by Brown, TW
The radio stayed silent. Dinah had done what she set out to, she had made him respond on the defensive. Thad grabbed his duffel bag, slung it over his shoulder, and threw a leg over the railing. He climbed down the rope they used to set up an easy access to the freeway below.
A moment later, the rumble of the big truck vibrated the insides of the cargo area. The back end of the garbage truck blocked out most of the ambient light as it backed to the opening. The warning beep echoed, doing its best to give Thad a headache.
In less than five minutes, every box containing bags of various chips, nuts, and cookies were transferred.
“They’re coming!” Dinah’s voice boomed from the PA.
The last big cardboard box was handed from one man to the next and everybody—Thad, JoJo, and Keith— scurried to the cab and jumped in. Dinah was now behind the wheel, she started the monstrous, armored truck forward as the men were still climbing up and in.
Thad popped open the overhead trapdoor and heaved himself into the machine gun turret. The .50 caliber that they had managed to salvage from an overturned National Guard Humvee was loaded and ready. He released the safety and swung to the left where the closest threats were pouring around all the abandoned, overturned, or burned out cars.
In short bursts just like Dinah taught, he began firing. Brass casings spat out, catching the sunlight as they flew end over end, clattering on the roof of the garbage truck’s cab and rolling away. Zombies spun as rounds ripped through their rotting torsos or simply dropped when the bullet found their heads. Some of the creatures’ skulls erupted in greyish-black explosions of jelly-like matter.
The air horn sounded once, signaling that the vehicle was about to turn. Thad took his finger off the trigger and braced himself. With only a couple of stragglers falling under the wheels along the way, the journey back to their ‘fortress’ was relatively smooth.
Thad clicked the safety back on and turned so he could see what now counted as home for himself, Dinah, JoJo, Keith, Chelsea, and about a hundred others. The Four Seasons was twenty-three stories tall. The top floor was a restaurant and the two floors below that were luxury suites. That was where all of the meeting and planning and eating took place. They put an arsenal on every fifth floor, that way, if they were ever overrun, they had a solid source of weapons and ammo during their retreat.
Still, as they rumbled up the snaking drive that led to their home, Thad didn’t worry much about those zombies getting too thick. Their hotel-home was the only building built on this man-made plateau. Except for the curving, switchback driveway, thick undergrowth and trees covered the flat-topped hill on all sides. To climb up was difficult for a regular, healthy human, much less one of those uncoordinated undead. To make it more impossible, they uncoiled spools of razor wire all throughout the landscape.
Of course nothing is foolproof, so they completely filled the parking lot and all the flattened ground around the hotel with cars and trucks. Some had been turned on their sides. They left small gaps between every vehicle. If a zombie managed to climb the hill and got itself up onto a parked car or truck, it would then fall between the cracks. The third floor was where the guards kept lookout. Everybody able to shoot a gun took turns standing watch. Morning shift was the busiest. That was when the ten or so that managed to get in the perimeter during the night were dispatched.
There was a big gap for the garbage truck to pull into. It was like placing the last piece of a puzzle. Thad, Keith, and JoJo hopped out and while Thad pulled in a few cars that they used to wall off the truck, the other two kept lookout. As Thad parked the last car, Keith walked about ten yards down the blackened driveway to the first curve.
“About a hundred followed,” he called as he began pouring a three gallon can of gasoline on the blacktop drive.
“Getting to be less every time.” JoJo pulled a pack of gum from his jumpsuit’s breast pocket. He extended a foil stick towards Thad who shook his head. “Suit yourself.” He shrugged and peeled away the shiny aluminum, pulling the piece of Big Red out with his teeth.
Joseph Jones, or as he was better known, JoJo, was about five-feet-seven and two hundred-twenty pounds. He claimed to be part Hispanic, as well as African- and Native-American. His long, wavy black hair came to the middle part of his back when he wore it braided, which was most of the time. A stranger might think he was just short, squat, and chubby. They would be wrong. Under the easy smile and baggy clothes was the pure strength of a power-lifter.
