It was bedlam in the front of the RV. Phil and Bryan were whacking away at the screaming infected trying to clamber over the seats to get at them. They were doing a lot of damage and had put several of the infected out of commission, but it looked like more may have shown up. Body parts and blood. Screeching and war cries. Randy waded into the mess to stand with his friends who were risking their lives for him and his children.
It was like using hedge clippers to try and chip away at a hedge made of really thick branches that were waving in the wind and trying to grab you. Randy swung at every infected he could reach with the hatchet. He pulled his arm back each time praying none of the infected had been able to get their teeth into him. They held the line fighting like that for what felt like forever. Then there was quiet.
They ducked back behind the seat breathing hard. Covered in blood. Hearts pounding in their chests. Each of them taking the time to check their arms and hands to make sure they didn’t have any suspicions looking cuts. Kelly came up and poured peroxide all over them. They had no idea if that helped or not, but it probably wouldn’t hurt. Weightlifting gloves and long sleeve shirts had become all the rage among the survivors who constantly found themselves battling the infected in close quarters.
Bryan slowly stood up to look out the front window to see if the path was clear now. They’d obscured the view with a layer of the bloody dead, so he had to stand up on his tiptoes to get a good look. He stayed up for a few seconds then squatted back down. They all looked towards him hopefully preparing to leave.
Bryan held up his finger in a shushing gesture then held up both hands with all his fingers held up twice. It was their silent communication signal for a buttload of Zombies. Randy sat down on the body of the dead girl. Looking back behind him he signaled to Kelly to keep everyone extremely quiet. She took that signal to mean they were surrounded, and the slightest noise could get them all killed. She picked up Doreen and sat with her in her lap stroking her hair.
Tears of frustration did their best to escape his eyes. Randy wanted nothing more than to jump over the seat and mow down every Zombie in their path. They didn’t have time for this. After everything they’d been through, he wasn’t going to let them die this close to the finish line. He could see the desperation in Bryan and Phil as well. Phil looked at them then crawled carefully back to where his pack was. He pulled out a layer of clothes and junk before pulling out a plastic grocery bag. He crawled back over and handed the bag to Bryan.
Bryan opened up the bag and his eyes got a little bigger. He turned the bag so Randy could see it. Kelly was looking over curiously, but Randy grabbed the bag before she could see what was in it. He pretended he hadn’t noticed her looking. What the men in the front of the RV were now thinking was not a plan that Kelly would endorse in a million years. It was a desperate last attempt to survive. It was going to be loud and bloody and completely stupid. It was the Tim the Tool Man Taylor Zombie escape plan.
They were surrounded. They had a bag full of grenades. They’d toss them and see what happened. The quiet takedown hadn’t worked so now they were going to go in the complete opposite direction. Kelly saw all three of them pulling grenades out and getting ready to throw them. Randy turned and shrugged his shoulders.
“I love you all.” Randy said loudly and clearly.
He pulled the pin and tossed the first grenade as far out as he could. Phil and Bryan followed suit. The infected had rushed the RV on hearing Randy speak out loud. That added layers of Zombie flesh to the protection they were already getting from the seats in the front of the RV. It was an unintended consequence of what Randy had done but love literally protected them in this case.
The grenades exploded sending metal fragments into the tightly packed flesh in front of the RV. Knowing this would attract the other infected to the front of the RV they paused for a few seconds after the first round of grenades exploded then repeated the exercise. The muffled thumps of the grenades going off told them the plan may actually be working. They still had enough grenades left for one more round. They counted to three and did it again. They were all deaf at this point anyway so why not. They were going to have to make a run for it and the grenades were heavy.
The final salvo of grenades went off. The three men jumped over the corpse covered front seats and slithered through the mountain of dead and wounded. They shot anything they saw that was still moving to avoid getting bitten and established a perimeter quickly. Guns were out. Noise didn’t matter anymore. Violence and motion were going to get them out of this. They’d been humping pounds of ammunition around the country for forever. Now was the time to use every ounce of it.
Kelly and the girls climbed out behind them. Bryan and Phil were shooting the infected that were continuing to show up to investigate all the noise.
“We’ve got to go!” Bryan yelled. He may have meant to just say it loudly, but it came out a scream since he was pretty much deaf at this point.
Randy saw Caitlyn looking at the men shooting their rifles and nodded at her. They weren’t trying to be quiet any more. It was time to rock. Weapons out they blasted their way down the street. Single shots were taken as much as possible. Center of mass was the rule of the day. The infected may still be alive and snapping at them but they were doing it from the ground where they could easily be avoided. The ones that kept coming got rewarded with extra metal to the head.
Doreen was riding Kelly’s arm with her eyes buried in her mom’s shoulder. Kelly had her pistol in her other hand and a ferocious look in her eyes. A Valkyrie protecting her young. Myriah, Zoey, Caitlyn and Ali were moving along together. Alternatively holding hands with the littles in between blasting away at any infected that got too close. It was getting to be too much. The noise they were making was attracting a lot of infected. If there hadn’t already been a concerted effort to clear the city out, they would’ve been overwhelmed and devoured before they’d made it a single city block.
