by R. J. Spears
Greg handed up the last load and climbed onto the table. “Joel, let’s go.”
The door lost its battle against the zombies and exploded in, spilling zombies into the room like a bar full of drunks on a Friday night. Unlike drunks, they quickly recovered and were on their feet again. But I was ready for them.
I brought the axe into the air again and brought it down. The valve broke off the tank, and instead of going through the cinder block wall, it went into a wall of zombies. In a very quick comparison, walls seem to be a lot tougher than the zombies. The tank hit the first zombie and it nearly exploded from the impact, limbs breaking off as the tank drove it backwards. The zombie’s body slammed into the ones behind and drove them all of them back through the door.
Not to be too deterred, another group started climbing over their fallen brethren and started through the door.
I gave them the same treatment, which gave me a perverse satisfaction, warming my heart a little.
“Joel, stop screwing around! We need you up here,” Greg shouted. That’s when I heard the first shots.
I took one last whack and sent another torpedo into the mob of undead who were trying to get through the door and pulped a few more of them. I heard two more shots, turned and mounted the table, and pulled myself out in time to see Greg, Travis, and Kara shooting their way through small mob of their own.
Chapter 42
Incursion
Anthony waited around outside the building as Rex and his team and their soldiers scoured the building for any remaining nomads. It was slow and tedious work, but Anthony didn’t want any strays left behind. Layla hung on Anthony’s arm as they waited. He liked the feel of her hand on his bicep. It was warm and distracted him a little as he monitored Rex’s progress, but it was a pleasant distraction. He liked the attention she gave him, not that he fooled himself at all. If he didn’t have the power, she’d never give him a second glance except maybe to make fun of him.
“What are we going to do about Wendy? Layla asked.
He took a moment to ponder this. “We’ll leave her here for the zombies to pick over.”
“But she’s one of us,” Layla said.
He turned and looked down to her, and she returned his stare. She was braver than the others. Or more stupid. Anthony couldn’t make up his mind, but he admired her spunk.
“Not anymore,” he said, “we can’t afford her soft attitude.” She looked down and moved closer to him. “Can we?”
It took her a moment to respond, “No.”
“You’re not soft are you, Layla?”
“No,” she said, then changed her mind, “only when I want to be.” She looked back to Anthony, and it was as if she turned up the wattage behind her vibrant blue eyes.
He felt the palpable effect of her attention, and, while he knew she’d do anything to her advantage, he wasn’t immune to her charm, if he could even call it that. Their stare stayed locked for several seconds and was broken when the walkie-talkie at Anthony’s waist crackled to life.
“This is Rex,” the voice said. “We have a survivor up here. What do you want us to do?”
Anthony grabbed his walkie-talkie and brought it up to his mouth, but paused before depressing the talk key. He looked back down to Layla and said, “We’ll finish this talk later. In my room, won’t we?”
She slowly nodded and let the tip of her tongue escape her lips.
Anthony depressed the talk button and asked, “What do you have?”
“It’s a kid,” Rex responded, “A guy. Probably fourteen or fifteen. Sort of feisty.”
“Can you capture him?”
“Sure, but what for?”
“We need a replacement for Wendy.”
Rex paused before responding, “What happened to her?”
“She got a little too soft for our purposes. I had to let her go.”
“Whatever you say,” Rex said.
Anthony put the walkie-talkie back in its belt clip, and that’s when he heard a light popping noises carrying in the air. It sounded sharp, but distant.
“Anthony, when we get back....” Layla started to say, but he pushed a hand over her mouth and squeezed hard. She immediately grimaced in pain and shock as he increased the pressure of his grip.
“Shut up and listen,” he said, any lightness gone from his tone.
He tilted his head much like a dog when it heard a far off noise and concentrated. More popping sounds carried on the wind came their way. He pushed her away, snatched the walkie-talkie off his belt, and started talking quickly into it. “Rex, we have someone in town. I hear shots in the distance.”
Rex came back instantly, “Who is it?”
“I have no idea. It could be anyone, but I suspect it could be the church people who left town.”
“Do you want us to break from what we’re doing?”
“No, it will take forever to get your soldiers loaded and transported. Layla and I will investigate. Secure the nomad, and be ready if I call.”
“Are you sure, you want to...?” Rex started to ask, but Anthony cut him off.
“Don’t question me, Rex. When you come down, retrieve Wendy’s collar. She’s lying in the alley.”
“Yes, sir.”
Anthony stowed the walkie-talkie and whirled toward Layla. “Why are you just standing there? Didn’t you hear me? Get your soldiers on the bus. We have to get to those intruders. Now!”
Layla nearly hopped in the air with Anthony’s final shout. She spun away quickly and put her soldiers in motion toward the bus.
Chapter 43
Out of the Frying Pan
It wasn’t an “out of the frying pan into the fire” situation, but it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park. We had exited into the parking lot on the backside of the hospital about half way between the main entrance and the emergency room. Any closer to either of those and we would have been toast. Albeit, toast spread with a generous portion of our flesh and blood. As it was, all the noise the tanks had made blasting through the basement wall still attracted quite a few zombies.
