DEAD: Snapshot (Book 3): Liberty, South Carolina

by TW Brown

  Landing on his stomach, Bo felt whatever had grabbed him fall on top of him, effectively pinning him to the floor.

  He could feel dead hands pawing at him and trying to get at his flesh through the pack and the heavy leather jacket that he wore. Heaving back with one elbow, he felt it connect solidly to the thing on his back, but it had almost no effect as the zombie continued to maul him.

  Another of the undead fell on his legs and he felt his knee twist painfully. Looking straight ahead, his eyes met Sarah’s. She had her head turned as she held a zombie inches from her face as it snapped and gnashed its teeth.

  A surge of strength seemed to fill all of Bo’s extremities and he pushed up and made it to his hands and knees. His machete was a few feet away, but his KA-BAR was still on his belt and he whipped it out. Reaching around, he grabbed a handful of hair and jerked the zombie forward so that he could stick it with his blade. Another of the undead fell on him, knocking him sideways.

  With a snarl, Bo rolled and ended up on his side. A zombie was just leaning down to take a bite out of his arm and he jerked away in the nick of time. A scream sounded from behind him, but he could not tell if it was Sarah. The scream was shrill and quickly reached a pitch that hurt his ears.

  Another zombie lumbered towards him, this one looked like it might outweigh him by a good fifty pounds. It had a nasty rip across its taut belly and something black and jelly-like was slapping against the gray skin, covering the bellybutton. One arm had been gnawed down to the bone from just below the elbow and apparently all the way to the wrist.

  There was a hiss and a thud just as the creature reached him and was staring down with its dead eyes. Bo knew that this thing landing on him would be his death sentence. But just as it looked like it was going to flop on top of him, that sound came and the tip of a crossbow bolt was jutting from its open mouth. The zombie tottered and then crumpled to the ground, landing hard just to his left; in between him and the last place he’d seen Sarah.

  A hand reached out of the shadows and Bo took it. He got to his feet and found Sarah Gilstrap looking at him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “I’m not ready to die…to give up,” she whispered.

  “Then move your ass and let’s get out of here.” Bo turned her towards the exit and gave her a nudge. He glanced down to see one of his team members on his back. His dead eyes were staring straight up and three zombies were crouched around his unmoving figure. They were still ripping out bloody handfuls of his insides and stuffing it into their mouths.

  More zombies were coming from every direction. If he took even those few steps to end that scene to kill the zombies and stick that poor unfortunate to keep him from joining the ranks of the undead, he might not make it out of the lobby.

  Stepping through the decimated portal, Bo walked out into the sunlight and instantly felt the warmth on his skin. It was as if his body needed to absorb as much of the sunlight as possible. Looking at the rest of his team, he realized that they had lost four people. He’d been so focused on what was happening to him, he’d obviously missed other members being taken down.

  “I sure hope to hell that this was worth it,” Bo mumbled as he started across the parking lot towards the grassy slope and Oliver’s apartment.

  When they arrived and found Jamie’s team already there and waiting anxiously, Bo felt himself relax just a little. After a very brief conversation, the group voted unanimously to return home right away. All of them had seen enough of the inside of the hospital to last a lifetime. Within minutes they all found vehicles to commandeer.

  As they neared the town, they were stunned to discover what had taken place in their absence. Their vehicles were quickly put to use to fill the holes that had been made by the Simms brothers and their followers.

  Jamie waited until the crowds dispersed and then pulled Ivan and Stephen Deese aside to discuss tomorrow’s town meeting and vote on closing their borders. They had wandered up to the train car barricade and she was still discussing the possible fallout of such an idea with Ivan and Mr. Deese when the sounds of engines approaching from the north came just seconds after somebody shouted, “We got an incoming caravan!”

  16

  Going Tribal

  The big truck rumbled to a stop as Jamie, Ivan, and Stephen made it up on top of the large green cargo car. Across the tracks and parked in a line were a dozen vehicles stretching back up South Norman Street. There was a long moment where nothing happened.

  The front windows of the trucks had heavy screens, boards, and even sheets of metal covering them. There was a slit to see out, but that made it impossible to really look inside. At last, the driver’s side door of the second truck opened and a very large woman emerged. She was wearing what looked like police riot gear including a helmet with a tinted face shield, and had an impressive looking rifle slung across the front of her body.

  “Is there a Jamie Burns here?” the woman shouted.

  Jamie glanced over at Ivan who shrugged. Stepping forward, she answered, “I’m Jamie Burns. Who are you and why are you looking for me?”

  “We have something that belongs to you.”

  The woman leaned back inside the truck for a few seconds and then stood back up. A moment later, the passenger door opened and two more women emerged and then hauled out a limp form. They let whoever it was drop unceremoniously to the ground at their feet.

  “This man was caught with a group of your people. They were trying to come in and steal what is ours. This man says that they were sent by a Jamie Burns to scavenge supplies.”

  “We made it very clear to any of our teams out searching that they were absolutely not to take from another settlement or engage in hostile actions against others.” Jamie moved closer to the edge of the car shaking off Ivan’s hand from her elbow.

