by Bryan James
They pushed into the clearing, ignoring the fallen limbs and jagged rocks that tripped them and sent them spinning and falling to the ground. It was this single-minded clumsiness that saved Ethan. The first two fell on their torn and bloody faces as they came within arm’s reach of the older man.
As they fell, arms nearly touching his worn combat boots, he gathered himself and released two rounds—one to each zombie’s head. Congealed blood spat into the air and he ignored the two bodies as he took a bead on the next row of creatures that had emerged.
Rhi outpaced my pathetic gimp, and reached Ethan as he fired several more rounds from twenty feet, taking one in the head and winging a second in the shoulder, spinning it around and pulling it off its feet. Rhi added her weapon to the line, and downed a third from ten feet away, siting on the next as the first fell.
I was within ten feet of them, and had stopped to raise my weapon and start firing, when Rhi’s carbine jammed, and she pushed into my line of fire as she changed her position. Cursing, she did what any good soldier would have done with the enemy merely ten feet away and closing. She shouldered the rifle and drew her pistol.
But Ethan was faster. Stepping in front of his wife, his rifle found its mark three more times before a large stone turned awkwardly under his foot, sending a burst of full automatic fire into a copse of evergreens to their right. Rhi grabbed for his arm, steadying him and keeping him from going to the ground. But that moment gave the zombies an opening. With no bullets separating the two living from the remaining dead, they surged forward.
Until I got there.
My rifle was useless at close range—with Ethan and Rhi struggling erratically before me, it was too risky.
Blades it was.
Stepping before both of them, I moved my weight into my healthy leg, and drew my machete.
The first creature to reach for me was an elderly black man wearing a black suit. I noticed that his tied was still neatly bound around his narrow neck, and wondered at how he had perished in such attire. Perhaps a funeral or a wake for an earlier victim?
My blade took his head from his neatly starched collar, spitting dark, congealed crimson blood over the dingy white shirt beneath.
The second and third creatures were women—one large and sporting the most unappealing sweat pants and tee shirt combo I had ever seen—the other an impeccably coifed octogenarian, complete with knitting needle jammed through her palsied palm. The larger one’s face was ravaged, an eye missing from a socket that looked like a small bucket of rotten ground beef. Her jaw was visible underneath a flap of fatty skin that sagged from her cheek.
I wondered briefly at her life. Did she work? Did she sit at home and watch television, claiming some sort of government-condoned disability? Was she fat because her parents beat her? Because her uncle abused her? Because she liked the taste of ice cream?
My blade came up, through her chin, parting her nose vertically before splitting the skull from the inside. As she fell, I reached a hand forward, leaning on my good leg, and pulled her to her feet again just as the older woman approached. I didn’t need to waste my blade on grandma. I tossed the three hundred pound corpse on the eighty pound blue-haired horror, and focused on the last four creatures.
All men.
All large.
All very hungry.
They surged forward again and my concentration was broken by successive gunfire from two carbines. The creatures dropped hard, their corpses falling to the jagged rocks as Ethan and Rhi joined me. A large cut ran up Ethan’s calf, but the bleeding was manageable.
Rhi looked at me and nodded once.
“I suppose you were worth savin’ after all, huh?”
I stared at the fallen zombies, wondering at the question.
A final gunshot sounded from my right. Ethan had killed grandma.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s see how I do against the herd that’s got your friends trapped.”
It took us nearly two hours to reach a low overlook that allowed a view down into the small valley that contained the thriving metropolis of Concrete, Washington. Through the thickly falling ash, I could see the modest collection of buildings and narrow roads that made up this settlement on the banks of the swollen river. Several blocks had already been taken by the surging water, and I could see the broken metal spires of the toppled bridge still battling the rising waves.
“Before the infection started, we would come here for groceries and church every weekend,” said Rhi, kneeling down at the edge of the pathway. We had gently climbed away from the river, making our way across downed trees, torn earth, and fallen rocks in our approach to this trail that ran along the side of a rocky hillside. In front of us, the trail dropped off precipitously into a wide ravine, the opposite slope of which gently rose to a series of fields and roads on the outskirts of the town.
Several rocks, dislodged by Rhi’s knee as she kneeled, tumbled into the ravine, slowly picking up speed as they rolled to toward the bottom.
“Reckon there were eight hundred people or so here before. When it all started going ass-up, some folks left. Most stayed.” Ethan’s voice was heavy.
“And most were still here when we found the dam.”
“How’d you think of it?” I asked, curious as to how they’d think of something so seemingly random.
Rhi nodded to Ethan.
“He was a steam fitter before retirement. Government brought him on for a couple contract gigs for the local power company. Worked there a few times before all this.”
I dug into my pack and found my binoculars, scoping the streets and buildings of the town. I moved the angle up slightly, finding the large dam and the body of water behind it on the cusp of the northeast edge of the town. The dam was a large gray concrete wall that doubled as a narrow, one-lane bridge that stretched from east to west, with a lake to the north being held back from rushing into the river valley that coursed through the town, ultimately emptying into the larger river behind us.
