El Paso Under Attack - 01

by Michael Clary

  “You don’t want to wait for her in a safe place? I’m sure she’ll be able to find you.”

  “No, I don’t want to leave.”

  Well, that tears it. I tried, he tried and it wasn’t exactly safe to stay here too long.

  I shouldered him out of the way, reached under the bed, grabbed Tamra by the arm and pulled. Damn that little girl could put up a fight.

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  Don’t judge me sweetheart. In the end, I was doing this kid a favor.

  She didn’t just fight though. This kid had a set of lungs that were making my damn ears ring. I think her scream was probably heard throughout the entire neighborhood.

  In other words, we had to boogie.

  “Grab her dolly and let’s go.” I shouted to Kingsley.

  He grabbed and we ran for the door.

  The growl came from a room farther down the hall. We froze and I fumbled for the flashlight. Tamra’s twin came slowly out of the shadows and into the light. She wore a pink dress. Half her face had been chewed off along with most of her stomach.

  Things made sense in a completely new and different sort of way. It wasn’t that Tamra was afraid of leaving her sister, Tamra was afraid of being eaten by her sister.

  I’m thinking it was the gross out factor that made Kingsley freak out a little bit. Whatever it was, when Tamra’s sister charged, Kingsley jumped back and hit me. I just happened to be standing by the edge of the stairs, so the slight bump took all of us for a tumble down the staircase.

  Tamra’s undead twin launched herself right after us.

  The next thing I knew, there were three living breathing humans and one undead zombie all in a pile at the bottom of the stairs. Kingsley had recovered sufficiently and was holding the zombie girl by the throat and away from the rest of us. I was busy trying to untangle myself from the mass of flailing limbs, when one of the windows to the backyard burst inward with an explosion of glass.

  It was the zombie we saw earlier in the backyard. The scream, the tumble down the stairs…I don’t know…take your pick, but something gave us away. He screamed into the dark room just as a loud boom of thunder sounded outside. He began to climb furiously through the broken shards around the window, gouging deep marks along his back as he did. Copious amounts of sticky black blood began to pour from his wounds hitting the wall and splattering down to the floor. I screamed, Kingsley screamed, Tamra screamed…hell even the zombies were screaming.

  I finally struggled out of the pileup.

  Kingsley would have to handle Tamra’s sister. I aimed and pulled off a shot just as the other zombie reached us. Luck was with me, he dropped like a rock. Unfortunately, I pulled the trigger at point blank range; our little group was covered in gore.

  “Damn, that was close. I would have gone into hysterics a long time ago. It just amazes me that you managed to keep on going after all of those horrible experiences.”

  Well, what choice did I have? What choice did any one of us have? I couldn’t just run and hide, we were running out of food.

  “There were people that did exactly that. Hundreds of people actually starved in their own homes right next their wives, husbands and children.”

  Yeah, I’m aware of that.

  It bothers him. I can tell immediately. Even after all that he’s done, any loss affects him. He considers it a personal failure. It’s touching. It’s bigger than life and I’m in awe of his presence.

  I was a little shocked at the gore that flew out from the zombie. So shocked, that I actually forgot where I was for a second. Then, I heard the crunching sound as Kingsley nailed Tamra’s sister in the head with a lamp. I snapped out of my stupor real quick after that, but the gunshots exploding from beyond the front door still managed to take me by complete surprise.

  Dudley was in trouble.

  We ran, through the front door and into a mess of zombies. I don’t know how many there were, but Dudley was already out of the Jeep and loaded down with all the weapons and gear we had left behind. He wasn’t trying to shoot anymore, there were too many of them. He was too busy running, shoving and pushing his way towards the front door. The punk didn’t even to slow down as he passed us and entered the house.

  With all those zombies less than a few feet away, Kingsley and I barely paused to look at each other before we turned around and ran after him.

  I grabbed my Winchester out of Dudley’s arms and ran to the back of the house. It was clear. I checked all the windows. All of them were secure, except for the one that had already been broken by the zombie whose gore now covered my clothes.

  I ran to the garage next. I ransacked the place as fast as I could and found the tool chest. Hammer and nails were on the menu. I was on my way back to the broken window when I heard the scream.

  A zombie was crawling through the shattered glass and just like the previous zombie, it was also gouging its back wide open on the shards.

  I didn’t hesitate for even a second. I simply smacked its head with the hammer and pushed it back out the window.

  It wasn’t exactly difficult, the whole smacking the head with a hammer thing; I just didn’t really understand why everyone was staring at me like I was the monster after I did it.

  Whatever, I grabbed a table off the floor, shouted to Dudley for help and while he held the table in place I nailed the hell out of it to the wall. The window was barricaded.

  After that, it was easy enough to board up the rest of the windows around the house. We were safe and secure as the outside walls rattled against the pounding fists of many zombies. We were lucky that Tamra’s father had plenty of tools and wood to work with.

  “Wait a minute, I’ve heard about this. I don’t remember where I heard about it, but is this the part where you were trapped inside a house?”