  The large woman turned to the other two, covering her mouth with her hand and saying something that was impossible to hear from this distance. Jamie tried to get a better look at the person on the ground but still could not make out who it was.

  The large woman finally walked to the front of the truck and took a spot standing over the downed body. “I want to make things perfectly clear,” the woman hollered. “If you come into Easley, you will be considered thieves and raiders.”

  “All of Easley?” Jamie called back. “I mean, can we drive through towards Greenville on a specific road?”

  The woman paused for a moment and consulted with the two that were standing just a few feet away. As they spoke, Jamie caught a glint of something in the trees to the right of this woman.

  She turned to Ivan. “We will not ambush these people. That is not who we are. As long as we are communicating, consider it a banner of truce.”

  “We don’t send out teams of one,” Ivan replied coolly. “Ask her where the rest of our people are.”

  Jamie turned back and was about to ask where the rest of the people who had been with the one on the ground were when the woman answered.

  “You can use Highway 93 and rejoin 123 on the other side of Easley.”

  “I think we can agree to that,” Jamie called back.

  “Good, now, tell your people to back off,” the woman opened her jacket and produced a metal cylinder with a wire that ran back into a vest that looked to be rigged with several blocks of some sort of explosive.

  “What people?” Jamie hoped that the woman simply meant those who were gathered on top of the train cars.

  “If you want to test me, just be aware that I am very confident that I am wearing enough high explosives to take you and everybody within about fifty yards with me.” The woman moved the hand holding what was apparently the trigger switch for emphasis.

  “Then perhaps you can tell me where the rest of that person’s team might be.” Jamie was not sure if the woman might be bluffing. She did not necessarily want to press the issue, but revealing an explosive and threatening to basically become a suicide bomber that would also kill all of her own people just seemed a bit
desperate.

  “They are all dead,” the woman answered without hesitation. “We spared one—”

  Several of the Liberty people who had been onlookers up until this point suddenly began drawing weapons and shouting threats. Jamie was about to yell for everybody to settle down when a single gunshot sounded.

  The large woman staggered and fell to her knees. A dark bloom appeared on her chest. She looked up at Jamie a terrible grin on her face. She held up the cylinder and made a show of her thumb coming off the button.

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Jamie was just letting out her breath when a bright flash, a concussive blast, and a ball of fire erupted, engulfing the woman, and a large area around her. The body on the ground and the two women that had been standing with the large woman also disappeared in that massive ball of fire. The blast was enough to knock Jamie back and hit her with a gigantic wave of heat, but after a quick check she saw that she wasn’t smoldering.

  Getting to her feet, she looked around and saw others doing the same. Ivan was nowhere to be seen and she spun when she heard his moans. She scurried to the edge of the train car and saw him on the ground. He was cradling one arm that was bent awkwardly and his right leg was bent back at a terrible angle. There were three others on the ground also moaning in pain.

  The eruption of gunfire caused her to fall flat on her belly. Looking back to the convoy of cars and trucks, she saw several of them backing away. In the back of a few of the pickups, figures were crouched and spraying lead from their automatic weapons.

  Gunfire was returned from the trees as the people that had been moving to flank this group took very carefully aimed shots. On two separate occasions, a body in the back of one of the trucks spun and fell out and onto the ground.

  The last truck eventually vanished around the bend. Jamie climbed down to Ivan and knelt by his side. “Don’t move.” Looking up at the first person she saw, she yelled, “Go get Sophie. Tell her we have injured here and need her to bring all her people.”

  She looked Ivan over and tried to hide her worry as well as force down the nausea. The arm and leg were both bent in such a grotesque manner that it was almost impossible to look at and not feel her gorge rise. She didn’t know about the leg, but the arm that was busted had bone sticking through the skin. This was very bad.

  A man walked up to Jamie. It took her a moment to recognize him. It was Phillip, the guy who had managed the Domino’s Pizza.

  “Jonathan is dead,” the man muttered and then trudged away, his gaze seeming to see nothing as he kept tripping and stumbling over every little thing his feet contacted.

  A feeling of guilt tried to assert itself, but Jamie forced it away. If these people had already killed the others who had been with Jonathan Patterson, then it is unlikely they intended to ever let the man go.

  At last, Sophie and half a dozen trainees arrived. Sophie went from one injured person to the next as she prioritized them according to severity of injury. When she reached Ivan, her lips pressed tight and she did not meet Jamie’s eyes.

  “Jamie, we will take him from here,” Sophie said and then whispered something to one of her helpers.

  “Don’t jerk me around, Sophie,” Jamie snapped. She got to her feet after easing Ivan’s head from her lap.

  Sophie grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the man as one of her students knelt and produced a syringe. Jamie watched as the man jabbed it into Ivan’s upper thigh and then turned back to the woman who had her arms crossed over her body and her lips pressed so tightly that they were turning white at the edges.

  “He isn’t going to make it, Jamie,” the woman whispered.

