I looked through the scope and pulled the trigger, missing the Zed and hitting the window of the bar- it shattered in a bright spray of glass that hit three Zeds. They didn’t take any notice of their injuries.
I slowed my breathing. I knew that I missed because I rushed. I needed to slow down. I took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. The shot was a little low catching the Zed in the upper sternum. Even so, the Zed was permanently out of the picture. It went down hard and did not get up again.
I repeated this process again and again. By the time I was done, I saw no further Zeds out around her place. I spread out my search, focusing on her path to my house. There were dozens of Zeds heading right at us. They were climbing my driveway toward my defensive line.
I stayed where I was and continued to scan for any remnant of the enemy. There were none. I pulled off my ear protection and shouted to my wife to get Theresa ready.
Jen promptly got on the Walkie-Talkie and told her to go for it. Jen flashed me a thumbs up and prepared herself for the oncoming Zombies.
I scanned the street and continued to see nothing. I watched the area carefully and saw the woman throw out a braided bed sheet from her apartment window. It had to have been a dozen of them tied together. It made it all the way to the ground. It had to have been around forty to fifty feet off the ground from her window. It was going to be a Hell of a climb.
I saw a pair of legs come out of the window first. She lowered herself down to the edge of the window and stopped. She hung off the edge of the sheet and swayed. I thought to myself that she must be terrified of the entire process. Then I saw her do something incredibly stupid- the stupidest thing I ever saw in my entire life.
She reached through the window and grabbed a bag. I looked closer and saw that it was a bright red cat carrier. And the stupid thing was moving inside the bag!
She steadied herself on the makeshift rope wrapping her legs round it. She had one hand fully on the rope and the other partially on the bag and the rope. She tried to shimmy down the sheets and was doing fine until about the halfway point.
She let go momentarily to wipe her hand against her shirt, and then she fell all the way to the ground. I watched her fall onto the pavement full force right onto her left hip. Her right hand still clutched that stupid bag. Rather than hold on to the rope, the idiot held onto the bag. I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t good. She paid for her stupidity with her hip.
I yelled out, “Get up!” as if she could hear me. Even my own people couldn’t hear me as they were firing their weapons at their own targets.
I started saying a little prayer for her to get up. She stayed still for a couple of minutes clutching herself. This was real bad. I started to scan the area again and saw a little woman coming out of a hardware store across the street. It saw Theresa immediately. It made its way straight toward her with a purpose.
I focused on her quick movement and took a snap shot without properly aiming. I was lucky and hit the Zed in the left leg. It fell straight down. I had amputated the leg at the knee.
Once down, the growling Zed ignored its own wound. It looked at Theresa and started crawling right to her. I took another shot and missed. I rushed again. Dammit, I was getting flustered. I needed to back off, but I didn’t have the time. I looked at Theresa, and she was getting up. Oh thank God!
Unfortunately, she was being a complete idiot again. She kept that stupid cat carrier in her hand. Why the fuck didn’t she just open the damn thing and let that cat out? I grunted out in mental anguish at the top of my lungs. She was a moron. She was limping heavily and wouldn’t let go of the damn thing. It was on par with what I typically saw on a daily basis in trauma surgery. People incessantly did stupid things for any number of reasons. I yelled at her through the scope. “Put the fucking cat down!” She didn’t hear me.
She limped toward us heavily. I saw her wince from the pain, and I saw her own personal Zed crawling toward her from behind. I could tell the thing was angry because her target was slowly moving away from her. I ignored it. The woman was now moving faster than the Zed. She would outpace it I hoped. There were now more pressing targets before her.
Theresa limped along the street as quickly as she could. I looked closely at her face and could tell that she was crying. She was elderly with multiple medical problems. I could guarantee you that she had broken her hip to some degree. The only way she moved was through sheer will power. Staying still would kill her. She knew the score and had to move. She chose movement despite the agony she suffered. I admired her guts despite her obvious stupidity about the cat.
She continued up the street slowly. I scanned the area continuously with a round chambered and my finger on the trigger. At 400 yards I readjusted the scope to get the proper range. The good news was that it was almost impossible to miss a target at this range with this gun. At least I hoped that was the case.
The firing around me stopped. I looked down and saw that there were no more targets for the moment. I saw them all looking at me with hope. I personally wished that I was good for it. I seriously had my doubts.
I looked down hill and saw a sight that chilled my blood. Dozens of the things were coming out of the woodwork looking to score. They saw the woman and were scampering forward at her. Her ridiculously slow pace continued. I saw her turn around at the sounds. Her face turned white. She started sweating profusely. The look of pain left her face though. The adrenaline must have really kicked in to her system. I saw her face panic.
She tried to move faster and failed. I couldn’t believe that she just wouldn’t let the cat go. She refused to look back and went full bore toward safety which was toward us. At least that was good.
I didn’t have time to be fancy. I looked down my scope and fired at the nearest Zed center of mass. I knocked her on her ass. The .338 was a powerful round as my shoulder could attest. I slid the bolt- up, back, forward, down. I was getting pretty efficient at it. I shot another one and then another. I kept firing full bore until I ran out of ammunition. I reloaded another mag and mistakenly touched the barrel. It was red hot and burned my entire palm. I swore loudly. I didn’t have time to wrap it. I felt stupid, but I didn’t have time right now. I knew better than that. I took aim and finally got a head shot by mistake. It was a lucky break for once.
