by Ricky Sides
The anizombie German Shepherd stopped when it located the body of its master’s former pet. It was now confused as to whether it should go after the juvenile pig or take the remains of Lily back to its master, so it stood still and did nothing for a few moments, but then its instincts took over and the Shepherd leapt into action as it resumed the hunt for the pig.
Shaunna saw the anizombie racing away in the distance and tried to follow it, but the scent of Lily caught her attention, so she followed her nose as she sought out what she had lost. She came to a three strand barbed-wire fence, which stopped her, but then her eyes fell on what remained of Lily and she released another of her screams of rage as she struggled to get to the corpse. She pressed her body against the wire and tried to push through it in her need to get to the body as she screamed. Without the ability of rational thought, crawling under the wire did not occur to her. Had she seen the anizombie go underneath the wire, that example might have been enough to prompt her to do the same. However, reasoning out such a problem without such a visual demonstration was now beyond the capability of her damaged brain, so she continued to scream in anger. She ignored the wire stabbing into her body as she struggled to get through the fence.
The zombies that were feasting in the scrub brush heard their Alpha’s screams of rage and stopped eating. They moved at their best speeds as they left the brush and headed toward Shaunna. When they arrived, they found her struggling to get through the fence and pushed against it with her. Finally, when enough zombies had arrived to force the fence to buckle, a strand broke. The wire had been held under pressure. When the strand broke, the two ends recoiled toward the posts to the right and left of the break. As they did so, they slapped across the bodies of numerous zombies, tearing trenches in their flesh. The zombies pressed all the harder and another strand broke with similar results. One unlucky zombie female lost an eye to one of the recoiling strands, but feeling no pain, she ignored it and moved forward with the others.
When the second strand broke, several zombies fell across the remaining wire. Shaunna had managed to maintain her footing. She rushed across the body of one of her unlucky minions and soon reached what remained of Lily. Her scream of rage when she saw what had been done to her former pet was so vigorous that it eclipsed all of her previous outbursts. This agitated the zombies around her that looked all around for something to attack, but they saw nothing.
Shaunna picked up Lily’s head, which still had a bit of fur from her back attached to it. The pig had fled with the rest of Lily’s body. She turned and walked back toward the other zombies that had by now extricated their bodies from the bottom strand of barbed wire. She wasn’t watching where she was going, so she didn’t see the bottom wire and tripped over it as a result. She twisted her body as she fell in an instinctive effort to protect Lily. She succeeded in doing that at the expense of her own body. Yet, she felt no pain as she climbed back to her feet and approached the remains of the wild boar that had succumbed to its wounds and died.
None of the other zombies had molested her kill because it bore her scent. When they saw her squat beside her kill, they turned as one and headed back toward the feast that had been interrupted.
Shaunna held Lily’s head near the dead boar trying to encourage her to feed. Her deranged mind drove her to attempt to feed the dead anizombie. When Lily failed to respond, Shaunna rammed her fingers in the hog’s wounded throat and pulled free a small piece of bloody meat, which she then tried unsuccessfully to insert into Lily’s mouth.
A few minutes later the anizombie German Shepherd returned to Shaunna. It found her still squatting beside the dead boar with Lily’s remains on the ground in front of her. She looked up as the anizombie’s presence registered on her awareness and saw that it again held the struggling form of the juvenile pig in her jaws.
This time, Shaunna reached out with both hands and accepted the gift her anizombie had delivered to her. In a violent rage, she tore the pig to pieces. The anizombie snapped several choice bits out of the air and wolfed them down as the Alpha female vented her rage on the creature that had dared to harm her Lily.
When she had vented her anger on the pig, Shaunna turned her attention to the old boar that she had killed. She shared her prize with the anizombie, patting it from time to time. When the pair had eaten their fill, they returned to the rest of the zombies that were still feasting on their kills. Shaunna sat and held Lily’s remains with one bloody hand as she stroked the German Shepherd with the other. The anizombie canine lay down beside her master, content for the moment.
Shaunna had no sense of time or urgency about resuming the hunt for her enemy. The events that day had been disturbing to her, so she sat surrounded by the other zombies as the day progressed and they picked clean the bones of their prey. It was late afternoon when the sound of an approaching vehicle drew the attention of the zombies in the copse of scrub brush. Shaken from her lethargy by the sound, Shaunna was the first to reach the open pasture. She saw the bus from the refuge drive past the pasture as the team was making their way back home.
No one inside the bus noticed the female zombie emerge from the scrub brush. It had been a long day, and their sleep had been interrupted the night before, so some of the team members were taking advantage of the opportunity to take a nap.
Shaunna sniffed the air, but wasn’t close enough to the road to get the scent of the occupants of the bus, so she started walking toward the road. The anizombie Shepherd walked beside her and the other zombies followed in her wake.
When they reached the road, the anizombie moved to follow the bus, but Shaunna’s hand reached out and stopped her. She turned back in the opposite direction and began to walk down the road, following the scent she had been seeking prior to the hunt. The anizombie caught the familiar scent and understood that its master wanted to resume the hunt for the creature they had been tracking.
