by J. Thorn
I waited, hidden in the brush, watching and listening. Even though I knew the world had changed it really didn’t hit me completely until that moment. I was on the edge of a major city with probably the busiest airport in the world, and the night was primeval quiet. There was the sound of crickets, owls and other nocturnal animals, but there wasn’t a single modern human noise to be heard. No big diesel truck slowing on the freeway, no rap music blasting way too loud from a car that probably cost less than the stereo system in it, no sounds of airplanes, nothing. Just the quiet that had been here hundreds of years ago.
Refocusing on the road I took my time scanning the pavement and the opposite tree line. I didn’t see anything and the only sounds were small nocturnal animals moving in the underbrush. After a full fifteen minutes of watching I decided to move. Drawing my knife I stepped out of the woods and started walking along a narrow strip of mown grass that separated the tree line from the edge of the asphalt. My steps were nearly silent to my own ears so I knew the sound wasn’t carrying more than a few feet. My rifle was slung tight under my left arm, ready for use, as I approached the top of the rise. Slowing my pace I eventually dropped to first my knees then my belly to crawl the last few feet to the crest so that I didn’t create a silhouette on top of the rise. I had to worry about more than just the infected.
A couple of hundred yards down the road the truck sat sideways on the pavement, gleaming faintly in the moonlight. I was relieved to note that the doors were closed, so at least the infected hadn’t had easy access to make a meal out of Dog. Unfortunately there were close to fifty infected, both males and females, surrounding the truck and in the open bed.
Different plans swirled through my head and were quickly discarded. I couldn’t take on this many infected single handed. If they had all been males, perhaps, but even then I would have to use the rifle and the sound would draw every infected within a half mile radius. I needed to find a way to draw them all away from the truck so I could make a mad dash and rescue Dog.
I was concentrating so hard that I almost failed to note the sounds of shuffling foot steps behind me. Spinning around I saw a large male only a few feet away. Damn it! Either I was slipping in my old age or he was one stealthy son of a bitch. I launched off the ground, leading with the Ka-Bar as he lurched towards me, mouth open as he started to let out a gurgling snarl.
Coming off the ground I drove upwards with my legs, the blade held straight out in my right hand like a spear. The tip met the soft tissue under his chin and I kept shoving until it punched through his mouth and up into his brain. It was like turning off a light switch. A strong, animated opponent suddenly went as limp as a sack of rice and collapsed. Unfortunately he collapsed on top of me and pushed me to the ground, covering me with blood.
Cursing silently I shoved the corpse off of me and pulled the knife out of his head with a slightly nauseating sucking noise. I wiped the blade on his clothes, but couldn’t do anything about the sticky blood that coated my hand, arm and chest. It would have to wait until I got back to the lake and swam back out to the boat.
Crouching, I scanned the area and it appeared clear. It had seemed clear earlier but this big fucker had surprised me and almost ruined my evening. Making a mental note to keep scanning my immediate surroundings very frequently, I turned my attention back to the truck. It didn’t look like any of the infected had noted the brief scuffle. Good. Now, how to distract them long enough to silently run two hundred yards, get Dog out of the truck then disappear into the woods without unwanted company.
An idea took shape, I tried and found about a dozen holes in the plan, but couldn’t come up with anything better. I began digging through the other waterproof bag, while scanning my surroundings. Inside were three reactive targets that I had grabbed when I looted the sporting goods store.
Reactive targets, also called exploding targets, are a binary explosive. They are plastic containers about the size of a squat pickle jar that contain ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminum in separate packets. When the two substances are mixed and the container is struck with a high velocity rifle slug they react very violently and create a very loud blast and lots of smoke. They don’t burn, so no worries about setting the forest on fire. My problem was how to shoot them with my rifle to get them to detonate without giving away my location to the infected.
Remembering something I’d been taught in the military I started scouting along the roadside. It took nearly half an hour but I finally found what I was looking for. I had collected two 2 liter plastic bottles, Pepsi and Mountain Dew if it matters, and one large Arrowhead plastic water bottle.
