by Tes Hilaire
“Out of the way.”
They drop it on a grunt. I grab the crate, bending at the knees as I shift and haul it over my head.
“Get down.”
Rodriguez and Matt scramble out of the way. I half pitch, half shove the crate up onto the other two. One more level and it will be tall enough if they stretch. I turn around to see they’ve already emptied two more crates and are shoving them across the floor. I leap down and help them get these up too, working to the occasional pop of Blaine’s gun.
A half dozen rounds later, and we have a working staircase. Rodriguez hands me the bolt cutters. I do my part, punching a couple holes with them in the roof and then tear an awkward swath in the roof to expose the sky.
“Pick off the ones in the back,” I tell them as I leap down, passing by Brian as he slings his gun over his shoulder in preparation for the climb.
“Why?”
“Two reasons. One, it should keep more from piling up around us, and two, if we’re lucky, there will be a few hungry ones that will leave the group to go pick the bones clean.”
Brian nods, his mouth turned down into a weird quasi-smile. “Good idea, fangs.”
“Matt, go with him,” Rodriguez orders as he follows me toward the door. “Blaine, you help ready the truck.”
“Roy, you’re with Blaine. And get Juanita in there too,” Convict orders, then turns to Herbie. “Herb?”
“Close. Real close.”
Convict doesn’t settle in anywhere in particular, like an overseer he shifts from group to group checking on our status. Not that it’s subject to change. I’m back at the door, stabbing zombies when needed, Matt and Brian are now picking off the latecomers before they can join our admirers, Roy and Blaine have gotten Juanita into the truck, are packing our supplies, and scavenging for anything useful to bring with us, and Herbie is still swearing and grumbling.
And then all of a sudden: “I got it! I got it!” Herbie yells over the roar of the engine. As if we couldn’t tell.
“That’s nice,” Convict replies from his current perch atop the crates. “But we still can’t get out of here.”
Yeah, barreling through a wall of a hundred plus zombies is going to be difficult. Not without some momentum and to do that we’d need some space…All of a sudden an idea pops into my mind.
“Hey! Can you guys clear out an area just outside the door but leave one or two of them alive for me?”
Convict doesn’t even question me as he relays the message. Maybe there is some trust developing here?
It takes a few minutes but they do it.
“Not going to get much better than that!” I hear Brian’s yell without Convict having to relay it, though he doesn’t realize this and does anyway.
I glance through the slit. They’re keeping an irregular half-circle clear around the door. Excepting the one zombie currently rattling the chains within it.
I smile. “Perfect.”
I glance over my shoulders at Rodriguez, who will be my doorman, and Blaine, who’s finished packing and will be my back up. I’m guessing Roy is already in the truck. He made strides today, but old habits and fears…
“You guys ready?” I ask.
They nod.
“Remember, don’t freak out and shoot it. I need this one alive. You can kill anything else that comes near the doors though.”
I get another pair of nods.
I pick up the bolt cutters and work it through the slit and around the thick chain. It’s a tight fit. A human probably couldn’t snap through it. The zombie isn’t happy with my interference and tries to rattle the chain out of the cutters’ grip but I’m already bearing down. The cutters bend, the chain link bends. It’s a contest which will break first. The chain wins. Crap.
I sigh, tossing the useless cutters on the floor.
“Now what?” Rodriguez asks.
“Now I do this.” I slip my hands through the opening, and ignoring the clawing fingers of the zombie, grab onto the chain and twist, bearing down on the weak link. The zombie claws at me the whole time.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” Blaine asks from behind me. I can hear the intrigue in his voice.
Heck yeah it hurts. The back of my hands are bleeding so bad now from the zombie’s untrimmed nails it’s making the chains slippery. I’m beginning to think this won’t work. That I’m too weak, too tired, the chains too thick, when it finally snaps.
The chain rattles through the handles. Turns out I don’t need Rodriguez to be my doorman, the zombie is perfectly capable of shoving open the door itself.
Come to Eva, said the vampire to the zombie.
