by J. W. Vohs
None of this mattered to the zombies however, who continued their mindless climb into the waiting steel of the leather-clad, helmeted warriors who were chopping them down by the hundreds. Finally Jack began to notice the weariness in his arms as the sun passed the mid-day mark above them. The entire battle seemed to have slowed around him, but then he realized that wasn’t true; the zombies were still methodically crawling their way over thousands of corpses as fast as they could, it was the soldiers who were slowing down.
Jack actually took in the scene before him and thought that if any of them had been dropped down into this place and time a month ago they would have vomited and run away screaming in madness. A mound of corpses stretched out from the top of the wall for at least forty yards along the entire front. In some places the bodies were piled at least six feet high, with black blood, gray brain-matter, and white chunks of bone covering the entire mass of corpses. He and the other soldiers were covered in the gore as well, and the ground below his feet was actually muddy from the blood that had spilled before them.
He was shaken from his observations by Andi shouting, “A little help here!”
Four zombies had dropped down from the pile of bodies and were less than five feet from Andi. Jack moved forward and efficiently dispatched three of them from the side while Andi stepped back a few feet and killed the closest monster. Then the tide began to turn. The zombie army had finally filled in the ditch and leveled the slope of the wall with the bodies of those killed by the soldiers, and now they were able to stumble and crawl over the mounds of corpses and drop down onto the exhausted fighters.
Jack knew they had destroyed thousands, maybe even ten thousand of the creatures, but now every one of the monsters that they killed would be rolling down into the paths of the people carrying water and weapons up to the fighters. Suddenly a woman with a bucket in each hand began screaming about fifty yards from Jack’s position, and he looked over in time to see that a zombie had actually slipped through the fighting line line, rolled down the slope, and latched onto her legs with his hands as he tried to bite through her boots. Then one of the soldiers who must have known the woman slid down from the top of the wall and crushed the monster’s skull with his mace. As the man led the sobbing woman toward the house, Jack felt the line giving way around him.
He realized that a major flaw in his plan was now unfolding before him as the zombies quickly gained the summit of the wall and his warriors were the ones fighting uphill. The inner slope of the wall wasn’t as steep as the outer, but the soldiers were now at a disadvantage and they were slowly being pushed back as the ground below them grew muddy from blood, gore, sweat, and even plenty of water that had spilled during the earlier fighting. The snake-proof boots they all wore stopped zombie teeth just fine, but they didn’t provide the best footing for a soldier fighting uphill on a muddy slope. Three warriors almost simultaneously went down under the weight of the attack, and dozens of zombies poured through the openings in the line and mobbed the fallen soldiers in mounds that slowly rolled down the slope.
Jack decided that their line was now finished, so he shouted for Tyler to run as he grabbed Andi’s arm and pulled her down the slope toward the house. All of the team leaders had prepared their people for the possibility of a retreat into the buildings, and the soldiers used their halberds and pikes to keep the zombies off balance and far enough away to make their escape from the charging horde. As Jack and Andi met up with Carter and set up a rear guard in front of the house door, they could see that several more soldiers had fallen trying to help the first three who had gone down. There was nothing they could do but shout for the others to get into the buildings while there was still time. Jack didn’t see anybody but soldiers and zombies outside so he was hopeful that all of the support personnel were already inside as the last of the fighters still on their feet rushed by him into the house.
He quickly looked over to see the door to the barn closing as dozens of zombies crashed into the building, almost howling with frustration as their prey escaped them once again. With a revolting feeling, Jack saw that there were at least a dozen places on the path to the barn where piles of successful zombies were ripping his people apart. For a moment he considered attempting to cut through the horde and trying to rescue the fallen, but then remembered Andi and Carter and he turned to push them into the house. If he had any thoughts of staying outside after his friends were safe they were dashed as several soldiers in the doorway roughly yanked him into the building and pulled the wooden door closed behind him. Then, as he fell to the floor in utter exhaustion, the soldiers who had pulled him in slammed the steel door shut.
