Ranger Martin (Book 3): Ranger Martin and the Search for Paradise

by Flacco, Jack

  Ranger would have noticed what Matty was doing, but he had his hands on his shotgun trying to keep up with his own growing problem. Instead of dealing with a diminishing group of undead hitting the fences, he fired his shotgun at a growing crowd, enticed by the racket he and the others were making. He eased his baseball cap from his head and tried to think of another solution.

  To Ranger, the biggest problem was the gap in the fence widening as more and more of the undead pushed against it. He thought, somehow the residence hadn’t placed enough effort into building the haphazard barriers to prevent a threat.

  “Randy. This is not working!” Ranger ran to the boy and pulled him away from the fence. “We’ve got to find somethin’ to hold the fence in place. We’re dead if they break through the breach.”

  Facing Ranger and covered in green goo, Randy pulled his knife from the head of another undead then said, “Fine. I’m with you. But what?”

  “Use the table in the cabin.” Olivia said, who hadn’t moved from where she had planted herself behind Ranger. “It’s long and heavy enough to hold the fence in place. We can then gain an advantage by concentrating our firepower instead of worrying about the breach.”

  “Good idea.” Ranger said.

  He sped to the cabin with Randy tailing him. Once he burst through the door, he noticed Jon holding Abigail in the far corner of the room. The little girl trembled. “Randy, get Olivia.”

  He didn’t have to. When Olivia ran into the room, her face turned white with fear. “No.”

  Randy shuffled his way past her and grabbed one end of the table while Ranger held the other end.

  Olivia dashed to the children’s side. She bent and wrapped her arms around them, but Jon wouldn’t have it. He squirmed from her grip leaving her to comfort Abigail alone. He would have rather helped Randy and Ranger with the table.

  As Ranger and Randy dragged the table from the cabin doorway and Olivia held on to her daughter crumpled in one spot while she covered her ears from the gunfire and shrieks, outside, Sunglow pulled the trigger one last time to an empty chamber.

  “Silver, do you have a clip for me?” she asked.

  “I’m down to my last one.”

  By this time, she noticed a massive form emerging from the woods and into the light of the torches. It must have weight four hundred pounds. It was the largest of any of the zombies Sunglow or Silver had ever seen. And it was heading straight for the fence.

  “Kill that thing. If it reaches the fence, it’ll tear it down!” Sunglow pointed at it.

  He let loose a barrage of bullets without aiming. He would have done better had he pressed the trigger with that thing in its crosshairs. Silver hadn’t thought of it. His only concern was to get rid of it as best as he knew how.

  As the four-hundred pound monster heaved through the crowd, Sunglow pulled her knife and took off in a puff of dust to the fence. Taking Randy’s approach to doing things, she attempted to kill as many of the zombies as she could. If it moved, she’d kill it. She hoped that if it had a path to the fence, Silver would have had a clear shot at it. She didn’t think of grabbing Silver’s gun to do the job herself. It had escaped her mind. She just wanted to get rid of all of them regardless of how she did it.

  In the meantime, the residents fired round after round into the horde attacking the west side of the compound. The zombies hadn’t surrendered. The more the undead fell to the gunshots of the residents, the more their brothers charged from the woods.

  “Where are they all coming from?” Someone asked.

  “The campgrounds down a ways!” Another said.

  Soon, the residents found themselves in a situation. As some bullets hit their targets in the head as they should have, since a bullet to the head would have easily ended the lives of the chewers, other bullets crashed into arms, legs, chests with no effect other than to waste a shot. There were many wasted shots. The residents weren’t the expert shooters they had claimed of being. The Resistance would have had it cleaned up by now, yet the residents struggled with shell casings flying in their faces without making a difference to the growing crowd.

  Back in the cabin, Ranger and Randy hauled the long, sturdy table as Jon tagged along holding the door. They dragged the table outside, halfway between the cabin and the breach to the east fence when Ranger dropped his side. Without waiting, he reached for his shotgun and blasted the three undead in the middle of the compound. Then, more of the zombies broke through the fence.

