What Zombies Fear: A Father's Quest

by Kirk Allmond

  “Okay, I want you, starting about five miles north of here, to start attacking their west flank. In and out, your job is not to kill them, although there’s nothing wrong if you kill a few. Your job is to draw them off. I need you to pull as many as you can west of here, all the way to Highway 29 and then get them headed south on 29. If we can misdirect them, all the better. Its eight miles of cross country running from Route 15 to Route 29. If you can drag them off, that’s great. If you try for two miles and they’re not following you, I need you back here. Most importantly, if you see any sign of a super, get back here immediately, that’s going to change the entire game plan.

  “My idea is that we drop ammo at four stations between here and one mile north of here. The four of us, plus Bookbinder’s team, fight a backward action. We line up and shoot until they’re at fifty feet, then run back until they’re a hundred yards away, shoot until they’re fifty feet, repeating all the way back here. With luck, we can kill a couple of thousand before they get here to the other four fire teams waiting on the edge of this property. We’ll open up here, trying to force them to stay on the road between the river and the banks. We’ll have elevated shooting positions. That’s when I’ll hit them with the big rig. I’ll be parked back on the Robinson River Bridge, that’ll give me a half mile to get up to speed, and then I’m going to plow right up the middle of them.”

  “Victor, not you. That’s a suicide run. Let me do it, at least I can outrun them.” said Leo.

  “No, Leo, I need you here. I need you to pick up Max and run with him if I don’t make it. If none of us make it, I need you to take him and run. Farther and faster than you’ve ever run before.”

  “Vic, don’t talk like that,” said Marshall.

  “I’m not; I’m just covering all my bases.” I said.

  “We’re not even sure if Frye was telling the truth,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t lie about something I could so easily check.

  “There’s a chance that Jimmy and Tom are going to come back and say they couldn’t find anything.”

  “We’ve got work to do. I suggest we get to the preparations. Best case scenario, we pick up the ammo tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Anyone else have any ideas? I’m all ears. This is a plan I’ve had in my head for weeks. It’ll work. We have enough ammo, we have enough shooters, we can do this.”

  We spent the rest of that day preparing. John took care of the ammo dumps; Marshall welded the plow blade to the front of the big rig. Leo took charge of stepping off lines of fire, and marking them in the grass with white spray paint every hundred yards from the main house. I went from spot to spot, but I was in the workshop down by the barn when I heard Tom come over the radio.

  “Jimmy’s dead. There’s so many, they go one for a mile or more. I lost count at a thousand, and I hadn’t even counted a tenth.”

  “Good work Tom, now get back here and let’s get ready to kill them.” Bookbinder replied.

  “I can’t come back, Lieutenant. I’m bit. I can feel it taking over. I’m parked on the side of the road, I’d like permission to take my pickup and drive it right into them. I think I could take a hundred with me. I’d like to try; I don’t want to end up like one of them.”

  “Tom, are you sure you’re gonna turn?” I asked.

  “Yes sir, Mr. Tookes, I’m sure.”

  “Tom, do what you have to. You’re a hero, getting us this information probably saved all of our lives.”

  36. The Beginning

  By late afternoon we’d finished all of our preparations, and the waiting game began. I spent about an hour playing Frisbee with Max and the other small kids in the back yard. For Max, it was about keeping life kind of normal. For me, it was time that I could just be Daddy, and not be in charge of the safety and welfare of over three hundred people. A little after five, Bookbinder came to get me.

  “Max, can you stay here for a few minutes and keep playing Frisbee? Daddy has to go talk to Mr. Bookbinder.” I said.

  “Daddy, are you talking about all the bad guys coming?” he asked, his face turned up and glowing in the evening sun.

  “Yeah, Max monster. There are lots of bad guys coming, but don’t worry, Mister John, Miss Leo, Uncle Marshall and I will make sure they don’t hurt us.”

  “I like Mr. John. He talks funny.”

  “I think so too!” I laughed. “He has an accent. An accent is when someone says words differently than we do. He thinks we sound funny! How crazy is that?” We both had a good laugh.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Stay right here.”

