The Week of the Dead

by Viktor Longfellow

  Rune sat on top of the canvas truck. He was sitting Indian style, carving things into his chunk of wood. The fire had died down to the embers. It was a cool night, but not enough for a fire. Ferret was still looking at the sky. He was happy. He knew there were other humans alive in this crazy world, and he was glad they weren’t trying to kill him. The crickets suddenly stopped chirping. The cicadas fell silent. Ferret sat up and looked to Rune, who also stopped what he was doing. His animalistic instincts told him there was something that made the critters go silent.

  Ferret grabbed a flashlight from a nearby bag. The campground was mostly pitch black. He fumbled around the tiny LED flashlight until a bright-blue beam came from his hand. He pointed it at the ground below him. He heard Rune snarl like an angry wolf. “Someone is watching,” Clint said quietly from the trees.

  “Are there more humans in the park?” Ferret whispered.

  “There was another family here, but I thought they had left. Even if it was them, they know not to sneak up on anyone at night. Wouldn’t they have flashlights or something?” Clint asked from the tree.

  There was a sound coming from the darkness from the way toward the way down to the water. Wet footsteps that sounded like they were dragging something came closer. Rune crouched on the canvas tarp. The sound came closer. “What the fuck is out there!” Ferret shouted. He called out to the noisemaker and to alert everyone in the camp. The snoring stopped, and the humans were standing up. “Guns up!” Devin called to the humans who had them.

  “Form a wall!” Redbeard shouted in his mighty voice as the old and young stood up in awkward commotion.

  “Lights!” Clint called to Gavin who flipped a switch somewhere behind them. Christmas lights and florescent tubes pointing outward flickered on. The humans were illuminated, and ten feet of space in front of the camp site were illuminated.

  The dragging sound came closer into the light. There, in front of the guns pointing out behind the shields of the Vikings stood a child. He looked to be about eleven years old with something wrapped around his ankle. Rune, who remained on the top of the truck, let out a throat noise. “What the hell?” Walker called out. The boy didn’t move.

  “Hey!” Faith called out. The boy didn’t move.

  “Are you human?” someone called out.

  “Maybe he’s deaf?” one of the old people said. The old man with the bolt action came out from behind the shield wall.

  “Get back here, old man!” Redbeard called out.

  “It’s just a child!” he responded. The old man walked toward the motionless child with his gun down.

  “Maybe it’s one of them, you old fuck!” Clint said from behind someone’s shoulder.

  Tank was standing on the end of the shield wall. He had Ferret to his left and was exposed to the elements on his right. Tank noticed rustling leaves to his side. He turned his head to see multiple glowing eyes standing at waist level. “Ambush!” Tank shouted as he broke from the shield wall and forced his shield into a child creature’s brittle body. The old man turned around right as the eleven-year-old latched onto him and took a bite out of him. Little sloppy feet were heard in all directions except toward the vehicles.

  Tank, Malik, and Razor were beating zombie children to pieces while Raine, Gavin, Faith, and Clint were taking them out as they stayed on the back side of the defensive circle. “What the fuck!” Devin shouted in between firing his pistol with a flashlight in his other hand.

  “Fuck!” someone shouted. The Vikings were using their weapons. Devin and the others, including Erica, Isaac, and Jamison, were using firearms.

  This new family was using a mixture of weapons. Faith used a weapon that looked like a shovel that had been sharpened and began smashing it into malleable skulls. It was too dark to use her bow or rifle. Raine was keen with her double daggers. These were homemade as well. They were the length of daggers but had rapier-style hand protectors on each handle. She was using these as brass knuckles and beating her opponents in the face.

  Clint started running and jumped on one of hood of the cars. He fired all the rounds his shotgun held. He slung it to the side. His button-down shirt was ripped back to reveal an undershirt and a belt with holsters sewn in. He had a series of revolvers in holsters sewn into a belt and a couple of semiautomatics in an underarm holster. He fired a revolver and replaced it with another fully loaded one from his belt. Gavin and Rune were using pieces of timber and teamwork to annihilate this small army of infected children. Gavin held one down with a long stick, followed by Rune who smashed it with his stump.

