by Dead Again
Sheriff Jones glanced at them, “Ten.”
“Have them fill your ranks, Sheriff. We need the fire power.”
“You men ready for this?” Sheriff Jones addressed the armed civilians.
Some didn’t respond. Others nodded back hesitantly.
“Follow my orders, hold the line, and remain side by side.”
Peterson continued, “We’re going to move as a single unit to the hospital. Put the weaker civilians in the middle. You know the way, Sheriff, so I want you up front. We take the main streets, whatever is least populated, easiest to navigate, and widest. I don’t want us getting stuck in a narrow space. Got it?”
Sheriff Jones nodded back.
“DOES EVERYONE HERE GOT IT!?” Armstrong yelled fiercely.
“YES, SIR!” came the chorus from the shadow team. A trained response which, in comparison, made law enforcement and the civilians seem like amateurs, who just mumbled and nodded their heads yes.
Peterson was concerned. Everybody had to do their jobs if this was going to work, and he was asking a lot from armed civilians and local cops. However, he also knew that there wasn’t any other option. These people had to move somewhere, and quick. On the outside, Peterson’s expression relayed belief in those around him. Inwardly, he calculated that this scheme had, at best, a fifty percent chance of working. If it didn’t, they were all going to be devoured alive. He was sacrificing everything—himself, his team, and the entire damn mission to save a group of civilians.
How the hell did I get into this?
“All right, round up all the civilians, and hand me that megaphone. I want to talk to them.”
Sheriff Jones and his men broke into action, rounding up the crowd, herding them from all over the sprawling parking lot, and bringing them close to Peterson.
As the crowd thickened around him, Peterson stood up on a crate, raised the megaphone, and faced them. He saw the fear on their faces, the nervousness, but also some hope.
“We’re going to get you out of here,” Peterson announced. “We are all going to safety, to the hospital. It’s only a mile from here. As we leave, my men will surround you, and you will be safe within our confines. We must move together as one. No one leave our perimeter, for any reason.
“Once we reach the hospital, we will secure it, and then you will be safe, and have shelter, food, and medicine. It will not be easy getting there, but we’re all in this together. Be strong. Follow instructions carefully. I repeat: do not stray from our perimeter. Our firepower will surround you, but stay close, hold together as a pack. And no matter what happens, keep moving, as fast as you can. We can only move as fast as the weakest link here. If you see someone too sick, or too slow, carry them. I want us moving in at least a trot.
“These gates are about to bust open. As soon as I give the signal, and not before, I want you to hurry through them in a fast and organized manner. Get ready.”
Peterson stepped down, and handed off the megaphone.
*
Peterson and his team took positions a safe distance on either side of the gate.
“Nice job, Commander,” Angelo whispered, as he took his position by Peterson’s side.
Sharon stood across from him, determination in her eyes. She was the consummate professional, and just looking at her relaxed Peterson. Beside her stood Cash, a devilish grin on his face, his eyes wide and frenzied. He looked like he was enjoying this.
The engine of the truck turned over and revved hard. Black smoke hissed from its exhaust pipe. Peterson made eye contact with Cowboy in the driver seat, his eyes wide and edgy.
Peterson raised his hand like a flag. “NOW!” Peterson yelled, and brought down his hand, chopping the air.
The truck’s engine roared, and its body kicked. Cowboy started his loop around the lot. Gradually, he gained more and more speed. Everybody was holding their breath.
The truck gained some decent speed. Its wheels screeched as it turned the final bend and came fully around, aiming at the gate like a guided torpedo. The engine roared as the truck gained further speed. Twenty feet, ten feet, zero.
The fence gates buckled like paper under the force of the truck. Upon impact, like a bomb had been detonated, the gates literally ripped and flew into the air. The crowd of zombies which were standing against the gate had no chance. Peterson was surprised as he watched the infected rebound off the truck, somersault and twist through the air, sailing twenty feet, and slapping the cement.
The infected which didn’t fly away were simply driven over, flattened under the weight of the ten ton truck. There was a revolting sound of crunching and popping bones.
