by TW Brown
He did the math, and if each of his men took a different target, they could drop a third of the group. The second volley had a great chance of being fired without a problem which—again, provided everybody hit their target—would put them at even odds.
Pointing to the path he wanted to take, he waited until he saw nods of affirmation. These men weren’t stupid. He didn’t need to give them all specific details. The only problem remaining was how they would all reconcile their actions with their consciences later. And from experience, he knew that just telling himself that he’d put down a bad person was not going to be enough. Not a day had passed since he’d killed that man in the pizza place that his mind had not shouted to him that he was a murderer. He’d long since given up trying to silence that voice.
Just before he started for the shelves that would give them cover, his eyes located a makeshift cage. Inside it were at least five more people. A couple were watching as the woman fought for her life, but the rest were turned away…refusing to watch their impending fate.
He was almost certain they would not be able to act before the zombies won this most recent round, but hopefully that poor soul would be the last victim. The men moved almost silently, Ken mused, feeling good about their abilities until a loud cheer was quickly followed by that gut-wrenching scream.
There was an awful ripping sound, and the scream changed registers again, almost sending physical stabs of pain into Ken’s ears and bowels. That seemed to be the only sound for a handful of heartbeats. It rang so loud in Ken’s ears that he looked around, certain that hordes of the undead would be converging. He was more than a little surprised when nothing stirred.
Cheers came from the crowd, and Ken watched as the spectators handed over an assortment of things that must’ve passed for wagerable. He shot a look to his left at his group. All of them had similar expressions of disgust etched on their faces.
He tapped the closest and then pointed to himself and a large man shaped like a deformed potato. His bald head sat on his shoulders, apparently without the need or use of a neck. There were a series of rolls where a neck might be that reminded Ken of a pack of hot dogs.
King Kong Bundy, he thought. The guy could be a twin of the former pro wrestler.
Ken nodded and the man nodded in return. The man then turned to Colton who stood next to him and repeated the gestures, indicating his target. This little mime session made its way down the line.
As they finally each had their targets decided, another series of shouts and hollers came. Ken turned to see a young man perhaps in his late teens being dragged kicking and struggling to the makeshift battle ring.
“Where’s all that attitude now, boy?” one of the men snarled as he twisted the young man’s arm behind his back hard enough to elicit a yelp of pain. “You types always walk around so big and bad…but take away all your homies and you ain’t nothin’ but a punk. You ain’t got your buddies to bring around for a drive by…none of them bleedin’ hearts talkin’ about how oppressed y’all are.”
Ken watched as they shoved the young man into the makeshift ring where a trio of the undead waited. Correction…four. As Ken watched, the woman they’d seen when they arrived was struggling to her feet. Her left arm was completely gone…ripped from the socket. A horrible tear in her stomach allowed for what remained of her insides to fall out as she made the unsteady transition to her feet.
He couldn’t help but wince as he heard the wet splat of her entrails landing on the floor of the ring. The young man fared worse as he dropped to his knees and vomited.
“Oh, Mama,” he heard the man wail. “You people are animals!” The man wiped at his mouth as he stood, turning to face the majority of those gathered around the outside his enclosure. “I hope you all burn in hell!”
“Hey…we ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong. We ain’t the ones gonna kill ya,” the man retorted, chuckling like he’d said something clever. “If you die, blame your mama and them others you was with when we caught ya stealin’ from us.”
“We were salvaging the few scraps that were left at a gas station mini-mart, you ignorant fuck!” the man spat back.
That was the end of the conversation—at least from his side—as the zombies closed in, forcing him to divert all his attention to defending himself. The first one to close within range was shoved back hard to collide with the woman who was apparently the man’s mother. As the melee began, those gathered outside started in with the feverish wagering, hooting, and hollering.
Now, Ken mouthed silently.
He focused on the big bald head of the man he’d selected. The next few seconds were almost anti-climactic. Bodies fell in the cacophony of gunfire, screams, moans, and yelps of pain. Stepping from behind his cover, Ken spun to his left as a man tried to bring a rifle to his shoulder. He was so clear of mind that he had the time to laugh inwardly at the man’s foolishness of relying on a rifle indoors before he fired his pistol, dropping the idiot where he stood. A shotgun? Sure. A scoped .30-30? Foolish.
He felt something to his right and ducked, spinning away. A loud clatter followed, and he saw a large knife spin away on the concrete floor and vanish under the storage shelving. When he looked over, a man was pulling another large blade from his hip and cocking his arm back to throw. The man was moving toward him as he did so. Ken had no idea how far away the man had been when he’d made that first throw, but he didn’t see this guy missing if he had any skill with that knife at all. He was bringing his gun hand around and under his outstretched left arm, but he wasn’t foolish. Shots like that looked fine in a Mel Gibson movie, but he didn’t see himself firing with any accuracy. He was also not quite nimble enough to recover and change directions to avoid what was sure to come.