They broke out of the street they’d been running down and into the parking lot of a shopping center. They ran across the lot towards the broken windows in the front of a large clothes store. Randy and Caitlyn scooping up Zoey and Ali to allow everyone to run flat out. The crowd of infected chasing them was now well over a hundred strong. Without skipping a step, they all made the leap through the broken store front and sprinted for the back of the store.
Running through the back they went out the door leading to the loading dock and ran straight into the ditch on the other side of the concrete. They ran up the ditch on the other side fighting their way through weeds and briars and mud. Behind them a Zombie got lucky and opened the door by running straight into the push bar. That one fell down but a string of other infected rushed out the door catching sight of them fleeing into the ditch. The screeches picked up and were answered from all around.
Randy led them across the road and underneath a yellow barrier blocking the access to a road into a park with overgrown baseball fields in it. They ran up the narrow road as fast as they could all move. In the rear Bryan and Phil thought about switching to blades and bats but hesitated on seeing there were still a good fifty Zombies in pursuit. They turned and began firing at the leaders of the group. They were jogging backwards protecting the rest of the group from being overrun.
A small maintenance building up ahead had a carport with golf carts chained to it. Randy ran that way hoping they’d be able to free the carts and use those to outrun their pursuers. Behind them he heard the team go full auto on their pursuers. That wasn’t a good sign. He set Zoey down and started banging away on the chains trying to free the carts. A minute later Bryan joined him. Phil was standing at the edge of the concrete pad slinging a steady stream of high-powered lead at their pursuers.
“These don’t work!” Bryan yelled. He’d hopped in the golf cart to see if the thing would even run. He didn’t want to die trying to unchain them if they didn’t even work.
Randy stopped chopping at the chain and stood up lost as to wh
at to do.
A white pickup truck sporting the logo of the local parks and recreation crew came around the corner with Kelly at the wheel. Ali, Doreen and Myriah were sitting up front on the bench seat with her. Everyone else immediately ran to jump in the back. Bryan and Phil stayed back to cover them while Randy helped Caitlyn and Zoey get in.
Zombies were encroaching from every direction when Randy banged on the roof and yelled for Kelly to drive. Phil was still only hallway in the bed of the truck with Phil and Caitlyn holding on to him to keep him from flying out as Kelly floored the accelerator to get them away from the infected coming at them from every direction. The pickup flew off the concrete drive and tore through the overgrown baseball field as Kelly navigated away from the Zombies. Driving dangerously fast through the weeds without being able to see if they may be about to hit something, she aimed for the dirt service road on the other side of the field.
Phil had just gotten tugged into the bed of the truck when Kelly jumped a ditch completely obscured by weeds. Hitting the hidden ditch rocketed the truck across the small service road in a completely uncontrolled skid that ended with them slammed up sideways against a huge oak tree. Phil was thrown out of the truck. Everyone else had managed to hang on although they all got banged up.
Phil hopped to his feet and ran for the pickup truck. Bryan and Randy were up and shooting anything that looked vaguely Zombie like in the general area to cover him. Due to the crash their accuracy was seriously suspect, but Phil made it back into the truck bed without being bitten or shot which was the ultimate goal. He jumped in and Randy beat on the roof again. Kelly pressed down on the accelerator, but they didn’t move. The engine revved up loudly and the wheels spun like crazy.
Phil and Bryan jumped out and began pushing the truck. Randy joined them after handing Caitlyn his rifle. Caitlyn stood in the back shooting at anything she saw running towards them. The three men pushed hard enough to get the truck levered off the massive root it’d been stuck on. Caitlyn lost her footing and fell off the back of the truck. She fell while still firing at the infected she’d seen coming through the field behind them. One of her stray bullets smashed into Phil’s shoulder as he pushed the truck.
Phil went down on the ground holding his shoulder. Randy and Bryan danced around trying to catch Caitlyn without also eating a bullet from the rifle she was still firing as she fell. They caught her and threw her back in the truck. Once they had her taken care of, they bent down and helped Phil get his wounded butt up in the truck. He was clutching his shoulder and giving Caitlyn an annoyed look. At least he was until he turned to sit down and saw the six freshly dead infected Caitlyn must’ve shot while falling off the back of the truck.
Kelly drove down the service road swerving to avoid the infected until it shot them out on a paved road once again. Infected were everywhere. Kelly floored it to take them through a gas station parking lot onto another street to escape the herd closing in around them. The truck died. She desperately tried to restart it, but it was dead. They rolled into the side of the gas station and came to a stop. Bryan yelled for everyone to get out. He ran over to the front door of the gas station expecting it to be locked. Turning the handle on a whim the door opened up for him.
Bryan flung open the door and turned to shoot the infected coming at them while everyone else ducked inside the gas station. Bryan heard shots from behind him that told him the gas station had some infected in it already. Looking up he saw a metal screen that could be pulled down to cover the front door. He pulled it down. A second after he pulled it down the infected started slamming into it from the other side. Randy and Phil joined him to try to figure out how to secure the damned thing. It was supposed to be locked down from the outside. The three of them squatted down to hold it in place manually. The infected screamed and slammed into the metal covering inches in front of their faces.
