by SP Durnin
Jake and Kat reloaded and circled around the bodies, fearful that some might just be too crippled to rise. As they neared the others, he saw one dragging itself slowly forward. The thing's right arm and spine had been shattered thanks to Kat's work with her shotgun. The corpse had caught some of the blast which finished the third she'd killed. It would be doomed to drag itself along for the rest of its miserable existence, half its face in ruins, one arm dangling useless by a few scraps of skin. Jake holstered the gun and took his crowbar in a two-handed grip. The zombie wore only a pair of flannel pajama pants and was horribly swollen. To be fair, that was more due to lying dead in the sun for half a day, than it was to obesity.
He fully intended to smash its brains in, but a female voice said, "Stand back, will you? This last bastard's mine."
A woman dressed in dark blue, wielding a fire ax, strode past him towards the creature. She stopped, set herself, drew back and once it moved within six feet, buried the ax in its head. The corpse sagged into the grass, brains leaking from its ruined skull, and lay still. The woman put her boot against the back of its neck, pulled the ax free, and gave the body a vicious kick.
As she turned, Jake saw she would never be what people considered beautiful. She looked pleasant enough, but her face was just a little too harsh for beauty. Her hair was short and so blonde it was almost white. Her arms and shoulders were heavy with muscle, but she had high breasts tapering into a slim waist, and she matched Jake in height. That put her a couple inches taller than Allen. The woman was staring at him as she put a fist on her hip, leaned the ax across the back of her neck, and looked each of them over.
"Well, it doesn't look like any of you've been bitten and I doubt you'd have given us a hand if you were looters," she said. "So I'm guessing you're the cavalry."
"More like the Indians picking up stragglers on the way back to the reservation." Jake offered his hand. "Saw the smoke signals and came running. Jake O'Connor."
"Maggie Reed," the blonde smiled, which softened her face a bit, as she gripped his hand. "Good to meet you, Jake."
He turned and introduced the others, then started checking their surroundings for more zombies. As they gave Maggie and her companions time to catch their breath, Jake was able to take a closer look at each of them. One was a pretty brunette girl who looked about seventeen named Karen Parker. Her eyes were haunted, and she spoke with a quiet voice when Maggie introduced her.
"Thank you for saving us," she said, unwilling to look up from her shoes.
The other was a dark-haired, wild looking girl, who possessed a body that would make teenage bad-boys turn in to slobbering morons. She told Jake her name was Heather Bell, and that she'd be happy to express her gratitude later. That earned her a cold gaze from Laurel, in what Jake hoped was a moment of unbridled jealousy, and a look of tolerance on the part of Kat. Jake had encountered the type before. Hell, about six months ago, he'd dated an older version of the same model.
Maggie told them she'd been running last minute certifications for summer lifeguards at the YMCA eight blocks away when everything went to shit. Out of the sixty people there, only she and the two girls had been able to escape when a crowd of zombies came moaning through the doors. They'd made it this far by keeping quiet and out of sight, moving from building to building, mostly hiding. When the odd zombie got too close, well that's why Maggie had taken the ax from an abandoned fire truck.
"We were looking for a way into the high school when we came nose-to-nose with this group. Thought we might be able to wait it out in there. Cafeteria will have food, water, and the windows on the ground floor are too small for anything to get through. I spotted the fire escape on the second floor, so we were gonna boost Heather up. She could drop it down to us, but these foul fucks were between us and the ladder when we came around the corner." She kicked the body of the one she'd killed. It was a woman missing most of the flesh on her back, who in life had worn a ridiculous amount of make-up—branding her a member of the Pink Caddy Club. She continued, "Heather landed wrong as we jumped the wall near the employee lot, so we put her between us and took off. Not the best plan, really. Another five minutes and we would've had to either leave her or stand and fight."
