“Oh, crap!”
He slid out the left side, pushing his club with him. The machine lifted off, and he felt it get close to him as he crouch-ran to the front of the truck. The old Ford was in the middle of an empty lot. He had nowhere to go.
Maybe I could get inside the cab?
Before he could finish his thought, the drone jumped upward so it was on top of the cab, about ten feet off the ground. The little gun tube swiveled to him.
Almost without planning it, he hefted the wooden club and let it go toward the copter. It impacted the underside of the rotors with a loud crack. Pieces of wood flew back at him, and the drone tipped backward. He ducked himself down to the front bumper, worried it would tip over on top of him and catch him with one of the deadly blades. That would be a horrible way to die.
The truck lurched as the drone banged loudly in the bed of the truck. The blades weren't stopping, but they clanged over and over on the metal.
Rather than gawk at it, he ran.
As he rounded the corner of a building onto the next street over, he heard the drone begin to emit a high-pitched siren. It sounded a lot like a cry for help. He found a dark nook and squatted down to catch his breath, again—needing the break. The sprinting was more than he could handle.
While he waited, another drone flew by. It came from across the street and passed near enough he felt the wash of its blades. It went in the direction of its fallen friend.
“Feet, I need you,” he whispered.
There were no other—obvious—threats on the street, so he got back to it. Now he was without his chair-club. He only had what jiggled in his pocket.
I'm breaking the cardinal rule of life: running with scissors!
He giggled to himself and enjoyed the distraction as he notched another couple of blocks. That's when he tripped—again.
This time, it was more of a slip. He saw dirt or something on the street, but the low light was tricky. He didn't count on banana-peeling the underlying layer of fluid. He was back on his feet in a flash, pants soaked in god-knows-what, looking for the inevitable attacker, like the previous trap.
But nothing came at him.
The debris on the ground was horrifying. And he'd seen something like it before. Two wide swathes of crushed bodies lay upon the ground, from one side of the street to the other. The Tiger tanks made the same horrific tracks when they crushed all the zombies between the warehouses earlier that day. But these tracks looked to be weeks old. They'd intermingled with dust, trash, and foliage. But here and there he could watch a lone hand move or the remains of a head with an ever-moving mouth. Where there were no bodies, such as where he slipped, the tanks had left slick tracks of blood and other gore. Crushed and compacted.
He tuned it out.
This isn't happening!
His stomach rebelled, but he didn't throw up. He ignored that he'd slipped on the effluence of the remains of things that had been pulverized days or weeks ago by heavy-treaded army tanks.
The scissors mocked him from his pocket. He was carrying a useless weapon in a world where rocket-propelled grenades were the order of the day.
Where the tank had gone was not his concern.
Whose side it was on was not his concern.
His concern was ahead. He stepped over the tracks and picked up the pace.
Running at night wasn't his thing.
4
He ran for about ten minutes while the darkness fell. There were no street lights or other electrical sources. He thought the darkness would be an advantage against the crazy people who might shoot at him, but it turned out to be a big liability for fending off zombies.
Almost without realizing it, he'd picked up a handful of runners. Among all the other noises of the city, and his own footfalls, he almost missed the sound of feet behind him. He kept to the middle of the street, hoping to avoid tripwires or piles of human remains, but a quick look back while running across an intersection let him make out at least three or four people chasing him.
“I don't suppose you're alive, huh?”
No response.
Damn.
He steadied himself. Forest Park was still miles away, and now he had a fan club. The risk of falling or getting delayed in any way had just become instantly deadly.
For a little while, he tried to tune them out. Just like any number of track and cross country meets he'd endured. He wasn't a contender in most of them, but he was a finisher. That was all that mattered, most times.
A large search light peered down from a helicopter to his right, as he cruised through the night.
Two jets flew very low, almost directly above his head. He absently thought about bombs—he was on their flight path—but resolved that if he was ever given time to think about bombs, he probably wasn't being bombed.
Blocks ahead he watched as someone fired a machine gun—an honest-to-god machine gun—as they sent the tracers skipping across an intersection. The rounds danced from his left to his right. A big spotlight at ground level illuminated the intersection for a few seconds, then turned off.
He considered slowing down so he could avoid that cross street until the shots were gone, but slow wasn't in his vocabulary. He continued ahead, though it didn't look like the bullets were letting up.
At the last intersection before the dangerous one, the attack stopped. He picked up his pace, intending to get across in the lull.
Did they stop, or are they reloading?
That was the most important question on Earth.
When he arrived at the road, he looked both ways as he would on any other run. A pair of Humvees were far down the road on his left. Shockingly, both sat under powerful spotlights, almost like they wanted to be seen. Each also aimed searchlights where they fired their guns. They were two intersections down, and they each fired down different roads. At that moment they weren't firing his way.
He sprinted. The cross street was huge—it felt like a superhighway—and it took him an eternity to cross it. The entire time he imagined the gunners changing their aim, so the bullets came his way.
