by Jon Schafer
Grimm saw him hesitate and avert his eyes, which caused her to laugh and say, “I was just getting dressed, but I’m sure it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
Steve laughed nervously and glanced down the hall. No matter how innocent the encounter was, if Heather walked up on them right now, he’d be screwed. Sneaking a peek back into the room to see if Grimm had put something on, and after all, he was a guy, his attention wasn’t drawn to Grimm’s breasts, but rather to her arms. He had seen her in action swinging her scythe and was amazed at how thin and delicate they appeared. Not wanting to look like a dirty old man, he averted his gaze back into the hallway.
After picking up a tee-shirt from the bed, Grimm slipped it over her head and added, “It’s safe now. So to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
Turning around and seeing that she was dressed, Steve said, “I heard the music and was wondering where it was coming from. I’m glad I found you, though, since we need to talk.”
Glancing down at her radio, Grimm said, “Just getting my mind right before the shit storm of epic proportions you’re about to stir up hits the fan and sprays across the countryside. I’m going to have my hands full after you leave.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You need to go with us,” he told her.
Smiling, Grim shook her head and replied, “We’ve talked about this before, and you just don’t get it, my work is here.”
“Work?” Steve asked.
“I have much reaping to do,” Grimm told him. “Before you came, I only took the ones that crossed my path. Now, I have thousands of my children to take. I am going to be busy, busy, busy for the next few weeks.”
“But what about the huge group coming from the east?” Steve asked her. “There’s no way this house is going to stand against them, and there’s no way you can stand against them.”
With a dramatic sigh, Grimm said, “But I will not stand against them, silly rabbit. In the immortal words of Muhammad Ali, I’ll move like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”
Steve started to protest, but Grimm cut him off by saying, “And now you need to go and make sure your group is ready, and I must finish my preparations. It is going to be a busy morning.” Seeing Steve open his mouth to argue that she needed to go with them, Grimm said in a reassuring voice, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. If it makes you feel better, my plan is that when you make your grand exit, I am going to use that as a distraction to do the same since you will be drawing my children off. Thing one and Thing two are coming with me, but I believe that Igor is going with you. He sees the little girl as some kind of savior and himself as her protector.”
Still hesitant, Steve said, “You and the Thing twins would be safer with us.”
“Safer, maybe,” Grimm agreed, “but like I said, I have my job to do, and like I also said, I still have a lot of other things to do, so you need to go.”
“Do you need any help?” Steve asked.
With a slight grin she replied, “I may have showed you my tits, Steve, but a woman has to have some secrets.”
***
The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, and false dawn had come and gone. Shapes were taking form from the shadows as Tick-Tock stood with Denise and Brain, looking down at the mob of dead pushing against the rear of the mansion. After a moment, he asked, “So who’s got the best throwing arm?”
Denise spoke up, saying, “I pitched on my college softball team.”
Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “Fast or slow?”
With a smirk, she replied, “I like it slow, but I can do it fast when the mood strikes me.”
From behind them, Brain muttered, “Jesus, you two need to get a room.”
Tick-Tock laughed and said, “We’ll stop at the first Super 8 we come to.” Nodding to Denise, he added, “You’re it, then. There isn’t a bull pen to warm up in, so you’ll have to wing it.”
Setting the book bag filled with explosives at Denise’s feet, Brain said, “The bombs are fairly stable, but you still need to be careful. A sudden shock can set them off, so throw them gently if you can.”
Pointing to a spot on the fence that he had marked with the paint gun earlier, Tick-Tock said, “That’s where we need to get to. Grimm told us that there’s a trail through the woods just beyond. I want you to throw each bomb about twenty feet apart in a straight line away from the building, heading directly to that spot. You should have a couple left over, so toss them about forty feet to both sides of the Zs to widen the corridor.” Turning to Brain, he asked, “And you’ve got the rest of the bombs?”
Patting another book bag slung over his shoulder, he replied, “Right here. I’ll use one or two for the fence and the rest for any of the Zs that follow us. Steve already showed me on the map where he wants me to use them.”
Tick-Tock nodded and said, “Then get down to the first floor with everyone else and get ready to go. Tell Steve -”
He was interrupted by his friend asking, “Tell me what?”
Turning, they saw him climbing through the hatch in the roof.
“That we’re almost ready to go,” Tick-Tock finished.
Making his way carefully to the edge of the roof, Steve looked down and surveyed the gruesome scene below him before asking, “Who’s the designated pitcher?”
“I am,” Denise said.
Looking her straight in the eye, Steve said tersely, “Make every one count,” before waving for Brain to follow him as he turned sharply and headed for the hatch.
When they were a short ways off, Denise said, “That was kind of abrupt.”
Tick-Tock shrugged off his own feeling of anxiety at the way Steve was acting and reasoned out loud, “I guess he’s under a lot of pressure. Sometimes I think he takes too much on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so serious about anything, though.”
Just then, Steve poked his head up through the opening in the roof and said loudly, “Hey, Tick-Tock.”
“What’s up?”
