“There are still a good number at the car in the intersection. If they notice us it will again become a foot race and I don’t think we have any other tricks ready to help us evade another mob. I am sure Charlie doesn’t want to chance the woods and I agree with him on that. The question is, how do we get through this intersection without drawing that whole group on top of us?”
Looking around I saw nothing that we could use. To our left a Wendy’s set just a little ways from where we were and across the road from Wendy’s was an IHOP. Looking to the right, the road sloped down from where we were towards the intersection and the car. Down the hill a bit and across from where we stood was Chik-Fil-A, Panera Bread and a place called The Vitamin Shoppe. This was not a whole lot to work with. I found that I was asking myself the always important question, “what would MacGyver do?” Even the famed jack of all trades who was purportedly always ready for adventure was shrugging his shoulders to me on this one. “Come on Mac” I said in my mind “you can do this.” MacGyver looked around and then asked the question I found myself asking at the same moment.
“We have any explosives?”
“What?” Sass asked.
“You know, things that go boom.” I said.
Everybody looked to Jane, who smiled back at us saying, “Why does everyone always look to me when we need to blow something up.”
“We count on Amanda to kill people and you to blow things up for us. Everyone has to have their own niche.” I said.
“And what would your niche be exactly?” Sass asked me.
“I am what’s known as sexy zombie bait.” I answered. I am proud to say that Amanda had to put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. I looked her dead in the eyes and said, “It’s an industry term.” To this Amanda punched me in the arm and said, “Stop it.”
“I have a few items that may interest you.” Jane said taking his pack off and looking inside. “Three grenades, a few sticks of dynamite and some C4 as well as a handful of traditional blasting caps to set em off. I have a Claymore at the bottom of my bag but not really sure how that could help.”
“Where the hell did you get a Claymore?” Sass asked.
“Same place I got my night vision goggles.” Amanda answered.
I took my own pack off and unstrapped my collapsible longbow from the outside half pocket where it rested. Then I opened the side pocket, which ran the length of the bag, and took out two of my arrows. I looked over to Jane and told him to get me two sticks of dynamite ready. It was time to set up a diversion.
“I think one stick will be enough Charlie. Two blasts may draw even more zombies down on top of us.” Jane said.
“Hell, for alls we know one will do dat.” Marky Mark said.
I thought about it and put one of my arrows back into its compartment and zipped it back closed. Jane zip tied the dynamite to the arrow. “When I light this baby don’t say or do anything cute. Just let it fly. You hear me Charlie?”
“Understood Jane. Trust me; I don’t want to be anywhere near this thing when it goes off.”
“What are you aiming for?” Amanda asked.
“The bank behind the car. I figure all I have to do is get it close.”
“Amen my brother.” Jane said and handed the arrow back to me. I pulled the string of my bow back and took aim on the building.
“You good?” Jane asked.
“Good.” I answered.
I heard a match strike and saw the flame as it entered my field of vision. The fuse lit and time seemed to stop when I realized what I had in my hands. I thought that I was going to freeze up. That I was going to just sit there holding the string back till we all blew up. I couldn’t bring myself to just let go. I had forgotten about the bank, captivated by the burning fuse growing shorter and shorter. Just when I was absolutely sure that I would never be able to let this arrow fly I felt my arm twitch and saw the streak of the wooden shaft race up and away from us.
The arrow never landed. I had held it so long that it exploded above the ground, but it had almost reached the bank when it went. The pressure wave from the explosion blew the windows in and unhinged one of the front doors. The reaction in the intersection was as immediate as it was violent. The zombies lurched into movement as they made their way for the spot where the sound and the flash had come. For the moment none of the dead were looking our way. I folded my bow back up and just slid it into my pack instead of re-strapping it in its place. Everyone else was still looking down the road except for Amanda and me. She saw that I was looking at her and she nodded to me before grabbing Jane by the sleeve and saying roughly, “Come on!”
