Dead Surge

by Joseph Talluto

  When were we going to do something right?

  Chapter 47

  We fairly flew up Route 65, which was also called Division Street for some reason. The road was clear, save for the occasional vehicle parked on the side of the road. The cars were rusted and useless, and probably had been there for years.

  Several homes broke up the landscape, some fairly large, others small, but with enormous yards. Several looked to be the playground of your typical country folk, several battered cars in the yard, an outbuilding that hadn’t seen maintenance in years, and scattered toys about an abandoned play set.

  I called back on the radio to Duncan to see if he had heard anything else, but he told me he’d heard nothing for a while now. Sarah and I exchanged a look, and we both knew we were probably too late.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled into the southern end of the town of Lucas. Crossing the railroad tracks, we slowly pulled into the main street. I had to be careful of where I drove, since there were bodies everywhere. They were under bushes and by trees, blood trails marking how they had dragged themselves to die. Some bodies were strewn about, as if they had been dragged from places of safety and killed. Throats were torn open, torsos were ripped apart, and faces were mangled and ripped.

  Blood was everywhere.

  Down each street, the scene was the same. The houses were broken into, and in the ones where we could see inside, there was blood and gore all over the place. One body was draped over a threshold, her hands still gripping the doorframe where she tried to save herself. Her legs had great hunks of meat torn off and the bloody chunks were tossed about the yard.

  Other bodies lay in the streets, some old, some young. I could see where some of the attackers had met resistance and gone down with a bullet between the eyes.

  Sarah rode silently with her hand over her mouth, shaking her head slowly. I knew how she felt. They had no warning, no way of knowing what was headed their way.

  Down every street, it was the same. Broken homes and broken bodies. Back towards the center of town, a large group had made a stand, and they were slaughtered to the last. Blood flowed freely over the ground, and congealed in small pools wherever a depression in the ground happened to be. Most of the damage was centered on the face, neck and arms. It was easy to see how they died. The little bastards would attack, one would get a bite in and then others would join. Soon the victim would pass out from blood loss and that was it.

  I radioed in. “Did anyone see anyone alive? Anything at all?” I felt responsible for this massacre. If we hadn’t gone south, we would have been here at the attack and may have been able to make a difference.

  Rebecca radioed back. “No, John. They’re all dead.”

  Damn. They didn’t have much of a chance at all. They never knew what was coming and they certainly weren’t expecting the kind of zombie that hit them. As I drove past body after slain body, I had to wonder if this was just a taste of things to come. I just wish I knew how they were traveling! If I had that little clue, then we could set up a trap and blow them away. But as it was, we had no idea.

  “John?” It was Charlie.

  “Yeah?”

  “We need to finish them, you know that.”

  “I know it. I was just avoiding it.” I was too. We had to get out and take care of these once and for all. Otherwise, they were going to come back, and that was an extra mess that I didn’t feel like cleaning up.

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “No time like the present.”

  We pulled over and got out of our vehicles. The air had a coppery smell that came and went in strength, and we could hear flies starting to approach the meat on the ground. From the back of the truck, I pulled out a real pickaxe, one with a wide metal blade offset by a twelve-inch spike. It was ungainly, but the best things for the groundwork we had to do. Charlie grabbed a similar one and both of us set about the grim task of spiking the bodies so they wouldn’t come back.

  We moved quickly, stepping on the heads and planting the spike into the skull of the deceased. We had done this a number of times before, but you never got fully used to it. Killing a zombie was one thing. Even the most hard-core pacifist had to admit the zombie was trying to kill you and you acted in self-defense. But the systematic skull popping of people who were unmoving, and sometimes looked like they were sleeping, well, that was another matter.

  The hardest ones were the kids. It was such a shame that they had managed to survive the upheaval as babies, only to fall prey to an anomaly like the kids we were fighting.

  We worked silently, while Duncan and Tommy searched the houses for survivors. Rebecca and Sarah took the vehicles and circled the town, looking for anyone who might have fled the carnage and was out in the countryside, too terrified to return. I had my doubts we were going to find anyone, but we had to try.

  I was finishing off a couple that had apparently died together, when Charlie called me over to where he was. He was standing by a small body, and by the looks of it, it had been one of the attackers that had been taken down. A large bullet hole was centered on the forehead, surrounded by blackened flesh. The body was sprawled out on the ground, as if it had been thrown back. Given the size of the hole and the obvious point-blank range at which the gun was fired, this one had met someone tougher that he was.

  “What’s up?” I didn’t understand why Charlie was calling me over there. I had seen these guys before.

  “I wanted you to take a look at something, it just seemed odd to me, but a second opinion never hurt,” Charlie said.

  I shrugged. “Talk to me.”

  Charlie pointed at the dead zombie’s feet. They were bare of shoes, and the soles were pretty torn up. Bits of rock and grass were imbedded in the dead flesh, and there were a couple of small, black balls that were stuck in the flesh.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  Charlie nodded. “I saw those, too, and was wondering if you had any idea where they might have picked up something like that.”

