Victoria seemed to ponder the situation, but Liam was disappointed she didn't provide a solution.
He settled on, “We should keep going down the valley.”
The sound of gunfire was overpowering now. Liam yelled but Victoria signaled she couldn't hear him, so he grabbed her and pulled her along, much as Lee had done for him.
He kept an eye on the survivalist character as he ran behind him in the cover of the woods, but the man made no effort to follow him or even look at him.
I guess it would be too much to expect him to leer at me like a hungry wolf as I ran by.
In his mind's eye he saw that very image. He ran a little bit faster until they were clear of the whole group. Victoria stuck close behind.
They stopped about a hundred yards down the valley to rest and evaluate. He saw a couple zombies amongst the melange of tents and tarps out in the valley. Surely there were more lurking out there, but it was hard to see all the way across the littered field.
He dropped to one knee, lined up his shot, and missed the closest zombie. Even with the small red-dot scope he was unable to make a second or third shot. He was shaking too badly.
Soon the two zombies moved in their direction.
“How is it I'm scared to death of these two zombies after seeing hundreds pour out of the woods earlier?”
Victoria responded by shooting the two zombies at twenty-five yards. It took her several shots for each one, but she got the job done.
“Liam, you were just in a traumatic situation back there. It's OK to be scared. Let's go find our friends.”
They slung their rifles, she took his hand, and they jogged together toward the main fight taking place further down the valley. In a few minutes, they found it.
Liam's shaking wasn't getting much better so they decided to use tree branches on the edge of the woods to steady his aim.
Zombies were much thicker here, but so were the shooters. Liam and Victoria were able to contribute as part of a group of about two dozen men and women lined up along the edge of the woods. Behind the line, women, children, and unarmed men made their way up the steep hillside out of the valley. The recent rain showers made the leaf-covered slope a slippery mess. Lots of people sat on the ground at various points, apparently unable to go further. Others helped as best they could. Several elderly people waited right at the bottom.
Liam had a vision of Grandma sitting there. It helped him refocus his energy on protecting them by shooting zombies in the valley.
Zombies scared Liam to death, there was no doubt about that. But under concerted fire by dozens of semi-skilled shooters in fixed positions, the zombies couldn't make much progress. It was no more than 100 yards from the creek to the woods, which was nothing for a scoped rifle and a skilled marksman.
Liam needed them to get in a lot closer before he was able to half-reliably shoot a zombie in the head to put him down for good. After several shots he noticed his scope had come loose and clanged loudly on the AK's top cover with each shot. That was part of his aiming problem.
Minutes went by. Liam squeezed off his first magazine of thirty rounds. He'd already used a few rounds earlier. The second mag went quickly because a small clump of zombies had found its way directly in front of Victoria and himself. The third magazine was depleted a couple minutes later. He soon had only one magazine left.
And our pistols. Ha!
He studied the number of zombies; they weren't going to have enough ammo. Even with his pistol and whatever was in the extra rifle on his back, he wouldn't have enough. A few other shooters had stopped too. Things would snowball quickly if fewer and fewer guns were fired.
In the space of a minute he un-slung the survivalist’s rifle he salvaged, fired off twenty or so rounds, and it was empty. He had no more ammo for it so he set it down next to him.
“We aren't going to make it. Look up the hill at all those people. We're running out of ammo down here. We need a movie rescue to happen. Marines. An air strike. Something!”
Close by one of the shooters shouldered his rifle and lifted a piece of wood off the ground.
The spears!
The spears were a Boy Scout specialty.
“We have to find some spears!”
There were lots of spears not far from their position. Up the hill behind them, all along the ridgeline, Lee had put checkpoints for the outer perimeter of the camp. One of those points had to be close by. Lee mentioned they stored lots of spears in each checkpoint as part of their overall defense against the infected.
“We have to get to the top of this hill and get spears from the nearest checkpoint.”
His throat ached as he yelled into the pandemonium of the gunfire, but he had to tell the men and women fighting down here they had to get up the hill to swap their gunpowder for spear power in order to survive this onslaught. Even knives would require getting in biting range of the monsters.
They seemed to understand the word “spears” while he was pointing up the hill and pointing at the man nearby holding his wooden weapon. In return he got various thumbs-up signs and they began to peel off the firing line to go up.
Liam and Victoria retreated toward the muddy hill too.
6
The first challenge was gang of elderly loitering at the base of the incline. There were ten or twelve people, mostly women, who had apparently given themselves up as lost. Many of the fleeing shooters saw them, hesitated, then ran on when the women shook their heads vigorously in the negative. When Liam arrived, he stopped.
“You have to try to get up.” He shouted it as loud as he could. The moans and yells of the zombie horde was all-encompassing.
The closest old woman just shook her head no. She made no effort to move. He looked at them again and realized what they were doing.
Praying.
Several had Rosaries in their hands. A couple were grasping their necklaces. One ancient man wore a yarmulke.
It was too much for Liam. His emotions ebbed and flowed just like the battle around him. He was distraught to see these people had given themselves up.
“Liam. We—” she choked on her own words, “we have to go. We can't save them.”
