by catt dahman
Alex whooped as they handed out supplies and lightened their packs of MRE’s. “I love it, Kim, and I’d kiss you, but Beth would kick my ass.” He pretended to flutter his eyes at Kim.
“She’d only kick your ass because she knows one kiss, and you’d try to cop a feel,” Kim said back, making Alex laugh.
“I don’t kick my best hair stylists ass; kiss away,” Beth said.
“Better be your only stylist; no one can French braid like I can.” Alex pretended to pout. He was a masculine type, and if he didn’t tell people he was gay or only pretended effeminate behavior, no one would ever guess; he liked to make them laugh though, when he put on a show.
“Conner, you, Juan, Alex, and Johnny have the Explorer,” Kim said.
Johnny was rough looking with short, bleached-white hair, even more so with the roots growing out dark. She still wore her leathers, although she had traded stiletto boots for comfortable, study military boots. “I like it; we can ride in style, but who’s driving?” Her group began to argue over that good-naturedly.
Levity was essential for sanity.
Before, she had played a tough-gal role to hide insecurities, but with these people, she knew she was a valued, trusted friend, and while she was indeed a strong woman, she had risen to her own level by earning that faith via hard work, consistency, and training. If she died in the next second, she would know she was going out to save her friends and give her life for another. She was not the same truck-stop waitress she had been a month before.
Kim and Beth went back out, hoping to find another vehicle as easily. She looked longingly at a bookstore. “That’s one thing I’ll miss.”
“They’re still there. You have books.”
“Not new ones. And they’ll get old and moldy.”She motioned him to come with her, and they ran into a coffee shop. “Besides, who wants to read fiction when we have the real horror right here? No way.”
Kim kept guard while Beth scooped up packets of coffee, telling him that Len was a secret fancy-coffee addict and that these would put him in a better mood for days, thus easier on them. Before they went back out for the search, Kim grabbed her lightly and kissed her for a few long seconds, savoring the feel and smell of her.
“That’s pretty romantic, Kimball,” she laughed.
“I worry about losing you.”
“Well, hang on extra tight. But it ain’t gonna happen; you’re stuck with me.”
“I try to hold on tight.” He held her. They had become friends while at the hospital, but that had quickly evolved into love. Sometimes he wanted to run away and find somewhere safe for them to hide, but she was a warrior in her heart; that’s what made her so amazing. Fighting zeds wasn’t easy for her, physically or emotionally, but she drew from down deep and found her inner strength; he loved her for that.
They saw movement in a dollar shop next to them. With a sigh, they scooted over to the doors with their glass broken out.Their boots made crinkling sounds as they tried to move quietly. They listened. No moaning.
“Hello?” Kim called out as they both sat on their haunches below where an armed person might fire a weapon. “We won’t hurt you; we’re looking for survivors to help.”
“Don’t shoot us.” A woman and a little boy peeked out from behind a rack of clothing.
“We won’t. Are you alone? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Maybe.”
Kim and Beth entered the store and looked around carefully, nerves on edge. “Are you hurt or bitten?”
The place had been looted; the shadows made deadly threats; the sounds around them were too soft and too loud, as they strained to hear anything coming at them.
“No.” The two looked at them suspiciously, not coming any closer and ready to run. The woman slid the child behind her own body. “Are you?”
“No, we aren’t infected. Do you need food or water? We can share.”
“We have it.” Her clothing was dirty, but they both looked well fed. “You here to rescue us? Take us to a shelter?” Her obvious fear was tempered by the sad, unrealistic hope on her face.
“There’s no real shelter. I can direct you to a hospital where there are other survivors, food, a doctor, and protection.”
“They, the government hasn’t gotten us back on track? There’s no rescue? Where are the military and the people to rescue us? Did they forget us?”
“No, just us, I’m afraid. We can help you. We’re what is left of the military…such as we are…but there is no rescue coming.”
“They forgot us.”