  Ranger’s trusty shotgun splattered green brains over the crowd that had yet to break through the fencing. He holstered his weapon and sprung to help Randy again.

  While Ranger and Randy moved the table to the fence, Matty heaved the first gas canister from the pickup. It slammed on the ground and for a moment Matty thought it was the end of her. It wasn’t. Her heart returned to normal and her hands latched on to the canister. She tugged and dragged it to the gate as the sweat from her forehead trickled from her brow to drip on to the canister.

  One done, she thought.

  She didn’t allow the fatigue of that one canister stop her from rising to her feet again. She ran and gripped the second canister from the truck. Her mind swam with happiness thinking how she should place the gas canisters on either side of the fence then light them up with the hope of getting rid of a huge swath of chewers. Without stopping, she carried the second canister across the compound and laid it on the other side of the gate.

  Resting for a moment, Matty allowed her breath to return to normal. The heaving and dragging had taken all her energy. Her thoughts wandered. Her head down, she couldn’t see what came through the fence to make her night even more miserable. Undead arms jutted from the barrier and grabbed Matty by the scruff of her neck to pull her closer. All the zombies wanted were a taste.

  Her legs went in many directions. Her arms flung into the air. Soon three to four sets of hands had her squirming as her back hit the fence. She felt fingers probing her from her shoulders to her hips. The mouths dripped with drool as they drew her even closer for a small bite. They screamed their famine as the pangs grew deeper from their stomachs.

  “Matty!” Jon abandoned Ranger and Randy to run for her sister.

  “Stay back, Jon!” Matty twisted and turned, but the more she did, the more the undead held on to her.

  Ranger and Randy had their own problem to deal with. The breach to the east fence opened wider, spilling more of the undead into the compound. Not wanting to waste his shots, Ranger used his knife to hit each body that had broken through the fence. A knife to the head, one body dropped. A slash to the neck and another dropped. At one go, Randy flipped the table and pushed one side closer to the breach, then ran and pressed the other end. He thought it would have seemed impossible to win if he didn’t get help soon. He couldn’t do it on his own.

  On the north side of the fencing, Sunglow panted, as she grew tired of the incessant stabbing motions to the undead against the fence. But her problems didn’t end there. While she took her time carving a hole on either side of the fence where the four-hundred pound zombie thumped toward the middle, Silver had also spent his last shell on the crowd that had shielded the teens’ greatest enemy.

  “Sunglow, tell me you have more bullets.” Silver said.

  “I’m out!” Sunglow stabbed another in the face and watched it slide to the ground. “Come and give me a hand. Maybe we can kill them all this way.”

  Pulling his knife, Silver attacked the fence stabbing everything in his line of sight. What he didn’t know though was what he neglected. The four-hundred pound bubba pushed the rest of the others forward, using its weight as a means to attack the fence. As it leaned forward, so did the others. They pressed the fence to the sound of creaking wires and cracking poles that held everything in place.

  “I swear if we ever get out of this alive, one day I'll show you a beach in California where we won't have to worry about the undead ever again.” Silver plunged his knife in the skull of another undead. �
�We won’t be able to hold them back much longer. Sooner or later, this fence is going to come down.”

  “Keep killing them. They’ll have to stop coming sometime.” Sunglow wiped her face of the green blood that had sprayed all over her with the last stab wound she had inflicted on one of the monsters.

  Inside the cabin, Olivia held Abigail tight, not wanting to let go.

  “When will it be over?” Abigail asked. “When will they all go away?”

  “Soon.” Olivia rocked her daughter back and forth, as they sat in the corner of the room. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  The screams sent Abigail deeper into her mother’s bosom. Once the zombies breached the fences and got a good hold of the compound, she knew everyone would die. She had seen the undead infest other places before and who was to say they wouldn’t do it again? That’s how Sergeant Baskins had died. She didn’t want the same thing happening again.