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Steve said in a serious tone. After a moment, he smiled and asked, “Are you a sociopath?”
Tick-Tock gave a half-laugh and said, “Probably, but why do you ask?”
“You seem to be enjoying yourself too much, with a zombie apocalypse going on and everything,” Steve told him.
Tick-Tock didn’t hesitate as he said, “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”
Steve laughed and said, “That’s what I thought,” before disappearing into the mansion.
Motioning out toward the field of dead, Tick-Tock said to Denise, “Time to do your Catfish Hunter imitation. Make it count, babe.”
***
Heather looked at the grim faces surrounding her in the first floor bedroom and said, “I need the guys with the crow bars to come up front.”
Two men made their way around Linda and Cindy to stand in front of Heather. Nervously, they shifted from one foot to the other as they waited to be called into action.
Seeing their discomfort, Heather said, “Take it easy. All you have to do is pry the storm panels off and then get out of the way.” Trying to ease their nerves, she pointed to where the window and part of its frame had already been ripped off to enlarge the opening and added, “You did a great job so far, just calm down and focus on what you have to do.”
Movement out in the hallway drew their attention as three of the people that had been standing in the doorway moved aside to let Steve and Brain through.
Raising his voice to be heard above the sound of dead hands pounding and scratching at the storm panels, Steve said, “They’re ready up top, so I want to go over everything one more time. We can’t afford any screw ups.” Looking around to make sure he had everyone’s attention, he said, “After the bombs finish going off, I want those panels down as quick as possible.” Pointing to Brain, Connie, Igor and Linda, he said, “You three will be back-up, and Denise will back you up. You’ll all be covering Cindy
, too. I want her in the center of you at all times. Make sure that one of you has Pep on a short leash. You know how she gets when she sees the Zs, and I don’t want her running off. When the panels are down, Heather, Tick-Tock and myself will use our rifles to clear away any of the Zs that might be left standing near the opening. After that, we’ll move out the window first and cover everyone as they follow. Once we’re all clear of the building, we move to the fence as a group.”
Turning to Brain, he said, “Once we get out of the building, I want you with me. I want you so close that if I stop fast, your nose goes up my ass.”
There was some nervous laughter at this.
Steve waited for it to die off before continuing, “We’ll stop about forty feet from the fence, and Brain will do his thing. Once the fence is down, we head into the woods. At this point, we’re going to start moving fast, and I can’t stress again how important it is that everyone stay together. From what Grimm told us, the path is wide enough for two or three people at first, but then it narrows down, so we’ll have to go single file. Just follow the person in front of you, and once again, stay together. If someone goes down because they’re bitten, shoot them in the head. If they go down for any other reason, get them up and moving. If they can’t move or we can’t carry them, we have to leave them.”
Looking at the faces staring at Steve as they digested this, Heather added, “And be ready to adjust to any situation. Make sure that if you have to shoot that you only shoot at the Zs that are an immediate threat. You may think that you’re all carrying a shitload of ammunition, but it will go fast if you start popping away at everything.”
“And also make sure of your target before you pull the trigger,” Tick-Tock added as he entered the room with Denise behind him. “Fire control isn’t just for Smokey the Bear.”
The ten remaining people from The Battleship Texas nodded at this. To Steve, they all looked scared, but behind this readily apparent fear was a posture of determination. This pleased him. They had a long way to go, with numerous unknowns in front of them, and he needed everyone to pull their weight.
Heather said loudly, “Everyone get into position.”
As they moved around to find the places in the hall that they had been assigned earlier by Tick-Tock, she said softly to Steve, “I’m still worried that we don’t have anyone spotting to make sure the area is clear before we pop those panels off.”
Steve shook his head and replied, “We’ve been over it a dozen times and keep coming to the same conclusion. If we leave a spotter on the roof, or even on the second floor, we’d have to wait for them to catch up and it will leave everyone too exposed. We saw before how quick those things recovered from the blast from the dynamite, so we know we’ll have to move fast. On top of that, the dead from the sides and the front of the mansion are going to come quick. If we wait for a spotter before popping the panels, we all might not get through. Anyone that’s even a minute behind us will probably get cut off if we wait outside for them. We only have one shot at this, so it’s win or lose.”
With a sigh, Heather said, “I know, but it’s still a big risk.”
With a laugh, Steve said, “And so is everything else we’ve done so far.” Seeing her uneasy look, he gave her a hug and said, “I’m not going to say that everything is going to be okay, but it will be what it’s going to be.”
Hugging him back, Heather said softly, “That’s fucking reassuring.”
Steve laughed.
***
With a half-bow, Brain pulled the detonator from his pack and handed it to Connie as he said, “Would you do the honors, my lady?”
With a strained smile, she took the radio as Tick-Tock called out to his trainees, “I want everyone to squat down and put their palms against their ears and open their mouths, just like we practiced. I don’t know how bad it will be, but I don’t want anyone going deaf from the concussion.”
Hands rose to do as they were told as Connie looked unsure at the detonator in her hands. She didn’t know when to press the transmit button, so she looked questioningly at Brain.
