by R. J. Spears
“There’s another set of zombies coming our way from the front,” Travis said.
“I know it,” I said as I backed the SUV back away from the car that had held us in place.
“There’s a whole mob of them coming from the hospital,” Kara said as she fired on the zombies coming at us from the side. When I looked back, I saw what looked as if all the hospital zombies churning our way like they were late for a Black Friday sale and our flesh was the featured item.
“That’s why it’s time to get the hell out of here,” I said, switching from reverse to drive and jamming the accelerator down. A group of about eight zombies were heading up the street towards us. Ordinarily, we would avoid driving over a group of that size for fear we’d end up messing up our ride, but since time was of the essence, I floored it and got the SUV up to ramming speed. They came up fast and the street was narrow. That meant no fancy evasive action.
I hit the first two doing twenty. They didn’t stand a chance. One flew into the air, and the tires pulped the other, as I rolled over it. The SUV jumped slightly. The next three didn’t fare any better as two went under the tires, and the other one bounced off the fender and then slammed off a parked car like a fleshy bowling pin.
Five down and three to go. Then, I had figured out how to get by that freaking bus.
Anthony didn’t like the fact that he was losing soldiers left and right, but it was losing the control units that bothered him the most. Zombies were easy to come by. His specialized receivers were not. They were much more unique, handcrafted, and lovingly made. Sure, he had more, but it wasn’t an endless supply. There was no ordering a couple hundred more from Amazon. If he needed more, he had to make them. Making more meant finding more parts. Finding more parts meant risking trips to the electrical stores in town and his old lab at the college.
Still, he’d do what he had to.
He looked down the street and saw his juggernaut lumbering along on a path straight towards the truck. If his street soldiers didn’t get the job done, then his juggernaut would.
It was time to get back to the bus and escape. Between the two attacking groups and the horde of rogue zombies, things were going to get interesting. It was always best to avoid that kind of interesting, he thought, but once he got back to the bus, he would make the church people’s lives interesting.
I had to slow down some because a parked car was partially blocking the street. While the SUV was mowing down zombies like blades of grass, a collision with a car might break an axle or puncture the radiator. I eased down the street carefully, and when I was finally by, I looked and I spotted another group of zombies heading our way, so I hit the brakes.
“Is there an endless supply of these sons of bitches?” I shouted and then calmed down just a little. “How many bullets do we have?” I asked.
“I’m down to my last clip,” Travis said, “but I have my pistol and two clips.”
“I only have what’s left in your rifle,” Kara said.
I pulled my pistol and handed it back to her. “I’ll focus on driving; you focus on shooting.”
“Is that him?” Paige asked pointing to a man running through the backyards of the houses on the east side of the street. Russell only saw him in glimpses as he passed in and out of his line of vision. Russell didn’t need more than a glimpse though. It was him.
“Yes,” Russell said, his gut tightening.
I’m going after him,” Paige said.
Russell whirled toward her and said, “No, you’re not. Don’t you see those zombies coming down the hill? We’re only moments from being overrun.”
“But he’ll get away,” she said like a child about to miss the parade.
“No, he won’t,” Russell said as he reached into his pocket. “At least not on that damn bus.” His hand found what he was looking for, wrapped around it, and he pulled it out in plain view where Paige looked on in astonishment.
“Where the hell did you get a grenade?”
Anthony ran through the backyards, trying to stay out of view, and vaulted fences when he had to. He slowed as he reached the last house because he knew that somewhere down the street were others that had fired on him and his Layla. Better not to run into an ambush unprepared.
He eased along the backside of the house cautiously. Just before he got to the corner, he pulled out his assault rifle with the extended clip and flipped off the safety. They weren’t the only ones with a little firepower.
The SUV took a beating up front as I battered down two more zombies. The instinct to avoid humanoids, - live or dead, had been drilled so thoroughly into me that each time I hit a zombie, something inside me clinched up. Although, they were our mortal enemy and wanted us dead, I couldn’t turn it off. It didn’t stop me from ramming the next one, sending it rolling down the street, ass over elbows, like a human tumbleweed.
“Travis,” Kara cried out.
I looked back and saw her shrinking back away from a flailing arm whipping around inside the cab. A zombie held onto the side of the SUV while it clutched for any human flesh it could find.
Travis tried to wheel around, but the zombie grabbed for Kara again, causing her to push back into him and knocking him against the door. The zombie grabbed her wrist and yanked her towards his waiting mouth.
I jerked the wheel to the left and smashed the zombie against the next parked car. They may not feel pain, but they do feel the force of being slammed into a car. It let go of her, and was peeled away from the SUV, rolling into the street, its legs crushed and useless.
I looked up just in time to see a car angled slightly with its back end sticking into the street. I jerked the steering wheel to the right, but I still clipped its back fender solidly. I felt the impact all the way through my arms and into my teeth. Kara rocketed forward and slammed into the back of the passenger seat. Greg fell forcefully into the dashboard and groaned. The SUV spun off the car and started going perpendicular to the street, which was a very bad thing since the zombies were coming down the street from both sides at us. The SUV protested this rough treatment by dying right then and there.
