by Derek Slaton
“Just try and keep that fancy jumping and climbing to a minimum,” Mandy added. “Some of us ain’t great with heights.”
Tony saluted and sprinted up the road.
Vernon took a deep breath. “Let’s move out, people. We can do this.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Victor pulled up outside of Mister Kenneth’s house, hopping out with James, Doug, and Luke, his posse of moderately overweight truckers. Nadia took a deep breath as they approached, offering a thin smile to Solomon and Gregory as they hopped out of the truck bed. The teenage boys gave her a little wave as the group headed up onto the porch.
“Mister Kenneth, why are we back here?” Victor asked as he pulled off his hat to address the deacon. “We still got a lot of work to do on the barricade you wanted.”
“Something more important came up,” Nadia declared.
The trucker stared down his nose at her. “Excuse me little girl, but the adults are talking.”
She got up from her seat and stepped in front of him, her nose inches from his even though she was a half of a foot shorter than him. Something in her eyes cut through the older man like a knife, and he shrank under her gaze.
“As I was saying,” she said, ice in her tone, “something more important came up.”
“All right, girl,” Victor muttered as he stepped back from her. “What is it?”
“That rumble y’all heard a few minutes ago?” she asked, waving her hand. “That was the bridge over the Mississippi being blown up.”
The men all froze, eyes wide.
“But what about our people?” James stammered.
Nadia shook her head. “They’re alive, but they’re trapped on the other side of the river.”
“Well let’s go get ‘em!” Doug cried.
“No,” she said firmly. “We have another task we have to tackle, and we don’t have a lot of time to do it in.”
“Well, spit it out,” James snapped. “What do we need to do?”
She raised her chin. “We have to clear out the casino.”
There was a long moment of awkward silence before Victor barked a hysterical laugh. “Oh, is that all, little girl? We’ll just go clear out the casino? Hell, while we’re at it, we can build a rocket ship to take us to the moon!”
“You call me little girl one more time and I’m going to plant your bitch ass in the ground,” Nadia growled. “And if you don’t think I can, let me remind you that while your doughy ass has been lounging around, I’ve been out there on the front lines fighting these motherfuckers. Word around town is that you couldn’t make the cut because you get winded trying to find your own dick in the morning to take a piss. Which, given the size of that gut I imagine it’s a two day trip for your hands to make it below your waistline to find that shrunken gummy worm you call a manhood. Now, you got anything else to say? Or are you ready to start tackling this problem?”
Victor’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, shaking his head and unable to speak.
“Miss Nadia,” James said, coughing nervously and raising his hand. “I have a question.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Why?” he asked. “Why do you have to go to the casino?”
“Glad you asked, James,” Nadia replied with a smile. “Because that explosion is going to attract every zombie within earshot. I know you boys have been working hard on a barricade, but it’s not going to be enough to withstand a horde of any size. If we can get people into the casino we might have a chance at surviving whatever comes our way.”
Solomon stepped forward, his brother in tow. “I speak for both me and my brother when I say we want to do our part. I know we’re young and that’s why we’ve been left behind before, but we want to help.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that, because I was kind of counting on your two,” she replied gently. “Everybody who would normally being doing an assault like this is currently on the other side of the river, which leaves it up to us.
“Now, I can see the look on some of y’all’s faces and I can tell you’re scared. But there’s only one thing you need to keep in the back of your head. If a sixteen-year-old girl isn’t scared to do this, then I shouldn’t be either.”
The three truckers glanced at each other and shrugged, unable to argue with the logic that they’d just been guilted into a suicide mission.
“Well, miss, we’re with you, but I have one more question,” James said. “Do you have a plan?”
“I do,” Nadia replied. “You and I are gonna run over to your workshop while the rest of these guys get any weapons they can. Mister Kenneth, I’ll need you to start getting people ready to move, and packing every bit of our supplies into vehicles. It may be awhile before we’re able to come back to town.”
The old deacon stood up from his rocking chair and nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
“All right, gentlemen,” Nadia said with a firm nod. “You know what to do. We meet back here in ten.”
CHAPTER SIX
Phil kept a white-knuckled grip on the barrel of his handgun as they headed up the road leading towards the docks. “What’s the plan if there aren’t any boats?” he asked.
“Well,” Marc drew out the word as he scratched the back of his head, “we know for a fact there are going to be boats near the water since there was a traffic jam that got everybody stuck. The thing we have to be concerned about is getting a boat in the water without being eaten.”
Phil raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Yeah, just a massive pileup of trucks, some of which don’t have keys and others have zombies trapped inside,” Darrell cut in, sarcasm evident in his voice. “All we gotta do is clear the ones with busted boats out of the way and get one in the water while fighting off a few hundred of them pricks with what—twelve bullets between us? Easy as fuckin’ pie.”
Phil’s breath caught in his throat. “Okay, that does sound bad.”
“Guys, it’s Tony,” Mandy pointed ahead at the figure tearing towards them, frantically waving his hands for them to come to him.
Vernon sped up to a jog. “We should pick up the pace,” he instructed, and his group followed suit. They huffed as they finally reached him, and he shook his head in disbelief.