A tracer flashed in front of him.
He'd made it a little over half way, but the rounds started passing in front of him.
The searchlight caught him in full view.
He threw himself down and lined himself up so his head faced the guns. He didn't know if that was a bigger risk than spreading himself out lengthwise, but it seemed to make sense. His head was turned so he could see the runners behind him.
Five or six had tagged along. They were closer than he figured they'd be.
Unlike him, they made no effort to get low. As the gunners up the street noticed their rounds were making contact with something, both gunners focused efforts on Liam's intersection. The runners stood out in the glare of light.
The first zombie was halved, and he fell with a disgusting splash to the pavement. He'd only made it a short ways across.
Liam used the distraction to claw his way toward a body that had been shot earlier. It put something between him and the gun trucks, though it would offer no protection if the bullets wanted him.
One gunner stopped, but the other swept the entire road again. It brought down a second zombie, and when it hit, the tracers spun off in odd directions. In the uneven light, Liam saw the woman get shredded.
The second gunner started up again. His shots were short, so the rounds hit the road between Liam and the Humvees, and the rounds skipped over his intersection. Several skipped right over his head. Some made funny sounds as they went by.
One of the runners made it all the way to Liam and tripped over him as he lay there.
As was common with the zombies, it struck the ground with great force, without using its arms to catch itself. The hollow slap of its skull on the asphalt would have been funny in any other situation. Now, not so much.
The zombie seemed to notice him as it struggled to get up. Instead of finding its feet, it crawled toward Liam. It wore shorts and a white tan
k top with bloody accents.
He struggled to get out the scissors.
Several more rounds whizzed right over the zombie.
“Just a little lower,” he shouted, knowing he wouldn't be heard.
The gunfire stopped completely.
He propped himself up on his elbow, intending to prepare to fight the crawler, and the gunfire resumed. Both guns angrily pounded the intersection like it had killed the gunners' pet cat.
The zombie was unafraid. It closed the distance. The scissors felt miserable in his hand, but he readied them.
At the last second, he gambled on another tactic.
Using his experience with squats, he got to his feet and then sprang up.
The tracer rounds bounced and skipped wildly further down the street, but he ignored the danger. As expected, the zombie got to his feet as well.
All the better to grab my prey...
He dropped back down and tried to continue drag-crawling himself across the street. His black suit jacket would be harder to see than the man's white shirt. Or, he hoped that would be the case.
A repetitive thumping noise sounded from the zombie. It had been struck several times in succession, but it stumbled after Liam. He moved as fast as he could on his hands and knees, but figured if the zombie caught him—it would bring the angry thumps with it.
More impacts.
He imagined a tracer flew underneath his chest as he was on his hands and knees. Maybe it was the fear.
He picked up the speed like he was doing exercises with his track team.
“Who can cross the intersection the fastest, without standing and running? Go!”
In ten seconds he was across and had another corner of a building between himself and the gunners. He got to his feet and looked back.
The pursuit had been wiped out. The zombie closest to him had huge chunks removed from his chest, and one of his arms had been taken clean off. His white shirt had turned sickly black, and blood poured from a large hole in its head. It had taken the full force of an untold number of machine gun rounds. And, it had almost made it.
The lights flicked off.
Liam waited for fifteen seconds and then peeked around the corner. The Humvees were aiming their lights down other roads now.
Behind him, a couple of runner zombies came into the intersection, saw the lights, then headed that direction. It was as if they'd been following him but now had juicier targets.
Since they had lights on themselves, along with powerful weapons, he allowed that he was glad the zombies were targeting someone else for a change. If he wanted to get safe, getting to those guns might be the right choice to survive the night, but that wasn't the direction he was heading.
His journey westward continued.
5
He tried to guess how far he'd come since he'd left the Polar Bears. With all the distractions and changes in directions, he estimated he'd gone three or four miles. That left at least two to go.
A twenty-minute run under ideal conditions.
He felt the dead weight of fatigue hit him hard. The combination of the drain of adrenaline and the fall of night had him wishing he could get off his feet and rest.
Push on!
The zombies were out there, but he kept moving fast enough they couldn't see him. He thought there could be runners behind him, but he couldn't be sure. His footfalls were stealthy compared to the zombies, and if they were back there—he'd never assume they weren't—they were very quiet.
More gunfire from every direction in the city. The chatter of the machine guns was distinctive, but a thousand other guns were being discharged over the urban landscape. Rarely, someone would shoot close enough to worry him.
This city has lost its mind.
If he looked down the cross streets to his left, he'd often see the tracers of the Humvees two blocks over. They skipped or arced to the west in the same direction he was going. But they couldn't reach him.
When he was only a couple blocks outside Forest Park, he saw the dim lights of the medical towers ahead. They still used generators to keep the places lit and functioning. They called to him.
“I'm here, Liam.”