Where JoJo was short and stocky, Keith Thomas was tall, skinny and ill-tempered. Again, a stranger might be concerned about going out amongst death with somebody so unpleasant. But nobody could shoot like Keith.
“Those bastards are learnin’,” Keith stepped back and watched the tide of gasoline spread across the smooth blacktop. He waited until a suitable number made it to the wet pavement. “Douse ‘em!”
JoJo stepped up with a bug-spray canister full of kerosene, pumped the handle a few times and opened the spray nozzle. A mist of fuel began coating the oncoming hordes.
“That should do it.” Keith drew a box of wooden matches from another pocket in his green coveralls. “Step back!” He lit a match and tossed it to the ground.
FWOOSH!
A wall of heat rolled over the men even at this distance. A greasy, black pearl of smoke snaked skyward. As more of the zombies caught fire, the smoke grew darker and denser. One by one, the bodies toppled and ceased to move. The men stayed until the last body fell, and then waited for them to burn down.
The third or fourth time they had done this, one of their own had started in to dispose of the remains, loading the charred bodies into a waiting pick-up truck bed. A blackened husk had taken a chomp of the guy’s forearm. Without warning, Keith had walked over and put a bullet in the zombie’s head, then their co-worker’s. These days, they let the bodies burn longer.
JoJo crawled across a few of the parked cars and disappeared for a moment only to return with a cooler.
“Warm beer, anybody?” he called and opened the small, red plastic carrier. “Kept it in the shady area for a day.”
“I’m actually getting used to it.” Thad reached out for one, popped it open, and took a long drink.
The men sat in silence, sipping warm beer, watching corpses burn. Somewhere distant, the distinct sound of gunfire erupted. It lasted several seconds.
“Think they made it?” Thad asked nobody in particular.
“Don’t know,” JoJo sighed, and took another drink.
“Don’t care.” Keith closed his eyes and lay back on the hood of the car he’d been sitting on.
9
Geeks to the Rescue
“Left! Left Dammit!” Darrin screamed into his handset.
The U-Haul swerved left, its tires squealing and leaving a blue-gray puff of burnt rubber in its wake. Mike’s El Camino sped past Darrin with a roar. A pair of zombies flew as the solid front bumper shattered legs and ribs. The bodies twitched and struggled as Darrin glanced in his rearview mirror. They weren’t eliminated, just less of a threat to anybody else that might come along now that they could no longer walk.
The three-vehicle caravan turned off Main Street and took another left on Market Street. Darrin gave directions and Kevin led in the big U-Haul truck in an attempt to clear the way as much as possible for the group. Darrin was becoming convinced that he needed a new car. The Geo was great for gas mileage, but they weren’t paying for gas anymore. It would be best if he found something durable.
“They said the building was reddish-brown.” Mike’s voice brought Darrin back to the issue at hand.
They picked up the radio broadcasts on their CBs just before they reached the bridge that would take them into Ohio. The vote was unanimous; they turned around to see if they could rescue the owners of the voice that claimed to be a mother and her three daughters.
One of the daughters was seven months pregnant.
“I see the building!” Kevin announced.
The big truck began to pull away. Bodies were being crushed and knocked aside. There were hundreds. They were packed in around the building that held their objective.
“No way we can get in there,” Mike said.
“There’s too many!” Darrin agreed.
The U-Haul was now surrounded on all sides by throngs of the undead intent on getting at the living, breathing body inside. The truck pushed ahead, but the task seemed as pointless as that of Sisyphus and the rock.
“You’re gonna bog down and get stuck!” Mike warned.
“You two back up and see how many follow. I got a full tank, I can keep edging to the door. I think once I’m under the awning, there won’t be enough room for that many. I can pop the few that get stuck between me and those doors. Switch to channel ten and tell those girls to get down to the lobby. They’re gonna have to get through the window on my passenger side because I’m gonna be pressed up against the building. Opening the door is going to be out of the question.”
“Good luck,” Mike said, and switched the CB to channel ten where they had told the girls to listen for further instructions.