An instructor I’d known at Fort Bragg had called these Hillbilly Silencers. Put the muzzle of your weapon into the mouth of the bottle, tape it on good and tight, and you had a one use, poor man’s sound suppressor that would reduce the report of the rifle firing by almost 80%. The down side was that each bottle only worked for one shot as it would get pretty well torn up by the bullet and the gasses expanding out of the muzzle of the weapon. If you needed a second or third quiet shot you had to take the time to remove the remains of the current bottle and tape a new one on in its place.
My hope was that the bottle would reduce the report of my rifle enough for the sound not to carry the 200 yards to the infected, or at least not to carry well enough for them to identify my position. Pulling the plastic tabs on each of the containers that kept the two ingredients separated during shipping and storage I shook them to get them ready, then placed each one back in the waterproof bag. Shouldering the bag, I crept back into the woods.
My plan was to work my way past the infected and place the targets on the side of the road about 100 yards beyond the truck. I would then return to my current position and put a round into the targets, hoping the resulting explosion and smoke would draw all the infected away from the truck. There were several holes in that plan.
First; I had to make my way silently through 300 yards of forest, place the targets, and then retrace my path without alerting the infected.
Second; assuming I successfully placed the targets and made it back I then had three tries to make a 300 yard shot in the dark. Granted, the target containers were fluorescent orange, but they weren’t significantly larger than my fist in profile. I would have three opportunities at best before I ran out of Hillbilly Silencers.
Third; I was counting on the plastic bottles to muffle the report of my rifle enough to not draw infected to my position, and…
Fourth; the infected had to be attracted to the explosion in sufficient numbers to allow me relatively free access to the truck.
Oh, and the Fifth; I had to get to the truck, get Dog out, and disappear without being spotted. I was confident I could easily outdistance the males, but if several females got on my trail they would run me to ground very quickly. And they were damn STRONG.
There were probably about a dozen more problems with my plan that ran through my head as I worked through the brush, but I put them aside so I could concentrate on noise discipline and scanning for any infected that might be loitering in the trees.
Twenty minutes later I had covered the 200 yards and was parallel with the truck. In the faint moonlight I counted 50 infected around and on the truck, then quit counting and guessed the number was close to 70. About fifteen of them were females. More than enough to form a hunting pack, run me down and rip me to shreds. I was glad to note that the wire mesh I had covered all the truck’s glass with was still intact. Other than scared, hungry and dehydrated, Dog should be OK.
Moving slower because of my proximity to the infected I kept on, taking another twenty minutes to go the final hundred yards. Stopping on a small hump in the terrain I belly crawled to the shoulder of the road and placed the targets on the edge of the asphalt. Every movement was slow and deliberate, bringing sweat out as I concentrated on not making any noise. The mosquitoes that had found me in the forest had stayed with me and the only positive news was that malaria and yellow fever didn
’t exist in Georgia. Regardless, I’d look like a pin cushion for a few days.
Targets in place, I retreated to the trees and paused to check them out. Each container was fluorescent orange and nearly glowed in the weak moonlight. I had placed them one on top of another, making a short tower, trying to give myself a larger target. I also hoped the impact from one target detonating would cause a sympathetic detonation in the other two for a really spectacular BOOM, but I had no idea if that would work.
Over an hour later I was back on the rise where I had started, staring down the road. Clouds were scudding across the moon and there was almost no light, and I couldn’t spot the targets. The sky looked like it would clear off soon, so I sat back, drank some water, waited and watched.
Sometime later a raccoon ambled out of the trees a few yards away. He stopped, looked at me, stood on his hind legs to sniff the air then quickly vanished back into the forest. I’m sure he could smell the infected, but didn’t know if the smell of them or my infected blood soaked shirt was what had sent him scurrying off. I didn’t waste too much time thinking about it as the clouds finally moved on and the moon came back out with what seemed like more intensity than before.
