One Blink From Oblivion

by Mark Curtis Bullock

  Outside, for nearly a quarter of a mile in every direction animalistic screams can be heard in response to the shots that have just betrayed Max, Vinny and Brooke’s location.

  Brooke’s tremulous and desperately human voice barely carries above the chorus of the infected, “They’re coming.”

  Chapter 13 - Holdout

  Spurred on by the distant drone of rapidly approaching infected; Brooke, Max and Vinny scramble to secure the clinic as fast as they can. They debate only a moment, about weather or not it would be best to barricade themselves in with one biter that is presumably injured, or to hit the streets and take their chances with the unknown hordes approaching. They quickly decided it would be better to deal with a quantifiable evil than the local mob of who knows how many infected. They weren’t fooling themselves into thinking that sooner or later the infected wouldn’t breach the perimeter. No matter how well fortified it was they would find a way in. Somehow, the freeway-man had found his way in and possibly back out again. The biters seemed to have enhanced night-vision and would eventually find multiple points of entry.

  Max and Vinny barricade the front glass doors with as much heavy furniture as they can manage to move to the lobby. After doing her best to make Gilly comfortable in what are likely his final moments –the morphine seemed to be doing most of the work for her- Brooke handles the interior doors of the clinic. Aside from closing every door, she piles as much in front of them as she can find. Since all of the doors open inward, this proves to be problematic. There simply isn’t enough loose furniture to properly block every door that opens into the hallway. When she runs out of chairs and shelves, she resorts to dragging the bloodied bodies of the dead and piling them wherever she can. She feels like a hypocrite and ashamed of herself after giving Gilly a hard time over his perceived disregard for fallen comrades. Brooke is quickly learning that there is no limit to what a person can do when his or her life or the lives of those we love depend on it.

  After a quick search and discussion, no one had any inkling of how the freeway-man found entry into the clinic. So, blocking every door except the one at the end of the hall where Gilly lies seemed the only logical move. This large storage room that would serve as their fallback position had a high ceiling with no attic, windows, outer doors or ventilation. With only one way in or out, the doorway created a bottleneck where they could concentrate their fire should they find themselves in retreat.

  With all preparations made, Max gives a crash-course on the M4 assault rifle. He covers only the basics; the selector for the single shot or three shot burst, removing an empty clip and seating a full one, pulling and releasing the bolt to chamber the first round on a fresh clip, squeezing the trigger rather than pulling it, and using the heads up scope to aim with both eyes open. He purposely skips the operation of the trigger safety for fear that Brooke or Vinny may forget to switch it to ‘fire’ and be caught in a vulnerable position. The only thing left to do now is wait.

  Their first stand will be made from behind the receptionist’s counter. Brooke will watch the hall to be sure that the freeway-man, or any other infected, is not sneaking up on them from behind. Since Vinny has only one good arm, he will concentrate on the strategic tossing of the Molotovs. There isn’t much distance between the three of them and the lobby door so special care will have to be taken if they are to avoid burning themselves up along with their intended targets. Max will handle the majority of the shooting until and if they need to fall back, at which time he is quite sure they will all three be gunning for their lives.

  The screeches loom so close now that the sound has almost become deafening.

  “Is everybody ready?” Max receives nods all around, “Then lets do it.”

