by Josh Hilden
“How many shots did you hear?” Kyle asked Scarlet as they moved toward the kitchen.
“Two I think, but I was really freaked at the time Kye.” She had the baseball bat cocked like a pro. In her agitation Scarlet’s six years of softball was rising to the surface. Kyle was relieved that the survival reflex had reasserted itself on all of them.
There was a scratching sound from the closed pantry door. “What the fuck was that?” Benny squeaked, turning his whole form toward the door and raising the crowbar.
Kyle didn’t say anything. He just raised the gun and moved to the door. The sounds were light but insistent, and they tickled some memory of Kyle’s that he couldn’t fish out. He brought his free hand up to the knob and turned it, the scratching stopped. Kyle threw the door open aiming the pistol at head height. At first he was relieved that there was nobody there. Then he screamed as a cream-colored blur launched itself straight at him.
Kyle tumbled backward and fell on his ass with his back against the wall. When he opened his eyes he was greeted by a pair of green and orange cat’s eyes staring back at him. This was quickly followed by furious head butting and meows from the terrified Oscar.
Kyle reached out a tentative hand and stroked the thick warm fur. Tears began to roll down his eyes. He was finally able to dredge that memory from the back of his mind. Constant fights between himself and his Mother, every time Oscar did something to piss her off in the last year, she’d locked him in the pantry and forgot about him. The worst was when Kyle and Benny had gone to Columbus for the Origins Gaming Convention in June. Poor Oscar spent three days locked in the pantry.
“Good Oscar,” he said stroking the cat and rubbing him under the chin. Kyle got up and Oscar took up his accustomed spot riding on Kyle’s shoulders as they resumed their search of the house.
They found Kyle’s Dad in his Mom’s office. There was a bullet hole in his shoulder and one in his forehead. Carol Carson’s favorite pistol, the .40 caliber Sig Sauer, lay on the floor next to him.
As Kyle was staring at the body of his Father, Benny walked over to the big maple roll top desk and pushed the light on the blinking answering machine. The first two messages were from the day before this started and had to do with work, but the third was Jenny.
“Mom … Dad … Kye … is anyone there?” There was a pause. In the background, the sounds of sirens, screams, and gunfire could be clearly heard. They’d become the constant theme music in this brave new world. “If anybody hears this, I am alive. I haven’t been bitten by any of those … things either. I’m going to try and get home.” There was the sound of very close gun fire, and Jenny let out a string of curses. “I just want you guys to know that I love you and …” The message ended there.
“What’s the time stamp on that?” Kyle asked Benny who was staring at the machine.
“Seven hours ago.” His voice was thick and choked.
Everyone jumped at the sound of banging from down the hall. Kyle ran over to the window and opened the blind that looked out on the front yard a crack. He recoiled at what he saw. There were close to 20 of those things on the street in front of the house and on the front yard. Cocking his head as far to the side as he could, he could barely make out the two figures on the front porch. The banging that all three of them have become so familiar with began in earnest.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Scarlet asked.
Kyle walked over to the closet in the back of the room and opened it. Behind the door was a heavy steel door with a combination lock on it. Kyle worked the lock, with a combination that he was not supposed to have, and opened his Mother’s gun safe. He pulled out a pump action shotgun and a box of shells and slams them on the table.
“We fight.” He said, and began taking out the other weapons.
5
The Carson Residence: Three
8:05am EST
The constant slamming of the dead fists against the house was beginning to drive them all just a little crazy. Benny kept looking at the door. Kyle knew that he was trying to estimate when the mass of almost 50 dead would be able to knock it out of its frame. He figured that it would not be much longer, but that was okay.
“So we just walk out there and only shoot the ones that get close?” Benny asked for the millionth time. He kept checking the rounds in the .357 Magnum that Kyle had given him like he feared they might have magically disappeared and been replaced by black jelly beans.
“Yeah, we just get out the back door, through the side gate and work our way back over to the Prius. Any of those things get close and plug them.” Kyle hoped he sounded like it was going to be as easy as a walk in the park. At least a walk that didn’t involve Mikey and Paul he thought. Inside his stomach was in knots, and his head kept telling him that they should just hunker down here and wait. But it wasn’t going to be long before they caved that door in and were inside. If the windows on the first floor weren’t set so far off the ground they would have been inside five minutes after the little siege started.
“I wish there was a way of keeping them focused on the house though.” Kyle said as he checked over the bags of supplies they would be carrying. Next to the pile that he knew was too big to really carry and too small to last them was the cat carrier with the pissed off Oscar inside. The poor little shit probably thinks that he is going to the vet, Kyle mused to himself.
Scarlet jumped up and ran for the stairs, “Just wait a sec, I have an idea!” She said as she took the steps two at a time.
