on to his message and followed his lead in switching to a slower rate of fire. While this method forced them to take more care in their aim and resulted in a higher ratio of kill per shot, it also slowed down the time it took between hits and was allowing the zombies to start getting even closer.
"GARRETT!!" Miranda shouted from somewhere behind him and off to his right.
Turning to dash forward another few feet before swinging back to face the zombies coming up behind them he saw what Miranda was yelling about. At least fifteen more zombies were racing up Doug's driveway and across the front of his lawn and threatening to cut them off from his house. He saw that Miranda and Doug had just finished forcing their way through the row of hedges between the two houses and that Miranda was pushing Doug by the back forcing him to try and run faster. He caught sight of Doug's face and saw his mouth opening and closing rapidly as he struggled to catch his breath while his face was turning dark red from a level of exertion that his body was totally unaccustomed to. He was going to either fall flat on his face or stop to puke at any moment. If either of those things happened right now, they would have to leave him behind or try and stand their ground while getting him going again, either option was sure to result in at least one if not more of them not making it to the safety of Doug's basement.
"You got this?" He yelled to Calvin as he drilled one last zombie between its eyes.
Calvin glanced back over his shoulder and saw the scene behind him reaching the same conclusion that Garrett had.
"Go, go", he urged as he turned back to the closer of the zombies still coming along behind them and let loose with a trio of rounds resulting in two more undead sent forever to their endless slumber.
Needing no further encouragement, Garrett turned back towards Miranda and Doug. With an exaggerated leap, he cleared the row of hedges and quickly caught up with them. Without any preamble he grabbed the struggling man under his arm and pushed him along freeing Miranda to concentrate on any zombies that managed to get between them and the kitchen entrance at the back of Doug's home.
"Come on Doug, you can’t give up. Just a few more feet and we are home free." Garrett encouraged as he felt the man sag against him trying to force him to carry more of his weight.
The sound of Miranda's pistol capping off a pair of rounds just behind them forced him to take the extra weight from Doug and pull him along as best he could. He considered looking back to see what she was dealing with but it would only slow him down and get him out of rhythm. Miranda had more than proved that she was capable of handling herself in this situation and he just had to trust that if she started running into trouble she would cry out.
By the time Garrett reached the threshold to Doug's kitchen he was also starting to get out of breath as the extra burden of carrying almost all of Doug's weight started to take its toll on top of the exertion of the life or death situation they found themselves in. He let Doug lean against the doorway while he turned back towards the yard. Miranda was only twenty or so feet away from him having continually worked her way backwards as she methodically dropped several zombies along the middle of the driveway. She had just fired off her last round in the pistol's magazine and Garrett watched as she smoothly and efficiently went through the steps he had showed her to drop a spent clip and slap in a fresh one. Miranda released the slide to chamber the first round and was instantly back into a perfect shooters stance scanning in front of her for the most threatening target. He was amazed at just how cool this young woman was, it was a trait that even seasoned soldiers sometimes lacked when faced with heated combat. He had taught many young soldiers under better conditions the basics of firearms use, and it often took repeated lessons and many hours of practice for a good deal of them to grasp those basics and even then he had seen many of them just go blank when it really mattered. To see this young girl, who had never handled a gun before in her life, pick it up with such precision, it showed him once and for all that she was definitely one of a kind.
"Miranda, come on. Inside." He called out to her as he to
ok several steps away from the door with his rifle raised and ready to take up the slack once she retreated from her covering position.
Miranda didn't need any more encouragement, she knew that she was on her last magazine of ammo and that she didn't stand a chance of stemming the flow of zombies moving towards them. She had only hoped to at least keep them at bay long enough for them to reach the kitchen and make a run through the house to the storm room in the basement. Doug has assured all of them that the room had already stood the test against zombies trying to break in the door and that it hadn't even suffered more than a dent or two against their relentless attempts to enter. Firing off one last shot, she turned back towards the house and raced to the doorway where Doug was still down on a single knee struggling to catch his breath.
"Take care of him, get him into the shelter." Garrett told her as she ran past him. Reaching Doug, she turned back towards him and he saw the concern in her eyes before she asked the question, "Don't worry, no heroics on my part. I am just going to cover Calvin's ass and we will be right behind you."
Turning back toward the yard, Garrett spotted Calvin still working his way slowly towards the kitchen door. He was alternating back and forth between the zombies spilling across the open ground between the two houses and those rushing up the driveway towards him. The hedgerow had turned out to be a natural obstacle that they seemed to have trouble trying to push their bodies through. There were now at least twenty of them lined up along the far side of the hedges trying to force their way across. With the chase from that direction temporarily slowed, their biggest threat became the driveway and the zombies in that direction had no such obstacles to impede their full on rush towards them. From the back of the house he could see a dozen of them that had reached the top of the driveway and knew that even more were probably just out of sight coming on hard to reach them.
"CALVIN! Come on, get inside!" Garrett yelled out as he let loose a single round into a very fit colored man wearing what looked like bums clothing and seemed oddly out place in this area. He thought it possible that the creatures were already starting to migrate from other parts in search of food. His round caught the bum on the very top of his head and carved out a groove through his hairline but did little else to thwart his approach. Garrett adjusted slightly and fired again, this time hitting the man just about the eyebrow and blowing the entire top half of his head free from its body. Calvin turned back towards the house and started running full speed towards Garrett. After he took only a dozen or so steps he raised his rifle again, this time at a point just behind Garrett and called out. Garrett had just fired off another two shots when Calvin started yelling out to him and the words were swallowed up by the thunderous blast of the rifle next to his head.