CHAPTER 28
The sun was setting and the residents of The Castle were trapped inside the buildings with over four hundred refugees. As soon as Jack handed off his outer gear to a sanitation team, Zach pushed through the crowd in the room and told him that John was asking all team leaders to come to the cafeteria. Zach was more than content to lead the way as Jack and Carter followed the bull-like teen as he pushed his way through the throngs of people, many of them weeping or staring away in shock. The situation in the house appeared to be standing room only, stinking of sweat and gore, with a temperature somewhere in the nineties.
Guards had been set at every possible zombie entry point as team leaders met together in the cafeteria to discuss their options. Even though all outer garments had been collected for sanitation, towels soaked in bleach water and piles of antibacterial wipes lined one side of the room so the soldiers could more thoroughly wash up before eating anything. Food was somehow being passed amongst the hundreds of people in the buildings, and as it reached the cafeteria nobody spoke for several minutes as the hungry soldiers tore into sandwiches, chips, and cookies, along with gallons of cold well-water. When the edge had finally been taken from their hunger and thirst, Jack opened the discussion by explaining, “I’m sorry that I didn’t plan for the ditch and outside slope becoming filled with corpses; I should have seen that coming.”
“None of us saw it coming, Jack,” John argued, “so there’s nothing to apologize for.”
Jack nodded his semi-acceptance of John’s rebuttal, then asked, “Who did we lose out there today?”
Carter let a long sigh and answered, “Drake Ross fell tryin’ to rescue one of his people who was mobbed by the first wave that broke through.”
Jack placed his face in his hands and declared, “Everyone was told that they couldn’t attempt a rescue on either side of the slope; there was no footing up there—”
Carter glared and cut in, “Ya would’ve stopped for me, or Andi, or probably any of us. Drake made his choice and died for it, but maybe he knew he wouldn’t be able to face himself if he didn’t at least try.”
Jack couldn’t meet Carter’s eyes as he quietly mubmbled, “You’re right. Who else?”
“Ross was tryin’ to save a young woman from town named Haley Drummond, she’s gone too. We also lost two men from Ricker’s squad named Pete Fetters and Harry Smith, both of ‘em were in their fifties and lived together. Rickers said they fought like hell up there, but Fetters wouldn’t leave Smith when he went down during the retreat.”
Carter hesitated, took a swig of water, then went on, “Barry Stergen tried to save one of the people from the courthouse, a twenty year-old kid named Brett Mitchell. They’re both missin’ and presumed dead.”
Jack felt like he had been hit in the chest with a hammer, and he could do nothing but bow his head and squeeze his eyes shut as he remembered the tough, competent construction worker who had so efficiently organized the courthouse defense.
After a moment Carter continued, “Three older married couples who had children fighting with us picked up pikes and kept the zombies away from the door long enough for the soldiers to safely get inside. They all died. Two of them were Stanley Rickers’ parents. I didn’t recognize the other couples, but I only hope that I can someday have their courage.”
A chorus of “Amen”
and “Damn right” echoed through the room.
“Who’s got Rickers’ team now?” Jack asked.
“I do!” Stanley Rickers’ voice rumbled from a few feet away, and Jack looked around John and Tina to see the young Iraqi War vet standing tall amongst the crowd.
“I’m sorry, Stanley. You and Ross have been two of my best men—we’ve lost Ross, and you’ve lost your parents. I can’t imagine what that’s like for you. If you need some time to yourself . . .”
Rickers cut him off, “When this is over, hell yeah, but until then I’m gonna fight these bastards and avenge their deaths. I am going to make sure they did not die in vain.”
Jack nodded his understanding and simply said, “You come from good stock, kid.”
He then turned back to Carter and asked, “Any good news to report?”
