by Evans, Mike
Pete ignored the glass shards, he would take a few cuts to the palms and abdomen if it meant they would survive the day, which at the moment was all important to him. Pete’s eyes bugged out as he fell to the ground. He didn’t care if they followed him at this point. Right now, the idea of the fact or the hope that is of having an end to this seemed second to the fact that if he hadn’t felt the need to brag that he could still be safe and on the inside of the building for a while longer. There was not an immediate shortage of rations, however they were definitely dwindling. Pete popped up just as quickly as he’d fallen and began a dead sprint. He screamed, “What are you doing standing there? It’s a fucking bomb, you need to move, or you’re all going to die.”
Chapter 14
A second later that grip that was fueled by hate and hunger went limp and the body fell onto him then to the ground. Earl turned around kicking it away from him, seeing a pitchfork resting on the ground through its skull. Earl didn’t have to say thank you, but Scott motioned for him to get back in the fight. Clary started firing off on full auto, burying bullets in those resting on the rafter. Never giving them the chance to pursue. Earl did his best to fire but only got light when Clary took the rifle in his direction, or when he could see something coming his way from the flash coming from Clary’s rifle. Earl was screaming like a wild man firing off one after another. The Turned were dropping, but Clary knew that both of them were near the end of their magazines and hoped the precious seconds needed would be there when it clicked completely empty. When Clary fired off on his last target before the firing pin clicked empty he was already hitting the mag release, catching it, and flipping it around. The Turned that were coming for him, like all the others, were ready to eat.
The Turned reached forward, mouth open, and Clary could only think of one short term solution and that was shoving the barrel down its throat. When it bit down, a grotesque smell of frying zombie flesh from Clary’s burning hot barrel made its way quickly trying to escape out the door. Everyone’s stomachs turned and Clary pulled the charging handle back letting it go into place so that he could continue firing off nonstop for as long as possible. The Turned was stuck to the end of the barrel and tried grabbing and pulling the gun away but Clary held the trigger down sending five shots out of the back of its head. His new issue was having the full weight of The Turned pulling it down. Clary did his best to guess where to aim at the two that were coming straight for him and unleashed Hell, catching them in the spine, which having them disabled for the moment was good enough for him.
After Earl got his reloaded and Clary put a boot up into the Turned’s gut and kicked it off and down to the ground. Clary knew this was a shit show of massive proportions. He wanted this to end, but there was no end to the Turned coming. He wondered if at one point the owners had trapped them in here somehow and they’ve been locked up ever since, which would be potentially why they were so angry?
Clary thought this looked like some sort of insane horror flick fused with strobe lights. The Turned racing towards them never seemed like they were in the same spot twice. However, the other issue was it looked like slow-motion even though Clary knew they were moving at the absolute fastest that they had the ability to move with.
He knew the sound of his own gun and had heard thousands of rounds go through his pistol so when new gunfire erupted from behind them other than when Shaun had gotten off of that plane, he had never been so happy then to see the two boys together at once again.
Shaun and Greg wasted zero amount of time decimating those Turned that were still in the Morton shed. Shaun was pretty sure that these were determined and hiding would not be something that they would want to do. However, he was a big fan of not leaving any stone unturned.
Shaun walked slowly along the vehicles inside of the giant shed and Greg did the same waiting for something to come out after Shaun. When they had gone through the entire area, they had deemed it as safe as you could considering the circumstances at hand.
Earl leaned back against the shed, wiping a healthy amount of sweat from his forehead. He took his hat off, looking around before finally pulling out a lighter and putting his attention on the door to the Morton building. Earl pulled a few pins from the door, not being a stranger to farms, and slid the doors wide open. Light took over his face, turning a dark horror story into a crime scene, had these things not been something that needed to be killed.
Earl said, “Now don't you tell me that isn't just a hell of a lot better. There's nothing better than seeing a whole bunch of dead zombies. Is everybody okay?”
Clary said, “Remind me the second we get back that you guys get machine guns, handguns, you name it, you get it if you are going to be that reliable and on my side then there's little common sense in you guys not having the best machinery that the military can afford US to use.”
Scott looked down at his pitchfork smiling, reveling in the fact that he had just used it to kill a zombie and said, jokingly only of course, “Hey, I don't know. This pitchfork is pretty badass! I'm not sure if I could let this sweet thing go.”
Clary said, “Oh, I guess if you want to keep that…”
Scott threw it against the wall, holding up his hands shaking his head no. Everyone smiled for a moment taking it all in and as usual being thankful to be alive. Shaun was walking around cursing under his breath. Greg had not forgotten about the plane but the current situation at hand had left him not thinking about it either. Clary said, “Shaun, we got them buddy. There aren't any other ones at least here right now. But I think we probably need to keep moving, God knows after that much gunfire if there are any within a mile and they have any sense of direction from the sound they will be here eventually.
