by Jack Hunt
Ryland jumped on the back and patted. “Go!”
I hit the throttle and tore away nearly losing him off the back. He clung on for dear life while Daniels turned and fired a few more rounds at those barreling out. We zipped south on Main Street planning on giving them one hell of a chase through the sleepy old town. Somewhere between Copperfield Inn and Rite Aid, I slowed down to see if they were even following us as by the looks of it no one was giving chase. Tobias pulled up beside me. All of us were out of breath, pumped up on pure adrenaline.
“Are they coming?”
Daniels brought out his binoculars and looked back. “Come on,” he mumbled under his breath.
“Well let’s not stick around to find out,” Ryland said, patting me on the back.
“The whole point was to draw them away. It’s not working. Why aren’t they following?” Tobias added.
Daniels shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I’m gonna go take a look,” I said.
“Don’t bother, they aren’t coming,” Daniels said. “Something’s gone wrong.”
In that moment all I could think about was my brother. Had they found them?
“Ryland. Off now.”
He slipped off and before Daniels could say anything, I gave the throttle a twist and brought that puppy around and took off down the road until I was about fifty yards away from the front entrance. I swerved the bike and revved it a few times to get their attention. There were about nine skinheads outside, all looking like they were ready to come and stomp on my face, but they weren’t moving. They remained in place. I tightened the strap on my rifle and reached for a Glock. Perhaps they needed a little motivation. I swung that Glock around and unloaded three rounds in their direction causing them to scatter and take cover behind their vehicles. Now I fully expected them to take action — nope. They weren’t even firing back. I remained there for a few more seconds before peeling away heading back to join the others. Daniels had been watching it all play out through the binoculars. He lowered them as I got closer.
I shrugged, casting a nervous glance over my shoulder.
“They know what we’re doing,” Daniels said.
“How?”
While we were looking back at the hotel, unbeknownst to us, ten of them were making their way around. Using the same idea we were employing against them. If Tobias hadn’t turned to our left and spotted one of them, we would have been dead, of that I was sure. “Move!” he yelled revving the engine and taking off as we came under fire. I didn’t have a chance to follow them as they came out of nowhere unloading a flurry of rounds. Ryland hopped on the back and we had to take the bike between two stores down onto a dead-end road called Railway Place. However, I didn’t know it was a dead end until it was too late. Here we were doing our best to avoid the onslaught of bullets, and we’d forgotten that the town was overrun with the dead. I swerved the bike to avoid slamming into ten of them near the end of the street. The wheels spun out and both of us came flying off. The bike skidded forward taking out the legs of four Zs.
Now you have to picture this in your mind. It’s pitch-black, the dead are pissed off, a group of ten armed skinheads are making their way down towards us and there is zero cover nearby. The closest buildings are two old wooden structures about twenty-five yards away. Ryland is groaning from having taken off a layer of skin from his leg. I’m hobbling. My ankle is absolutely killing me and we have no other option than to run.
The staccato of gunfire forced us to dash for the structures without even a complaint spilling from our lips. We crossed the old railway line, our boots pounding the gravel, staying low and praying aloud that we didn’t die. Ryland kicked at the battered front door and it swung open and we stepped into the building without hesitation. I slammed the door closed and approached the window, using the muzzle to smash the glass and return fire. I had two goals: kill as many of those assholes as I could and make them think twice about approaching. Both of us had to hit the ground as they peppered the thin clapboard walls with so many rounds I thought it would never end.
When it did that wasn’t good either. As now I expected them to burst through the door and finish us off. As I lay there on the ground with glass and wood splinters all over my back, all I could hear was the sound of Zs groaning. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from inside or outside. Everything blurred together. Just a mishmash of voices, gunfire, snarls and boots running back and forth. Were the dead attacking them? God, I hoped so. I turned and brought my rifle up, raking it back and forth from the windows to the door. Any minute now they would burst in. I slid back across the floor using feet to push me towards some form of cover until I saw the hand coming down over my face. I jerked to the side, and Ryland dragged me away. As he turned his tac light towards the back of the shed, there they were, chained up against the rear — six Zs. In the noise of gunfire, and Zs outside we couldn’t distinguish what was in or out. The walls were so flimsy and thin, and it was so dark inside, I didn’t even spot them.
They rattled chains like Marley from A Christmas Carol, and groaned, their teeth grinding together as they let out unearthly cries. Ryland and I slipped into the darkness at the east side of the building and waited for the dead to break loose, or the skinheads to enter. Neither happened.
Seconds turned into minutes and though we knew the skinheads weren’t gone as Ryland spotted a couple taking cover behind some old rusted railway equipment, at least they weren’t charging in. Ryland returned from the window to his seat on the dusty ground covered in cobwebs. He yanked out a pack of smokes and as he took one out, I asked for one.
“But you don’t smoke?”
