He stood there, amazed at his new-found strength until Maddy snorted, “You’ve split your pants. Whitey-tighties? Really?”
Chapter 10
Bryce immediately felt the breeze and turned partially so that his backside was to the wall. Maddy grinned and said, “You can only see it when you’re showing off, vaulting fences. You have quite the big…”
Zombies striking the wall with a great roar stopped her, but didn’t stop Bryce from gaping. “You saw…”
She punched his shoulder. “I was talking about your head.” She tapped her own. “Being a show-off is just not something the real Bryce would do.”
The real Bryce, he thought, So, she saw an imposter, too.
With the zombies a few feet away, threatening to tear down the wall, there was no time to dwell on the remark. “It just sort of happened,” he threw out as way of an explanation. “But I gotta go.”
She expected him to run off for new pants; the old Bryce certainly would have. Instead, he sprinted away to a further section of the fence, leapt up on a desk and called the zombies over. There were somewhere around a hundred of the creatures stacking up near that part of the wall. Just their weight alone was pushing it inward, grinding the feet of the desks across the concrete with a screech.
“Over here!” he called out and then dropped back down as soon as they turned their heads his way. They came on in a fury, but he was already twenty yards further down the wall where a pair of frightened men cowered. They were armed with long-handled axes. He had to refrain from snatching one for himself. “Get up. We’re fighting.”
He didn’t wait for a response but jumped up on another desk and called more of the zombies his way.
“What in Christ’s name are you doing?” one of them demanded, grabbing his leg to pull him down. Although a young man, he had a huge walrus of a mustache, at the same time his eyebrows looked to have been teased into nonexistence. They were only thin arcing lines.
“Spreading them out,” Bryce answered, trying his best not to stare at the odd eyebrows. “They’ll be easier to fight this way. Come on, get on up. You can do this.” By then the entire length of the wall was being mobbed, but at least it wasn’t being crushed inward.
Just as a hundred other people were, the men climbed up onto the desks and began to hack at everything in reach.
Bryce found his own spot and laid about with the chain. It was a much less vindictive weapon when used at a downward angle. Instead of bouncing back at him, it leaped upward where he could use its momentum to strike faster than before. Ten swings left seven of the creatures spread out on the ground, giving him a moment of reprieve.
Staring around he saw that the battle was still well in hand. There were plenty of people with guns in evidence and although they were burning through ammo very quickly, they were holding the zombies back, and that in itself was a win.
“Billy!” he roared. Maddy was near the middle of the back wall, hacking with her ice axe. Like Bryce, she had a wide section all to herself. She didn’t need any help just yet.
The boy had been crouched under a desk near her. He came running at Bryce’s call. Bryce clapped him on the shoulder. “I need your help. I need a new weapon. Your chain and I are having a disagreement on who’s boss.”
“You want a gun?”
Guns were going off all around the building. They were fine weapons, perhaps the best weapons under the circumstances, and yet Bryce felt a touch of embarrassment at the very idea of using one. A memory of the demon flashed through his mind. Griff had fired a gun at it and the thing’s response was one of scorn, as if firearms were beneath the creature. It was a strange moment that shouldn’t have made sense, only it did. Guns were for the weak and the frightened.
A sword was a proper weapon, though he knew better than to ask for one.
“No, something stout. Like those axes or a bat. And if you see a pair of pants lying around that might fit me grab ‘em. Now go.” The kid took off at a run, his heavy coat swishing. Figuring he would be gone a while, Bryce strode off, wondering who was in charge. There were dozens of people on the west wall crouched in little groups not fighting anyone.
He headed their way only to feel a sudden queasiness. It was a sensation that pertained more to the spirit than the body. A glance over his shoulder and he saw Victoria running his way. This wasn’t about the battle.
“You said…” she started in right away.
“I promised to find your son, and I will. Once this is all settled, we will go.”
She grabbed his arm. “By then it might be too late! We have to go now before we’re surrounded.”
