Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2)

by Dulaney, C.

  “I’ve got a hangover, Warden. Don’t push me.”

  If the folks standing around the hall heard what I said, they gave no indication of it. Michael’s men, on the other hand, did. They had their pistols drawn as well, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Jake and Mia squeeze themselves into the circle. This was it. The turning point of the game. Either the Warden and his second would back down, or they wouldn’t. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen if they didn’t, but I was sure I’d like it. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to find out.

  “Michael, this is Solice. Respond,” a voice came urgently over the radio clipped to Michael’s pocket.

  The sudden interruption made us all jump. Harvel kept me locked in his glare, leaving no room for misunderstanding. Given the chance, I knew he’d choke the life out of me with his bare hands.

  “Hell,” Michael spat behind me, then louder into the radio: “Go ahead, John.”

  Silence.

  “John, go ahead.”

  “They’re here.”

  The tense hostility surrounding everyone in the room quickly gave way to measured panic.

  “Alright, people!” Michael barked. “You know what the plan is, you know your assignments. Let’s get to it!” He stepped up and pushed the Warden back with a firm hand to his chest.

  “I suggest you go back to your office, Harvel.”

  The Warden’s face flushed a deep red and his lips curled back. Finally realizing his days of dogging the good people of Blueville were coming to an end, he turned on his heel and strode out of the cafeteria.

  “You too, asshole,” Michael said to Harvel’s man.

  The guy took a deep breath and held it, seemingly trying to decide whether to fight us or to go running after his boss, then set his mind on the latter and took off. I let out my own pent-up breath and lowered my head.

  Definitely getting too old for this shit.

  “C’mon, we got some deadheads to kill,” Jake said, taking my elbow to lead me away, Mia and Gus on my heels.

  I nodded a quick thank you to Michael and his men, then to the various people who smiled and patted my back as I left the cafeteria. I was slightly ashamed by how hypocritical I was behaving, nodding my thanks for their support, all the while thinking, Cowards, every one of you.

  * * *

  “Kelly, I want you to make a quick sweep of the dorm, make sure there are no stragglers, then get to the maintenance garage with the others. The vehicles are loaded and ready, you know what to do if I give the signal—lead the others out the back gate and haul ass away from here, understand?” Michael instructed the young woman.

  They were standing with their heads together in the middle of the courtyard as we made our way to the wall, and it was the first time I noticed the resemblance between the two. I tapped Mia on the arm, motioned towards Michael and Kelly, then turned and walked in their direction.

  “Hey, guys, hold up!” I shouted when Kelly began to leave. I closed the short distance with a quick jog, Mia, Jake, and Gus following curiously, and asked what was going on.

  “Kelly is taking care of the Evac plan, if it comes to that.” Michael was blunt, knowing we wouldn’t fully understand what he meant, but also knowing there wasn’t time to explain. I shook it off and turned my attention to the girl.

  “Okay, well would you take my dog with you? He can’t be on the wall with me, and I don’t want to leave him alone in our room.”

  “Sure, I’d like that,” she said, smiling down at Gus. “Come on, boy, let’s go.” She stood on her toes, kissed Michael quickly on the cheek, then patted Gus and walked off.

  “Thanks,” I called after her. She and Gus strode towards the garage without looking back. Michael sighed and I could literally hear him grinding his teeth.

  “Sister?” Mia asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The same thoughts of family flashed through our heads as the first moans penetrated the prison. Our heads snapped towards the wall at the same time and settled back into the grim reality of the day.

  “Let’s go,” Michael said and led us to the staircase.

  The courtyard had cleared out by this time. The only human activity was on the roofs of the buildings and the wall itself. Even though it was agreed the concentration of snipers needed to be on the wall, it was also agreed that it would be absolute stupidity not to have people on the buildings as well. Of course, this wasn’t the plan Michael and the other logical people of the prison had suggested, but it’s what the Warden had ordered. This much I had learned over the course of the last twelve hours, not counting those which had been spent drinking. If there were more details to the plan, I was not in the loop.

