by J. W. Vohs
She lifted her visor and tried to grin as she replied, “I only had to pull a trigger forty times; you looked like a medieval warrior back there!”
David tried to smile back, “C’mon, let’s check on Luke.”
Lori joined them, but Jerry was already making his way toward the young man at the other end of the room. They carefully avoided dozens of zombie corpses as they crossed to where Luke had retrieved his axe and was scanning the room for any more threats. He lifted the blade in salute to the four adults heading his way before turning back to the man he’d saved. Covered with a heavy safari hat, goggles, and a surgical mask all splattered with black zombie blood, the gunman was sitting next to his fallen partner. The man lying prone on the floor was bleeding profusely from at least three horrific bite wounds, and he obviously didn’t have long to live. He’d removed his head gear and was gasping for breath, but he was clearly still alert and aware of the situation as he struggled to communicate with his comrade.
Then, just as his father stepped to his side, Luke received the shock of his life when the apparently uninjured gunman removed the gory protective gear. A beautiful teenaged girl, with huge, dark eyes and very short, dark hair touched the dying man’s face and whispered, “Dad?”
He looked up at her and somehow managed to smile through his pain. “So we fought them off, huh?” he managed to croak out.
She smiled and nodded through her tears, “Yeah, we did. Some people showed up to help after all. I guess your prayers were answered.”
The girl then turned her father’s face so he could see the five battered warriors standing over them with their helmets in their hands. His eyes moved back to his daughter and again he spoke with halting breaths, “Call them over.”
She looked up and her voice cracked as she said, “My dad wants you to come here.”
They all stepped over to the pair of brave fighters and knelt down around them. The girl’s father made eye contact with everyone before resting his gaze on Luke, whose countenance reflected a serenity totally at odds with the gory armor covering his body. The mortally wounded man looked at the teen for a long moment before gently nodding once. Luke pulled off a glove and carefully wrapped his fingers around the dying man’s hand. The stricken father then turned his gaze to Jerry and asked, “Will you take care of my daughter?”
Jerry promised in a voice breaking with emotion, “I’m a cop. You have my word that she can join our group and we’ll take care of her like she’s our own child.”
The man then looked at David, “You get me out of here and do what needs to be done.”
David bowed his head and grimly replied, “Yes, sir. I give you my word.”
Then the quickly fading father looked back at his daughter one last time, “Gracie?”
“Yes, Dad?” the girl answered through her tears.
“You stick with these people.” He shuddered, then struggled to continue speaking as he looked from Christy to Lori. “These are some fine women, strong women. You look to them from now on.”
“Ok, Dad, I will. I love you, Dad. I will always love you.” She stroked his matted hair, sobbing as her father took a final shaky breath and slipped away. She laid her hand on his brow and closed his eyes, whispering a prayer as David and Jerry exchanged a long glance that communicated their concern about how much time they had before the man turned. Finally the girl choked back a sob and climbed to her feet as Luke scrambled up before her and extended his hand. “Thank you,” she murmured in a flat voice before looking at David and instructing, “Do what you promised you would do.”
Jerry and David picked up the surprisingly light body and lifted him from the gore-slicked floor, following Lori as she kicked and pushed aside zombie corpses to clear a path across the room. Once they were behind the mound of corpses where they’d made their stand they gently placed the man where the girl couldn’t see him. Lori still had two rounds in her pistol, and she fired both of them into the dead man’s skull before they headed back to Christy, Luke, and the girl.
She was already pounding on the door to the rectory, crying out, “Father O’Brien? Father O’Brien, we killed them all! Let us in!”
Finally the heavy door opened and the priest stuck his head out, his frightened eyes widening as he saw the teen covered in gore. “Are you all right, Gracie?”
Again she fought back tears as she explained, “I’m fine, but my father’s dead. Everyone’s dead.”
The door opened wider and Father O’Brien pulled the girl into the room before motioning for her friends to follow. The priest slammed and locked the door behind the group as they entered the rectory. He gushed, “Gracie, it’s a miracle. You are a miracle!”
In spite of the circumstances, Father O’Brien appeared to be a jovial old priest, tired but not particularly concerned about his weariness because he knew nap-time was coming. Of course, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, David suspected that the elderly churchman’s appearance had to belie a terrified emotional wreck at the moment. Still, locking himself away while his congregation fought for their lives, and allowing a teenaged girl to face those monsters without his help, was dishonorable as far as David was concerned. He couldn’t hide the resentment in his voice as he asked, “Is this all that’s left of your group?”
The priest nodded his head and added, “And we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you folks!”
There was steel in David’s voice as he retorted, “Gracie and her father just made the bravest stand against the greatest odds I’ve ever seen or heard of. We came up in the middle of the fight and helped out. They were the ones prepared to die protecting you.”
Father O’Brien’s expression immediately changed from one of happiness to that of embarrassment as he exclaimed, “Oh, I know that! I’m not trying to take anything away from what Levi and Gracie did for us, not at all, I just think God sent you here in answer to Levi’s prayers.”
