by Ricky Sides
Randy turned his attention back to the sky and frowned when he saw another vulture had arrived. “Hurry this up, man. We’ve got another vulture in the area. I’d bet it’s an anizombie too.”
“I’m almost finished,” Jason said quietly. He didn’t want to raise his voice for fear of spooking Sheba.
“Crap, it’s headed this way. We’re out of time,” Randy insisted. “Get the dogs in the bus. I’ll be right behind you.”
“I’m on it,” Jason responded as Sheba shook herself and slung water everywhere. “I think that’s good enough for now.”
Inside the bus, Ed was putting the finishing touches on the bandage he had applied to Herb’s face. “How’s he looking, Ed?” Randy asked as he closed the doors of the minibus.
“He’ll be okay. The bump to the head was worse than the cut to his cheek. Neither needed stitches. Of course, there’s always a possibility of infection with the face wound. You know how nasty a vulture’s feet would be, so he’ll need to see the doctor about this when we get back to the refuge.”
“Is he good to drive?” asked Randy.
“You two can stop talking about me as if I’m not here,” Herb said grumpily.
“Okay, buddy, but I do need to know if you are going to be able to drive or if we should abort this mission,” Randy explained.
“I’m okay now. I was just rattled for a few seconds by the blow to the back of my head,” Herb explained. “And no, we are not going to abort this mission. Not on my account. Those people in Newport won’t be able to survive there forever.”
“Okay, then I guess I need to drive while you tend to Ox’s wound, if you feel up to it that is.”
“He got wounded too?” Herb asked with concern evident in his voice.
“Yes, but it doesn’t look too bad.”
“In that case, you drive while I see to him. I’ll take over after that.” Herb started toward Ox, but stopped and turned back to face Randy as his friend was walking toward the driver’s seat. “Randy,” he said to get his friend’s attention.
Randy stopped and turned to see what Herb wanted. “Yeah?”
“You keep right on voicing your opinion when you think I’m wrong. If Ox hadn’t been with me, that anizombie would have done a lot more damage. I think it was trying for my eyes,” Herb said soberly.
Randy nodded his understanding. “I will. You can count on me.”
Herb grinned, but the smile turned into a wince as the cut on his face pained him. Then he said, “That goes for the rest of you too. Never be afraid to voice your opinions.”
Herb turned his attention to Ox and saw that it was a nasty cut in the heavy muscle of his chest. He set about cleaning the wound, which he then packed with an antibacterial ointment. “That could use a stitch or two, but we’ll let it go for now,” Herb said to Ox who was still unsettled from his recent battle. He trusted Ox not to hurt him deliberately, but was smart enough not to tempt fate with the canine right after it had been in a fight.
Chapter 14
Newport.
Erma was in the cabin when a messenger knocked on the door. “You’ve got to come quick,” the messenger said breathlessly when she opened the door to see who was knocking. “There’s a message from Newport. The people there are saying they have to abandon the place they retreated to because the zombies have found them there.”
Erma frowned and said, “Let’s go. I need to see if we can get a message to our team to let them know about the change in plans.” She started out the door, but then she stopped to ask, “Did they say where they’re going?”
“They said they were going to try to get to a police station in their area. They are hoping they can hold out there until our team arrives,” the messenger informed her. Then he said, “We tried to radio our team, but we didn’t get a reply confirming that they heard our message.”
“Okay, then let’s get to the radio. We have to get a message back to the people in Newport. They are going to need to leave a visible signal for our team, and that means they will need to know the route our people are planning to take to reach them.”
Erma waited as the radio operator tried several times without success to raise the Newport survivors on the radio. Then, at her behest, he tried to raise their rescue team. Finally, the man said, “I guess the team is out of range. Either that or they are in an area we can’t reach due to the terrain. As for the Newport survivors, the last I heard from them, they were preparing to move out from their position and head for the police department building.”
“All right. Keep trying to raise both parties,” Erma instructed the radio operator. Then she told him what she wanted him to relay to them. When she finished her instructions, she said, “Impress upon the survivors the importance of putting out some sort of visual signal that our team can’t miss. Otherwise, they’ll go to the scheduled rendezvous and miss them entirely.”
“I understand, Erma. Don’t worry. I’ll be sure to impress upon them the need to leave a sign our team can see and understand.”
Erma thanked the radio operator and then left to go in search of Amy and the Echols. She wanted the rest of the council to be well aware of what was transpiring as well as what it might mean for their team.
Across the refuge in the medical clinic, Dana Rainey waited in her isolation room impatiently. She was furious that Raman Chandler had taken her in like a schoolgirl with his lies. He had intended to use her and then discard her, so she was determined to get revenge on him for making her look a fool. It made no difference to Dana that she had intended to do the same to him. She was also angry with the residents of the refuge for her perceived mistreatment at their hands.
