by M. Lorrox
After taking that last shot, Eddy jumps to the ground and runs toward the other truck. Three bullets left. Halfway there, he notices zombies running toward him now. He judges that they’ll cut him off before he can get to the truck. He turns and runs straight away from them, drawing them toward him like fingers pulling a thread. Eddy turns and runs backward, aims, and fires—straight along that thread. Three zombies lose their heads from the bullet.
Two shots left. He spins and starts running again toward Roger’s truck.
Sophia struggles to stand as more zombies grab at her and bite into her. She’s growing weak and dizzy. A mangy-looking zombie of what was once a young woman bites hard into her thigh, but it can’t tear the flesh away. Sophia looks down at it through a growing haze. It shakes its head but still makes no progress. The bowie knife splits into the top of its skull. Sophia buries the blade in the zombie to the hilt, and the mouth releases. Sophia uses her other hand to hold the head while she withdraws the blade, and she gets it out just as a lean zombie with a shaved head leaps at her and takes her to the ground.
Out of the corner of his eye, Eddy sees Sophia fall, and as the zombie that tackled her rears up, snarling and hissing. -BWRANG!- A bullet removes the head above the jaw. Just a little skin from the neck holds the lower jawbone, teeth, and tongue. Air is still being pressed out from its lungs by its diaphragm, although now it just makes a sound of air bubbling through a wet tube.
It collapses, and she pushes it off to the side.
Only one shot left. Shit! Eddy sprints for the truck, and when he gets there, he leaps on top. Sophia hasn’t gotten back up. Zombies bend down and claw at her as she screams. Eddy has a thought. He screams out, “Play dead!” He raises the gun and fires his last shot. It takes out one of the zombies above her, and it severely maims another as the bullet slams into its side under the arm, breaking through its ribs and sending bullet and bone fragments shredding through its internal organs. He lowers the gun. Don’t fight them—you can heal.
He watches the zombies take a couple more bites out of her. He watches as she writhes and twitches in silent pain. I have to distract them. “Hey, zombies, come and get me!” With one hand, he tosses the gun in the air like a twig, allowing it to flip around, and then he catches it by the barrel with the same hand. He holds it like a club and waves it above his head. “WOO-HOOO! I’m ready for you, you fucking assholes!”
Charlie blasts through town. Not many people are on the road tonight. After all, it’s a Sunday night in a small town—one with an ever-increasing zombie problem. He slows at intersections but never needs to stop.
What the hell is he thinking? A hundred zombies? He’ll be eaten alive!
Charlie doesn’t pay attention to the intersection ahead. He speeds through it. No one was coming.
The other kids are going to know. Especially if he’s hurt and he heals. They’ll tell the parents, and the parents will tell others…
Charlie knows that living in secrecy is crucial to their way of life. Nobody is bulletproof, and Minnie is extra vulnerable. One asshole on a paranoid mission could destroy his whole world.
He’s killed for less, MUCH less.
Tomas leans on the side of Craig’s seat, looking out through the windshield. Every so often, he sees Eddy sprinting by amazingly fast—faster than he’s ever seen anyone run. At first, he thought it was just adrenaline, but not anymore. Tomas is shocked to see Eddy run, jump, spin, and strike zombies so hard, so fast, and with what seems like so little effort. It’s like a fight scene from a movie… How’s he doing this?
Craig comes to. “Ugh.”
“Craig!” Are you okay? Is anything broken?”
He opens his eyes and realizes he’s sideways, lying on the door of his truck. “What the fuck happened?”
“I think the gun blew up, and then bullets in the back blew up, and we crashed.”
Craig looks around anxiously, then out the windshield to the moonlit field. “Where’s Bill? Is he alright? And Jess and Joe?” He tries to get out of his seat, but he’s still belted in. He struggles for a second before realizing.
Tomas shrinks, feeling like his reaction to the explosion wasn’t the most heroic. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything. Eddy was here, but now he’s…out there.”
Craig climbs out of his seat and rights himself, kneeling on the door now. “Oh man. I feel like garbage. Think I’m gonna puke.” He collapses but catches himself with his arms. He drops his head and holds himself up with the center console.