As it shoulders its way through the door, I reach out and snag its wrist. “Hold it there Rodriguez.”
Rodriguez bears down on the sliding door, trapping it. The zombie roars, its teeth snapping as it strains to reach me. I lift its wrist, holding its gaze. And bite.
This one is even weaker than the last. Starving, yes, desperate, yes, but no real will. Just instinct. I work my way in and have its mind wiped clean before I swallow twice. I am hungry enough to keep drinking, but I know this creature can’t take too much blood loss. Not and do what I need it to do.
I pull my fangs out, wiping my mouth off with my other hand. It stands there motionless between the sliding doors.
“Let it go.”
Rodriguez eases up. Blaine is hovering, his gun lifted and ready. I give him credit that the gun is not focused on me or my new pet but the dark opening beyond. Luckily Matt and Brian are keeping the area clear.
I pull my Glock from my pants, look down at the dull metal. It needs cleaning and is just shy of a relic, but damn if I’m not attached. “Don’t suppose anyone else is willing to part with their gun?”
I glance around. Negative.
Grumbling, I put my Glock in the zombie’s hand.
“We still clear?” I yell.
“Not for long, they’re piling up out here,” Brian’s call, muffled by gunfire, wind and moaning, drifts down to me.
“Get on the truck and be ready to shoot like crazy,” I say to Blaine.
He scrambles onto the truck, gun ready, at the same time Convict scrambles down the crates and over to the other door, ready to open it. “Be ready to book it!”
I look over at the truck. Blaine is positioned to fire, gun braced as he hangs half out of the truck from the passenger seat. I’m surprised to see Roy has pulled back the tarp enough to shoot out past the driver’s head. As long as he doesn’t shoot Herbie, I admire his newfound gumption.
“Ready Herbie?” I ask.
He revs the engine in response.
“You only get one chance at this.”
“Open those doors, baby, and we’ll blow those fuckers away.”
I nod. Rodriguez and Convict slide the doors open enough for my zombie. I send it out and watch it march right up to the first zombie and put a bullet in its brain.
“Fuck yeah!” Matt yells from the roof, then he and Brian give my zombie an edge, popping the two zombies that rumble and dive toward it.
“Lay it down people!” I yell. Matt and Brian go crazy, their guns cracking at high speed.
“Open them wide!” I point to the doors.
Convict grabs onto the handle, Rodriguez the other, and together they grunt as we push open the heavy doors. As soon as they’re done, Rodriguez and Convict bolt for the truck.
Herbie guns the engine.
“What about Brian and Matt?” Roy yells, looking over anxiously at the stacked crates.
“I got them covered,” I say, grabbing up the broken bolt cutters. “Stop when you’re past the worst of them so we can catch up.”
“Go!” Convict orders.
I step out of the way. The truck takes the entire length of area that my zombie and Matt and Brian have cleared to get up to speed, but once it does, it barrels a path of destruction right through them. Zombies fall beneath the wide front grill, squashing beneath its thick tires. I stand for a moment in awe, then
run out behind it, half a bolt cutter swinging in each hand as I de-brain those trying to get up after being mowed down.
“Time to move it, Brian, Matt!” I yell into the sky.
The gunfire from the roof stops, but is immediately replaced by that from the truck as the others try and keep both the path behind them and the area around them clear. They’ve stopped a few hundred yards past the ring of zombies that have encircled our warehouse, and now the tide is shifting, half of them heading toward the vehicle of mass destruction and the other half heading toward me and the open warehouse.
I still have my zombie, and I set it to shooting at anything that moves toward the truck as I keep the doors clear.
“Come on! Come on!” I yell to Brian and Matt as they slide and jump down the crate stairway.
As soon they’re clear of the building, they pause to lay down a quick round of cover fire, then, together, we start our sprint across the yard. I flank them, leaping over crushed and bleeding bodies, but never letting my attention slip. One zombie, still alive, and it could be the end of these two men.