The truck tore a damn bloody path right through the thick crowd of zombies, successfully opening a decent size corridor.
Peterson didn’t waste a moment. “GO!” he shouted.
Armstrong was the first outside. He fired his flamethrower to the right, and sprayed a long blaze across a line of zombies which stood about twenty feet away. They ruptured into a fiery wall of human flesh.
The rest of the team fell into line, each member laying down fire with fatal accuracy.
With the help of the truck, they had already established good clearance. Peterson was firing like mad, trying to widen the thick perimeter and establish even more breathing room. All around him, Sharon, Cash and the others did the same, while Armstrong continued setting groups of the infected ablaze. The path wouldn’t stay open forever, and the civilians would have to move quickly. Peterson noticed that the zombies on the outskirts, missed by the truck, began to form lines and close in. It seemed to Peterson as if they were unifying, gaining strength before striking.
Peterson spun and gave a hand signal to the waiting cops.
At that moment, all the civilians came running out, into the open perimeter, surrounded by Peterson’s team, which stood there, providing suppressing fire in every direction as person after person ran out of the parking lot.
Within minutes, all the civilians were out, and Sheriff Jones’ men and the armed civilians broke into action. Some of them moved to the front line, while the others stayed back and held the rear. The action was going according to plan, and Peterson was hit with a rush of adrenaline that felt a lot like satisfaction.
Sheriff Jones, firing, approached Peterson at the front of the group.
“Time to move our asses,” Peterson said out of the side of his mouth.
They began to jog at a good pace, and Sheriff Jones pointed which way to go. Everybody moved as one—the shadow team, cops, troopers and civilians—following the pathway which was created by the truck, the flame thrower, and the blazing rifles.
Running down the street, gaining ground, it began to open up. Now the zombies perimeter was at least fifty yards, and the group began to really pick up speed. The cracking of rifles decreased, as now less suppressing fire was needed.
The truck had run out of gas not far from the exit point, and Cowboy and Hatchet jumped out and ran, zigzagging their way over to the group. They had victorious smiles on their faces, clearly basking in victory.
“Good job, boys,” Peterson said, as they got close.
Because the civilians had been encamped in that parking lot for so long, Peterson realized, all the zombies in town must have been drawn to that location, and had clustered there. That was a good thing. As they trotted down a street, hardly any were out in the open now. They had made it out of that darn parking lot unscathed. Success.
But there was still a ways to go.
Peterson turned left, following Jones onto Main Street, and he and his men fired at an occasional roving zombie. Peterson kept checking over his shoulder to make sure the civilians were moving. They were.
They continued moving down Main Street. Peterson could tell that this was the center of a once-wealthy suburban town. But now, it looked like the aftermath of an unnatural war. The street and sidewalks were littered with abandoned cars. A Mercedes Benz was turned on its side, a Lexus was on fire, and as far as the
eye could see, there was wreckage of passenger vehicles.
And all the dead bodies—the corpses of policemen, paramedics, women, men, babies—the entire town’s population seemed to be spread out and dead. The stench of death was heavy in the air. And the horrible gore—intestines, severed arms and legs, heads, every body part imaginable—littered everywhere. Nothing was alive here anymore. Everybody other than the fifty or so civilians at Peterson’s back, had faced a hideous, gruesome death.
Surveying the haphazard and chaotic wreckage, Peterson realized that when catastrophe strikes, people die in the most peculiar ways, and the living can behave in ways which are equally as shocking. When panic sinks in, nothing is out of the question. Peterson was still alive, in part, because he understood this fine point. In these times, he realized, people can be equally as dangerous as the dead, and he had to be darn careful of both.
Peterson kept an eye on the rest of the team: Sharon, Johnny-Boy, Angelo and Cash, all holding up the flanks. Sharon noticed Peterson looking at her, and she gave the “okay” sign.
