by Ricky Sides
It soon became apparent to Herb that their presence near the gate was now hindering the defensive effort by restricting the ability of the men on the berms behind them to fire. “Fall back!” he ordered the men. He grabbed a man next to him who had been so intent on firing his rifle that he hadn’t heard the order to retreat. “Fall back!” he instructed again as the man looked at him to see what he wanted. He noted the wild-eyed look of fear in the man’s eyes and realized that he was operating at a state near panic, and he couldn’t blame him. He felt a deep-seated fear himself and realized that he was feeling something close to despair. The man nodded his understanding and raced back toward the berm.
Herb turned and saw that Randy and his party were already en route for their former positions. That left him and the construction team in the vicinity, and they were already moving to vacate the area.
Herb was about to leave when he heard a menacing sound that was similar to, but not quite the same as a growl. He turned back toward the fence and saw Shaunna peeling away a section of the wire with the anizombie beside her. He raised his rifle to fire at the creature that he knew would dart through the wire as soon as Shaunna had pulled enough clear. When he pulled the trigger, he discovered that he had run out of ammo after his last shot and failed to note it. He ejected the spent magazine and inserted a fresh one. He was about to target the anizombie but changed his mind when he heard Randy yelling for him to get out of there.
Herb turned and ran for the comparative safety of the berm. He was halfway to it when he felt a savage impact in his back. He lost his footing and was knocked to the ground face first. His rifle fell to the dirt just out of reach. He tried to scramble toward it, but felt a sharp pain as fangs sank into the calf of his right leg. Herb screamed in pain and reached behind him to beat at the head of the anizombie German Shepherd.
It seemed to Herb that time slowed down. He heard Randy shouting in fear. Glancing up, he saw Hernando on the berm. He got to one knee and tried to sight in on the anizombie with his pistol. He saw the Hispanic man shake his head in frustration and realized that he couldn’t get a safe shot. All the while that he was observing these things another part of his mind registered the sensation of his right leg being mauled by the anizombie.
Herb turned his head to see what was happening behind him and saw zombies coming through the hole that Shaunna had torn in the fence. He forgot about the anizombie then and reached for his pistol. He had to stop the zombies before they could overrun his friends. Herb emptied his magazine into the bodies of the first four zombies that made it through the wire. When his pistol locked open after the last round was expended, he threw it at the anizombie’s head, which only infuriated the canine.
Then Ox was there beside him. The big Pit Bull hit the anizombie German Shepherd hard and rolled its body away from Herb. Herb tried to get up to help Ox, but he felt hands grabbing him as rifles fired beside him. He glanced up, and saw Jesse and Hernando had each grabbed one of his arms and they were pulling him toward the berm while two other men with rifles provided covering fire. “Ox!” Herb shouted. “Break away, boy!”
Ox was a brave and strong dog who was no stranger to fighting, but in this case, he was outmatched. The anizombie Shepherd had already scored numerous wounds on him. Its reflexes were faster than anything that Ox had ever fought before. It was even faster than the coyote that had almost killed him just a few days earlier. Ox heard Herb order him to break off the fight. He had been trained to obey that command, and to his credit, the animal tried, but the anizombie wouldn’t permit him to escape that easily. She pounced on Ox the moment he turned to run. She bore him to the ground and locked her jaws on the back of his neck.
Herb saw Ox go down beneath the jaws of the anizombie and he screamed in anger and frustration. Then he saw Sheba break away from one of the men who was trying to restrain her. The big American Mastiff female ran toward the anizombie, but a fast moving human zombie intercepted her and bore her to the ground.
Now the zombies were gaining a small foothold in the compound and trying to spread out along the inner fence in an effort to encircle the defenders, who were fighting a desperate battle against the influx of the undead. There was barely time to stem the flow of the incursion, and no time to go to the rescue of the dogs that were in distress. Herb stared helplessly as the anizombie continued to maul Ox, and then he heard the loud crack of a high caliber rifle discharge near him and saw the anizombie drop in its tracks.