A single main street ran perpendicular to the river valley, and a row of one-story, unremarkable stores and offices lined the road. Behind either side of the main street were working class houses and a variety of churches, hotels and parks.
And all throughout the small town, the streets were teeming with zombies.
We were too far away to make out the entrance to the dam, but I could get an idea of the layout from here. To reach the access point in the side of the large structure on the western side of the dam, we would have to come down into town and take the only roadway up to the large edifice. The trees were thick against the sides of the narrow strip of asphalt that rose up and away from town, with one side allowing only fifty feet of forest between the road and the rocky hill next to it. On the other side of the road, a steep incline dropped into the small river valley.
“What’s that lake?” I asked absently, taking in a large crack in the dam on the eastern side that had already grown to nearly two feet in width, water gushing freely through the gap. According to Ethan and Rhi, that crack had been barely three inches wide when they left.
“Lake Shannon,” Ethan said. “Mostly fishing and camping through there—it’s national park territory north of here.”
“Where’d you come out when you left?” I scanned the wall at its lowest point, searching for unseen doors or hatches.
Rhi chuckled, finishing a granola bar and tossing a small scrap to Romeo, who wagged once as he leapt into the air to grab the sweet morsel.
“It’s there. You just can’t see it because it’s under about five feet of water. That lake is itching to come into this little valley, and when it does, it’s going to bring about a hundred feet of water with it. That town is going to be under water, and if we’re still down there when it goes, we’re goners. That’s why we’ve got to get our people out.”
“I can’t make out the western entrance …”
“They’re there,” said Rhi, interrupting me. “They’re everywhere. That damn siren broug
ht ‘em up from town. They might not know where the door is, but there were eight hundred people in this town before the infection, and as you can see, they all appear to have stuck around. No, that siren was a dinner bell for them, and they know it.”
“What about the east side? I can see the eastern shore of the river near the dam—it looks clear.”
Ethan shook his head, spitting to the side. The mucus hit a large rock with a heavy splatting sound.
“Nope. There’s a gravel pit on the other side of that dam, big construction crew was over there when this thing hit. Maybe forty men. They got trapped on their site, and most of ‘em turned. Them and some others—campers and maintenance workers from the dam mostly—are still wandering around on the other side, locked in on the other side of a fence. They’re between the dam and the old logging road that tracks around the lake. Even if we got out that side, the terrain’s too rocky to come down on the river side, and that old logging road isn’t the road you want to be on if you meet any company. It’s long, crappy, and narrow.” He considered it for a moment. “If it even exists any more.”
“You think the roadway on top of the dam is still good?”
He shrugged while Rhi cocked her head and held her hand out, rocking it back and forth.
“It’ll take your weight, but the way we figure it, that dam’s ready to go at any point. Wouldn’t take much. It’s a wonder it’s lasted this long, but we reckon it was built right.”
Not unlikely, I thought. Anything in this area probably had seismic activity factored in when it was being built. Although I supposed that they never contemplated anything like what we had already seen here. Unconsciously, my eyes came away from the binoculars and strayed to the flaming orange glow of Mount Baker in the distance, the fitful shadows from its spewing anger still visible through the swirling ash. To the south, I knew that it was joined by several other friends, all making their rage known.
I shook my head and sat down, wincing at the slight twinge of pain from my leg. There were hundreds of those things in the town, and if Rhi and Ethan knew the area—which I didn’t doubt—there were probably hundreds more strung out between town and the dam.
I needed to pull them away from the dam. But the terrain wasn’t friendly. With mountains on the west and a river to the east, there was only one way for them to be drawn away from the dam. That was south, toward the larger river. Toward the town.
Toward us.
So we would have to pull them away from the dam, toward the town. But even assuming we could simultaneously pull them down, then get past them and into the dam, how would we escape from the dam if we had just drawn hundreds more zombies into the town, blocking our exits to the south?
I hated thinking. It was one of the worst things about the apocalypse.
Staring at Romeo as I considered the problem, I watched as he lapped at a small bowl of water Ethan put on the ground for him, smiling briefly as he pawed it, accidentally tipping it over and sending the contents running down the edge of the ravine. Ethan cursed good-naturedly and filled the bowl again as I watched the water trickle over the rocks.
Then I smiled.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zombies, zombies, everywhere...
The town of Parkersville, aside from being the home of one of the largest industrial wine making operations in Western Washington, didn’t have much else to recommend it. The winery was by far the largest group of buildings in the town, and the large machines and impressive storehouses and production facilities dominated one entire side of the arterial route leading into the area.
On the west side of the road, vineyards stretched to the west, while further on, a small elementary school sat adjacent to the road, vacant windows staring at the large factory accusingly. A lonely playground, now overgrown with long grass and weeds, lent the entire scene a maudlin overtone that wasn’t necessary.
Not with all the zombies and whatnot.