When they had first met, they had been much the same height; now he looked down when he stared into her eyes. The way his glowed with an almost neon radiance was off-putting and she tried to look away, but he held her eyes firmly with his, his gaze, an imperative. He saw into her. Her desire to leave was equal parts fear for her son and husband, and equal parts fear for her own skin. Both were natural fears.
Still… “I have a duty to these people.”
“What duty?” she insisted. “You don’t know any of them. You don’t owe them anything. You want to be a hero and save people? Then save my son like you promised.”
The word hero bothered him; it stuck in his mind and nagged at him. It was pretentious to even consider the idea of being a hero. On the surface, Bryce knew he was no hero, he was just bigger now, and knew things. A deeper, darker part of him felt that Victoria was right. He didn’t have a duty to these people, no more than he had a duty to anyone. At the thought, he felt a sudden, inexplicable shift inside him, and a thought ghosted up: Leave. They are nothing. Worms beneath your feet. You are greater.
The thought brought him up short. “I’ll d-do what I said, just not yet,” he stuttered. It felt like there was sand beneath his feet, sliding down somewhere he was afraid to go and Victoria’s presence only made things worse. The fear and weakness that bloomed from her was appallingly and at the same time contagious. This time he looked away. “For now, we’re going to do this. We’re going to fight this battle. You and me. To start, I need you to find out who’s in charge. Go.” The last word was a command that had her blinking, stunned. She turned and left, slowly at first, but then running.
You did that, came from deep down. You are greater.
“I’m just Bryce,” he told himself, firmly. “I’m just me. And people aren’t worms.” It was a strong statement; forceful and undermined by the people along the west wall cowering under desks. He marched over to them, holding in his anger, knowing that he would’ve been right there with them if the circumstances were different.
“What’s with all this? For the most part, the fight is at the front!”
One hissed him quiet behind a double layer of scarfs and was then hissed quiet, himself. Another whispered, “Zombies,” so lightly that the word was more a movement of mouth and lips rather than breath.
Bryce’s sharp ear had already picked out the sound of the creatures on the other side of the wall, despite the din. He could count their moans and the scraping of their feet. “There can’t be above a dozen of them.” He hopped up on the desk the whisperer was hiding beneath and saw the dead moving along the wall. “Eleven,” Bryce said, hopping down. “And there’s six of you.”
The six were waving at him to be quiet, cringing as they did.
You are greater.
He grunted the thought away. Others without powers were fighting very bravely all along the wall. Were they greater, as well?
“This won’t do. Come on. Get up!” He was being loud and now the zombies were battering at the cubicle wall over the whisperer. “These are great odds. Trust me, it’s ten to one up front. It’s better to kill them now before their numbers grow. No, don’t use the gun.” One carried a shotgun and had just hitched it to his shoulder. “Save your ammo.”
Leaping back on the desk, Bryce demonstrated that with their height advantage it was easy to kill the creatures. H
e cracked a few heads and then stood back to watch. The six were armed with a strange assortment of weapons, among them a tree branch and a crutch with a wood saw duct-taped to the narrower end. They hacked and whacked with more fervor than accuracy.
As he watched, he caught the sound of an odd metallic jingling sound. It was coming closer and when he turned, his face broke into a smile. Billy was hurrying around the building carrying a long metal pipe. It was at least six feet in length and with a bore an inch in diameter. It was heavy and after sprinting through the lower floor of the building, the boy was now dragging the back end of the pipe.
Hurrying forward, Bryce took it from him. “Yes, thank you. Nice.” Longer and narrower than his last pipe, it was basically a quarterstaff, a weighty, head-crushing quarter staff. He swung it, two-handed in a circle around him, then made a few tentative karate-esque moves he had seen in movies. Against unmoving, imaginary opponents he felt like an expert with the weapon.
