Charlie ducked back into the more homely side of Shawn’s place when we arrived, I suspect to quickly throw on a bra since I’d pulled the other one apart in my late afternoon zest for life. I had a momentary flash of potential parent paranoia and did my absolute best to drive it, kicking and screaming, into a lock box inside my skull. It quieted down when she reappeared and was promptly replaced by determination that the both of us come back alive.
“All right people, here’s the rest of the plan. In three minutes, we load up into our appropriated Humvee.” Flower gave us educational finger-pointing to go along with the lecture. “Ramos is our wheelman. We will enter the neighborhood around the church approximately 50 yards from our target, hard cover, break into teams and proceed on foot using appropriate stealth. The high sign to commence the mission is my rifle firing. You know the rest. Questions?”
“Do we get to sing road songs on the way there?” Franklin asked, bouncing up and down like an idiot.
“If you sing anything while we’re moving, I will pop you in the jaw with my rifle butt. Clear?” Flower was smiling but was also dead serious.
“Clear, Sir!”
“All right people, saddle up.” Like we would have balked at that order.
“Frank,” Charlie snagged my arm and whispered to me. “I think I love you, and that was really hot earlier!”
“I know.” I grinned at her and she punched me in the shoulder. “I love you, too. Let’s go rip it up, Chuck!”
Seven people and associated equipment were a bit of a snug fit, even in a top-down military Humvee. Franklin and I found ourselves standing in the cargo area, holding onto the roll bar. He had a tight grip on his weapon, which was, as he informed me, a Light Anti-Tank Weapon. He pointed at the box on the floor between us and suggested that I not step on it.
“Why?”
“It isn’t a reinforced ammo container. You don’t want to dislodge a warhead on an anti-tank missile. Trust me on that.”
That was all the conversation we had time for, because we started to move.
It was a very quiet, nearly eternal trip. I had never been in a military version of a Humvee before and I was pretty surprised at how quiet they were on normal roads. That did not hold true for the occasional pothole.
The irony was not lost on me when we pulled up to the yard I had visited earlier in the day. From a visual standpoint, it was better in the dark, except for how white disjointed bones look in the moonlight. The smell, sadly, was also several hours more ripe. Zombies were not as attentive to burying their comrades as I might have hoped, or even wished, they might be.
We broke into our teams and I watched Charlie head away with her group. I had to swallow the worry and resign myself to the fact that I could help her best by doing the best for my team as I possibly could. Truth be told, the three of us were going straight down the throat of the enemy and were probably in a shitload more danger than she would be in a flanking position.
Omura took point, I was the middleman, and Franklin was bringing up the rear, lugging the anti-tank weapon over one shoulder and the unstable box of projectiles under his other arm. We halted at the corner of Sarge’s house, as I referred to it in my head, and Omura poked his head around the corner. He gave me the high sign and pointed to the far corner of the neighboring house. I took the direction and moved.
I looked left, then right, somewhat surprised to find a sentry standing beside the residence’s heat pump. The critters hadn’t given me an advance warning about him, I assume because his body temperature was nearly the same as the surroundings. Cool or not, he needed to be dealt with. I gave a single finger sign followed by pointing right and then the closed fist for “stop.” This one was mine.
The knife on my belt was situated for a right cross draw, much like a samurai sword would be, but edge down rather than edge up. I drew it with my left hand, giving me the classic “ice pick” grip, and moved toward my target. There wasn’t a reaction I could see as I got closer. So much the better for me, because approaching someone from their side or from anywhere in their peripheral vision is a chancy matter. Any little flicker could cause a startle reaction and the encounter would begin ahead of time, rather than on your terms and timetable.
This sentry was either asleep, dead, or a mannequin. No reaction, not even a sigh, gave me a clue he even knew I was there. Something was up, and I was barely eight feet away from him. Generally, someone with a blade can cover eight feet before a gun can be drawn, aimed, and fired. Time for a risk.