Kate kept her head down as she looked into the haze of ash and gun smoke. At the front of the truck, Starr was shouting orders into a shoulder microphone held in her left hand, while the right hand clutched her weapon with authority. Her driver hadn’t left the idling vehicle, and Kate held up a hand to Ky, who was eager to dismount.
“I can help,” she said urgently, looking toward the front of the column.
“No, just stay put. It could just be a small group.” Kate turned to the front again as a blood-curdling scream ripped into the air. Starr cursed and turned to Kate, grabbing her arm and pulling her forward.
“You’re with me.” Shouting over her shoulder, she ordered the cars in the rear of the column to stay alert and motioned for the women in the rear echelon to come forward. Fifteen women marched forward out of the snowy haze, weapons ready. The squealing tires of the rear guard humvee startled Kate as it plowed past.
The head of the column had stalled out at the main gate to the winery, where Evan had sealed the creatures inside. A small stain of his blood was even still visible on the weather beaten concrete, had the group of survivors known to look for it.
The low visibility, combined with the increasingly heavy ash fall, made it so that the front of the column wasn’t quite visible from the middle, where Captain Starr and Kate and Ky were riding. It also meant that the lead vehicle’s gunners couldn’t quite appreciate the true extent of the threat when they had begun firing at what appeared at the time to be a group of twenty—a manageable engagement for a fifty cal machine gun and an armored truck.
When that twenty grew to fifty, and that fifty grew to three hundred, the situation grew more dire. No one could count the numbers, as the creature disappeared and reappeared in the haze of ash-fall.
And no one had the time to count anyway. They were too busy fighting suddenly for their lives.
The lead humvee fired until the creatures were too thickly packed around it. The massive rounds from the top mounted machine gun did their damage, with more than thirty corpses lying prone or twitching before the large vehicle.
But it wasn’t enough.
Within minutes, the herd had surrounded the truck and dead, eager hands were reaching up to the gunner’s cupola, forcing the gunner—a Sergeant named Jane Sherman—back into the cabin of the truck.
“Too hot—we gotta get some distance. Can you move up and turn back in?”
The driver’s hands moved quickly on the wheel, pulling it sharply to the left and trying to move the vehicle forward. In the narrow two lane road, amidst a herd of creatures, the truck was immobilized against the surge of bodies.
“Can’t move it. This is it,” she said, grimacing as the creatures outside started to slam their rotten arms and faces against the reinforced glass and metal of the humvee. Behind them, the firing from the rest of the column had intensified, and Starr’s voice came to them over the radio.
“We’re coming to you. Give me a sitrep.”
Her voice was calm, but the gunshots were coming fast and furiously from the other side of the channel. From the rooftop cupola, Sherman unloosed another heavy barrage of fire, even as she slapped away several grasping hands.
The driver, a specialist named Shonda Fray, could barely control her anxiety. Another face pressed against the glass of her window, bloody cheek spreading fluid and pus against the grimy glass. As she watched, a tooth caught on the edge of the bulletproof glass and pulled slowly away from the blackened gum.
“We’re, uh, we’re overrun. Still in the fight, but we’re drawing a crowd.”
Above, Sherman cursed and yelled once, then dropped into the cabin.
“They’re going to be on top in about a minute. We need to move, now!”
Outside, the intense firing had drawn many of the creatures to the humvee—in fact, it was the only reason that anyone in the column had time to leave their cars before they were overrun.
“Get inside the vehicle and stand fast,” came Starr’s only reply.
It was three hundred feet to the head of the column, and Kate fo
llowed Starr with her eyes scanning her surroundings—through the ash she could see movement and the volleys of gunfire intensified as they moved forward, gathering women as they did. Kate took the time to pay attention to the crew. There was no bias toward age or race. No apparent exclusions or divisions between the military and non-military. Just one glaring omission. Not a single man.
They had reached the third car in the convoy and Starr was on her radio, speaking with the lead humvee. Suddenly, the shadows in the ash came alive. There were dozens of them. Then scores.
No, Kate realized.
There were hundreds.
She brought up her carbine and knew they were outmatched. Around her, the gunfire erupted with a new ferocity. She started to site targets and pull the trigger, finding a position near the closest car that provided cover for her left side.
A piercing shriek ripped through the gunfight, even as Starr was motioning the group up. The SUV that had been following the humvee was the next in line to greet the oncoming horde. Distracted by the humvee, the creatures now had new targets to pursue—the twenty women that were marching toward them, rifles blazing in the falling ash.
Like snow-covered demons from the fog of hell, the zombies appeared, many coated with a layer of ash, as if they had just emerged from the pit of a raging fire.
The shriek ended suddenly, and Kate heard a sound that tore at her soul. She cried out in pain as the voice of a little girl screamed into the fight.
“Help me!”
A door slammed. An engine roared.
And the SUV behind the lead humvee flew forward like a drunk teenager was driving it, careening into scores of creatures before turning sharply toward the winery entrance and plowing through the chain link fence. It got twenty feet into the courtyard before the gate—which had been caught under the grill of the large SUV—eventually dragged it to a stop, sparks flying out from underneath.