“Game? What the hell else am I going to do? We’ll cover your flank with the reservists here.”
“You can call me Doug, Chief,” one of the uniformed men said. Tanner turned and recognized him as Dougie Statsvold. “You’ve known me all my life, Chief, and ‘reservist’ just seems a little cold is all.”
“Hi, Dougie, didn’t even see ya there. Can’t say as I’m glad to see you here though.”
“You can ditto that, Chief; we should both be in a better place.”
“Well, you’re going to be in a tight spot. With all these bodies, the D8s will only move slightly above walking speed; so lock and load and be ready to shoot. Keep Ernie under wraps too; we don’t need him creatin’ situations, if you know what I’m sayin’.”
“I’ll take care of Ernie,” Tanner said with a quick nod before heading back to his group. “Colleen, Ernie; each of you grab an M4 and some mags. Jen, you’re driving the van, and Tommy, you’re in Ernie’s truck,” he said, ignoring Ernie’s protests. “We gotta run interference from behind as the diggers get their families up ahead and out of here.”
After he was finished, Tanner turned to watch one of the reservists as he pulled a semi across the bridge entrance from the island. It wouldn’t stop the dead, but it would slow them down.
****
Ernie left the back of his truck with four full magazines plus one in the rack, he had his .357 revolver on his hip with five speed loaders on his belt and his .38 tucked behind his back with a couple of extra mags in a pocket. He walked away from his truck thinking, The old west be damned, this is where the real action’s gonna be.
The heavy equipment revved up and pushed their way en route for the Rockwell side of the lake, a mass of dead flesh ahead of them. A sea of corpses flowed back over itself as the heavy blades pushed into them. A mass of blood, flesh, and bone rolling back in continuous folds of former humanity, creating the sounds of permanent grind and squish as blood and flesh turned to a pink slime, spreading across the pavement.
“Ernie, take center, Colleen’s on the left, and I’ll take the island side,” Tanner said as he fanned the group out, taking the heavy front upon himself and three reservists already tired from the morning’s battle. The reservists spread out to either side of the police, all locked and loaded. It didn’t take long for the first of the zombies to appear on top of the writhing mound of crippled corpses they had made to block off the Hot Springs side. At the same time, the zombies from the island made their way around the semi that was blocking their easy access as the fighters walked backwards, not yet taking a shot.
“Hold fire,” Tanner said. “All we need to do is hold them until we get to the other side and then we can hightail it. Head shots only; everything else is wasted rounds.” Tanner continued to sound as if he had been fighting these things all his life instead of just the last hour of the morning.
****
The slamming outside the door to the windowless room reverberated through the concrete block walls as the zombies tried to get in; she shook the visual from her mind’s eye. Her whole body quaked like she had taken some sort of drug and her body had relinquished all control. She couldn’t sort through her emotions other than the dominant pain of losing her mother and the need to escape, even though she knew there was much more there. She looked at the scalpel in her quivering hand, feeling grateful that the good doctor was no longer there and regretful that he was gone while she held the sharp object. No, she couldn’t think of that right now, there was already too much for her to deal with. She tried to stifle another bout of sobs but couldn’t help it as a couple more escaped.
Ally contained her urge to vomit as her body went through the motions in a series of dry heaves. She wiped tears from her eyes and looked up at the ceiling.
Of course, the ceiling. The realization of the one potential escape, which had eluded her, gave her a fleeting sense of hope.
She crawled up on the counter, bringing a chair with her so she could poke her head up through the acoustical tiles in their lightweight metal track. It was mostly dark, but some light filtered up, showing the partition where it ended at a brick wall to the outside. She moved across the counter to the other wall and peeked again. The fluorescent lights shining through the back of their casing allowed her to see the area; not much, but enough to navigate. Still in the exam room, she pulled down upon some of the metal tracking and saw that it was too flimsy to hold her. She would have to hang from the main supports and might even be able to fit on top of some of the ventilation ducts. Either way, she had no choice so she raised herself up into the ceiling, careful to keep her knees centered on the wall underneath.
She was going to escape. Even as her hands shook from fright and memories of terror that kept trying to force their way in, she knew she would escape. Ally had a debt that was owed to the good doctor—a debt of blood.
Chapter Five:
Extortionist
“Fucking town houses again, Benson?” Lisa said as she looked upon the row of twenty-year-old, upper-middle-class homes, each painted identical, right down to the neutral tone window treatments.
“How can you tell which one is yours?” Her good-natured sarcasm was evident although neither could help but look, briefly fearful, at the bridge that now sounded like a construction zone on a shooting range.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. Truth is, that’s all they build these days. Anyway, it’s not a bad place to live. My door is the second one in.”
“It looks like a nice place… really. It just isn’t what I expected you to be in. I expected a large yard with an old, single wide in the middle of several dilapidated out buildings highlighted by rusty, broken down vehicles and lazy dogs sleeping in the shade.”
“Wow, wouldn’t that be great? Are all of you northern people so judgmental? Do I look like I have a fucking mullet?” he replied in good nature.
