“You are just freaking awesome, that’s all,” he said before he swept up our friend’s abandoned machine gun. “And nice goggles, are those night vision?”
“I know and yes, night vision. AWESOME!” I said as I motioned to the glasses with my own grin.
“Where did you get—?” he started.
I waved my hand. “I promise I’ll tell you all about it later, but right now there are a shitload of other guys outside and they want to sort of kill us dead. Well, me dead anyway since they want you for science or something. So let’s boogie, huh?”
He didn’t have to be asked twice. The busted door was not going to be the way to go, though. Outside Kathleen was firing off her machine gun at the soldiers and they were starting to be aware enough now to fire back.
Dave motioned to a side window and I nodded. “Kick it, Zombie Boy.”
He laughed as he did just that. “See, there are advantages to being part zombie.”
“Yeah, that rope thing was awesome,” I admitted as we dove through the hole he’d created in the window.
Unfortunately, there were two guards just outside and both of them raised weapons as we rolled clear of the building.
But Dave hadn’t been playing video games for years without learning something for the effort. He swept his legs toward one guard and tripped him up as he fired off his first shot.
Now Dave will forever tell me that he did this on purpose, but I contend it was all just luck. You see, as guard number one staggered, his shots went wild and he actually shot his own buddy. Between the eyes, no less.
Dave blinked, but he didn’t savor his luck for too long. He couldn’t. Instead, he threw himself on the soldier who he’d tripped and slammed a hard, heavy shot right to his temple, knocking him unconscious with one blow.
“Nice,” I admitted before I motioned him behind me and crouched low as I stared into the night. “Stay behind me,” I whispered. “I can see in the dark.”
He grabbed the back of my shirt and did as I asked, staying right on my ass (though he did snatch a pistol from my belt before he did it… almost like he thought I might not finish up this “save the day” superhero shit! The nerve). We crept away from the house, inch by inch.
Only of course it wasn’t going to be so easy.
We were almost to the base of the hill where we could climb up and I could “distract” the guards by using a missile launcher on the shack when I stopped.
We weren’t alone. At the top of the hill were figures moving in the dark. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t rebels.
They were zombies.
Let go. It won’t be as bad as you think. Maybe.
Oh, fuck an elf,” I muttered as I stared at the milling zombie horde.
Darkness doesn’t really bother zombies; they don’t have such great eyesight anyway (rotting eyeballs and all). But they can still smell meat and brains. And hear firing guns.
“What?” Dave whispered.
“Sound brought zombies,” I answered. “Of course.”
“Fuck an elf,” he agreed softly.
“Okay,” I said as I stepped to the side and pulled him forward. “Aim your gun this way….”
I maneuvered him so that he was pointing uphill in the general direction of the zombies. “And fire.”
“Oh yeah,” he said as he pulled the trigger. “Like Halo when one of us used to use the sniper rifle scope with night vision while the other one fired.”
“Sure,” I sighed. “Just like that, dear.”
If video-game references helped him do this, I wasn’t going to argue. I pulled my carbine and started firing. The zombies lurched between the combined accuracy of our bullets (though Dave did go wild more often than not, I have to point out) and they fell in big rows. Some of them even tumbled down the hill and landed pretty much at our feet.
I glanced over my shoulder.
“Oh crap,” I muttered as I grabbed for Dave and started hauling him up the hill.
“What?” he asked, tripping over zombies and swinging his arms wildly as he tried to get some purchase over what he couldn’t see.
“The soldiers heard us killing the zombies.”
“And the zombies hear us killing the soldiers. Damn, it’s like a catch-22.”
“I’d kill for a .22,” I muttered as we reached the top of the hill.
Through the darkness I saw more groups of zombies staggering toward us. They were pretty far off, though. I dove flat on my stomach and yanked Dave next to me. Once again, I pointed his gun at an angle.
“Trigger,” I said as I struggled to get the big missile launcher I’d been carrying into position. I looked down at it. There were actually a lot of pulleys and levers on this thing. Huh.
“What are you doing?” Dave whispered. He was hitting soldiers, but not with too many kill shots. Lots of knee hits, though. Ouch!
“Trying to figure out how to shoot a missile launcher.”
What? I’d never fired one before.
“Give it to me!” Dave snapped. He reached out and started slapping at me, grabbing at my face (and catching me a few times in the process); he got my goggles and pulled them off.
“Ouch, Grabby McGee! You could ask me to do that myself, you know,” I muttered, though I surrendered the missile launcher and went back to the carbine. I fired into the dark toward where I’d last seen the soldiers coming. “Big jerk.”
“You’re the one who rescued me,” he pointed out and then there was a huge crash and the shack exploded, filling the area with fire and light.
“Bull’s-eye!” I cried before I used the new light to fire off a couple more precise shots at Dave’s former captors.
He yanked the night-vision goggles down around his neck since the light was too bright for them now and smiled. “Thanks!”
“Wow, how’d you know how to do that?” I asked as we scrambled to our feet and started running back toward the vehicle that was outlined by the fire of the shack. I just prayed to God Kathleen had made a beeline for it, too.