As the zombies followed Shaunna up the road, a few others joined them. They had heard her scream earlier and had converged on the area from the surrounding countryside. Some came from the barn where the dairy cattle had died. Others came from two of the nearby rural residences. The rest of the zombies they encountered resulted from small clusters that had seen the bus go past and began to walk after it. As these smaller groups joined Shaunna’s, her small army swelled to number over 200.
Chapter 10
Confrontation.
“Would you sit down and stop looking out the damned window?” Big John said to Dana in exasperation. They were in his RV where Dana had alternately paced the floor and paused to look out the window for the past twenty minutes.
“Can’t you feel it?” Dana turned to John and asked.
“Feel what?” John asked her.
Dana shook her head irritably and responded, “How in the hell have you stayed alive this long if you can’t feel danger approaching?”
“Is that what this is all about? Are you still on that female zombie paranoia?”
Dana turned back toward the window and stared out into the darkness. The camp had settled down for the night. Here and there, she saw a few campfires as people went about preparing their evening meals. If she took her time, she could pinpoint the guards out walking patrols just inside the fence that surrounded their compound. “Do you think I’m just being a silly woman? Need I remind you that it was me who sensed danger near us earlier today just before Bennett and his crew showed up?”
That comment caused John to stop and consider what she was saying. He nodded his head and said, “Yes, you did spot them first. And before that, you seemed to be aware that danger was near us.” John got to his feet and said, “Okay, if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll send a couple of patrols to check out the roads in this vicinity.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you or argue with you,” Dana said. “If they encounter the threat and make it back to warn us, then that’s a good thing, but if they don’t make it back, then we have weakened our defenses.”
�
�It would take more than a handful of zombies to give my patrol teams a hard time,” Big John countered.
“And if they don’t come back?” Dana asked.
“They’ll have instructions to be back in an hour. If they don’t make it back in that time limit, I’ll put the compound on alert,” John said. He was beginning to realize that there was a lot more to Dana than just a hot body with a voracious appetite for sex. She was also an adept strategist whose advice was almost always pretty damned good.
“Send out your teams. I’ll be in our bedroom waiting for you,” Dana promised.
“Try not to fall asleep. I don’t like being disappointed,” John growled as he opened the door.
“If I do, you’d damned well better wake me up. I’m looking forward to this,” Dana responded.
John was chuckling and shaking his head as he closed the door. He’d had lovers in the past, but never a woman like Dana whose enthusiasm for sexual experiences seemed to know no bounds.
He located the leaders of the teams he wanted to send out and gave them their orders. The two trucks, loaded with patrol teams, left the compound as he was heading back to his RV.
***
Herman Marcos had been with Big John since the marauder leader had shot their Army Lieutenant, and the three men loyal to him, while on a mission at the height of the zombie outbreak. John, Herman, and three other deserters from their unit had then stolen the small convoy of food, weapons, and ammunition that they were transporting to a base in Missouri. Weeks later, they recruited other men who had deserted various units and formed a marauder group of former soldiers that preyed on the other survivors of the zombie apocalypse. They took what they wanted and slaughtered anyone who opposed them. Their group was responsible for causing the slaughter of most of the survivors in Newport, Arkansas, months earlier.
Herman Marcos stared out the window of the speeding, extended cab, pickup truck. At his orders, the driver had the vehicle barreling down the road at a high rate of speed. Herman was angry. He’d had a bad day and had been looking forward to spending a few hours drinking whiskey, and then turning in for the night, but John had ordered him to take his team on a patrol. They had to drive twenty miles east on Highway 40, toward Brinkley, looking for zombies. If they saw any within that distance, his team was supposed to eliminate them on sight. If they didn’t see any within the twenty mile limit, then they were free to return to their base. He didn’t intend to allow the simple mission to keep him from his plans any longer than necessary. Therefore, the driver had been instructed to drive much faster than they would normally travel at night.
“How much further do we have to go before we can turn around?” Herman asked the driver.
The twenty-one-year-old man glanced down at the odometer and said, “Another ten miles.” He looked back up at the road and saw that they were coming to a curve. He let off the acceleration pedal and tapped the brake a couple of times lightly to slow down prior to entering the curve.
“What the hell are you doing? We’ll never finish this patrol if you keep slamming on the brakes every time we come to a curve. Accelerate into it, dummy!” Herman ordered the man.
The chastised driver shrugged and accelerated into the curve. One of the two men in the back seat said, “Damn, Enrique, did you just learn to drive or what? You’re going to throw our gunner out of the back of the truck driving this way.”
“Shut up back there,” Herman said. He turned and glared at the men in the back seat. “Didn’t you hear me tell him to speed up?”
“Yeah, but you didn’t tell him to take the curve like a race car driver,” the other man responded.
Herman turned back around in time to see the headlights of the truck illuminate the final hundred feet of the curve, and then the road become straight again. He also saw that the highway was filled with people. A lot of people.