He felt himself being pulled away. The rush of zombies was very close. He turned to follow the other young people. He hated himself for thinking the old people's deaths would give he and Victoria a head-start.
It started to seem like a movie scene where the monsters pursue an ever-slowing hero in a bladder-loosening chase. The muddy leaves were much worse than they appeared from the bottom. Without any path they had to jump from sapling to sapling, trying to hold on and not slip back down the hill.
“Victoria, don't look back. Just climb.”
The gunfire fizzled out behind and around them.
The screams of the elderly at the bottom of the hill began.
I'm so sorry. I really am.
“Don't look back. I'm serious!”
He made sure she was ahead of him. Any other time he would be happy to have such a nice view of her posterior, but not today. He wanted to catch her if she fell. If he missed, she might end up dead. That meant they both would die...
Liam didn't take his own advice. When he had the chance, he looked back down the hill. He saw some of the last gunslingers struggle up the hill, the same as him. There were only a few. Behind them were thirty or forty dirty zombies starting up the hill. Their methods were clumsy, but they were indefatigable. They made progress by sheer force of will.
The race was on.
“Victoria—”
“Let me guess! Don't look back?” Victoria laughed, but Liam recognized it as her nervous and slightly fatalistic laugh. Perfectly appropriate for this situation. But she was stubborn. She grabbed a stout tree and turned herself around so she could see back behind them.
Did her knees just buckle? I thought that was just a cliché?
She said nothing, but climbed again. Liam followed. Several times they helped struggling campers stuck on t
he slope, but there were fewer and fewer living humans around them.
The slope grew less steep up top, and they were able to run. To their dismay they passed more and more campers who reached the top ahead of them, but stood around doing nothing. They looked exhausted. It would take no time at all for the zombies to chase down these people.
They reached the small Scout checkpoint and finally had a piece of good luck. Scouts were already there, working on getting spears into hands of those who could fight. Many boys were on the ground, frantically whittling more spears.
“Can we make a stand?”
“We have to try,” Victoria answered.
Liam yelled, “We need spears. There are still people stuck on the hill, and the zombies are right behind them.”
A boy nodded, then tossed him two spears from his dwindling stockpile.
“Make them count.”
He returned the nod.
“Gather your spears and come with us!” Liam yelled it to no one in particular, but was pleased to see a dozen or so men and Boy Scouts joined up.
“We're going back down this hillside to try to engage the zombies before they can get a footing on solid ground. If we can get them while they're still climbing we might have a chance.” He wasn't sure if he learned that in one of his books, or through real world experience. Things were starting to blend together.
No one argued, though a couple of the men instead ran with their spears down the backside of the hill, away from the zombies, to points unknown.
Liam couldn't bring himself to curse them. Part of him envied them.
Instead, he and his compatriots ran toward the battle, hurtling themselves into the transition zone between the muddy hillside and the more stable hilltop. They didn't have to wait long.
A few of the last survivors from the shooting line made it up mere feet ahead of the pursuing zombies. They looked wrecked as they crawled by. No one was going to make them stay and fight.
They spread out as best they could, found comfortable fighting positions, and waited for a few moments before the first climber arrived. It came up under one of the grown men. With one skilled poke, he skewered the face of the assailant.
Then a few more reached the line. Liam still didn't have one in his area, but Victoria did. She tried to reach out to the zombie, but she unceremoniously lost hold of her spear and it fell down the hill.
Liam thought he caught her cussing, but he wasn't sure.
She began climbing out again, but the zombie she missed lunged and grabbed her leg, causing her to fall and start backsliding.
Liam didn't hesitate. He was doing it almost before he thought it.
Un-sling rifle.
Bring to bear.
Aim.
Shoot.
Miss.
Shoot.
Miss.
Aim center of mass on the zombie.
Hit.
It didn't kill the zombie, but if a zombie could be surprised—this one acted surprised. He let go of Victoria and she climbed once again. Another woman piked the zombie.
He re-slung his rifle, glad he didn't expend all his ammo down at the bottom.
He then got to business on the zombies closing in on his fighting position.
The next hour was a mental fog.
He remembered seeing Victoria come back into the fray with a fresh spear.
He remembered seeing several of his allies get grabbed as Victoria did. Each time he would un-sling his rifle and try to help the victims. A few times he got lucky, but he had to admit hitting moving targets was not as easy as they made it seem in the movies. Several people were bitten and pulled down the hill. Eventually he did run out of ammo. He wanted to save some in case Victoria needed help again, but he knew he couldn't sit doing nothing if someone else was in similar trouble. His last bullet saved the life of one of the other women fighting on the line with them.
And seemingly all at once, they ran out of zombies. No more were coming up their hill. A hundred or more lay sprawled on the hillside below. Some he recognized as campers.
7
Victoria and Liam studied the Boy Scout spear builders as they continued to work after the fight was all but over. The boys cranked out as many as they could, and showed no sign of slowing down.
“We can't ever be unarmed, even for a second, can we?”
Liam knew she was right, but it seemed an impossible proposition.
“Do we carry spears into the shower with us now? In bed? How can we be armed all the time?”
