Lisa was on top of a car, staring down an automatic barrel at us. My skin crawled as she drew a bead on me. I wondered what she made of the ghoul, wondered if she was thinking of blowing us away just for hauling it back. Trust was hard to come by nowadays.
She would be right to kill him and us. I wondered if I would do the same in her shoes. I realized what a mistake it was to bring this thing with us. I should have ended him when we were back at the house, but this was an opportunity to study our enemies’ leaders. What sort of information could we learn?
“What the fuck is that?” she yelled as we drew within fifteen feet.
“One of the ghouls.”
“What?” Coming off the car, she slid to the ground in a neat, practiced move.
She came at us with assault rifle raised, stopping a few feet away before she lowered it to her waist. The gears were spinning—I could see it in her eyes as she considered what we had brought with us. This was a great opportunity; she had to see that.
“You can’t bring that ghoul in. Lay it out and take care of it, then drag the body somewhere. I don’t want to see the thing.”
She turned to leave.
“Wait!” I set the unconscious creature down on the ground. Scott leaned over to help, then straightened and stretched until something popped in his back.
“Heavy mother fucker,” he grunted.
“What? You think that thing is going to come in here? Maybe we can feed it, give it a room to stay in? Maybe we can ask its name and treat it like family, the way we did with you and Katherine last night?”
She had a point, but the tactical advantage had to outweigh the risk. We could learn so much from this ghoul. We could find out how they controlled the zombies, how they lived, where they lived, and how many there were. I was afraid to admit that the ghouls might have some sort of organization, that they might be living in groups and communicating, like we did. If that were true, then we would need to find and eliminate them, because they would certainly be unwilling to peacefully share the world with us. They would want to destroy us—or worse, gather us up like they were farming cattle.
“We need to find out if they’re organized. We need to learn everything we can. Don’t you have a secure room where we can keep him while we gather intel?”
“Gather intel? Is that another word for torture?”
“What the hell does it matter if we torture this thing? It’s not even human.”
“I can give fuck all about him. I don’t want him in the camp.”
I wanted to chalk up her reaction to being a woman, but that wasn’t it, and it would be cheap to think so. Lisa had worked very hard to maintain this enclave in the midst of hopelessness. She had been a beacon for the survivors, given them a place to gather and live together as a family. They relied on each other. They protected each other, and I had no doubt that each would sacrifice himself or herself for the others. It reminded me of the military, and that was why I felt so attached to them after only one day. I couldn’t betray them, but I didn’t want to lose valuable information we could learn from the ghoul.
A scream from ahead drew my attention toward the end of the road. There were a couple of zombies headed in our direction. A loud moan filled the air and lifted the hair on the back of my neck. I looked down at the ghoul, and his eyes were open and glowing.
“Are you doing that?” I wondered how intelligent he was.
“You will die,” he hissed in a burst of foul breath that made me want to turn aside and throw up.
I looked back, and there were more of them. They were filling the street, heading in our direction. I considered the ghoul—this man that used to be human but was now some sort of monster. Who was I to become judge, jury, and executioner?
“Call them off or I’ll blow your brains all over the road. You want to die?” Pulling my handgun, I pressed the barrel to his head.
“I’m already dead … just like you. You just don’t … know … it.”
His speech pattern was a mess. He could only choke out a few words before wheezing.
“Fuck! How do you do it? How do you call and control them?”
“Why are you still... among the living?”
White rage filled my vision. It tore across my eyes and filled them with hatred for this thing. He was human once, like me, like all of us, but he had no humanity left. He was worse than an animal. He was a demon that needed to be put down.
I was holding his collar as I kept his head off the ground. Dropping him, I stood and blew his head open with a pair of rounds that turned the concrete red and gray, like a bowl of putrid spaghetti had been spilled.
More moans filled the air. I did a full turn as I took in the hordes that were closing in on us. I saw five or six coming in every direction, with more behind them. A shambling army of rotted dead that walked like living men and women. Their cries and snarls filled me with more rage. This was not supposed to happen!