In front of Peterson, from behind a stalled Mini Cooper, an infected woman appeared. “Putrid, stinking motherfuckers,” came a grunt from Armstrong, under his breath, as he walked up to the infected woman. He stopped just feet in front of her and shot a round point blank, hitting her matted, greasy head. The gleaming bullet split the woman’s skull right down the center. Bone chips splintered and dots of blood speckled Armstrong’s face.
“What are you stupid, Armstrong?” grunted Peterson. Armstrong was one bald, muscle bound motherfucker, and the last person on earth one would want to call stupid. But Peterson was the only man on earth who could get away with it.
“What?” replied Armstrong, playing dumb as he simultaneously wiped the blood from his face.
“You know what will happen if you get that blood in your eyes or mouth?” exclaimed Peterson. “You’re acting like you want to get infected. Put on your gas mask if you insist upon doing shit like that,” Peterson ordered.
Appearing like a specter behind Armstrong was another walking dead. This female infected was full frontal naked and, in the most perverted sense, beautiful. The zombie’s toned body said that this was once a woman any man would be lucky to screw. Now she was a walking corpse. Her skin was an impossible, unnatural grey, and her sunken, shark-like eyes were without a soul. She was fucking dead…and she was walking.
She almost looks alive, thought Peterson. He signaled to Armstrong, who spun around fast and was ready to fire, but Cowboy beat him to it. The gun blast from Cowboy’s elephant killer connected with the zombies neck, severing her head clean off her shoulders. It took a moment, and then blood jetted out of her neck socket like it was shot from a garden hose. The headless corpse kept walking, however, as if it needed time to catch up with the fact that it no longer had a head. Then, it collapsed.
“Where did she come from?” Armstrong said, as he wiped sweat from his forehead.
But the eyes on the decapitated head, now on the ground, moved and looked around. The damn head was still alive.
“It’s not dead yet!” Peterson said, stunted.
Armstrong turned and looked, “Oh, man. You gotta be kiddin me.”
“When they said destroy the brain, they weren’t kidding,” mused Peterson.
And with a burst of rage, Armstrong brought his foot down on the head, flattening it with a disturbing crunch. The job seemed done, but the face moved again, not willing to give in. Armstrong lost his cool and slammed down his foot again, and again, and again, until grey matter finally oozed out of the skull. The brain finally destroyed, the head stopped moving—this time, for good.
Armstrong wiped his bloody boot on the ground, like he’d just stepped in dog shit. His last bit of mental and physical energy drained, he let out a deep, tired breath.
Desensitized to the gruesome scene, Peterson turned toward the horizon, as he continued trotting with the rest of the group down Main Street.
“It’s getting dark again, Armstrong. We’re in for another fucking night,” Peterson spoke almost to himself as he gazed at black plumes of smoke, rising from a great distance away, as if an enormous fire had engulfed the forest. Unfortunately, it was not a forest. Peterson became stern and clenched his jaws tight. He was looking in the direction of New York City.
“We can’t keep going like this, boss,” Armstrong said, trotting alongside him. “I’m tired. Not to mention, hungry and thirsty. We’ve had one good stroke of luck after another, but it has to run out sooner or later.” Armstrong got serious. For all of his bravado, he also had no-nonsense survival instincts. “Liberty to speak freely, Commander,” Armstrong said.
Peterson didn’t make eye contact and just kept looking at the burning horizon. He knew this was coming.
“Permission granted.”
“With all due respect, Commander, I believe our mission has been compromised,” Armstrong spoke in a low tone, so the others could not hear.
Peterson was ready for it, but pretended to ignore Armstrong’s statement. He raised his hands and the group stopped running.
“What’s up Commander?” Sheriff Jones asked.
“Give em’ one hundred and twenty seconds to catch their breath.” Peterson said, motioning to the civilians.
Peterson pulled the remains of a cigar out of his front pocket and lit it up. He blew smoke out slowly and, for a moment, looked as if he were a part of the burning horizon.
Peterson never really ignored a person, sometimes he just had the tendency to think for a while before responding. He knew this bothered Armstrong. Still, to some, it seemed a bit self righteous.