  The glass doors that comprise the lobby entrance suddenly implode and send shards spraying in Max and Vinny’s direction. They duck in time enough to avoid bodily injury but lose precious moments in the fight to defend the clinic. In the seconds it takes them to wait out the shower of shrapnel, several biters have already tossed the highest obstacle between them and their dinner to one side. The couch flies across the lobby and puts a hefty dent in the drywall. Max stands, picks a target and opens fire. Rather than concentrating all of his fire on one biter, he changes targets frequently in hopes of pushing them back as a whole. He aims primarily for their heads, when an open shot presents itself. He discovers quickly that the single fire selection on the M4 is inadequate at keeping the infected at bay. With a flick of his right thumb, he is firing in three shot burst and begins to feel more as though he’s making a difference. The 5.56 ammunition fired by the M4 has little knockdown power but can do massive damage to soft tissues once inside the body. Since the infected feel little to no pain only the most well placed shots have the sought after effect. Max stands erect to gain a clearer field of view. A combination of luck and skill on his part drops one infected attempting to climb over the barricade. Max’s shot hits the UPS man directly in the eye. The small bullet does its job and scrambles the man’s brain upon impact. He drops limply to the ground outside and Max thinks ‘what can brown do for me? Stay down, that’s what.’ The UPS man complies and does just that. The sight of one of their own dead on the pavement does little to assuage the onslaught of predators forcing their way in. A small Asian man wearing a shirt with ‘EAT MORE BEEF!’ written across the front, uses his fallen companion as a step to gain more leverage.

  Max swings the rifle left to right, picking his targets based on the level of threat coupled with the amount of damage his bullets can do to the portion of their body that he can see. Primarily, he searches for gut, chest, neck and head. The high velocity ammunition rips through flesh sending splinters of bone, blood and bile through quarter size holes erupting from the backs of the infected. He hammers away with the M4 but the numbers of the infected continue to swell to the point that he can hold them off no longer.

  “Burn ‘em!” Max shouts to Vinny.

  Vinny stands with Gilly’s Zippo in his good hand and lights one of the Molotovs already lined up on the counter. He scans the lobby barricade for the biter that is presenting the most immediate threat and settles on a middle-aged Hispanic female dressed in a bloody Dodgers jersey. She has found a weakness in their barricade and is wriggling her way through a crack between a bench-chair and the wall. Vinny cocks his arm back and throws the bottle with as much force and accuracy as he can muster. He scores a direct hit and the jersey-girl is engulfed in flames. The howl she emits is so unnatural that Max and Vinny actually take a pause from their defense in order to process the sound. It can only be described as an odd synthesis between siren and roar. She burns in place unable to free herself from the flames or the tight position between the wall and bench.

  Three more, including the ‘EAT MORE BEEF’ man, begin to make their way over the top of the barricade and through the void left by the absent couch. Max continues to fire but it is painfully obvious that a single rifle of this type lacks the necessary punch to drop a biter in its place. The ejector on Max’s M4 locks in the open position, indicating that his second clip is now empty. With his right hand, Max presses the release and lets the clip fall to floor. With his left hand, he reaches for a fresh one from his pocket.

  “Torch it!” Max yells to Vinny who promptly lights another Molotov and tosses it directly at the barricade.

  The makeshift wall instantly burst into flame, igniting every infected that finds themselves in the splash-radius. Cushions containing cotton, polyester and vinyl take flame as readily as the alcohol sprayed upon them. The wood furniture burns with a quick intense heat and before long the ceiling panels have caught fire as well. Max and Vinny watch the wall and the infected trapped within it crackle and burn. The heat from the blaze intensifies rapidly. Even safely behind the counter the effect feels like sitting too close to a campfire and Max knows they will have to shift position soon or be burned along with the infected.

  Vinny points to the point of impact on the wall where the couch was thr
own, “Check it out!” he yells.

  Where the couch had weakened the drywall, several hands can now be seen punching through.

  “They found a way around the fire,” replies Max, “Concentrate your aim there.”

  Max and Vinny both open fire and the rapid rat-tat-tat explosions of the rifles are deafening in the small space. Drywall and fragments of wood spray into the air as the rifles shred the area around the intruding fists, but ragged and bloodied fist and hands just keep pounding and ripping away at the wall.

  Max lets up on the trigger, “Cease fire, we’re just helping them break through faster. We need to conserve ammo. Don’t fire unless you can hit something vital.”

  Vinny complies and turns to check on Brooke whose eyes are wide with fear and adrenaline. “We’re going to be ok!” He yells to her over the biter’s screams and the roar of the fire.