“Call everyone back!” Lisa yelled.
A pulsing sound ripped through the air, like they had routed a semi’s air horn into an air raid siren. Houses opened on all sides, and people came streaming out and into the street. They were strapping on clothes, packs, guns—it was a perfect example of organized chaos. There must have been thirty people, which would put the population of the enclave at something like seventy. Would it be enough?
Scott grabbed my arm and tugged at me. I stared at the ghoul on the ground as the light left its eyes. The body didn’t even twitch; it just lay listless like it had been on a morgue table for days.
The rage washed over me, but I used it rather than let it take over. I had met men who would go blind with rage in the heat of battle and make mistakes. Blind anger was a powerful tool, but it could lead to mistakes. There would be no mistakes. I was going to mold the rage.
Forcing down the adrenaline shakes, I took a deep breath, then another, before focusing on the zombies coming at us. Men and women with horrible wounds that no longer bled. Strips of flesh hung over rotted clothing as they came after us.
Lifting the rifle, I stared down the iron sights at a man dressed in a suit. His tie was still pulled up tight, but most of his shirt was missing. I put one in his forehead, and he fell back without a sound.
I walked as I shot, my gaze sweeping with the end of the gun as though the weapon were some sort of strange eyewear that allowed me to see the dead. And when I saw them, I dropped them. I fired fast, exhaling as I squeezed the trigger. Most fell with one shot, but some took two.
A voice called to me, then two, but I ignored them and fired. The voice in my mind was counting, and when I ran dry, I was already reaching for my back pocket for another magazine. The old one went into my waistband, and the other was slapped home without a look. My gaze never left the things coming after me.
They snarled and groaned as they moved in on me. There were no tactics; all they cared about was getting a piece of my flesh. I was probably fifteen or twenty feet from the barrier when other shots started to fill the air. Bullets buzzed past—angry wasps that tore holes in the air and passed with a brutal blaze through the zombies.
A group of three left the safety of a bunch of overgrown rhododendrons when they saw me. I spun to my right and coolly dropped two of them. The third one was too close for a shot, so I stepped forward and snapped my foot up in a front kick to the thing’s chest. The kick was cool and coordinated; I exhaled as I struck, and every muscle in my body tightened on impact. The blow was horrendous, and I felt ribs snap under the kick, but the zombie merely fell onto its back and, after a couple of seconds, started struggling to its feet. I turned and dropped a pair that had gotten too close, and when I spun around to kill the one that I had kicked, a bullet ripped from my right and tore its forehead open.
Looking back, I found Scott with his shotgun. He pumped a round in and fired at nearly point blank range at a pair that had been closing from my right. One fell, so I dispatched the other. She was probably in her sixties and dressed in rain gea
r. It was easy to imagine she had chosen the thick clothing to protect her from bites, but she was missing most of one hand. They must have started there when they turned her into a meal.
I shot her in the head and then started to fall back. I was not done with the fight, but I needed to get to the other side.
“Let’s go!” I called to Scott, but I didn’t stop to see if he heard me. I ran for the line of cars and jumped on an old Ford, landing with a boom that probably left a dent in the hood. In two breaths, I was over it and sliding to the ground, then through a line of defenders.
Zombies parted, but it soon became a tangle as I strove to get around the combatants. Guns in all forms came out as the zombies came on. From all sides, they poured out of the woods and into the streets. They came in pairs and then in tens. It was the worst scenario I could possibly imagine, submitting my newfound friends to this horror. They came covered in blood, some fresher than others. Some had only strips of flesh left, and some were missing limbs. One poor woman in a jogging suit was missing part of her face; she was no longer ‘juicy,’ that was for sure.
Reaching the other side of the compound, I slid over another car and into the street. I dashed for my Honda and flung the rear door open. The M249 came out, as did an extra pair of magazines.