Maggie frowned into the distance, wearing what people called the thousand-yard stare. "I'm no coward, but I've seen way too many people die already today. What if I'd gone down or been bitten? Both the girls would likely be dead the hard way by now." She motioned Jake to the side as Kat wrapped Heather's ballooned ankle with an ACE bandage from the med-kit Laurel pulled from her bag, and Allen managed to get a timid smile out of Karen with an impression of Invader Zim's robot singing the "Doom" song.
"Karen's family is gone," Maggie said in a low voice. "No one at her house, no car in the garage, just some bloodstains. Don't know if they were turned or killed or what. Heather's a student at OSU with no family after 9/11. Karen's the one I'm worried about though. She hasn't said ten words since this morning. I figured I could keep her with me, at least until we reach the army or someone in charge."
Jake felt cold and shot a glance at the girl. "Parker? Was Karen's father a cop?"
Maggie looked at him quizzically. "How did you know?"
Damn it, he thought.
She was a kid. Young, scared, no clue what to do next, not made to survive in a world of monsters and escaped cons. Besides, he owed her father for last night. Jake made his decision right then.
"There's no military presence that we've seen. No army, no National Guard, no police. Shit, I haven't seen so much as a meter-maid. Whatever this is, it's everywhere." He pointed at the body she'd just booted. "There are so many of those things, I'd be surprised if the people left in charge will be able to even think about sending help to anyone for a while. Days, weeks...who the hell knows."
He took out his smokes and, seeing the look on Maggie's face, passed her one. As he lit them both, Jake considered what Foster had said to him before they'd left. While it was true the two teenage girls wouldn't contribute much at first, they both seemed bright enough, and Maggie was an EMT. That gave her more medical training than anyone in their tiny group.
Jake exhaled. "The three of you need to come with us. It'll be tight, but the Jeep can handle three more. We're headed somewhere that should be safe."
She took a long drag from her smoke. He could see her mind weighing the options. "We've got good reason to trust you people after pulling us out of that mess. Not many would've risked it. We'll come along."
Jake and Allen helped get the limping Heather into the Beast while the others piled in. Kat took position riding shotgun, while Karen and Maggie backed up against the seats. They had to sit on the bags the girls had brought from their apartment, but at least it was better than the metal floor of the bed.
He heard another wounded zombie pulling itself over the turf as Laurel jumped up into the vehicle. Jake had been marveling at the way her legs propelled her, dancer graceful, over the raised tailgate when the unmistakable sound of moaning brought him back to earth. He pulled his crowbar from the bed, strolled over and calmly smashed it into oblivion. He turned its snapping teeth into flying Chiclets. Shattered its arms as it reached out, hungry for his flesh. Finally, Jake stood over the helpless zombie and, with a swing that started at the soles of his feet, crushed its skull, sending pieces of its brain flying across the field.
He walked back numbly and squeezed into the rear, pressing himself against the tailgate as Allen brought the Jeep to life. Jake gazed behind them as the soccer field shrank into the distance. Three saved. Three that might live another hour in a world where even death offered no escape.
"I saw that, by the way."
Jake looked at Laurel, baffled.
"Your appreciation as I was getting in?" She tried to sound offended and failed. "I guess even nice guys stare at your ass once in a while."
He gave her a half-hearted smile. "Guilty."
"I won't make you feel too bad about it." Laurel took his free ha
nd. "I was staring at yours so hard while you were lifting Heather in I'm surprised you didn't feel it."
"She was. I saw." Maggie grinned widely.
"My roommate. The Butt Whisperer," Kat said, causing them all to laugh uproariously and Allen swerved a bit. "You watch the road!"
Jake chuckled and squeezed Laurel's hand.
Heather rolled her eyes and wondered if these gimps could get any mushier. Alright, zombies bit the big one, but these guys were acting like it was the end of the world. Even if everything was going down the tubes, bitching and moaning about it wasn't going to change the fact. That guy driving was a hottie though. Brown eyes, thin, funny. Cute, in a goofy sort of way.