“There is no they left,” Kim said, “you can join the ones we told you about.”
“No, we’ll stay on our own,” she said, “thanks.”
“They are dangerous: zeds and raiders; you‘d be safer with others,” Beth told her. “We came from there and were there a month, but now we’ve come out to find other people and maybe find a better place to rebuild.”
“We hide. We can run if we have to. We’ve done okay so far.” The woman backed away as if the pair might force them to go to safety.
“If you decide to go to the hospital or to the pharmacy, you will find a bunch of dead zeds there, but you can find good people, also. Tell them Kim and Beth sent you.”
The woman and boy took another step back, beginning to fade into the gloom. “No thanks.”
“If you change your minds.” But Beth saw them vanish into the darkness; a door slammed a second later as they fled. “They were so scared.”
“I know of no tests to tell bad guys from good guys.”
Hearing a horn honking and gunshots, they left the dollar store at a run, heading back to the rest of their group. Len and Rae had brought back a shiny Range Rover and a huge Suburban from a car lot close by.
The rest of the teams were loading the vehicles and picking off the few zeds nearby. Down the street, a large group of zeds, heading toward the teams, was attracted by the noise that the teams were making. The team members were loaded up and ready to go; using scopes for the distance, the team members stopped and shot some zeds in the head.
“Too much noise, we’re drawing ‘em to us,” Johnny grumbled.
Kim fired at a few more. “We saw a woman and child; I don’t want these creeping up on those two because we attracted them,” he said.
“They didn’t want our help, wanted to wait for the rescue that’s never coming,” Beth added. “It was pretty sad to see.”
“False hope,” Len said, angry that people held on to fantasies of the military swooping in to save everyone and setting situations right and back to how they used to be.
Everything had changed. No one was coming to help, and not working together and adapting would cause failure. But then, Len was always pissed off at everyone, and the world in general.
The others paused to finish off the hissing, moaning group as it drew closer.
Len had Julia, Rae, and Tink in the Range Rover, and Kim gathered the other four with him in the big Suburban. In pure anger at the circumstances, Len drove over a zed, causing a sickening, loud crunch as they pulled off one street and onto another one.
Tink whistled at the crunching noise. “Love the sound of one less of those bastards.”
When the Reds were just coming out of their comas and beginning to attack people, Len and several others had met George and Tink at George’s house where they had been under siege for a while, having to fight their way out at the expense of two of their friends.
Len thought there might still be plenty of survivors who had to be hungry and thirsty after hiding in boarded up homes for a month. He wanted to look for survivors, find the rest of the dangerous raiders who brutally had killed so many so he could torture them to death, and find where they were supposed to rebuild the world.
“I think there may be some survivors, but I bet the zeds flushed a bunch out and chased them down, nine or ten maybe,” George said to those in his SUV. “Then you have those with immunity, who hid but have diabetes, heart trouble, or have ha
d accidents:the little kids and old geezers like me. I don’t think we have more than one hundred out of five hundred left, maybe two.”
“If we used big tractor trailers, why couldn’t we block the main downtown off and have a safe zone here?” Beth asked. “After we do whatever it is we are out here doing.”
“Maybe,” Kim said as he drove. He wanted to know what the zeds were doing and where they were. He wanted to check for survivors. “Right now, we’re going out to look things over, to see what we have out there.”
There were wrecks and a few barricades where it looked as if people had tried to fight back, but the litter of bodies didn’t tell much of the story or who had won.
They headed north, each vehicle on a separate street, watching for survivors who might be signaling from upper stories of buildings; there was nothing to indicate survivors.
At the next intersection and with his binoculars, Len looked at a school downhill, surrounded by a few zeds. As far as they knew, it hadn’t been used as triage for the infected, but now an SOS sign was hanging from a window of the second story; it was as good a place as any to begin a search.
Conner’s Explorer came down the side street too fast, and he jumped out, visibly anxious, and at Len’s side within seconds. “I can’t get my radio to work right, but Len, we have company coming.”