  “John, what’s the situation?” Michael asked once we were up top.

  The three of us stood back from the two men, jaws gaping and faces crinkled in disbelief. You’d think by now there couldn’t be anything left to shock us. But no matter how many times you see a swarm, you simply never get used to the sight and smell of it. And this was the largest swarm we had seen so far.

  What the hell is Harvel thinking? And why the hell are these people following his orders?

  “We’re gonna need more ammo,” Jake said, much more subdued than usual.

  “We’re down here guys, let’s get set up,” Michael said, leading the way.

  John nodded as we passed, more so to me than the others. Michael led us to four empty chairs dead-center of the wall. I recognized a few faces from my short turn at watch before, but most of the men and women were strangers to me. Like everyone in this damn place, I thought as I sat down and adjusted my bipods. Mia and Michael were to my left, Jake sat to my right, and a moaning, writhing horde of dead bastards lumbered a couple hundred yards or so in front of me.

  “This is going to be a disaster.” I heard Mia whisper to herself, staring through her scope. I echoed her sentiment out loud so Michael and every other person on that wall could hear how foolish they were being.

  “This is stupid. There’s no part of this that makes any kind of sense.”

  “So, correct me if I’m wrong, Boss. We’re just supposed to sit up here and shoot the deadheads, right?” Jake asked. “We don’t hafta, ya know, strategically coordinate our attack with the fuckin’ Marines or anything, right?”

  I laughed in spite of myself and wiped the sweat from my forehead with the sleeve of my shirt. The snipers down the line from Jake were laughing as well. That was a good sign we hadn’t stuck a foot in our mouths.

  “Yeah, Jake. As always you are the King of Perspective. Point taken, but answer me this: What the hell are we supposed to do when we run out of ammo?” I watched him bite his lip, fighting for a snappy comeback.

  “Goddamnit, Kasey.” Unable to think of one, he set his crosshairs on the walking dead mosh pit gathering in front of the outer gate.

  * * *

  The first regiments of the swarm took longer than we thought they would to navigate up the hill approaching the prison. So long, in fact, that by the time they broke through the treeline and finally started giving us clear shots, another wave of the runners had caught up and maneuvered through their slower cousins, altering our initial plan a bit more than we would have liked to admit. Especially when those fast bastards began launching themselves at the fence and gate. Granted, it was heavy-gauge steel, built to keep dangerous criminals in. Imagine watching the only thing protecting you from a thousand hungry mouths swaying like a cat with a sock on its head with each fling of a corpse.

  That wasn’t even the worst part.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, or am I having an aneurism?” Mia asked on my left about the same time Jake started laughing his ass off on my right.

  The rest of the snipers up and down the line were breaking into assorted cries of amazement, astonishment, or general bewilderment, which was quickly cut off by a barking order from Big John. The only one still raising hell was Jake, and he was laughing so hard I’m surprised he didn’t shit up his back. I suppos
e I should have been disturbed that the majority of the folks on that wall were amused by the dozen or so midgets that were throwing themselves against the fence. Then again, if one takes into account everything we had been through since Z-Day, all the horror, all the pain, all the little things in between that drove our minds to the limit and beyond, I guess one would find it quite logical.

  “Fuck! Does anyone have a camera!” Jake finally managed to yell.

  Mia piped up next to me and reminded Jake of the ass-thumping she had promised him the day we left for Ohio if just such a thing happened.

  “Oh man, I forgot about that…”

  As for me, I hate to admit that I was caught between absolute terror and the growing sensation my head might explode from the lunacy of the thing. The mini-zombies were dressed as circus clowns. I hate clowns.

  That’s when shit took a very wrong turn: the little berserkers scaled the fence.

  “Take ‘em out!” John’s assertive tone was thankfully reassuring. “Center, fire! Left and right, wait your turn!”