  Yeah, the story got out almost immediately. We were trapped there for about five days. It wasn’t much of a problem though. The house had plenty of food and water.

  Tamra got sick that very first morning.

  She was pale when the sun came up. She looked bad. I guess it happened before we ever got to her house. It was Dudley who found the bite mark on her shoulder. I’m guessing that it was her sister that bit her. We were all saddened by the knowledge, but there was simply nothing we could do. That little girl was going to turn…at least we thought she was.

  We had talks about it as we stayed up late into the night and listened to the dead pound on the walls. What to do? None of us could shoot her. That was a fact. Besides, we didn’t even know for sure that she was going to turn. We were basing all of our information on a bunch of zombie movies and how reliable could information gathered from a bunch of movies actually be?

  It was agreed, we’d sit and wait and watch. If she turned, whoever was closest would handle it. Kingsley was taking care of her. Dudley even tried to make her laugh. They were getting attached. It made me nervous, but I guess it was inevitable.

  “What were you thinking during all this? What was going on in your mind? You’re isolated from the rest of your friends and family. You’re taking care of a very sick child, and you’re trapped inside an unfamiliar house that’s surrounded by zombies.”

  I guess at first I was just able to relax. Maybe I should have been panicking, but we were in a safe place and it gave me some time to collect my thoughts.

  “What kinds of thoughts?”

  Well, I was thinking three very different things all at the same time.

  The first thing that crossed my mind was how the hell I managed to heal so quickly from the injuries I received. That shouldn’t have been possible. I was in some seriously rough shape. Bad enough shape that I wasn’t counting on much of a future…and the next thing I knew, I was covered in grass and feeling a lot better. Just a little bit stiff maybe, but a hell of a lot better. And the stiffness didn’t last very long either. The next evening when I took a shower…well, let’s just say that any remaining stiffness and bruises practically melted away when
the water made contact with my skin. There was no other way to explain it, that’s for sure. So I did the only thing that I could do. I ignored it.

  I actually do this quite a bit in life. If I can’t explain it or figure it out, I just toss it onto the good ole ignore pile and forget it ever existed.

  “What’s the second thing that you were thinking about?”

  Making contact with Georgie, I wanted him to know that we were still alive and we’d get back with the food as soon as possible. This wasn’t exactly difficult for us to do. There was a working computer. The only problem was that I couldn’t sign into it under my own screen name. I had to use Tamra’s fathers screen name.

  “What was it?”

  The General.

  “Is that where the name came from?”

  It sure is. At the time, I had absolutely zero experience with the military. Yet, for two days, stupid Georgie wouldn’t respond to my messages on EPUA, so I kept leaving messages for him under the Generals screen name. I couldn’t remember his email address, so a direct email wasn’t an option. Finally, I started writing huge paragraphs about what had happened after we had left his house. I skipped the part about the grass growing over me, but I did include Tamra. He eventually answered and after that we spent hours going over all the little details of how we survived.

  “And people were reading this?”

  Yes.

  “They were reading about how some man named ‘the General’ not only survived numerous life threatening situations, but also saved lives along the way?”

  Yeah.

  “And what happened next?”

  I signed back on the next evening and the people were still talking about it.

  “What were they saying?”

  Some of them believed it, some of them didn’t. Some of them were telling what happened accurately, and some of them were embellishing.

  “What do you mean embellishing?”

  They were talking about me, but they were making me out to be some kind of hero. They were taking the situations we fell into and exaggerating them into tales where I fought a hundred zombies with just my axe and my knife.

  “How did all these attentions make you feel?”

  To be honest, it was funny. Kingsley and Dudley were getting a kick out of it as well.

  “Did you respond to any of these people?”

  No. Not until Tito wrote. What could I say to them? I guess I figured that they needed some kind of hope. Maybe this could be it. The stories weren’t always true, but if they could inspire someone to hang in just a little longer…good for them. I wasn’t going to take that away from anybody. Also, don’t forget…they were cracking us up.

  “Your friend Tito wrote?”

  Correct.

  “Why do you call him Tito?”

  He looks like a Tito.

  “I see and he was able to connect the tales he was reading back to you?”

  Yeah, he said later that if the stories were real…only I could be the General. Which is quite a compliment coming from Tito…I think. He’s normally a very angry person who becomes rather resentful when someone else achieves any kind of success. You don’t usually get compliments from guys like that unless they need something from you. Then again, he did need something from me…

  “I should think so. What did he say?”

  Help.

  He told some stories about the good ole days as a way of garnering my attention and proving it was him, but he wanted help. He was trapped in his apartment and the entire complex was teeming with zombies.

  “And what did you tell him?”

  I told him to sit tight and be safe. I was coming.

  “What happened next?”

  The people who were watching the site reacted. All of them began to send messages at the same time. The site crashed for the next few hours.

  “What messages were the people sending you?”

  Help us.

  “And what did you think of that?”

  I panicked. Kingsley and Dudley were reading over my shoulder. The responses, the crash…it was kinda surreal. We didn’t know how to react to that. We just kinda sat there in silence for awhile. Then Kingsley began to laugh.

