by Caleb Cleek
Matt unleashed a multitude of shots in rapid succession and then took cover as a flurry of shots from upstairs poked holes in the dirt and tree trunk in front of him. I took aim through the hole in the wall where the window had been. The shooter moved behind the wardrobe on the wall on the right side of the room to reload. He thought he was behind cover. I could still see his head looking around the antique piece of furniture. My gun bucked as it spit the bullet down the barrel. I momentarily lost sight through the scope. When the gun settled I found him in the scope again. My shot had gone wide and shattered the mirror on the door of the wardrobe. I shot again. This time the bullet found its mark. The upstairs shooter crumpled to the floor. I couldn’t tell where I hit him. It seemed like a good hit from the way he fell.
I turned my attention to the left, searching for the sixth gunman. He must have realized the tide had turned because he ran backwards toward the tree covered hill behind the house. Before I could get my rifle situated, I heard Matt’s rifle boom and saw the last gunman sprawl forward onto the ground. He lay motionless.
I returned my attention to the entry way of the house. Both bodies remained where they had fallen. Neither had moved. “Do you see any more?” I yelled to Matt as I shifted my gaze to the two who had been moving to my right.
“No, I don’t see any more. This is definitely the group from the Jones’ house. Unless they picked up an extra on the way, that’s all there is,” he answered in reply. “Where did the other shots come from?” he yelled at me.
“I’m not sure,” I answered.
“They came from back here. I couldn’t let you boys get all the glory.” I nearly stood straight up at the sound of my wife’s voice. The only thing that kept me from doing so was a strong sense of self preservation. I still wasn’t sure that all the shooters were finished.
“Katie?” I yelled. “Is that you?”
“It’s me and Toby,” she called back.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We aren’t hit, so I guess we are,” she replied.
“Stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”
“Cover me, Matt. I’m going to work my way to them. Keep your eye on the upstairs window. He went down, but he might still be alive.”
“Copy that,” he said.
I looked at the car. The hood looked like it could have come off Bonnie and Clyde’s rig. It was full of ragged holes, dents, and furrows. If they had been closer, or had used a more powerful cartridge, I would probably be dead. As it was, the engine and steel rims had protected me.
Any further shooting was going to be close range and the scope wasn’t suited for that. I swapped the AR-10 for my AR-15 which was still jammed between the front seats of the car. The Aimpoint sight was ideally suited for the cleanup. I grabbed my .223 magazines and sprinted to the nearest tree. In the fading light, I had a hard time deciphering the bodies in the yard. I moved closer and could see they had not moved. I briefly activated the momentary contact switch for the light mounted to the quad rail. Two hundred lumens illuminated the area well enough to see that one guy had been hit in the head. The second had a crimson circle around his chest. Both had taken fatal rounds. I was thankful that they were only wearing soft body armor. I didn’t have much experience with higher rated plate body armor, but I was pretty sure it would have stopped a .308 round. I continued toward the back of the house.
“Where are you, Katie?”
“Keep coming, you’re almost to us,” she yelled back.
I homed in on her voice to a large tree, but still could not see her. I made a dash towards it and saw her at the base when I drew near. “Where’s Toby?” I asked, rounding the trunk.
“I’m up here,” his small voice squeaked. I looked up and saw him sitting on a thick branch, hugging the back side of the tree.
“Why don’t you come down, you little monkey,” I said, smiling for the first time since I had left the house forty minutes earlier.
I leaned my gun against the tree and approached Katie. As I wrapped my arms around her, I could feel her body trembling. She was experiencing the after effects of adrenaline.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she said, choking up. “I’m not hurt, but I’m not okay. We saw the van coming up the road toward the house. They stopped halfway and got out. They were looking at the house with binoculars. Something didn’t feel right about it. I told Toby we had to get out of the house. As soon as they got back in the van, we ran out the back door. I took your other AR as I ran out. We didn’t get very far before they pulled up the driveway, so we hid behind the tree.
“They were in there for about ten minutes. I could hear them yelling inside. One of them kept yelling, ‘Come on out. All we want to do is put a bullet in your head.’ After tearing the house apart for ten minutes, one of them came out the back door and started walking toward us. Then you were driving up the road. Someone yelled from inside and he ran back in.
“When the shooting started, three of them came out the back. Two ran around that way,” she said, pointing to the left, “and the other one went the opposite direction. I was going to shoot when they first came out, but I hesitated. Then I was afraid they were going to get too far for me to hit them before I got up the nerve to shoot. I finally shot and he just fell over.
“I started shaking so badly, I couldn’t hit the other one.”
“Don’t worry. You did fine,” I reassured her. “You got his attention and he forgot all about me. With his attention on you, I was able to take care of him. You saved Matt and me. They just about had us surrounded. In another minute, we would have been finished.”
I pulled away from her embrace. “Stay here while I clear the house. I’ll yell “clear” when it is okay to come out.”
“Can I come with you?” Toby asked enthusiastically.
“No, Son. I need you to stay and take care of your mom. Can you do that for me?”
“I can,” he said, beaming with pride that I would trust him with the job.