He glanced around and saw Bernie standing near him with his rifle. The man then shifted the weapon and worked the bolt at the same time. His next shot took out the zombie that was kneeling over Sheba, pinning her down on her back. Bernie blew a large hole in the zombie’s head, dropping it to the ground beside Sheba.
Herb had ample opportunity to observe Bernie as he worked with his rifle for the next minute and a half. He’d had his doubts as to the man’s skill before, but that skepticism soon vanished. The man was a consummate rifleman. There was no doubt in Herb’s mind that had he wanted to kill him the day he wounded him, he could have done so with ease.
Ox crawled along the ground to Herb with Sheba keeping pace by his side, whining her concern. The dog was determined to obey Herb’s command to break off fighting and return to him. Herb felt lightheaded from the blood loss. He reached down to stroke the top of Ox’s head as he said, “Good, boy.”
Herb heard someone shouting loudly. They were calling for a medic. He thought it might be Randy, but the man’s voice sounded funny. It almost sounded as if the person shouting was crying. He heard someone telling him to hang on and then he felt pressure cinching around his right thigh. He wondered if he was imagining it. He heard Sheba whine and wondered if the zombie had hurt her badly. “Someone, see to the dogs,” he muttered slowly. His tongue felt thick in his mouth and he felt an incredible dryness in his throat.
“I will, Herb,” Randy pledged beside him. He wiped his eyes as he stared at Ox and then back at his friend who would probably lose his leg, if he lived. “Where the hell is the doctor?” Randy shouted and he glared wildly around at the chaos surrounding him.
Randy felt someone grab his right arm. He looked down and saw Herb staring up at him with an intensity and clarity in his eyes that hadn’t been present moments earlier. “The zombies?” Herb asked.
“The few that survived left with that woman leader of theirs,” Randy said.
An expression of relief came across Herb’s face. “The dogs need tending.”
“I will take care of everything. Don’t you worry, buddy,” Randy pledged.
“The fence?”
“Bernie is patching it now. That’s his excavator making all that noise.”
“Some may be alive in the trenches,” Herb warned, but Randy could see his eyes losing their focus. He marveled at the effort that his friend must have expended in order to ask those questions.
“I already sent teams to see to that problem. Jason and Ed are leading them,” Randy told Herb, but as he finished explaining that, he noted that his friend’s eyes were closed.
***
Shaunna was at the head of the few zombies that survived the battle at the refuge. She had opened the fence for her minions to enter, but then, just as she had known she needed to regroup her army, she knew it was time for her to leave and take as many of her followers with her as she could. She paused only to pick up the remains of Lily and was gone before Bernie’s shot killed her anizombie German Shepherd, which was busy attacking Ox, so she had failed to answer Shaunna’s screaming call.
Shaunna stopped out on the road and circled a small area where she detected a familiar scent. It took several moments, but finally her brain interpreted the altered scent of Dana. A cold smile of joy creased the Alpha female’s face as she held Lily up and crooned encouragement. Then she headed back to the south along the road her army had used to reach the refuge. She had found the scent of her enemy once more.
Her minions plodded along behind her, neither knowi
ng nor caring where they were going. Unlike a human army, the survivors gave no thought to their losses. They knew that their leader saw to it they fed with regularity, and the parasites responded to that steady influx of nutrition by releasing endorphins to reward the zombies. They felt no pain and needed no rest. It was the closest zombies would ever come to happiness.
Chapter 19
Confrontations.
Dana’s eyes snapped open. She had only been asleep for a little while when the sound of heavy gunfire in the distance woke her. Although she knew the sound was coming from a long way off, she got off Amy’s bed and went to the window. She moved aside the heavy quilt that Amy had used to cover the window and stared out into the night. “Well, Bennett, I guess you and your crew are getting yours right about now,” she said with satisfaction. She pressed her palms against the glass and felt the sympathetic vibration as the firing reached a crescendo. It ended abruptly and a few minutes elapsed in silence, but then the firing resumed. “Boy, she must be giving you hell, Bennett,” she muttered.