Garrett saw Calvin aiming his rifle aiming somewhere right behind him and he whirled around in time to see the wood line on the far side of Doug's house coming alive with another group of zombies. Six of them were already clear of the trees and into the backyard only a hundred or so feet from the kitchen door while he could see even more movement still inside the tree line behind them. It was like a three pronged assault and if he didn't know better he would have thought that there was actually some form of higher intelligence involved in just how the zombies were pushing in on them. If they had timed the maneuver a little better they would have been able to catch them out in the open yard between the two houses. Even without that proper timing they still had them in one hell of a pinch, any thought of leaving the house any time soon was now out the window. If Doug's storm room in his basement was not as secure as he had told them, they would not survive the next few minutes when all of those zombies continued their pursuit into the house and stacked up against the door. Garrett realized that they had no other option now, Miranda and Doug had already disappeared inside the house and he would not be able to get to them in time if they were all to try and make a break in another direction. Even if they were able to take that option, Doug would never make it to the edge of his own yard. He had only known the guy for a very short period of time but there was no way he could allow any human being to fall victim to the fate that awaited if those zombies got their hands on him.
Calvin also realized that they were trapped; he had given up trying to hold back the zombies coming up the driveway and was now running hard towards the back of the house. As soon as Calvin passed him by, Garrett rapidly retreated in reverse, firing off aimed shots as he went. He passed through the smashed remains of the back doors, evidence of a prior group of zombies having forced their way into the house while giving chase to the neighbor's son whom Doug had taken in and given shelter. The broken glass and twisted remains of the door frame made for a slippery and treacherous entry into the house and caused them to slow down and watch their footing as they navigated through it. It was the sight of that broken and smashed doorway that made Garrett hope they were making the right decision in trusting that Doug's shelter was as secure as he had bragged. Once they were all inside that basement with only a single set of stairs leading back out, they were trapped and there was no obstacle on the outside of that house to prevent the house from filling with undead behind them.
Garrett heard Doug's feet already pounding down a wooden staircase off to the right side of the kitchen and he vaulted over an overturned kitchen chair in a mad dash for the doorway to the basement. His last image of the kitchen before crossing the threshold was a picture of several zombie eyed faces just starting to appear in the tattered remains of the back door with many more visible beyond them. He took the stairs to the basemen two at a time and once he reached the bottom frantically snapped his head left and right searching the vast expanse of the basement for the storm room.
"Over here!" Miranda shouted off to his left.
Garrett spotted her peeking out from a small hallway cut into a far corner of the basement. He would have never noticed it had she not called out to him; the entire wall on that side of the basement simply appeared to be the far boundary of the basement. The short hallway leading into the entrance was strategically placed for just that purpose. A casual inspection of the downstairs and it would easily be missed. A basement living area rarely encompassed the same square footage of the floor above it so it would not be unusual for the area that was visible to be mistaken for the limits of the living space on this level. Frantic footfalls and the crashing of belongings on the floor above told him that zombies were inside and already starting to fill the floor over his head with their numbers. The first sounds of moaning and crashing footsteps in the narrow stairwell into basement told him that they had followed his movements and were coming for him. Garrett hurdled over a sectional sofa and around the corner of the short hallway where Miranda had disappeared. He found the hallway contained nothing but a single open doorway and he stepped quickly inside. Calvin was waiting just inside the door and as soon as Garrett stepped through, he slammed the door closed and snapped all three locks closed.
Chapter 6
It was just starting to get dark when Kyle decided to head back to the Ranger Station to check on the girls again. He had spent most of the day walking an alternating wide and then narrow path around the perimeter of the building and returning to check on Shellie and Kimberly. Since her outburst earlier that day Kimberly had remained asleep in a restless slumber. Her fever had finally started to settle down but Shellie had told him that she was still prone to mumbling in her sleep as if in the grip of a nightmare. The last time he had checked in with Shellie the two of them had tried to wake Kimberly up long enough to at least take in a couple drinks of water. She had spit out everything they managed to get in her mouth and had started to fight against them again so they had abandoned that effort and allowed her to fall back to sleep.
He could just make out the shape of the Rangers Station through the trees when something in the waning light of dusk caught his eyes. The path all of them had been walking through the woods over the last several days had been fairly established after the first day and by
now had worn down to a clear dirt trail winding its way through the woods. They had not been concerned about the fresh paths announcing their presence in the area; their enemy was not one that they thought had the ability to reason and therefore would not understand the significance of an obviously new trail that had popped up suddenly. He had also grown accustomed to the tread patterns along the path from himself, Garrett and Calvin as well as the occasional smaller prints where one of the girls had tagged along with them. What caught his attention was a set of footprints that looked out of place from the others and he stopped for a moment while studying them. All of the prints he had been so accustomed to seeing moved in one direction or another along the trail, this set cut across the trail from left to right. Judging by the depth of the heel marks he figured it had been a male, probably close to two hundred pounds. He thought for a second that maybe the marks had been left by Garrett or Calvin stepping off the trail at one point to make use of the trees for a makeshift bathroom. Something about that scenario bothered him though and he couldn't quite figure out what it was. As many times as he had passed by this part of the trail that single oddity had not attracted his attention. He was not much of a woodsman and had only been camping and fishing a few times, but even then it was at well-established camp grounds in state parks with well-worn trails used by hundreds of others before him. He was about to chalk it up to him just being tired and the failing light of the closing day causing him to see things a little differently when it suddenly occurred to him that he had been the only person walking that particular path since morning. The footprints crossing the path and leading into the woods were over top of ones that he easily recognized as coming from his police issued boots which left a very distinct and recognizable pattern in the worn dirt. Whoever had made the footprints had done so after he had made his last pass along the path and the direction of the prints indicated they were heading straight for the Rangers Station.