“Bad company, huh?”
“We saw some movement, so we jumped out, being careful of course, but after we cleared the building and got to the roof, we found some clothing up there, blowing around.” Conner shook his head. “Come on.” He led Len and Rae to a close building that they had cleared fast. “You need to see it for yourself like we did.”
Len followed him, wondering why Conner would break protocol and then have Len see something for himself.
“We’re moving too fast and carelessly; there could be zeds,” Len protested.
“Trust me, I doubt you could find a zed right now, even if you tried,” Conner said, leaving Len to wonder what he meant.
On the roof, Conner motioned them to stay down and hidden, but pointed in another direction.
Rae normally never said a word, even though these people were her friends; she had, in the past, faced too much prejudice from those who thought all Middle Easterners were terrorists. Now, she mumbled in her native language without thinking, something that meant she was disgusted and amazed by what she had seen.
Hearing her voice surprised Len, but he was too shocked to think beyond what he was seeing. At least a thousand zombies, shambling, moaning, and drooling, stood in the center of a street, jammed body to dirty body.
The smell was eye watering. There were Reds and freshly turned zeds, rotting corpses, and partially skeletalized zombies, young and old, some intact, and others partially devoured, snapping at one another and looking in the same direction with milky eyes, as more shamblers and jogging zeds came to join their ranks.
“This makes my blood run cold,” Conner said. “What do you think they’re doing there?”
Len looked at them, turned his head the other way, and then looked back. “I think they’re gathering to attack and to infect anyone in the direction they walk.”
“Looks as if they’re facing north.”
“That is where we just saw an SOS hanging from a school window.”
“Collective consciousness,” Rae spoke again, “like birds flocking, moving at a split second. Like bees…a hive.”
Looking the other way, Len saw that a smaller group of zeds was also gathering, but none was headed for the larger horde, yet.
This was one of those times that they wanted to crawl into a safe spot and cover their heads, to be hidden.
Len wondered again why, as a retired Marine, he had to lead teams of civvies on these suicidal missions. Why him? Why couldn’t he just run and save himself? Oh yeah, cause he was a fucking jarhead, too stupid or loyal to run away for our own sake.
With deep sighs, they went back down and outside to their friends. They described the scene to the rest. No one looked happy at the news. They all looked the same: why couldn’t they just run away? However, not one hinted at running, nor would any; they were Len’s badass crew.
Before a decision could be made, they needed more information. They talked it over, and as decided, they drove close to the school.
“You see anything?”
“Nothing, maybe they left or were over run?”
They saw mangled bodies outside of the school; the doors were closed and windows secured, so they likely had not been over-taken. A few zeds tottered around, falling and getting back to their feet, stringing along intestines and flesh as they caught on branches.
“Kim?”
“Not yet. Wait.” Kim watched. “There we go.”
A man looked out the window of the school, waving.
How many? Len gestured with a motion to stay quiet as well.
Five. Ten. Fifteen. The man flashed his hand up repeatedly.
Around the building, zeds were shambling closer to the vehicles. We’re going to get you out. Hang on. Len hoped the man understood his gestures. Get ready to go now. Getting so many out at one time made it more difficult, but there was no other way. If Len weren’t born for this type of mission, he was now.
Adrenaline swept Len’s body. He quickly went over his plan, and although there wasn’t time to argue every detail, everyone immediately disliked the idea because it was too dangerous and too dependent on being very stealthy.
Tink, George, Beth, Jeff, Julia, and Alex left the rest, driving slowly, trying to tempt some of the zeds away. It wasn’t working, and four of them had another mission anyway. It wasn’t a good plan, but no one had anything better.
They planned not to use the guns; the others kept Len, Juan, and Kim covered as they used baseball bats, which had been looted, to bash skulls into pulp.