The gun was immensely heavy, and I would be better off getting to cover so I could mount it on something. At this range, I would be far from accurate.
None of that mattered. I wanted to blast these things back to Hell. I wanted them all dead.
The gun was a terrible pounding that tore open the day like a plane was flying overhead. It jerked back against my shoulder, so I leaned in and fought the recoil as I sprayed a healthy dose of .223 rounds into the oncoming creatures. Parts flew off with sickening ease. Bodies fell back as the bullets hammered into them over and over. One would almost call it a bloodbath, but there wasn’t much blood.
Long before I was ready to stop, the gun ran out of rounds, so I dropped the giant drum and tossed it in the back of the truck. I slammed another magazine in and let out a fresh burst. The chatter of shots came from behind, but there was also the sound of engines starting up. One, a very low rumble, sounded like a big diesel engine.
I glanced over my shoulder to see an army of men and women setting up lines of defense. It looked like something out of a textbook on how to defend a line. Some lay on top of trucks and yammered away with assault rifles. Some, like Scott, had dropped the big guns and were going at it with handguns. He had what looked like army-issue .45s in each fist. He spun and shot, moved and shot, and when he shot, something fell.
It was a massacre, plain and simple.
But they kept coming.
The first car to leave was a beat-up station wagon. It had someone in the back, and I suspected it was Katherine. Another car swerved around it and, with a roar, shot into the lead. A couple of other cars came after, then a big wrecker inched along around them. I kept glancing back to see how the warriors were holding up. Gunshots echoed everywhere. The ringing in my ears settled in and would be there for a while.
Scott came to my side as I unloaded a fresh magazine. He had one gun under his arm while he reloaded. He slapped a magazine in, then repeated the process.
“What’s the plan?” he yelled.
“Staying alive.”
“I didn’t ask if you could dance, man. I want to know if you have a fucking plan to get the hell out of here before the place is overrun.”
I didn’t have a plan besides killing as many of the zombies as I could. I had brought them here, and it was my duty to get rid of them.
The gun hammered to a stop, and the last recoil left my shoulder feeling sore. My ears rang, but the sound of the dead rang louder than any shots. They came on, slipping over bodies, and they fell among the corpses. Moving corpses among the still corpses—it was a nightmare. All I wanted to do was run away screaming. My flesh crawled as I watched the zombies clamber for me.
Scott continued shooting them, but we were seriously outnumbered. More cars were starting up, but I wasn’t ready to leave just yet. I dug in my pockets and pulled out the keys. “We can take my car.” I tossed the keys to Scott.
“I look like a fucking chauffeur?” he said and tossed them back.
Catching them, I grinned. He grinned back and shot one in the face. There was a splatter of blood that was nothing more than congealed red, like the blood that pools in the bottom of a container of leftover meat in the refrigerator. I grimaced and tossed the M249 in the back of the car. My trusty shotgun was in the back seat, so I tugged it off the floor and checked the load. Picking up a box of shells, I stuffed it into my pocket. I could kill a few more while the survivors made their escape.
They were all around us. I emptied the shotgun and started to reload, realizing we would not have much time. They were ten or fifteen feet away, and I could pick out details. Things I wished I could not see. The empty eyes, faces covered in blood. Some gray, others pale and white. Listless features on moving bodies. And behind them I caught the sight of green eyes that burned into me—seared like fire. I saw one pair then two, then several others popped up. And they urged the undead on.
I had a new target.
I emptied the shotgun and reached into the back of the car for the hunting rifle. It was on the floor, and I didn’t have time to check its condition. I opened the front door and used it as a brace to lean my body against. Then I lifted the gun, slid the bolt back, and watched a round fall into the chamber. Lifting the gun to my cheek, I took careful aim.
They were about fifty feet away, and they had their hands out at their sides as if corralling the zombies. One gestured, and a group stepped forward. I waited until he gestured with the other hand, and then I blew his brains out.