  I pulled my knife and pried out one of the black balls. It was heavy, and mostly spherical, although it had a kind of point on one part of it. Taking my lighter out, I burned off the zombie gunk, killing any residual virus that might have been lurking around. After the ball had been burned, I looked closely, and I saw that it was made of iron or steel.

  “Huh. Wonder where he picked this little thing up?” I asked.

  “Good question,” said Charlie. “I’d say wherever he picked it up, there had to have been a lot of them, “

  “Why’s that?”

  “No way could he have picked up two on his travels. One, I would believe, but two? No way.” Charlie replied.

  I had to admit it made sense. I believe in coincidences as much as the next person, but sometimes you had to take the leap and go from coincidence to pattern.

  “All right, we’ll keep our eyes peeled for anyplace that might have a lot of these. We’d stand a better chance of following these little bastards if we knew what they were running on.” I was actually hopeful. I had a feeling this was a break we were going need, and if we weren’t careful, it would be the only break.

  “We’d better get back to work. It’s been nearly an hour and we don’t want to give these guys any chance at getting up,” I said, turning back to the zombies at hand.

  “Oh, damn.” I didn’t feel the need for anything more descriptive.

  “What? Oh, damn.” Apparently, Charlie didn’t either.

  In front of us, about fifteen zombies slowly began to creak upright. They moved, slowly, painfully almost, unfolding themselves from the ground that had lapped up their spilt blood. All fifteen had locked their eyes on Charlie. We stared as if we had been caught killing their brothers with a pickaxe. Never mind, that it exactly what we were doing. It was still creepy to have a horde of zombies silently accusing us of it.

  “Now what?” Charlie asked. “The heavy weapons are on the trucks.”

  “Hang on,” I said, cocking an ear to th
e wind.

  Around the corner, the truck came squealing in, causing the zombies to turn towards the new sound. Sarah swung the vehicle wide, and then slammed on the breaks, skidding the heavy truck sideways and slamming the tail end into a dozen zombies. Most were killed on impact, and the momentum of the truck literally threw the zombies fifteen yards away. Sarah quickly put the truck in reverse, and then knocked aside and killed a dozen zombies. She put it back into drive, and pulled away from the rampage. Two zombies were still standing, so Charlie and I hurried over to finish them off.

  “Watch your step,” I cautioned. “Some of these aren’t fully dead yet, “I said this as a zombie skull snapped at my foot as I planted a spike in its skull.

  “No kidding. Hey!” Charlie stumbled as a head grabbed his pant cuff and held on. Charlie choked up on the pick and crushed the offender’s skull, pulling his pants free.

  Sarah came out of the truck, and used her pistol to kill several zombies on her side.

  “That it?” She called.

  “That should do it,” I said, spiking a final zombie. “Any word on the others?

  “Rebecca was helping Tommy and Duncan finish off a small horde on their side,” Sarah said.

  “Cool. Any survivors?” I hadn’t expected any, but I could always hope.

  Sarah smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Really?” I was incredulous. I figured we were going to strike out again.

  “Rebecca picked them up. It was a family of four that made it into the woods and managed to stay hidden up in a deer stand.”

  “I’ll be damned. Come on, Charlie, let’s take care of business, and then let’s go see those survivors.”

  Chapter 48

  We finished off the last of the zombies, broken or otherwise, and took a minute to flame off our picks. That done, we climbed aboard the truck and headed north, the results of our handiwork still spread out all over the ground. Nothing we could do for it, we had zombies to chase.

  On the north side of town, Duncan and Tommy were washing off the side of the van with a bucket of water and a couple of kitchen mops they had found somewhere. The side of the van was one huge bloodstain, and the water sluicing off of it was a dark red that flowed across the street into the storm drain.

  “We’ve got survivors!” I called out.

  Tommy waved and Duncan raised a hand in acknowledgement. They would cruise the town, dealing with any zombies left over, and see if they could get a handle on where the little suckers went. For some reason, I kept thinking about those little steel balls stuck in the feet of the little zombie.

  Rebecca was standing with the family as they stood by the tree. They looked haggard and worn out, as I’m sure I would be after hearing my town get killed. I got out and sized up the couple. The man was tall and well built, and his wife was a thin, muscular woman who looked more than capable of taking care of herself. She was hugging her children, and taking turns kissing each one on the top of their heads.

  “You must be Talon,” the man said, holding out his hand. “Name’s Greg. Greg Holder. This is my wife Gina, and these are the twins, Paul and Grace.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “You sure picked a good day to wander the woods.”

  Greg’s face was ashen. “What the hell hit us, Talon? One minute we were just a nice community, and then all of a sudden these little demons are tearing us apart! I saw the way things were going in the first five minutes and knew we didn’t have a chance but to run.”

  “You did exactly the right thing. If you’d have stayed, you all would have been killed,” I said. “Do you have any transportation? We need to get moving and I’m sure you’d like to leave this town behind.”