Instinct more than true awareness is what has me pushing Brian off course. Just as I do a hand latches onto my ankle. I twist as I fall, driving the metal head of a bolt cutter half into the injured zombie’s eye socket.
“Goddamn.” This is from Brian, who has regained his footing and is looking at the zombie that had been about to try for a chunk of him. He blinks at me as if shocked I would actually save his life. Suspicious bastard.
“Run!” I yell out the reminder as I scramble back up.
We book it. Herbie is pressing the truck into a slow first, then second, then third gear. Gaining momentum, but staying slow enough for us to catch. Brian reaches it first and leaps onto the back fender, grabbing onto the metal pole that holds the tarp on. He reaches out, his hand ready for Matt as Matt strains to reach the truck that is now rolling at a steady clip. Matt yells, launching himself at the truck. Brian grabs hold and yanks him up.
Everyone is on. Good.
I slow, letting the distance spread between me and the truck.
“Eva!” Blaine yells from where he’s half hanging out the front, his eyes widening in alarm.
“I’m going back for John!” I yell back, trying to ease his concern.
All of a sudden the truck is jerking to a stop and Convict appears beside Brian at the back of the truck.
“Private Harper!”
“What are you doing?” I scream.
“Get up here now, Harper. That’s an order.”
I shake my head, disbelieving at his stupidity. There are no zombies close enough to stop them and they’re wasting the opportunity.
Brian lifts his gun. I suck in a breath. The rifle cracks and I hear a grunt from behind me. Guess there was a zombie close by.
Convict makes a sharp motion and Brian leaps down, bearing down on me. “Guess you’re getting on this truck, fangs.”
Like hell I am. I bare my teeth, warning him off before he can get too close. “Wanna make me?”
He jerks back, shaking his head as he reverses direction back to the truck. “Fine. Have it your way. But you’re fucking crazy!”
Convict is not happy when Brian leaps back in the truck without me, but he must realize it’s a lost cause. With a sharp order the truck is off again, mowing down zombies and chain link alike as it barrels through the front gate at high speed.
I look down at the broken bolt cutters in my hands, knowing I’ve just blown whatever slim chance I had of earning back my keep.
Crazy? Yeah, I guess I am.
22.
Then…
I crouched down beside Raoul into the shadow of the overgrown shrubbery, my hands clenched around my dad’s bolt cutters. The worn wooden handles are warm from my own body heat and in sharp contrast to the chill breeze of the desert. Despite the soaring day temperatures, it gets cold here at night. And here I was in my running shorts and a t-shirt.
Maybe I am crazy. But I couldn’t exactly pack a backpack with jeans and a sweatshirt. That would have given me away.
Running. It’s what my parents thought I was doing right now. It’s not unusual for me to take off well after dark for a quick run through the park near our house. It’s how I calmed my brain at the end of a stressful day. A difficult homework assignment, a long drawn out rehearsal at drama club, an upcoming test: any of the above would send me out. As long as I told them where I was going and when I’d be back, they were cool with it. Which means that they expected me home in the next forty minutes. Better hurry.
Taking a deep breath, I fixed my gaze on the moon-drenched complex of small round structures in the distance. Each one is just large enough to house a hundred plus pound animal. Each one packed in just close enough to the next to give the tethered occupants enough room to step outside to relieve themselves and gobble up some fattening milk replacement formula.
Fatten them up for the slaughter. The very idea sickens me. Perhaps, if I wasn’t a vegetarian, I’d accept the atrocity before me as necessity, but I didn’t think so. There were better ways. More humane ways. Especially when you added in the fact that these particular calves had been weaned from their mothers before they should have been, and hadn’t seen an ounce of affection, or humanity, since. I could smell the rot and decay from here. Guess they only had to stay alive long enough to make it to the round up.
“You going to tell me what you’re planning now, Eva?”