They hadn’t seen much on their trek from the beach. A couple groups off in the distance dealing with infected but not the hordes they saw in Rockwell. Although they kept their guard up, it was a much-needed break from the intense stress they had been under.
They could hear the big diesel engines of the D8s as they pushed more of the infected into the water. They had seen a few National Guardsmen from the pontoon, but it was contractors and their own equipment trying to create a safe zone and passage.
Lisa and Benson came around the hedge and slipped silently between some cars as they made their way to the front door. He pulled out his keys and silently slipped them into the lock and turned the dead bolt before he moved down to the handle lock. He looked at Lisa, who was scanning the parking lot.
“Which car is hers?” Lisa asked.
“It’s the yellow Aveo in the front spot there. Everything looks normal… well, except the TV isn’t blaring.”
Lisa nodded, knowing that the TV and radio service would soon be out if it wasn’t already; phone service could hopefully last a couple of days. Benson turned the handle and quietly popped the door in just a crack to see if it generated any movement… nothing. He entered the house, leaving the door open for Lisa. Lisa did one last check of the streets, noticing that they were starting to fill up with stumbling corpses. She didn’t see any of the runners yet and she didn’t think they had been noticed, so she followed him quietly inside, slowly closing and locking the door.
The town home was immaculate and looked more like a model on display than an actual lived–in house. Nothing was out of place and the house was completely silent, with the exception of a thumping coming from upstairs.
“Jesus fuck, Benson, didn’t we just go through this? This thumping in the hallway thing is getting old.”
“This time it’s different,” he said urgently as he led her upstairs.
They both stood at the top of the stairs, looking down the hall in the direction of the thumping sound. Lisa saw a little boy pounding on the door screaming and moaning, continually turning the obviously locked doorknob.
“Wait! It’s my son. Hey Bucko, what’s going on?” he said as his son buried his face into his pant leg, crying. Benson kept his eyes on the door where he had been pounding.
Special needs, Lisa thought as she lowered her gun and felt the shock of what she almost did run through her. They listened as more sounds came from behind the locked door. They could hear something shuffling then the door shook in its frame as she advanced on it. She could hear the familiar moaning of the infected behind it and she knew the answer to Benson’s question before it was even asked.
“Danny, where’s Mommy and Elle?” Benson asked. Lisa saw his face fall when Danny pointed to the door he had been pounding on. Benson’s face was a mask of dread, both he and Lisa knowing what had happened, but where? How? There was no blood or signs of trouble other than a bedroom door with a locked-out child.
“Lisa, take Danny downstairs, will you?” Benson said, his eyes already starting to water.
“No, you take him downstairs; he needs his father right now—they don’t,” Lisa replied to the glaring eyes of Benson. “You don’t have to do this, Art. Seriously… he needs you, they don’t; now go. Besides, protocol says you are too close to the situation to be objective. You might hesitate, bud, trust me on this one, okay?”
After a couple of seconds, he nodded his head and guided Danny down the stairs, giving Lisa the first good look at the young boy’s face, and she saw the telltale signs of Down Syndrome. It had been a long time—if ever—that she felt compassion for a child. Lisa just didn’t have a maternal instinct and typically avoided children all together, but for some reason Danny’s face broke her heart. What must be going on inside of that kid’s mind? She shook her head as she approached the door, emotionally mixed up about so many things. Was it her lack of desire—or fear—to be around children so strong that she would rather kill zombies than comfort one in need? Lisa was starting to feel that she was as messed up as the rest of the world.
She pulled out the Allen wrench on her specialty multi-tool she kept for just these kinds of locks. She paused as she thought about what she was about to do. She wasn’t going to just shoot a couple Zs, she was about to shoot the wife and daughter of her only ally. She inserted the hex key into the small hole on the outside of the knob and gave it a twist, freeing up the handle. She folded the wrench back into the handle and put it back in its sheath before double-checking her magazine and making sure there was one in the pipe before she gently pushed the door open.
There seemed to be a moment where the woman on the other side of the door struggled with the surprise of it suddenly opening. At first Lisa thought she was perfectly healthy, and she almost lowered her firearm but then the woman’s face changed with the arrival of food; she lunged for Lisa. Lisa was stymied by the visage. It’s never what you expect, she thought as the creature lunged. She had to struggle to get her gun aimed well enough to put a glancing blow off the top of the woman’s skull, slowing her enough for the second round to take her front and center. Benson’s wife flew backwards into the room, sprawling out in the center.
Lisa stepped over the legs as she walked through the room checking obvious danger spots first. Behind the door or bed were the first ones and then closet but they were all clear. No bathroom was evident but she knew there was another person—or what used to be a person—in there somewhere; a younger female. Krissy, she thought her name was. Her peripheral vision showed her the bite marks on the mom’s legs and she felt remorse for Benson. His wife and daughter were now gone in the most horrible of fashions.
Shuffling and scraping came from the open window so she slid over to one side of the dormer to see what caused it. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then at the last minute, she saw a Nike symbol on the bottom of a sneaker trying to get a toehold on the edge of the roof.