  Holder looked a bit sheepish. “Actually, we don’t. We decided as a community not to have cars so we could use the gas for our farm equipment.”

  Well, that didn’t make things easier. “Okay, we could find you a ride to the nearest town, would that work?” I asked, wanting to get going before we lost more daylight and maybe another town.

  Rebecca spoke up, “I said we could take them. That’s all right, isn’t it, John? Charlie?”

  Inwardly I cursed and I saw Charlie lower his eyes. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was, but there it was and we couldn’t take it back.

  I gave in. “Yeah, we can drop you off. Do you need anything from your house?”

  Gina spoke up. “We’re not going back into town for anything. Please just get us out of here.”

  “Done. We’ll pick up our comrades and be on our way. Ma’am?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Do me a favor and make sure your kids don’t look out the window when we go back into town. Thanks.” I knew it would be a mess and I didn’t want to deal with it.

  We piled into the truck and radioed for Duncan and Tommy to meet us on the east side. We were going to follow 34, which seemed to be the best thing for chasing these Zs, but for whatever reason we kept missing them.

  The Holder family stayed in the van and Sarah and I led the way. I was feeling slightly sick, knowing that my decision to go south had been wrong and we were too late to do anything about Lucas. I hoped the next town would be spared that same fate.

  The sun was behind us as we drove, and I tried to make it as fast as I could, but several times, I had to slow to nearly a stop and navigate around a deep crevasse in the road. Sarah seemed to sense my mood and tried to alleviate the hard feelings I had about it.

  “No way you could have known, John. These things aren’t like anything we’ve seen. You couldn’t predict them, even if you had a month to study them,” Sarah said, putting a hand on my leg.

  I covered her hand with mine. “I know and I accept it. But it seems weird we just keep missing. It’s almost like they already know where we’re going to be, so they just work around it until it becomes our turn to fight.” I stared out the windshield. “I just wish we could get ahead of them and be sure of their coming. Then we could deal a blow that would finish them off for good.”

  “We will, John,” Sarah said. “Anything else?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, I really want to get home to our boys. We’ve been gone a lot longer than I wanted to and I am getting really anxious to be home,” I said.

  “We’ll get there, John. The army is on its way and we’re not too far from the border. Have faith.” Sarah smiled sweetly.

  Faith. Hadn’t thought about that word in a long time. Good for other people, I know my own religious leanings have been severely curtailed in the last few years. Oddly, clergy seemed like some of the first to go when the Upheaval hit. It was weird, but I guess if your congregation is running to your church seeking sanctuary, it makes sense that the odds of one of them being infected were pretty good.

  Ten miles outside of Lucas we found the town of Russell. I didn’t know what to expect, but we readied ourselves for anything. At this point, I was just trying to get lucky, since smart was eluding me.

  Russell, we discovered, had been abandoned a long time ago, and was just a small town becoming smaller as more and more homes and buildings fell over. One side of the town had been literally smashed to pieces, making us wonder if a tornado had tried to take out the town.

  Greg and Gina were happy with it, and were grateful for the lift away from their old home. They were used to the abruptness of life after the zombies came, and their kids seemed like they were used to it as well.

  As we shook hands goodbye, I offered to do a quick sweep of the town, but Greg said he would do fine. I offered him one of our extra rifles, and he gratefully took one of the .22 bullets we had. If nothing else, I knew he’d be able to put meat on his family’s table.

  We left Russell and the Holders and headed back to 34. I had been thinking things over and decided the only way we might get a handle on this would be just to run like hell for the river, alert the towns along the way, and listen for trouble as it came to us. We’d be sacrificing some people, but in the end, we didn
’t have much choice. At least we could warn them.

  Chapter 49

  I went over the plan with the rest of the crew and they seemed to accept the idea, although somewhat reluctantly. I wanted to hear what everyone had to say, so I threw it out there.

  Charlie spoke first. “I think you’re probably right. We can’t do much more than warn people, and if Lucas was any evidence of what these Zs can do, then we’re going to need the backup of the army and a good place to make a stand.”

  Rebecca spoke next. “I just don’t know. I feel like we’re abandoning these people, and that doesn’t feel right, either.”

  Duncan piped up. “I’m with Charlie. We don’t have the resources, and we’ve been lucky so far. If they had come at us full force back at the silos and the strip clubs, then we wouldn’t be here.”

  Tommy nodded his approval and Sarah did the same. In all honesty, we didn’t have much choice. We could run around all over Iowa trying to put out fires and in the meantime, the perpetrators were wandering around making zombies and putting a general strain on a relatively fragile peace.

  “So what’s the plan then?” Duncan asked.

  “Basically, we’re running and yelling. We need to get the army on this side of the river, position them so they can report activity, then sweep in and take care of the problem once and for all. We need to broadcast to everyone who can listen to watch their borders and seal up tight, at least for the next couple of weeks. We don’t know where these suckers are going to be, so until we do, we need to cast a wide net,” I said. “If we catch them, without army support, we’ll have to run and gun. We’ll get killed otherwise.”