David appeared to be somewhat mollified by the priest’s explanation and decided to move on. “We need to get you out of here. We have two homes secured in a quiet part of Westlake, stocked with plenty of food, water, medicines, weapons, you name it.”
Gracie asked, “Do you have more of that gear you’re wearing in those houses?”
David responded, “We do, and we have the means to construct more of it as well. We’d really like for you to join our little community, especially since Jerry just gave your father his word that he’d look out for you.”
Gracie stiffened as she replied, “I think I can take care of myself, as you’ve seen. All I need to know is if being with you would improve our odds of survival.”
Luke could keep quiet no longer, “Gracie, they took us in and it was the best thing that ever could have happened to us in this new world. Not only that, David’s brother was an Army Ranger who knew this was coming and prepared for it by building a walled compound over in Indiana. Everything we’re doing now is in preparation for the journey to join his brother’s group. We have a plan and a place to go where we believe we’ll be able to rebuild.”
Father O’Brien interjected, “Good. We will go with you. I may not be much of a fighter, but I know the value of a sacred promise.” He turned to Gracie, “We honor your father by going with these people, and that is the least we can do after everything he did for us.” Gracie’s eyes welled with tears, and she looked at the floor.
David gently asked, “Show us what you want to take with you, and give me an idea on how we can get one of those SUVs in the parking lot out of the jam all those vehicles are in.”
Father O’Brien excitedly explained, “The parish provides me with a Ford Explorer, and it’s in a small garage under my living quarters here. It has four-wheel drive so I could make emergency visits during winter weather.” He looked around and smiled as he shrugged, “It is Cleveland, you know.”
Ten minutes later they were all down in the small garage under the rectory, giving the priest’s vehicle the once over to make sure it was in good conditi
on and had enough gas to make it back to Jim and Trudy’s place. The SUV was a few years old but looked almost new, and it had a full tank of gas. David wanted to leave right away and ended up arguing with Father O’Brien about what he did and did not need to take with him. The old priest actually wanted to take the garments he used for giving mass, and he had several trunk loads of similar items that David considered useless in the zombie world. Finally Christy pulled him aside and whispered, “There’s room in that vehicle for all of O’Brien’s stuff. Just let him take it along if it makes him feel better. When we make our break for Indiana we’re all going to leave most everything behind anyway.”
David realized that she was right, and that he was still a bit angry with the priest for hiding in his apartments while a teenaged girl faced almost certain death to protect him. He finally let out a deep sigh and considered that he didn’t know what exactly had been going on up there before his group arrived on the scene. For all he knew, the old man didn’t even know how to use a gun, or Gracie ran out against orders to help her doomed father. After a moment he nodded at Christy and said, “All right, just get them loaded up and ready to move. The priest rides in the Rover and you’ll drive this thing. Lori, and probably Jerry, can guide me back to our place if we get separated, and of course you know this area. I’ll follow you.”
Christy had to fight back the urge to argue, not wanting to leave David’s side as long as they were in any kind of danger, but she realized that his plan made sense. She finally shrugged and said, “Stay on my bumper.”
David smiled and said, “I always try to!”
She playfully punched him in the ribs and scolded, “Stay focused on what we’re doing here! The priest and the girl should ride in the Explorer with me because you may have to fight your way to the Rover. Get everyone armored up and ready for action, and I’ll let you know when to open the door.”
Christy helped the priest finish loading while David checked everyone’s gear. Luke had managed to retrieve most of his arrows, though many of them were bent and unusable till he could do some repair work. He said that he wanted to depend on his axe anyway, since if they had to fight their way to the vehicle the combat would probably be close. They had very little ammo left so Lori was going out with her short sword in hand, and a light mace as back-up. Jerry and David were heading out with their usual assortment of weapons.
Finally everything was set and Christy climbed into the driver’s seat of the SUV and started the engine, motioning for David to raise the door as soon as the vehicle was running. Jerry quickly lifted the old door to the small garage and brilliant sunlight flooded their eyes for a moment. Christy exited the building as fast as possible while still being safe, and the four fighters followed her out with weapons at the ready. They found no threats between themselves and the Range Rover so they simply trotted over, tossed in their gear, then pulled in behind the Explorer.
As Christy led them back to her parent’s house they followed the same route they had taken to the leather shop, and again saw very few zombies as they drove along. Lori suggested that maybe this meant that the flesh-eaters were dying out everywhere until Jerry reminded her that three or four hundred had attacked the church. He believed that every zombie within hearing range of the guns had tried to make it to the noise that signaled food for them. With a strong wind blowing out of the west, most of the sound waves were blowing toward Cleveland where they already knew most zombies had died or fled. They finally decided that thousands of zombies were almost certainly still in the area, and if sound was carrying in the direction of the monsters, the people making the noise were going to be in big trouble very quickly.