“Next thing, Billy, I’m going to need another sandwich. Stack it with meat, cheese, meat, cheese, meat so it’s this thick. And plenty of mayo. A dry sandwich sucks. Go!”
All around him were chilling moans, high screams and gunshots, but the idea of a sandwich put a smile on his face. It faded slightly as he began to feel the fear in the air around him build and swell. There was dread on the faces of the people manning the walls. Sure, there had been fear on their faces before, but it had escalated quicker than he could have believed and was well beyond simple fear now. The defense of the wall was already crumbling in spots where the fighting was thickest. People were on the verge of breaking—and when they did, it would be pandemonium.
There’d be a mad rush to get inside through a single, narrow, mostly barricaded door. There’d be a logjam and in the terror, the weak would be trampled, their bodies making it even more difficult to get inside. Those in back would have to face the dead as they came on, crushing relentlessly inward. Those that didn’t cut and run would be buried beneath a grey wave…
Bryce blinked trying to clear away the vision. “How many of us will be trapped outside?” Most of them and that included Bryce and Maddy.
Someone has to do something. Mixed in with the mounting fear was something of a milling confusion. People were going in different directions, aimlessly it appeared and there was too much standing around on the part of others. Bryce spied twenty people along a quieter section of the wall watching half their number fighting desperately only a few yards away “What the hell? Why aren’t they shifting over? Who’s in charge?” No one seemed to be. People were following their own minds, which was generally a poor choice.
He looked around for Victoria, hoping to find her hurrying back with someone in a uniform, preferably a uniform draped in medals. She was nowhere to be seen.
“Fuck!” Someone needed to step up. Someone had to control the situation. This was a battle without a general. A general would’ve seen the need for a reserve force, and for someone to take charge of logistics, and another to be in charge of communications.
Bryce had never been in a battle in his life, but even he could tell there was already an ammo problem. The gunfire coming from the front was already slacking and it was not due to a want of targets.
He jogged to the front of the building where a wide breadth of stone steps marched up from the street. The wall here was set right along both the steps and a little hill, giving the fighters a greater advantage. They were in need of every advantage they could get. Hundreds of zombies had already been killed, but there were hundreds more streaming in towards the fight.
This was the epicenter of fear. Bryce felt it pulse, which was no longer the shock it had been. What was interesting, from his science-based view, was seeing that everyone else felt it as well. This invisible force was affecting the rank and file, making them hesitant, making them glance over their shoulders every few seconds.
They’re going to lose. It was only a thought, and dark as it was, he was happy that at least it was his own.
Losing was very possible, but not foreordained. The absolute knowledge of that escaped him possibly because it depended on what it meant to lose, precisely. A terrified panicked route in which most of them would be slaughtered was on one end of the spectrum, while being slowly driven inside and trapped in this one building was on the other. The idea of being trapped like that nagged at Bryce. Sure, they’d be relatively safe; there were enough people to stop an army of zombies in the cramped stairs that led to the upper floors, but what would the defenders eat? How would they stay warm? What would they do when the water stopped flowing, something that was likely at any time.
Being trapped was the last thing he wanted and yet, the walls were already close to falling. He knew he could still flee. He and Maddy could make it if they left right then. Looking back, he saw her still fighting, whacking all about with her axe. There was something oddly striking in the way she stood, legs set wide on some poor sap’s old desk. The wind had picked up and where, ages ago it seemed, she used to wear her hair cut short in a hideous bob, as if long hair made her a slave to the sexist patriarchy, her hair had grown into a thick brown mane that rippled in the strengthening breeze.
He found himself staring. She must have sensed his glance, because she took that moment to pause, and across a hundred feet of battle, their eyes locked.
She gave a little wave and then gestured oddly, perhaps trying to tell him something, but he was suddenly struck by an odd thought: She could be leader. This drove the thought of her flowing hair completely out of his head.