  “Abigail, remember how I used to sing you to sleep at night when you were having bad dreams?” Olivia asked.

  “I remember.”

  “Remember how you woke up the next morning wondering what all the fuss was about the night before?”

  “I remember that, too.”

  “Tomorrow morning we’ll wake up wondering what all the fuss was about. Everything’s going to be better.”

  Water sprung from Abigail’s face while she thought how wonderful it would be, but then realized her mother was saying it to keep her calm. She wiped her face on her mother’s chest, as she knew nothing would change. Things would get worse. She could see the undead dragging their entrails on the ground as they hunted for the last of the humans to consume in the first light of morning.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Olivia asked.

  At the south gate, where the undead had their hands all over Matty, Jon sprinted then vaulted on the fence with his knife fully extended, pointed at his first victim.

  “Jon, no!” Matty screamed.

  “Leave my sister—” he plunged his knife into the head of the one who held Matty’s right arm, “Alone!”

  Once free, Matty swung her arm to her neck. One of the monsters was pulling her shirt tight around her throat, causing her eyes to bulge.

  Jon looked like a spider that had caught its prey in a web, except instead of eating, he killed his catch. He soon slipped his knife into the head of the undead that held his sister by the shirt. It collapsed behind the fence, but its grip hadn’t loosened. It remained locked, pulling Matty’s shirt tighter around her throat. Her eyes grew heavier as the oxygen drained from her head.

  Unless Jon helped, Matty had a few more seconds to live. His focus was not on the shirt however, it was on her feet. He didn’t notice Matty turning blue. He thought if he had freed her hands then she should have freed herself from the strangler. He had made mistakes before. He was a kid. What kid didn’t make mistakes? Yet this mistake could have caused Matty to lose her life.

  The residents at the west fence had all but lost hope. As their rifles jammed and as the ammo disappeared, the horde behind the fence pushed forward pressing the structure inward toward the camp. Some of the kids that were waiting outside their cabins watching from a safe distance ran inside where their mothers had packed their belongings. They shut the doors and crawled under their beds as instructed in case of a breach. The mothers and the kids now waited for the go-ahead to evacuate the compound to their secondary place of safety.

  Soon, Olivia stared outside her cabin window into the crowd that had taken over the west fence, then she saw how the south gate had the undead attacking it, too. She dashed outside to the back of the cabin and gasped as the north fence rattled and bent at the weight of the zombies. When she then gazed in grief at the breach in the east fence—her face turned to terror and her legs carried her back into the cabin where she slammed the door and pressed against it. They only had a few minutes, she thought, before everything collapsed around them.

  As the light of the torches faded outside, in the cabin, Olivia trotted to Abigail, grabbed her and crawled in the corner under the bed. She held her tight with the resolve nothing would harm her child.

  In the meantime, Ranger carved a hole in the last of the undead that had broken through the east fence. He didn’t waste time. He sprung from his spot while holstering his knife, and hurried to the heavy table Randy had dragged from the center of the compound. Together they lifted the piece of furniture and rammed the fence with it, sealing it of its breach. For the first time, among the dead bodies scattered at their feet, Ranger smiled at Randy thinking they had the upper hand.

  It was their first win. They needed it. Had they not sealed the east fence, the other undead would have certainly ripped it apart to take over the whole camp. The boys laughed at the thought it could have been over.

  The residents at the west fence made similar progress. One of the men had passed a few boxes of ammo he had held as reserve in one of the vehicles next to the cabins. Once the line of residents reloaded their weapons, a renewed spirit took hold and they mowed the remainder of the zombies that had attacked the barriers.

  At the south gate, upon hearing the guns blasting again, Jon shot to his feet and saw Matty turning blue, unable to breath. His eyes popped and he rammed the fence with his sister attached to it, slicing through the back of her shirt.