As she sat on her bed considering her options, she heard a man in the room next to hers. Her frown made a slow transition to a smile of satisfaction when she recognized the voice as being Bernie’s. He was one of Raman’s men. She had heard him talking to Raman the night before, and she had noted the way he looked at her earlier today. She got up, walked over to the wall, and called out to him. Dana’s smile broadened when the man returned her greeting enthusiastically. She had come up with a plan to get her revenge on Raman as well as the others, and it was a good one. If she could pull it off, she would be set for months, if not longer. All she had to do was seduce a man who was halfway there the moment his gaze fell on her. She thought that this was almost going to be too easy.
***
A little over an hour past sunup, two men and six women moved down the street furtively, taking advantage of every opportunity to put abandoned vehicles between themselves and the zombies a few blocks to their rear. They were now within three blocks of the police station and were attempting to get there without being spotted by any more zombies.
Zombies had located the group at the building they had decided to use for shelter until they could be picked up by the team of men from the refuge. At one point, the undead creatures had surrounded that building. It had been necessary for one of the men to cause a diversion at the front of the department store. Using a skateboard and a battery-powered alarm clock, which he attached to the skateboard with a roll of duct tape, he went to work on his simple plan.
At some point in the past, the windows of the department store had been boarded up after the place had been looted. The two men worked together to deploy their diversion. One of them pried a corner of a board open enough that the other could shove the skateboard through the opening and give it a push. The skateboard rolled across the sidewalk and onto the asphalt parking lot. The small slope to the parking area caused the makeshift diversionary decoy to roll faster. It came to rest against an overturned shopping cart a good forty feet from the store.
Inside the store, there had been tense moments as the deployment was made and the man pulled his hand back inside. They could hear moans approaching their position as the man with the pry bar beat the wood back in place and the other hammered home the loosened nails. Then the clock alarm activated, drawing the zombies to the sound.
&
nbsp; The group had rushed toward the back exit where they waited a couple of minutes as they worked up the nerve to open the door.
There was only one firearm among the group. It was an old Taurus PT 99. There had been other firearms in their possession in the past, but they had long since run out of ammunition for those weapons. The people had carried them for weeks before finally giving up on finding additional ammunition, so they left them behind. Now the party was armed with an eclectic array of weapons, ranging from machetes and swords to baseball bats.
The man armed with the 9mm pistol motioned for the other to open the door. He dropped into a combat crouch and waited with a grim expression on his face as the door was opened. As soon as he had the clearance he needed to exit, he was out the door in a fluid motion. Outside the building, the man turned first to the right, and then to the left. “All clear back here! Move out!” he whispered urgently.
As the team moved away from their former sanctuary, they could hear the combined moans of the zombies that were gathering on the other side of the building. They wasted no time in vacating the area. Sticking to the side street that ran behind the store they managed to get clear of the mass of zombies gathered out front without being spotted.
They traveled west across town. All had gone well at first, but then they had been spotted by a trio of zombies that came from the back yard of a residence. They had outdistanced them with ease, but were faced with a problem. They had made a tactical error of heading straight for the police station. This meant that any zombies that spotted them would continue to follow in their direction of travel until something else distracted them. They needed to reach their location and gain entry without being seen.
Had they taken a less direct route, they could have changed directions. That was still an option. They could deliberately permit the zombies to see them, and then lead them away on a detour. Once they were certain they were leading the majority of the zombies away from their planned sanctuary, they could then outdistance them and double back toward their intended destination. However, it was very risky to chance prolonged excursions outside a good shelter. The town was crawling with zombies, so every minute they spent outside added to the risk.
By the time they were within six blocks of the police station, they had been seen by several other small groups of the zombies and had accumulated quite a following. Their leader looked at the rest of the party as they moved at their rapid pace. He saw that they were all in good shape and appeared capable of running, so he made the decision to run for two blocks, after which they would resume their normal pace. He believed making that effort would get them out of sight of most of the creatures following them.
The sprint had achieved the desired results and they had managed to get out of sight of the zombies trailing them. Then they had resumed their slower pace and once more, they began to take advantage of areas that offered concealment.
As they moved through the street toward their destination, their leader, twenty-seven year old Hernando Garcia, studied his people. Their group was comprised of people from all walks of life. He had been a truck driver who had gotten stranded in Newport. Three of the women had been housewives prior to the zombie outbreak. They had lost their spouses. Two were high school seniors. They were friends, who had worked together to stay alive when the rest of the city was succumbing to the onslaught of the zombies. The remaining woman was married to the other man of their group. He had been a mechanic prior to the outbreak.
Hernando was pleased by what he saw as he studied his people. Several of them appeared apprehensive, but there was no panic in evidence. Jesse Colton was bringing up the rear as usual. The big black man was keeping one eye on the other party members and the other on the area behind them. He saw Hernando look his way and nodded that all was well.
Hernando returned his attention to the direction they were traveling. He saw the police station up ahead and felt a moment of relief. Then his spirits took a nosedive when he saw a small group of zombies coming out into the street a block ahead of them. The women slowed their pace and looked to their leader to see what he would decide to do about the threat.