Laughing, Dana pulled the quilt back over the window and made her way back to the bed. The sound of the distant gunfire acted as a lullaby for her, and she soon drifted off to sleep, made happy by the thought that her enemies were killing each other.
An hour and a half elapsed before Dana awoke again. This time, she felt a cold stab of fear racing up her spine. She was so frightened that she almost soiled her clothes. She had to get up and make her way to a corner in the room to urinate on the floor because there wasn’t time to find anything to use as a chamber pot. The strong pungent odor offended her sense of smell. She would have been embarrassed but for the stark terror that she felt at the moment. She didn’t know how she knew it, but the zombie she had sensed tracking her for days was nearby. “What the hell, Bennett?” she muttered to herself as she adjusted her clothing after pulling it back into place. “Can’t that group of yours do anything right?”
Dana aimed her small flashlight at the pack she had sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed. She scooped it up and deposited it on the bed as she headed for the window she had used the previous night. Not knowing what to expect, she drew the makeshift blackout curtain aside a fraction of an inch and tried to study the yard out front through the narrow opening. She saw nothing but a patch of brown grass and the driveway. In order to see more, she would have to open the curtain wider. Taking a deep breath to bolster her courage, she pulled the quilt a little further aside. As she stared out the window, Dana breathed a sigh of relief. There were no zombies in sight. She let go of the quilt and hurried over to the bed where she grabbed her pack.
Dana wasted no time in opening the trap door and deploying the ladder. She scrambled down it and rushed through the house. She decided to go out the back door because exiting there would get her to her truck quicker. Unfortunately, she discovered that it had been boarded up because it was damaged when zombies attacked the home.
She darted out of the kitchen and headed for the front door. She felt a growing sense of urgency, and was determined to get to her vehicle and make it to the interstate as quickly as possible. After that, she planned to travel far from this area, and never return.
Dana stopped at the door and parted the blinds a sliver in order to make certain the coast was clear. When she saw nothing in the yard, she rushed out the front door and turned to her left. Her backpack slapped against her back as she jogged around the house. As she ran, she kept her right hand on a pistol she had taken from John’s RV. She was afraid she would lose it because she didn’t have a holster for the weapon and had been forced to jam it into the right front pocket of her jeans.
Dana reached her truck and fumbled with the keys as she tried to climb inside. In her haste to leave the area, she had neglected to remove the backpack. It prevented her from being able to slip into the seat behind the wheel of the truck. Cursing under her breath, she removed the pack and threw it into the cab of the truck. Then she removed the pistol from her pocket and tossed it on the passenger seat. When she climbed inside the truck, she locked the doors and started the engine. John’s mechanics had kept the vehicle in good condition, so it started up without a hitch.
She drove around the house to the driveway. “I made it!” she said to herself as the tires left the grass of the lawn and gained better traction on the driveway. “Nothing’s going to stop me now!” she exclaimed. She was excited and experiencing a sense of euphoria because she thought the danger she sensed approaching her would not be a serious threat after all. Then she saw Shaunna jogging along the road with a string of zombies close on her heels.
Dana slammed on the brakes and brought the truck to a halt. It was already too late for her to beat Shaunna and her followers to the end of the driveway. Her eyes grew large as her fear intensified. She hoped that the undead creatures would pass by the farm. She hadn’t been driving fast when she spotted the zombies. It was possible that they hadn’t noticed her. She sat still and waited to see what would happen, thankful that the truck had a good muffler so the vehicle was running quietly.
When Shaunna jogged past the driveway, Dana felt a moment of intense relief. However, it was a brief reprieve because the Alpha female stopped a few yards past the drive and turned to stare in the direction of the farm. She screamed in rage when she spotted the truck, and then she began to run across the grass toward Dana. The other zombies spread out and followed her.
