The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3

by Peter Meredith

  Only there was still the matter of guns. They knew enough to fear the guns the grown-ups carried. And they knew the tunnels weren’t good places to be around guns. The tunnels were good for picking off loners like the mayor had been, but they restricted movement. Jaimee Lynn’s pack could only come at the grown-ups from four directions and already they had seen how easily the others had been shot down.

  For the moment, both sides were at an impasse and it hurt Jaimee Lynn’s head to try to think beyond it.

  “Just move them back for a moment,” Thuy said. “Just a minute and then we’ll lead you right where you need to go. There’ll be lots of people. You want that right? So just move them back.”

  Jaimee Lynn guessed that she would be able to move her pack away from the tunnel entrance, but she wouldn’t be able to hold them back once the grown-ups came out. There’d be a fight and lots of them would be killed—and maybe that was okay with her. Her pack ate too much and they were greedy and never shared. She had set up the trap to get the mayor and hadn’t tasted a drop of blood to show for her efforts.

  “Alright, just give me a sec,” Jaimee Lynn said with a black-gummed smile. She then started pushing the other zombie children aside saying: “Move, darn you! Git back. All y’all git.”

  Thuy watched, noting that Jaimee Lynn hadn’t moved them far. When they got out of the pipe, there was going to be trouble. Then again, they were already in trouble. Deckard’s gun had not let up. They were being pressed from behind by worse creatures than Jaimee Lynn’s pack.

  Courtney came up while Thuy was still trying to think of a plan to save them. She took one look at the children being pushed around and said: “We can’t go this way.”

  “We don’t have a choice. To go back means we run the risk of getting lost in the maze. And all indications suggest that the tunnels are flooded with adult zombies which are infinitely worse.”

  As always, Dr. Lee astonished Courtney. Here she was the smallest and arguably the weakest of the group, and yet she still had her M4 strapped to her back and clearly she thought that the kid zombies would simply let them pass through the force of her will. In Courtney’s eyes, her bravery had become hubris—foolish hope based on extreme over-confidence.

  “But there’s no way they’ll simply let us by without…” Courtney began, only just then, Chuck and Stephanie appeared out of the dark, each looking ready to pass out.

  There was no time for passing out or even resting and Thuy ordered: “Here, step back. Let Mr. Singleton through. Don’t worry about those little zombies. They…they are under control. Just get to cutting one of the bars away, if you please.”

  Chuck squatted down at the entrance and eyed the feral children through the bars as they slunk back and hid themselves like kids playing a game of hide-n-seek. Beyond the bars, the drainage pipe ended at a tumble of rocks that sloped down to a small creek. Up and down its banks were reeds and weeds standing chest height; the children slipped down in the growth and in the shadows, Chuck could see their dark eyes glinting.

  “Fuuuck,” he said, probably for the hundredth time that night. The exclamation was all the time he allotted to himself for rest before switching out the broken blade on the saw and getting to work on the middle bar. Sparks flew, lighting up the dark, blinding his night eyes. He couldn’t see more than two feet away. The beastly children could have come right up and he wouldn’t have known it. Thankfully, Stephanie crouched behind him, one hand on his shoulder, guarding him as he worked.

  It was slow going. Soon his muscles were quivering and the blade slipped repeatedly out of the groove he had made, forcing him to start again. He didn’t complain and he didn’t stop. If he stopped, who would take his place? Deckard was fighting and Thuy was thinking. Stephanie was so sick she could barely stand, and Courtney was especially weak in the upper body. Chuck went on because he had to.

  Behind him, Deckard heard the saw wailing like a banshee and stopped his slow retreat. From the flickering of the sparks, he observed the tunnel piling up with the grey bodies of the undead. There were hundreds, if not thousands, and the only thing stopping them from sweeping down on his friends and eating them alive was his M4.

  Knowing he was low on ammo, he knelt with his weapon at his shoulder and waited to fire until the first creature crawled to within ten feet. He pulled the trigger and it dropped. A second beast crawled over the first a moment later. Another pull of the trigger and another limp body.