Hernando was down to less than a full magazine of ammunition for his pistol. He knew he could take out the four zombies he saw in the street with the ten rounds in his pistol, but that would leave him precious little for their defense unless they could find ammunition in the police station. He held up his hand for the group to stop. Jesse soon joined him and the two men stared at the approaching zombies.
The zombies before them were suffering from starvation. The men had seen it before and they knew what that meant for them. After a few weeks, zombies that couldn’t find a victim to attack began to starve. As a result, their bodies began to break down and become weak. Although they were still on their feet, they could barely manage an unsteady shuffle. It was impossible for them even to walk in a straight line. Rather, they staggered this way and that as they struggled to walk toward their intended victims. The main threat from such creatures was that they would not quit trying to reach their prey. The best defense against them was to give them a wide berth and then change directions once you were out of their sight. In this case, that wasn’t possible. They stood within plain sight of the destination that Hernando had selected for his people.
“Are we going to take them out with bats?” Jesse asked calmly.
“Yeah. I don’t dare waste the few bullets we have left on such as these. Besides...”
“The others would hear the shots,” Jesse finished Hernando’s sentence for him.
Hernando nodded. He holstered his pistol, reached over his right shoulder, and grasped the handle of the ball bat that was in the makeshift carrying case he wore slung across his back. Jesse had drilled a one-inch hole in the center of the bat, which he filled with several ounces of molten lead. Bats were devastating when used on the skulls of zombies. The weighted ends made them even more effective.
Lacking a firearm, Jesse held his own weighted bat in his right hand.
“We can’t afford to waste time with these things,” Hernando warned, and then he moved out on the attack.
Jesse was a step behind his leader. He moved to Hernando’s left. When the fighting started, he’d make certain that nothing could approach his partner from that side. Hernando would do the same, protecting his right side. The men had fought together in that manner upon numerous occasions.
The women followed the men, but left a gap of about twenty feet between them and their protectors. They also tried to watch for any other zombies that might approach them from different directions. They would leave the melee fighting to the men, as they had in the past. They would only intervene if it became apparent that the men needed their assistance. This was for practical reasons. When swinging bats, the men needed open space. Crowding them with friendlies that they had to avoid hitting was a liability when they were facing low odds. Had there been more of the zombies, the group would have fought much differently. In the past, they had stood shoulder to shoulder with the men and fought, but that limited their attacking movements severely.
The four zombies in the street wore little more than rags. Constant exposure to the elements for months on end had even their footwear falling apart. They suffered an unholy hunger, the likes of which no man could comprehend. They hadn’t just been hungry for a few days. They had suffered hunger for months. Because of this, their moans were louder than normal.
Hernando and Jesse approached the zombies with caution and deliberation. They were looking for any exploitable weakness. Jesse found one in the zombie he had selected to be his first adversary due to its proximity. The right side of the zombie’s face and neck had borne the brunt of the attack when he had been a man and was beset by zombies. In their eagerness to bring him down, one of his attackers had gouged out his right eye. Therefore, the creature would have a blind spot on that side of his body.
Jesse nodded in satisfaction as he shifted the bat in his hands to get a better grip and st
epped further to his opponent’s weak side. The creature had just begun to articulate another of those loud moans when Jesse’s bat connected with the side of his skull caving it in and dropping the zombie where he stood. Jesse raised the bat overhead and administered another strike, just to be certain, and then he turned to face the next.
Hernando was fighting a zombie that had turned as a result of exposure to contamination. That one had no debilitating weaknesses, other than the fact that it was weak from starvation. Even so, it took Hernando several attempts to take it down because it kept attempting to grab him, thus putting its hands and arms in the way. The zombie was oblivious to the pain, as Hernando broke both of its wrists and its arms in rapid succession. Finally, the Hispanic leader of the Newport group was able to connect with its skull and knock it off its feet. He was preparing to administer another strike when he felt something grab his wrist and pull on him.
Jesse staggered backwards a couple of steps as he battered away at the zombie he was facing. Like Hernando’s foe, this one was sacrificing its arms in an attempt to grab hold of the human. Jesse was getting angry. The longer it took them to take the enemy out, the more likely it would become that other zombies could reach them before they got inside the police station, or at the very least, they would see their prey entering the building. He shifted tactics and stopped trying for a quick kill shot. Instead, he attacked the creature’s right knee and had the satisfaction of seeing it tumble down to the ground. Jesse stepped behind the creature and struck it a terrible blow to the top of the head as it struggled to climb back to its feet.
A scream alerted Jesse to danger. He turned toward the sound of the scream and saw one of the women pointing in Hernando’s direction. Jesse was ten feet from Hernando, who was struggling with the remaining zombie. It had grabbed hold of his left wrist and was attempting to pull the man to its snapping teeth. Hernando was trying to hit the zombie with his bat, but was being jerked so forcefully by the creature that he lacked the ability to land a killing blow. To be sure, he was damaging its body with every strike, yet Jesse knew it was just a matter of time before his opponent was able to drag his wrist within range of his moaning mouth.