by Flacco, Jack
Yet, as careful as they were, and from the dozen that had survived, a pair of hands landed on the back of Randy’s neck before Matty could discharge one more round. The hands belonged to a fiend that had drool dripping from its mouth. Randy screamed as it pressed its fingers in the back of his neck. It pulled the young man to his knees before a bullet cut its life from under its feet. Matty dashed to the frontline joining Randy and at pointblank range, had burned a hole clean through the undead’s head releasing its brains on the ground.
Randy shot to his feet, turned to Matty, and surrounded by zombies on both sides, time had frozen for an instant.
“Are you okay?” Matty asked.
“I’m okay.” Randy said, cracking his neck once to the left, once to the right.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it in time to save you.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
“Do you think I would have left you for dead?”
“Oh, Matty.” Randy grabbed her and held her for a moment tightening his grip while the zombies around them tightened their circle.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you how much I appreciate you.”
“Can we do this later? Something’s coming toward you and I want to make sure to kill it before it rips your head off.”
“Sure.” Randy said. For some reason he didn’t want to let go of his best friend. After everything they’ve been through, he needed comfort and the only way he could do that was to embrace her. Strange boy.
Time suddenly sped up again. The teens looked at each other then watched the oncoming horde surround them. They had no place to go but fight. Randy needed an excuse to do what he did next. He plopped his hand on Matty’s head driving her to her knees. With his other hand, he jabbed one of the scum suckers in the face with his knife. Green spewed from its head, falling next to where Matty had crouched.
Matty hopped to her feet and squealed, “You saved me!”
“Not now!” Randy slipped his knife in the head of another of the belly munchers.
It didn’t take long for the pair to realize the best place to be was together. Together they had a chance to defeat the remnant that had survived their brutal assault. Their backs locked. Their stance lifted. They rotated clockwise, swiping their knives through the air.
The dozen or so eaters lurched forward swinging their arms at the teens. One at a time those in the crowd felt the cold steel slit their throats.
Matty threw the first salvo striking one of the zombies in the neck. It didn’t take kindly to what she had done. As the blood trickled from the wound, the victim reached for her, but she had other plans. She didn’t give it time to hook its maggot-infested claws on her. Matty sliced through its fingers with one flick. The first of the crowd lost its hand and soon after, she finished it by carving through its face with very little trouble. It fell to the ground, releasing its life on the drive.
Another of the gut churners had its crosshairs painted on Randy. It had stretched its stench-laden paws all over the young man, but he wouldn’t have it. He swung his body around, always keeping his back to Matty, and drove his knife into the side of the undead’s worm-sprouting head. It tumbled, its dead body slamming on the drive.
That was when Matty glanced to Jon and Abigail and watched in horror as the three chewers that had climbed from the ditch reached for them.
At the same time, Silver hopped from the ditch with a short, sturdy stick in his hand that he had broken from the dead log lying underneath the Humvee. He sprinted toward the first that dared threaten the kids with it grimy hooks. He stabbed the first in the back of the head and while it screeched in agony, grabbed the second and flung it around in a circle and tossed it on its back. When the first crashed to its death, Silver pulled the stick from its head and rammed it in the second’s face, shattering its skull. Had there been more time, Silver would have taken care of the third. But distance made it impossible for him to jump to his feet to save the boy. He watched with terror as the third reached for the boy.
“Jon!” Matty hollered as she plunged her knife into the ear of another of the undead.
In between gunshots, somehow Abigail heard Matty’s piercing scream. She turned around and faced the final chewer that had popped from the ditch. Like someone had pressed a button, she zoomed in on the chewer and released a blast that took its head. It crashed on the drive. Green oozed from its neck and slowly covered the bottom of Jon and Abigail’s shoes.
Silver rested his hands on his knees and his lungs expanded taking in as much air as he could. He wondered how it all happened so fast and how it could have easily gone the other way. Instead of celebrating, they would have been mourning Jon’s death.
Jon turned and saw what Abigail had done. He nodded then said, “Thanks. You saved my life.”
“Seems like we’ve been doing a lot of that for each other lately.”
Before they could celebrate though, the last of the crowd at the foot of the drive marched toward the kids with vengeful stares. That measure of time Abigail had taken to save Jon was all that the horde needed to advance their attack.
Silver shot to his feet and said, “Run!”
* * *
The grenade dropped to Ranger’s side. He heard the metal spring release. His mind sprang into a panic. Seconds left, he had time for one last prayer before it blew him into chunks for the zombie horde behind him to consume.
Without thinking, he grabbed the grenade and flung it as hard as he could into the starving crowd behind him at the foot of the woods leading to the prison path. Again, without thinking, he pulled the body of the fifth chewer he had killed and dove under it as the grenade flew through the air and into the undead mass.
As soon as Ranger had tucked himself under the body, the grenade slammed into the crowd letting off a massive explosion that had taken with it the frontline. Body parts flew into the air and green covered the trees along with anything else that stood near the blast, including the frontline’s undead brothers and sisters. A rain of body parts came crashing not only hitting the ground but also the body that had covered Ranger.