Dana felt an intense moment of fear. She thought she needed to urinate, and was glad she had done so a few minutes earlier. Otherwise, she might have embarrassed herself then and there. Her options were limited. She considered attempting to hit the female zombie with her truck, but discarded that notion as too risky with all those other zombies right on her heels. Therefore, she did the only thing she could do, which was to attempt to escape.
She shifted the truck into gear and accelerated toward Shaunna. Then she whipped the steering wheel to the left in a violent maneuver and crashed through the barbed wire fence that led to the barnyard. The truck bounced over some ruts left by a tractor as she floored the accelerator. She planned to drive through the open field on a diagonal that would take her to the road. The roadside fence was a wooden affair that obscured her view to a degree, but she wasn’t worried about her truck being able to make it through the fence. All she needed to do was hit the wooden horizontal slats between the four by four posts. The damage to her vehicle should be minimal.
Dana barreled through the fence at about thirty miles per hour. Unfortunately, she hadn’t paused to consider the fact that there might be a ditch beside the road. A split second after striking the fence, her front tires ran into the ditch in a bone jarring impact. This slowed her momentum dramatically, but her front tires climbed out of the shallow depression. Then her rear wheels dropped into it and her vehicle came to a stop. For a moment, Dana feared that she would get stuck there, but she applied more power and the front wheel drive vehicle pulled out onto the blacktop.
As she looked out the window, she saw that she was about sixty yards from the advancing zombies. Dana reached out for her pistol, intent upon rolling down her window and taking a few shots at Shaunna. She frowned as her hand wandered around on the seat in search of the handgun. Finally, she glanced over at the seat and saw that the weapon was no longer resting there. Then she spotted it on the floorboard of the truck. It had been thrown there when her truck stopped at the ditch. Now Dana had a dilemma. Should she stop to secure her weapon, or just drive away and hope she made good her escape from the area.
Dana had experienced too many narrow escapes with zombies to be comfortable driving around the countryside without a weapon handy. Her pistol was out of reach, therefore, it would be of no value to her if she came under attack. She knew she needed to retrieve it. As things stood at the moment, it might just as well have been in the bed of the truck because there was no way she could grab it while driving.
Dana muttered a curse as she brought the vehicle to an abrupt stop. Sh
e then reached down for the handgun. The tips of her fingers brushed against the black grip, nudging the firearm away from her. She cursed even louder as she leaned down more, reaching for the weapon as she did so. Her foot slipped off the brake and the truck rolled forward, striking a tree on the edge of the road. The top of Dana’s head struck the dashboard. She grabbed the pistol and bolted upright in the seat. Turning to face the window, she saw the zombies were still moving across the barnyard. She shifted the truck into reverse and tried to back away from the tree.
It was then that she discovered that the engine had died after the impact. “Oh, hell no!” Dana cried out as she tried to start her truck. Behind her, she heard Shaunna voice another of her screams and felt an instant of stark terror. She tried the ignition switch again, but the truck refused to turn over. Then she remembered that the vehicle was still in reverse, therefore, it wouldn’t start. She shifted the lever into park and tried the key a third time. This time, the engine started without a hitch. She then backed it away from the tree. She felt a jarring impact on the back of the truck and heard the sounds of moans.
Dana shifted the transmission lever into drive and took her foot off the brake pedal. The truck rolled forward and she felt a vibration as one of her rear tires ran over the zombie she had just backed over while in reverse. “Serves you right, asshole!” she shouted angrily as she sped away.
Shaunna reached out with her hand, attempting to grab hold of the side of the truck as Dana accelerated away, but it was out of reach. Dana had almost backed over the Alpha female, who had managed to avoid the speeding vehicle by only the slimmest of margins. She followed Dana, running as fast as she could, but she couldn’t get to the truck before it moved out of reach.