“The hospital might be a hell-hole,” Peterson said, finally. “But if we make it into the shelter, these people will be able to hold up a while. So will we. We can stay the night there, at least.”
Armstrong looked west to the setting sun, and east at a darkening sky, “Doesn’t seem like we have much of a choice. The hospital is just a good a bet as anywhere, I guess.”
Peterson broke his gaze away from the smoking horizon. With sadness, he reached into his front pocket and pulls out dog tags—they belonged to Ishmael and Spooky.
Peterson turned the dog tags in his fingers. “I will make sure their deaths mean something.” Peterson put his hand on Armstrong’s shoulder, and tried to fortify his resolve. “We’re not losing, not as long as we’re still breathing.”
However, as he looked out upon the street, death and destruction littered everywhere, and he couldn’t help thinking. Maybe Armstrong’s right
But Peterson wouldn’t let this thought fester. He always tried to speak himself out of defeatist ideas. “I know our mission has been compromised, and I know you want to scuttle the job, but it’s all we have left. Either we accomplish this mission, as unlikely it may seem now, or die trying.”
Armstrong wasn’t about to give up so easily. “We’re far away and far behind. We never knew if Dr. Winthrop was alive to start with, sir. Our window of opportunity has shut.”
Peterson could always read Armstrong’s mind, and right now he knew what Armstrong was thinking. He knew he was wondering: is it really worth it?
The callous answer was Yes. The mission was worth it. Dr. Winthrop’s life was worth that of a thousand soldiers, and even a thousand other scientists. Not everybody is created equal, and somewhere deep down inside, in the current of Armstrong’s subconscious, Peterson knew he felt this indignity.
But Peterson saw the big picture, in large part because he was granted permission to read classified files which Armstrong was not. Peterson had a glimpse of just how powerful Dr. Winthrop’s mind was, and how important he could be in fighting this unnatural war. Dr. Winthrop was a torch, where only blackness otherwise existed.
Armstrong continued, “and what happens when we don’t roll in with the Cavalry, boss? When just our team goes limping in. Then what do we do? Where do we go? The world has fucking collapsed.”
“I don’t have all t
he answers. I just know what must be done.” Peterson’s conviction was always amazing, one of his great strengths. In situations where other men crumbled, by sheer force of will and faith, Peterson always seemed to find the eye of the needle. He was hope where hope had no right existing—and he had proven this to Armstrong again and again.
“Well, I’m having a hard time seeing the justice in it,” Armstrong concluded with an unusually disobedient tone…of which Peterson took note.
*
After about half a mile, they cleared Main Street, and they all followed Sheriff Jones as he turned down a wide boulevard. This boulevard was pretty empty of infected, too. Peterson took out the occasional zombies as he went, as did the others.
Five blocks later, Sheriff Jones, breathing very hard, stopped at an intersection.
“To your right,” Jones said, unable to catch his breath.
There, in the distance, Peterson saw it: the hospital. It was a huge, brick structure, impossible to miss. “Get everybody in formation,” Peterson ordered Armstrong and Sheriff Jones.
“The entranceway and parking lot look good,” Sheriff Jones’s voice cracked as he made this observation. “But there are going to be a hell of a lot of crawlers inside. We may be heading out of the frying pan into the fire.”
Peterson shot him a look. “Just do as I ordered and get the civilians ready.”
Johhny-Boy edged up to the Sheriff with a sly smile, and gave him a rib, “Never say something like that before a battle, sheriff. It brings bad luck.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Moving in point-lock step, with trained precision, the shadow team led the way. Straight down the throat of the devil, running up the driveway which led to the front entranceway of the hospital. A big sign which read “emergency” hung above the plated glass doors.
A four story institutional building with an American flag on the lawn was this town’s excuse for a hospital. On the fourth floor some windows were black, charred and hollow. A fire obviously ate through a part of the building. The first floor, though, appeared intact. Dead bodies were scattered all over the hospital grounds.