Dead Surge

by Joseph Talluto

  “Would love to, just as soon as the hundreds of little zombies outside our door pass us by,” I whispered.

  Sarah’s eyes got wide and she jumped to her feet, giving me heart palpitations as parts of her bounced very nicely. She dressed as quickly as I did, and in a minute, we were back to our dangerous selves. We crept over to the window and looking carefully out, we surveyed the scene before us.

  Dozens of zombie children moved along the street, stepping quickly past the strip club and heading up Sigler Street. There was a long procession of the deadly little things and they were moving quickly. I couldn’t see what was leading them, there were too many for that, but they walked along the road in nearly single file fashion, one child after another. It was as if they were moving from classroom to classroom in an elementary building.

  “Do you think they know we’re here?” Sarah asked, fingering her supply of magazines.

  “Don’t know, doubt it, though.” I looked at their line of travel, cursing the luck that put us on the west side of the building. If we could see out the east, we could see the leader, if there was one, and where they were actually going.

  I watched for a bit, and then gave Sarah a quick kiss. “I’m going down to warn the rest. I hope to hell Duncan came in from the van last night.”

  “Oh, God.”

  I hurried down the stairs as quietly as I could and raced for the dance floor. If those little things knew we were here, they would be on us like no one’s business. In the manager’s office, I roused Tommy and let him know what was going on. His sleepy answers turned to whispered curses as he struggled to get himself up.

  I went to the VIP area and as I approached, I heard Rebecca giggle. I shook my head, realizing my friend was doing what I wish I could do at this moment. Guess they just got up earlier than Sarah did and I did.

  I tried to knock discreetly on the wall, but it was hard since everything was covered in carpet. I tried whispering, but I couldn’t get past the noises that were coming from the room. Finally, I had to resort to direct methods, so I took a magazine from my holder and tossed it into the room, hoping to get lucky.

  “Ow! What the hell?” Charlie said.

  Apparently, I got luckier than I thought. I stepped back from the curtain just as it was pulled aside. A very angry and very naked Charlie James swept the curtain back and glared out at me, holding my magazine. A red spot was forming on his forehead. A glance at my attire and he changed his expression.

  “John.”

  “Charlie.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Lots.”

  “Be ready in two minutes.”

  “Come up to the loft.”

  “Will do. Your magazine.”

  “Thanks.” We never broke eye contact during the exchange, and I grinned after Charlie drew the curtain back across the threshold. That will be one we never talk about. I thought.

  Back at the loft, Sarah was watching the procession of zombies streaming past the building. We didn’t know where they were going, but this was a big break. Up until now, we had been guessing where they were and trying to predict where they were going to strike next. Suddenly, they were right in front of us, and we could easily track them and guide the army to a point where they could be decimated.

  I looked out the window. “How many do you figure?” I whispered, watching the line go by.

  “About one hundred fifty that I’ve seen. Probably a lot more has passed us by,” Sarah said.

  “Do you think Duncan is up and knows to keep quiet?” I asked, looking down at the van below us.

  “Hope so, or we’ll never see him again,” Sarah said ominously.

  I understood what she meant. If he stumbled out of that van while the zombies were mobbing past, they’d be on him before he even knew they were there. The only reassurance we had for his survival was the fact Duncan was an old campaigner, and wouldn’t likely make such a rookie mistake. Sure, he was a goof, but he was as solid as they come and there was no quit in the man.

  Charlie and Rebecca silently came up to the loft, and Sarah and I made room for them to see out the window. When Rebecca looked at me, her cheeks colored slightly, and Sarah picked up on it right away. She pulled me away to look into our packs and confronted me with our backs turned to Charlie and Rebecca.

  “Did you walk in on them?” Sarah chided.

  I nodded. “But not as bad as you think. I was behind a curtain, and they couldn’t hear me, so I threw a magazine at them.”

  Sarah groaned softly. “Oh, no! Who did you hit? Rebecca?”

  “I didn’t!” I protested. “I swear I did not hit Rebecca with a magazine.”

  “Good.”

  “I hit Charlie in the head.”

  “John!”

  “Shhh!”

  We turned back to the window as Charlie let out a slow whistle. “Damn.” Was all he said.

  Tommy came up the stairs a minute later, and he looked out the window at the procession of zombies.

  “There’s just something so wrong about this,” he whispered, watching the zombie kids go by. Since a lot of them were relatively new, they looked almost normal. The thing that gave them away, however, was the dark red circles around their eyes. That and the bloodstains on their shirts and chins. The older ones, the ones that must have come from the school, were the very white ones. These had older, thinner clothing and lankier hair. I thought it strange that they weren’t grey like the old ones we encountered now and then.

  The line thinned out and the last zombie walked away towards the east, around the building and out of our sight. We all breathed a sigh of relief, only to replace it with a gasp of surprise when Duncan opened the side of the van, the one facing the retreating zombies.

  “John! Wake up! Osceola is under attack!” Duncan looked at the line of zombies that had suddenly stopped to turn and look at him. In a lower voice, we could hear Duncan say, “Aaannnd… so are we.”