When the smoke cleared, Ranger pushed the body that lay on top of him and he coughed. For the first time since he ventured on the island, silence soaked him. Yet, he couldn’t have thought it too soon. The moans seeped into his ears once again from behind. The blast had taken a good portion of the frontline, but it didn’t take all of the undead. When he watched them shift and rock from their places toward him, he had nothing else to do than what he knew best—and it wasn’t running.
He rose from the bed he had made on the path and faced the crowd. This time, he wasn’t taking any chances. He pulled his shotgun from the holster tied to his leg and cocked it without trouble.
Ranger dug his feet into the dirt and stood firm on the ground he claimed as his.
The undead roamed from the woods and dragged into the clearing. Had they been self-aware, they would have seen the bodies of their brothers and sisters to scream in disdain at what the zombie killer had done to one of theirs. They would have seen the body parts, pieces, sinew and chunks, and would have screeched their mourning for their kind. Instead, the look of death ran through their white gazes and nothing more than hunger for the undead murderer filled their stomachs. They had no consciousness. They weren’t self-aware, but they did have one thing in common. They looked at Ranger with drooling mouths and starving eyes. He was their food. They weren’t about to let him escape.
Three of the crowd had lost their legs in the explosion. It didn’t stop them from dragging their weight across the grass and into the path. Ranger didn’t even bother with them. He just stared at them wondering what could possibly have given them the impression he was an easy target.
Nonetheless, he drew first blood. The boot he meticulously cleaned earlier of the blood he had spilt by stomping on the head of one of the chewers, he once again used to introduce his brand of vengeance to the crowd. He crushed the skull of the lead
dragger and splattered its brains all over the path in a huge grease spot.
The others couldn’t do anything other than press forward and holler their anger at the undead exterminator. They pushed their limbs forward. Their faces bore the anger of their bitter lot in life. They raised their arms and shrieked. It was their war, not Ranger’s. They had decided they would win.
One of the chewers with speed to its legs dashed from behind the crowd and pushed through to the zombie killer. It had nothing to lose other than its own undead life. It was a risk worth taking. As it raised its rot-filled arms into the air, reaching for Ranger’s throat, it met with the blast of a shotgun that left it without a head. Its body slammed on another dragger that crawled toward Ranger.
By this time, Ranger decided to save his shells. He could have been there all night had he allowed it to continue. After so many undead kills, he felt the pull of getting back to the kids. He didn’t want to leave them too long, and although he knew they were safe, he still needed to return in order to get out of this hellhole he called the new world order.
To make his decision easier, what he thought was the last of the crowd appearing from the woods was only the beginning. The horde had grown from a dozen to fifty to a hundred. He realized then the infestation was more than what he had wanted to deal with in the time he had on his hands.
Ranger smiled at the large crowd drifting in his direction then performed an about-face and dashed in the opposite direction. No more, he thought. He pumped his legs forward and crashed through the woods where more of the undead had surfaced. He drew his shotgun and in the dark forest, as the leaves crumpled under the soles of his feet, he fired at anything that got in his way. It wasn’t hard for him to find them. They hopped in his path as he pressed forward like a football player running for a touchdown. His face burned in ire seeing how they followed him, popping from the sides and dashing ahead.
One gut grinder had the air as its ally. In among the trees, it hopped on a boulder and lunged at Ranger’s passing figure. Its weight had propelled him toward the zombie slayer and it didn’t have a problem wrapping its arms around Ranger’s neck.
Coughing and gagging, Ranger slowed his pace, and swung the gut grinder around with his free hand, slamming the monster on its back. As it rose from its temporary grave, Ranger made its resting place permanent, pulling the trigger to splatter its head all over the bed of leaves where its corpse flattened. He didn’t have time to waste. His shotgun was his agent, but because he had stopped, the other leapers caught up with him. Ranger threw them off his back as if they were rag dolls.
One zombie in particular wouldn’t take no. It hopped and tackled Ranger to the ground.
“Get off me, you scum-sucking beast.” Ranger said then let off a blast from his faithful sidearm into the head of the savage creature.
In an instant, Ranger scrambled from the others out to the clearing.
Just as he was escaping the woods and the moon led the way to his boat docked on the pier, an eater of no distinct origin leaped from the dark and tore into Ranger’s arm, spilling his blood. Inside the woods, the zombies that had pursued Ranger lifted their noses and flared their nostrils. They began to shake and they frenzied to the zombie slayer.
As Ranger ignored the pain, he made a run for the boat. One undead after another piled on top of the undead killer.
Ranger had lost his way of escape.
Chapter 32
Dawn broke that morning with little fanfare. Whatever had happened the night before was a memory. Bodies of the undead were lying at the foot of the drive, broken, wearing holes in their heads and their faces bore the evil, wretched looks they had from when they once were alive.