“It would be perfect. She’s always been bossy and when she starts to screech…” Now, she was frantically waving at him and pointing. “Huh?” He turned and saw the defenders were shying back from the wall. The corpses had piled too high and now there was a hill of them, giving the zombies much easier access to the defenders. They surged upward and people began to break, their fear hitting new levels. The moment one lost their nerve and began backing away, two followed, and three followed those two.
The wall was about to fall and Bryce had been caught daydreaming.
Chapter 11
People were fleeing, which was bad, but what was worse was that no one was stopping them. Surely if there was a leader, now would be the time to do some damned leading. Bryce looked around for the leader to appear and when one didn’t, he cursed and raged, “Stop!”
He found himself suddenly sprinting to the wall. With a single flying leap, he landed on the top desk where he crashed his new weapon across the head of the closest zombie. He cracked the heads of two more before turning. “No one leaves this wall!” His bellow cut through the great din of battle and could be heard across the grounds. “We stand and fight!”
Without waiting to see what effect his words might have, he spun and began spiking the heads of the creatures coming up at him one after another, using the staff like a heavy, blunt spear. It was an odd way to fight with the weapon, and a style not likely to be emulated because it took such a short, sharp force. The angle at which he fought, and the lack of maneuverability hampered him in this way, but he made up for it with such zeal and unrelenting energy that he piled the zombies so high in front of him that the rest struggled to get up.
“Mister?”
It was Billy standing below him, holding out an enormous sandwich that was positively dripping mayo. “Yes! Billy you are a god-send. Hand it up. Ah, perfect!” Like a famished wolf, he shoved a third of it in his mouth at once. As he chewed, he looked about with some satisfaction; the wall was still standing. Those that had wavered were back in place. Bryce’s presence was holding things together—for the time being. He knew it would be only a temporary fix. When ammo started to run low, the wall would fall. “Go get Maddy, will you? Tell her I need her ASAP.”
“Her a-sap? What’s an a-sap?”
Another third of the sandwich was already in his mouth and so he waved the kid away. A groan had him turning. Another zombie, its face a wreck; no lips, its teeth sh
owing right through where its cheeks should’ve been. It was at just the right distance and, one handed, Bryce brought the pipe around like a windmill. TANK! The thing’s head was nearly divided in two by the force of the strike. It tumbled back.
He went with the overhead windmill attack twice more before his mouth was empty. It wasn’t for long.
His cheeks were near to bursting when a girl a few feet away asked him, “How can you eat with all this right here? Doesn’t the smell get to you?”
“Mmm hmm, mh,” he replied through clenched lips, pointing at his filled mouth. With her face wrapped in a purple scarf, it was hard to judge the girl, though she did have dark warm eyes that matched the tone of her skin. Other than her height—she was tall—it was impossible to describe the rest of her as she wore a man’s trench coat over a heavy winter jacket. The trench was splattered with black blood.
Pointing and swallowing heavily, Bryce said, “Careful with that blood. I’d get some bleach on it pretty quick.” She looked down at herself and somewhere beneath her layers, her shoulders drooped. A sense of giving up seemed to be drawing around her. “Hey,” he said. “We’ll figure this out. And we’re not going to die today, got it?”
He smiled at her and then jabbed a zombie through the eye as it crested the hill.
“I’m Tomika,” she said, pulling down her scarf and assaulting him with a brilliant but anxious smile. Her full name was Tomika Morgan and she had never been so scared in all her thirty years.
“I’m…Bryce.” He had almost called himself Dr. Bryce Carter, like he used to back when he’d been a twerp and his PhD was the only thing about him that was impressive. To gloss over the pause, he shrugged and gestured at the great mound of corpses. “I just do my best not to look at them as people. And, I don’t know, I can block out the smell, thank God.”
She pulled the scarf back up and hefted a length of black metal that had a chunk of broken cement on one end. “I wish I could. My stomach keeps heaving and nausea makes me feel weak, like I want to lie down. Which I won’t,” she added quickly, afraid he’d think less of her somehow.
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