I looked over at Raoul and rolled my eyes. As if it weren’t obvious. But then, he really doesn’t know me that well, which was half the point of tonight. I shifted, focusing back on the field in front of me. “You’ll see…”
And then we’d see if he still wanted to go out with me. Two weeks. I thought this must have been a record for me. Okay, maybe not a record, we weren’t technically dating. But that wasn’t for lack of interest on his part. Since that night he’d caught me running through the park, he’d been following me around like some sort of hopeful puppy dog. Sitting in the shadows of the theatre during every production, tagging along after me and Carrie at the mall, meeting up with me to jog through the park at night (which is, coincidently, how I’d managed to snag him for this late night adventure). It seemed like wherever I was, he was there. He kept asking me out too, for dinner, dancing, the movies. I kept on declining, which either made me the smartest or the stupidest seventeen-year-old in the world. I wasn’t sure.
Raoul, the hottest guy in the county, no, the state, wanted to date me. Holy crud. And he seemed truly interested (he hadn’t tried for more than a kiss since that first night in the park). I figured after tonight I’d know for sure if he wanted me for me. Tonight would be the true test.
I felt him shift beside me, knew he was about to ask more questions. To cut him off, I stood and dashed into the meadow. It was overgrown, shrubs poking up through the tufts of once fertile grass. Before Mr. Ellis had bought the place, this had been a grazing field. Little baby calves frolicking and kicking alongside their mothers. Yeah, so maybe those calves were destined for the butchers too, but at least they’d had a good life first.
I sprinted for the first little white structure, keeping my body bent and low. I hardly heard Raoul, but a quick glance to the side showed he kept pace.
We made it across the distance without detection. In reality, we hadn’t been exposed for longer than it would take someone to turn on a light, stumble to a window, and blink their eyes a bunch. But it had felt like forever, and I tossed a thank you up to the sky that we hadn’t been found out. Yet.
With a glimpse at the farmhouse—still dark—I crouch-walked to the point where the chain met up with the bolt in the ground. The calf, like all good little babies, was inside its calf-house, curled up and dreaming of its lost mother.
I couldn’t give it its mother back, but I could do this. I could give it a taste of freedom. Its last hurray before its pitiful puny existence was snuffed out to end up on some potbellied, liver-spotted carnivorous-hum
an’s dinner plate.
I took a deep breath. Settling my shaking hands. This moment was too important to cheapen with haste.
When I was ready, when I felt it, I laid my father’s bolt cutters through the bottom link of chain and bore down. Nothing happened. Darn it.
I strained, shifted my grip to the very end of the bolt cutters. Nothing. With a growl I plopped to the ground and placed my hands between my knees, using both my arm and leg muscles to bear down on the bolt cutters. They dug in. All of an eighth of an inch and stopped. Geez. I guess I needed to add weights to my regiment.
“Is there a plan B?”
I shot Raoul an evil look over my shoulder. “You could help.”
“This is insanity,” Raoul chided, but moved in to place his hands below mine on the bolt cutters. A quick tensing of his forearms and the chain dropped to the ground.
“How did you do that?”
He shrugged. “I’m a guy. We’re inherently stronger.”
Yeah, whatever. Maybe true, but he could have at least feigned some effort.
With a huff I stood back up, brushing off my spandex shorts. I couldn’t help but notice that Raoul was looking at my butt as I did. Guys may have had the muscle, but us females…
I slung the bolt cutters over my shoulders, making sure to sashay my hips as I moved to the next white housing unit. Not that I was going to let him touch the goods, but it gave me a perverse sort of pleasure to know I had some sort of power here.
We moved through the rest of the little houses quickly. After the second shelter, and a lot of through-gritted-teeth grunting, Raoul simply took the bolt cutters from me and snipped the next chain per my direction. We made it to the end of the row and then started back up the other side. Finally we were at the last one. A sense of satisfaction rose in my chest as Raoul snapped the bolt cutters through the chain. I’d done it. Correction. We’d done it. Only…
I looked down the line of freed calves. One or two of them had ventured out of their hovels, probably roused by the noise, but none of them had gone past their compressed circle of earth that their prison had allowed.