by Mark Clodi
Stewart watched Max's face and remained quiet as he gave her a progress report, “Tom and the others are at the next house over. They are not getting out of the car, just pulling up in front of the house. I don't sense any zombies over there. One of ours is at the porch steps. He is looking down, almost right at us.” Max sighed in what sounded like relief to Stewart, “He is not a slow one, there is a woman carrying the kid behind him. She is fast too, I think faster than the man.”
“I thought you couldn't tell?”
“They get close, I can tell, I don't know why. The little one looks, weird, fast maybe?”
“What?”
Max raised his finger to his lips and whispered, “It is different than the other two, I get if they were male or female, but the kid is...different.”
Upstairs they heard the door swing open slowly. Then a muffled female voice called, “C'mon, get in here before they see! Hurry it up, don't touch anything and stay away from the windows!”
The voice moved away from the front door and they could hear some muffled movement upstairs, then everything went quiet.
“Well?” whispered Max.
“We do this. They stopped in the living room. I can hear them whispering up there, but I can't make out what they are saying.”
Max shook his head, “How can you hear them? I haven't heard a thing since the woman told the other one to stay away from the windows.”
“I just hear them is all, you can't hear them?”
“Not like that.”
“Well that is where they are and what they are doing, let's try to get them without the guns.”
Max slowly swung the bathroom door open and they quietly moved to the base of the stairs that led up into the kitchen. The stairs were normal wood and neither of them were intimately familiar with the house, they could not recall if the stairs were squeaky or not. Shrugging his shoulders Max started up slowly, with each step he planted his foot, then slowly put his weight down on it before taking the next step. At the top the door to the kitchen was closed, but they had left it unlatched. Catching a glimpse of a shadow in the kitchen Max set his shotgun down on the top step, leaving it upright and leaning against the corner of the wall where the door was.
Amelia's voice loudly spoke into Max's ear, startling him, and almost causing him to fumble the shotgun as he set it down. “Anything? We haven't seen anyone yet.” Max reached down and turned the radio on his belt off, thankful he had at least remembered to put in the ear buds. Up in the kitchen he heard someone moving around, had they heard the noise from the ear bud?
“Charlie?” the female voice called out from the living room, “You see anything?”
“No.” came the slow reply.
“You keep watch out the back, but don't stand in front of the windows or doors.”
They heard Charlie move into the kitchen a brief shadow passed in front of the basement door.
“Him first.” Stewart said.
Max nodded, and wondered how it was he was in the lead. He moved up to the top step, tensed himself and burst into the kitchen as quietly as he could. Standing in front of the back door was a tanned man with scraggly black hair who was about six feet tall. He was of moderate size with more fat than muscle on his frame, nonetheless he twirled quickly enough when the door was shoved open.
Max swung his bat sideways and Charlie blocked it with his forearm, not even attempting to catch it with his hand. A loud crack shot through the basement and it was not the bat which broke. Charlie swung his other hand in a punch that ended at Max's face. Max tried to roll with the blow, but it was coming too fast and he was moving in the wrong direction, the hit knocked him sideways into the kitchen sink and he bounced his head off of it and rebound onto the ground behind him. Stewart leapt forward and smashed the man with the crowbar, it hit him on his upper arm, the opposite arm that Max had broke. The head of the crowbar swung around behind the zombie's arm and smashed through it's ribs. Stewart made one attempt to pull it out then she was tackled from behind by the zombie woman. Both of them crashed into the man, who was pushed into the back door, where the glass shattered out onto all of them. Max bounced back to his feet, shaking his head to clear the stars out of his eyes, looking down he saw the two woman struggling on top of the man, who was just laying there with both arms twitching. The woman would have been five foot seven standing up and perhaps a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet...if she were carrying a ten pound bag of potatoes. The zombie woman was wearing a snuggy, a device designed to carry infants in front of the wearer and leave the user's hands free.