I picked my way to the back door, running from tree to tree, trying to keep as much cover as I could. I came up to the left side of the doorway and I got down low and peered around the door frame. It was a straight shot through the house to the front door. The two bodies were still laying on the floor. I watched them for twenty seconds with no movement. When I was confident they were dead, I moved quickly through the door and moved left to get out of the “fatal funnel”. There wasn’t much light outside to silhouette me. It was still a bad place to stand. I quickly cleared the living room.
The house was trashed. They had done more than just look for us. They had taken joy in destroying our things. The clock that hung on the living room wall was smashed on the floor. All the pictures had been stripped from the wall and the glass was broken out of the frames and the couches had been overturned.
There was only one contractor not accounted for. I assumed he was upstairs in my room where I had last seen him. I climbed the stairs backwards so that I would ascend into the room with my back to the corner and my gun facing toward the threat. Climbing as quietly as I could, my attention was focused on the growing portion of the room coming into view above me. My right foot caught on the edge of a wooden step, banging loudly. My heart sank at losing the element of surprise. As my head cleared the floor, I peered through the railing, searching for a body. I didn’t see it where I thought it had fallen. A blood stain on the carpet and an abandoned MP5 confirmed it was where he went down.
I moved off the stairs and followed the trail of blood around the corner of my bed. More and more of the floor came into view around the bed as I moved deeper into the room. Finally, I saw feet trying to push a body forward and out of view.
“Let me see your hands,” I ordered. “Put them up so I can see them.” I continued forward and more of his body came into sight. I could see a mangled hand trying to extricate a pistol from its holster.
“Don’t do it!” I yelled. “Move your hand away
from the gun.” He managed to undo the holster snap with his blood stained hand in spite of a thumb hanging by a thread of skin. He pulled his pistol from its holster.
My finger tightened its grip and the trigger snapped backwards.
Chapter 14
The smell of freshly burned gunpowder filled my nostrils. It is a unique smell, one that you never forget after smelling for the first time. It is an odor that takes me back to childhood, bringing back memories of shooting with my dad. It is a comforting and relaxing smell.
The soothing quality of the smell was bringing my heart rate down, closer to normal, which was ironic. The burning of gunpowder had created the extreme pressure needed to propel bullets in my direction. It was the proximal cause of my pulse spiking to start with. Now, the after effect of burning powder was the stimulus that was normalizing my pulse.
I looked around the room. There was no one else in it. The room itself had not fared well in the gunfight. There was glass from the window and wardrobe mirror all over the floor. Bullets passing through the wall had pulled bits of fiberglass insulation out and strewn dabs of it all over the carpet. My bed had caught a multitude of bullets, which had torn the bedspread to shreds. The back wall was pocked with holes.
At some point in the gunfight, the contractor had caught a bullet in his abdomen. Afterward, he had crawled across the room and left a stinking trail of the contents of his gut mixed with pints of blood. The wall behind where he had been standing when he was shot had a dripping blood smear that looked like a Rorschach inkblot test. It reminded me of a butterfly. I’m sure a psychologist would find all kinds of defects in my personality if he knew I saw a butterfly in a blood smear. He would probably say it was my dad’s fault for giving me too many boundaries as a kid.
The floor was littered with empty nine millimeter cases as if somebody had reached into a barrel full of them and thrown handfuls up in the air. They hadn’t piled in a neat heap like you see at the range. The contractor had been changing his aim from Matt to me and moving around the room on top of that. Every time he shot, the ejection port was pointed in a slightly different direction, preventing the empty cases from accumulating in one spot.
I couldn’t imagine what would cause a whole squad to act like these six had. What they had done to Will Jones was murder. Under the circumstances, I could almost see how they could justify trying to kill an exposed family. I couldn’t make the jump though. An exposed family is not necessarily an infected family. Their ability to justify their actions in their own minds didn’t make their actions moral or right. From Katie’s description of what she heard and the evidence I had seen downstairs, something else was going on. There was no professionalism in their behavior. They had destroyed my house for no other reason than they enjoyed doing it.
It reminded me of riots and looting in the aftermath of a natural disaster. When society breaks down, people lose their inhibitions against socially unacceptable behavior. It was another indication that people are not good at their core. When it matters, they can put up a convincing facade. When repercussions for bad actions are taken away, what is inside comes out. Time and time again people show their true character to be degraded and reprobate when the social norms are no longer upheld or expected.
These six men were ordered to kill indiscriminately. The facades came down. The untamed animal, deep within, was unleashed and I had seen the result. Any goodness that may have been inside was overcome and fled before the evil that resided in the recesses of their hearts.
The remnant of physical light outside was rapidly being dispelled by darkness just as any moral light within these contractors had been dispelled by the darkness that had been lurking in the recesses of their hearts. I activated the tactical light on my gun and flicked light switches on the wall as I passed them. Walking through the house, I saw more wanton destruction. Holes had been kicked into the sheet rock, bathroom mirrors shattered, and clothes had been tossed from dressers with the removed drawers smashed on the floor. This was behavior I had encountered from juveniles in abandoned houses. I would expect to encounter it while dealing with delinquents, but not from a professional law enforcement agency, especially not from an elite unit.
