They were about to see the truth of it all…in spades.
I’ve heard that most of the people gathered on the safe side of the fence were there to find out whether or not I was real. I mean, I’m sure that a lot of them came to help any survivors that managed to reach the fence, but I don’t think they really believed anyone would.
Regardless, I don’t think any of them would have shown up at all if they didn’t believe that they were safe.
“You don’t believe that the people who came that day expected anything to happen?”
Exactly, they weren’t ready for it. Nobody even noticed the lone truck sputtering its way towards the caravan. They were too busy cheering and clapping.
They did however notice when the air filled with the smell of rot.
I noticed it as well. I also noticed the lone man abandoning the failing vehicle and running across the bridge. It was Jack, the man that ditched us when we were trying to distract the zombies from the caravan.
The look on his face told me everything.
Jack is not the man’s real name. Nobody seems to know his true name. In fact, nobody seems to know much about the man at all. What we do know, or more accurately, what we can piece together, is that after abandoning Jaxon, Dudley and the two shooters, Jack got lost on his way towards rejoining the caravan. In his search for his fellow survivors he somehow attracted the attention of at least five thousand zombies. It probably wasn’t long before the man’s truck began to run low on gasoline and start to stutter, thus making it easier for the zombies to pursue him. It also isn’t known what Jack was thinking when he led the zombies to the border gates and trapped his fellow survivors between a massive horde of zombies and a fence that they weren’t allowed to cross. Perhaps, he was seeking aid. Or, perhaps Jack merely got lucky and finally found his way. We’ll never know for sure, the man known as Jack disappeared after the events that are about to transpire.
I knew it was coming; the hell storm was on its way.
I could feel it deep down inside the pit of my stomach. I looked down at Skie. I saw the confusion in her face. The cheering was dying down once again. It was almost as if everyone could sense the danger and the vileness that was headed our way.
I went completely selfish at that moment. All I wanted on this earth was but a few more precious moments with my wife. Just time enough to hold her close. Time enough to feel her warm embrace and hear her tell me that she loves me, that’s all I wanted. Then I could fall back into hell.
For a brief moment, I held her fingers and refused to look away from her pretty face. I thought about ignoring everything. I thought about staying right where I was and letting someone else stand up and play hero.
Instead, I pulled my fingers out of her hands.
“Where’s that Major guy that Georgie told me about?” I asked Skie.
“Why?”
“We need to be quick Skie. Where is he?”
“I’ll go get him,” she answered as she quickly disappeared into the crowd of people.
The onlookers knew something was going on. They were talking amongst each other. The noise was elevating once again as voices competed over voices in an attempt to be heard.
I saw Jack running towards us. He was shouting something, but nobody could hear what he was saying. I didn’t have to hear the asshole. I knew exactly what he brought to our doorstep.
Skie returned with the Major just as Georgie, Dudley and Kingsley came forward to stand next to me. Merrick was getting agitated. She was letting out little growls with each breath.
“You’re in charge here?” I asked.
He was one of those middle aged fella’s that always seemed to have some sort of chip on their shoulder.
“What do you want?” He demanded.
“You need to get those helicopters in the air right now,” I shouted motioning my head towards the aircraft. “And you need to let us through this gate.” I said.
“I don’t need to do a god damn thing,” he answered. “You aren’t the one calling the shots around here boy.”
“They’re coming,” I shouted. “Can’t you smell them?”
“You deal with it,” he answered with a smug expression on his face. “This is what happens when you try to tell the U.S. military what to do.”
With that, he walked away.
The first of the screams began to sound off.
I motioned for Skie to come towards me. She lifted her hands and grabbed my fingers through the fence once again.
“I want you to run,” I said. “Run as far away as you can. If you have a car, get into it and drive as fast as you can.”
It was hard to hear her over the screaming. I knew the zombies had come, but this moment was for my wife. I wouldn’t look at them until I knew she would be safe.
I saw her eye’s grow wide as she looked over my shoulder and saw what I knew was the advancing horde.
“Skie,” I shouted. “Don’t look at that, look at me.”
She did as I asked. I could see the panic in her face. Around us…utter chaos. Everyone was screaming. On the safe side of the fence, people were running in circles, colliding with one another and trampling others. A few people managed to run off, but smaller fences had been erected all over the place behind the main gate and getting out wasn’t easy.
“I need you to run Skie. Can you do that?” I asked, trying to fight the desperate tone that flowed into my voice.
“No.”
I was floored.
“You need to come with me. You need to be safe with me. You’ve done enough. You need to leave with me right now,” she said.
I had no words for her. What could I say? How could I expect her to understand? She had just gotten her husband back and now she was faced with losing him once again. It wasn’t fair, not to her and not to me.
I saw Jen; the red head that I saved along with that idiot Calvin begin to climb the fence. She was half way up before one of the soldiers shot her in the head.