  Jamie jerked away. “What the hell are you talking about?” She ignored the heads that all turned her direction. “It’s a busted arm and a busted leg. How is that—?”

  “Nobody has the ability to give him the treatment that he needs. Both of those injuries need surgery. We don’t have the resources, and if we attempt it and fail, that is a lot of medication gone that we can’t afford to lose.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “At the least, that arm need to be pinned together. I don’t have any idea how to do that. It isn’t just a simple break.” Sophie took a breath and forced herself to speak quieter. “He is a high candidate for infection. And the pain he would endure…there is just nothing that I can do.”

  “But what about all the stuff we brought back from the hospital?” Jamie pressed.

  “Just his injuries alone would put an incredible dent in our supplies. I’m sorry, Jamie. The best we can do is send him off peacefully.”

  It took a few seconds for the meaning of those last words to sink in. Sophie had just started away and so Jamie had to lunge after her, grab her arm, and spin her around.

  “Don’t you dare!”

  “It’s already done, Jamie. There was enough morphine in that syringe to send him to a peaceful and pain free death.”

  Jamie turned and looked down at Ivan. The man’s eyes were shut, but the wince of pain that had etched his face just a few moments ago was already gone. He really looked like he was just drifting off to a sleep.

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to demand that something be done, but her rational mind was already telling her to let him go. She walked back to the man and knelt beside him. Taking his hand, she decided that he at least deserved to not be alone in his final minutes.

  She prayed softly as she waited. It was only a few moments later when she felt the man take one final breath, and then let go with a long, slow exhale. She reached down and checked the carotid for his pulse just to be sure and then got to her feet.

  She was still trying to decide what to do when a young girl, in her early teens at the most, jogged up to her. The girl had a busted lip and one eye was swollen almost shut. It took her a few seconds to realize why the girl would be present—the junior high kids were all part of the detail that put up the barbed wire and helped roll the logs in place to seal up the trains so that zombies could not get through.

  “One of them is alive,” the girl reported. “Mr. Deese says you should come.”

  ***

  Stephen moved back when the massive woman revealed that she was wired with explosives. That had been something he did not understand before the zombie apocalypse. What in the world could make a person think there was any upside to blowing yourself up as a form of attack. You would never know if you had been successful or not.

  He noticed both Ivan and Jamie actually move closer. The gunshot caused him to flinch and duck down. He looked up to see the woman drop to her knees…and then the explosion came. He was suddenly flat on his back staring up at the cloudless sky.

  His ears rang for a moment and it took him a few seconds to get to his feet. When he looked around, he saw that most of the damage had actually been done to the convoy that the big woman had been a part of. Still, there were plenty of folks on his side that looked to be injured.

  The gunfight erupted and he desperately wanted to use one of his own explosives, but he did not feel confident that he would not take out some of his own people in the resulting blast. Drawing his Beretta, he returned fire as the survivors of the convoy made an uncoordinated retreat.

  Once the last vehicle vanished around the corner, he scanned the scene. Movement in the wreckage of one of the smoldering trucks on Norman Street got his attention. There looked to be plenty of people tending to the wounded, so he took off at a jog for this potential survivor.

  He reached a small Toyota pickup and saw the passenger trying to free herself from the shoulder harness. She had to be in shock which would explain why she could not understand how the piece of metal that was pinning her to the seat was her actual problem.

  Stephen moved over to her side of the truck and grabbed the door. He had to give it a few yanks to get it open, but at last it came free with a terrible groan of metal. The woman’s head lolled over to him, and for just a moment he thought that she might be one of the u
ndead. Her eyes were bloodshot, but they were red.

  “That blast really fucked you up,” he quipped as he pulled his knife and cut away her seat belt.

  He gave the scene a close inspection. After a moment, he decided that he could not think of any way to get her out other than to yank that piece of metal free.

  “This is gonna hurt,” he cautioned just as he grabbed the end of the piece of metal and pulled it out as fast as he could.

  The woman groaned and her eyes rolled back in her head as she slipped from consciousness. Removing his glove, he checked her pulse before continuing. No sense in dragging a zombie out of the truck, he reasoned.

  He pulled her free and inspected her as much as he dared and then produced a piece of clothesline from a pouch on his belt. Once he had her wrists tied, he stood up and waved over one of the kids that appeared to be standing around unsure of what to do or how to help.

  “Hey, kid, go tell Chief Potter and Mayor Burns that I got us a prisoner,” he called.

  “Where are they?” the girl asked, looking around as if she expected the pair to be hovering above her head.

  “They were on the green train car over there.” Stephen pointed. “Maybe start in that general area.”

  The girl wandered away looking confused. Not for the first time, Stephen wondered if maybe the next generation had a shot at survival. Of course he’d had those thoughts before the zombie apocalypse; he gave them even less chance now.

  At last he spotted Jamie headed his way. She looked like somebody had just shot her puppy.

  “Chief Potter didn’t make it,” she said in response to his questioning expression.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “We can’t keep taking hits like that.”