The Humvee stood quiet with the broken branch under its wheels and with no way out. It hadn’t moved nor had anything or anyone taken it as its home to sleep in. It was lying in the ditch as a memorial to those that had defended her. It would remain there until someone had the courage to exhume it from its shallow grave.
From the foot of the drive, a path of bodies led to the top where the entrance to Emery’s Dock parking lot held the memory of the fight the night before. More bodies covered the asphalt, dismembered, shot and stabbed, delivered by the hands of the kids who defended themselves against the hatred that once lived in the zombies. A trail of footsteps in dried green blood covered everywhere.
Another path of bodies led to a maintenance building where the doors appeared shut. Dead bodies had piled against the door of the solid structure as a warning to other chewers that if they attempted to mess with any of the kids again, they would meet with a similar fate.
The orange light from the sky betrayed the battle that had taken place the night before. None of the undead had survived. The ones that had made it to the border of the maintenance building had branches sticking out of their head. The final minutes of the battle had brought with it desperation. The sticks worked as crude weapons against the eaters, plucked from the woods and tailored to cause the maximum amount of damage to those that had followed their prey from the drive.
Inside the building, which resembled a glorified shed, the sun’s rays seeped into the one room through cracks in the roof. Dust particles gently floated in the air passing through the light and disappearing when they met the darkness.
In the corner of the room, Jon and Abigail held one another as they slept. The events from the night before had left them exhausted and ready for a long vacation. Silver sat next to Jon, snoring away. He had a few scars on his arms and neck, but nothing as serious as the twisted ankle he had nursed back to health from a few days prior. It was the most sleep he was getting in days.
Several feet from them, on the other side of a chair that stood against the wall between them, Randy slept upright with his back against an empty shelf. The exhaustion had caught up with him as well. It wasn’t every day that he could rest and not worry about chewers coming inside to threaten him. He had resolved the maintenance building was the safest place to be. They had four walls, a locked door and boarded windows they could swing open if they needed to make a quick dash.
He adjusted his position, but didn’t wake up.
In the midst of them, under Randy’s arm, Matty sat quietly. Her eyes hadn’t closed once all night. She held her knife in her hand. She ground its tip in the wooden floorboard under her. She could still see crusted emerald over the length of the blade. If anything attempted to get into the building, she would have been the one to hop to her feet and cut the predator to its grave. She would have been the one who would have soaked the inside of the building with the chewers’ blood. And she would have been the one who would have hauled the rest of the kids from the safe haven for another escape.
Matty’s delicate features had all but disappeared in the fight she and her friends had participated in the night before. The ponytail she sported several days fell limp on her back. She needed a shower. She couldn’t wait until she hit the water. For now, she sat with her gaze fixed at the door ahead.
Randy readjusted his position once more but this time he yawned and drew Matty closer. He whispered, “Did you sleep at all?”
“I’m fine.” She whispered. “I’m looking forward to Ranger coming back.”
“He’ll be here soon. Then we won’t be able to keep this place quiet with all the children running around.”
Matty glanced at Randy then smiled. She liked the idea of having more people around, but the melody of Randy’s voice was what gave her the smile. She looked at him and without saying a word, kissed Randy while she had the chance. It wasn’t a peck, nor was it one of those sisterly kisses. It ignited her insides and a gentle moan escaped from within her.
When their lips separated, Randy remained frozen in his spot. Matty had surprised him. He wasn’t sure what to do next. He couldn’t catch his breath and his face had bloomed in warm colors.
“You don’t have to say anything.” Matty snuggled deeper in Randy’s arm. “Let’s enjoy this while we have a chance.”<
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He didn’t know what she meant. All he knew was that she didn’t back away or argue with him. That was a good sign.
Matty’s thoughts drifted to how they first met. She remembered seeing him for the first time as a lost boy who came from Ranger’s truck back at the silo. Even back then, she thought he was cool. That first conversation with him had made her night. She couldn’t ignore her feelings for him. The moonlit night when they sat on a rock talking about classical music always kept her warm. She couldn’t think about her life without him.
“What did you want to do when we finally get out of here?” Randy asked.
“I’m not sure if I have a clear answer for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t ever want to lose you again.”
Randy squeezed her as her head rested on his shoulder.
“Listen, Randy. You have to understand something about me. I’m hurting inside because I can’t give myself to you one hundred percent. If I did that, I’d lose myself in you. I have to hold back. I just don’t want us to get hurt, okay. Do you understand? If we go further and something were to happen to either one of us, I could never forgive myself. I’m finding it hard to be with you at times. That’s why some days I’m okay with us being together, getting to know each other and growing closer, but other days are a struggle for me. I know this sounds corny, and I know it sounds weird, and all that. But you have to know, I don’t mean to hurt you.”
“I figured that out already.”
“Have you? I sometimes think I’m too harsh and cold toward you. But if you have, then you know I have the greatest admiration for you. I would do anything for you. That includes me giving my life for you, if I have to. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good.” Matty said, then propped up and locked eyes with him. “You’re my best friend, Randy. You are. Nothing will ever come between us. Nothing.”