Enrique also saw that the highway was filled with people walking, so he slammed on the brakes. The tortured rubber of the tires squalled in protest as he tried to stop before ramming into the crowd in front of him.
The truck slewed to the left and then back to the right as the driver sought to control the vehicle, but he knew they were still traveling too fast. At the last second, as his headlights illuminated the people in front of him, he said, “Oh God, they’re zombies,” and then the truck plowed into the crowded front ranks of the undead at thirty-seven miles-per-hour.
Herman Marcos was a survivor. When he saw the people in the road up ahead, he realized at a glance that an accident was unavoidable. He then buckled his seat belt in the final moments before the impact. Therefore, when the truck stopped abruptly after the initial impact, he wasn’t ejected from the vehicle. The driver wasn’t so lucky. He was thrown through the windshield.
Outside on the road, dozens of zombies had been injured by the horrific impact. Others nearby closed in on the truck as well as the bloody body of the driver, who groaned in agony due to his injuries, which included broken bones as well as numerous cuts.
Behind him, Herman heard one of his men groan. A scream of terror and agony sounded outside the truck and Herman saw a commotion amongst the zombies in front of him. Then he saw the gunner who had been riding in the back of the truck. The man was attempting to fight his way through the zombies in order to get back to the truck. He was rapid firing his pistol until the magazine ran dry. Herman lost sight of the unlucky man as the zombies closed in on the front of the truck and the headlights were blocked, plunging the events unfolding in front of them into darkness.
Herman unbuckled his seatbelt and slid over in the seat to take the wheel. He jammed the truck into reverse and tried to back up to get away from the encroaching zombies. He cursed when he realized that the vehicle was stuck on several of their bodies that were trapped beneath the front end. The driver’s feet, which rested inside the cab atop the dashboard, were jerked away abruptly. The man screamed in pain and terror, but then he grew quiet.
Herman heard the moans of scores of zombies and flinched in terror. He had found himself in the worst situation imaginable. He was trapped inside a vehicle, surrounded by zombies. Worse, he was trapped inside a wrecked vehicle that couldn’t keep a determined human out, and the undead were much worse.
The marauder patrol leader turned the steering wheel to the left and right as he gunned the engine in an attempt to dislodge the vehicle. Then he felt the front end lurch. Something had landed on the hood of the truck. One of the men in the back seat aimed a flashlight out the shattered window. The beam of light illuminated Shaunna who was crouched on the hood. The Alpha female glared into the light in agitation and made a sort of warning growl.
“Get the light out of her eyes,” Herman said in a quiet tone of voice.
“I can take her out,” one of the men behind him whispered.
“You be still and don’t do anything. Haven’t you noticed that the other zombies have stopped trying to attack us?” Herman said. “If you kill her, they’ll attack us for sure.”
The man with the light lowered the beam from Shaunna’s face and she crept closer as she sniffed at the air.
Herman felt the vehicle bounce again and he saw a canine move up beside the female zombie that was edging closer and closer to the cab of the truck. He saw the female place a restraining hand on the German Shepherd’s shoulder, stopping it when it became obvious that the animal was preparing to attack.
“She’s not attacking, so whatever happens, don’t do anything to provoke her,” Herman whispered. He felt sharp stabs of fear as he stared at the bloody attire worn by the female zombie. The momentary glimpse of her bloodstained face, illuminated by the flashlight, gave mute testimony as to the prowess of this huntress.
Shaunna could smell Dana’s scent inside the cab of the truck. Late that afternoon, John had taken her with him on a brief trip to the outskirts of Forest City so he could see for himself whether or not the zombie population had changed much since his last visit the previous week. That trip had left Dana’
s scent inside the cab.
Shaunna was following the scent when she stuck her head inside the cab and stared at the men who were cowering inside it fearfully. The man behind the wheel confused her. Until he had slid over in the seat to take over the driver’s position, he had been seated in the same spot where Dana had ridden earlier that day. Therefore, he bore strong traces of Dana’s scent as well as his own. Without warning, the Alpha female opened her mouth and screamed at Herman with her face just a foot from his.
One of the men in the back seat panicked and fired his pistol at Shaunna. His hand was shaking so violently that he missed her with the first shot. She withdrew her head from the cab of the truck and jumped off it, screaming in rage as she did so.
The anizombie Shepherd, now released from Shaunna’s control, launched her body toward the driver of the vehicle. All around the truck, the zombies that had been waiting for their leader to indicate what to do began to crowd closer to the vehicle.
Herman felt the fangs of the anizombie sinking into his right shoulder as he tried to bring his pistol up to fire at the creature. He got off one wild shot before the savage attack caused his right arm to go numb and his pistol fell from his nerveless fingers. “Help me!” he yelled to the other men as the window glass all around the truck began to reverberate to the blows of the zombies that had the truck surrounded. He heard the pistols of his companions firing over and over and thought that they were shooting the dog. Yet, something was wrong. The animal wasn’t letting go or even behaving as if it were being hit.