Just as the man was about to hurl his arm forward and let his weapon fly, a loud ‘POP’ sounded from beside Ken. The man didn’t fly back as much as he just stopped moving forward. His arm seemed frozen in position, and for a split second, nothing happened; then, the bloom of darkness began to spread across the man’s chest.
Ken looked up to see Sean Drinkwine standing with his arm outstretched, the pistol in his hand still smoking from the barrel.
The warehouse became eerily quiet and Ken looked around to see that the entire group of what he still considered Don Evans’ men were on the ground. If they weren’t dead, they were close to it. Glancing up at the makeshift ring, none of the zombies still stood. The young man was on his knees with his mother cradled in his arms.
“I heard all the gunfire and could not just sit on my hands,” Sean said, his voice hollow, and his arm still jutting forward from his body as if forgotten.
Ken looked up to see that the man’s face was almost slack. His eyes would not tear themselves away from the body of the man he’d just shot.
“We got one still breathing,” Colton shouted from a few feet away.
Ken rose, considered the mayor for a moment, and then hurried over to the man sprawled in a pool of his own blood that was spreading around his middle. The bloom on his belly was bad, but it was obvious that the round that hit him had gone through.
“I thought for sure I’d killed him,” Colton sniffed as he toed the man who made a hissing sound between his teeth at the touch.
Ken glanced at the .44 Magnum in Colton’s hand and had a feeling this guy would bleed out in just a moment. If he was going to get any information, he needed to act fast.
“Colton, you and the others let those people out of that cage.” He turned his attention back to the man at his feet. “Where’s Don Evans?” Ken snarled as he knelt beside the only apparent survivor.
“Fuck you, old man,” the injured man spat.
“Is that right?” Ken sniffed, a hint of amusement in his voice.
The man had curly brown hair and looked like he might barely be a hundred and fifty pounds. And while it was a bit hard to tell with the guy sort of curled around his injury, Ken guessed him at perhaps five-foot-seven. His teeth were stained with blood, and
a trickle of it leaked from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were squinted in pain.
Reaching over, Ken pulled the man’s shirt up to expose the nasty hole where the bullet had entered. Just the action of pulling up the shirt made the man wince. Placing a gloved hand over the wound caused him to buck slightly.
“This goes one of two ways,” Ken whispered. “You can either answer my simple yes or no question and I will take care of you, or you can be stupid and I will make your last moments on the earth a very unpleasant experience.” To emphasize his point, he allowed his index finger to dip into the open wound.
The man yelped in pain and then started babbling, “Yesyesyesyes, we work for Donnie,” he babbled.
Ken stood and glanced around the room. All eyes had turned his direction. He saw a few looks of concern, but most were blank and seemed to just be waiting to be told what to do next.
“Now…you promised…you said you would take care of me,” the man gasped.
“Yep.” Ken drew his pistol.
“Wait,” the man yelped. “You said you’d take care of me.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t say I’d help you.”
Ken pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into the man’s face, cutting off his plead or protest before it managed to escape his lips.
Turning to the others, he made a circling gesture with his gun hand before holstering his weapon. “Let’s roll out of here. All this noise has to have drawn some attention.”
Everybody started moving for the exit except Sean who still stood where Ken had left him. He was still gaping at the man he’d killed. The people freed from the cage were nowhere to be seen, so he had to imagine they’d found their own way out of the place.
“Let’s move, Sean,” Ken called as he passed, but the man acted like he hadn’t heard a thing. He didn’t budge.
Ken sighed. He really didn’t have time for this. But, if the man was going to have a breakdown, it was best that it happened now while they were not in danger.
“Ken!” Colton shouted from the doorway. “We got incoming…lots of ‘em!”
“Way to jinx it, dumb ass,” Ken mumbled, scolding himself as he hurried to Sean and grabbed his arm, glad to see that he’d at least lowered his weapon.
Giving the mayor a tug, he frowned when the response was minimal. The man had moved, but he certainly hadn’t started walking. Ken eased beside him and slung an arm over his shoulder. He didn’t have time to figure out how to snap the guy back to reality.
As they exited the building, Ken felt his heart leap to his throat. Already a few of his team were engaging some of the closer packs of the walking dead. They were pouring up the highway from the direction of Interstate 205. The throng was dense enough to completely block the highway in the direction they were coming from. Fortunately, he and his men wanted to go in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, there were already perhaps a hundred of the creatures that had come through the gates and were now wandering about the warehouse complex.
Ken spied his truck and calculated the number of undead he would probably have to take out to have a chance of making it there alive. He took a step and felt the tug of resistance that was Sean Drinkwine. His chances evaporated in that single moment. There was no way in hell he could make it through the mob trying to pull this man along. In a split second, the idea of leaving him behind came and was promptly extinguished. As much as he felt the desire to survive, as much as he espoused that his top priority was to ensure his and Bennett’s survival, he couldn’t simply leave the man to be ripped apart.
He heard a sound that made his ears ring, and it took him a second to realize that it was a voice yelling in his ear.
“Run!”