The zombies didn’t care at all and just kept coming. I looked past the frontline of the zombies and saw the biggest freaking zombie I had ever seen in my life. He was gigantic, and he was on a beeline heading towards us.
As I shook off the cobwebs of the collision, I looked past the gargantuan zombie and saw a couple, a man and a woman, running up the street in the direction around of the bus. He had a rifle, and she had a pistol. We sure didn’t need any new enemies right now.
“Someone’s running toward the bus,” Travis shouted.
“I see them,” I said.
“Them? I see one guy coming from the last house on the right.” Kara said.
I pulled my attention from the couple and saw a man in military garb carrying an assault rifle running past the houses on our right. He sprinted out of the front yard of that last house and headed in the direction of the bus.
“There he is again,” Paige yelled as she spotted Anthony. She pulled up her pistol, and without really aiming, started firing. The bullets missed, but the man still had to slow down to dodge the hail of shots. He jogged to the right and brought his rifle up, spraying an unrestrained burst of bullets towards Paige.
As he saw the weapon come up, Russell leapt at Paige. His shoulder caught her in the hip, and she went down with him. A vicious line of bullets cut into the side of the car they had been standing next to. He wrapped her in his arms, and despite the pain in his bad shoulder, he rolled them both across the pavement and between two cars. Another burst of bullets ran like a zipper up the side of the car.
“Why did you do that?” she hissed.
“Because if I hadn’t, you’d be dead.”
“But I had him in my sights,” she said and tried to wriggle free.
“He had you in his,” he said, drawing her close.
I had only a little idea of what happened and really didn’t have time to sort
it out since I had troubles of my own. Zombies were just about on us, and with most of the windows either shot or broken out, they would be able to reach and pull us out as if the SUV were a catering truck and it was lunchtime.
I cranked the ignition, but the engine sputtered and died. I wondered if the Gods of all the bad horror films I had watched in my teens decided to exact punishment on me for all the times I groaned at the ‘hard to start car’ scenes that proliferated those movies. I cranked it again and eased on the gas, trying to avoid flooding it, and the SUV roared to life.
Something slammed into the side of the truck, rocking it slightly. I looked back, and another zombie tried to get at Travis, clawing frantically at the door. He put his rifle against its forehead and pulled the trigger. The top of its head exploded in a plume of red and gray as it fell away from the SUV.
I put the SUV in reverse and slammed down the accelerator, and we shot backwards until we met another parked car on the other side of the street. The crunching sound hurt my ears, and the impact rattled the fillings in my teeth.
“Joel,” Kara shouted, “take it easy.”
“If you hadn’t noticed,” I said, “I’m trying to get us out of here alive. There are no extra points for style, just for execution.”
Before I could get the SUV back into a drive, a zombie climbed onto the hood. Kara leaned over the front seat and fired off two shots, both hitting home directly in the zombie’s face. It flew backwards and over the hood and into the street. Unceremoniously, I jammed the transmission into ‘F’ and promptly ran the thing over.
Anthony didn’t wait for the man and woman to recover but instead ran toward the bus. Just to keep them off balance, he thought as he burned off another round of bullets, firing without really aiming. They tore into the car next to where he had last seen the couple rolling along the ground.
He made a final sprint and was beside the bus in ten seconds. He pushed open the door, but before he stepped up and into the bus, he fired another wild barrage of bullets at the vicinity of the couple, not knowing whether he hit anyone or not. Prevention was ninety percent of the cure, he thought.
He pulled himself inside the bus and peered down the street. He saw his last few soldiers climbing onto the SUV, trying to get at the passengers inside as the driver maneuvered his way back into position to escape. Sadly for his soldiers, the people inside the SUV dispatched them with well-placed headshots.
Too bad, Anthony thought. What a waste. He consoled himself with the thought that while they’d get past these foot soldiers, they wouldn’t get by his juggernaut.
“Who was the guy getting on the bus?” Kara asked.
“I have a feeling that he is not our friend,” I said. “As for the couple, I don’t know who the hell they are. They say ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ which means....”
“Do we have time for this explanation?” Kara asked.
Before I could answer, a zombie interrupted me. He was a scrawny little thing and tried to grab onto the side of the SUV, but Travis took it out. Another one came at him on our right, but when Travis pulled the trigger on his rifle, it only clicked.
“I’m out,” he said.
“I’m down to four bullets,” Kara said.
“I only have my Glock with what it has in it,” Travis said.
I started to accelerate but stopped. “Well, if we can get past these last couple and Godzilla, then I may be able to maneuver past the bus. The only problem is that they will have a free shot at us as we pass unless one of you holds back a few shots to keep them off us.”
Chapter 46
End Game
Anthony smiled as he sat waiting for the SUV to roll down on his juggernaut. His finger played with the small, but very consequential button on the keypad control panel on his chest. This was going to be good.