Karen sat quietly next to Maggie, listening to the way Kat joked with Jake. Seeing the way Laurel's eyes watched his face as he sat there, head down; he was obviously upset but was trying to keep himself together. Her teenage mind decided that she would watch Kat and Laurel very closely.
The teen had already come to terms with the fact that her parents were dead. She knew they never would've left without her, no matter what. They'd always talked about what to do in case of an emergency. Come home, her father always said. We'll all meet at home. When she'd seen the blood trailing from their room towards the door, she knew they were gone. So she followed Maggie back out into the horror, empty inside, but not ready to sit on the curb and wait for the monsters to find her.
They drove on, avoiding occasional packs of zombies, shooting a few others that got too close, moving east as parts of the city burned behind them.
Jake looked back at the city of the dead and dying. As he watched the smoke rising, he thought of a bit of poetry that before last night he'd enjoyed. Now it sent a shiver of fear through him, like a chill December wind.
This is how the world ends.
Not with a bang, but a whimper...
* * *
The dead were legion now.
Between shootings, riots, people stealing anything still drivable, and those dropping from exhaustion, the creatures' numbers swelled like the flood waters of the Mississippi after a weeklong downpour.
Police units that hadn't retreated to secure locations had been overrun. The dead were teaming south, heading for the freeway interchange just below the heart of downtown. People were leaving their cars and taking to their heels. The more forward thinking had mounted bicycles and were weaving in and out of traffic, carrying themselves over roadblocks, and dying by the dozens as those on foot assaulted them for the fragile machines in hopes of escape.
Desperate people began striking out across country. Fields were trampled as more and more fled the highways.
The dead followed…
Chapter Seven
The corner of Hamilton and Broad was a mess.
A couple hundred corpses were milling around between the Check-4-Cash, Floweropia, and the two gas stations on the corners. Bodies were everywhere, some mobile, others not so much. Many hadn't had the chance to reanimate after being torn limb from limb by the hungry masses, and flies were having the feast of their short little lives. A tricked out Caddy had tried to blow through the Circle K on the northeast, only to take out a gas pump which still spewed premium across the lot.
It had been the unmistakable aroma of highly-refined dead dinosaurs that alerted the survivors. Allen noticed it a few blocks prior as they were cutting through a now vacant apartment complex. The group had moved farther south to avoid a crowd of creatures¸ thousands-strong, that had almost gained entry to DCSC. From half a mile away, Jake viewed them through the mini-binoculars he kept in his Tac vest and pronounced the military supply base well and truly fucked. The fence buckled in half a dozen places on the south side alone, and the dead had already torn the razor wire down in many places. The main entrance was being held by a trio of Bradley assault vehicles with M240C machine guns. Even though they expended hundreds of rounds per minute, it barely held back the flood of hungry dead.
They turned south on Watson, cutting wide around the southern edge of the horde, and came back to Broad by going off-road through a golf course. Allen had always dreamed of tearing the living crap out of those perfectly manicured greens and, after all the damage he did roaring over the sixteenth hole, even if the zombies were eradicated no one would ever offer him membership to the country club.
They came to a halt a block later, allowing Jake to get a closer look at the intersection through his binoculars. The creatures were clustered tight, and he knew if they attempted to break through his group would swiftly become tartar. Even the Beast couldn't make it through that many walking pus sacks. There was a SWAT van in the middle of the mess, flipped over on its side. Many of the creatures were pounding on the undercarriage, roof, and rear door. The front windows, even though bullet-proof, hadn't been able to withstand the ever-increasing pressure of the crowd and had buckled inwards. Jake didn't have high hopes for the vehicle's occupants.
They needed a distraction.
"I could take a jog," Allen suggested. "Those things are pretty slow. Hell, I could probably outdistance them at a fast walk."
Jake shook his head. "No. All you'd need to do is twist an ankle and it would turn into a rescue mission. Or a funeral." He gazed towards the apartment carports with a thoughtful expression.