“Okay, you can come in now,” Lisa said, knowing that a zombie wasn’t going to hide from anything—especially on a roof. The shoe shuffled a little bit but then stayed where it was. She leaned out the window to get a better look at the girl and gasped. The end of the block was amassed with lurching bodies coming right their way.
The gunshots attracted them, she thought as a couple runners struggled their way through the horde, trying to get ahead of the pack.
“Come on, Krissy; we have to go. Your dad and Danny are downstairs waiting.” The mention of her dad and Danny must have been the trigger for the girl; she quickly crawled down from the roof and in through the window. Lisa saw the tears start to well in her eyes as she saw her mother lying on the floor, and she wanted to kick herself for not moving the body out of view but there really hadn’t been time to. Krissy was frozen in place. Lisa didn’t know what she had seen before she crawled out onto the roof but now was not a time to think about it.
“Okay, honey, you had better grab what you need quickly, or we’re going to be on the neighborhood lunch program,” Lisa said and started to panic when the girl didn’t react. She couldn’t tell how old Krissy was due to her own lack of knowledge of children but she was guessing the girl to be around Justin’s age. She grabbed her arm and the girl snapped out of it and returned a look of urgency; she had seen the mass coming toward them too. Another glance out the window showed the runners practically up to the house and she screamed to Benson.
“Incoming!” she pushed Krissy before her as they headed down the stairs, and Benson’s M4 starting to fire immediately. Krissy ran when she saw her dad and Danny, which allowed Lisa to holster her sidearm while pulling the shotgun from her back. She wasn’t a big fan of how loud they were, and the kick killed her shoulders and wrists, but for clearing a room there was nothing better. She had swapped rounds with Benson, giving her three fresh mags and one installed for the Mossberg.
She kicked the front door open, sending a runner back into the one behind it as Benson ushered his kids outside, the foyer clear for the moment. Lisa pumped a round into each of the heads she knocked down with the door as she looked for the path of least resistance that would get them to the shoreline and the safety of the pontoon boat captained by the little extortionist. The pathways between the cars which were empty when they arrived were now filled in with zombies. The need for silence was over as Lisa and Benson heated their barrels with a couple of well-placed rounds.
It was evident that Krissy was used to watching over Danny, as Benson was fully mobile and in protection mode. The zombies formed a pocket around them that was closing tight like a noose. Danny started screaming and Lisa responded by emptying her last three shots in a concentrated pattern, creating a path to the south. Without missing stride, she flung her shotgun over her shoulder and pulled out her .40 caliber, firing off two more headshots. She wanted to put out some insurance but didn’t have the rounds or time. She had eleven before she’d have to reload so the time to move was now.
Reaching behind her, she grabbed Danny’s arm and rushed through the hole she had created, hoping the others followed her lead. Stopping to see who else followed wasn’t an option, as the press had become too great; they were free with open yard in front and a horde of zombies behind. She shot several more before she chanced a look over her shoulder as she switched mags in her pistol, even though it wasn’t quite empty.
Lisa smiled when she saw Benson with Krissy in front of him, bringing up the rear. She holstered her sidearm, brought the shotgun around, and blindly slammed home a new mag, knowing that she had only two left after this one. A couple of runners broke away from out of the mass.
Letting Benson take the lead since he knew the territory, she took u
p the rear, knowing that the runners were the biggest fear. They were fast and seemed to have a little more going on upstairs than the typical Z. She kept pace with the group, seeing that the runners would easily outpace them and waited until they were only twenty paces away before she spun and fired a clean shot into the face of the closest one and as close to pointblank as possible on the second. The Mossberg was marketed as center mass so when it came to headshots, she wasn’t going to be taking any chances on anything long range. More runners were headed their way but were far enough back for Lisa to catch up to the group. Benson crossed a couple yards and changed direction behind some buildings, trying to shake the horde; it seemed to be working except when the runners got too close and Lisa had to send some buckshot into them.
Out of breath, they ducked down behind some shipping containers. Lisa looked at the kids, noticing for the first time that Danny had quit screaming—in fact, he didn’t even look as if he was afraid. His dad looked at him and smiled, roughing up his hair before Danny knocked his hand away.
“It’s just like paintball, isn’t it, Danny boy?”
“They weren’t trying to eat us at paintball,” Danny replied seriously but his dad saw it for what it was: Danny’s own special brand of humor.
“No, they weren’t, Danny. No, they weren’t.”
“If they were… you probably could have gotten your money back.”
He looked at Lisa over his son’s and daughter’s heads with a smirk. “It always amazes me what he remembers.”
“I guess you had to be there,” Lisa replied. She slid her last mag into the breach and slammed it home before stowing it on her back then moving mags for her pistol to more accessible pockets. She still had four mags left and a few partial ones.
“How are you doing on rounds?” she asked.
“I’m sitting good; you’ve been doing all of the shooting. Here, take this,” he said as he removed one of the draped belts holding 12-gauge shells.
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