The chaos before, was nothing compared to what it was after that shot.
The military was not going to help us. They were going to watch us die. They were going to sit back and protect their stupid fence and watch two hundred and twenty people literally be torn apart and eaten.
Skie was tightening her grip on my fingers.
“Georgie,” I shouted.
“I’m right here,” he answered.
I saw him out of the corner of my eye. He was facing the rushing horde of zombies, not even looking at me.
“We’re fucked Jax. What the hell are we going to do?”
“Get the shooters in a line in front of everyone else.”
“I can’t. They took our guns when we got here. They made us pass them through the fence.”
Fuck. My mind was going over a hundred miles an hour, but I couldn’t find a solution.
“I have a rifle and a pistol in my overnight, I didn’t hand it over,” said Georgie.
Kingsley interrupted us.
“I got it covered Jax.” He shouted over all the voices. “Me and this other guy rigged up the explosives I took from Martin to the bridge just in case these assholes didn’t let us in.”
“So that was why he had a duffel bag with him when he came out of the building.”
Yeah, he thought we might need it, so he grabbed it. He also grabbed a spare detonator. What comes later gets all the attention, but if it wasn’t for Kingsley rigging up that bridge…well…we’d all be dead.
“Is it ready to go?” I asked.
“You’re damn right it is,” he answered.
I didn’t let go of Skies fingers, but I looked behind me and I saw the zombies that were rushing towards us for the first time.
It wasn’t the entire horde that we brought all the way from Downtown, but it was at least half of them.
They were running as fast as their dead legs could carry them. It was way too fast. I could hear their weird screams and snarls. They were just about to reach the abandon
ed vehicles of the caravan.
“Wait till they’re halfway across the bridge,” I told Kingsley.
I looked back towards Skie. I had no idea what these explosives would do. I had no idea how much of a boom they’d make. All I knew, I knew from looking into Skies eyes. She was terrified. Terrified for me, terrified for herself probably and she wasn’t about to let go of my fingers. It was just as well, I wanted between her and the blast.
BOOM!!!!
It was loud, but not as loud as you might think though. It was kind of muffled from the water and the weight of the bridge.
I turned away just as Kingsley hit the button. Dust and concrete flew into the air, but we were far enough away. I could smell the water from the Rio Grande in the air as well. The wet splatter of the river fell like raindrops as I finally looked back.
The blast stopped the panic. Everyone began to calm down. They began to feel just a little bit safer.
I couldn’t see anything just yet, the kicked up dust and concrete formed into an almost mushroom cloud that blocked my view.
People began to cheer once again.
“Can you blame them? Look at everything they witnessed. Look at everything they’ve seen. On both sides of the fence, people suffered.”
Of course they did.
“It’s over,” I said to Skie.
For a brief moment she looked into my eyes and smiled. Then I watched the smile slowly vanish as she looked over my shoulder.
I followed her gaze and I saw the dead rise up on each side of the broken bridge from the rivers embankment.
Some of them blew towards us in the explosion. It turns out, that there was some sort of delay in the detonation after Kingsley hit the button. Around two hundred zombies were blown towards our side of the river, almost as many survivors still under my care.
They were stunned by the impact of the explosion, but that wasn’t going to last very long.
There was no screaming this time; the soldiers had pushed their way to the front of the fence in order to guard the people on their side. I knew better than to expect them to help.
The survivors, all two hundred and twenty of them began to crowd around me. Sound in general began to slip away. I could only see my wife’s face as she looked into my eyes.
“I have to do this,” I told her.
“Don’t you dare leave me Jax,” she said. “You just stay right here, don’t you dare leave me.”
She clutched at my fingers as hard as she could.
“I love you very much,” I whispered to her.
She franticly grabbed at my fingers as I gently pulled them away.
“No Jax, don’t you do this. You’ve done enough.”
I turned away from my wife.
“Get everyone together,” I told Dudley. “Grab whatever weapons you can find and be ready for whatever gets by me.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Dudley.
“No you won’t,” I answered.
I walked to the middle of the street and out in front of everyone. Merrick was right next to me. She growled at the growing mass of zombies. Everything went into slow motion.
A zombie screamed at me from the distance. In answer, I Pulled my tomahawk and knife clear from my belt.
I was tired, but the pumping adrenaline gave me temporary strength.
In front of me, about two hundred zombies that were hungry for human flesh, behind me, two hundred and twenty survivors that depended on my strength for their survival.
The mass charged me.
I charged them.
We met together in a fatal embrace of blood and steel.
I fought like I had never fought before. Their numbers were staggering, but I wouldn’t surrender. They struck at me and I felt the impact and pain of their blows, but still I kept fighting.
I swung and stabbed and chopped and slashed. I kicked and punched and twirled and fell. Their bodies began to drop all around me. Their corpses, no longer animated, littered the ground. The ground itself became slick with blood.
