by R. J. Spears
It was my turn to pray and, with my heart in my throat, all I could get out was, “God help us.”
Chapter 27
Testing, Testing
Maggie felt warm sweat trickle down her spine and pool at the top of her pants despite the coolness of the basement. Even though there was a heavy metal door between her and the two dozen zombies trapped inside the room, she had no idea if Henry’s new battery stunt would work. She was also worried about the zombies inside that didn’t have control modules. Adding to her list of concerns was the fact that she didn’t know if any of the modules still worked.
The accumulation of worry resonated within her like an electrical current. She had never guessed that she would ever wear the control vest again, but if there was something she had learned in the zombie apocalypse, it was that you had to expect the unexpected.
“This is going to work,” Russell said as he stood next to the door. While he portrayed confidence, he was just as nervous as Maggie. They both knew that he was the one that got to run while he had to stay and face down the hungry creatures once he opened the door.
As military cohesion broke down in Kilgore’s men, Maggie, Russell, and Henry had found a lapse in the guard shift and slipped away into the basement undetected. It took patience, and it took guile, but they found a break and took it. They had commented on it as they made their way deeper into the basement area under the front of the complex.
Something has shifted under the surface of the delicate emotional and psychic eco-system at the complex after Aaron had been killed and Jones was confined to quarters. Just a day ago, they would have been kept in their containment areas, but all of the soldiers looked frayed around the edges, their eyes red-rimmed with fatigue and worry. They also looked scared. It was something Russell, Maggie, and Henry had exploited, but they also had the feeling that it could just as easily come back and bite them. Badly.
They all had makeshift weapons. Russell and Maggie each had bent pieces of rebar that they had pulled from some of the rubble. Henry had a broken board. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
Henry stood safely behind a pile of fallen debris thirty feet behind Maggie, watching almost as anxious as Maggie and Russell. Safe was a relevant word, though. Things were not good at the Manor. Not for anyone and the decline in the situation seemed to be accelerating.
But Maggie didn’t give a shit about anyone else at that moment because not one of the other bastards was facing off a two dozen deaders. Everybody else could suck it as far she was concerned.
Russell stood with his hand poised on the doorknob, his palm moist with perspiration.
“You ready?” he asked. He could not only hear the zombies on the other side of the door but also felt the thuds of hands pounding away, trying to find some way through to them.
“Hell no,” Maggie responded. The words came out tight and clipped.
“Seriously, are you ready?” he asked again.
She ran her fingers over the control vest. The same vest she had been forced to wear by a madman under the fear of death. Henry had removed the fail-safe mechanisms that the Lord of the Dead had used to punish any insubordination among his unwilling allies. Of all his minions, she was probably the most adept at using the vest with exception of the now deceased Rex. Despite her skill, she felt no overconfidence at that moment. While she had been good at what she did before, deep down, she hated herself for it. But it was survive or die and she always picked survival.
She took in a deep breath and let it out. “Let’s do this.” She pressed the main power button on the vest and heard a slight electric cracking noise and then felt that almost imperceptible hum of the vest coming on. A myriad of emotions flowed over her. Fear, anxiety, and even excitement. To be able to control something, living or dead was a heady experience.
Henry had tested the vest as much as he could. He had used several gadgets that told them that the vest was emitting a signal. She also conceded that it had been operational just a few days ago, but few of these facts gave her much comfort.
But all the pre-testing was over. This was game time.
All of their attention shifted to the door where Russell stood, ready to turn the doorknob. His decision was whether to fling the door open or just open it a crack and let the zombies do the rest.
He decided on the latter and turned the doorknob slightly. The metallic click sounded loudly, reminding Russell of a drumstick hitting the rim of a drum. He maintained all of his focus on the doorknob while Maggie’s fingers stood over the vest control buttons. He held his piece of rebar in his free hand and waited, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it, but knowing he would.
Zombies, not being the sharpest knives in the drawer, didn’t figure out immediately that the door was unlocked and ready for opening. That didn’t last long.
After two thuds and a push, the door opened wide, and the first two zombies shuffled through the door. Maggie scanned their heads, looking for control modules and saw one surely had one, but she couldn’t tell about the other one.
Since she stood front and center. She was the item on the menu for the insatiably hungry undead, and they came at her with as much speed and gusto as a zombie could muster. Something bad had happened to the lead zombie’s leg, either in life or in post-mortem. It limped towards her in large hitching steps. The corridor was wide enough for three of them across, but these zombies seemed somewhat orderly, coming at her single file, playing follow the leader. It was that they were trying “the shortest distance between two points was a straight line” strategy, the following ones not knowing that the faster method would be taking a shortcut around their slow-moving friend.
Maggie didn’t seem to mind, but for some reason, she waited for the zombies to cut the distance down.
Russell hissed out, “What are you waiting for? Try the vest.” He readied himself for a rush forward.