  Brooke doesn’t respond. She returns her attention to the hallway that they will soon have to travel. The upside is that the fire is now providing adequate light and the corridor can be traversed with greater confidence. The downside is that before long that same fire will engulf the hallway and everything around or within it.

  “We better move while we still can!” Brooke shouts over the sirens of the burning and the screams of the hungry.

  Max agrees, “Lets go, but we stay together and take it slow.”

  Max moves to the lead position in the hallway, followed by Brooke with Vinny bringing up the rear. As per Max’s plan of retreat, he would focus on the hall ahead while Brooke covers the doorways to their left and right. Vinny will cover their flank and prevent them from being overrun... At least, that was the plan.

  The maddening sound of the infected breaking through the hole in the lobby wall grows ever louder and makes the use of directional hearing impossible. They are submerged in so much noise that vision is their only remaining ally.

  Max and Brooke’s eyes dart tirelessly about, from hall to ceiling, ceiling to door, and back to hall. Everyone expects the freeway-man to make another impromptu appearance at any moment. They were caught off guard once already and probably would not be so fortunate to survive a third go round.

  Vinny is walking backward and expecting a deluge of biters at any moment. He keeps his center of gravity low. If the biters charge him he’ll hit them head-on and drive his legs as long as possible to give Brooke and Max a chance to escape. To his surprise he finds himself smiling slightly at the prospect of a full on, drag out, hand-to-hand battle with the infected. Truth be told, he was tired of running, and after having his ass handed to him by little old Lisa he was ready for some redemption.

  Back in the front, Max is panning his rifle left to right and allowing the barrel to follow his gaze. ‘Never look anywhere you’re not prepared to shoot,’ his father used to tell him. Who would have thought that so much of his father’s criminal teachings would some day come in handy, and after Max had made so much effort to stay clean? Irony at its finest.

  While looking out for the freeway-man Max also keeps one eye on the door at the end of the hall. Though it seemed that Gilly had lost far too much blood to survive even as an infected, Max is taking no chances. If Gilly emerges looking even the slightest bit too spry from that door, Max intends to unload everything he has into him.

  They’re now halfway down the hall and Max is beginning to believe that they can make it.

  “We’re almost…” Max’s words are cut short by a door being ripped from its hinges just to his left.

  The firelight doesn’t extend into the room and the only thing Max can make out are some broken tiles dangling from the ceiling. Before he can swing his flashlight-equipped rifle into position, He is being driven back into the wall behind him. The hit is harder than anything he ever experienced on the football field, but Max manages to keep the gun between him and his attacker. The rifle runs up and down the length of their bodies and its girth is the only thing preventing the biter’s teeth from sinking into the soft flesh of Max’s throat. The rifle’s tactical light shines on the face of the infected and to Max’s surprise it is not the mangled face of the freeway-man. His attacker is a young man not much older than Max, and judging by the stethoscope still griping his neck he must have been a doctor here at the clinic.

  Max’s collision with the wall deals a hefty blow to his back and head, which is slow to register as pain due to the copious amounts of adrenaline coursing through his system. That same adrenaline also sharpens his thought processes and he responds to his attacker with a brutality he had hoped he was no longer capable of.

  Max takes advantage of the fortuitous positioning of his rifle and jams the barrel up into the biter’s chin. He pulls the trigger and instantly a red-hot hole blooms in the doctor’s face spraying a jet of blood and jawbone fragments out in tight trajectory. The fountain of blood covers the left side of Max’s shirt. Max immediately realizes that his shot has not scrambled the biter’s brain as he had hoped, but it has gained him a few feet of space to work with. Before the doctor can regain his composure and renew his pursuit Max steps back and rocks him with a high roundhouse kick to what’s left of his head. He kicks with so much force that he drives the doctor’s head inside the wall and collapses his already shattered face a bit more. Momentarily stuck and blinded, the doctor lashes out wildly at the empty space around him. Without a clear shot at the Doctor’s head Max aims his rifle pointblank at the biter’s exposed neck and unloads the rest of the thirty round magazine. By the time the rifle is empty the doctor’s body is slumped and twitching on the floor. His head however, remains in the divot in the wall with the stethoscope swinging back and forth like a pendulum. The only connection remaining between head and body is a bloody streak down the wall between those two disconnected parts.