  The first child who made his appearance made his way to Tara. She set her gaze upon it. She beat the child-zombie to death with a burning piece of wood. The extension cord wrapped around his ankle made racket as it dragged across the hot asphalt. The tip of the cord was caught around the base of a tree. Tara stabbed the zombie with the wooden stake. The rotting boy was engulfed in flames as Tara moved to her next challenger. Some of the humans climbed in their vehicles and drove off in the darkness. One of the SUVs backed into the row of Viking motorcycles and sped off into the distance without looking. The taillights faded into the distance as they left the park.

  Jack and his aging father had joined the group from the Millington base. They had seen all that the group was capable of. Jack’s instincts came in, and he decided to flee with his father and anyone else in the car. He felt bad about backing over the motorcycles, but they shouldn’t have been parked there. Everything was always someone else’s fault when it came to Jack’s thought process. Jack redlined the vehicle climbing out of the basin and back onto the highway. He didn’t give a shit about anyone except his dad and himself. He threw the SUV toward the way they were headed. The highway was dark, and Jack threw the high beams on. His heart finally stopped racing, and he looked over to his dad. His dad was slumped against the car door. “It’s going to be OK, Dad; we’re getting the hell out of here.”

  All of a sudden, Jack stomped on the pedal, and the brakes screeched to a halt. In the high beams, bodies turned and faced him. The red eyes were locked on the people in the car. As Jack threw the vehicle in reverse, he made it about thirty feet before he heard a grunt from his father in the passenger seat. The woman in the backseat kept her eyes looking backward as Jack was backing up. The SUV shifted into the drive as Jack began trying to do a U-turn. The body of his father began to look around, readjusting itself to its environment. Jack held the wheel at 10 and 2, and he made the turn. His father’s teeth latched on to his right forearm. Jack let go of the wheel and hollered in pain. With one arm in his father’s mouth, he tried to push his father’s head away, letting the wheel go as the road went. The woman screamed and jumped out of the moving BMW, only to have her legs crushed by the back wheels. She lay on the warm pavement as feet and shoes began to fill her vision.

  She could smell the musk coming from these creatures. She screamed in pain as the razor-sharp teeth latched down on her soft skin. Jack got out of the car and tripped over his own feet as he tried to run back to the campground. The vehicle slowly rolled into a ditch. With his father’s corpse crawling out of the vehicle, Jack began to run.

  Jack didn’t make it very far when he saw clumsy shadows coming from the banks of the highway. He held his wrist and ran, and the shadows were getting closer. He could feel the heat coming from their bodies. Soon, he was encircled by these creatures. Their hands and mouths were open, and they began to claw and snap at his appendages.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here! There are too many!” Devin shouted over the gunfire.

  “Back to the vehicles! Everyone retreat!” Walker said. The loud beeping of the SWAT van could be heard moving toward the opening of the campground. Devin was lucky enough to grab the side mirror as he drove off. Jamison started the transport truck and fired out the window blindly.

  Those who had weapons held down cover fire for those who ran for their vehicles or the exit. Faith gathered her children into the back of Jamison’s truck. C
lint made his way to the roof of the truck and continued to fire his handguns. Jamison decided that it was time to go and set the large truck back of the hill and out of the campground. Jamison held the automatic rifle out the driver-side window and fired wildly into the night air as he put the truck in reverse. “Fuck me!” Clint said to his family as he flipped inside from the roof. Faith wasn’t sure if it was because he landed on the supplies in the truck or if it was because their quiet campground had been overrun in such a short period of time. They watched as faces turned to feast on those they had captured.

  Jamison’s truck was the last one out. Some of the old people didn’t make it. Some of the zombies latched on to them and dragged them down to the ground. One of the girls in scrubs ran into the woods, never to be seen again. Tank was last seen carrying a saddlebag and shield bashing wildly like a crazed maniac.