  I walked off a bit with Charlie, around the corner to the front of the house. Three of the locals were working on boarding up the windows using fence rails bolted all the way through thick brick walls. They had a generator running to power the drills they were using. We moved off to the side, behind the huge three hundred year old boxwood bushes.

  “They’re about eight miles out. They didn’t even slow down going through Culpeper. It’s about time to get this show on the road, they’re making roughly four miles an hour.”

  “Alright, Charlie. Let’s get everyone wrapped up and get some food into them. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Leo,” I spoke into my radio. “Can you come to the front of the house? It’s time.”

  “On my way, Tookes.” She replied, and was standing in front of me before the radio static died.

  “Have you eaten anything Leo? You’re going to burn a lot of calories; I need you on your A-game.” I said, concern clearly prevalent in my voice.

  “Walk with me to the kitchen; I’ll grab something to throw in my backpack.”

  “Charlie, can you get the word out that its time? Discretely, we don’t need to frighten the children.”

  Leo and I walked back around the house to where Max was playing. I resisted the urge to hold her hand; I wasn’t quite ready for it to be public knowledge. Anyone that knew us, knew that we were developing feelings for each other, in the old days we would have called it dating. These days our idea of a date was clearing and looting a convenience store. Times change.

  “Max, it’s time to go inside buddy. Can you take your Frisbee and put it in the toy-box on the porch? Then go find Grandma, please.”

  “You got it, Dad.” he said.

  Leo and I continued on around the house towards the kitchens outside door. About halfway there, we stopped and I took her hand. “Leo, don’t do anything crazy. Try to get their attention and lead them off, but if it’s not working, don’t be a hero out there by yourself.”

  I leaned forward and kissed her, which she returned more passionately than I expected. We kissed for several minutes, enjoying some quiet time together before we both had to go to work. At last we broke the kiss, and walked inside the kitchen.

  Inside, my mother was a whirlwind. She had almost a hundred and fifty bags laid out. In each, she had a sandwich with thinly cut grilled deer, roasted red pepper, lettuce and mustard. There was a rolled oat granola bar, and a bottle of water. To this day, I have no idea how she managed to bake that much bread in twelve hours. There’s no way she slept. I handed Leo one of the bags.

  “Vic, I made this one for Leo. She needs more calories than you; you’re still a little pudgy.” She said with a smile on her face.

  Mom handed Leo a much heavier looking bag. “Here you go, honey. You be safe out there. Don’t let Vic get you in trouble.”

  “Vic, here’s yours, two granola bars and a bottle of water.”

  I knew that this was my mother’s way of saying, ‘I don’t have a sandwich for everyone, so I gave yours to Leo’. I gave her a hug and said, “I love you, Mom. You’re amazing, none of this would happen without you.” I walked Leo down to the road, where I kissed her one more time and hopped into the big truck Marshall had attached the old plow blade to. She was off in a flash; trails of leaves swirling in her wake. She was getting faster. I followed her purple and green swirling aura, and discovered that I could ‘see’ her aura
, even when she stopped running, somewhere between six and seven miles away.

  “Interesting.” I said out loud to myself.

  I focused on Max’s aura, and spun around, and saw his beautiful pale blue light coming from the main house. John was down by the barn; Marshall was up at the carriage house. Bookbinder was several hundred yards out behind the house; I wondered what he was doing there.

  I started up the big truck, and let it idle long enough for the brakes to air up. Once I could release the brakes, I pulled the huge rig out onto the road, and backed it about a quarter mile down to the bridge.

  “John and Charlie, it’s time for the advance team to get into position, I’m heading that direction.” I started jogging up the road, heading roughly towards where Leo was. I watched her aura bounce east and west. It looked like she was running in to attack the flanks of the group, and then moving off west, trying to draw them with her. Based on the number of times she ran east and west, it didn’t appear to be working. I jogged at a fairly quick pace, and had come to the pre-marked location one mile from the property. Bookbinder came jogging up second, not breathing anything over his normal rate.