The body of a man in his late forties lay next to an overturned Kawasaki 450 motorcycle. He had been virtually torn apart. The only reason Jake was able to tell it had been a male was the beard. The corpse was missing everything from the navel down, and the top of its head from the nose up.
Striding quickly across the gore-splattered asphalt, he righted the bike and began to check it over. Its previous owner had managed to get to it— he'd even inserted the key in the ignition—but had been pulled off and consumed before he could make good his escape. Checking the gas tank, the writer found it to be almost full, and when he turned the key the idiot lights came on, so the battery still had a charge. Considering it worth the risk, he kicked the starter over and the bike sputtered slightly, then came to life.
Jake pulled it over to the others, killed the engine so as not to attract the attention of the dead just yet, and told them his plan. The women would stay with Allen in one of the carports while Jake drew the dead off towards the airport. After he led them away, he'd circle back, join up with them again at the apartments, ditch the Kawasaki, and they'd head for Foster's.
Neither Laurel nor Kat liked his plan at all.
"You shouldn't go alone!" Laurel insisted. "What if you wreck or get surrounded or…"
"Then taking another person would get us both killed." Jake checked that he had the extra magazines for the Hammer, then secured his crowbar to the handlebars with a couple of strips of duct tape. He made sure to leave a four inch pull tab on both ends so he could release the weapon quickly if need be.
"Not necessarily. A passenger could keep them at bay if you get cut off and need to look for an escape route." Kat watched their surroundings from beside the Jeep.
"No. I'm risking my own ass here, no one else's," he insisted. "Al, move into one of these carports. If any of those bastards find you, take off. Otherwise, I should only be about thirty minutes. Stay hidden, stay quiet and stay alert. Be back soon. I hope."
Then he kicked the bike to life again, dropped it into gear, and headed for the street.
Jake disappeared around the building as Maggie and Kat took positions in opposite carports. That way they could see both sides of the complex and watch each other's backs from their hiding places. Laurel and Allen stayed in the Jeep with the girls, just in case they all had to make a hasty getaway.
Laurel looked worriedly north, checking for zombies. "He'll be fine. Right?"
"He's careful, and these things are damn stupid. At least from what we've seen," Allen said.
They sat in the Jeep, sweating quietly for a minute or two, before she spoke again.
"You didn't answer my question."
Allen remained silent.
* *
*
Jake's plan worked flawlessly up to a point.
He shot through the wrecked gas station, avoiding the spilled petrol, hoping all the while this little side trip wasn't going to end up with him splattered across the hood of an abandoned Ford.
Or eaten. He'd really rather not be eaten.
As he jumped the curb, the bike's engine drew every set of piss-yellow dead eyes in the intersection. Almost in unison, two hundred rotting jaws dropped open and began howling out their only desire: to find out what his flesh tasted like. Their gurgling moans chilled him. The thick, guttural cries sent awful thrills of fear from the base of his spine to the primitive portion of his brain, which made bringing the motorcycle to a halt one of the hardest things he'd ever done.
The dead were seventy yards distant. He didn't want to waste any time getting on and off the bike, so Jake parked it on the double yellow lines, front wheel pointed away from the dead at a ninety degree angle. He pulled the Hammer, sighted on the nearest ones, and started firing. He dropped nine out of the first eleven he targeted, holstered the enormous pistol, turned the motorcycle, and sped another hundred yards north. Then he stopped again and repeated the process.
The ghouls that were mobile followed. A few had broken or even missing legs, so they merely continued banging impotently on the sides of the SWAT truck.
He drew them for a mile, leading the dead beneath the railroad overpass and up the hill, before bagging it. Turning west down the access road bordering the south side of the airport, Jake fled. The creatures continued following his shrinking form, hopelessly outdistanced, but lacking the mental capacity to realize said fact.
Just before turning south to Broad, he noticed chunks of pavement kicking up in front of the bike's front wheel.