Theresa was trying to run and failing. She waddled forward as fast as her hip let her. I saw her head covered in sweat and tears. Her eyes were bloodshot, and I could see that she was openly sobbing. The pain had to have been excruciating. She was only moving by sheer force of will power. She was a tough old bird.
I took aim again. I fired round after round, and still they kept coming. There were dozens coming after her as fast as they could. They were catching up to her. She was frantically falling forward toward us. I did my best to slow them down without success. There were just too many of them.
As they closed their ground, Theresa hit her limit. She tripped on her own feet. She went down hard. I saw her cry out and look at the sky. Rather than get up, she unzipped the cat carrier. The cat ran out and didn’t look back. She disappeared into the weeds and was gone. Theresa stayed there exhausted looking up toward the sky. When the cat left, she just looked up and didn’t make a move. Theresa was a cornered animal who realized that she was at an end.
I took a deep breath. She was done. There was no possible way to escape. I had no other recourse. I couldn’t let her go out in agony. She deserved much more. All humans did.
I put her chest in the center of the red dot. I calmed myself, my breathing, and my soul. God help me.
Just as the goons reached her, I gently squeezed the trigger. I knew that this bullet was true. I didn’t bother to look where it hit. That would have been too much for me.
Her pain was over and didn’t feel what was to come. I got up and climbed down the deer stand. I lost any more will to fight and left it to my people. I went inside to be with my children.
Chapter 8
The Zeds came fast
er and faster at us. We shot and killed them, and their people came for revenge. At least that was what I told myself. The Zeds really had no ability to think. We spent the next several days outside just hitting them as fast as we could. I was starting to get scared of all the bodies outside my gate. They were attracting flies and were beginning to smell. What was worse was the fact that I had no solution to the problem. We couldn’t stop defending ourselves for even one second. Any rest we took was taken by the Zeds to regroup and attack. We fought or we died. It was really that simple.
Shell casings littered the ground at our feet. Thousands of them got under our shoes and made for a slippery environment. I went down hard multiple times. It was becoming dangerous so we switched to the air rifles. I didn’t want to use up all our ammo at this point, so we shot them all at point blank range with our .22 pellets. At that range, there was no problem with penetration. It also made things much quieter. I hoped that would help- at least I prayed that it did. We were all getting burned out.
By the third day of this, none of us had any sleep. We were getting cranky, and what really made me afraid, was the fact that we were starting to miss our shots at a range of two feet. This could not last.
I sent everyone to sleep and stayed out there by myself throughout the night. I think I averaged a dead Zed every thirty seconds. It was an absolute blood bath. I was already numb when I started. By the morning, I literally stopped focusing on targets and pointed my air rifle at any reasonable resemblance of heads. Sometime I hit them, sometimes I missed. Honestly I stopped caring. I was literally too tired to think. Just before the sun rose, I almost fell asleep standing upright. That really scared me. I headed over to the trough I used to water the animals and dunked my head underwater. The water was freezing. I quickly got out shivering and got back to work. It was the only thing short of a cappuccino that I could think of to sober me. It worked until the sun rose in the sky.
I looked East at it, admiring the beauty of the creation of everything around me. I wanted to be reminded of this throughout my fight and not of the sheer evil accumulating outside my front gate. I only took my eyes off it to shoot more Zombies. I was seriously getting depressed by the lack of sleep and the lack of goodness outside my front door.
I kept at it, getting my body count higher and higher throughout the morning. By 10 am I started getting pissed that I was still out here by myself. Unfortunately I couldn’t take my eyes off the targets to yell at my people. Besides, they were all asleep inside my nice warm house. I let my anger increase until it became fuel for my overtaxed system. Concentrating on the sloth of my people kept me from falling asleep again.
By 11 am I saw Sam taking care of the animals and the crops. I wanted to yell at him to take over for me. Instead I stayed quiet and focused on my work. Sam was right that those chores had been neglected. I just chose to seethe inside at the disrespect. I knew full well that this wasn’t true. That didn’t stop me from internalizing all the anger until I was ready to explode.
By 12:30 I was finally relieved of my duties. I wanted to yell and scream, but I was just too damned tired. I went inside and fell right to sleep.
************
I woke up 15 hours later at 4 am. I heard the soft popping of air guns shooting. I got up instantly and ran outside. I saw twice as many bodies piled up against my gate as when I left. There was now an entrance ramp of flesh extending up and over my fence. I almost flipped out at that and thought, “THEY’RE INSIDE!”
I yanked my pistol out of the holster and scanned the compound. I saw nothing. I ran around the entire property twice without finding even one of those fucking things. I almost relaxed until I heard yet another pop from the pellet gun.
I ran around to the front and took up position next to my wife. “You must be exhausted!” I wanted to kiss her.
She looked at me and smiled, “I just woke up, silly. We’re doing just fine.”
I looked at her with complete confusion. “What do you mean fine. This is really easy for them to get inside.” I wanted to yell it out in fear.