We entered the road making a left and almost running for the next parking lot beyond Wendy’s and IHOP. I could see a large Home Depot sign looming from out of the trees. I wasn’t sure if the zombies at the bottom of the hill were still keeping all their attention away from us, but I was starting to realize that using the dynamite wasn’t as good of an idea as I had originally thought. As we had started up the hill I had thought that I was a genius, but as we grew nearer to the Home Depot entrance I noticed that there were dead from up on top of the hill who were now headed towards the intersection behind us to see what the uproar was about.
We had zombies behind us and now zombies in front of us. I had been told once upon a time in high school that it may be beneficial for me to re-evaluate my life choices in order to have a better future than the one I was currently on track for. I could once again hear the voice of my, most likely long dead, councilor Miss Shift repeat those words as I watched the eight zombies top the hill and start to slowly make their way towards us. Moans came out of their mouths as they adjusted the path they were walking to point directly at the entrance to Home Depot. There was no doubt that they had seen us. Amanda looked back to the rest of us, “We have to deal with this as quietly as possible. No guns.” Understanding washed over the rest of us. It was going to literally be a street fight. I looked back at Fred and Marky Mark who had the deer in the headlights look on their faces.
“Snap out of it! Get ready! You’ve been trained for this, you know what to do.”
From behind me I heard Marky Marks whisper of a voice say, “Yeah but dose practice dummies never tried ta eat me.”
THIRTEEN
There has been a lot of planning and thought concerning each person’s gear. First off, the clothing that we wear when we come down to the ground has been constantly evolving over the last few months. We looked at practicality as well as the most common bite zones and where on your body is the most vulnerable if you are in a hand to hand combat situation with the dead.
From the feet up, we are each wearing thick tube socks underneath a pair of steel toed boots that come up extra high onto the leg giving added protection. Above that we have a pair of long johns under our blue jeans. There had been much debate over what type of pants would provide the most piercing protection, which is what you concern yourself with when trying to avoid a bite from a zombie. It had come down to Dickies work pants or blue jeans. I’m sure that there are better options out there, but we had to go with what we could find. At one point, while I was confined to that damned wheel chair, Amanda and Jane had left to go find us some weapons. They had returned the following day in a box truck loaded down with building supplies and a wide assortment of combat equipment. However, they said that they hadn’t been able to find any clothing that would be any better than what we had at Wal-Mart. I thought I had read somewhere how police had puncture resistant gear for riots, but nobody else could confirm, or deny, that I was right about this, so the idea of trying to ransack a police station got shelved and never really got a second look.
We all wear belts. We do this more to have something to strap on extra items we may need than to help keep our pants up. On my belt was a multi tool, two knives, a compass, and an old cell phone holder which has a two packs of fire crackers, two smoke bombs and a lighter in it. Above the belt line each person varies a bit. I have on a turtle
neck, then a thick cotton sweat shirt, and then a black cotton hoodie on top. I have a pair of leather motorcycle gloves on my hands and under the gloves I have ace bandages wrapped from my hands halfway to my elbows in order to add more protection for my forearms. The neck area is the most vulnerable part of most of us. I only have the turtleneck and hoodie to protect me there. Then there is the head. Not many of us wear head protection. Although for a long time there was a debate on whether or not to wear motorcycle helmets. In the end it was decided to leave it up to the individual. Helmets made it safer, but greatly limited your vision and screwed with your depth perception at times. I imagine that motor cycle helmet manufacturers never designed one with the thought that the person wearing it would be fighting off multiple attackers.
Then we get to the back packs themselves. On the outside of the packs are the weapons that we will need to get quickly. On the outside of my pack is the collapsible long bow that I strap into the half pocket which is made of this kind of webbing material. On the left side of the back pack is a long pocket that goes the length of the pack. I use it as a quiver to store my arrows. On the right side of the back pack is another version of the long pocket. I modified this pocket by cutting the bottom and the top of the pocket away leaving a sleeve where I could carry my trusty baseball bat for when I would have to do hand to hand fighting. Amanda has attempted to get Sass and I to give up our bats and use some other weapon that would be easier to control or quicker to make multiple strikes, but so far, she’s had no luck.