I had already prepped the rifle with the Pepsi bottle, and had the Mountain Dew and Arrowhead bottles sitting there ready to go. The Pepsi bottle was held in place with a couple of wraps of duct tape, yes it’s indispensable even in the apocalypse, and I had already wrapped a length of tape around the mouths of the two spare bottles to get them ready to be used.
Rolling onto my belly I laid the rifle over the top of the rise and scanned with its low power combat scope for the targets. I was getting concerned when I couldn’t find them, but finally spotted the bright orange plastic. I took a deep breath and slowly let it out through my nose. This would be one hell of a shot. 300 yards on a target less than eleven inches tall and five inches wide. Easy shot with a rifle set up with a bi-pod and high power scope, but I didn’t have either. I was relying on years of shooting that started with targeting coyotes in the West Texas desert when I was only twelve years old.
I spared a glance at the truck, but there was nothing new there. Same swarm of infected paying attention only to the meal inside the cab that they couldn’t get to. Looking around, I checked the area behind me and found it clear of threats. Back to the rifle I pulled the stock in tight to my shoulder, pressed my cheek into place and acquired the target. I held high, knowing that the 5.56 mm round would drop about an inch of vertical distance for every hundred yards of horizontal distance traveled. At 300 yards that made for a 3 inch drop, so I aimed at the top target. It was a calm night with no wind, so I had no excuses to not get a hit.
Another deep breath, exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger as my exhale stopped. The rifle made a strange popping noise that sounded like a combination of a bongo drum and snare drum, but not much louder than if I had clapped my hands together. The bottom and most of the sides of the Pepsi bottle blew out. The targets didn’t detonate. Shit.
A quick check of the infected around the truck and I saw a couple of females that seemed to be looking around, but the Hillbilly Silencer seemed to have done the trick. The problem was I had no idea where my bullet went. Don’t know if I was high, low, left or right.
As quietly as I could I stripped the Pepsi bottle off and replaced it with the Mountain Dew bottle and smoothed down the tape to hold it in place. I re-sighted on the target, held slightly higher this time and aimed a couple of degrees off to the left. Again, deep breath, exhale, fire.
No hit, and this time the bottle didn’t work as well. Thinner plastic? Who knows? I checked the infected at the truck and there were now several females standing away from the pack looking in my general direction. They obviously weren’t sure I was there or they would already be charging, but I was on borrowed time.
Third bottle on the rifle, aim high and right, deep breath, exhale, fire. Nothing. I ripped the bottle off the end of the rifle as I watched half a dozen females start moving in my direction. Not running yet, but moving too fast for my comfort.
Fuck it. I stripped off my shirt and wound it tightly around the muzzle of the rifle. It wouldn’t work as well as the bottles, but the fabric would suppress the muzzle flash and knock down a good amount of the report. Aim center mass on the target, adjust up a couple of degrees, deep breath, exhale and fire.
23
BOOM!
The detonation was far louder than I expected. I felt the concussion in my chest and a huge cloud of white smoke marked where the targets had been. I ripped my attention away from the smoke to check on the infected. It looked like the diversion was working. The pack had abandoned the truck and was moving towards the smoke cloud. All but two females, that is, who were still moving towards me. They must have either seen my movement as I fired or heard enough of the rifle report to keep their attention.
The pack had cleared the truck by a good ten yards when I yanked the singed shirt off the end of the rifle barrel, slung the rifle, grabbed my pack and headed to get Dog. The two females spotted me as soon as I stood up and broke into a run directly at me. I kept the rifle slung, afraid to use it and alert the rest of the pack to my location. Instead I drew the Ka-Bar and moved to meet them.
One of the females looked to have been in her late teens to early twenties and was in good shape. She was completely nude as she ran towards me and even in the heat of battle my mind wondered what she had been doing at the moment she got infected. The other was older, probably in her forties and grossly out of shape. She was still coming fast, but the younger one quickly outpaced her.
