by Jon Schafer
Jane turned to grab one of the swings when she heard Capp suddenly say, “Oh no, oh God no.”
Looking back out the window, she now saw hundreds of the dead converging on the school from all directions. Frozen in fear and shock at the sight, all her senses died as she stood locked in place and watched as more and more of them appeared. Her vision went black, and by the time she came out of it, the shamblers were pushing up against the front wall of the school.
Her senses came back in a rush, and she saw the other kids running for the stairs and heard the whining voices of thousands of the dead. Capp had pulled her away from the window and was trying to use a swing, so she picked up one of her own and moved forward to help him.
Readying her rope at the window to his right, she leaned out and watched as the concrete block Capp was swinging dropped lower and lower toward the mass of dead. The block made its final arc only to smash and shatter dead hands and arms reaching up as they tried to grasp at the food above them. There were so many outstretched arms that they stopped the swinging block before it could reach a single head. Those dead, who were still able to, grabbed onto the rope and pulled violently. The force of the tug was so great; it threw Capp off balance and almost yanked him out the window.
Both of them backed away until they were standing in the middle of the classroom. Capp turned to her and said loud enough to be heard over the whining of the dead, “There’s too many for the swings to work, but we should still be okay. The first floor is solid, so they’ll never get in that way. We’ve got enough food to last a couple weeks and it’ll rain tonight so we’ll have water.”
“And beyond that?” Jane asked.
“We just have to wait them out,” Capp told her. “Remember that couple that came through here a few months back and told us about the huge groups of shamblers that roam around looking for something to eat?”
Jane brightened at this and said, “That’s right. They said that it takes a while, but when the dead figure out that they can’t get to you, they move on. A few of them hang around but most keep going.”
“And if there are only a few, we can deal with them,” Capp reassured her.
They were distracted by a strange noise coming from outside the window. It was a combination rustling and crunching that was loud enough to be heard above the whining of the dead. Cautiously, they moved to the opening and looked out.
Below them, the dead at the front of the group were being trampled. As their bodies fell, the dead from behind climbed and clawed their way on top of them to paw at the brick wall of the school. After a moment, the process was repeated, quickly creating a mound of dead flesh that reached past the top of the first floor windows.
Not giving up, the two survivors rallied the rest of the group and they went around closing all the windows and blocking them with whatever they could find.
Capp gave his rifle to one of the older boys and kept the shotgun for himself. They fired at the first of the dead coming in through the windows until they ran out of ammunition. In the end, it was useless. It only took fifteen minutes for them to breach the second floor and attack the people there, and an additional five to reach those who had barricaded themselves on the roof.
***
Having learned from the last experiment, this time the scientists observed the test from inside a portable, fenced enclosure. A small generator kept an electrical current running through it, and the late Lieutenant Randal’s troops stood with their weapons at the ready.
Lowering his binoculars, Hawkins almost beamed as he said, “That was fabulous! Did you see how they climbed over one another to get inside the building? No one could survive that kind of assault. They even made it on top of the roof.”
His assistant nodded while saying, “And their speed was at one and a half times the normal average.”
Hawkins settled down in a camp chair, and said, “Give it five more minutes to make sure everyone inside is dead, then reverse the process so the Malectron repels them. After the dead have cleared the area, send in one of Tru’s – I mean Sergeant Cain’s men to retrieve the box.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Happy Hallow Insane Asylum:
Steve climbed through the attic access and then through the hatch set into the roof. He could see Brain, Tick-Tock, Connie, Denise and Grimm at the peak looking to the east. Turning to look east himself, he didn’t have to climb that high to see what they had called him up here for.
He took in the huge, dirty cloud for a few seconds before calling out, “That’s a lot of feet kicking up dust, that’s for damn sure. My guess is there’s between twenty and thirty thousand Z’s out there, which makes sense.”
“How did you come up with those numbers?” Denise asked. “It looks closer to the million that Grimm was talking about.”
“One of the first jobs I had when I went into radio was in Dallas,” Steve told her. “We had a bunch of sister stations all through this area so I had to learn the demographics. I know the numbers, but you know this area from the ground, Grimm, so how far away are they?”
Grimm tilted her hooded head and thought about it for a few moments before saying, “About twelve miles, give or take. I looked through the binoculars earlier and could still see a few landmarks that I know are within ten miles of us. My children are a couple miles past the furthest point I could see.”
“How long do you think we have?” Tick-Tock asked.
“That depends on if they’re even heading this way,” Grimm answered. “I’ve seen clouds like that before, but there’s a river and a lake between here and there that usually stops them.”
“Isn’t there a bridge?” Tick-Tock asked her.
“Someone blew it up trying to keep the infection from spreading,” Grimm told him.
Tick-Tock laughed and said, “Think you might have told us that earlier when we were heading that way?”
She shrugged and replied, “You didn’t ask. If you had insisted on continuing toward Jasper, I would have told you a few ways to get around. My children will also have to go the same way to get to the nearest bridge to cross the water, and those are further to the north or south.”