  ARTILLERY

  CHAPTER 69

  FRIDAY 0400 CST

  CROSS CREEKS NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

  When Jamison made it to the highway, he saw Devin’s van had stopped at an awkward angle with Devin in the back rummaging through the weapons. In his headlights, he saw Devin motion for Jamison to kill the headlights. Jamison left the engine running and got out. He saw a group of vehicles had stopped down the highway. Isaac’s ambulance and some of the other civilian vehicles had left ahead of Devin trying to get out of the forest. Ahead, Jamison saw a pair of taillights backing up to them.

  Redbeard and a couple of the Vikings had returned holding on to the side of Isaac’s ambulance. “What is it?” Jamison asked to them.

  “There’s a huge pack up there. We tried to go around them, but there’s too many of them.” Devin clicked on a flashlight and placed it in his mouth. He went to the back of the SWAT van. He came back and handed Jamison, Ferret, Redbeard, Gavin, and Clint a tube-looking device.

  “For those of you who don’t know what these are, it’s a goddamn grenade launcher. This is a grenade. You place it in the tube like this. You shoulder it to aim accurately. You have to arch it. The rest of you, I want with rifles to our six. Those fucks might come from the camp. Heard?” Devin commanded as he stood in line. There were seven humans armed against a battalion of snarling hungry creatures, including Jack and the woman who was crawling with her arms. They had seen the headlights and were coming for the rest of the party.

  “Kill them all!” Erica said as she finally figured out how to close her action on the rifle in the dark.

  “Fire!” Devin shouted. Those with launchers fired military and police single-shot M79 launchers. The rounds Devin found were a mix of incendiary rounds or tear gas. He didn’t read the label on the side before firing. After the first few grenades made quite an impact on the imposing force, Walker went to the back of the truck. He lifted up the tarp to find Raine who had her dagger ready to strike. “Hey! Cut that shit out! Hand me that big one, the one with the short barrel.” She did so.

  Walker took the weapon to the rest of the men who were popping heads with single shot from rifles. Even Redbeard, in his fit of rage, was using a rifle. Walker clicked the safety off his weapon. Walker took the M32 grenade launcher and fired all the six rounds of the cylinder. The rest of them stopped firing and looked at Walker, who shrugged his shoulders and smiled. His yellow unbrushed teeth showed in the predawn morning.

  After the smoke and gas had cleared, there were only fractions of what once remained. There was a noise of heat and air rushing from the campsite with a minimal booming that followed then another and another. The group then turned to the entrance of the camping ground. “Whatever comes our way is not friendly. Understand?” Devin said to those next to him.

  “What was that?” someone asked. Jamison backed the truck up to face the campsite entrance. From the beam of the overhead lights, aimed by Raine, they saw bodies coming toward them.

  First were the originally turned, who were faster. Then there were the freshly turned, including some of the civilians who weren’t lucky enough to escape the carnage from the children. Their skin had begun to turn gray, and their eyes were turning red. They were quickly taken down. After they hit the ground, there came two figures in Viking armor. Their armor made noise before they were noticed. Their eyes were illuminating red, and their body language was that of death on two legs. “Shit!” Erica said. She raised her weapon again.

  “Hold,” Redbeard said as he placed his hand on Erica’s hot barrel. “They were good men. They deserve a good death, a Viking death.” Redbeard, Ferret, and Razor took up their shields and weapons. They recited in unison something to their adversaries coming toward them. The three men spoke the same words and ended with “May we find you in Valhalla!” The three Vikings stood and began clanging their weapons against their shields. The reanimated corpses of Tank and Malik trudged forward looking to feast on their still-living motorcycle group members.

  “Draugr,” they called it, a Viking who had died and returned stronger and more powerful than when it was alive. Ferret and Razor took turns attacking the slow and groggy Tank while Redbeard eliminated Malik with one single blow to the top of the head. Redbeard continued clanging on his shield as Tank still remained. Razor distracted the reanimated Tank while Ferret took his shield and charged Tank’s massive body. Ferret was on top of Tank with the shield pinning him to the ground face down. With Tank immobilized with Ferret’s weight on top, Razor came alongside and connected Tank’s batons to his snarling head. Ferret held his eyes and mouth shut as Tank’s blood flew into the air. Ferret stood after the initial blunt-force trauma to Tank’s skull. Razor continued to beat Tank’s shattered cerebrum until there was nothing left. He let out a whimper as he fell to his knees.