  Ah, finally something I understood. Michael, Mia, myself, Jake, and the sniper next to him opened fire on the now chaotic group of midgets that were racing towards the wall. Half our shots missed, and I cussed under my breath over the waste of ammo, but it couldn’t be helped; I’ve already explained the difficulty of hitting moving targets, especially when they’re hell bent on ripping your throat out.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Mia chanted.

  A few of the mini-zombies had escaped our shots and were racing straight towards the wall gate. There were five of us shooting, and five runners left. I’d say we wasted at least a box of shells between us trying to down the little sonsabitches.

  “Hold your fire!” John finally ordered.

  The little deadheads were at the gate now, pounding, screaming, and throwing themselves against the heavy steel. Everyone was standing and leaning over the ledge to watch, quite a few drawing their pistols but not sure whether to shoot.

  “I said hold your goddamn fire!” John shouted, striding up and down the line.

  My heart thumped in my chest, blood rushing in my ears so loudly it nearly drowned out the screeching coming from directly under me. I glanced back at the outer fence; the slower ones were rhythmically leaning against it, moaning and clawing at us. John laid a hand on my shoulder, successfully scaring the shit out of me.

  “Take those fuckers out,” he said to me. To the rest: “Open fire on the outer fence, remember your assignments!”

  The snipers had been briefed earlier that morning on how to organize their fire. It was basically what I had implemented back in Matias except on a much larger scale. The target was to be split into a pie-formation, as would the snipers on the wall. Those on the left third of the “pie” would fire on the left third of the horde, the center would fire on the center, and the right on the right. Seemed pretty much like common sense, but you’d be surprised how quickly something so simple can be fucked up by trigger-happy fingers.

  I stood there, gripping my rifle with both hands, John’s hand still on my shoulder, and listened to the sounds of fourteen bolts and levers being worked simultaneously. I have to say it was one hell of a rush hearing that, and also quite impressive. The tension level dropped incredibly fast in a matter of seconds, every single sniper on that wall zeroing in on their targets and falling into the zone. It also helped me regain some focus and confidence.

  Here we go.

  Gunfire ripped through the air.

  I gave John a solid nod, then stepped up to the ledge and bent at the waist. Those crazy bastards were still throwing themselves against the gate, though now they were more beaten and bloody than before, their clothes falling to the ground piece by piece. I braced my knees against the ledge and swung my rifle over. I’d just reloaded before John had given the order to hold fire earlier, so I knew I only had enough shells for the number of deadheads below. No pressure to make every shot count. None at all.

  I felt a firm tug on the back of my jeans and knew that someone, probably John, was holding me by my waistline. I leaned a little further and rested the bipods of my rifle against the stone wall.

  Don’t drop your gun, don’t drop your gun.

  I stared down sixty-five feet to the raging midgets on the ground below. To say it was a weird shooting position would be a ridiculous understatement. It would be interesting to see if I could pull it off.

  Confident the hand gripping my jeans wasn’t going to let go, I gripped the forearm of my rifle tightly with my left hand and pulled the butt of the stock firmly into my shoulder. My right hand rested easily around the grip, my index finger and thumb preparing to squeeze off a round. Though the shooting was incessant all around me, at that moment it seemed the rest of the world faded away. My breathing and heartbeat slowed, all I was seeing was the crosshairs in my scope and the target on the other side. I say target because by this time I had stopped thinking of them as zombies or dead people trying to eat me. They were simply targets, no more, no less.

  After completely wrapping myself in cold indifference, I began taking my shots, picking off those squirmy, twisted little shit-asses one by one. All this seemed to drag on for minutes, so long that I wondered how far into the swarm the rest of the snipers had carved. In reality the whole thing lasted only seconds. The next thing I knew, John was pulling me back by the seat of my pants and my rifle was empty.

  “Well done. Now get into position and get to work on the swarm.”