  Deckard had to stop up the tunnel and the only material he had to work with were corpses. He shot methodically and with utmost precision until the stacked corpses couldn’t be crawled over and almost no light could filter past. He had corked the tunnel, but it was a temporary fix. The raging howls of the zombies could be heard for miles as they pushed forward until the pressure became too great.

  Gradually the mass of dead bodies was thrust down the tunnel, something Deckard hadn’t foreseen. If it kept coming, his little group would be crushed against the bars until their bones were ground into a pulp and they slithered through like so much flesh-colored goo.

  “You better hurry!” he yelled down the tunnel as he backed up, step by step.

  A light struck him from behind and a woman’s voice cried, “What the hell is that?”

  There was no way to answer the impossible and there was nothing he could do but hope that the wall of bodies would collapse. It would mean he would have to retreat and start shooting again and risk running out of ammo, but it was a better alternative to this.

  He stepped back slowly as the grey wall came on and then suddenly, happily it just collapsed and out spilled living corpses once more.

  “Thank God,” he whispered, suddenly grinning over the idea of facing a roiling mass of zombies. There were so many, the grin dried up and the next five minutes were the longest of his life as the number of rounds in his gun dwindled and the number of beasts grew and grew.

  He was twenty steps from the bars and was down to his last four bullets when the screech of the saw suddenly turned to a loud whirrr, as the blade bit on nothing and the bar dropped with a clang of metal.

  Seconds later, Thuy came to stand next to him, holding a can of disinfectant spray of all things. Germs were the least of their problems and he was about to say so when she abruptly ordered him to lead the group out.

  “What about you?” he asked. She seemed so small and weak. At some point in the last few seconds she had given her M4 to Chuck and now she was armed only with the spray can.

  “Someone has to go last. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” In her other hand she showed him a lighter she had taken from the hardware store. “Fire and ethanol don’t mix. It should keep them back until everyone gets through the bars.”

  A grin crossed his rugged features. “It should, just make sure you keep close to them and keep them off balance. Don’t let them get a lot of momentum. If they get moving, no fire in the world will stop them.”

  “Got it,” she said, advancing on the crazed tangle of the undead, the dead, and the dying. One beast was just crawling out of the pile. Without hesitation or remorse, she thumbed the lighter and sprayed liquid flame into its face in a short burst. It didn’t even blink and now it was blind. A second one got the same treatment, only this one had been a woman with long black hair—her head became a torch, the smell of which was astounding and made her stomach do flips.

  For a minute, until the others had shimmied through the tiny opening, Thuy stood within arm’s reach of the horde, blasting flame at every face that came through the pile.

  “Now, Thuy,” Deckard called. “We’re through.” In an instant, she turned and ran for the opening. It was small and the cut pieces of metal were longer than before. She felt her jacket catch as she went through and for just a second she panicked.

  Courtney came to her aid as she flailed. “You need to go back a few inches and then go forward. There you go.” When Thuy looked up, she saw they were now beyond the lines of the 82nd, in some unknown suburb, but the
y weren’t safe. Dozens of gleaming, evil eyes stared at them from the tall grass, while further on, beyond a little brook, there were shadows lurching in their direction.

  “Jaimee Lynn?” she called. “Remember what I promised you? Soft bodies? If you want them then you’re going to have to give us some room.”

  There was no answer. Deckard waited for only a moment before he said: “I got point, Chuck on my left, Courtney on my right. Thuy and Steph use the spray cans and remember, don’t let them close on you. And, I almost forgot, who’s got ammo?”

  Three extra magazines were all that was left. “Make them count,” he advised, once he had switched his out for a full one.

  He expected trouble right off the bat and knew it was best to take the offensive instead of waiting to be caught unaware. With a low growl, he headed straight for where the child zombies were gathering in the brush. Two turned on him and he shot them both. The rest fled, but didn’t go far.