  She fell on the ground on her hands and knees, and rubbed her neck gasping for breath. She took in the oxygen and laughed. It had hurt so much that she laughed as Jon did, too, knowing they’d beaten death once again.

  But death hadn’t finished with any of them yet.

  As Sunglow and Silver stabbed the heads of the beasts that were pushing against the north fence, the four-hundred pound zombie shoved forward, and his demon brothers followed suit. The fence cracked, the beams rattled and the wires finally snapped from the weight.

  “Sunglow! No!”

  Chapter 16

  Lifting his head to the sound of Silver screaming, Ranger pulled his shotgun, left the table he had erected against the east fence, and with Randy following him, charged to the north fence. When they arrived there, Ranger’s jaw took a dip as he watched the undead flood the compound after they had toppled the fence and trampled it to the ground. Their mud-soaked shoes marched all over anything under them as they headed to the west fence where the sound of gunshots alerted the mass to activity.

  Randy wanted to jump in and find Sunglow and Silver, but Ranger pulled him back.

  “No.” Ranger said, and hauled Randy behind the corner of the cabin. “Run to the pickup and brin’ it around back. Get Matty to help you get Olivia and Abigail from the cabin. We ain’t got time to waste. I’ll find the others. You got that?”

  The teen nodded then said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. The others are here somewhere. Once I find them, we’ll all leave this hell and head straight for Paradise.”

  “What if you don’t find them?”

  “Stop wastin’ time and get your ass into that pickup!”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  Once Randy left, Ranger glanced around the corner of the cabin to where the fence had collapsed. He didn’t see any sign of movement. The zombies that had attacked it, including the four-hundred pound slug, had dragged their limbs to the west gate and left the entry abandoned.

  With no one in sight, Ranger walked to the opening of the fence wondering what had happened to the kids. They couldn’t have run into the woods, not with the undead roaming about. They couldn’t have run between cabins, they didn’t have time for that. He pushed the bill of his cap away from his face and examined the area.

  He didn’t have to look far. A slight groan came from under the fence poles the eaters had snapped into pieces. Ranger quickly dove to his knees and sunk his hands into the rubble. Among the broken pieces, the mud the undead had tracked over the fencing and the broken wire, he pulled at an arm to the sound of a painful moan.

  “I gotcha. Don’t worry. I gotcha.�
� Ranger brushed aside the rubble and pulled one of the kids across the dirt to the side of the cabin.

  When Ranger propped him on his back, Silver said, “My foot. I think I sprained my foot.”

  “Your foot? You’re lucky you’re alive. With those rot chewers, you should have been dead.”

  Silver grabbed his foot and massaged it. Then, with exhaustion in his voice, he said, “Sunglow. She still under there.”

  Ranger didn’t waste a second. He shot to his feet and dashed to the rubble. Again, he dug through the debris and found Sunglow, eyes closed, body twisted. “Sunglow?”

  Unable to make out what was happening Silver rubbed his eyes then gazed at the zombie slayer. He saw Ranger over Sunglow, but he wasn’t pulling her out like he had done with him. He couldn’t understand why. With all the strength he had left in his body, he whispered, “Ranger? Take Sunglow out of there. Pull her out.”

  But Ranger had placed his hand underneath her neck, and soon closed his eyes, bowing his head.

  “Ranger? Pull Sunglow from the rubble.”

  Dropping his head, Ranger did no such thing.

  “Ranger?”

  He removed his hand from under the rubble and placed pieces of debris over Sunglow’s face so that the undead could not come back and feed. Then Ranger rose from her and turned to Silver. He slowly approached him.

  Through his blurred vision, Silver’s face crumpled and wetness covered it.

  Bending to the teen, Ranger said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I told her one day I’d show her a beach in California where life was carefree and we wouldn’t have to worry about the undead ever again.”

  * * *

  “Get your gun and follow me.” Randy said, stopping five feet from Matty and Jon placing his hands on his knees, panting.

  Matty raised her head then stared at the teen. She said, “You’re talking to me again?”