The snuggy was empty, where was the kid? Max found it without seeing in the living room, probably on a chair if his memory was correct. The kid was not moving so he filed it in the 'worry about it later' category and reached down to grab the mother's foot. Once he had a good hold he pulled her off of Stewart, who rolled clear of Charlie and pulled out her pistol.
The zombie woman twisted from Max's hand and scrambled away on her hands and knees, the kitchen was of good size, but she couldn't go far. Stewart was up and had her handgun out, she took a shot at Charlie as he got to his feet, the zombie man shrugged off the bullet and grabbed a cast iron frying pan off of the counter. When Stewart fired again it hit the bottom of the pan and ricocheted through the window of the back door. Aiming lower Stewart shot the zombie in the groin and upper thighs, Charlie bellowed in rage and flung the frying pan at her, she almost blocked the pan in time, it deflected off of her pistol and into her forehead. Stewart took one step back, staggering as her forehead turned red and then blue. Another step toppled her over backwards down the open door to the basement below.
Max had his own pistol out, but he could not get a bead on the woman, he took a shot anyway, doing nothing was more likely to get one or both of them killed. The bullet hit the woman's ankle as she slowed to try and pull herself upright.
She screamed, “Charlie! He is killing me!”
Charlie had just finished tossing the pan at Stewart, he turned around and grabbed the tea kettle from the counter, then swung that in an overhand arc at Max, who lined up his pistol at the same time. The kettle deflected off of Max's arms as he held his pistol, however it wasn't enough to ruin his shot completely, his bullet hit the zombie woman in the neck, just below her skull, she fell into the sink and lay there twitching while Charlie looked for the next pan or pot to throw at Max.
At the same time both of their eyes fell upon the block of kitchen knives on the counter, Max fired as Charlie reached for the knives, the bullet went wide and flew into the kitchen cabinet where there was a sound of breaking glass.
“Fuck, don't you ever get weaker?” Max yelled as the zombie continued making his legs work despite the damage Stewart had inflicted upon him. Something brushed up against Max's leg, he tried to move sideways away from it, fearing it was a zombie toddler. His heel came down upon a squishy bit of flesh that rolled slightly as he put his weight on it, beneath him the zombie baby let out a squall of indignation and wrapped its arms around Max's leg.
“Fuck!” he was standing on one of the baby's feet, the kid tried to bite him, but the small teeth he had could not get through Max's jeans, while he was looking down a knife struck him handle first in his chest, the impact was so soft that he almost laughed. The next knife spun more true and Max blocked it with his left arm, taking a cut in return. “Goddamn it! Enough of this shit!” he stepped back off of the baby's leg and then shook his other foot trying to dislodge the baby.
Charlie yelled, “Leave my baby alone!” and charged at Max with a knife in each hand. Max had one hand bracing himself against the doorway between the living room and the kitchen and one leg up off the floor shaking the baby around trying to get it off of him, in his right hand he still had his trusty revolver.
“Stop!” he said as he brought the handgun's barrel down and placed it against the baby's head.
Charlie tried to veer to one side, shouting “No!” but the damage to his legs had caused him to los
e some of his coordination and continued towards Max in an ungainly shuffle. Max fired into the baby's skull and tired to pull the gun up before the man hit him, he was not successful. Both men toppled into the living room and onto the coffee table, which broke under their weight.
Max felt himself get stabbed by one of the knives in the zombie's hands, in a daze he watched the other hand rise with a knife in it. His gun had been knocked from his hand and was laying three feet away at the base of the couch, Max couldn't see any other weapons close by and there was no one to save him as the zombie's blade descended.