“Just give me one,” I said holding my hand out. He dropped it into my hand and I squeezed it between my lips. He lit it and I broke into a coughing fit. He chuckled and shook his head. That shit was nasty but after all we’d been through, I just wanted anything to relax me, to help me think clear, something to distract my mind from the situation we were in.
“They’re still out there. I saw a couple head off towards the hotel. Guessing they’ve gone to alert this Dominick fella.” He glanced over at the Zs chained up. “Who do you think did that?”
“Maybe it wasn’t someone else, perhaps they did it themselves.”
“Yeah right. I doubt it.”
“Might have been good folk who didn’t want to harm others.”
“Uh huh,” he mumbled breaking into a grin. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
I exhaled hard and looked up at the ceiling. My eyes roamed. “How come every time we get the shit end of the stick, I find myself with you?”
“I guess you’re lucky,” he replied blowing smoke in my face.
I got up and stayed low looking for some rear exit. I shone the tac around our dingy prison.
“You know this reminds me of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“Why?”
“Well you know the way they are trapped at the end and have this big shootout with the Bolivian soldiers. I figure that’s the way we are gonna go out. Guns blazing, balls to the wind and all that stuff.”
I peered out the window and saw the silhouette of two figures moving. I couldn’t tell if it was the dead or skinheads. “You are aware of how that turns out for them, right?”
“Of course. The kid was killed and Butch shot himself in the head.”
I turned. “That wasn’t how it ended.”
“Oh not in the film. In the movie the director shouted cut just as they emerged shooting from the hip all heroic like. It was brilliant. Best film ever. They just don’t make them like that anymore.”
“Of course they do.”
“Name one?”
“Well there is the remake of True Grit.”
“You mean, True Shit. C’mon, that movie sucked balls.”
I cut another glance out the window as he droned on about the stylistic downfall as though he was some professional film critic.
“What if we release them?”
“What?”
“The Zs. We send them out.”
He chuckled. “Dude, I know they’re already dead but do they look like they want to go out for a stroll? The second we loose those chains they are going to gobble us up like a two-bit whore fallen on hard times.”
“You got a better idea?”
He blew out another cloud of smoke though this time he made a few smoke rings that he stuck his finger through. “Well now that you mention it.” He got up and brushed himself off. “Yes, I do.”
He took a hard hit on his cigarette then pounded the wooden floor with one foot and got down on his knees and blew into the cracks of the floorboards.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“We go down, brother.”
“Are you out of your mind? Have you seen how many cobwebs are in this room? I don’t even want to imagine what is below.”
He shrugged, “Okay, then we go out Butch and the Sundance Kid style.”
I stared back at him for a few seconds and looked out again.
“Scotty. Trust me.”
“I do. That’s what bothers me.”
Over the course of the next few minutes he used the crowbar to pop up four of the floorboards, revealing an ocean of cobwebs. Now there were few things that freaked me out beside Zs but spiders were one of them. Anything but that.
I gazed in grimacing. “There was no way some small little sucker made those.”
“Oh get over it. There is nothing spiders hate more than smoke. Blow some cigarette smoke in their faces and we’re golden.”
“I’m glad you are. Go on then, you go down first, clear the way and I’ll follow.”
He chuckled and dropped down.
“Oh, we’ll still need to do what you said and release the Zs.”
“But I thought you said that idea was lame.”
“By itself, yes, but combined with my winning idea, it’s perfect. Those bald-headed bastards will have them on their hands, and if they come in, they’ll find the place empty and assume we must have been bitten.”
“Right,” I said with a frown on my face. His logic didn’t exactly add up, but I wasn’t going to debate it. There was no time. Right now getting the hell out of here was all that mattered to me. As Ryland went through some smoke-blowing ritual, wiping away the bed of cobwebs that reminded me of the inside of a cotton candy machine, I crossed the room to check out what was holding all these Zs together.
The one closest to me had his Adam’s apple gone. There was a huge gaping hole where his throat used to be. It looked like the damn thing was trying to scream, but nothing came out except a mixture of groans, gurgling and what sounded like someone trying to hawk a loogy. I looked down at the old fella’s waist and noticed the thick chains threaded around each of them and then attached to the wall by a huge lock. There were two locks either end. I turned back to Ryland to see what progress he was making.
“How we doing?”
“Oh just dandy, I think I might have swallowed one. Hairy little thing he was.”
I shuddered at the thought of it.
“And you?”
“Well, I’m going to open the door, then shoot off the lock, and…”
“You can’t shoot it off.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ll hear it.”
“Then how the hell do you expect me to loosen the chain — bite through it?”
Ryland crawled his way back to the opening and came up looking like he’d had a vast amount of white Silly String squirted all over his face. He shook his head like a dog.
“Use this,” he said handing up his crowbar. “I’ll crack the door open, you release them and then get your ass down. I’ve got to cover up this hole before those ghouls end up joining us down here.”
So that’s what we did. Ryland jumped up, crossed over to the door but cast a glance outside first. “Looks like they aren’t back yet. Still three of those guys out there.”