“We need to get the fuck out of here, man!” Scott yelled from somewhere behind me, punctuating his words with a shotgun blast then another.
I spun around, and he was almost swarmed. He staggered to the SUV and got in, slamming the door shut and popping up in the turret. He squeezed the gun between his body and the opening, then turned away from me and shot a pair.
I had to fall back, but they closed in on the other side. Now my way to the car was blocked. I fished the keys out and called out to Scott. He turned to see my wide eyes, and I threw the keys at him. He nearly dropped the gun as he made to catch them, but he managed to snag them in one hand. He stared at me, and I could not read his eyes. I wanted to tell him to take care and to watch out for Lisa and Katherine, but it seemed unnecessary.
I slammed the butt of my gun into the face of one of the zombies, and it fell away with a crunch. There should have been a spurt of blood. I was afraid that the only blood I would be seeing anytime soon would be my own.
The rifle was empty, and I didn’t have time to load, because they were everywhere. I spun away from the car and kicked one in the chest, then I swung the gun like a bat and laid another one out.
A small space opened, but I felt hands reach for me. The stench of the dead and rotting made me want to puke my guts out. I tried to breathe in the mass, but it was damn near impossible. I knew it was panic eating at me—an absolute dread sinking into my gut like a dark night. I had no escape. The SUV was ten feet away, but it might as well have been a mile away for all the good it did me.
I swung the gun hard into another zombie, and the stock came loose. Goddamn cheap Walmart rifle. More cold hands. Drawing my knife, I went at them with my own version of teeth. The blade was a crescent of death that I used to slice my way free. There were so many of them, but I might buy myself a few more seconds. The clothing might hold up against a small bite, but it wouldn’t if one set into me with intent.
Hands. Rotted breath. Moaning. Cries. What would it feel like when they tore me apart? I should have saved a bullet for my own head.
Then a space opened up, and one of the green-eyed bastards stood ahead of me. I dove for him, but something came down across my back like a lead bar. While I stagg
ered under the blow, I still launched myself at the fucker one more time. I just needed to close in and sink my blade into his throat. Then another blow, this one to the base of my skull, and the lights went out like someone had covered the sun. My knees hit the ground and sent pain rocketing up my legs. I tried to get my hands out to stop my fall, which was the last thing I was aware of, except for one hazy thought. At least I wouldn’t feel pain when they tore me to pieces.
Part Three
Reality was the bitch I didn’t want to deal with. I came to it unwilling, tried to ignore it, but there was a ringing in my ears that wouldn’t let me be. Pressure on one side of my head made me feel like I had a cold and needed some medicine. I needed some Oxy while I was at it, because my whole body felt like a punching bag, or the remains of one tossed into the trash after a lifetime of faithful service.
The smell of dirt, mud, and old leaves filled me with a sense of peace. That came into sharp contrast as I tried to blink away flashes of light. It was like I had stared at the sun and paid for it with the aftereffects burned into my retinas.
I lifted my head, but the pain made me pay for that little effort. A pissed-off demon bashed around in my skull. It screamed over and over again for me to just give up and lie here for eternity.
Reaching up, I felt around the back of my head, which revealed a huge lump to my questing fingers. My shoulders hurt when I moved; they felt pinched and sore right in the middle of my back. Where had that blow come from?
My head was in a fog. The last thing I remembered was the battle at the barricade. My half-suicidal attempt to take out the enemy while my new friends got away.
Some of my vision returned after I blinked, but only on one side. My left eye continued to throb in time with my heartbeat. A blast of darkness that almost cleared soon fizzled out again. I shook my head, but that only made my brain rattle around and hurt even worse.
I had fights that didn’t hurt this badly.
I rolled to my side and then onto my stomach, managing to get one arm under my body and push myself off the ground. My hand crunched against leaves and wet foliage of some sort. When I gripped at pressed grass, I felt something slither across my fingers.
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