  The group could hear them whispering to each—they sounded like snakes. No words were used, but somehow they understood the hissed commands. Before the group could make it to the other side of the brook, the children attacked from all sides.

  Beside Thuy, Stephanie suddenly screamed, and there was a whoosh of flame and a splash of light. Three guns went off in a string of shots as the reeds waved back and forth. Out of fear, Thuy lit off her can. In the light she saw they were surrounded by lithe bodies. The greedy, upturned faces shied away from the heat and the flame.

  She was shooting flame when, unexpectedly, Deckard yelled: “Run!” And like some unthinking herd animal Thuy took off, blundering forward and sprawling right over Courtney, who had tripped with her first step and had fallen in the brook. The water was icy and the rocks were painfully sharp, but Thuy didn’t even pause to sputter. The feral children weren’t exactly smart, however, they were cunning and they could sense weakness.

  They closed in for the easy kill with Thuy flicking, flicking, flicking her lighter and seeing nothing but a spark.

  “I call the dark one,” a voice screamed in glee. It was Jaimee Lynn racing through the tall grass at them, pushing the others aside. “No one touches her. She’s mine. I called…”

  The lighter finally caught, spouting a little golden flame. Thuy pointed the can straight across it and turned the little flame into a big one that caught Jaimee Lynn square. Her wispy gown went right up as though it had been soaked in gas and her hair was a torch that lit the night.

  She howled in pain; however, the sound was obliterated by the crash of Courtney’s M16 as she fired five times right in a row, spraying bullets and sending the children scrambling for cover. In seconds the children, including Jaimee Lynn seemed to have disappeared.

  “Now!” Thuy screamed as she jumped up, pulling Courtney to her feet. They splashed across the brook and up the other bank where they had a fine view. To their left was the ugly back end of a strip mall: dumpsters, lazily stacked pallets, receiving docks stained with oil, trash…lots and lots of trash. A heavy screen of bushes hid the sight from the perfectly aligned backyards of a pretty row of suburban houses on their right.

  In front of them was an overgrown field and right at the edge, only feet from getting clear was Deckard…and a mass of zombies.

  Not realizing that his group had been split, Deckard had been rushing headlong towards the houses, but at the sound of the gun fire he turned and raced back, leaving Chuck and Stephanie half-surrounded.

  “No!” Thuy yelled. “We’ll catch up. Go! Go!” With that, she and Courtney plunged down the slope and into the thicket of tall grass where they couldn’t see more than two feet on any side. Here and there, grinning faces would suddenly appear like shadow ghosts, seeming to float in the dark.

  Courtney’s fear was at a fever pitch. She couldn’t stop herself as she shot bullets left and right, missing wildly. Thuy had to grab her gun to keep her from wasting the last of her ammo shooting at nothing.

  “Wait until we’re out in the open,” Thuy told her. “We’re close. Just keep running.” Around them, the weeds swished with the passage of the undead children running on either side of the two, looking for an opening, hoping that one of the women would trip and then they would converge and feed like piranha.

  In spite of the dark and the panic numbing them, Courtney and Thuy burst out into the open going at a full sprint. They had gotten turned around slightly and were forty yards to the left of where Deckard, Chuck and Stephanie were fighting off two dozen adult zombies.

  With the children hanging back, lurking in the reeds, the pair of women were all alone and could have made a run for it. The thought never crossed their minds. With a single look towards each other, they ran at the zombies who seemed so much bigger and stronger than the children.

  “Hey! Hey!” Courtney screamed, waving her M16. “Look over here.” Of course they looked and of course they charged. Not all of them, but enough to open a lane for the others and enough to have Courtney screaming and running for her life with Thuy right behind.

  They ran for the nearest house, jumped up on the porch and rattled the doorknob uselessly. It was locked and the house was dark.