“The only good news I got,” Carter explained, “is that Bill Haines somehow escaped from the mound he was under with only a sprained wrist and a bunch of bruises. He’s in the clinic now. One of Ross’ soldiers, a gal named Tonya Rigney, broke her ankle on the way down the hill and her husband carried her to the barn. She’ll recover, but she’s outta this fight. We got seventy-five soldiers who can still fight, and three hundred others with pikes who can help defend the buildings. Doc and the med staff are checkin’ everyone, but they haven’t found any bites that broke skin. Looks like we’re infection free in here.”
Jack nodded his understanding, “John, what reports from the roof?”
“Good news or bad?”
Jack shrugged, “What’s the good?”
“Well, not very many zombies are coming down that inside slope now, so it looks like most of our visitors have arrived.”
“What’s the bad?”
“Bobby thinks we’ve got about three-thousand of them surrounding the buildings right now.”
Jack smiled grimly, “Then we’ve killed about ten thousand of them since they got here.”
John nodded and continued, “They’re trying mighty hard to get in here, but you guys must have built this place over code.”
Now Carter smiled slightly, “Yeah, ya could argue that we saw this day comin’ when we built the place.”
Jack interjected, “They won’t be getting in here unless they learn how to use explosives or a medieval battering ram. The question is how are we going to get out?”
John asked, “Do we need to get out right now? I mean, isn’t there a chance that they’ll lose interest if we’re quiet in here?”
“If they weren’t trapped inside the walls that might happen,” Jack replied. “They climbed them because they saw or heard food, but they don’t have any reason to climb out right now. Besides, I don’t think we’d have the time to wait them out anyway.”
A chorus of “why” came from several points in the room so Jack explained the situation. “We’re trapped in these buildings which are good-sized but really only amount to about fifteen square feet of livable space per person. We can get by for a while, but not for any length of time. We have six bathrooms in the house but only one in the barn, and even if we all rotate in and out of them the septic could very well back up in a few days. The temperature is already tropical, and I don’t even want to think about the quality of the air we’re breathing. We’re surrounded by thousands of corpses; how long before sickness breaks out in here? How long before somebody has a panic attack and makes a break out of here?”
Jack didn’t wait for answers before he went on, “We need to figure out a way to escape these buildings.”
Tina spoke up for the first time, “How do you propose we do this?”
Carter and John enthusiastically spoke at the same time, “Kill ‘em all!”
Revitalized by the food and coffee, Jack left the meeting for an inspection of the facilities and walked through each of the buildings with Carter to observe the situation they faced with their own eyes. When they reached the roof, Jack turned to his friend and observed, “Three thousand is still a hell of a big number when it comes to zombies in your yard.”
At first Carter just grinned, then he started to chuckle, and within seconds he and Jack were doubled over with laughter that finally subsided only after Bobby yelled over and asked what was so funny.
Carter waved his hand in the air toward Bobby in a ‘never mind’ gesture, then remarked, “This situation sucks, but we got ourselves through a few times just as bad.”
Jack raised an eyebrow at the comment and asked, “You’ve been surrounded by three thousand starving zombies before?”
That set off another round of laughter, until, finally catching his breath, Carter declared, “Ya know, I think I fergot how beautiful the sunsets could be from up here.”
Jack looked to the west and saw that the sky really was amazing this night, then he asked, “We’re going to make it out of this, aren’t we?”
Carter answered with another question, “I ever let ya die yet?”
Jack chuckled before stating, “All right, I got us into this mess, so you make the plan for getting us out.”
Carter turned a bit more serious and declared, “We just finished the first half of an impossible battle with a ten thousand to twelve body count, so stop feelin’ like you did somethin’ wrong. And ya know what we need to do now: use the murder holes we put in every door and window in this place to take out as many as we can.”
“Eventually the corpses will stack up and block the murder holes,” Jack observed. “I doubt that we’ll kill more than twenty zombies from each opening and that will only take out ten percent of their force.”
“Yeah, and then we’ll figure out another way to kill the bastards.”
Jack nodded, “That’s a good start. Think we should use guns too?”