Chapter 14
For the twelfth time in an hour Bill shook his head and tried to wake himself up. This was only a dream, only a bad, bad nightmare. Through the field ahead of him another figure came rushing out of the night. The moonlight was the only thing that made fighting in these conditions possible. Bill was on the edge of a field with his squad, he had, true to Wilke's word, been promoted to sergeant at the brief ceremony two days before when the soldiers graduated. Also true to his word Bill had raised up Ruben to act at his corporal. The old man had protested, just a bit too much in Bill's mind, but he took the job nonetheless. The squad had been called out once before their training was complete, there was an incident in the small city of Perry, IA. The military had roused them for action and they went house to house checking on all of the residents. Midway through clearing about half of their sector Wilkes had been called and told to move his men quickly towards the west edge of town and some trailer homes located there. Bill and the others had to search trailer by trailer and in the first two they found the undead waiting for them. After that bit of excitement the rest of the fifty homes had been empty. The squad returned to base at the end of the day and celebrated their victory with a few beers Ruben had scrounged up. Even John partook of the drink, which Bill didn't mind, old enough to kill meant old enough to drink a low alcohol beverage. The entire squad was dead tired from the adrenaline rushes they had gone through during the afternoon of searching house by house for zombies, by seven o'clock that evening they had passed out like overgrown children coming back from a play date.
That was four days ago, after graduating they had immediately been sent to Sioux City Iowa, this was not supposed to be their final destination, but just a brief stop on their way to the Lincoln Nebraska area. What they arrived to find was something out of a deranged nightmare. There were a half dozen bridges across the Missouri river between Nebraska and Iowa, Bill and 'his' squad were assigned to push across a rail road bridge and take up positions on the other side, shooting all zombies they encountered, no exceptions. The official briefing given by Lieutenant Jenkins was way too vague for Bill's liking, he and another squad were all the assets assigned to what the militia was calling an area of 'light activity'. The Lieutenant was younger that Bill by almost fifteen years and seemed new at his job. Talking this over with Ruben Bill discovered that this was often the case, Lieutenants didn't know what the hell they were doing when they started any more than Bill had the day he 'graduated' from training. Ruben did know that Jenkins was a regular army, not recently drafted or promoted, which implied that the man at least had more training than most of the men he commanded.
“New Lieutenants are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are getting. Most do okay if they have seasoned non commissioned officers to respectfully suggest a course of action to them.” Looking Bill over Ruben said, “So ours is screwed in that respected. But he might do okay. Just think of him as your boss and you are the supervisor over this 'department'. You can run the day to day stuff and let him worry about the bigger picture stuff. If he screws up too badly he will be replaced, probably demoted in this new world order or moved to be a rear echelon mother fucker, in charge of trucks or something. The army of my time didn't waste any resources.”
“So if I am the supervisor what does that make you?”
“Me? I am the eager young man training to take over your position and to show how much I want it, I keep this crew in line for you. You move up, I move up. Just like the business world. Of course it really isn't like that, the Army switched to promotion schedules and stuff during peace times. You know though, this is war and I might make it back to sergeant yet.” rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
“Third time's a charm, right Ruben?”
“How did you know that? Goddamn, you can't keep a secret in this army, even after five fucking decades!”
They moved out around two o'clock in the afternoon and each man had bagged a zombie or two as they pushed into the fields along River View Drive, the other sergeant, Don Williams, was given the objective of clearing out a sports complex to the north of the rail road tracks and Bill was supposed to hold the tracks proper and scout into the fields to the south. The entire area immediately close to the river was not settled, but South Sioux City Nebraska was less than a mile away. As the sun went down a steady stream of refugees started moving towards them, most were alive, but a few were bitten and infected and fewer still were undead.
Bill asked many of the people moving why they hadn't left during the day and they told him they had been told to stay put earlier, but then the military moved in after sundown and told them to leave and head east into Iowa. This didn't make any sense to Bill so he called up to the Lieutenant to confirm it. Jenkins got back to him and said no such orders had been given by either the Iowa or Nebraskan national guard, but he was checking into it. That had been six hours ago. Now they could hear William's squad firing almost constantly and Bill's men were having a hard time differentiating living from dead as they came towards them across the fields. One thing that did make it easier was that most of the living carried some belongings with them, chances were if the person coming towards you was not carrying anything it was a zombie, or a 'zed' as the squad started calling them.