“Dude,” I whispered, “your fly is down!”
Dude snorted, startled out of whatever reverie he was enjoying, and looked down at his crotch. I was beside him, blade in motion, as he turned his head to look at me. The tanto in my hand cut his throat back to the spine, causing a spray of cool, gummy blood, but not a single noise. The sentry started to collapse, and I reversed the blade in mid-air, turned with him, and used my hips to make the second cut before he hit the ground. I caught his head while the rest of his body hit the dirt.
The third strike put the point of the blade through the head’s eye and into the backside of the skull. I pulled the head off the knife, swished the blade through the air to get the majority of the blood off, and resheathed it. My skull pinged, and I heard a single word from Omura. “Clean.”
I smirked and we moved on.
There weren’t any other sentries between the one I dispatched and the row of broken-down cars at the far edge of the church parking lot. I may never be sure whether we arrived precisely at the best time or the most unfortunate. It was feeding time.
The noises the poor souls in that pen were making were some of the most pitiful and hideous I’ve heard up to that point or since. I had to hold myself down to keep from rushing in there and heating the barrel of my gun to bright red with flying bullets. Watching people die, even ones you could never keep from their fate, can fill you with an oozing bitterness unlike anything else you will ever experience.
This was what the poor, brave little kid at the wrecked McDonalds missed out on. Dying while I talked to him was a mercy compared to this. I wanted to kill them all, and the rage at having to be silent and hold myself in check was nearly as awful as the tableau unfolding in front of me.
Flower took his shot and I rose up from behind that car with a roar that was drowned out by the rifle in my hands spewing lead across the parking lot. Franklin tossed his rage through the launcher on his shoulder and turned their Humvee into flaming origami.
While my shots were nearly indiscriminate, Omura’s were measured, precise, and unerringly accurate. Between him, Thunder flanking them, and my volume of fire, we dropped half of them in the first few seconds. The rest of the zombies took exception to our flashy entrance and returned fire.
They had enough cover that we couldn’t simply keep firing and hope to force them out. I hollered at Omura and Franklin, “Cover me!” I snapped the Man Scythe out, took a bullet in stride, and headed for the nearest hard cover.
The zombie that was using that cement planter as cover took some exception to my sudden appearance. On the bright side, she dropped her shotgun and screamed when she saw my baby. I made sure it was the last thing she ever needed to scream about.
Her partner attempted to get the drop on me, but someone pumped him full of lead before he got a good bead on me. I spun on the ball of my foot and made a beeline for the nearest parked car. In my combat-juiced state, I vaulted over the little SUV. Charlie was on the other side, calmly wiping blood and brains off one of her short swords.
“RRRRRRRR!” I growled.
“RAAAAR!” She growled back. It was ferocious, bloody, absolutely full of love, and gave me something wonderful to counter the violence as I headed towards the next target, bracketed by a wall of gunfire.
The next three targets I encountered were either dead or about to go, so I simply took their heads and left their skulls open for the squirrels to snack on. The fourth was ready for me when I came across the top of t
he car he was hiding behind, and he planted the bayonet of his rifle between my ribs on the left side. It hurt, and if I hadn’t been upgraded, I would have been dead the moment he pulled the blade out because it felt like he’d pierced my heart.
When the blade came free and blood sprayed everywhere, it was clear he’d done precisely that. I looked up at him and tried to keep the blackness from eating away at my vision. He was looking incredibly proud of himself for having done me in. I hoped I could ruin his day in a moment or two.
“Ow.”
“What?” he asked over the din of weapons rattling all around us.
“That bayonet hurt.” I had dropped the scythe and was clutching at my chest with both hands. He couldn’t see that I had two fingers jammed into the wound. It kept some of the blood in, or so I hoped, and it gave me some sort of clue as to whether or not my critters were repairing the damage.
