“Well folks, guns are not a good option with that many living, so keep them holstered or slung until you need them. We’re going to have to do this with nothing but balls and bats people, so grab your balls and swing ’em if you got ’em,” Lisa said, getting a chuckle from the mostly male group as she went around to the trunk on the Chrysler that was loaded with requisitioned melee weapons as well as firearms.
She pulled out her collapsible baton and a Gerber machete she had decided to add to her melee weapons and strapped them on.
“Tonka,” she said as she pulled out his flak vest, which was like pulling the trigger.
“Holy crap, he’s actually drooling,” Franc said as he looked at Tonka, who stood like a tightly stretched wire ready to snap. His entire body quivered with anticipation.
“My old man had a pointer who got like that every time they went hunting. Two days ahead of time while they prepped the gear, the dog almost had to be kenneled,” Kibble said.
“Oh yeah, this is his element. Do you wanna see him in action?” Lisa asked and they all nodded. She saw how effective he was in fighting Zs on the first day they met, both in the morning and that evening.
“Tonka, let them know we are here.” Lisa barely got the words out before Tonka started barking ferociously at the undead. People hiding on the rooftops sat up and looked toward the dog, but so did the zombies.
“Ah, now you done it, you had better go and kill as many as you can,” Lisa said, testing to see how receptive the dog was. Tonka simply stood there awaiting a direct command. His training had been thorough, and Tonka was a highly receptive and intelligent breed as well as individual so he waited for the command that would set him to work.
“Bite!” she said and flicked her hand in a sweeping motion.
The dog was off like a lightning bolt, ham stringing the first two he came to before grabbing the third by the neck in mid-flight and dragging him to the ground. In three shakes, he dropped it and moved to the next. A living human would never be that easy to kill, but only Lisa probably realized it from her SWAT training. It takes more than a minute of intense muscle output to strangle someone and that isn’t even when they fight back. The muscles automatically tighten as the internal mechanisms of the body itself practice the reflex of self-preservation. Zombies had no reaction to speak of other than to bite and feed. Their heads hung onto their shoulders like a wet noodle, giving Tonka the ability to snap, break, and bite through much easier and he took advantage of that.
Tonka could have run amok through the horde all day, easily evading the grasping hands. Too many just caused him to break away and attack from another angle, turning the zombies into twisted, crumpling heaps. He danced as he leaped, throwing shoulder blocks and gnashing teeth at the undead as he was taught, but it was more than that for the officer.
He was a cop, a good cop with his own mentality and identity, but he had failed when his previous handler died in the line of duty. He was punished when he was sent to his handler’s brother-in-law, who he never liked and never held with high regard. Tonka could sense it every time they met before he failed. The brother wasn’t cruel aside from some twisted carnal issues but Tonka didn’t know or care about those things. Humans were a strange species anyway to him and were there to serve a purpose just as he was.
The brother was simply lazy and kept what should be considered an athlete on the high end of the spectrum on a leash, chained to a fence in the backyard. Then one day, less than a week ago, his punishment ended and his new handler arrived and took him away from his prison. It was the same day that most of the other humans began to smell like rot. Dead, live, comatose were all terms that Tonka didn’t give a crap about. They didn’t fit into his spectrum of thought as a dog. These were walking cadavers who killed. His new handler felt fear and hate when they were around and that was enough for Tonka.
It wasn’t some mystical connection that canines had with the world as much as it was the instinctual knowledge of what is right and wrong. All creatures have it but some don’t listen to it.
Tonka always had an eye on Lisa and when they moved in to join the fight, he changed his tactics again. Now bigger and slower prey was here so the zombies all but ignored the swift-footed dog and went for the people. Tonka dragged them down from behind, killing them as they fell but there were too many for one dog to handle and the press was getting too great. He wouldn’t let this handler down; to not fail again was his motivation as he made his way back to her side.
*
“My god, that is a beautiful animal,” Kibble said as Franc stood there speechless.