He shrugged. “Halo, right?”
“Ah, of course,” I laughed.
We reached the SUV, but it was empty and I stared toward the hilltop with worry. I couldn’t see the shack from this angle, but the glow from its fire was more than visible. People were yelling down below and pretty soon they’d start coming up the hill toward us.
“What are we waiting for?” Dave asked as he got into the passenger side.
“Kath—” I started and at that moment she came half-running, half-limping up the hill toward us. “—leen!” I finished.
“Get in the vehicle!” She screamed. “Get in the fucking truck and start it!”
I didn’t wait for more instruction. I dove into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and gunned the engine hard enough that the smell of gas filled the air. Kathleen wrenched the back door open, dove in, and tossed a grenade over her shoulder, all while screeching, “Drive, drive, drive!”
I peeled away and the only thing that kept smoke from billowing from my tires was the fact that we were on dirt. But dust did flow behind us, though not enough to block out the huge explosion that rocked from Kathleen’s grenade. And this one wasn’t of a flash persuasion. It was the real deal.
I floored the truck as we barreled across the field.
“Um, goggles, please!” I shouted as we bumped and battered against the doors. “Can’t see in the dark!”
“Fuck,” Dave hollered and dragged them over his head and across mine. They were cockeyed when I finally was able to see, and there, in front of me, was a tree. A big fucking tree, rising up in the not-so-distant distance before me.
“Hold on!” I screamed as I turned the wheel.
The SUV had pretty good handling (came with the leather seats, I guess) and we stayed upright as we swerved around the tree. Unfortunately, more zombies were right behind it in a shambling mob. I barreled through the line of them without even slowing down. Rotting flesh hit my windshield, cracking the glass
as arms and legs bounced off the doors and roof of the car.
“Where do I go?” I asked as we passed through that gauntlet. There was blood and goo on my windshield and the wipers were not helping at all.
“Hang on, I have to remember how to breathe,” Kathleen panted from the back. “Just go straight for a while.”
Dave looked back at her. “How badly you hurt?”
She shook her head. “Not bad. Got shot in the thigh and it stings, but I’ll be okay.”
“Thanks for coming for me,” Dave said as he reached back to squeeze her hand.
She nodded. “Of course, but thank your wife. She’s the one who put this party together even though she could have just gone to her daddy at the Wall and gotten free.”
Dave spun on me. “What? You mean, you could have gotten out with the cure?”
“Relax,” I said as I got us back on something resembling a road and clicked out headlights back on now that I felt like we were far enough from the chaos. “I sent the cure with Nicole and McCray.”
He stared at me. “What the fuck? You handed over the cure to that drug addict?”
“Well, first that drug addict took a bullet to the gut trying to save you when those people knocked you out,” I said, watching Dave’s face pale in the dim light. “And secondly, I gave the cure to Nicole. I’m not so stupid as to give it to McCray, who’d probably take it just because he liked the color.”
“I hate to interrupt this little spat, but turn left,” Kathleen said from the back.
I did as she asked while Dave laughed. “You think this is a spat? You should have seen us before the apocalypse.”
I grinned at him, but then looked at Kathleen. “How long to get to the rendezvous?”
She shrugged. “Depends. Maybe twenty minutes.”
I glanced at the clock on the dash. “And that’s just about as much time as we have left before we’re supposed to be there. It’s going to be tight.”
“What happens if we don’t make it on time?” Dave asked.
I tilted my head. “Actually, I’m not so clear on that, myself. Kathleen?”
“Well, you know all the soldiers guarding the place where we just got Dave?”
“Yeah?” he said.
“Well, multiply that by one to two hundred and add a thousand zombies. Your dad is good and if they have a solid plan, they can probably cut a hole in the wire and keep it clear for around three to five minutes.”
“And then?”
“Then all hell breaks loose and they’re going to have to run. The military closes that bitch up and that’s it. It’s going to be double protection for at least three months.”
I blinked. Shit. This really was a make-or-break kind of deal. So I put my pedal to the metal and drove faster into the dark.
Twenty minutes can feel like an eternity. But after a bunch more turns and a couple passes of “dodge that zombie pod” in the middle of the road (they are worse than cows, I swear to God), we managed to reach… something.
“Stop here,” Kathleen said. “And cut your lights.”
I did as she asked and then clicked the night-vision goggles back on. In the hazy green I saw the high fence of the Wall in the distance. There were people standing around it.
“There,” Kathleen said. “Dave, there’s another set of goggles in the glove compartment. Put them on and let’s haul.”
“Can’t we drive closer?” Dave asked as he slung the third pair of goggles on. “It’s like three hundred yards or more.”
She shrugged. “Too much noise, too many vehicles, and it’s only going to draw attention that much faster.”
We got out of the car and started running across the field. We were about halfway there when I could finally see the people at the fence more clearly. McCray was being helped through a cut in the wire by Nicole. My dad was on the other side, pulling them through and hustling them both toward a vehicle parked close by.