  Max, without hesitation, ejects the empty clip and seats another in the rifle. Wordlessly, he turns his attention back to the hall, steps over the doctor’s limp body and continues onward.

  Brooke stands motionless behind him, staring at the biter’s fresh corpse and not believing what she just witnessed. The fact that Max had just killed an infected is not what is troubling her, the fact that he did it with such ease and conviction goes far beyond merely disconcerting. What does she really know about Max after all? Who was he before she met him? Both of those were good questions, but Brooke makes a quick decision that all she needs to know about him right now is that he’s the one saving their skins and that will have to do.

  Brooke’s attention is drawn upward when she hears a loud clatter just above her head. She tries to quicken her pace as soon as she realizes that something is about to break through, but she is too late. The ceiling panels above her crumble, and raining debris followed by the weight of an infected thrust her downward. The biter is dressed in a yellow and white horizontally striped shirt that doesn’t quite cover his sizeable gut. His hair is cut into a mullet that would be laughable under any other circumstance. He wears low riding jeans, and his large feet are completely bare.

  He lands spread eagle and hard on top of Brooke with such force that all the air instantly evacuates her lungs. She fights the urge to blackout and struggles to keep a large unbroken piece of ceiling panel between her face and that of her attacker.

  Vinny is the first to react and raises his rifle to shoot.

  “Don’t shoot!” yells Max knowing that the high velocity ammunition in Vinny’s rifle had a good chance of passing right through the infected and into Brooke.

  Max remembers the knife he salvaged from one of the downed soldiers earlier and in a moment has it clear of its scabbard. The infected thrashes about wildly trying to get around his own girth and at Brooke. Max steps in fast and straddles the biter’s back. He knows he must move quickly before the biter has a chance to change his focus to him. Max grabs the man by a swath of his hair and pulls back hard to expose his neck. Max then reaches around under the biter’s throat with the knife he wields in his right hand and plunges it deep into the soft tissue just under t
he man’s left ear. In one swift motion -left to right- Max has slit the man’s throat from ear to ear being sure to sever the jugular.

  The volume of blood that pours forth is immense and Brooke does her best to shield herself with the ceiling panel. She shuts her eyes, closes her mouth and holds her breath. She isn’t sure if ingesting the blood of the infected can infect her but she sure as hell isn’t taking any chances. The warm fluid bathes her arms, hair and lower torso. The panel for now seems to be adequately protecting her face. She feels the heavy man still writhing above her and she knows she is not yet out of the woods. She struggles against his weight but can’t so much as budge him.

  To Max’s horror he feels the biter still fighting beneath him. Any normal man would have bled-out in seconds after sustaining such a wound, but this is obviously no normal man. Max takes aim at the biter’s back in search of a path to its heart. The man’s increased size makes the location of a slot between ribs hard to discern but Max makes his best guess and drives the blade in nearly up to its hilt. Still the man thrashes at the board between him and Brooke. Seemingly controlled now only by the desire to feed, the infected has lost all fortitude for self-defense. But somehow with the ten-inch blade piercing his back and driven in at least eight inches the biter continues to live.

  Max realizes that the knife must be too short to reach the man’s heart through the layers of fat and muscle that it must travel and pushes it deeper still. He presses down with all of his weight and twists the knife in hopes of drilling it into the heart of the ogre. After a final contraction the thrashing stops. The large man suddenly goes limp and lays motionless with Max panting over him.

  “Get him off of me!” Brooke’s voice is muffled and not more than a whisper given the limited air she’s able to muster.