“...we do? Can you hear us?” The voice was near hysterics. Another voice, calmer, spoke in the background, “Stop using the radio. They’re down below. I can see ‘em. If those guys are trying to talk to us, we won’t be able to hear.”
“Okay, ladies,” Mike said, “start heading downstairs. Kevin, the one in the U-Haul, is gonna move under the awning at the main entrance.”
“Should we head down right now?” The calmer voice had the mic now.
“Yes, me and Darrin, the one in the little car, are gonna head away in different directions and hopefully lead some of those things with us.”
A big, meaty hand slapped the windshield of Mike’s El Camino making him jump. Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw that one of the things had managed to make it into the back with all the supplies. Slowly, the thing was crawling over the plastic tarp towards the cab. He could see Darrin backing up. He was almost to the corner.
“Oh shit,” Mike breathed. He keyed his radio. “Darrin! On your left coming around the corner!”
Mike could see Darrin’s face. He saw the way his eyes widened when he looked in the rearview mirror. A wall of zombies were coming around the corner. They had followed them down Main, drawn by the sound of engines and the moans and groans of their brethren to home in on their prey.
Darrin’s car picked up speed suddenly, zooming backwards toward the sea of arms that reached out with primal need. Using the wall of bodies as a sort of bumper, the Geo slammed into them and then sped away down what the sign dangling from a stoplight wire declared to be Wheeling Boulevard
Mike looked ahead at the U-Haul that was gouging a path through the multitudes. A good number were indeed coming after him and the El Camino. From behind came an equal if not greater number.
He didn’t see any possibility that he would be able to force his way out if things got much thicker. Kevin was busy coaxing the U-Haul forward inch by violent inch as bodies oblivious to pain or injury continued to surge forward at the big truck. Yet, from the way he talked on the radio, it was as if nothing in the world was wrong. The girls signed off, saying that they were on their way down.
Meanwhile, Mike had backed up into the oncoming group from Main Street. Bodies were deep on all sides now; greasy and decaying faces of all races and ages pressed on his side windows. Many of the ones that had been near Kevin had broken off as he had driven into the more confining, less open area under the overhang of the building the women were in.
Bodies were being pressed onto the hood and into the back of the El Camino, and as the weight increased, a grinding sound began. At first it was slight, but as more bodies covered the big green vehicle, it increased until it was constant.
“I am clear, guys,” Darrin’s voice was fuzzy with static “there are a bu—”
Silence.
Mike saw his antenna sticking out of the throat of a zombie trying to claw through his windshield. The entire thing had been snapped off from the base mounted just above his head on the roof. The upside-down face in the windshield stared blankly at Mike, its mouth squished tight against the glass, both hands opening and closing like claws. It paid no attention whatsoever to the two-plus-feet of metal thrust all the way through the side of its neck.
The El Camino ground to a stop. Mike tried shifting back to drive.
Nothing.
He floored it.
The engine roared, but the El Camino wasn’t budging an inch. He tried reverse again.
“Fuck me.”
The dead swarmed all over the disabled vehicle. Hands beat and clawed on every available inch of its surface. The sound echoed in the small cab, reminding Mike of a bowling alley.
A crack began to grow across the windshield.
“Fuck me runnin’!”
***
“...bunch of those things moving down Main Street where we turned left on Wheeling,” Darrin said.
“I’m at the door as tight as I can get,” Kevin replied. “I’m gonna roll down the window and clear the way for our passengers.”
“Where are you at, Mike?” Darrin called.
Static.
“Mike?” Kevin keyed his handset.
“Yo, Mikey?” Darrin tried once again. “Kevin, can you see Mike?”
“He was backing up, following you,” Kevin replied.
“I didn’t see him on Wheeling. But I wasn’t paying attention to anything past putting some distance between me and that mob.”
“Well, I know a bunch of those bastards were peeling off from me to go after him, but I thought he was on your heels and I lost sight when I pulled into the drive-up thingy that leads to the front door.”