“I’m going to say, ‘Fire in the hole’ three times, and then you press the button,” he told her. Looking to Steve, who nodded, he said loudly, “Fire in the hole, fire in the hole, fire in the hole.”
***
The dead thing looked at the lump lying beneath the shuffling feet of its brethren before dropping to its knees and picking it up. The object had seemed to fall from the sky just seconds ago to bounce off the head of what had once been a shopkeeper to land in front of it.
When it had been alive, its name had been Ethan, but it had no recollection of this or how it had died or where it had come from. It would be impossible to explain to the raggedy, dead thing that it once had a mother named Lena and a sister named Megan, or that it had been infected and died when it had gone on a foraging trip with his sister and that she couldn’t bring herself to put a bullet into its brain. It didn’t know that after it had died and come back that it had wandered westward for days before coming across a group of things just like it.
Instinct told it to join them.
Since then, they had come across three separate bands of travelers that they had fallen upon and eaten, but now humans had become elusive. It had dug for grubs and termites to try and feed its insatiable appetite, but even those had become rare. The lure of food had brought it and its herd across this area four times before they ended up outside the mansion.
The thing that had been Ethan might not have known any of this, but when it saw the thing lying on the trampled grass at the back of the mansion, the faint memory of a word passed briefly through its shattered mind.
‘Ball’.
Holding the white blob of plastic explosives against its chest, it made its way through the tightly packed mass of dead. Being only eleven years old helped, as it occasionally dropped down to weave its way between the legs of the mob and finally into the open.
After reaching the outer edge of the mass of dead pressed against the building that held the food, it suddenly stopped. Looking at the open area leading to the fence, it turned its head and looked back at the mansion. It had completely forgotten about the object in its hands or that it had wanted to get away from the rest of its kin so it could play. Reasoning was gone forever from its brain, so instead of asking itself what it was doing out here, when only moments before it had been less than twenty feet away from the food that was very reason for its existence, it turned and started moving back the way it had come.
The blast came before it took its first step, disintegrating what had been Ethan and shredding all those close by with shrapnel as it knocked them down.
***
The explosions came so close that they sounded like one. Dust dropped from the ceiling from the concussion, and the walls shook so hard that a picture of Jesus holding a lamb in his arms fell with a resounding crash. The noise from the blast was barely a memory when the two men with crowbars jumped up and ran into the room to frantically pry at the storm panels covering the window.
Steve, Heather and Tick-Tock followed, stopping to stand a few feet behind them with their rifles at the ready. The lights flickered for a moment and then died as the generator gave out, leaving them with nothing but a few rays of dust-filled sunlight shining in through the cracks around the panels. One of these widened as the panel on the right pushed outward, but then it stopped after only a few inches to be pushed back.
The man that had been working on it stepped back and raised his foot to kick it, even as Steve yelled at him to stop. He had seen that the storm panel had been pushed back by something on the outside, and that could only mean one thing.
In his quest to be free of the dust and confinement of the small room, the man didn’t listen and lunged out with his foot. The panel flew off, but instead of the opening being filled with sunlight streaming in, it was filled with the faces and clawing hands of the dead as they grabbed on to the extended leg and dragged the screaming man i
nto their midst. Vicious teeth and nails dug into him from all sides as he was literally torn apart before his body disappeared into the throng of dead outside the window.
Gunfire and shouts erupted as the group reacted. The dead that showed themselves in the opening were quickly shot down, only to be replaced by more. These, too, were quickly dispatched by the accurate, almost point blank fire from Heather, Tick-Tock and Steve, but a never-ending stream of dirt-covered, snarling faces and clawing hands replaced them. The noise was tremendous, and soon the stink of burnt gunpowder filled the air to mix with the dust and create a haze in the small bedroom.
Knowing that it was taking too long, Steve yelled, “Cover me,” as he approach the window from an angle for a better look, moving sideways to stay out of the line of fire. They had been killing the dead at a steady pace for almost half a minute, with what seemed like little effect on the continuing stream of Zs trying to get in, and he needed to see exactly what they were facing. It was hard for him to imagine that there were this many of the dead left after the tremendous blast from the explosives, and he had to see how many they were facing. He knew they had to get rid of them fast since they only had a short time before the ones from the front and sides of the house came around back and cut them off completely. His first thought was to use another of Brain’s bombs.
Finding it hard to see with all the bodies climbing over each other to get at them, he yelled, “Pour it on,” to Heather and Tick-Tock to see if they could shoot an opening through the Zs. The dead fell away momentarily from the onslaught of lead, but he still had to jump up to get a better look over the crowding heads of the dead.
On his second leap into the air, he finally had a clear view of the back of the mansion, and what he saw filled him with dread.
The dead were massed twenty or thirty deep around the window, with more coming to join them by the second. He could see the carnage inflicted by the explosives, but it all appeared to be further away from the building. The first bomb should have taken out most, if not all, of the dead they were now having to shoot, but it looked like it hadn’t gone off.