“I’m glad you’re awake. I called Eddy’s dad; he’s coming. And I called my parents. Do you want to call anybody?”
Craig moans and lifts his head. “Yeah, call David, my uncle.”
Tomas pulls out Eddy’s phone. “What’s the number?”
In the back of the upside-down Land Cruiser, Roger is still out. Jess starts to cry. Her chin is caked with blood from her broken nose, but her clothes are soaked in Joe’s blood. She has him propped up, leaned against her.
“Sis, I’m getting dizzy.”
He’s cold. I’m cold, but that might just be his blood. Shit, there’s a lot of blood. “You stay with me, Joe. Eddy’s out there fighting back the zombies. It’s gonna be alright.”
“How’s he doing?”
Jess looks out the window in disbelief. “It’s crazy—he’s destroying them.”
Joe grins and closes his eyes. “I bet he is.”
Eddy swings the rifle like a club, crushing skull after skull with the stock. He runs around to stay on the edges of the horde; he saw what happened to Sophia—getting surrounded like she was will only get him gnawed on, too.
He runs and uses the trucks as shields, then comes around the sides of the group and strikes. He’s doing another lap when he hears Jess scream out.
“Eddy! They’re crawling in!”
The smooth ceiling of the flipped SUV isn’t a godsend anymore. The zombies explore through the windows with their hands, and one just stuck its head in the front passenger’s window. When it saw the kids in the back, it growled hungrily and started to snap its teeth as it climbed in.
Jess eases Joe off of her. “I have to move you, kiddo.”
He’s very pale and fading fast. He murmurs something and blinks.
Jess props him against the back gate of the truck. She scoots forward toward the zombie with a wince—positioning herself past Joe and Roger—and holds her left foot up in the air. Her knee is bent, cocked, and ready to stomp. Her weight rests on her right side. The pressure on her broken femur sends mind-numbing pain, but she holds it in.
It isn’t long before the zombie is past the front seat and crawling toward the back on its hands and knees.
“Eddy! Help!”
When the zombie is in range, Jess kicks and connects her heel with the bridge of its nose—cracking it and sliding some of the skin off the face under the eyes. It moans, shakes its head, and looks at her with gray eyes above skinless cheekbones. It howls at her and swings out with its arms, trying to grab her.
She holds her leg away from it, out of reach. It puts its arms back down to crawl closer again, and again she lets out another swift kick—this one to the forehead. The strike connects and cracks its skull, but the zombie isn’t dead.
It is disoriented, and it wavers—looking here and there along the ground beneath it. She kicks again, and the crack blows inward, sending bone fragments slicing through its brain. It drops as another zombie starts climbing in, this time through a back window.
Jess is tiring quickly. With each kick, the jolt sends shock waves of pain from her broken leg through her body. She’s breathing heavy. Don’t faint…don’t fucking faint!
The zombie’s entire body is now inside. It growls and starts to climb over the dead one, toward its three-course meal in the back. Jess opens her mouth to scream for Eddy again—for the only person who could help right now—but she doesn’t get the chance to call out for him.
An arm reaches into the truck and grab
s hold of the zombie’s leg. “Gotcha!”
It turns around to look, but it’s already being dragged out of the window with surprising speed. It claws and howls, but it’s torn straight out the window. As soon as it’s all the way outside the truck, Eddy releases it, jumps into the air, brings both hands to the barrel of the rifle, and holds it over his head. As he lands, he slams the butt of the gun into the zombie’s head so hard that the wood stock explodes away from the rest of the gun.
The splintered stock stabs upward, embedded in the earth through what was once a zombie’s skull.
Eddy frowns. Crap, that was stupid. He looks around and sees other zombies almost on him again. He starts to run and yells over his shoulder, “I’ll be back in a second!” He pulls away from them and has an idea. Block the windows!
He turns and runs back. A pair of zombies were neck and neck right behind him, but now they’re right in front of him. He still holds the barrel of the 45-70. It doesn’t have the same reach anymore—not since it lost its stock—but it’s still a devastating weapon in his hands. He swings the steel toward one zombie’s temple. It crushes into it and sends the zombie’s head crashing right into the other one’s head.