He turned and searched through the darkness with a rifle scope that I prayed had night vision. Apparently, my prayer was answered because he raised an arm and waved toward us.
Relief washed over me. We were here. And in a few minutes we’d be through. Yeah, we’d still be running, but we’d be on the other side, away from the zombies and able to work on getting the word out about the truth of the outbreak. That was something.
We were a hundred yards away now, seventy-five.
That’s when the three military Humvees tore up from behind. Doors slammed, orders were shouted, and suddenly a hail of bullets starting falling around us like rain.
Kathleen dove down on her stomach and Dave and I did the same. It was pretty barren and there was no protection out in the field. It was only going to be a matter of moments before the bullet shower started hitting and we ended up dead.
I lifted my head. I really hoped my dad wasn’t going to see this. But in the distance, people started to pour out of the vehicle where McCray and Nicole had gone. They had weapons, ones just as impressive as the military, and suddenly the soldiers who had come for us had to turn their attention on the firefight instead of shoot at us.
“Crawl for the SUV,” Kathleen said, her voice laced with pain from the shot she’d already taken to the leg.
I sent one final glance toward the fence. If we crawled for the vehicle, we would be going in the wrong direction.
We wouldn’t make it through the fence. There was no way with all the soldiers firing and more lights coming toward us from the distance with even more military types in them, no doubt.
“Go! Dad, just go!” I screamed out into the night as we started to hurry toward our abandoned car. “Run!”
My dad hesitated, sending me one final, furtive look before he did as I said and ran. Before he even had the door shut, the car took off and disappeared around a bend, with a couple of military jeeps tearing after it. But the car was superfast (I think it might have had a turbo engine) and I doubted they’d be caught.
Us on the other hand…
Kathleen tossed her last grenade toward the fence and we all started running back toward the SUV. I heard it explode and then a voice crying out, “Wall breach, wall breach! Focus on shoring up the Wall before the zombies come.”
And that’s how we got away. The zombies, or the threat of zombies, saved us.
And you know what, after all the time we’d spent running from those fuckers, they owed us one escape.
Make the decision to be free. Whenever you can.
We couldn’t go back to the bunker. It had been compromised since the military knew about it, and before the night was out, Kathleen’s crew had relocated. It took us over an hour to get to the new camp and by the time we unloaded and fixed up Kathleen’s leg, dawn had lit up the sky to the east.
Dave and I sat outside on the dead grass, blanket wrapped around us to ward off the winter morning chill, watching pinks and purples light the sky.
Still on the outside of the Wall.
“Think McCray and Nicole made it?” Dave asked.
“That’s what I came out here to tell you,” Kathleen said.
We turned and she hobbled up behind us. Her jeans were torn and her leg was bandaged. She leaned on an ornately carved cane, but she didn’t appear much the worse for the wear.
“You have news?” I asked, as we both jolted to our feet and took a few steps toward her.
She nodded. “Come on.”
We followed her to another underground tornado shelter. It wasn’t as nicely fixed up as the other, but the radio equipment had already been set up, along with some heaters and some temporary lights. Within a few days, it would be a cozy little home again.
A guy sat at a small table, listening through headphones, but when we came in, he flipped a switch and the sound filled the room.
“This is J.L. on a repeating signal. This is not live. We are safe,” my dad’s voice crackled across the waves. “This is J.L. on a repeating signal. This is not live. We are safe.”
I shut my
eyes. “When did it start?”
“About five minutes ago,” Kathleen said. We think he set it up on an open channel along their escape route. The government will shut it down within five or ten minutes, but it gets across the message. They made it.”
As relief and regret both washed over me, I didn’t say anything else, just turned and went back outside. I wanted the sunshine for a minute. Even if it seemed like we were going to spend the rest of our lives hiding underground and planning sneak attacks on military outposts and zombie pods.
Dave followed and put his arm around me without saying a word. I leaned into him as we watched the sunrise again.
Kathleen hobbled next to us. “So where will you go?”
I stared at her. “Go? Um, here. You guys need us, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “Sarah, I won’t lie. We would love to have you two here to help us. The more, the merrier and you would definitely be assets with all your skills and… er… attributes.” She hesitated. “But that just isn’t going to work.”
“Why?” I asked.
Dave looked down at me. “C’mon Sarah, you know why. The military knows I have this zombie thing. Even if they weren’t sure before, they took my blood and stuff as soon as they captured me. I’m sure they’re running tests on it right now. They’d love to run some more.”
Kathleen nodded. “They won’t stop looking for him. And that means they’ll come for us over and over again. But if you leave…”
I stared at the horizon. Yeah, I got it.
“If we leave, they’ll know that, too.”
Kathleen smiled. “We’ll make sure they do.”
I nodded. “And they won’t come for you because they’ll figure the zombies will get you eventually. Everything will go back to… normal.”
She nodded. “Something like that.” We were all quiet for a minute and then she added, “But we have something for you. Come with me.”
I looked at Dave and he shrugged so we followed her around to a big deserted barn on the property. The house had been destroyed but this structure remained standing, one fading beacon of what had been before zombies.
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