Shaun said, “We can't leave just yet. We found something in the house and I think there's a good chance we can use it.”
Clary who was still so focused on killing the Turned that he had no idea what the kid was talking about basically struck him off. Clary snapped, “Shaun, you aren't listening. We need to get the fuck out of here. We can come back when we are whole again and take stock of the house for the food. We can also come back when we get a little bit more help to go forward with.”
“I don't want any goddamn food Clary; you're not listening to me so you're missing the point! What we saw inside the house was a picture with the two folks that blew their head off along with their dog, pretty fucked up thanks for letting us see that, not that it was your fault but we could have lived without seeing it. The point is we saw that the guy had been in the Air Force at one time. Now, I would say up until the Turned took over the world this guy was a duster pilot or crop pilot whatever the hell you call them. He had a picture of himself and his wife with the plane. I would assume that they probably owned it but I was really hoping this Morton shed would have the plane in here.”
Earl, who had been walking around looking at the cars stopped and said, “Well, he must not have been too goddamn smart of a crop duster pilot then.
Shaun having no clue what he is talking about questioned, “Earl you aren't making any sense. What are you talking about?”
Earl slapped his head as if what Shaun had said was the dumbest thing you've ever heard. Shaun didn't like that at all, but was willing to hear the man out as little as he wanted to listen to him. Earl said, “Well, see if I was a pilot even if I had a small plane, and I mean like the smallest plane then my fat ass woulda’ been gettin’ it on, pronto.”
“Yes, Earl, I would probably do the same thing. However, given the fact that there are still two people upstairs that match the picture that is on the wall, along with a dog, that all share the same looking bullet wound I'm pretty sure they didn't fly away. I have no clue if it's because it doesn't work or whatever but I sure as shit am going to turn everything on this property upside down until I find what I need.”
Greg leaned over patting him on the shoulder keeping his guard up in case the new returned Shaun didn't have quite the sense of humor the old one did. Gre
g said, “Hey man, are you all right? I mean you're pretty pissed off about something that I'm pretty sure you don't even know how to use. I mean I'm just saying what the hell were you going to use it for if you did find it?”
Shaun did not answer at first. He was looking around and Greg had seen focused Shaun before. Shaun pointed to the corner seeing something that looked like it could be from a Star Wars movie if it was under a tarp and wasted no time running over to it.
Greg followed closely behind him not wanting to lose his best friend on the first day that he got him back. Shaun gripped on to the tarp, pulling at it like he hated it as much as one of the Turned. Shaun grunted as he pulled backwards not sure if he was going to find the gold at the end of the rainbow. But as the tarp gave less coverage to what it was hiding Shaun 's eyes grew bigger by the second.
Greg asked, “So that's cool and all that you found it, Shaun. But what the hell are we going to do now?”
“My dad always said modification is the best way to make something do what it had the capability of but what it might not have been intended for originally.”
“Meaning what?” Greg asked.
“You haven't been doing a lot of studying while I've been gone have you, Greg? So, what I was thinking is these crop dusters spray stuff on fields, right? So, if that's the case why don't we just tweak a little and go to town with it. We can stick Bob in this, and once he gets going. Then maybe if we can draw out enough of the Turned, maybe we could like use a tank and blow some shit up and get them drawn into one space and he can just paint the little bastards with them. Can you imagine how many you could take out if you had some serious amount of spray that you could unleash on them?”
“So, you want to take the plane, which we also don't know if it works, go back to the base with it. Then we're going to have Pilot Bob take a look at it and see if it works? Is that about the gist of it, Shaun?”
“Jesus, man, what else do you need? Seriously, I mean think about it, just kill the damn things. It's not like anyone is going to miss them.”
Greg thought about this and he couldn't agree more. No one that was worth anything would miss these things. Greg said, “So, you just think that it's going to be that easy?”
“Of course, it isn't going to be easy, is anything we ever do easy? It's going to be a huge pain in the ass. God knows what's going to happen; there's a million things I haven't thought of that can probably go wrong. But if we can take the state back and start working our way out can you effing imagine what that would mean. I mean what if we had an endless supply of that zombie powder and we could just fly across America painting it with powder.”
Clary had walked over, seeing the two talking and looking pretty serious about whatever they had found in the corner. Clary asked, “You didn't learn how to fly, right, Shaun?”
Shaun didn't want to say the same thing over again but he did reiterate pointing and explaining, “For God's sakes guys, get your heads out of your asses. There's hope here that we can retaliate. We can go back against those things. We can do something smarter than sticking a damn bag of blood up and then picking them off like fish in a barrel one at a time, it's too little thinking at that pace it’d take us a lifetime of doing it to get us anywhere. I'm well aware I came up with the idea but now I came up with this idea and it's going to be awesome. It's going to be great but we just need to take this with us.”
It did not take a genius to see how Clary felt about Shaun's idea. Clary replied, “What in the hell are we standing around here for? We need to find a trailer.”