“They don’t have to breathe,” Heather told her. “They can cross just about anything given enough time.”
“Ahhh, yes,” Grimm said. “But they need some type of motivation first. I’ve been through that area countless times and have yet to see one living thing to attract them.” After a second, she added, “Except for the birds. Big, fat birds that have been feeding rather well of late. I would say that it’s a good thing that my children don’t fly or we would be eternally screwed.”
“So you think they might go to the north or south?” Steve asked her.
“North, south, east or west,” Grimm told him. “My children go where they go and do what they do without reason or rhyme. And now for a poem: Birdie, birdie in the sky. Why'd you drop that in my eye? I won't sigh, I won't cry. I'm only glad, the dead don't fly.”
They all laughed at the silliness of it while Grimm bowed.
His attention drawn back to the cloud, Steve said, “It’ll take them a couple hours to get here if they do come this way, so I want everyone ready to take off within ten minutes notice. I also need someone up here twenty-four seven to keep an eye on that cloud, and tomorrow we’ll do a recon to see what we can see.” He looked at Brain and asked him, “Did you get the radio up and running yet?”
“Almost done,” he replied. “I just finished adjusting the antennae when I saw the cloud.”
“Then start broadcasting,” Steve told him. “I don’t want you to give our position away, but you can mention that we have someone here who’s immune to the virus. That should get the military’s attention, if nothing else.”
“Consider it done,” Brain told him as he made his way toward the hatch with Connie in tow.
Seeing Sheila and Mary walking across the lawn, Steve called for them to come up to the roof. He would get them to take the first and second
shifts as lookouts.
To Tick-Tock, he said, “You and I are going to round up the others and get them to load the vehicles in case we have to haul ass fast. I’ll ask Heather and Linda to watch them and make sure they do it right, and then we’ve got work to do.”
“What are we doing?” Tick-Tock asked.
Pointing toward the cloud, he said, “Finding a way around that.”
***
The others, of course, complained bitterly about having to load everything they had just unloaded, and at one point, they called for a sit-in and flopped down onto the ground. Heather was not impressed with their theatrics and simply told them that if they didn’t work, they didn’t eat. This got them motivated enough to start working again, but only at a lethargic pace.
“How could you stand to be around them?” Heather asked Linda as they stowed jugs of water in the back of a truck.
She could only shake her head and say, “When I took the job with the Senator, I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I was shocked at her level of ignorance and incompetence even before Dead Day. She and the rest of them are idealists and seem oblivious to the real facts and the consequences of their actions. Plus, if they get called on something, their answer is always to blame someone else. They really can’t seem to do anything except pass a lot of laws, rules and regulations that just end up costing money and bogging down the system. What they preach for everyone else to do is exactly the opposite of how they lead their own elitist lives. It also goes against everything that’s right, and they can’t even see their own hypocrisy. It was really starting to grate on my nerves, so I already had plans to quit at the end of October.”
“And we all know what happened then,” Heather said with a half laugh.
Linda chuckled and said, “Who would have ever thought that the dead would walk the earth to eat the living.”
Cindy walked up carrying a water jug with Pep at her side and Igor trailing behind them. They hadn’t expected Igor to help, but he was carrying four cases of canned goods.
He gave them a look that asked, ‘where do you want these?’ so Heather told him to stack them against the back of the cab.
After dropping off their load, the trio left to get another. When they were out of earshot, Heather asked, “Do you worry about Igor being around Cindy alone?”
“Not as much as when he first started hanging around. He actually kind of grows on you,” she replied. “But I do know exactly how much time it takes to go into the mansion, grab a jug of water and come back. If Cindy’s out of my sight for a second longer than that, Grimm’s going to be looking for a new Igor.”
***
As soon as Brain turned the CB radio on, he could hear voices. They were faint, and he could only pick up every other word of what they were saying, but there was definitely someone out there.
Smiling at Connie, he picked up the microphone and pressed the transmit lever before saying, “Breaker, breaker. My name is Randy Tangleoni and I’m with a group of survivors trying to contact any military or civilian authorities. We have a girl with us who is immune to the HWNW virus, over.”
He listened for a reply but didn’t get one. He could tell the voices picked up in intensity after he’d transmitted, but couldn’t make out if they’d understood what he’d said.
After repeating his message again, he stopped and listened. Still not receiving a reply, he switched to another channel and tried again.
***
Tick-Tock’s finger traced the route they planned to take as he said, “We have to backtrack only a little way before we come to this fire road. We can take that south and then east all the way to Kirbyville. Then we can bypass the town to the north before we pick up Highway 190 where it curves back down here to the south. What do you think, Grimm?”
With her knowledge of the area, they’d asked her to join them. She thought about it for a minute before saying, “I have been to Kirbyville twice since my children arose. The town is relatively intact and abandoned from what I could see. They had roadblocks on the outskirts so I couldn’t get close, but I would say that you should have few problems going that way. I scrounged very little, so you should be able to get gas and food out of whatever vehicles you find on the road. That is, if somebody else hasn’t gotten to them first.”