Things inside my chest were moving, and it wasn’t just the muscles of my heart. It felt like nothing I could possibly describe without using words like “vibrator” and “hot Jell-O.” The fellow who stabbed me might have found it completely vile if I had been able to vomit all over him, but I regretted I wasn’t able, for that extra “Oh! I’m dying!” effect. The feeling of things moving around certainly inspired me to barf up the contents of my tummy, but the body disagreed.
“I’m glad it hurt, you murderous bastard! Do you know how many of my friends you’ve butchered?”
Let him argue. The longer he raved, the more time I’d have to heal, and then I would feed him every word.
“Let me guess,” I coughed up some blood for effect, “two or three?”
“You killed Sarge and seven of my friends today!” I couldn’t believe he put down the rifle and grabbed me by the ballistic vest I was wearing. “You didn’t just kill them, you dismembered them and tore their brains out!”
“Oh... them. I didn’t tear their brains out.”
“Bullshit!” He was right up in my face, nasty breath and all. I almost thanked him for closing the distance, but I settled for giving him a Hell of a headbutt.
I fell flat on my ass, and so did he. By that point, my chest was forcing the fingers back out of the hole, and I wasn’t dead, so it was time for more mayhem. My tackle caught him by surprise, but smashing his head against the side of the nearest car shouldn’t have. I disliked how satisfying it was to feel his skull collapse, but I didn’t have any time to reflect on it in a meaningful way. There were more zombies that needed mortification... or some variation on the theme of being killed.
Instead of vaulting over cars with appropriate barbarian cries of triumph, I decided to scoot carefully along and find my next target. I held up for a moment when my skull pinged with Charlie angrily commenting to me, “That little fucker actually bit my boob! I want to kill him a third time!”
“Don’t worry about the dead guy with the oral fixation. Take care of my favorite breast! They’re much more important.”
“You don’t even know which boob it is, so how can you say that it’s your favorite?”
“They’re fraternal twins, and I love them both equally. Therefore, as a set, they are my favorite breast.” I felt a little smug about how well I handled that and managed to creep around the minivan in a seriously stealthy way.
“Baby, you are so full of shit!” Charlie signed off, but I think she was smiling when she did. I was gratified.
I remained gratified until the gunman on the right saw me, yelled, and tried to shoot around the side of the minivan from entirely the wrong angle. There was a certain something in the air under the gunpowder scent, and it reminded me of gasoline. My favorite critters informed me, without any words, that it was gasoline.
They took over my legs.
I had half a second to bellow, “Fire in the hole!” before my legs had carried me across the parking lot to “our” side. Either I dodged every bullet that was shot at me, or my body accepted each love tap or puncture without slowing down. I had barely stopped running when the minivan exploded in a ball of smelly flames.
“Fire Teams! Check in!” Flower broadcast his urgency through my skull and I waited for the responses, much as he was waiting, before I said anything.
Franklin checked in by swearing loudly. Ramos rattled off a string of Spanish that was so beyond what I knew that he could have been speaking Martian. Omura reported that he was in the process of healing a severed femoral artery but was otherwise fine. I chimed in and was followed by Charlie, who sounded relieved.
“Fitz? Report!” Flower didn’t sound happy.
“Flower, I see him,” Charlie sent back to all of us. “I think he’ll respond when he finishes... what he’s eating.”
While I couldn’t hear everyone else say “Oh,” I certainly felt it.
Flower spoke up again, “I mark four unfriendlies, three people in the pen still moving, and nothing else. Ramos, you and Franklin mop up those four. Frank, go and cope with the pen. Charlie, watch over Fitz. I’m pulling in to check on Omura. Go.”
Frank. Cope. With. The. Pen. Fuck. Me. I didn’t want to follow my orders, but I did. The pen was littered with the remains of at least three people who had been food, and three victims who were still, for some value of the word, alive. They were not, I assure you, the least bit happy to see me. I wanted to say something comforting but I couldn’t think of anything that fit or wouldn’t sound like some kind of mortality consolation prize.