She looked at me like I was a child. “This was from yesterday. All the bad stuff is pretty much over. Those last two I killed were the first in six hours. I think we emptied the town.”
I didn’t see any more of those things. I moved closer to inspect them. There was no movement. There was a Hell of a smell however. I stepped back and holstered my weapon.
She let down her guard. “We have a plan for later this morning. Go and take care of the property and I’ll fill you in when we’re done.” She kissed me on the cheek and ran into the house for a second. She came back out with and iced coffee for herself.
I had to laugh at that. She had already proved that she would risk her life for coffee. I gave her a real kiss and left to get to work.
While I worked, I kept listening for more ‘pops’ of the pellet gun. I heard none for over two hours which was good. I would occasionally look in on my wife to make sure, though, just in case.
When all my work was finished, I met up with the now rested army I led. I liked what I saw. They all seemed calm and content despite being exhausted mentally and physically. They were all veterans now.
“I heard you guys have a plan.” I looked into their faces. They seemed hesitant.
Sam started first. “We have to drive around town and see what’s going on.” He saw my face about to explode and put his hand up to stop me. He continued, “There are still people out there, and we need to make them safe. And we can use the same driving to lead these Zeds away from us while we work.” He looked smug.
“And how are you going to do this?” I was skeptical.
Sam smiled. “We go A-Team on them.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I said nothing. He expected me to argue. I made him uncomfortable just by staring at him. It was an old trick I picked up. Stare and say nothing. People tended to fold fairly quickly.
Finally he spoke, “I’m going to attach those steel panels onto my SUV and make it impregnable. It’s not going to be hard. Then I’m going to simply talk with a microphone through the amplifier attached to the roof and let everyone know where we are. Hopefully people hear us and eventually come to us. The last thing we need is to have to go out and find them as the rest of the people in this town turn into Zeds.”
He was right about that. Searching for people was out of the question. I wasn’t about to put our people at risk.
He continued before I asked any further questions. “I’ll drive slow enough to get them away from us like the Pied Piper.” He abruptly stopped talking.
I guess he was done. It wasn’t a bad plan. And then when he returned, we could kill as many of those things as possible and repel them in a frontal assault.
“All right let’s do it.” I turned and walked to the SUV. They seemed to just be standing where I left them. I think they expected a fight out of me. They must have been disappointed. Eventually they came over to where I was standing in front of the truck.
I looked the SUV over and made sure there was nothing that could get us into trouble. There were no obvious flaws other than the windshield which was spider webbed. We would have to remove it eventually. The vehicle had running boards and a metal roof rack. It would be a piece of cake. Too bad I couldn’t weld the thing. I never considered getting an acetylene torch. We would have to screw the metal on to it. It would be the best we could do.
I brought Sam over to my construction equipment. He smiled knowing it would be more than we needed.
I left him alone to get started. I had to check on the equipment I would need to dig the holes for my next fire. I would have to dig a completely new hole that was literally ten times the size of my last one. I wish I had just bought a huge supply of lime instead. It would have been easier. I prepped the equipment and got ready.
***********
Five hours later, we were ready. I checked the SUV. It had crossbeams screwed onto the top of the vehicle. From these, more crossbeams
came down to the running boards and onto the hood and rear hatch. On top of the crossbeams wood panels were screwed into them every six inches. It looked like a wooden tank. Used oil dripped from the outer surfaces. Sam put that on the wood to keep the Zeds from grabbing on easily. He thought it would be much harder for them to stick to all the surfaces that way. Wooden ports were cut out of the panels every couple of feet about window height to allow him to see. He had reinforced these with razor sharp metal. I wanted to touch them, but I was afraid I was going to get cut. He must have sharpened them before putting them on the ports. This guy had become dangerous. I’m glad he was on my side. Serious thoughts of pain went into the construction of this beast.
On top of the SUV there was my old amplifier screwed down onto the surface of the vehicle. The wires went in through the sunroof right to the driver. I saw a microphone dangling down to the driver’s seat. I guess that was the final piece.
“We have one problem. How are we going to get out the gate?” Sam looked glum about opening the gate and driving over the dead bodies stacked like rotting cordwood.
I looked at him and smiled. I forgot to tell him about the camouflaged back door. “That is a piece of cake.” I showed them all their means of future escape. They were surprised they had never seen it before. I kept it hidden for a reason. It was our last means of exit if the shit ever hit the fan.
We spent the rest of the morning planning the dig site for the bodies and for the bodyguard placement. We knew that there would be Zeds out and about waiting for one of us to do something stupid. We couldn’t afford to take any chances.
By mid-afternoon, we were ready to go. Unfortunately, it was too late in the day for this. The last thing we needed was to be out in the town in the dark. I put everything off till the next morning. We needed a full day of sunlight in my opinion, and I didn’t want to risk everything going dark before our work was complete. I also thought the Zeds would be more active hunters in the dark. It probably wasn’t true, but my perceptions of them were probably skewed. Humans tended to like the light and not the dark. Around us since the power went out, it was pitch black. I shuddered at the thought of driving out there without being able to see.
My Last Testament Page 14