They growled at me, they screamed that blood wrenching scream at me, but still they fell. I could see the hunger and rage in their eyes. Their stupid little brains couldn’t comprehend why they couldn’t simply rip into me.
Still, I was growing weaker by the minute. They were so many of them and they just kept coming.
I began to stumble and fall more and more often from their blows. Each time I did, it was that much harder to get back up. The zombies began to pile on top of me. It was unbelievably hard to shake them off and strike them down. I felt as if I couldn’t move fast enough. I could no longer keep them at a distance.
Merrick did not abandon me. She bit and crunched bone at random. As they came for me, she came for them. She fought like a Tasmanian devil from an old cartoon. They kicked and slapped at her, I saw her stumble and slide, but like me…she wouldn’t give up.
One of them hit me on the back of the head so hard I saw stars and my vision began to cloud. The world began to sway and I once again fell to my knees. The zombies dove on top of me once again. Their sheer numbers were bringing me down and holding me underneath their crushing weight. For a second, a brief shining second I almost gave up. I almost fell into that painful surrender of being ripped apart and eaten.
Something inside of me clicked.
Something inside of me snapped.
Everything became a blur of violence after that. I’m not exactly sure what happened. Yet somehow, I kept on fighting. Despite the exhaustion, despite the pain, I somehow fought them off. I stopped them from rampaging into all those people huddled together against the fence. I just…don’t know…how I did it.
I only remember Georgie was suddenly standing next to me and yelling for me to get up. He was firing round after round into the scattered remaining zombies as they rushed towards us.
I was tired, more tired than I had ever been in my entire life. I saw my tomahawk on the ground by my feet. I couldn’t see my knife anywhere.
I picked up the tomahawk and struck out at the twenty or thirty zombies that were still left.
It was hard to move. It was hard to keep my balance.
Merrick helped me. She rushed at them with no fear whatsoever. As she tangled them up or knocked them over, I struck them down.
In moments, it was over.
There was nothing left to fight.
I looked around and saw only blood and lifeless corpses.
I heard the screams and snarls of the rampaging dead coming from across the broken bridge over the Rio Grande. There were thousands of zombies reaching out for me. The lucky ones (if you could call a zombie lucky) that weren’t on the bridge when it blew.
I walked to my end of the broken bridge and stared at them. They were enraged, hungry and they desperately wanted to get at me. Some of them were even rushing into the water after me, but the current was too strong and just like they did on the day all this began, they were washed away down the river.
They screamed at me.
In defiance, I screamed back.
I wanted more.
My legs gave out. My body finally succumbed to the exhaustion. Georgie and Merrick were there. Georgie helped me to my feet.
I looked at my body; I was covered in bite marks.
I was too tired to freak out, even though I could feel the poison trying to spread through my system.
Using Georgie for support, I walked back to the fence. I walked back to my wife. Kingsley, Dudley and Ivana met us halfway. They were all helping me walk. Everyone on both sides of the fence was starting at me.
I saw my wife. I saw Skie. Her face was puffy from crying. The gate was wide open. She was there waiting for me. Why in the hell was she holding a rifle?
I was the first one through.
“You walked through that gate, and you stepped into legend. One of caravan survivors had a camera and filmed your entire battle. Fifteen minutes, you fought for fifteen minutes and no matter how hard you were injured, you never gav
e up. You became a hero almost overnight. The world knew your name. The world knew that you were real.”
I never thought about any of that. I just did what I had to.
“Were you afraid?”
Of course, but action eliminates fear. A part of my mind told me to jump the fence. Use my new strength to hop over before the soldiers could shoot me down. A part of my mind told me that if I fought, I would die.
I hate being told what to do.
“Did you have any idea how famous you were?”
No, I mean, I knew people were talking about me…that had been going on from the beginning. I couldn’t even begin to anticipate what things would be like after I got out of the decontamination unit.
“How long were you there?”
Georgie, Lucy, Dudley, Kingsley, Ivana, Merrick and I were only there for a little while…I think. Skie never left my side. I slept through most of it, so I don’t remember much. I only remember some elderly woman pouring water over my bite marks until the skin healed.
The next thing I knew, we were free to go.
Skie, Merrick and I walked out of the room into a crowd of people. They were all giving me that salute thing they like to do.
My friends were out there as well. They too were saluting me. They just had bigger smiles than the others.
Skie was laughing.
“You did it baby,” She said. “You saved everyone. You’re a hero now.”
I didn’t reply.
I saw Major Crass a few steps away. There were soldiers trying to lead us to a helicopter, but I needed to know about Tito. I walked over to Crass.
“What happened to the other caravan of survivors?” I asked.
He gave me the nastiest look I think I’ve ever received.
“Don’t come over here asking me questions boy. Now get in that chopper and out of my sight before I have you thrown in the worst kind of jail you’d ever think about.”
Spit was flying out of the guys mouth he was so angry.
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