  A shot rang out as a small child fell motionless to Razor’s side. It was Faith. She held the smoking barrel. Clint came to her side. “If the option is still on the table, we’d like to go with you.” Devin nodded silently.

  “Let us grab our things,” Clint said quietly.

  “How many people can you fit inside your vehicle?” Devin asked. Clint simply let out a smirk. “What is it?” Devin asked as the little man ran to the woods.

  Logs, branches, and leaves were thrown on top of the motionless bodies of Tank and Malik. Their armor was taken; weapons were recovered and placed in their hands. The bodies were carefully placed on their shields. Redbeard folded Malik’s glasses and placed them within his shirt pocket. Clint and his family were in the distance packing their things and loading it into a vehicle in the distance.

  The remaining Vikings stood around the bodies under the pile of timber and leaves. “I started this group…,” Redbeard began. “As a symbol of morality in the world. A world full of depression and pain. We’ve all lost someone to extenuating circumstances.” He said as he squeezed Tara’s hand. “I only wanted good men to defend good people against the darkness that grows in this world.” He started to tear up.” I have good men, we have lost some, but we remain strong and vigilant.” His tone changed to reinforce his strength. “But we shall endure! With that, I send these two of my finest warriors to fight in Valhalla! Until the days of Ragnarok, we will fight the eternal battle!” The rest of the Vikings repeated “The eternal battle!” They raised jars of a liquid and toasted their dead companions. They moved the broken bodies of the wrecked motorcycles and put them next to the bodies. They stabbed the gas tanks of the useless motorcycle and flooded gasoline onto the pile.

  Clint and his family had loaded up their belongings into their vehicle. When the engine came to life, the gutted mobile home came from behind the tree line. It was painted Cardinal Red with a giant pig face on the hood and a white “A” painted in cursive. The state of Arkansas was outlined in matching white along the side. The tail was a smoke pipe that was decorated like a pig’s tail. “What the ever-loving shit?” Devin asked. Faith was walking back to the road and passed by them. “My husband is a chef, what can I say? The fridge and the electronics work. I wanted to take my truck, but this was the long-term vehicle,”
Faith said.

  “What was your vehicle?” Erica asked. “We had an off-road vehicle with a tow winch and extra fuel tank and other nifty shit my husband bought. But we left it and made due,” Faith said as she guided her husband out of the camp with hand signals.

  “Why didn’t you just sleep in that?” Erica asked.

  “Wasn’t safe. Trees have better advantage,” Faith said simply.

  They walked over the rest of the bodies. All the children were dead, again. There were shrapnel wounds in the trees and bodies lying on the ground. “That’s what those noises were. Tank must’ve set off some of the bombs before he died,” Jamison said. As they were looking over the bodies, they noticed the children were wearing matching shirts. “Must have been a field trip.” Jamison continued as he crushed one of their skulls with his boot. They looked over the bodies and severed heads to those who didn’t look dead. They also grabbed the weapons from those who had turned. They lost the old man who had the bolt action, the young pregnant girl, one of the nurses from the hospital, and a few more that Devin didn’t recognize. After everything was loaded back on the vehicles, Devin went back to Redbeard and Razor. “There’s no trace of that Billy guy. Guess he turned tail and ran,” Ferret said aloud.

  “No body?” Walker asked.

  “Nope, just the bush he was lying, and drag marks where his armor scrapped the ground. Guess he got scared. No blood trail,” Ferret responded.

  “Billy! Get your ass back here!” Jamison shouted out in the open.

  “Shut your shit!” Faith shouted. “We don’t want to attract any more attention!” she said in her quietest voice possible.

  “Too bad about Billy. He gave us those weapons. Hope he’s OK,” Faith said.

  “Ever seen any other humans around here?” Erica asked carrying the armload of weapons.