Our escape from the basement left us on the backside of the hospital, away from our SUV. We had one of two choices: circle around the front of the hospital to the SUV or go by the E.R. Shooting our way past the zombies crowded around the E.R. was the most direct path, so Greg was already moving us in that direction, but our forward momentum was slow.
Around forty deaders shambled towards us from the direction of the E.R. With the exception of the farm, this was the highest concentration of zombies I had seen up close and personal in a long time, and it nearly froze me in place. A half dozen zombies lay around us, all missing large portions of their heads. Greg, Travis, and Kara had been busy while I was dealing with the zombies down below
Kara was down on one knee, carefully targeting with her rifle, expertly blowing the heads off the zombies as they approached. Each one of her measured shots hit home, knocking down the zombies like bowling pins. If she were nervous about the approaching mini-horde, she didn’t show it.
Greg stood a few feet from Kara and was just as effective with his assault rifle. For him, it was like another day at the office.
Travis, on the other hand, looked as if he were about to jump out of his skin. Normally, he was a good shot but many of his shots either hit torsos too little to no effect or went wild as he fired into the mob headed our way.
Before I joined them, I took a look behind us and saw a handful of zombies coming from around the far corner of the building. They weren’t an imminent threat, but if we got pinned down, they would be. It would only be a matter of time. If more joined them, as I knew they would, we were going to be caught in an uncomfortable vise of the undead.
I slowly moved up behind Travis and I carefully put a hand on his shoulder, not wanting to spook him. “Slow down, big guy; we have time.”
He looked over to me, his eyes wide. He wasn’t in full-out panic mode, but he was in the vicinity.
“Take it one shot
at a time,” I said. “We can whittle them down before they get to us.” I only wished I believed what I was saying because each one of our shots only brought more attention to us.
“What about those?” he asked, pointing to the ones coming up from behind us.
“They’re slow,” I said putting on a confident smile, “and we are fast.”
His expression didn’t change much, but some of the panic left his face.
“Come with me,” I said as I moved off to Kara’s left, “we’ll take the ones on this side.”
Like Kara, I dropped to one knee and I took careful aim at the head of an approaching zombie. This was a particularly nasty looking one: It looked as if a giant dog had used its head as chew toy. I put its face, or what was left of it, in the center of my crosshairs, took a breath and blew it out, and then pulled the trigger. I sunk its battleship with a direct hit, and it toppled over backwards.
Travis moved next to me and started shooting, but this time his shots struck home. I only hoped that we could thin out the approaching mob enough that we could make a run for it and get back to the SUV.
Layla nervously punched buttons on her control console as her soldiers piled up around the ramp that led up into the back of the school bus. Instead of ascending the ramp, they rammed into each in some macabre reenactment of Keystone cops movie. She knew she was screwing up, and she guessed that Anthony was pissed because his soldiers were stacking behind them, wasting valuable time. And she guessed right.
She was so focused on her console that she didn’t hear Anthony stomp up behind her. He clapped her on the forcefully on the back of the head with his open hand, sending her face-first onto the parking lot.
“You stupid bitch,” he shouted, “can’t you get anything right? They’re going to get away.”
The sound of shots echoed in the distance. Anthony was in a frenzy, wanting to load the zombies onto the bus and get on the move.
Afraid to look up at him, she did peek at the zombies as they shuffled around the back of the bus. She heard the clicking of the buttons on Anthony’s console and prayed that he wasn’t sending them to down on her, but that wasn’t the case. She saw the zombies start to jitterbug as he sent the electrical current directly into the pain centers. Two fell to their knees, and one went down on all fours. This went on for several seconds as Anthony raged, shouting and cursing.
She knew what Anthony was like: He would be calm and controlled most of the time, but like a summer storm, he would sometimes shockingly surprise her as a rage would come over him. Sometimes the anger was like a quick thunderstorm, but at other times, he was like a tornado, rending destruction wantonly and without regard to the consequences. She hoped it was a quick one because she didn’t want to be swept up in one of his tempests.
The zombies stopped their shaking after a few seconds, and she could hear Anthony taking deep breaths, exhaling long and deliberately, calming himself. She watched through one slitted eye, afraid to move, as the zombies hopped and shuffled into a straight line, and then their feet started up the ramp like obedient soldiers one after the other.
The last one hit the ramp when she heard Anthony’s voice. “I’m not going to give you another chance to screw up. Now, get up, and get on the bus.”
She slowly opened her eyes and watched him stride for the front of the bus. After about a second, she scrambled to her feet and quickly followed, thanking God silently that he didn’t bring down the lightning on her. Or worse, the zombies.
Anthony’s crew wasn’t the only one to hear the shots.
Paige shook a sleeping Russell’s shoulder. “Wake up,” she said.