-Clonk!- Both zombies fall.
Nice, just like in the cartoons! Eddy leaps over their falling bodies and is almost back to the truck. Probably just the one is dead, though. Still, that was pretty sweet!
As he approaches the truck, he grabs a zombie that he had already killed and throws it at the window. It hits the truck hard and shakes it. “I’m going to block the windows!”
Jess reaches out to steady her brother in the shaking truck. “Take it easy! Joe’s hurt!”
“Help’s on the way; just stay inside!”
Another body slams against the truck. Then another, and another.
Eddy runs, jumps, and kills a zombie wearing overalls. Then he throws it against the truck, and he is on to the next one.
Soon, he has all the windows covered with stinking, rotting zombie flesh. He takes a breath and feels a sense of satisfaction, but it quickly fades. An arm grabs him on the shoulder. He hears a zombie growl as it reaches for him with an open mouth.
Ahhh!
Eddy spins and frees himself, barely in time. The zombie snaps his jaws tight with so much force that some of the teeth shatter in its mouth. It is undeterred, and it opens its mouth again, hissing and trying to bite. Eddy clocks it on the side of the head with his fist, sending it to the ground. He stomps on its neck. -Crack!-
That was close. He looks up. Shit! He spins around, looking in all directions. As he turns, his stomach drops. The hope and exhilaration he felt just a moment ago sinks away and is swiftly replaced with dread.
He’s surrounded by zombies. He stands at the center of a circle of zombies, half a dozen deep in all directions. He has nowhere to run.
June, Minnie, and a relaxed Rusty ride in the back of the Jeep. Sadie drives, and Skip makes phone calls from the front passenger seat. He hangs up and sets down the phone.
“It seems Tomas called everybody’s parents; they all know.”
“Are they coming?”
“Yeah, and they’ll be armed.” I wish I had my bow. I’ll keep my old one in the truck from now on, for emergencies.
Sadie can’t help grimacing at the thought of guns in people’s hands. She hates guns almost as much as Charlie does. They’re just so impersonal, and they can kill too easily. She takes a deep breath. “Hopefully, the kids are safe… Charlie should be there soon.”
Minnie flows in and out of sleep as they drive. The big, knobby tires being pushed fast against the pavement release a soothing rumble that drowns out the rest of the world. It relaxes her.
June’s tension, anxiety, and fear is heightened by the noise from the tires. The boiling thoughts in her head are only louder now in an effort to out-scream the rubber ripping against the road. She squeezes her knees with her hands and dips her head down toward them. Her hair falls down the sides of her face, shielding her from the world. She focuses and tries to breathe more slowly. You better be fine, Eddy. You just better be.
Inside the impromptu zombie-corpse fort where Roger, Jess, and Joe are barricaded, the zombie that Jess killed oozes infected blood out of its smashed skull. The side windows are blocked off with the bodies that Eddy had piled up, and inside, all they can do is wait.
Jess holds up Joe, who is fading. He quakes with weak shivers.
The smell inside the truck is atrocious, and it helps Roger come to. He opens his eyes and squeezes his head. “Damn.” He sees the dead zombie and then the zombie-clad windows, then the scared Jess, and then the very pale Joe. What the hell? “What’s wrong with him?”
Jess motions toward his chest. “Piece of shrapnel. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
Roger is puzzled. Why is he sitting up? He shouldn’t be sitting up; that’s not how you do it. “Lie him down and lift his feet.”
As Jess lays him down, Roger looks out through the rear window. He has a view toward the road and sees more zombies clambering down the hill. He looks away and positions some bags under Joe’s feet. “What’s going on outside?”
“I should put pressure on it now, right?”
Roger looks at the wound and doesn’t think it looks that bad, but then he sees Joe’s shirt covered in blood. He looks at Jess and notices that her clothes are also soaked through with blood. He tries to hide his surprise and the sudden hopelessness he feels for Joe. Fuck. It must have hit a vessel. The kid’s a goner… Oh, that poor girl. He takes a breath and blinks. “Yes, put pressure on it. That’s all we can do.”