“What the hell?” Benny asked glancing at Kyle.
“Fucked if I know,” Kyle said and peeked through the blinds again. That had to be the Jespersen kid over there with half his right arm gone. The 10 year old little punk liked to beat on the little kids in the park after school. “Not anymore,” Kyle mumbled.
“What?” Benny asked.
Kyle shook his head. They both turned to the stairs as Scarlet came bounding down. In her hands was Jennifer’s MP3 player and the plug in speakers.
“What are you going to do?” Kyle asked her.
“This,” she said and turned the MP3 player on at full volume. The hard edge of the Sex Pistols, Jennifer had been in an extremely deep retro punk music phase last year, blared from the little plastic box with an ear splitting shout. As Scarlet put the box in front of the front door, outside the crowd reacted violently with all of them attempting to get to the door at once.
They hurried to the back door, scooping up the gear as they ran. In addition to a backpack, Kyle was carrying Oscar’s cat carrier and the shotgun. Benny threw open the back door and they entered the fenced in area, an eight foot wooden privacy fence surrounded the entire lot. They all looked at the back of the fence which was swaying back and forth as something in the back neighbor’s yard pushed violently on it.
“Alright let’s do this.” Kyle said. He hurried to the gate to the front yard and looked between the slats. The closest of the dead was nearly 10 yards away looking at the front of the house and not the gate. Kyle lifted the latch and pushed the gate open. The moans of the dead were almost louder than the music streaming from the Carson home as the three of them eased through the side yard.
As they were creeping by, the Jespersen kid and his one arm turned and saw them. He raised his arm and began to move in their direction still moaning. At first it was just him, but in a couple of seconds more and more of the Dead noticed them and turned to approach. Oscar hissed and Kyle heard Benny yell something that sounded like “Oh Fuck Me!”
They hurried, but the thick web of walking corpses between them and the car was formidable. Kyle wanted to drop everything and break for the woods, climb a tree, and then go to sleep. He didn’t do that, if they were separated and lost their supplies and weapons, they were as good as dead and he knew it. The cat carrier swung from its shoulder strap as Kyle lifted the shot gun and aimed for the skull of the Jespersen bastard. Oscar was far less than pleased.
BOOM!
The sound of the shot
gun going off was deafening. The head of the little bully disintegrated in a spray of blood, skull, and brain matter. Kyle worked the slide and ejected the empty shell. Now there were five rounds left. He was far from surprised when Scarlet and Benny also opened up on the dead nearest to them. Although they were nowhere near as good shots as Kyle, they steadily cut a path through the corpses toward the Prius.
Kyle slung the shotgun over his free shoulder as opposed to reloading and drew his mother’s Sig Sauer. He took aim and fired one round after another.
“You two get to the car and get it started.” He said as one after another dropped. He was delighted by the cold and calculating shroud that fell over him as he started shooting. For the moment, the fear and sickness he’d felt were washed away and replaced by this reflexive shooting style that he’d honed in competitions all his life. Fire 12 rounds, watch 12 corpses fall. Drop the empty clip, reload, pull the slide, and drop 12 more. He did this over and over until there were no more targets. He blinked as the shroud disappeared and he saw the line of 61 bodies that were strung out in front of him.
Kyle dropped to his knees fighting the urge to vomit again. He felt considerable better after holding off the purge.
There was a hand on his shoulder. He whipped around and was raising the pistol when he saw Benny standing behind him. He was staring at the dead with a look on his face that Kyle didn’t like very much. There was too much hero worship and awe in that look for him to ever be comfortable with.
“That was fucking amazing.” Benny breathed.
“It was just target shooting.” Kyle said as he tried to end the discussion. He got up off of his knees.
Benny looked at him a little weirdly but said no more. They reloaded their weapons then started loading the baggage into the Prius. As they worked a car came around the curve of the neighborhood. They all recognized it as a Montgomery County Chief’s cruiser, although the blood and gore that was dried to the bumper and hood was a little off putting.
The car stopped 15 feet from them. The glare of the newly risen sun made it impossible to see who was behind the wheel. Kyle raised his shotgun and aimed it in the direction of the cruiser. He was far from hopeful that a police officer was behind that wheel.
The door opened and a figure stepped out. Her long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She had on a police jacket that was two sizes too big and mirrored sunglasses. She had what looked like an M-16 aimed at them. They all recognized her in half a second.
“Jenny!” Ben screamed and dropped his weapon to the ground and ran to her. She lowered the rifle, setting it on the car’s seat instead of dropping it, and met him in the middle of the street. The embraced so tightly that Kyle wondered if they had broken any bones, the embrace was followed by a deep, passionate kiss that stirred feelings of protectiveness that were forcefully shoved down in Kyle.