“Well—”
“Gotta go, Darrin,” Kevin cut Darrin off. “I see the girls in the lobby, and I need to clear out a few of the more persistent types who are trying to squeeze in between me and the doors.”
“But what about Mike?” Darrin’s voice sounded like he was about to cry.
“Busy right now, but we’ll get him. Don’t worry.”
Darrin’s protest continued, but Kevin ignored it as he dropped the handset and drew his nine-millimeter. Sliding across the bench seat, he rolled down the window. A pair of hands reached in from behind the cab instantly, and a face appeared. Most of the right side had been torn away. Kevin pressed the barrel of his gun against the thing’s forehead and fired. The back of its head exploded, splattering the coarse rock of the wall behind it.
Judging that he had a moment before the one squeezing itself between the front bumper and the glass of the first of the double-doors that he was parked in front of could get through, he chanced to look back. Two of the things were practically flattened between the truck and the wall. Dark smears where they had been dragged and grated stained the reddish, quartz-type rock that coated the building’s exterior.
The girls were dragging huge sofas that they had used to brace and block the doors. He swung his arm around and blew away the one zombie at his front bumper. More were massing up in front of his truck as well as along the driver’s side. Getting out was gonna be more difficult than getting in. If the bodies got too dense, he might not be able to force his way through.
“C’mon, ladies,” he yelled.
They were fumbling with a set of keys now. Finally, they came to the right one. They pushed on the door.
Clank.
Damn, Kevin cursed himself. He hadn’t considered that the door opened out, but that couldn’t be helped now.
“Step away,” he called and brought up one of his pistol-grip 12-gauge shotguns. The ladies scrambled away obediently. His thumb pressed the safety button and he fired. The sound was deafening in the cab, and all he could hear was ringing in his ears, but the glass door was now a big gaping hole.
The dead would have the building, but it wouldn’t matter. Kevin looked over the four women, he guessed the mother to be in her fifti
es but well maintained. The three daughters were from late teens to probably thirty (the one who looked to be about sixteen was the pregnant one).
The women all rushed to the truck, helping the pregnant one in first. Then, one by one, they squirmed through the window, spewing words of gratitude that he could barely hear above the ringing in his ears. The last one was in—the mother—and Kevin, unaware that he was yelling, told them to roll up the window. That done, he shifted into drive and floored it. The truck lunged, and bodies vanished from in front. The big vehicle rocked as it drove over downed corpses.
“Hang on!” Kevin warned as he cranked the wheel left and plowed into a sea of undead pouring through the pillars that marked the exit. He glanced left and his blood seemed to freeze. He knew where Mike was.
About three blocks away, a mass of bodies rose in a lump. Obviously Mike’s El Camino was underneath that squirming mass.
***
Darrin took another left. If his guess was correct, he should now be coming up on the street where Mike and Kevin were at…hopefully.
Why wasn’t anybody answering their damn radio?
He saw the intersection just ahead where that reddish building that those women they were rescuing were supposed to be in. While there had to be at least a hundred zombies coming at him from all sides, Darrin barely noticed. He was craning his neck trying to get a look. Another body bounced off the front fender, causing the poor Geo to shudder. The car was taking a real beating, and there would be no doubt that he would have to trade up to something more durable. At least he wouldn’t have to sweat the price of gas.
Finally he was able to see; what he saw made his bowels turn to water. The U-Haul was surrounded on all sides and barely moving through the swarm of undead that was doing everything possible to get at the five people jammed in the cab. Further up the road was a mound of rising horror that had to be the location of Mike and the El Camino.
A hand slapped his side window causing Darrin to scream and wet his pants…just a bit. The twisted caricature of what had probably been a beautiful woman pressed up against the glass in an audible squish of rotting flesh. Only an ugly, gaping hole remained where her nose had been. Black slime smeared the already gore-crusted window. One torn breast was nothing more than a thick, ham-like piece of flesh. The other had a small tear, and what had to be a silicon or saline pouch poked obscenely through the ripped skin.