“Don’t y’all be getting comfortable, we gotta move!” he urged.
“What is it, Tony?” Vernon rasped.
The younger man waved him off. “Come on! Keep moving.” He took off around a bend, along a tree-lined curb, and the group stopped short in shock as they caught up to him.
Shoulder to shoulder across the only road into town shambled at least a hundred and fifty zombies. They moved at an aimless pace, as hordes were wont to do, not having noticed the fresh meal clustered at the bend ahead.
“Holy fuck,” Mandy breathed.
Marc’s face was white as a sheet. “What do we do?”
“We’d better be finding a fuckin’ hiding spot, that’s for damn sure,” Darrell hissed.
Marc shook his head. “Where? Where would we hide?”
“I don’t know,” Darrell snapped. “Up a damn tree, anything!”
“No, if one of them spots us, we’re all dead,” Vernon put in, shaking his head. “They’ll just wait us out, it’s no good.”
Phil pointed to a metallic building to the right, with a large stone silo in the yard. “What’s that building there?” There was a large metal construct that connected it to a neighboring building across the street.
“Holy shit, you’re a genius, Phil!” Tony grinned. “It’s an old processing plant and they have a conveyor belt that connects the two buildings.”
“So we lure them into one building,” Vernon said thoughtfully.
Tony nodded. “And cross over to the other side!”
“Okay, if we’re gonna do that we’d better hurry the fuck up and get there before they do!” Darrell urged, and Tony took off like a shot. He led the charge across the street and up onto the grass, and a few of t
he approaching zombies began to notice the movement ahead of them.
Tony made it to the building just before a few of the faster zombies did, and tried to throw open the door, but it was locked. He frantically looked around, spotting a nearby window that was about eight feet off of the ground.
“Christ I hope this works,” he muttered, and sprinted for the window. A trio of zombies moved to intercept him, and he leapt into a kick, catching the lead one in the chest and knocking the other two over like a set of dominoes. He thrust off of the zombie and did a spring up the wall, grabbing the windowsill.
He held on with one hand and drew his baton with the other, ducking his head as low as he could while smashing the glass with the metal. He glanced down the road to see the rest of the group closing in, and more and more zombies from the other side.
Tony took a deep breath and clambered up through the window, dropping down onto the ground floor and rolling towards the front door. He unlocked it and threw it open, a zombie there to greet him. He reached up and grabbed it around the throat as they tumbled backwards, and he managed to keep from toppling over even though the zombie was large. He smacked it a few times with the baton, avoiding snapping teeth as he pushed it against the wall. He dropped the baton and drew his knife, stabbing it in the forehead just as two more zombies burst in through the door.
He whirled around and fell into a fighting stance, when the two corpses crumpled to the floor, revealing Mandy and Marc behind them.
“Thanks for the assist.” Tony grinned.
Mandy winked at him. “Anytime, sugar.” The others bustled in and threw themselves against the door, but the horde outside was too much for them to push back.
“Where in the holy fuck are we going?!” Darrell screamed.
Vernon pointed up at the conveyor belt that led to the crosswalk. “There! Move!”
“Go, I’ll hold this!” Darrell cried, digging his heels in as best he could. Vernon led Phil, Mandy and Marc up the conveyor, slow and steady as they could on such a thin ramp. Tony stayed at the bottom, watching their progress.
Darrell grunted under the strain as an arm shot past his face, flailing from the widening gap of the door. “Are they up there yet?!” he yelled.
Tony clenched his fists and shook his head. “They’re getting there, man!”
“They’d better hurry the fuck up, cause I can’t hold this much longer!” Darrell cried.
Tony took a deep breath. “Fuck.” He watched his comrades struggling with the steep incline. He spotted a six-foot-long piece of rebar and grabbed it, taking a step towards his grunting friend. “Okay, I got an idea! I need you to run as fast as you can to me and start climbing, I’ll take care of the rest!”
Darrell nodded and braced himself to make his move. “Okay, I’m coming, you’d better be ready!” he cried, and then pushed off of the door. As soon as he let go, the door practically exploded from the weight of the zombies. It caught his foot and he tripped, hitting the ground hard in a panic.
He screamed as he scrambled to get to his feet, but the mass of rotting flesh descended on him instantly, decaying teeth finding purchase in his soft warm body.
“Darrell!” Mandy shrieked from above, open-mouthed at her friend’s disappearance under the flood of corpses.
“Goddammit,” Tony cursed, blinking back tears. “Y’all get moving, now!” he screamed up at them, and leapt onto the belt, closing the distance between them quickly. As he caught up to Marc, he saw a row of zombies managing to work their way upwards. “Vernon, they’re coming up! You gotta hurry, man!”
The older man looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened, and he picked up the pace as best he could while still finding good footing.
Tony readied his rebar and then fell into a controlled slide, all the way back down the ramp into the row of zombies. It slammed into the chest of the first one, skewering a few like a kebab.