“Naw,” Carter explained, “at least not right away. We got a lot of ammo stored up here, but if we face disagreeable humans in the future we’re gonna need our guns fer sure. And when we move into new areas, like Fort Wayne, we’ll want our silenced .22s as part of our arsenal.”
“You know,” Jack mused, “your reasoning reminds me of my high school baseball coach who saved our best pitcher for the second game of the state tournament. Then we went out and lost the first game and our best guy never got a chance to pitch. Our ammo won’t do us any good if we’re dead.”
Carter gave a sly smile and asked, “Deep down inside, ya think I’m stupid, don’t cha?”
Jack smiled back and said, “Even close to the surface I think that! Why you asking?”
Carter laughed and continued his questions. “Did ya ever pitch for that team of yers?”
“Yeah, I had a hell of a fastball, but nothing else. Good teams would rough me up after they got their timing down.”
“Hmmm,” Carter rubbed his chin as he confessed, “same here.”
“Why you asking about my baseball career, dork?”
Carter raised his hand and beckoned for Jack to follow him over to the edge of the roof where a tarp covered what Jack assumed were tools or supplies until Carter pulled off the covering to reveal a large pile of the fist-sized stones his crews had used in the catapults. Jack held his breath for a moment, then let it out as he shook his head and nearly shouted, “You are smarter than me . . .”
Carter cupped his hand behind his right ear and playfully said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear whatcha said.”
Jack threw a fake punch at his buddy’s head and asked, “How long were you going to keep your rock-pile a secret, jack-ass?”
Again Carter put his hand to his ear and asked, “Did ya say rock-pile?”
Again Jack made as if to punch him, so Carter finally admitted, “That needs to be pluralized, Dr. Smith. We got another pile on the roof of the barn. And honestly, Deb is the one who suggested the idea to me and I basically forgot about it. Anyway, with some throwers up here we’ll thin that herd out a bit.”
Jack pointed a finger in mock sternness, “I knew somebody smarter than you put these rocks up here. We’ll find some thrower
s, but first I’m going to give Deb a big, sloppy kiss.”
“I already did that,” Carter mockingly explained, “so just get me some pitchers up here.”
Jack had plenty of volunteers for the rock throwing, but in the end chose people he knew he could count on to follow his instructions: show themselves over the roof edge and drop the rocks onto the heads of reaching zombies. As darkness fell The Castle’s external lighting system illuminated the yard nearly as well as sunlight, and the rock-throwers got to work. As Jack observed the action he discovered that his people were managing to drop zombies with about twenty-five percent of their attempts, which was a little better than he’d expected. After an hour or so the rock supply was exhausted, but Jack figured at least five hundred new corpses littered the yard, so the result was worth the effort in what was essentially a numbers game now.
Another meeting was held with the team leaders following the rock throwing operation, and Jack gave the go ahead for the firing slits he and Carter called ‘murder holes’ to be opened. A few unsuppressed shots would be fired from the slits to drop any zombies who were easy targets and to attract the others to converge on the murder holes. The zombies would gather around the openings and soldiers would use pikes to kill them until mounds of corpses blocked the murder holes. Jack and Carter observed this action until it was finished in about half an hour, and again, they figured that another five hundred or so zombies were now out of action. The crowd of monsters was noticeably thinned now, but the yard was still packed with moaning zombies scratching at the doors and windows of both buildings.
Jack and Carter sat down on the roof and talked about possible options now that they had used the two methods of destroying the zombies from within the house that they had been able to think of earlier. Carter suggested trying to set the creatures on fire, but they both quickly shelved the idea when they thought about what havoc the smoke and flames might play with The Castle and the people crowded in the buildings. Jack briefly entertained the idea of trying to fasten two pikes together so they could reach further out, but Carter pointed out that the resulting weapons would be difficult to make and use effectively. Finally they just stared out into the night in silence until they heard other people climbing up the access ladder to the roof.