Earl said, “If Bob don't know how to work on those, if y'all still got the internet I bet you I can find some schematics on how that thing works and with hopefully just a little bit of tinkering I can get it running like a boss.”
“Earl, you work on guns and cars. I feel like you might be a lot handier than your presentation to people might suggest. You might think about cleaning that up.”
“Oh shoot, just cuz you're the smartest guy in the room don't mean you need to dress like it. I don't know if I'll ever get rid of this party in the back business in the front, I got my shit down, brother. Besides this is the only thing I got that helps keep all them ladies from trying to get with me if you know what I mean.”
Clary knew that Earl probably didn't have too many issues in that department, regardless of his know-how was probably still never the smartest guy in the room. But as of right now, Clary didn't have any interest in putting a hole in Earl's balloon. Clary said, “That sounds like you've got life figured out, Earl. You just keep on improving shit and we might be able to give those things a run for their money.”
“Damn straight, I'm in it to win it. I got things to do and people to see. I just need to figure out if my pals in Canada are still alive. But I think I got time to help you guys get rid of all these zombie things running around causin’ Hell for everyone else.”
Chapter 15
No one asked anything. They knew that more than likely if a nerdy kid such as Pete was screaming at the top of his lungs that they needed to be attentive and listen. When Ellie heard everything and connected that with the words, you’re gonna die, she took off in a dead sprint. Ellie pulled Joey to get running and they sprinted like a bat out of Hell to get out of the blast range. Ellie could only assume the seriousness of what was going on with the speed that Pete was moving. A million thoughts were racing through her head at the moment and the thought that maybe that one tank was connected to other tanks, or that once one domino fell there was going to be a helluva lot of things happening all at once.
Ellie looked over her shoulder to see that the dead were beginning to come out of the windows. A fireball erupted, one that immediately reminded her of day two of this. Shaun had thought that when they had their shitty old van, they were driving around to get Patrick insulin from his house that he was making a good choice. Shaun learned a valuable lesson about the Turned on that day. That it was a very important thing to not be loud, loud meant dinner bell, that the dead would race towards you with a thirst like nothing you could ever see. The blast from the windows was the first of two, the first made the second seem like a nuke had just gone off. The Turned disappeared instantly as they were engulfed in an endless spread of fire. The remaining glass on the rest of the windows exploded in what seemed like a million directions. None of the group had thought that it was going to work as well as it was. They never stopped running until it wasn’t an option.
Glass from the windows had turned into a skin searing piece of shrapnel. It wasn’t picky as it seemed to seek out the living running in front of them. They all felt a varying degree of pain in their bodies. Someone would be picking small glass shards from the group for quite some time. The blast from the first ball of fire went away and a second one which shook the ground came over them and they were so unsure if they had jumped or been blown forward from the blast that no one said anything for a second. They could feel heat on their backs and Ellie could only compare it to the absolute worst sunburn she had ever endured.
Joey made the first sound which was more of a moan. Yassa said, “Pete, are you alright?”
Pete, who could barely hear anything over the ringing in his ears, knew it’d be good but when he looked back behind him there was half of the wall missing from where it belonged. The beautiful sight of seeing Turned spread all across, the insides still roasting didn’t hurt his heart. He answered, “I think I’m okay. Is everyone else okay?”
Yassa replied, “A fucking bomb just went off, and it was your fault, god damn it. What in the hell were you thinking? Did you know that was going to be the aftermath?”
“I didn’t think it’d be that powerful but it worked didn’t it? Do you see anything coming for us from there?”
Yassa didn’t have time to answer. Ellie was hyper focused on everything going around and that they had just sent a midnight black smoke signal up into the great yonder. She said, “Oh Christ, we need to go, come on, get up, get up now! You took the entire
side of the building off!”
Joey was going to ask what was wrong, but he knew how the Turned behaved and this was perfectly that which would morph into an all-out hell in a very short time. Joey raced around, practically throwing anyone who wasn’t moving fast enough getting to their feet and got them up right with a push behind them to get everyone moving. Pete who should have been smart enough to know this and had he not been sheltering since day one probably would know this, or would be dead, said, “What happened, what’s wrong?”
“You just gave off the biggest dinner bell in the state of Iowa, maybe the world since this started. What the Hell made you think that was a good idea?”
“I was trying to save us, Ellie, I’m sorry I guess?”
“Right, and that was a temporary fix at best, wasn’t it, Pete?” Ellie yelled, as they pushed forward.
Kya looked over her shoulder and then all around. She felt like this dead-on sprint which was going to leave them out of breath was a calm before a very, very violent storm which was on its way towards them she could only assume. She wanted nothing more than being inside of that damn Humvee and to preferably have it going fifty miles per hour, or at least faster than whatever the closest Turned were to their current location. Kya said, “We’re going back to the Humvee, right?”