I stood there beside the pen and did not have one word to say, flippant or otherwise. The living ones stared at me, crouched together on the other side of the pen, as far away from me as they could get. To be completely honest, I didn’t blame them. There was no way in creation they could have thought I was there for any reason other than to kill them.
I imagined I could see it in their faces.
“I am so sorry.” It was the only thing to say, and the only thing that would come out of my mouth. The poor soul on the left, who had a rough rope tying off the flow of blood to her gaping forearm, nodded at me but said nothing.
The only thing I could really do by way of mercy was to stop delaying and take the fastest and most fatal action I could. I drew my pistol and fired three shots from right to left, and another three from left to right. The first bullets were sure and final, but I added the second shots for an extra measure of terminal security.
Turning around, I surveyed the Methodist Church parking lot of Hell. Bodies and parts of bodies were all over the place, and two vehicles were still burning the last of their rubber and petroleum away into the night. The only people moving were the ones I had arrived with, and they all looked like animated blood-soaked ragdolls. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume I looked at least as adorable as they did.
“Frank?” I hadn’t even noticed Charlie was walking in my direction, much less that she’d arrived.
“Yes?”
“Honey, you do not look... well.” It took her a moment to end that statement, and I’ll admit it was spot-on accurate. I didn’t feel anything remotely close to “well.”
“I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all. Let’s finish this insanity and go home.” I started walking toward Flower and Omura, who were standing together in the middle of the lot. I heard Charlie fall in behind me and was a little comforted by her presence.
It was 7:31 pm.
When I got to Flower and Omura, I had only one thing to say: “What’s next?”
“Ramos goes back to the Hummer, Fitz stays here as a relay, and we head in when we get word the convoy has left and Buttons has executed his side of the plan.” He looked me over like a head of lettuce in the produce aisle. “You need to eat something right now. You’re looking gray.”
“I didn’t bring anything to eat,” I explained, and dropped straight down onto my ass on the pavement, “and none of these poor idiots looked appetizing.”
Omura opened up a Velcro pocket on the leg of his tactical pants and handed me a foil-wrapped rectangle.
&nb
sp; “They didn’t create these with good taste in mind. Think of it like one of those sports drinks that tastes like shit unless your body needs it and then it tastes really good.” I gave the package the evil eye.
They were probably talking sense, so I opened the package and was enticed by the aroma of pure bliss that wafted from the broached foil. Tentatively, because nothing that smelled that good could taste that good, I licked it. Then I stuffed the whole bar into my mouth sideways. Buddha had nothing on my bliss.
“Gee, Flower, it looks like he needed something in his mouth,” Omura snarked and cracked a rare smile.
“Damn. I have something he could have used for that!” Charlie piped up from right behind me.
“Both of you,” Flower pointed at both of them, “stow it. You’re making me ill.” They laughed at him, but did stow the snark as he ordered.
The outer skin of the thing in my mouth started to slough away and I was content to sit there and let it dissolve into mush. Ramos headed back to the Hummer, and Fitzgerald found himself an easily defensible area to dig himself into. Before too long we had our Cranium Townhall relay set up and ready to go.
Fitz called out to us, “Buttons says the convoy has started to move. He estimates a ten-minute window before he can start the light show.”
“Roger.” Flower answered for all of us. I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer if I had wanted.
My darling, blood-covered Charlotte sat down beside me and gave me the once-over. “What happened to the front of your vest?”
“Mmmrrr nnnnnnn mmmm,” I replied, saying something that sounded a whole lot like a man who had a mouth full of goop.
“If you swallowed some of that instead of sitting there like a demented, homicidal squirrel, you could answer the question.” I detected a bit of annoyance in her voice, so I did as she suggested.
“Ah got staabud in a ches wi a baynet.” I swallowed a little more, because it didn’t come out as clear as I might have preferred. “I got stabbed in the chest with a bayonet.”
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