Eventually their speculation faded as they approached their neighborhood, everyone on alert to watch out for healthy flesh-eaters hunting nearby. They passed a pack of seven a mile away, but they were in pretty bad condition and didn’t give chase to the small convoy passing in the distance. As soon as the battered fighters had Jim and Trudy’s house in sight and could see that there were no zombies hanging around, they used the radio to ask for somebody to open the garage door. Christy pulled the Explorer with the traumatized family inside while David backed the Rover into the drive and pulled as close to the doorway as he could without actually blocking it. Luke climbed up on top of the vehicle as soon as they parked and used his bow to cover the unloading process. Sal was up on the roof providing additional observation, and he had nothing to report while they emptied the SUVs and closed the garage door as fast as they could.
The housemates were all interested in meeting the new arrivals, and David finally had to order everyone but Vickie to leave the garage so clean-ups and inspections could take place. That process took about thirty minutes, though Gracie and Father O’Brien were the first cleared and then ushered into the house by Trudy. They all knew that she would fuss over them until they were cleaned and fed, but Luke and Christy went inside as soon as possible so the newcomers would have familiar faces close by.
Jim was astonished at the amount of supplies the mission had yielded; his excitement seemed to increase with each item produced by the proud foragers. As David and his team looked about at all the goods they had so hurriedly gathered, their earlier suspicions that they had found a gold mine were confirmed. As near as they could tell, they had fulfilled Jim’s wish list and then some, and everyone smiled and milled about, picking up and closely inspecting the leather-working gear and wondering how hard it would be to actually use the equipment. Finally, they all had to admit that they were starving, and reluctantly left behind their hard-earned goods until they had more time to figure out what they were going to do with everything that had been salvaged.
CHAPTER 10
After everyone was clean and had eaten, they gathered in Jim and Trudy’s large family room to discuss all the events of the day. Gracie did her best to explain how they had come to be in the church at the time of the zombie attack Luke and the rest had rescued her from.
“My father was the rabbi of a Messianic Jewish congregation in Lakewood, and we were in our home there when early news of the virus showing up in the Cleveland area was reported on TV. He and Father O’Brien had worked together for years, running an inter-faith community center and food bank. Dad decided very quickly that we would be safer in Father O’Brien’s church, with other people, than trying to ride out the emergency alone at home. My mom and younger brother are visiting my grandparents on a kibbutz in Israel, so it was just my dad and me. That very night we packed up all the food and medical supplies we had and headed this way. We also brought our guns and all of our ammo.”
Seeing a few quizzical looks among her listeners Gracie explained, “My father was a chaplain in the Army Reserve, and he’d served four years active duty before I was born. After being called up and sent to Iraq, twice, he developed a strong interest in firearms and all types of self-defense. He taught Michael and me everything he knew about guns and shooting, and even bought lessons for us at the range. He also put us both into mixed martial arts classes, and had us do knife fighting training with one of the sergeants in his unit who was an expert with blades. The guy could make his own knives and use them.”
She pulled a small Bowie knife with a full hand-protector around the grip. The blade was about ten inches long, gleaming menacingly in the lantern light. She soberly declared, “It’s come in handy a few times since the outbreak. Anyway, a lot of people started coming to St. Bernadette’s as the virus spread and the zombie attacks began, and for a few weeks everything was going well enough. But then we started running low on food, the temperature in the place was like a sauna, and some of the people just started getting cabin fever. Small groups started going out foraging for supplies, and they shot plenty of zombies while they were out running around. After a few days of that we started seeing packs of the creatures gathering around the building, and then one of the guys started firing at them with an AR-15.
“Everything went downhill from that point on. Others joined him in his
zombie shoot and they killed hundreds of them, but more and more kept coming to replace the ones they dropped. Finally, a group of the flesh-eaters managed to grab one of the gunmen and pull him out of an open window he’d been shooting from. That was just before dawn this morning.”
She shook her head and an expression of sad bewilderment flashed across her face before she continued. “A bunch of zombies were in the sanctuary before anyone knew they’d breached our defenses, and then pure chaos erupted. A lot of the people escaped the church through windows and a couple of the doors, but I don’t know if any of them made it or not. Dad and Father O’Brien herded a few of us up to the rectory, where you found us not long after the zombies did. Dad and I were the last two standing. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you did. When me and my father were waiting in that alcove, laying out our magazines and knives, knowing we were going to die, he prayed for help. He asked God to give us strength . . .”
At that point Gracie stopped for a moment as she fought back tears before choking out, “Then when he saw how many zombies were filling up the room, he got really calm and asked God to help him live the next few minutes in a manner that would please Him. He told me he loved me as he lined up his sights on the first one, and then he started killing them. Soon after that you guys showed up and took most of the pressure off of us, but father had already been bitten several times keeping the zombies off of me as I kept shooting.”
At that point Gracie began to quietly weep and Father O’Brien pulled her into a comforting embrace. For a long moment nobody said anything until Luke finally broke the silence, “I only hope that I can live my life as bravely as your father lived his in that alcove, fighting the monsters until he couldn’t fight anymore.”