“Don’t know how much higher y’all would be able to get, but I ain’t taking any chances,” he muttered, and jammed his end of the bar into the metal grating on the side of the conveyor. The kebab worked as a temporary barrier, trapping the other zombies below from clambering up.
Satisfied, Tony turned and climbed back up, just as Marc managed to haul himself up onto the landing above. The group looked down onto the factory floor to see easily a hundred creatures flooding the space, reaching up to the fresh meat above.
“Everybody okay?” Tony asked as he pulled himself up, and received a series of somber nods. “I’m gonna go out first and make sure there’s nothing else that is gonna cause us any issues. The two most important things from here on out is that you don’t look down and you don’t make a noise. We don’t want to go through all of this only to inadvertently lure them into the other building. Everybody clear?”
There were another round of nods, and then he took a deep breath before heading outside. He peeked down to see a dozen or so stragglers outside, but none of them took notice of him. He crept cautiously across the walkway, the wind rustling his hair as he moved. When he reached the other side, he scanned the ground floor of the opposite building for threats.
He let out a deep sigh of relief when there was no movement whatsoever, and popped back out to the walkway to wave at Vernon.
One by one, the group moved slowly and quietly across the street, and climbed down to join Tony on the ground floor. They stayed as silent as they could for fear of alerting any of the horde, and gathered around a dusty window along the far wall.
Vernon wiped the glass and peered out. There was a dirt road running alongside the river, completely devoid of movement, alive or dead.
“There’s our road, and it looks clear,” he murmured. “Tony, you know the drill. You go on ahead. For the rest of us, stay silent and move quickly. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Victor pulled his truck up to the casino parking lot, stopping at the edge. He hung out the window as the group in the bed stood up to survey the area.
Nadia pulled out a pair of binoculars, inspecting the barricades at the front entrance. She carefully scanned the cars in the parking lot, making sure there were no straggler zombies lurking about.
“Looks like our barricades have held,” she reported, “and I’m not seeing any danger coming from the parking lot. But we should avoid the cars just to be safe.”
“Where would you like me to go, then?” Victor asked. “Because I’m assuming we ain’t doin’ a frontal assault?”
She shook her head. “Head over to the old hotel,” she replied, motioning to an older two-story structure just to the north of the main building.
“All right,” he barked, “y’all hang tight.” He put the truck back in drive and everyone sat back down to avoid falling out onto the pavement.
“Man I love this place,” James commented wistfully as they pulled in front of the old hotel.
Solomon shook his head. “It’s so old. Why did they leave it up?”
“Because, young man,” Doug replied, “this place used to be one of the most popular destinations on the river when it opened in the early sixties. Rumor has it that the new owner just couldn’t bring himself to tear it down, so he had it converted into extra hotel rooms while keeping the retro feel.”
“That’s right,” James agreed, “back in our day all we needed to have a good time was a grill and a swimming pool.”
Gregory’s brow furrowed. “But who would want to stay in a place like this nowadays? I bet there aren’t even any flat screens.”
“Some of us old folks yearn for a simpler time,” Doug admitted with a chuckle. “Ironically, with this apocalypse we ended up going a bit further back than any of us would have liked.”
Luke shook his head. “You know, it’s really a miracle this place is still standing at all. How many floods and hurricanes have rolled through here over the years?”
“They definitely don’t build ‘em like this anymore,” Doug agreed.
Victor rolled to a stop and e
verybody hopped out. James and Luke drew shotguns, taking a defensive stance in case anything ran out at them. Nadia jumped down next to the driver’s side door, and Victor motioned to the large building.
“What’s the play?” he asked.
Nadia turned to Doug. “You have the room key?”
He grinned and pulled out a large battery-powered drill with a twelve-inch bit, giving it a few buzzes for effect. “Yes, ma’am.”
“All right,” she replied. “Second floor, pick a room. Preferably one that isn’t occupied by the undead.”
Doug nodded and led the group inside. They fanned out and covered him as they headed up the main staircase, and he chose the first room on the left. He jiggled the handle and tapped on the wood, but there was no movement or sounds from inside. He drilled through the locking mechanism, and eventually it popped open, allowing them entrance into a hotel room that felt like it had transported them back in time.
Solomon wrinkled his nose as he ran a hand over the lime green linens that matched the curtains. “So… interior decorating wasn’t a profession until after the sixties, then?”
“Hey now, this reminds me of my childhood,” James replied, patting the bright yellow fridge. “Show some respect.”
“Pretty sure this means you forfeit any right to make fun of anything in our childhood,” Gregory shot back.
James scratched the back of his head as he took in the pukey green ceramic tile in the bathroom. “Yeah, all right, I’ll give you that one.”
Nadia tossed her bag down on the bed and began pulling out supplies.
“So, you gonna let us in on your little plan, here?” Victor asked, voice impatient.
The young woman took a deep breath to keep herself from snapping at him. Instead, she took three screwdrivers out of her bag and tossed them down in front of him.
“What in the hell you want me to do with these?” he demanded.
“You and James are gonna go find the four heaviest doors you boys can lift,” she instructed. “You’re gonna take them off their hinges and bring them back to us. Just make sure they’re solid.”