Paige untangled herself from Russell and got to her knees. “He’s on the bus. If we don’t do something, he’s going to get away.”
“What do you suppose we do?” Russell asked.
“Something,” she said, but had no specific plan or attack. “What about using that?” she asked pointing to the grenade he still had in his hand. Somehow he had maintained his grip on it when he rammed into her, but he had left his rifle in the street.
“We can do something, but tossing it from this far probably won’t do anything. If I toss it wrong, it’ll bounce off the side, and maybe we’ll get shrapnel in our faces. Besides, my shoulder....”
She cut him off. “Give it to me,” she demanded.
“What are you going to do with it?” he said.
“I used to play third base on our softball team in high school. I can throw it.”
“It’s a lot heavier than a softball. Plus what are you going to do if it bounces off the metal or doesn’t break through the window?”
“I’ll make it,” she said as she held out her pistol. “You shoot out the window.”
“This is crazy. He’ll cut us down as soon as we stand up,” Russell said.
“It’ll work,” she said, taking the grenade from his hand.
Three more zombies and the giant and we would be home free, but some sort of warning bell was going off. The giant zombie moved like a steamroller down the street, not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but inexorably and inevitable. Beyond the giant’s size, there was something menacing about it.
“Hold back on shooting,” I said, “I’ll try to take these last three out with the truck.”
“You can try to avoid them, you know,” Kara said.
“It’s a narrow street.” It wasn’t that narrow.
The first one came up fast, undeterred by the fact that I had just rolled over several of its undead colleagues. While not going terribly fast because of the silent alarm going off in my head, I was still able to smack the undead thing down the street. His buddy followed, and he went under the tires, crunching a little as his bones cracked.
One more and the giant.
Anthony knew they couldn’t see the crude suture marks running up the giant’s stomach. And if they could see them, they wouldn’t expect that he had planted enough explosives in the giant’s abdomen to take down a small building.
With the help of these unknown assailants, they had taken out Layla and his entire crew. But it would end there. He and his juggernaut would make sure of it.
“Why are you going so slow?” Travis asked.
“Something’s wrong with that giant zombie,” I said.
“Like besides he’s spectacularly big, fat, and undead?” Travis asked.
“Is this a part of your vision?” Kara asked.
“No, not really,” I said, “more of a gut instinct.”
“Well, we can’t stay here forever,” Travis said. “If you hadn’t noticed, we have a couple hundred zombies coming up the rear.”
I took a quick peek back and saw the horde less than a half block away. They steamed down the street, trudging along like an army ready for the last battle.
“Okay,” I said, “but could one of you shoot this last one before we take on the Titan?”
“Sure,” Travis said, raising his pistol, aimed carefully, and then pulled the trigger. His bullet hit the forehead of the female zombie who was just ten feet off the front bumper. She was done.
“Now, onto Goliath,” I said, punching the accelerator.
“We have to time this perfectly,” Russell said. They had moved into a position that aligned them perfectly with the front windshield of the bus.
“I know that,” Paige said.
“I’ll stand first, then fire into the front window of the bus. I’ll let you know when the window is gone and I’ll give you the signal to....”
She cut him off again, “We’ve been over this. Now, let’s just do it.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay, on three....”
Despite the warning bell going off in my head, I floored it. We quickly approached the lumbering giant zombie setting up a real clash of the Titans
-- a 1983 Jeep Wagoneer versus the biggest son of bitching zombie I had ever seen. I had two options: ram the big bastard or swerve around him. Being an obstinate son of a bitch myself, I picked option one.
“Brace for impact,” I yelled as I tightened to a death grip on the steering wheel and leaned forward. The wind blew through the multiple holes in the windshield, stinging my face. I narrowed my eyes to slits and readied myself for the impact.
Anthony’s finger held over the innocuously looking little red button that was poised to send his enemies off this planet and onto to the afterlife. The corners of his mouth turned up a little in eager anticipation as he hoped zombies were in whatever place they ended up.
“THREE!” Russell yelled and sprung up, immediately opening fire on the front windshield of the bus. His aim was steady and true and his bullets hit home. A spider web of cracks appeared with the first few bullets, but Russell just kept firing, pulling the trigger with an anger that swelled from somewhere deep within. With each shot, he wanted to yell, “This is for Cody,” but instead he concentrated to maintain his aim. With the eighth bullet, the windshield shattered completely and collapsed inward.
“It’s gone,” he shouted.
Paige shot up while simultaneously pulling the pin on the grenade. Without a moment’s hesitation, she reared back and started forward with her arm.
Anthony heard the shots and felt glass fragments explode into the bus and shower onto his face, shoulders, and arms. Blood trickled out of the tiny cuts on his cheek. Instinctively, he ducked away and stumbled down the aisle away from the hail of bullets and glass. His hand slipped from the button, leaving it un-pressed.
Life slowed down to millisecond increments; his mind whirred along and ran through the options. He was safe now from any more immediate shooting. He’d take care of the people in the truck first and then he would turn his attention to the couple outside the bus. They would pay dearly for interrupting him.