Inside the store Kelly stepped over the dead bodies of the three they’d killed to secure the store. She found some novelty flashlights near the counter and handed them out to the girls so they could see. She went to check on the men and saw the predicament they were in. They were going to have to sit there holding the metal screen to keep it from being forced up. It was a battle they’d eventually lose to the massive mob outside.
She sat down behind Randy and put her arms around him. Kissing him softly on the neck she told him she loved him. They’d made a good run for it, but it seemed like this was going to be how their story ended. The pounding on the metal screen was starting to bend it. Hands were being shoved in the space on the bottom from the other side. Kelly took a knife and sawed the fingers off the hands being shoved under, but it was a losing battle. Caitlyn and Myriah joined her in trying to slow the infected down enough for a miracle to happen.
The metal screen rocked backwards with the force of a massive explosion. Another blast followed shortly afterwards. The sound of a large caliber machine gun firing filled the air. Kelly threw her body across the girls. The metal screen warped enough that a foot worth of space was now open. The men in the front fought against the sudden incursion of the infected trying to crawl in and get at them. The incursion slowed then stopped as the sounds of weapons and yelling in the parking lot heated up.
“Don’t shoot me! We’re here to rescue you!” Someone yelled from the outside. They kept yelling it until Bryan acknowledged they wouldn’t shoot them.
A tunnel was cleared through the Zombie corpses and a set of hands appeared under the metal screen. The yell of please don’t shoot me was heard again then a man in full battle rattle yanked up the screen.
“About time you guys got here.” The badly scarred man said before he was charged by Caitlyn who gave him a giant hug and kiss. They fell to the ground into a small pile of chopped off fingers submerged in a puddle of blood.
Laughing and smiling Kyler stood up holding Caitlyn’s hand and led them out under the bent metal security shutter to the parking lot where a team of men with some serious weaponry were keeping an entire herd at bay. They piled into the helicopter and were quickly airborne. The helicopter bathed in the orangish glow of the setting sun as they flew in the direction of the waiting carrier.
Chapter 36: We Attack at Dusk
The apocalypse had turned the laws of warfare upside down. Luckily for the Brotherhood Forrest was a marine. That meant he was trained to overcome, improvise and adapt. Minutes after promising Krantz they’d have the carrier making steam for the open ocean by lunchtime he’d realized that wasn’t going to be the optimal approach. Not if one of their objectives was to save as many of their troops and gear as possible for future assaults to expand into other regions. He realized he had a valid excuse to delay the fighting for at least a day.
On the first status update call he let Krantz know he was delaying going live until dusk. In case they were being monitored neither of them brought up the fact that this would give the settlements more time to get the carrier out to sea. Instead they focused on devising tactics that would destroy the settlement army while preserving as much of their own army as possible. Forrest already suspected Krantz was in silent collusion with him on trying to protect the settlement civilians. The way he danced around the planning session with Forrest pretty much confirmed it.
All that meant was if something went wrong Sam would have them both executed. It did make it slightly easier for Forrest thinking he may have some high-level backup for what he was trying to do. Not that he really knew what he was going to be able to accomplish. He was walking a tightrope over a pool full of crocodiles. He knew now that at least he had a safety line, but it was fragile and the man holding it was probably drunk. Best case he was able to delay everything long enough for the settlements to get their act together and sail away. No muss no fuss.
It didn’t appear that was going to be happening though. At this point it was pretty much down to a countdown. When the sun set all bets would be off. The day would be spent planning and getting the artillery and other gear into the positio
ns it needed to be in when it was time to attack. He’d already issued the orders to that effect. Each major position had access to a radio. The commands wouldn’t be secure, but it wasn’t like the settlements would have a team of code breakers either. If they happened to break the simple code being used all they’d be able to use the information for was figuring out that the men surrounding their position were going to keep firing at them and moving forward.
The airport was overrun by the infected around noon. A few men who hadn’t left soon enough were caught out in the open and killed. Inside the command hangar everything continued on like normal. Forrest spent the day monitoring the movement of his troops and reviewing the feeds of live video from the drones they had over the city and port. The large drones capable of firing weapons were shot down if they ventured too close to the carrier but the smaller drones were left alone. This told Forrest the carrier was reserving it’s defense systems for serious threats.
There was frantic activity on board the dredging scows. The ocean for miles around them was cloudy from all the sand being blown up as they worked on cutting a channel that would guarantee the carrier wouldn’t get stuck. To all appearances it looked like the settlement folk were really trying to get the hell out of dodge. They just needed more time.
That suspicion was confirmed when a message was hurriedly delivered to Forrest. He scanned it then read the transcript out loud to Krantz. Starting in the afternoon they’d stopped bothering to disconnect the video conference sessions between updates. The crux of it was that the commander of the settlement forces, a captain named Hartfield, was letting them know he didn’t want to fight them. They were preparing to weigh anchor as soon as the channel was dredged enough for them to get out. He’d happily cede them the territories the settlement had claimed in exchange for them giving him another few hours to sail away. The message also informed them that there were thousands of innocent civilians on board.
Zombies! (Book 7): Still Standing Page 30