  “Wow, Charlie, you must have sprinted here.”

  “I found a four-wheeler at the neighbor’s farm, and got it running. I thought it might come in handy, I have ideas, too. I parked it back at the first ammo dump.”

  “I like the sound of that!” I said as Marshall and John walked up with the rest of Bookbinder’s team.

  Marshall was carrying two shotguns with two home made bandoliers of shells strapped to his back, and a Ruger 10/22 rifle with thirty round magazines duct taped together back to back, so that when one was empty, he could just flip the magazine and have another thirty rounds.

  John tossed me the same rifle, a small .22 gauge carbine, with the same magazine configuration, and when I got the strap over my shoulder, he tossed me four more of the double-magazine configurations.

  “That’s three hundred rounds, Tookes, make 'em count. There are two more double-magazines each four hundred meters behind us. Start firing when I say fire, not when I do. These are small rounds; you might have to put two in their head to put them down, unless you can hit them in the eye.”

  Leo flew up to us. Her hair, which she normally kept braided when she worked, was flying somewhat loose, but matted down with sweat and gore. Her clothes were covered in blood, and she had a cut on her knee. “They’re coming, about half a kilometer ahead, maybe ten minutes from being in range.” She opened up one of Mom’s granola bars and shoved it in her mouth, washing it down with half a bottle of water.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, concerned about her ability to keep this up.

  “I’ve killed about three hundred; I lost count about three kilometers up.” She said, “It might be closer to three-fifty.”

  “Damn it, Leo!” John swore, “How am I supposed to catch up? That’s cheating!”

  “I didn’t make the assignments, John,” Leo quipped. “But you’re not going to catch up anyways; I’ve been working on some new tricks.”

  I reached down to Leo’s waist, and clicked her radio over to voice activated. “Leo, your mic is now hot, so you don’t have to push talk, if you’re using both hands. If you’re going to be attacking the flank, or the rear, we need to know so we don’t shoot you.”

  “Got it, Tookes. This is kind of fun.” She took off again just as the first zombie head became visible over the rise. John wasted no time, even though this was three hundred yards, he aimed the rifle at almost a seventy degree angle upwards, lofting the bullet towards the zombie, using gravity to assist the trajectory. The zombie went down in a heap. For us, it had started.

  A few seconds later, the first row appeared. John lofted six bullets up in the air in the same fashion, and removed his magazine. He had the mag out of the gun before the first zombie crumpled. As the next set came into view, he had all seven bullets replaced in his magazine, the mag replaced and the gun cocked. He was amazing to watch, we started to think this was going to be easy.

  The next wave was about twice as many. He shot ten times, but before those were hit, there were more behind them. He shot the last twenty bullets of that magazine as fast as the gun would allow. I’m certain that all twenty bullets were in the air at the same time. He flipped his magazine around, reinserted it, and shot those thirty bullets without pause. He just might catch Leo; this was sixty shots, sixty dead zombies. There were way more than he could handle now. He removed that magazine and put it in his back pocket, pulling out a fresh pair of mags.

  Zombies were solidly over the hill now, about two hundred yards away. Still too far for us. John stopped shooting, pulled out his emptied mag and started reloading it from bullets in his pocket. A hundred and fifty yards. He flipped the magazine around, reloading thirty rounds into that magazine in just a few seconds. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder.

  “Wait for it. Thirty seconds.” He fired, emptying his magazine, hitting every zombie in the first two rows directly in the eye. Flipped the magazine, and dropped the two that were still coming after one small bullet to the eye.

  “Fifteen more seconds.” Another thirty shots, he was moving the gun barrel at incredible speed, the tip of the muzzle actually blurring with the movement, the muzzle blasts seeming to be one long burst of fire from the tip. The last shot was a misfire, which he cleared by working the action back and forth several times.

  “This bloody gun can’t handle the rate of fire. The action is heating up, causing bullets to fire when they’re injected into the chamber. I’m going to have to slow down.”