  “Shit!” Courtney cried, and then turned, only to see zombies coming up the porch stairs. Thankfully the steps were not easy for the clumsy creatures, giving the two women enough time to leap over the side railing. They landed in a bed of tulips, crushing them underfoot, and then took off again.

  They caught up with the others and ran down the street, their feet slapping pavement, their breath hucking in and out, their movements a dead giveaway. Even in the dark of night it was obvious they were human.

  Zombies streamed from out of every shadow, forcing the little group to run on and on. Thuy had a stitch in her side and to Courtney the air in her chest felt as if it were on fire—but that was nothing compared to what Chuck and Stephanie were feeling. The tumors in their lungs were like hunks of glass and every gulp of air came with a searing pain deep inside where the soul sat pressed up to the core of the body.

  After a hundred yard sprint, they couldn’t go on. Deckard saw it and pointed them at the nearest house. Its front door was locked, but he shouldered it in with one blow. After a quick glance to make sure there weren’t any zombies inside, he led them through the house and out the back door. They crossed through the back yard to the fence where Stephanie collapsed and had to be lifted over.

  “We can’t go on,” Thuy whispered to Deckard, once they were on the other side. “Find us somewhere safe.”

  He grunted a: “Sure,” that was part sarcasm because obviously nowhere was safe anymore. The house just in front of them seemed as good as any and so he hurried to a basement window, pulled off his jacket and used it to break the glass which tinkled softly when it fell.

  The group heard it as if it was an explosion of sound and they hunkered down, their eyes staring out into the night, their hearts thundering in their ears, certain that the hundreds of zombies they had just escaped from would come flocking.

  None did, but that didn’t stop them from scurrying down into the dark basement like a pack of rats. They feared risking a light, so they bumbled about knocking into things until the staircase was found. Once more Deckard led, his M4 at the ready, his eyes wide, his muscles tensed and ready for anything.

  What he found was an average, upper middle-class home. Disregarding the Pier 1 decorations and the Ethan Allen furnishings, he went straight to the front room, creeping up on the bay window from the side. Slowly, he closed the heavy curtains. Next he went to the front door and checked that it was locked. To be on the safe side, he and Chuck heaved a leather couch in front of it.

  Only then did he relax. He glanced back at the others trying to make out which one was Thuy in the dark. She was the smallest. The next smallest was Courtney, and then Stephanie and then…there was another shadow!

  Sudden fear tore through Deckard. It wasn’t Chuck, who had collapsed beside him, breathing in a wheezy rasp that sounded as if
he had just climbed from his death bed.

  The shadow meant there was someone in the room with them, someone who had come out of a back room or perhaps in from the back yard. No one had checked that door. Instead of clearing the rest of the house as they should have, the others had stood watching Deckard.

  Just then a soft, hungry moan escaped the shadow. Thuy jumped and Courtney flinched back. Stephanie turned slowly, too spent even for fear. Chuck went for his weapon which he had set down on a coffee table.

  Only Deckard could react. His rifle seemed to come up on its own, but there was no sighting it. His target was a black shape against a black background with only a suggestion of a human form. It couldn’t be human, Deckard told himself as he pointed the rifle at the center of the shadow and blasted it twice, knocking it back.

  Had it been human, it would have fallen or at least cried out, but it only stepped back two paces before staggering forward only to be met by Deckard, who rushed up and at point blank range, where he could finally see what he was shooting, blasted the zombie’s head open.

  It had been a woman and before Deckard had shot it, there hadn’t been much to it but rags of flesh, cracked bones and a few barely working organs. In the dark, he had no way of knowing how harmless it was and so he erred on the side of caution, only now that error had deadly consequences.

  The gun’s blasts had been heard and the countless zombies they had just escaped from charged the home.

  “Out the back!” Deckard cried and once more took the lead. He raced through to the kitchen, where he hauled back on a sliding glass door only to come face to face with two half-dead creatures. There were dozens more pouring through an open gate at the side of the house. There were too many to fight and with Chuck and Stephanie so exhausted, there was no room to run.