  Chapter 43

  Duncan spun around and dove into the van, slamming the door shut just as five little zombies crashed against it. They bounced off and backed away, circling the van as others came back to investigate. They kept their distance, which was very weird, but none of this fit anything we knew. Right now, it looked like they knew the van could keep them out, but they weren’t going anywhere, so they could wait for the meal in the box to get hungry or careless.

  We couldn’t wait for the zombies to win. “Tommy, get on the roof! Charlie, see if you can get to the truck out front and get to our heavier guns. They don’t know we’re here, so let’s keep that element of surprise. Rebecca, you and Sarah stay here until Charlie and I get back with the guns. Find your best targets and keep an eye in their behavior.”

  “What are we looking for?” Sarah asked, peering out at the zombies that had begun to circle the van and slowly move around it. They were clicking their teeth together as they walked, some kind of sign they had spotted their prey and had run it to ground.

  “Anything that gives us a clue to their behavior. Are they pack animals of a type, are they capable of some form of communication? Do they have any way of recognizing danger? What kind of intelligence do they have? Can they solve problems? Something, anything.” I ran down the stairs without waiting for an answer and caught up to Charlie.

  We stood by the front door and looked out carefully through the windows. Thanks to the heavily tinted glass, we could see out much better than they could see in. Way off to the east, we could see a convergence of zombies that watched while the others circled the van. In the far back of the pack, I could see a taller female standing and watching. She seemed to turn her head to the left and right, almost as if she were sniffing the air. She opened her mouth, but I couldn’t tell if she made a noise. All I knew was five little zombies detached from the group and started to trot over to where the van was. We watched them pass by, and then the group turned and disappeared into the brush. They looked like they were heading south, but from where we were that was impossible t
o confirm.

  “Did you see that?” Charlie asked quietly.

  “I did,” I said, pulling my pistol from my belt. “They can communicate and they have a leader.”

  “What the hell, John?” Charlie seemed almost in a panic. “How do we fight this? How do we go up against an enemy that’s never going to tire, can figure a way around our defenses, is faster than anything we’ve seen, and can coordinate attacks?”

  “Wish we had a choice, my friend, but the good news is we know they can die, and they run from a fight they can’t win.” I put a hand on the door, but Charlie stopped me.

  “What if they don’t run this time? Remember they kept coming when we put up a fight at the silos and I got bitten,” Charlie said.

  I thought about everything we had done, and how hard we had tried to put the world back on the right track. I thought about my sons and what they meant to me and what I was willing to do for them. The cold fire began to build, and I looked hard at Charlie.

  “Then, by God, they will wish they had run, right before I put a bullet in them.”

  I stepped carefully outside, keeping an eye out for the five that had come to reinforce the ones surrounding the van. Fortunately, they had gone around the side of the building, so we were pretty good to go. I moved to the truck and pulled out my rifle, Sarah’s rifle, and some extra ammo. Charlie kept a watch on the brush where we saw the rest disappear, but they seemed to be gone. He had holstered his gun, and held a sharp tomahawk in each hand. I understood his caution. A shot might attract all of the ones by the van, and we wanted to keep them in one place so we could get rid of them in one swoop.

  As I closed the door of the truck, a little zombie came around the corner. He was a boy of about eight years old, roughly the same size as Jake, with sandy hair and blue eyes. His shirt was torn around the neck, and a raw bite wound could be seen in the same area. That was where the resemblance to anything we’d ever encountered ended.

  This child’s face was twisted with fury and pain, and his eyes burned at us. His small hands were claws, and they were black with what could only have been dried blood. When he saw us, his mouth pulled into a vicious leer, and he let out what could only be described as a combination of a growl, a snarl, and oddly, a meow.

  The boy took a step forward, and then pitched onto his face as a tomahawk crashed into his forehead, right above his left eye. The blade had sunk in nearly to the haft, so Charlie must have put some serious force behind it. I knew then just how jumpy Charlie was.

  As Charlie retrieved his ‘hawk, I took the rifles inside. I waited for Charlie and we went up to the loft together. We didn’t have much to say. We were both kind of lost in our own thoughts. Back in the loft, we relayed to the women what we had seen, and they gave us the rundown of what was going on around the van.

  “They’ve circled a bit, and then they settled into three areas,” Sarah said. “There’s four right below us, another two in the shadows over by the shed, and three in front of the van. A single one wandered off towards the front of the building…”

  “It found Charlie and me,” I interrupted.

  “One less to worry about,” Sarah finished.

  I got on the radio. “Tommy, what have you got?”

  A minute later came the reply. “There’s a bunch of them waiting beyond the trees to the east, looks like they might be waiting for this crew to catch up. Don’t see any activity, they’re just waiting.”

  “Can you get a shot at the leader?” I wanted to take out that anomaly as quickly as I could. This was just strange.

  “Not on my best day. It’s easily four hundred yards and all I have are open sights.”