  “It figures. The whole world is going to shit and freaking Jax ends up being famous!”

  “Yeah, no shit,” said Dudley. “Why does all the cool stuff happen to you?”

  They were both cracking up. I was trying to laugh along with them, but there was some serious stress involved. I mean…talk about pressure. I’m just one person. I have no training. I was surviving on luck. Never mind the whole healing from my injuries. Never mind that when I was in the thick of things I felt way too comfortable. What the hell could I really do to save anyone?

  “I could see how you’d feel the pressure, but you handled it quite well.”

  Eventually I handled it. I don’t know how well, but I eventually dealt with it I guess. At the time I was more concerned with the third thought that was on my mind.

  “And that was?”

  Getting out of that house.

  It took a good long while to figure that one out and when I finally did, let’s just say…my plan bordered somewhere between lunacy and idiotic. It was mid afternoon on the fourth day. I looked out a crack in the boarded up window and saw my new best friend…the sun. That hot, blaring ball of heat that hangs over the Texas skies and makes life miserable every single summer…well, I don’t think the zombies liked it very much, because the ones that hadn’t already entered the nearby houses seeking shelter were all sitting around in whatever shade they could find looking just as miserable as you please.

  This is common knowledge now of course. Zombies don’t like extremely hot temperatures. They tend to get really sluggish and seek out whatever shelters they can find, but back then it was new and welcome news to me.

  However, when zombies are stalking humans they tend to be rather relentless. I’d noticed that without much difficulty as well. So that meant that even though most of them were waiting out the heat in the neighbor’s homes, the minute we made a run to the car they’d snap awake and attack.

  My plan needed a part two since the idea of running to the car and getting surrounded by masses of zombies wasn’t very appealing. I wandered around the garage until I saw the ladder and every bit of my crazy ass plan came together. I also caught sight of some chain link fence. Now that really started to spin my gears. However, I had to keep my mind on the present situation, which included rigging up the ladder and getting back to Georgie’s. Just keep chain link fencing in the back of your mind, because I’ll get there later.

  We spent the entire night stretching out that ladder. It was already pretty long, but we needed it even longer for my plan to work and we also needed to reinforce it so that it would hold our weight.

  The zombies snapped out of it as soon as the sun went down. We could hear them outside, as we pounded and hammered on the ladder; they pounded and hammered on the walls. My plan may have been insane, but it was still a halfway decent idea. It was also the best we were gonna come up with. We just needed the sun to make another appearance so we could get a decent head start.

  “How was Tamra doing during all of this?”

  She wasn’t doing very well. She was steadily getting worse. Kingsley refused to leave without her. He’s always had a soft spot for kids. He’s good with them and as far as he was concerned, she was alone in this world and he wasn’t about to abandon her.

  “How did you feel about her?”

  I have no idea. I kept my distance, but Kingsley had made up his mind and that dudes an Aries. Those people are stubborn as hell…my wife’s an Aries as well, so I speak from experience. If Dudley and I left without the girl, we were also going to have to leave without Kingsley and neither one of us was prepared to do that, so the decision was made without me ever having to think about it.

  When we made a break for it, Tamra was coming with us.

  “You had no attachment to her?” />
  I knew what was going to happen. I kept my distance. If I was wrong I’d make up for it and buy her an ice cream, but I’m rarely ever wrong. That’s one of the many things about me that can really infuriate people, but it’s also something that they have to learn to live with if they wanna hang.

  I was really hoping that this would be one of those rare occasions and I’d be wrong. I mean…I was still getting my information from a bunch of movies and most of them weren’t even very good movies. There was hope. Not much, but a little.

  When the sun rose on the fifth morning we watched in anticipation. The day grew hotter and hotter. The majority of the zombies sought shelter once again. The ones that remained sat in the shade or squirmed under bushes. By mid afternoon Dudley, Kingsley and Tamra were on the roof with this incredibly long and awkward homemade bridge that used to be a ladder.

  The houses in this neighborhood were rather close together. The bridge easily spanned the distance to the next houses roof. Kingsley began to make his way across. The zombies hadn’t noticed what they were doing yet; they were more concerned about the heat.

  The homemade bridge worked…kind of. It wobbled like hell, but Kingsley made it. Next up was Dudley. He had Tamra secured to his back. Halfway across, a zombie scream broke the silence of the neighborhood into a thousand pieces. In less than five minutes about two hundred zombies were reaching up for him. He was about five feet over their heads. Safe, but it probably scared the hell out of him when they started jumping up in an effort to grab him.

  They approached the next house with our improvised bridge in the same way and the zombies followed. I watched nervously as they went across the shaky ladder and to the next roof. I couldn’t believe it was really working.

  I waited until they started on the fifth house before I made my move.

  I ripped the boards we used to secure the front door off and after loading up my arms with gear and food I went outside.

  It wasn’t as clear as I was hoping. There were still some loitering zombies and a couple of them noticed me and started running my way. I threw the gear and food into the back of the Jeep with the rest of the supplies Dudley didn’t grab when he ran for the house. My hands found my tomahawk and knife as if they had a mind of their own.