  I knew the adrenaline rush from what I’d just accomplished would threaten my ability to shoot smoothly. While John turned and paced back to his position at the far end, I fell into my chair and took a deep breath. I tried to reload my rifle but my hands were shaking too hard. Mia had just stopped to reload as well, and she noticed I was a tad bent out of shape.

  “Here, get a drink, cool down.” She handed me a bottle of water that had been at her feet.

  I accepted it, twisted the cap off and gulped down a few mouthfuls. The sniper-fire was beginning to slow just a bit and I was reminded of something I’d told my friends back on the rooftop in Matias: “They’re not in a hurry, so neither are we.” The front of the swarm had been thinned considerably and the bodies were piling up in a hurry. At least that provided a sort of barrier between the rest of the deadheads and the fence.

  I also noticed that the snipers, including Jake and Mia, had fallen into a rhythm with one another. While one fired, the next rested and reloaded. It made sense to do it this way, and I was surprised at how natural it seemed to be for them. Once again, common sense won out over panic. There were even coolers filled with drinks and snacks set up every so many feet, and each shooter had an ammo box next to their chair. Small details I had missed before. Now that I had a chance to stop and catch my breath, I realized just how prepared these people really were for a situation like this.

  After finishing off the water, I twisted around in my seat and ran my eyes across the neighboring rooftops. Those lonely shooters looked pretty relaxed, one even had her feet up on part of an air conditioning unit with her hands laced behind her head.

  “Hold your fire!” John suddenly yelled.

  He walked along the wall repeating the order until the only sound floating through the air was the frustrated moaning of zombies coming from just below the crest of the hill north of the prison. My fourteen fellow marksmen had dropped a couple hundred deadheads. Unfortunately that had forced the remainder to halt their march up the hill, and we all knew they were too stupid to go around. They were simply standing out there, just out of sight behind the pile of bodies, all flocked together, moaning. Every so often we would catch a glimpse of a head bobbing back and forth, or an arm waving in the air, but nowhere near enough skull to chance a shot.

  “Well, shit,” Jake commented.

  I seconded that. John had stopped and was talking to Michael, most likely trying to decide what to do next and definitely not wanting the Warden’s input.

  �
�We needed to stop anyway, John. Barrels are getting hot, and we need a break before we burn out,” Michael said.

  John pulled the ball cap from his shaved head and rubbed a hand over it. The tattoos and one huge scar zigzagging the back of his scalp made me wonder if John hadn’t been a prisoner himself pre-Z. He and Michael seemed to be pretty chummy. I suppose that didn’t mean anything either way. The world turning upside down tends to make for strange bedfellows.

  “How are we on ammo?” John asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve only reloaded four times, so I’ve probably got a few hundred shells left. Most likely the same with everyone else, but I can find out.” Michael turned quickly and walked to the far end, then made his way up the line, asking how we were doing on ammunition. Meanwhile John got on the radio and talked to Kelly in the maintenance garage, informing her of the situation and checking on the morale of those just sitting and waiting.

  “And the kids, how’re they holding up?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation.

  This startled me; I never once thought about children living within these walls, besides the one I saw playing with Gus that once, and so far had not gone out of my way to meet anyone else besides Michael and Shirley. The full gravity of our situation finally sunk in once I pieced together all the little bits I’d overheard of this plan.

  The entire population of Blueville was here, in this prison. Well, those who had survived the initial storm on Day One, that is. Of course there were kids here, along with old women, men, folks my age, teenagers, prisoners and former military. I never once stopped to think about any of them, or the struggles they must to have endured, very successfully I might add. It was obvious to me now: this Evac Plan that Kelly was in charge of involved nothing more than keeping all those who were unskilled, too old, or too young to shoot, together in the garage, packed into whatever vehicles the townsfolk had brought here, until such time that John or Michael deemed the situation too dangerous or lost. Then I assumed Kelly would do just as I had overheard Michael telling her to do; lead them out the back gate and as far away as possible. Perhaps to some fall-back location, I wasn’t sure.