  I looked over at Sarah and Rebecca and they both shook their heads.

  “Our scoped rifles are in the van,” Sarah said. “We’d just be lobbing bullets at this range.”

  I thought for a minute. “Tommy, do you have a shot at all against the ones near us?”

  The reply wasn’t encouraging. “Don’t have a rifle. Could do it with my pistol, but I can’t see them any better from here and when they see me, they’ll run.”

  I signed off and stared out the window. Sarah watched my face for a second, and Charlie took his cue from Sarah.

  My eyes narrowed and I looked out the window briefly.

  “Aw, crap,” Charlie said.

  Chapter 44

  “Let’s go. Sarah, you and Rebecca open up from up here when we signal. Charlie, I’m going for the four under the window and you take the three by the shed. Just blow them away. Don’t bother with headshots, just get them down and we’ll finish them off. “

  Charlie and I ran down the stairs and back to the front. We looked cautiously out and still didn’t see anything. But we knew they were out there, waiting. Trouble was, they had time, and we didn’t.

  “Offense?” Charlie asked, putting a magazine in his hand for a faster reload.

  “No choice and we have the element of surprise. Hopefully, when the girls open up, they won’t scatter right into our laps,” I said, putting a magazine reload in my hand as well.

  “Christ, did you have to tell me that?” Charlie said.

  “Hell, man, I’m making this up as I go. Those little fuckers defy everything I’ve seen with zombies.”

  We stepped outside and slowly made our way to the edge of the building. I wasn’t sure if the ones by the shed were going to be able to see us or not, but I was grateful that the sun was throwing our shadows against the building, so we didn’t have to worry about alerting them that way.

  Charlie and I made our way towards the back wall, and by the time we got halfway there, I was sweating. The air was cool in the early autumn morning in Iowa, but I was sweating as if it was August in Florida. A quick glance back showed Charlie was in the same shape, and in all honesty, who could blame us? We were about to engage fast, smart zombies that could overwhelm us in a heartbeat. Charlie and maybe I could handle a bite at a time, but even our systems could be overloaded from multiple bites. It wasn’t something I was willing to try out at this particular time.

  At the edge of the building, I signaled to Charlie and he nodded. Reaching for my radio, I pressed the transmit button three times. I counted to three, and then stepped out into the open, moving away from the building.

  Just as I came into sight, Sarah and Rebecca opened up from the window. Immediately there was chaos. Two forms fell to the ground in front of the van, while the rest looked up in shock at the windows where the shots came from. In that instant, I opened up on the four hitting one in the head and the other in the neck, slamming them both to the ground. The others bolted from the building and darted around towards the front of the van, joining the others as they moved away from the windows which were killing them. The three by the shed were knocked to the ground by Charlie’s shots. Two of which got up immediately and began running, the third stayed dead with a shot to the head.

  I fired at an exposed leg, which knocked the little girl to the pavement. She turned a hate filled stare at me seconds before her head exploded from a shot from above. The two from the shed came sprinting at Charlie and me, and we both fired several shots to halt the attack.

  While I reloaded, Charlie fired single killing shots and I circled wide for the remaining three which were by the van. I couldn’t fire towards the van, so I holstered my gun and pulled out my trench ‘hawk and my knife. The thirteen inches of steel glistened in the morning as I worked around to the front of the van.

  “John! Behind you!” Sarah called a warning just in time. One of the zombies had circled back and was coming at me from the back. I knelt down and swung my axe, smashing the blade into the hissing face. The body flew to the side from the impact, but I didn’t have time to admire my handiwork, as a second came running from the other direction. This time, the little shit came in low with his arms outstretched. I waited until he was close enough, then I kicked the little sucker up under the chin, cracking his neck and launching him several feet in the air.

/>   When he landed, his teeth still clacked and clicked, and I speared him in the temple to end his troubles. As I pulled the blade out, the last one came charging around the corner, too fast for me to get with the knife. I readied another kick, hoping I wouldn’t be bitten in the process.

  I needn’t have worried. A long, thin silver line split the air and neatly removed the little child’s head from its shoulders. The little girl’s long blonde hair flew up as the head sailed away, biting and snarling as it went. It bounced once on the parking lot and Charlie walked up to kill it with his tomahawk.

  “Nice work, Duncan. I think I may need one of those,” I said in admiration.

  “Oh, sure, steal another killer idea. First, you take Charlie’s idea for tomahawks, and now you want a sword. What if I want to be the only cool one around?” Duncan laughed at his own joke.

  Charlie smiled. “The only way for that to happen is if you’re alone.”

  “Stick it, jerky.”

  ‘I’m not the idiot who announced to the world we were here, was I?” Charlie asked, eyeballing Duncan.

  Duncan looked down. “Was kinda hoping you hadn’t seen that.”

  I didn’t pay attention. I was looking at the brush line and single figure that stood there. She was about ten years old, at least I figured from this distance. She had brown, shoulder-length hair and her face was white. Her eyes were deep-set, and from the way she was standing, it looked like she didn’t have eyes at all.