“I'm coming, girlfriend,” he said to the darkness. The reply was the ricochet of a bullet. It snapped somewhere close. That got him to move from the middle of the road and approach more cautiously.
As he closed the distance to the park, he became aware of where all the gunfire was originating. It wasn't just all over the city. It was a very specific point in the city. A perimeter, actually.
The boundary of the park was a combination of derelict cars, parking barriers, and whatever junk people could stack in piles. They'd filled the gap between buildings. It presented a formidable barrier to keep the zombies out, assuming the defenders had sufficient ammo and that the military wasn't instructed to bomb the place to oblivion.
But the larger problem was that he was now on the outside, looking in. Those gunshots were coming in his direction. The far side of a big intersection was blocked by city buses, dump trucks, and other large vehicles. A few men with spotlights walked on top, illuminating the zombies in the street outside their position. Gunners would then dispatch them. A ton of bodies littered the intersection.
They appeared to be using a similar tactic as the military down the road. They were drawing in the zombies by using light, which gave them clear shots at the easy targets. The biggest difference was the caliber being used. No machine guns or tracer rounds, here.
Liam heard men and women yelling from across the street, but they sounded as if they were on the other side of a wide river. The zombies in the “river” between them kept him from yelling out to them. In the darkness of night, anything could happen.
A jet screeched overhead.
Choppers whomped in the distance.
Always gunfire.
Amidst all the confusion, he felt something sting him on the back of his shoulder. He reached back and froze.
A little helicopter drone hummed by, well overhead. It moved with silent grace over the intersection, and he could hear the little wisps of air as the drone tagged other zombies standing out there. It didn't hurt to remove the little tag, and in the darkness he had no way to know what color his was. All he could think about was that he was now targeted for death.
A methodical cadence of gunfire erupted nearby. Four shots in a row. He searched the intersection as it sounded as if it were coming from that direction.
He saw it. It was on the next block. The little drone tank came out through the glass frontage of a fast food chain store. With a quick turn, it engaged some zombies on the parking lot, then headed for the road.
He threw down the drone's tag. He briefly considered throwing it into the flat, but couldn't say for sure if anyone still lived there. It would be a terrible way to die—some kid throwing a killer drone tracking device into your living room. One country music star was enough responsibility for him…
He crawled along the base of the brick home, looking for a way inside. It pained him to do it, but he needed a place to hole up until the light of day. He'd never get across the intersection, or the road, or the barrier, if he had to run out of the black of night to do it.
But he wasn't going to sleep in the streets, either.
There was a tiny side window to the basement, as he hoped. The home was very similar to Grandma Marty's. He had to push firmly with the bottom of his shoes, but the lock was weak. He pushed the window open and then slithered feet-first into the basement.
If there were survivors waiting down there—or zombies—he'd take his chances with them, rather than deal with that tank drone again. It continued to shoot at will in the night.
Please, just one night of safety.
It was rare for him to pray outright, but he was so tired he pretty much forgot Grandma's rule never to pray for himself.
6
He fell asleep and dropped into a dream. It was a vividly bright day in Grandma Marty's backy
ard. The grass was a lush green, and the flower gardens were in full bloom. While he walked, he studied the larger neighborhood. It took some time to process.
I know I'm dreaming. That's odd.
The small garage at the end of the lot was flattened. Every garage and fence on the near side of the alleyway had been similarly smashed. Several houses, including the one next to Grandma, had been burnt to the ground. He made sure her home was OK, and to his relief, it stood with resilience as it looked down on him.
The top level was Angie's apartment inside the two-story brick building. So many memories flooded his mind, but he kept grounded by remembering he was inside his dream. Being in this house, so much like hers, probably jogged something in his memory.
“I'll avoid Angie's room like the plague,” he said with laughter. He figured if he was dreaming, he might as well enjoy it.
From inside Grandma's house, he heard screams. In fact, they were coming from the basement—his old bunk space. Much as he'd done in real life, he went to the side of the house and found the narrow basement windows. He kicked one in, then slid through.
His bed was still there. It hadn't been touched. His gaming laptop was on the bedspread, just as he'd left it. While fighting the deep longing for the computer, he looked at the rear doorway. It was just as well he didn't try the basement door, the dryer he'd placed in front of that door was still there.
It was as if he'd just stepped out. Minus the fact the other houses were in ruins. That wasn't something he'd witnessed.
Am I seeing the house as it is now?
Another scream. He recognized Victoria. It came from deeper in the basement, which looked like a hoarder's stash, once he walked beyond his little living space. He inched through the junk and noted with some pride the gap in the rafters where his dad had left him the small-caliber guns. Those had saved his life, and Grandma's life. He was positive of that.
“Liam, please hurry,” Victoria's voice was soft and wistful.
He became driven. Deeper he went. The dream basement was different in one major way. It was much larger. The piles of junk continued for minutes while he struggled through, and then over them. He ignored the changing scenery below him.
Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 Page 6