Conner took a turn, smacking a woman over and over until her head was little more than red and grey pudding; she had finally stopped moving and moaning. He shivered in fear and disgust but almost wished he could start again as hatred for the things filled him.
As much work as it took to put down a few even with guns, it would be dangerous and take a lot of sweat to take out a thousand of them. Anger drove their energy; to them, hitting a zed repeatedly in the head wasn’t hitting a person, but was a strike at the virus.
Taking turns, they put the zeds down, the ones who were shambling around in the front of the school.
When Kim had first been a part of using melee against the zeds, he had vomited from the violence and smell. The sounds of the bat striking the skulls were sickening, and it took a bit of force not only just to hit the skulls, but also to break the bones and damage the brains. Each beating took several swings to take the corpse down and damage its brain enough to keep him from getting back up.
Kim had fought several times, using pipes, a fire axe, bats, his gunstock, and melee, but it was always a violent, messy job that he was always glad to be finished with. Like Conner, he felt the stress of sheer work in killing one of the shamblers.
With adrenaline flowing, Kim bashed women, men, and a few children who were stumbling towards them, with thick, ropey saliva, dripping dangerously from filthy maws. These were mostly intact with bites on arms and faces, which had turned green, purple, and black and had swollen with pus. He focused on the broken, slimy snapping teeth to avoid thinking of them as children. He seriously disliked putting the kids down.
Inside, the noise of furniture being moved away from the door stopped, and the door cracked open.
From a street over, they could hear faster zeds moving closer as they moaned loudly, shuffling, and falling over each other as they converged. It sounded as if a few smaller groups had merged and were almost on top of them.
“Why are they coming already?”
“Maybe they heard us.” Johnny grimaced as she slipped inside the school.
Len and Conner called up to the second floor. “I wanna look out the window,” Le
n said. “We’re coming up.” They bolted up the stairs, still alert to danger and guns ready.
“Incoming, oh, my God, did you bring a horde with you?” a man yelled from upstairs.
Kim and the rest stood downstairs, looking over the inside of the school.
“They’re coming?” the woman next to Juan and Kim asked and burst into tears.
“We’ll get out,” the other woman with her promised.
“Ummm. How’d you get hurt?” Kim asked, eyes on the first woman’s arm that was wrapped in a fairly clean shirt, but the wound was beginning to leak through and had the tell tale smell of infection. He glanced at Johnny.
“One of them almost got me; his teeth actually just grazed me.”She shivered with the memory. “I’ve never been so terrified.”
“They are scary,” Johnny agreed.
“I’m Rose. This is Mia,” the second woman told them as they shook hands. “Luckily, we got away from her and ran, but the human mouth is very dirty with bacteria, and Mia was scratched by her teeth, and now the bite is infected.”
“It did have dirty teeth,” Mia said, “nasty thing made me sick.”
“Let’s look.” Johnny grabbed a first aid kit from her pack. Snapping on latex gloves, she removed the make shift bandage. There wasn’t a distinctive mark, but a blackish purple lump was surrounded by angry red flesh.
Using a piece of gauze, Johnny swabbed the quarter-sized area, carefully adding some pressure as she wiped it gently. Thick, greenish, yellow pus oozed out in a stinking mess. She pressed more infection out slowly. “Hurt much?”
“It’s kind of numb in the middle,” Rose said, “feels better now that you have drained it. It feels tons better, actually.”
Johnny needlessly added a swipe of antibiotic cream from a swab and a fresh, thick bandage. “Feeling pretty rough?”
“Feverish and a headache. My joints ache as if I had the flu; damned infection is kicking my ass. Do you have oral antibiotics?”
“We’ll see about that in a few,” Johnny said, stepping back and throwing her trash into a corner. She traded knowing glances with Kim while sharing some non-aspirin pain reliever. Johnny had a strong stomach for the medical problems they had been faced with since it all began.This left her a little pale, knowing the woman had a slow death sentence. Still, the massive draining of infection had to have left her feeling a little better.