“Well, let’s go join in on the fun. Carlos, you and your boys head up to the hospital and see if you can help up there; we got this for now. Check with Mustafa and see if he needs any help. Franc and Kibble, fan out left. John, you and your people go right, and the rest of us will come down the pipe. Let’s try to bottle them up by the amphitheater there between those abutments. If we can stall them enough, we can have free rein on bashing some heads. We have all seen more zombies than this before so let’s just get it done. Kibble, have your skid loader operators work toward the bridge; they can push those abandoned cars into the entrance to block it up, all right? Good, let’s do it,” Lisa said.
If somebody would have told her three days ago that she would be wading into a horde of flesh-eating zombies with a bunch of strangers, she would have made them do a drug test. Truth was, she felt right about it; even having Leon—who she was sure was destined for the gallows—by her side with a pike felt right … at the moment.
Chapter 8:
Jiggidy Jig
Lisa found that the zombies fell easier with a swift, hard, baton strike than trying to chop through their heads with the machete, which tended to get stuck in bone and cartilage. The machete became an extension of her left arm that kept targets at bay until she could get some force behind her swing. Kibble stumbled and Tonka leapt right on top of him to get the zombie bearing down on him. Kibble kicked the dead corpse away as Tonka created a defensive wall in front of the fallen man. Leon backed up and tripped over Kibble, leaving a hole next to Lisa that was two men wide.
Tina stepped in with a heavy, fabric-woven mace of some sort that snapped through bone with ease. Tina moved like she knew something a little different than your garden variety martial arts. She didn’t kick or punch, but instead became a part of her weapon, directing all of her grace and power into it—that one piece of resin-coated cord with an enlarged Monkey Fist weave around a heavy steel ball. The air rang with the dull thunk of her battle mace shattering skulls. The women were lacking the weight of the bigger-bodied men so the two pushed forward mere inches at a time, but it was enough. Lisa cracked the skull of one that was almost on Neil as Franc swung an aluminum bat like an all-star, often times taking out more than one at a time, but fatigue was settling in. Neil ducked a close swing from Lisa and leaned into Franc’s space at just the wrong moment, causing the two to bunch up and miss several beats. Tonka leaped into action, pulling two down that were converging on the two men on a side that was too close to Lisa.
A scream from Tonka’s last position ripped through the small group as two zombies bit into Leon’s leg. Leaving Leon unguarded was a sacrifice Tonka had to make, and he did it without thought. He had one job above everything else, including his own life—to protect Lisa; that was all that mattered to him.
Lisa saw their lines start to waver and could sense the panic starting to creep into the group as their swings became more desperate and the exerted grunts more ragged.
“Tina, Neil, sidearms!” she shouted and the two immediately took a step back, pulling their weapons and starting to clear the area around the group. Kibble helped Leon up and got back into the fight.
Leon stood there with a confused look on his face. He stared at the ground for a minute, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Are ya bit?” Lisa shouted. He slowly nodded his head; Lisa frowned as she continued to fight.
&nb
sp; “That sucks, Leon. Can you make it back to the car?” Lisa asked as she pulled her Glock and turned to shoot into the group that had Franc under pressure. “Get those skid loaders back here!” she shouted at Kibble as Leon continued to stare blankly into space.
“They’re almost done! Then they’ll come,” Kibble replied, realizing that they hadn’t sent a radio with the skid crews but was able to see their progress over the zombies.
Leon continued to stare at the back of the Lisa’s head.
What a fucking cunt. She took everything and when I volunteered to fight beside her, she acted as if it didn’t mean shit … man, what a bitch. I get bit and she couldn’t give a shit. No compassion … not even a sad eye look. What a mammoth fucking cunt! his mind screamed at the audacity of Lisa’s reaction. Leon had no clues as to what she had been through already and her being desensitized to loss of life happened within hours of the first day. It wasn’t him or her … it was shit and they all had to deal with shit.