Inside the pack itself are the supplies that aren’t expected to be needed on an emergency basis. Food and water, first aid kit, extra ammo for the three guns I have strapped to my body and some additions I have made myself. Super glue, extra fire crackers as well as few other fireworks that may be useful to have in certain situations, a can of lighter fluid and a few other items that could possibly be needed during the course of a ground excursion.
The clothing we wear is designed to keep us alive in case we screw up and let a zombie get in close enough to bite us. Layering the clothes makes it harder for them to sink their teeth in far enough to actually break our skin. The packs are designed to give us the tools we each need individually in order to make sure the zombies never get close enough to warrant the need of layered clothes.
Having taken these measures to keep us well armed and safe during any form of zombie skirmish you would think that heading into a fight with a group of the dead wouldn’t cause as much fear as was felt the first time you saw the them staggering toward you. That isn’t the case. As time has gone by, the zombies have got scarier and scarier looking. Rigor never did set in, as we had thought, but injuries and some form of decomposition around existing injuries have made them into something more resembling the monsters you would expect. Their skin began to take on a greenish yellowish hue after about two months. As well, the dirt, blood, puke, bits of flesh, and other matter that is ground into their skin and matted into their hair adds to the whole terrifying image that these things generate simply by being themselves. You don’t want them anywhere near you. You don’t want to risk the chance that you will become one of them. Now you have to accept that they are going to be getting close, you are about to enter combat with one of these monsters and there is nothing you can do to stop it from happening except run away. However, if you choose to run away then you’re going to have to recognize the fact that every step you take will attract more and more attention. Eventually you will wear down and have to stop running. When that happens, you are going to have to fight a group of these creatures instead of just the one.
Why am I bothering to tell you this? I guess what I want to convey is that it never gets easier. On that first day it wasn’t as bad as it is now, they didn’t look all nasty. Those zombies were just newborns. They didn’t look much different from everyday people. There would be one every now and then that would have the freaky looking eyes. Other than that, they looked like everyday people. Well, everyday people with bloody wounds. The zombies we face now actually look like zombies. They’re all nasty and grungy and every one of them have those eyes that are almost pure white except for the red iris in the center. The eyes have this kind of glow to them at night. It’s just scary. And let’s not even start discussing the smell. On the first day the smell was nonexistent. There was a hint of that sick smell you can pick up in hospitals every now and then, but now that smell has been multiplied by a hundred. It’s the smell of sickness and infection. It’s not the sickly sweet smell of decay that I had read about in other books. Instead of smelling rot you're smelling the untreated open sores and wounds that now cover the bodies of the dead. The smell itself hits you like a punch to the face long before the dead ever get close. It’s all you can do to not look away. If you lose your nerve and flee then you will run into the same situation that we just talked about. Eventually you will tire and stop running and when you do it’s all but game over for you. Standing your ground takes guts, but it’s your best chance of surviving.
I pulled my bat out of its sleeve and threw the back pack to the side of the road. Sass had his bat. Jane had a police baton in each hand and Amanda had batons as well, it seems as if that piece of equipment is a favorite among military people. Marky Mark used brass knuckles. The amount of up close and personal that you would have to experience to use that particular weapon was something I had no desire to ever experience. That only left Fred and Fred had…nothing. Fred wasn’t wearing layered clothes. Fred had no backpack of supplies. Fred had no range or hand to hand weapons. What had I been thinking? Fred was as useless in a fight as he was vulnerable. He had taken Amanda’s self-defense course, but that was the only thing that he had going for him. The zombies were making their way into Home Depot's parking lot, and we were backing our way into the parking lot in order to have more room to maneuver.
“Fred, get behind us and make sure nothing sneaks up on us.” I saw him nod and back up a few more feet from where we had stopped. That was all the free time I had before my attention had to be turned to the fight in front of us. Jane let out some form of primal scream and blasted the closest zombie in the head with one of his batons. Amanda did a spin move which allowed her to connect with two separate zombies putting one down and knocking one backwards. I was standing between Marky Mark and Sass, watching our military peeps clean house Jackie Chan style.