I met her about half way to the truck, her at a flat out run, me slowing to a trot so I could move laterally. She leapt at me and I spun out of her grasp, completing the spin and jamming the knife into her lower back, directly into a kidney. Now, a normal human with an eight inch knife wound to the kidney would go down and stay down, but she wasn’t normal. She twisted around and almost pulled the knife from my grasp.
I spared a glance at the fat one who was still twenty yards away but closing fast. I needed to end this quickly before I had two of them on me and we drew the attention of the rest of the pack. Stepping inside the younger infected’s reach I slammed the hilt of the knife into her forehead with enough force to snap her head back and knock her to the ground. Using my own momentum I followed her down, right knee landing on her chest. I both heard and felt her breast bone and ribs snap when I came down with my 230 pounds. Reversing the knife in my grip I stabbed into her eye and sank the blade to the hilt. Just like earlier all animation left her body instantly.
Jumping back to my feet, I turned as the older female arrived with a snarl. I sidestepped and swept her legs so that she fell face first to the pavement. I was on her back in a second and drove the knife into the soft spot at the base of the skull. Another instant kill. Damn, but I was finally getting benefit from all the training Uncle Sam had put me through. I shook my head at myself, wondering why thoughts like that went through my mind in the heat of combat.
I cleaned the blade on the back of her shirt and checked on the pack. Several figures, most likely female, were already at the cloud of smoke that was still hanging in the air, the bulk of the pack still moving in that direction. They seemed to be completely focused on the diversion and the truck was clear for the moment.
Running, I covered the last fifty yards as fast as I could, bending over to make sure there weren’t any surprises under the truck before I stepped up to the door. Grabbing the driver side door handle I yanked the door open and immediately heard a loud growl from deep within the darkness inside the cab.
“Dog,” I mumbled in a low voice. “It’s ok. Let’s go.”
Before I got the last words out my mouth he was standing on the driver’s seat, tail wagging so hard that his whole body quivered. I couldn’t help but take the time to rub his head with both hands, surprised at the sense of relief I felt that he was OK. Stepping back I checked on the pack’s stat
us and Dog jumped to the ground and quickly trotted to the back of the truck where he lifted his leg and peed on the rear tire. Immediate need taken care of, he trotted back to me and pressed his head against my hip.
The pack was still distracted and moving away. I headed directly for the tree line, Dog at my side. We made it out of the open and into the shelter of the forest without being spotted. I relaxed half a notch, thinking we were clear of the imminent danger and could quietly make our way to the lake. That mistake almost cost me my life, and very likely would have if not for Dog.
He let out a low growl just as a female screamed and leapt at me from no more than five feet away. Dog leapt and met her in the air, knocking her down and fell on her and started tearing at her throat. I was immobilized for half a second then stepped forward and rammed the knife home in the infected’s ear. Dog stopped attacking as soon as the corpse went limp.
Screams from the direction the pack had gone told me that we had been heard. Time to go. I set off deeper into the woods at an oblique angle from the road, making more noise than I cared to, but speed mattered right now. After what I estimated to be fifty yards I changed direction, ran another thirty and stopped. Behind us were screams and the sounds of bodies crashing through the underbrush, but it all sounded like it was moving parallel to us, not toward us.
I looked down at Dog whose ears were at full alert. He stared in the direction of the screams and noise, but he wasn’t acting like we were about to be attacked. Maybe we’d managed to elude them in the woods. Quietly we started moving towards the lake again. Behind us there weren’t sounds of pursuit and the screams slowly died out. I only hoped that meant the infected were not on our trail, not that they’d found us and were sneaking through the woods to attack.
I didn’t have any idea if the infected were capable of a level of reasoning that included knowing to stealthily track prey before attacking. For that matter, was it even reasoning or was it instinct? Again I caught myself over analyzing things. I didn’t care why they might do something, I just cared if they could or couldn’t do something.