  He pulled his pistols, and emptied both magazines into the oncoming crowd. That was thirty more dead zombies.

  “One hundred and seventy eight, Leo!” he said into his throat mic, as he reloaded and holstered his pistols. Swinging his now slightly cooler .22 up to his shoulder, he began to fire cyclically, but more slowly.

  “Fire!” he said. “Fire straight ahead, drive holes deep in their line, I’ll clean up your misses.”

  “Four-eighty-five, John, you’re not gonna catch me!”

  I watched Leo come flying down the west flank of the zeds, her kukri lopping off the heads of every one she could reach in her easily one hundred mile per hour pass down the line. Before the zombies could react, their heads were flying.

  She stopped a few feet away and said “Five-ninety-two now!”

  We all opened fire. When one fell, we shot the one behind it. We walked backward, trying to match their pace, keeping them roughly a hundred yards from us. They were slightly faster than us. John, true to his word, shot every one we missed, all along the front of the line. The corpses stacked up, and the zombies started stumbling as they tried to walk over the fallen corpses. It actually made it harder to hit them, resulting in more misses and completely ineffective wounds. Were they living people, they’d be taken out by those wounds, but the zombies paid them no mind. Unless you completely destroyed a limb, they made no notice of the damage.

  Leo’s voice came across the radio. “I have good news; I’m up to six-forty-three.”

  “Bloody hell, Leo! Nice work!” said John. “I have three-twenty-nine, I’m catching up. Front line, retreat to ammo station one, triple time, run!”

  We ran for all we were worth back the last two hundred yards to the ammo station. I reach the pile, breathing heavily, struggling to control it. The problem with these extended campaigns is that they rely on physical training. Thus far I’d mostly made it on adrenaline. That was long gone, replaced with a gnawing in my gut. I put two boxes of .22 rounds into my backpack, and picked up my last four magazines. Everyone started reloading their empty mags as quickly as possible. John reloaded all of his; he now had six doubled magazines. My shoulder was starting to ache, even with the relatively small caliber gun, this many rounds was more than anyone was intended to shoot.

  I managed to get four and a half of my doubled magazines reloaded before it was time to stand up and fire.
We repeated that strategy, backing up, firing, backing up, firing, backing up, firing. We’d killed about five thousand zombies by the time we made it to the second ammunition dump.

  “John, this could work!” I said happily.

  “Guys,” Leo came over the radio. ”We’re in trouble. There are at least two more groups the same size as this one.”

  37. Battle

  “Leo, how are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine, I could do this all day, I’m not even running that fast.” answered Leo.

  “I need you to do a sweep around the perimeter of the house. I need to know if this is the entire force, or if they’re coming at us from multiple angles.”

  “You got it; I’ll be back in about three minutes.”

  “Leo, it’s at least five miles.”

  “You’re right, maybe two and a half minutes.” And with that, she was off in a blur.

  “My team, M-1, continue with the plan, increase fire. Empty your mags, and run to the next dump point. We’re halfway back to the property, and I have a pretty nasty idea on how to slow them down.”

  I tossed my rifle and mags to John. “You’re better with them anyways; I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I ran back at a dead sprint to the four-wheeler that Bookbinder had the foresight to park at the second ammo dump. Up over the bank, I flew across a soybean field at the machine’s top speed, reaching the old Sykes farm. They were cattle ranchers. Drawing my sig, I fired twelve .40 round shots into the base of a barbed wire fence pole at the corner of their cattle field. This fence was over half a mile long. The fence post gave way with two kicks to the top, I grabbed it and ripped the barbed wire free of the next post down the line, pulling the staples out that held it in place. I wrapped the fence post and barbed wire around and through the rack on the back of the four-wheeler, and took off, dragging three long strands of barbed wire off the row of fence posts behind me.

  The four-wheeler bogged down about two hundred feet from where I started.

  “Dammit!” I swore, rocking the four-wheeler back and forth, twisting the throttle to full. The tires spun, then it lurched forward, pulling off several hundred feet of wire behind me.