“Here sergeant.” said Ruben, offering him a packed sandwich. Bill took aim at the man rushing across the field and fired at his head, the thing went down, leaving him to hope it had been a zed.
“Where did you get...?” Bill asked Ruben, then shook his head, he didn't want to know. There was not a store in sight and these were not army rations. He took the sandwich and a diet soda that Ruben offered. “Thanks, you getting everyone fed?”
“Of course sergeant. We are the last to eat, feed the men first, that is my motto. I got one of the civilians to cross the tracks and bring us this stuff, enough for thirty guys, I said, he brought back fifteen sandwiches on the first load, but he looked a bit skittish when Don's squad started firing, I doubt he will be coming with that second load of food.”
Bill frowned, officially civilians were supposed to be told to move to the southern bridge on highway twenty about three miles downriver to cross, that way they could be inspected and allowed to cross. But sometimes they let a few people through. All of them had to pass Ruben or one of his cronies visual inspection, which meant stripping down naked as a jaybird to make sure they didn't have any bit marks on them. Those who protested could take the walk south, most didn't. Ruben had set up a tarp to offer the people some privacy from others in line and the soldiers who were nominally protecting them.
Looking out across the field Bill saw another group of zombies coming towards them. They had not seen any people for at least an hour now, these were zombies. “Ruben. Here they come, this is a big group.”
“Yeah sarge, it is. What do you want us to do?” Ruben said back.
Bill stopped for a moment, “You love this, don't you?”
“What?”
“Being here, doing this?”
“No sergeant I do not like the zombies.”
“That wasn't what I was talking about. You love being here doing this stuff. Responding to an emergency, even though you are what? Eighty?”
Ruben stiffened, “I am seventy one, Sergeant. Not a year older. And I was retired for eight years and about bored to death of it. Now I am doing something useful again and people depend on me and if you don't mind my say
ing we better do something because this group here does not look small enough for us to handle on our own.” he said, pointing with his left hand.
“Oh hell.” Bill looked again to make sure he was seeing things right, the far edge of the field had become an undulating wave of undead. “Send someone to tell Williams we have to pull back. Someone fast.”
“John?”
Bill wanted to say 'no', then shook his head to clear that thought, Ruben took that to mean not to send John and said, “Maybe Jerome then?”
“No, no that was to myself, send John, he is probably the fastest one here. Tell him to tell Williams we are going to be up to our eyeballs in bodies in fifteen minutes and they might not make it over the bridge if they wait longer than that.”
“Okay I will send him off and have Kirk buddy up with Larry and Vic.” Ruben ran to the north end of the line where John was and gave the young man the news. Normal soldiers had radios to speak with each other, the national guard also had decent equipment, but Max and the other squads like his had to make due with one radio per ten men and the radio was a bulky, ancient piece of equipment that was mostly battery. It did have a global positioning device on it, so the Lieutenant could find them if he needed to plot artillery. Williams squad had been issued a radio, but it had only lasted for a day before the battery gave out. Once Ruben spoke to him, John nodded and melted quickly into the night, running off to where the sounds of gunfire were coming from in the north. Each of the ten men in the squad, Bill included, had a designated 'buddy' whom they were not to leave for anything. You stayed with your buddy unless ordered to separate, the idea was that two men would not spook as easily as one. Bill's buddy was Ruben and the two of them violated the 'always stick with your buddy' rule constantly.
“Alright men, we know what to do, if they get too close we are backing up to the next line of defense.” Bill bellowed out. He had used the slow pace of the fighting this afternoon to prepare two lines to fall back on towards the bridge as the Lieutenant had directed him to do. “Jerome! Get the lieutenant on the line and tell him we need reinforcements there are too many zeds over here. Fire at will everyone.”