“I'll guard you when you take your shower.” Victoria flashed a wry smile as she said it, taking the edge off a dour morning.
As a topper it was drizzling again, making everything extra slippery and messy.
“I guess we should go help clean up the straggler zombies and see if we can locate my parents. We need to find some ammo, too.” Liam patted his shoulder strap, indicating he was talking about the rifle on his back.
They could hear very sporadic gunfire from down in the valley and throughout the woods around them. Liam wondered if it meant everyone was fighting hand-to-hand with the zombies, or they were truly gone. People around him started to relax. There were no zombies anywhere in their field of view on the wooded hilltop.
They found a group of young men who wanted to go down into the valley. No one said it, but Liam guessed they were a lot like him—they wanted to find their families. As they all walked away from the checkpoint along the ridge, Liam was surprised by two teenage girls who dropped in behind them all. They were covered head-to-toe in blood, like they'd been crawling in dead bodies. Liam thought they might be blondes, but couldn't really say for sure. They each had a spear, similarly slathered in blood.
Liam shared a look of concern with Victoria but otherwise kept walking. They followed the ridge for a while, then turned right and descended on a main trail, rather than going down the slippery slope on the side of the hill. Even so, they had to move slow. Several times on the way down they had to stop while someone in the group dispatched a wandering zombie. More often than not, it was the two girls who would rush in with gusto to kill the prey.
I'm not sure if I'm impressed or horrified.
He didn't want to risk antagonizing them by saying anything to Victoria they might overhear, but he thought she had the same wary look on her face as he did.
As they came to the valley floor, they saw the killing floor where most of the survivors had made their final firing line at the edge of the woods. The valley looked like a tornado came through and knocked all the tents and tarps over; a second tornado came through and dumped blood over everything. It was only missing the Four Horsemen, though many dogs rooted through the abandoned tents searching for lost masters, or food.
Liam recognized several of Lee's men standing off to one side, near a group of trees on the edge of the valley. He pulled Victoria away from the others. As they approached he saw the military men who had left on the long, circuitous route around the entire battle. They appeared clean and fresh, though winded. He had no energy to state the obvious to them: they were useless.
None of the crowd disbursed as he walked up so he pushed his way through. What he saw broke him.
Lee was dead. He'd been brought down by a zombie, then changed into a zombie, and was put down by a Boy Scout spear. His uniform was a bloody mess as he lay on the unnaturally green grass in this spot. They'd arrived just in time to hear a witness.
“...so Lee and the other guy made it most of the way back to the trees when they got surrounded by them things. They were able to fight with their guns for a little while, but it was too much. They were overwhelmed. Killed.”
Liam looked at his friend one last time, and noticed something odd. “Why does he have those belts on him?”
It was obvious once he saw the whole picture. Lee had removed his belt and wrapped it around his arm; it was lashed to the leg of his partner. The other man had a belt wrapped around his own arm, attached to Lee's leg. Lee knew he was a
dead man after getting infected. They both did. They tied themselves to each other so they couldn't get up and walk away and hurt anyone. It was the best they could do in the time they had left.
“My God. He prevented his zombie self from harming anyone in the camp.”
Victoria leaned against his back, as if unwilling to view Lee's body in all its horror. “He was a hero.” She started to cry into his shoulder blade.
He stared at the bodies as people came in and out of the circle to see the fate of one of the camp leaders. He tried to summon the sadness, but his own ups and downs had drained him. He just wanted to move on…
He melted back into the crowd, and Victoria was next to him. They crossed the field, avoiding several badly wounded zombies who somehow still managed to grab, claw, and bite with whatever appendages still functioned. He thought of the two girls. They were fifty yards away going to town on the doomed zombies up that way.
They're going to need counseling.
The mangled bodies were thickest near the administration building. Lots of living people were hovering around outside the confines of the shredded structure, many with the thousand-yard stare common in survivors of a desperate battle.
He was intent on finding his parents to ensure they were OK, but he couldn't help but notice the area around the small contingent of Marines was hopping with activity. A dozen men were pulling zombie bodies from a huge pile around the wedge of picnic tables. He and Victoria investigated.
Incredibly, the scrum of zombies revealed survivors. The two wounded Marines who were furthest inside the wedge had managed to survive. Somehow, under the massive pile of bodies, they managed to hold them off. A small cheer went up as the two men were pulled from the makeshift fortress. They also found two tiny children inside the wedge. The Marines weren't content to just save themselves.
As they watched it unfold, a woman walked up next to them.
“Mom!” Liam gave her a quick look for injuries, then gave her a fierce hug.
He pulled back and looked for his already-injured dad.
“Where's Dad?” He felt his stomach turn over at the depth of that question.
“He's fine. Still in the administration building. We were told we would be evacuated before the battle started, but I guess the memo got lost. It's really a miracle we weren't all killed by the big machine gun. I pulled your dad into that hallway, and into the basement as soon as shots started punching through all the glass windows on the outside. He wanted to fight of course, but he could barely hop the few feet down the steps.”
Stop the Sirens: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 3 Page 17