“What?” Russell asked, rubbing his face.
“There’s shooting coming from the south,” she said.
Russell shot to full wakefulness. “Who is it?”
“How do I know?” she asked in annoyance.
He stood and went to the window and listened. Shots carried on the crisp air. Lots of shots. There was a battle going on. It sounded as if it were coming from either the armory or the hospital, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Should we go check it out?” she asked.
“It’s probably them.” Them was his term for Anthony’s crew.
“You don’t know that. It could be the other people from the church. They could use our help.”
“And you don’t know that, either,” he said.
“So, we just sit here on our ass?” she asked.
“What do you propose we do?”
“We could, at least, go check it out.”
“That could leave us out in field, exposed.”
“Okay, listen, with or without you, I’m going out. You may be okay skulking around this town and just surviving, but I’m not. Not anymore. If there’s a chance for us to get out of here, I’m taking it.” She stood squarely in front of him, her shoulders back and chin out, ready for him to say, ‘No.’
He looked around their house, taking a quick inventory of what was there and what he would be leaving behind if they did find a way out of town. He had a good supply of food, weapons, and ammunition. But what did that really mean? That he could go on scrabbling to survive a few more months? That he could eke out an existence until his number came up? He finally came to realization that this was no way to live.
“Grab all the ammo you can carry, and get two days’ worth of supplies in your pack.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said as he turned away from her. “If it’s them, we’ll take the fight to him this time.” He walked over, pulled one of his ammo boxes aside, and reached into a hidey hole he had made in the wall, and pulled out a little surprise he had been holding back. He had found it while scouring a house just a few blocks away about a month ago. It’s a wonder what people have hidden in their houses, he thought. He seriously doubted if the thing would even work.
In the end, it really didn’t matter how good of a shot we were. There were four of us, and God only knows how many of them. I just knew for every one we took down, three more appeared on the scene like the hydra, only uglier and stinkier. Zombie bodies littered the ground in both directions, but their supply of replacements seemed endless.
“We’re getting boxed in here, Greg,” I shouted.
“I only have two clips left,” Kara said.
Travis didn’t say anything, but fear was creeping back into his eyes.
The zombies, drawn in by the sounds of our guns, kept streaming from the E.R. out of the west and around from the main entrance to the east. The quickest route to the SUV was the west, but shooting our way past the zombies seemed like a long shot now.
Our choices were quite limited, in my opinion. We could head back into the hospital, but the zombies clawing at the windows on the inside didn’t seem all that inviting. To our south was a drop-off that led down to some woods and a stream. The drop-off wasn’t too steep, and only a few zombies had clamored up from that direction.
Greg had reached the same conclusion, “We’re going to have to make a run for it. We’re going to head towards the woods.”
“How are we going to make it carrying all this stuff?” Travis asked.
“We’re not,” Greg said as he fired off another shot. The brains of a zombie to our west splattered across the parking lot, and the zombie collapsed.
“But my dad needs this equipment,” Travis said.
“There was no way we could retreat carrying it,” I said, and the word retreat felt heavy as I said it.
“We have to leave it behind for now. We’ll get to the SUV and ram our way back to it once this crowd thins out some,” Greg said.
“But what if we can’t make it back?” Travis asked.
“There is almost no chance we can make it out of here if we try to carry the equipment which means your dad has no chance,” I said. I stopped talking for a moment and put a bullet in the brainpan of an approaching zombie, sending it to whatever zombie hell I hoped there was.
“End of the dis
cussion, folks,” Greg said, “let’s move out. Travis and Joel, go first. Kara and I will protect our rear. Once we’re in the woods, try not to shoot unless you have to. Any shots will be like a beacon they can follow. Now, go.”
I didn’t need any more encouragement. I started to move but took a quick look back and saw Travis, his head swiveling to look at the woods, but then I looked back to the medical equipment, frozen in indecision.
“Travis, we’ve got to go,” I shouted.
He looked at me pleadingly, not wanting to give up.
“We’ll come back for it. I promise,” I said.
Kara took out another zombie, but it had made it to within ten feet of us. Too close in my book. Travis started in motion and we were on the move. I heard Kara and Greg following close behind.
There was a slight lip at the edge of the parking lot. We crossed it, and then we were running on a grassy decline towards the wood. I looked back to make sure Travis was following me. He was, but his expression was stricken with guilt. When I turned back around, I immediately saw a zombie stumble out from behind a large tree just five feet in front of me. My momentum was such that I’d never slowdown in time to prevent an eventual collision, so I used it to my advantage and brought my up rifle butt and rammed it into the zombie’s face. Bone crunched on impact, and the zombie went down as its face collapsed into its brain cavity. It wasn’t a pretty sight and smelled even worse.
As a kid, I had played in these woods many weekends, exploring the stream, looking for crawdads and other creatures. I’d spend hours here, swinging on vines, building dams in the stream, and goofing off with my friends. In most cases, I usually ended up with poison ivy.