My house was not large. It only took a few minutes to determine that there were no more threats. I walked to the back door and yelled, “All clear.” I moved across the house to the front door, careful to avoid the pools of blood from the two contractors in the entry, and gave Matt the same message.
Matt stood up from behind the juniper tree and trotted to the front door. “That came out a lot better than it looked like it was going to toward the end. If Katie hadn’t given them something to think about on their flank, we wouldn’t have lasted more than another minute. You got a good one when you married her. Not many women would have been able to do that.”
“She did alright, didn’t she?” I answered with pride in my voice. “Have you check in with Eve and Luke?” I asked, referring to his family.
“I haven’t talked to them for an hour and a half. They were fine when I last spoke with them. They’re holed up in the house.”
“Why don’t you go get them and bring them over here? The house is pretty messed up, but it won’t take long to get it livable again. You and Eve can have the guest room and I know Toby will be happy to share his room with Luke. They’re probably a little safer out here than at your place in town. It’ll be a lot easier to take care of them if they’re all in one place.”
“Check with Katie first. As long as she doesn’t mind, that would be great,” he said optimistically .
“It sounds good to me,” Katie said, stepping out of house and onto the front porch. “After this evening, I don’t think I can handle being here by myself anymore. It would be good to have Eve here. Besides, I could use some help cleaning up this mess,” she said, pointing at the room behind her.
Katie, Toby and I walked inside to survey the damage while Matt remained on the porch talking to Eve on the phone. A minute later he rejoined us inside. “Eve is in a panic. She said she would be relieved to move out here with you guys. Town is turning into a zoo. She said the infected have been running up and down the streets since it got dark. One of them ate Luke’s dog in the back yard five minutes ago. After that, she and Luke locked themselves in the bathroom.”
“I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere in that patrol car,” I said, looking down the driveway at the car. It was listing to the port side on two shot out tires. The hood and left fender looked like a big piece of Swiss cheese, bringing into question whether the engine would even run. Even if it did, it wouldn’t get very far without a new radiator. “We’ll take my truck. You can load anything you need from your place into it. Then we’ll pick up my patrol car from the station.”
As the four of us walked to the door, Katie wrapped her arms around my waist and began sobbing again. “I don’t think I can handle being alone again. Please don’t leave us.”
I pulled her close to myself and stroked her silky hair as I spoke to her. “I don’t want to leave you either. Luke and Eve and are in even worse shape than we are. They’re in the middle of town and the infected are all around them. It’s just a matter of time before one gets into the house. We’ll be back in less than an hour,” I promised as I pulled away. “Go into Toby’s room, close the door, and move the dresser in front of it. You’ll be safe there.”
While l was walking to my truck, I looked to the south and my eyes were drawn to Scorpius, hanging just above the horizon. The constellation consisted of eighteen gigantic orbs of burning hydrogen. It had been there since the beginning of time, watching over the struggles of mankind, indifferent to our problems. Today’s dilemma garnered no more attention than any other in the history of the world.
The truck dinged at me when I pushed the key into the ignition. I twisted the key forward and the diesel engine fired up and rumbled at a slow idle while I waited for Matt to close his door. Once he was in place, we started down the driveway. The
re was just enough room for the truck to squeeze between the front bumper of the shot up patrol car and the fence. Once we were clear, I put the transmission in park. I exited the truck and retrieved my AR-10 and extra bullets from the patrol car. I also took the time to find the three empty magazines I had discarded during the gun battle.
Before shifting the truck into drive, I brushed the dust off the empty magazines, handed them to Matt and said, “Why don’t you make yourself useful and reload these for me?”
He pretended to be insulted and said, “You sure do have a way to get people to do your bidding,” as he fed bullets into the hungry magazines. “How about some music?” he asked.
“What’ll you take?” I asked, “Rock or country?” Thanks to the remoteness of Lost Hills, there were only two radio stations to choose from. As long as you liked rock and roll or country, you were fine. If you liked something else, you were out of luck.
“How about a little country?” he said, knowing that I hated country music.
“Sounds good to me, rock and roll it is.” Rock and roll on this station could mean anything that had ever been referred to as rock and roll from its inception to the latest release that came out last week. It was a very eclectic station and you never knew what you would get.
I pushed the power button on the radio. Survivor was belting out the chorus from Rocky’s ballad, The Eye of The Tiger.
“Crank it up!” Matt yelled as he reached for the volume knob and twisted it to a level that was just short of what was required to rupture tympanic membranes. He lifted up his voice along with the band, “It’s the eye of the tiger, It’s the thrill of the fight, Rising up to the challenge of our rival, And the last known survivor, Stalks his prey in the night, And he’s watching us all with the Eye of the Tiger.” His voice was loud and at least two octaves off key. I couldn’t help but join in. We were rolling down the road, two idiots, still high on the after effects of massive adrenaline dumps and the camaraderie that comes from shared near death experiences.