“You think we are even going to have to fight? It looks like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are going to finish them off before we can even move.” Sass said.
“Yeah, I know. Why’d we get all psyched up for this if they were going to kill everything?” I said.
“You’se guys can stand around if ya want. I’m gonna punch me some dead faces.” Marky Mark said as he pulled his turtle neck over his mouth and nose and waded into the melee. Sass and I watched him go and I turned to Sass shrugging my shoulders and saying, “Well hell, we got all dressed up, why not?”
A second group had joined the initial group of eight making the number of attackers around twenty. Jane and Amanda were dropping bodies left and right. They had easily taken down six of the invaders and were stalking towards more. Marky Mark was doing his best Rocky impression dropping his first zombie as I reached the battle, and as I stepped into my first swing, I watched him kick a zombie in the gut forcing it to bend over then he drove both fists into the back of its head sending it crashing into the ground below. He took a step back and kicked the zombie in the head driving his steel toed boots into the middle of its face.
My bat connected with a zombie, its face crumpled and it flew to the ground, but the impact hadn’t been enough to scramble its eggs. This happens more often than you would think. All the zombie movies will make you think that a metal bat to the head will cave a skull in every time, but that just isn’t the case. It’s about a fifty-fifty proposition as to whether they will get back up or not. I have never had one survive two whacks to the head though. It may have something to do with the fact that if they get back up my second
strike will always be to the same place where the first one landed. Always return to the weakened spot. I’m not trying to tell you how to fight your zombies, I’m just saying it has always worked for me.
Marky Mark had a third zombie by this point and was finishing a little spin move that ended with him smashing his elbow into the zombie’s face. The nose had flattened against the things face and the lips had split in multiple places. There was thick green something oozing out of the busted-up features, but Marky didn’t really seem to care. He drew back his right hand and brought that fist into the zombie’s face over and over again turning it into nothing more than shredded skin and bone fragments. While he was lost in this rage another zombie was closing in on him from behind. I threw out a kick which pushed my next targeted zombie backwards and away from me; this would buy me enough time to take care of the one sneaking up on our resident pugilist. It wasn’t until mid-swing that I realized Sass had seen what was going on as well. He had come in from the other side to take out the sneaky little dead guy. I saw and understood what was going to happen a split second before the blows landed. His bat and my bat connected on opposite sides of the head at the same time. This caused the zombies head to literally explode like a geyser. Blood and green stuff and brains and pieces of bone exploded out of the opening in the things face. Marky Mark had heard the collision and spun around just in time to see the facial explosion of the unluckiest zombie in Home Depot’s parking lot. He jumped back avoiding the blast of zombie smegma and laughed at us. “NASTY!” he said through his laughter, then he spun back around and stalked towards his next target. Sass and I exchanged a look and then we turned and sighted our next target as well.
It’s hard to describe a battle against the dead because they are all pretty much the same. They stagger forward, arms reaching out to grab you and mouth held slightly open in anticipation of the coming meal. You use your feet to kick them back, so you can manage the crowd and line up what shots you want to take. When you feel the moment, you strike. If the moment doesn’t feel right push them back some more or back pedal. That’s at least ninety percent of the fight when you’re out in the open. It gets more interesting if you don’t have room to maneuver. I could describe how Jane and Amanda looked like they should have been in a movie with the way they were flying around using all of their combat training to cave in skull after skull. I could talk about Marky Mark’s ferocity as he didn’t once back down or hesitate from jumping on any zombie that got in front of him. He was like a machine that had a pummel setting. Everything fell before him. Sass and I ended up doing nothing more than picking up the scraps that those three were leaving. If I have to be honest about it, I was absolutely fine with that arrangement. I was still scared of these things. I was terrified of fighting them so up close. If I had my way about it we would never do this again, but I’m a realist. I know this will not be our last fight face to face with the dead. I will have to keep doing this until eventually they get lucky or I just screw up and they infect me. The odds are in their favor. Every time I step down off Olympus the odds of being cast down to live among the locals grows larger and larger.
Samantha's Song Page 14