Kyle and Scarlet walked over to the two young lovers and waited for them to come up for air. When they did Scarlet hugged Jennifer fiercely, and then Jenny turned to her brother. He saw the concern in her face that now she would have to explain that kiss to Kyle but he beat her to the punch.
“A baby” he said, and there was nothing but joy as he scooped her up and hugged her tightly. “Thank God you found us,” he said.
She was crying now, “You’re not mad?” she asked.
“Never think it,” he said and all four of them shared a group hug, and in that instant the foundation of their new family, forged in the loss of their old ones, was born.
6
Wright Patterson AFB
Near North Service Gate B
October 21, 2012 AD (Day Four)
4:00am EST
For two days they skirted as far around the city of Dayton as they could. It was a slow and painful journey. The things that they saw on their trek, first West then North, then East, and then finally South, would haunt them and inspire them for years to come. The Prius blew two tires while they negotiated their way through the war zone that was New Lebanon. They decided that they should just consolidate themselves into the rugged and dependable Crown Victoria police cruiser instead of searching for a new ride.
When Jennifer told them the story of how she acquired the car and all the police gear, they were a little horrified. She’d been making her way back to Moraine on foot following the rising, and making good time, when she came to a police barricade that’d been overrun. She carefully searched the area and gathered all of the equipment that she could find, dispatching half a dozen of the dead in the process, and appropriated the car.
They all knew that Jennifer Carson was one tough bitch. The third degree black belt that she received last year spoke to that. They’d never suspected the depth or the hardness of the steel that ran through her.
They’d been forced to hide from the increasingly large herds of walking corpses for hours at a time. The need to scavenge for supplies and keep on the lookout for other survivors that might be a bigger threat than the dead also slowed them down.
During the journey, Jennifer told Kyle the story of how she had fallen in love with his best friend. How she’d run into him at one of her lowest moments, right after being dumped by Mitch her jackass high school beau. That he’d at first been a sympathetic ear and then something more. She told Kyle how she made him promise not to tell Kye about them until she was ready, and that she loved him completely.
“When I think of all of the years I didn’t like him, I think I was a very stupid girl.” She laughed as she said this, Benny was in the front with Scarlet, and he was trying not to comment on the story.
Kyle told her he was truly happy for them. He only wished that they’d told him sooner. They both agreed waiting had been stupid, but they’d both been concerned about Carol Carson’s reaction considering her dislike for Ben. When Kyle told Jennifer about their parent’s deaths, she’d been sad, but she’d also told him she was glad they knew what happened.
They didn’t have to wonder like Benny.
They had the headlights off as they approached the old Service Gate leading into Wright Patt. Kyle’s father showed them the gate when they were working on the base. He told them that before 9-11, he’d been allowed to use the gate to bring his cleaning crews onto the base, but not anymore.
The fires that were burning on the base were visible as they approached. They’d all heard the general broadcast announcing the abandoning of the base via the police radio, but they voted to try and reach the base anyway before they tried something else.
Jennifer was of the opinion it was a waste of time, but she couldn’t think of anything better. Benny and Scarlet both suggested that they find a boat and set out on the Great Miami River. Eventually they would reach first the Ohio River, then the Mississippi River, and finally the Gulf of Mexico. Jennifer, who hated the water, said she would only do that if there were no other options. Thus, they all agreed to Kyle’s suggestion that the base was worth looking at regardless of the broadcast.
Outside of the gate were maybe 10 to 14 of the Risen Dead. On the other side of the gate was a large convoy of vehicles looking like they were getting ready to abandon ship. There were a mixture of military and civilian vehicles modified to travel on roads and through cities controlled by the dead, and the less scrupulous of the living. The attention of the Dead was being held by the brightly lit convoy, if they wanted to get away without the Dead noticing them, this was their only opportunity.
“What do you think Kye?” Jennifer asked from the back that she shared with Ben. A strange thing was happening since they all came together in German Hills. The three of them were more and more turning to Kyle to make the decisions. They always gave their opinions, and they would argue with him if they thought that he was wrong, but they always asked him what they should do and listened carefully to what he said. Kyle was not sure that he was comfortable with this new leadership position. He’d always been the follower not the leader. Here they were again, Jennifer asking the question and the other two waiting hear
what he said.
“I think that there is safety in numbers, and that is the first organized group that we’ve seen that doesn’t immediately scream ‘Rape Gang’ to me.” He said it and they all nodded with his words, it was a little creepy to him.
Jennifer, who’d taken on a tactical leadership role in the last two days, said, “OK, we need to do this fast and without noise. Hand weapons only. Scarlet, stay in the car and keep it ready to run if these guys don’t turn out to be so nice.” She never took her eyes off of the Dead.