She stood her ground and even spread her legs apart as her finger stayed poised over the control buttons. The following zombies finally lost their patience and fanned out on both sides of the lead zombie, filling the width of the corridor.
Maggie decided it was time for the test and pressed the first control button.
The lead zombie stopped in place nearly immediately as did one of the zombies on the side, a tall lanky fellow with a partially split open skull. The zombies didn’t so much freeze in place but went rigid as if someone had run a metal bar down their spine. Their bodies shook slightly, their arms and legs jittering. Tiny wisps of smokes leaked out of their skulls from where the control modules were attached to their brains, leading directly to the pain center. The Lord of the Dead may have been an evil bastard, but he was also near genius with his invention.
While two of the zombies were under control, the third one was not and ignored the plight of his two comrades and continued toward Maggie, whose concentration was locked on holding the first two zombies in check.
Russell broke into action and ran forward, raising his piece of rebar in the air.
The zombie closed on Maggie, and she started backing up. Her concentration wavered, and the two zombies started forward, but she locked them down again as Russell swept by her on an intercept path for the approaching zombie. He timed his swing, and the rebar caught the zombie on the side of its head, caving it in, and the zombie collapsed in a heap.
The only problem now was that several other zombies had noticed the open door and were making their way through. Russell caught this and started back-stepping away.
“I consider the test a success,” he said, “we need to get out of here.” Halfway down their escape corridor was another set of doors they could use to contain the newly released zombies. They knew the space between the two doors could be their zombie holding pin.
“No, hold on,” Maggie said and stepped forward. Her fingers danced over the control buttons, and the two controlled zombies whipped around and started back down the hallway toward the new arrivals and the open door.
“Ma
ggie, no!” Russell said. “We need to go.”
“Hold your damn horses,” she said calmly back as she continued following her two new thralls. Her locus of control spread out and two of the new zombies were captured in it. Like the other two, they turned around and headed back down the corridor towards the door.
One of the other zombies just coming through the door didn’t fall under Maggie’s spell and started towards her. This time she didn’t wait for Russell and started waving her piece of rebar in the air.
“Come to Mama, you big ugly pile of shit,” she said.
The zombie complied and continued to come her way, while the four zombies under her control filled the corridor, moving side-by-side like toy soldiers. Undead, rotting, and stinking toy soldiers.
The rogue zombie reached for her, but was slow, while she was fast. Her piece of rebar smacked it in the jaw in a quick whipping motion, knocking out a lot of its teeth. They clinked onto the ground and rolled along like dice. Maggie wasn’t done and once her arm reached its full apex, she swung back in a powerful, and very accurate backhand. The rebar connected again with the zombie’s skull, but this time higher, nearly taking off the top of the thing’s head and it went down.
Meanwhile, she was able to split her focus and moved her little zombie army down the hall, blocking the doorway and making a zombie wall, keeping any new zombies from entering the corridor. Maggie continued down the hall, walking with a cocky swagger, admiring her work.
She got to within the ten feet of the zombie wall and turned back to Russell and said, “How do you like those fucking apples? I think we have ourselves a little undead army.”
Chapter 28
Modern Miracles
Airman Moore knew he shouldn’t be wasting the ammunition, but he couldn’t help himself. Taking out these zombies and demolishing the mobile homes along with them gave him a child-like glee similar to thrill of a toddler knocking down a wooden block home at pre-school. There were fewer better pleasures than to tear something to shit and he had the tools to do it. Excellent and vicious tools. He also knew it was much better to destroy things than to build something. Building took time, but busting something up was pure fun. And it was lots quicker.
He let up on his guns and hovered to his right a few yards, watching the zombies filter between the rows of dilapidated mobile homes. A few had shuffled outside the scrum of homes and looked up at the source of this terrible and cacophonous sound, unafraid. That’s what Moore liked about them. They were too damn stupid to be scared. That made them easy targets.
He shifted the helicopter a little more to the right and targeted a small group of deaders out in open ground. Just as he had them sighted in, he pressed the trigger on his guns. Milliseconds later, those zombies blew apart, nearly disintegrating from the impact of the bullets. Blood exploded into the air, spraying backwards onto the sides of the mobile homes, making garish splatter paintings much like a Jackson Pollack.
A new set of zombies poked their heads out, seemingly curious as to what all the racket was about. Moore gave the stick a nudge to the left and let loose again with a barrage, only this time, he targeted the zombies sticking their heads out the gap in the homes.
Moore felt a sensual thrill shiver up his spine as the bullets smashed into metal and zombie alike with the same devastating effect. After getting done with this set, he pushed his bird forward, moving into the heart of the mobile homes, ready to deal out some wholesale devastation.
Oh shit, was all I could think. The unrelenting pounding of the guns made any thinking higher than stark terror nearly impossible.
The deafening combination of the guns being fired and metal being shredded was getting closer by the second.