He looked to see the mayor peeling out of his grasp. The man had his pistol up and shot the closest zombie ahead of them. Ken had no idea what had woken the man from his haze, but he didn’t need to be told twice.
The two men sprinted for all they were worth towards the beacon that was Ken’s pickup. They reached it at almost the same time and hopped in. By some stroke of divine luck, the rest of the team had arrived either just ahead or behind them.
It was the mayor who ended up behind the wheel and launched into a U-turn as fast as the wheels could find traction. They slalomed just a little, but eventually banked a hard right and took off up the highway.
Ken glanced in the side view mirror and saw a solid wall of the undead descending on the warehouse complex. A very small percentage peeled from the main group and continued to follow the accelerating pickup in vain. Still, even that small amount of the whole made up a mob bigger than anything he’d seen. If something this size descended upon Estacada, then they would all certainly die unless that mob simply stayed on the highway and passed through town.
They drove home in silence, but Ken’s mind was turning. They had to figure out a way to keep something that size from swarming his town.
By the time they pulled up to the parking area in front of Fearless Brewery, he was no closer to a resolution to that problem. However, he was certain that they needed to be more prepared for living invaders. What he’d seen in that building was horrifying, and he’d stared into the eyes of the man who was largely behind the group and let him live. He would not miss an opportunity like that again. In fact, when it came to outsiders, they would need to be very vigilant. That was a plan he could enact right away, and after what they’d just witnessed, once the word was spread, he doubted anybody would oppose the idea he had in mind.
***
It had only taken a single day to convene a meeting where his new security plan to deal with the living was put into play. Using the training tower across from the town’s volunteer fire station, they would keep snipers on duty around the clock.
They had welders put protective plates up to provide cover, and then Ken held what turned out to be a morale boosting event that was seen as more of a town party then what it really was. He held a sharpshooting contest at the football stadium.
Word was spread rapidly and while only about thirty men and women signed up to try their skill, hundreds more came to witness the event. Some brought food and beverages. Before long, it was a festival-like atmosphere.
“We need this,” Bennett said as she stood by Ken’s side and watched children playing tag on the field as the shooters took a break and had the first round of scores tallied.
“Where’s Colton?” he asked, arms folded across his chest as he took in the scene.
“Right here, boss,” the man said as he strolled up with his own score sheet in hand. “Don’t look like I’m making it to the second round. Guess I ain’t the shot I thought I was.”
“Well then, how would you feel about getting a few of the kegs brought up here?” Ken turned to the man with an eyebrow raised in question. “This has the makings of a party. I say this town could use one right about now.”
Colton didn’t need to be told twice. As he rushed toward the exit, he tapped a few familiar faces who all visibly brightened at whatever the man said on his way.
An hour later, it had officially become the biggest party the town had seen. It was difficult to tell if anybody didn’t show up as the celebration filled the stadium bleachers, field, parking lot, and even the street on two sides that boxed in the area in a giant “L” shape.
The people that had been on watch at the two main points of the highway that passed through town were eventually relieved by a few souls that, for whatever reasons, did not choose to consume the free beer that poured like water from far more kegs than Ken had intended. He’d even been about to order over two-thirds of what was brought to be returned, but Bennett had pulled him aside.
“You have the right idea, and this is what the people need.”
Ken sighed. It wasn’t like he was going to be sending any of it to markets around the city. And it wouldn’t be doing any good just sitting in the brewery.
As the day waned and night fell, folks began saying their goodbyes, but in all the festivities
, a team of ten snipers had been selected. The next day, the first one took position on the tower. To add to the security, more concrete barriers from a nearby construction site were brought down to basically funnel anything coming along the highway straight to the heart of town.
Ken knew that would do nothing to protect from a horde of the undead since they were barely thigh high, but unless somebody showed up in a tank, they would not be able to enter the city from the main highway.
As the next several days passed without so much as one single living soul appearing, people began to question the need for a sniper and a ten-man team keeping watch around the clock. The night the power went out for the last time, people stopped complaining as the age-old fear of the dark reignited the fear of many of the town’s residents.
People began to fall into a routine of waking with the sun and retreating to their homes as darkness fell. Supply runs were conducted in waves as people were made responsible for their own food.
Large cauldrons were assembled and placed in a dozen locations around town. Firetrucks were used to bring water from the Clackamas River to be boiled and distributed, but it was made clear that fuel was a very finite resource, and everybody was expected to start planning for ways to obtain their own water supplies.
People were starting to feel a sense of purpose as well as one of safety and security. Ken did not share in that last one. He knew that trouble could arise at any moment. There was sure more than one Don Evans-type in the world. And they hadn’t actually dealt with the real Don Evans, just a handful of his lackeys.
He thought his prophecy was about to come true when the sound of a vehicle approaching echoed on the afternoon air. He clicked his radio once, paused, and then clicked it a second time. That was the signal for everybody to lock and load.
“I sure hope today isn’t the day I am proved right,” he whispered.