With a scream of rage, Leon lifted his bat and ran toward Lisa, his mind visualizing how her head would turn to pulp and how it would flop uselessly to her shoulders after he broke her neck. His rage was great and his adrenaline at full rush as he swung down on the unsuspecting Lisa’s head from behind.
Ninety pounds of fur suddenly latched onto Leon’s testicles, forcing him down and back and throwing off his swing so that it skimmed Lisa’s back. Lisa turned and saw Tonka latched and the look of pain and rage on Leon’s face, and she knew what he had tried to do. He hadn’t turned yet and he was going to kill her and intentionally put the others at risk.
“You give me no reason to prolong the inevitable,” Lisa said as she pointed her Glock at Leon’s head. He froze in spite of the dog being latched onto him. She shook her head slowly with a disappointed look, and Leon’s eyes widened with realization. Within his own ideal of who he was and what he had accomplished in life, he never could have foreseen this ending. He didn’t close his eyes or scream. He didn’t think about the extreme pain in his balls, or his dead wife, or shattered children. He thought about his entire world, his life, and beliefs as he perceived them. In the last few seconds of his life, he realized that he had failed as a human. This thought finished with blackness. His eyes held the vision of the beautiful cop and her smoking gun in front of his cold, angry orbs before rolling back into his head. Then Tonka released him.
*
The expert shooting and two magazines apiece gave them the room they needed to push the zombies back toward the abutments, as was the original plan. The skid loaders were still shoving vehicles into the bridge opening, a task that was almost too much for the smaller machines. Both had buckets as opposed to forks, which would have been better suited for lifting cars. They had resorted to picking up one end and dragging or pushing the vehicle where they wanted it to go.
Once at the bridge, it was a matter of packing enough vehicles into the opening to stop the flow of dead from the other side, all while being swarmed by them. If it wasn’t for the almost indestructible nature of the compact chunk of steel that the skid loaders were designed to be, the drivers wouldn’t have been able to survive. As it was, they mowed the dead down as if they didn’t exist and soon were turning back to help their comrades fight the horde. People on the roof cheered as the tiny dynamos completed their tasks as if they were leveling grade on the job site before moving on to the next job.
Once the initial glut of Zs was thinned out, they were able to spread out more and the concept of herding the zombies into one spot became impossible as well as irrelevant. Herding needs herd mentality, and although zombies may form gluts and groups, they were by no means a herd. They weren’t together for the safety of the group or the sanctity those of its own can provide. They were there strictly for the relentless pursuit of food; therefore, herding was not an option. The decimation on the interstate the previous day was the exact opposite situation. They lured the zombies in as opposed to pushing them along.
The shambled-together group stood for several moments afterward looking at the carnage at their feet. It had been a short but desperate battle, leaving only one of their own lying at their feet. Leon lay a few yards away, forgotten and discarded like spoiled leftovers.
A solitary whine escaped Tonka as he looked toward the bridge they had just blocked. Lisa had seen different reactions from the dog over the last week but never a whimper. She looked closer at the bridge and wanted to whine herself.
“What the fuck is happening?” Lisa said, causing them all to turn and look, and it elicited a collective gasp.
*
Dean took to high ground to watch where Web was heading. He saw him carefully cross the street and enter into a lower-level garage. It was an area that had been cleared fairly well of zombies and still had stacks of bodies waiting for disposal. The doctor seemed to know where he was going, so Dean waited until Web was done checking the streets behind him and had entered the darkened area before he headed back down the stairs and into the building across the street. Web was just getting too complacent. He didn’t deserve to feel comfortable or relaxed, but Dean didn’t want to be seen. Not yet anyhow.