I turned my head and looked toward Kara, who was still praying. I’m not sure if it was coincidence or not, but she looked my way, fear showing across her face. I hugged Naveen toward me and put out a hand for Kara. She shot out a hand and took mine in hers, our eyes locked on each other.
The pounding marched our way like a herd of the devil’s elephants. I broke my stare on Kara and glanced to my right just in time to see the mobile home next to us evaporate, along with the three zombies standing there.
Now, you see them, now you don’t.
The only thing left of the three zombies was a single foot of the over-large zombie. The rest of them were pulped, like bags of flesh and blood exploding.
If it weren’t for the fact that the pilot could strafe the row of homes we were hiding under, I might have celebrated. If he did that, we were done. Diced, sliced, and beaten to bloody mush.
I turned my attention back to Kara, who was squeezing my hand so hard that it hurt, but I ignored the pain and focused on her face. If I was going out, then it was that last thing I wanted to see.
After a moment, I focused on her lips and saw them moving. I’m a notoriously bad lip reader, (a skill most men suck at), but I quickly caught what she was saying. She was saying the 23rd Psalm. I caught up to her and joined in.
The helicopter noise drifted slightly away, but then it shifted and started back toward us. I wondered if we prayed faster if that would make a difference?
Airman Moore swiveled the helicopter back around after passing by the edge of the homes he had just shredded along with a number of undead. For a moment, he hovered in the sky like a leaf on the wind, then sighted the next row, ready to mow down it like a man trimming his lawn.
He was ready to push the control stick forward when his radio squawked in his ear.
“Apache-1, report in,” Kilgore’s voice chimes in.
Moore cleared his throat and pulled back on the control still, holding the helicopter in place. “No sign of our targets, but plenty of zombies.”
“What is your fuel situation?” Kilgore asked.
Moore eyed the fuel gauge and saw that he had a enough for twenty to thirty more minutes in the air, calculating the return trip into the equation. That is if he didn’t push it too hard.
“What is your location?” Kilgore asked.
Moore looked back at his control panel and gave Kilgore his location.
“Why aren’t you more north?” Kilgore shot back.
Moore paused, knowing he was just screwing around, taking out these zombies. “Sir, I saw some movement in this area and decided to look more closely.”
“But you said it wasn’t the target,” Kilgore shot back in a challenging tone.
“Uh,” Moore stammered out. “Yes, sir. I will head north now.”
“Keep me in the loop with whatever you see,” Kilgore said.
“Yes, sir,” Moore said, trying to sound like the Airmen he should be.
Moore surveilled the scene and saw that if he headed north, he would be able to take out one more row of homes below and any deaders that just happened to be in his flight path. He asked himself, Where was the harm in that? Hell, it would even be a lot of fun.
He started to nudge the control stick forward when he saw something on the horizon. From where he was, it just looked like a dark cloud, but strange in its formation and concentration. There had been no reports of storms in the area and the sky had been nearly cloudless just moments before.
This cloud was densely black and its other unique element was the speed at which it was moving and the direction -- which happened to be directly at him.
Moore had never seen anything like it in all his days of flying. The sky was relatively clear with a few fluffy white clouds drifting placidly, but this dark cloud seemed to be flying directly at him. And it was doing it quickly and seemingly with purpose.
“What’s going on?” Kara asked, breaking from her prayer.
“I have no idea,” I replied. “From what I can hear, the chopper is just hovering to the south.”
“That sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?” she asked.
I wanted to say emphatically, yes! but the pilot could just be lining up for another run at us. I decided to play it hopefully and said, “For now, it is.”
“What do you mean, for now?” Naveen asked, seeing through my bullshit.
“It’s in God’s hand,” I said.
“You sound desperate,” Naveen said.
She knew me too well.
Moore watched as the cloud sped toward him. One part of him wanted ignore it and push forward while taking out another row of homes, but he was captivated like a crow tapped by the lure of a shiny object, unable to see anything else.
The cloud continued at him, and he watched as small dark objects sped up from the trees and ground to join the cloud. For Moore, that could only mean that birds were joining this approaching cloud and that seemed almost crazy to him.
His jaw fell as he stared, gape mouthed at this perplexing, puzzling, and impossible congregation, heading his way. It held him spellbound for the next few seconds.
His curiosity shifted subtly to anxiety. Bird strikes against choppers could be a dangerous thing. He had been drilled in flight school about the incidences where helicopters had been taken down a single large bird or a small flock. In most cases, a helicopter could shake off a single bird or a small group, but there were times that they caused real problems. Catastrophic problems. And this wasn’t a flock any more, it was a growing throng of birds, increasing in size every second as more birds flew up to join the cloud, spreading across the sky like a dark blanket.
A voice in the back of his mind told him not to be afraid and to continue the course. This voice seemed forceful and less than happy. For some reason, the scent of sulfur burned his nostrils, sending an alarm throughout his body. He whipped his head around the cockpit, but saw no visible smoke, but the fear was starting to run inside him.