Jess puts pressure on the shoulder. She’s in autopilot now; her emotions are turned down for the time being. If they weren’t, she wouldn’t be able to speak, let alone try to care for her brother.
Roger understands. He didn’t see active combat or any injuries like that while he was a wheeled vehicle mechanic in the Ordnance Corps, but he’s heard plenty of stories and seen too many soldiers coming back on stretchers. His heart grows heavy for her, but they’re all in danger right now. “Jess, what’s the situation here?”
His shoulder is bleeding everywhere, and I’m putting pressure on it.
“Jess? Do we know anything about the other truck?”
“Eddy is out there fighting the zombies. He said help is coming.”
Roger looks out the back window. He can see sporadic zombie bodies in the field. He moves to the side windows and finds a place where he can see past the mound of piled-up corpses. He finds a gap underneath a dead zombie’s knee. The view is partially obstructed by another one’s hand, but Roger can see the mass of zombies that surround Eddy. “He’s out there?” He’s fucked.
Inside the ring of zombies, Eddy knows he can’t get held down or attacked on all sides—he’d be killed. Instead, he charges forward. He opens up some empty space behind him while he attacks those in front of him. He stomp-kicks the knee of a zombie, snapping it backward. The zombie falls but catches itself with its other leg, dropping its head down to the level of Eddy’s chest. Eddy hits it in the temple with a hook, denting in its skull and dropping it permanently.
Dealing with that zombie took just a second, but the circle of zombies around Eddy has closed in on him more in that short time. As Eddy focuses on the next-nearest zombie, arms from the side grab at his shoulders, ripping at his shirt and vest. Eddy swings his arms wildly, connecting with some zombies but not all, and their reaching and tearing continues. The zombies he does connect with are knocked down, their old position in queue is quickly filled, and their new position at his feet give them something else to try to latch on to.
One zombie grabs his leg while another grabs his arm. Eddy looks down as the zombie bites into the side of his calf. He lets out a scream as he yanks his leg away. The zombie chews on some of the fabric of his pants, but it didn’t take away any of his flesh. The teeth cut into his leg, though, and his blood seeps through tiny parallel tears in his skin.
The zombie on his arm had more success, biting in while Eddy focused on freeing his leg. Eddy rips his arm away as fast as he can, but the zombie’s jaw was clenched on him. It tears short lines in his arm before finally getting a ridge of skin caught between its front teeth. Eddy rips away, and the zombie gets a taste of his flesh.
The pinched-off skin sends a flash of pain to Eddy, and he screams out. He swings with his other arm and knocks the zombie’s jaw right off its face, smashing its top teeth at the same time. Eddy cuts the back of his hand on the broken teeth of its upper jaw, but he has no time to deal with the injury—another zombie is grabbing at his face, and it gets a finger in his mouth. Eddy tastes the death of the finger; it’s dry, the skin is loose, and it tastes like filth and decay.
Eddy spits out the finger as he recoils his head. He flails his arms up to push the hand and arm away while he gags. The circle of zombies has closed in on him, and as he lurches to the side, a zombie from behind him grabs onto his leg and sinks its teeth in.
Charlie is on Hyatt Creek now, and his eyes search any sign of where the vehicles left the road. As he rides, he scans left and right. It’s dark out here, away from town, but the moonlight lets him see the surroundings well enough. He needs to find Eddy and the others, neutralize the threat, and get them out of there in one piece. That’s his mission, and he plans to execute it with efficiency.
He notices through some trees that there are lights in the field up ahead. Ah, the headlights! Good. The road straightens out in front of him, and he can see how it curves to the right in a few hundred yards. They must have gone off the road to the left.
Okay, attack strategy. Step one: Secure the ground. Impossible. They’re in the middle of a giant field, and probably every zombie within earshot is being drawn toward them. The lights are on, the zombies moan—others are coming.
Step two: Acquire strategic advantage. Maybe Eddy and I could jump on the vehicles and use them like high ground, or split up the zombies and take them on one at a time. Maybe Eddy and I circle them and run around them like herding dogs and pick off the ones on the edge.