He found a back door open and slipped into a hardware store that looked to be on its last legs even before the zombies. The advent of box stores had spelled the death of many small neighborhood businesses like hardware stores. Dusty pickaxes and stiff-bladed, old-school, corn knives would have been a welcome addition to his group a couple of days ago; now they were nothing but added weight, so he left them to collect more dust and allow the spiders to complete their homes. He opened up a camp chair complete with cup holders, grabbed a Coke out of the refrigerator in a back room, and sat down to watch the street. He saw the occasional zombie walk by but not enough to form a horde. They had been cleaned out of the area, yet the city hadn’t claimed it back yet and Dean wondered why. Was it just too far from the Sam’s Club, or had something happened there?
He noticed the Komatsu front-end loader and a smaller skid loader whose cabs were covered on the inside with blood. Then he noticed the incredibly large piles of bodies, some of which blocked a complete intersection. He felt that something had gone down there, and Web, knowing the area, had something to do with it. Web wasn’t about to operate in unfamiliar territory; especially when he didn’t have too.
Movement from across the street within one of the buildings caught his eye. He sat completely still as Web looked out the window of a cosmetic surgery clinic onto the street between them. He scanned left and right before walking back into an office and Dean was able to move. He could have rushed across the street and jumped on the doctor right there, but there was a risk involved in that and underestimating a sociopath was not in his game plan. Instead, he ran up and onto the roof. If he had learned anything over the last few days, it was that there was a certain amount of safety associated with high ground. Neither people nor zombies looked there very often and it gave a good view.
The roof, like most of the buildings in the neighborhood, had a flat roof that was covered old-style with pitch and gravel. He grabbed a handful of gravel, the stone only about a quarter to a half inch in size. He knelt down by a four-inch by four-inch rain outlet set through the two-foot high wall around the roof’s edge. He lay on his side and was glad when he could see Web’s back through the window of the clinic, oblivious to Dean as he worked at something on the floor.
Dean took three stones and threw them as hard as he could across the street and into the large pane window, ducking instantly behind the wall. By the time he got to the small peep hole, the doctor was at the window searching the street. Dean chuckled. He wanted to subtly torment the man so that he would be a nervous wreck. Knowing that someone was watching and following him, but questioning if they were really there and who it was.
Every time the doctor pulled away from the window, Dean would pitch a small stone, sometimes hitting the window or the building itself. He even threw a handful in a spray pattern onto the hood of a c
ar out front, making Web jump. The doctor came out of the building to see a couple of zombies stumbling away from him on an otherwise empty street. He scanned the roof tops and saw nothing but the roof’s edge, devoid of movement. The air was still as birds and small rodents skittered about. Slowly, he backed into the building, and Dean let out a small laugh before pushing himself back from his peep hole. Dean knew the doctor had heard the laugh even though it was soft. He hoped he would think it was his imagination and slowly eat away at him.
Soon the doctor was moving again. Dean watched as he walked farther away from the city and toward the suburb of Piney.
Where the hell is he going? Piney, Piney … what is it that I am supposed to remember about Piney? Something bad?
Chapter 9
The Council
Benson grimaced as they muscled an ambulance gurney out of the hospital elevator and toward the exit. He was hoping for at least a wheelchair but the PA had said no. She had also instructed that he be practically immobile for several more days; however, some things had happened that required his presence. He wanted to handle the colonel like Lisa handled criminals, but he knew that would start a war between the people and what remained of the military. Or at least these remains of the military. There was no way of knowing how many groups of soldiers were out there. He had hoped the colonel could be an ally and was disappointed when he turned at the first opportunity. There were many directions Benson could go when it came to evaluation of the colonel’s personality, but what was the point? He couldn’t be trusted, and he didn’t have to take things much farther than that.
Another blanket was thrown over him as he started to shake from the cold, and a small switch hooked to a battery was turned, causing an electric blanket of some sort around his stump to heat. He could feel the painkillers keeping him groggy and knew he probably shouldn’t be out at all, but he felt it was important. Susan was beside him to back him up in any way she could, and Krissy was once again taking care of Danny back at the tent.
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