“The others must have gone after Daniels.”
He nodded. “Right, you ready?”
“Let’s hope this works.” I jerked back trying to keep out of reach of the Z I was now referring to as Adam. Instead of attempting to break the lock itself, which would have been near impossible unless I had superhuman strength, I jammed it into the notch of wood that it was connected to and began to heave on it.
“Come on, Scotty. Put some muscle into it.”
“You want to come try? This wood isn’t as rotten as I thought it was.”
“Speed it up.”
I gave it every ounce of strength and just when I was about to turn it over to him, it gave way. Wood splintered and I heard the sound of chains loosening. The dead lurched forward, and I jumped back, making a mad dash for the hole. Sure, I didn’t like those eight-legged freaks but between them and getting torn alive, I was ready to face my fears. I landed hard, and Ryland kicked the door open and sprinted across the room, dropping into the darkness. Both of us grabbed up a plank and put it into place, then he reached up and grabbed the next two. The weight of the Zs as they burst away from their binds sealed the planks into place bringing down a deluge of dust. Now you have got to know we were not standing upright, neither were we on our knees. There was only enough room for a person to lay down. So here we were clawing at the earth heading for the back of the old dilapidated structure. Above us the dead moaned and cried as they stumbled forward out of that enclosure into an onslaught of gunfire.
That was our window of opportunity.
And with every passing second, it was closing.
On the Run
I felt like an escaped convict making a break for it under the cover of darkness. As we emerged at the rear of the structure, we stayed low crawling across the dusty ground like two soldiers in no-man’s-land. Gunfire pierced the night as did the cries of the dead. That was the beauty of our situation. We didn’t just have to rely upon the dead. The noise they made, along with the eruption of bullets, attracted more. Right now those skinheads had their hands full. We stayed in the shadows and made a beeline for the forest. When we made it I breathed out a sigh of relief and looked back. All that could be seen was muzzle flashes lighting up the night like fireflies blinking on and off.
Ryland placed a hand against a tree to catch his breath.
“Told you it would work.”
“Yeah, well, we ain’t out of hot water yet,” I said jerking my head. “Let’s go.”
We hauled ass through the forest, heading west with the goal of getting back to the hotel. In the distance we could see a handful of skinheads engaging with a slew of Zs and slowly backing up until they were trapped and cut off from both sides. The dead tore into them and they vanished beneath the tangled mess of arms and legs. We made our way around the back of the North Creek Depot Museum and hung back at the corner until we were sure it was clear. Getting out of the hotel had been the easy part. They weren’t aware of us. Getting back in was another thing entirely.
Ski Bowl Road wrapped around the back of the hotel. We snuck across and hurried for the coverage of trees butting up against the hotel. Crouched down in the foliage we could hear voices.
“Yeah, two of them. We got them on the far side.”
A radio crackled.
“Bring ’em in.”
I looked at Ryland and we didn’t need to say anything, we knew what it meant. We remained there in the humidity of the early morning waiting for an opening so we could climb up a drainpipe and head back into the suite. I felt sick to my stomach. My heart was hammering as I sprinted for the pipe and climbed it like a monkey. I gave Ryland a hand and within a matter of two minutes we climbed back through the window. Ryland exhaled hard. I closed the window behind me and was about to head down to the lower half of the Townhouse Suite when we heard more voices.
“Yeah, both floors are cleared. Clever really. We nearly missed the false wall.”
Both of us froze at the top of the stairs, we didn’t even want to
move a muscle. I brought my rifle around preparing to engage when I heard a door close and then the sound of boots growing silent. Once we could no longer hear them we made our way to the ground floor. I gazed around expecting to see bodies but there were none, neither living nor dead. I closed my eyes as the realization dawned on me.
“They’ve got them.”
Ryland eased open the door and took a peek out. He was quick to close it and then head back upstairs. “They found the wall. Scotty. Let’s go.”
I was frozen in place for a few seconds trying to grasp what to do next. What would have Daniels wanted, or Nick for that matter? He would have wanted me to get far away but I couldn’t. Everything I had left, all the meaning of my life was in that group — Diane, talking about a cure, my brother, the only one left in my family — I wasn’t turning my back on them now. But Ryland was right, we needed to get out or we would be of no use to them. We scrambled out of the building, dropped down to the ground and made a dash across the road into the tree line. I could see Ryland was going to be of no use as he paced with a hand on his forehead. “I knew we should have left those four alive. We basically kicked a hornet’s nest and expected them to lie down and take it. Stupid. Stupid!”
“Keep your voice down,” I said crouching at the corner of a building looking down Main Street. He started to laugh. “What are you laughing about?”
“You. You still think there is hope. They are going to kill every single one of them, if they haven’t done it already, Scott.”
“You don’t know that.”
He tossed a hand in the air. “Whatever, man. We might as well leave for Boston now. At least it won’t all be in vain.”