“Now the problem is, how to get there,” Tick-Tock said. “We can make it about halfway to Polk on the gas we’ve got left, so I say we dump the others and split our group into one of the minivans and a couple of trucks.”
“You’re not leaving those wretched people with me,” Grimm said indignantly.
“We’re not leaving anyone anywhere,” Steve interjected. “We’re only about seventy miles from Polk so we can hike it if we need to, if we can’t scrounge and run out of gas.”
“Those people were a pain in the ass when we were driving,” Tick-Tock said with disgust, “I can’t even imagine how they’ll be on foot.”
“They’ll need to keep up or get left behind,” Steve told him. “By the time we run out of the gas we have, we’ll be a lot closer. It shouldn’t be too hard for them to make it thirty or forty miles.” Turning his attention to Grimm, he asked, “And you’re sure that Fort Polk is still there?”
“As of last month I am,” Grimm told him. “That was when I ran into a deserter on the road. He was fleeing his duties at the Fort and trying to make his way back to his family in Dallas. When I told him that Dallas was now a playground for my children, he wasn’t too happy.”
“What else did he tell you?” Steve asked.
“He said that there were regular patrols going out of the Fort looking for survivors,” Grimm told him, “and that the city of Leesburg was free of the dead, so it was being used as a refugee camp. He also told me that Polk was a resupply base for the liberation of New Orleans.”
“The liberation of New Orleans?” Tick-Tock asked.
“He mentioned that the military was trying to take back control of certain cities, of which New Orleans was but one,” Grimm told him.
Steve looked thoughtfully at the map again before saying; “Maybe we don’t need to drag everyone all the way to Polk. I might have been looking at this the wrong way.”
“How so?” Tick-Tock asked.
Pointing to where Fort Polk was situated on the map, he said, “Let’s say their patrols are going out a maximum of ten miles. If we siphon all the gas into one truck, we should have enough to make it that far, if not all the way.”
Tick-Tock nodded as he caught on and said, “All we really need to do is send a couple of people to link up with the soldiers at Polk and bring back help.”
“Exactly,” Steve said.
“Denise and I can go,” Tick-Tock volunteered. “We can leave in the morning.”
Steve smiled at his friend’s offer. He was glad to see that he was coming back to life.
“I think that would be a great idea,” he told Tick-Tock. “Now the big question is whether or not the Z’s on the other side of Jasper will stay where they are. If they don’t, then we’ll have to bug out.”
“We can set up some rendezvous points,” Tick-Tock said. “We’ll pick two points to the north, south and west. That way, if you’re not here when I bring back the cavalry, I’ll know where to look.”
Bending over the map, Steve said, “Then let’s do it.”
***
It was early in the morning when Steve saw Tick-Tock and Denise off. After a good hot meal the night before, and the luxury of having real beds, the rest of the group was still asleep.
The previous evening, they had tried to calculate how long it would take them to get to Fort Polk and finally settled on three days. They were amazed at the thought that what could be driven in a few hours before D-Day, now took days, but with having to backtrack and keep their speed slower on the dirt roads, they’d added in the extra time.
Once on the road, Tick-Tock felt relief wash over him. He had always been a loner, so being around the others had been trying on hi
s nerves. His own group was tolerable since he felt comfortable with them, but Sean and his crew could be difficult even in the best of circumstances.
As he slowly wove his way around a jack-knifed tractor-trailer, Denise reached across the seat and took his hand before saying, “You know I’d take a bullet for you, Tick-Tock.”
“I’d never take one for you,” he replied adamantly.
Looking hurt, she asked, “Why not?”
“Because if I have time to jump in front of you and stop one, you’d have time to jump out of the way,” he replied.
Denise laughed and said, “You’re a trip without luggage.”
Extracting his hand from hers so he could navigate the turn onto the dirt road, they only drove a short distance before entering the woods. It felt good to roll down their windows to let the wind blow over them as they relaxed in their seats. The road ahead of them was long and straight and they could see nothing blocking their way.
***
Brain pounded on Steve and Heather’s door while calling out excitedly, “I got someone on the radio. I got someone on the radio.”
Still half asleep, Steve rolled out of bed and shook off his grogginess. He was confused for a moment when he looked around and realized that Heather was gone. Checking his watch, he saw it was nine-thirty in the morning. He’d been up for three hours during the night to take his turn at watch, and then woken up early to say goodbye to Tick-Tock and Denise, so he was wiped out. She must have left quietly to let him sleep.
As he was pulling on a pair of jeans, Brain started knocking again, so he said, “Hold on a minute, I’m coming.”
Opening the door, he found the tech bouncing from one foot to another in excitement. Before he could speak, Steve asked, “Don’t you have a bathroom in your room?”
“What?” Brain asked.
“You look like you need to pee,” Steve told him.
“No,” he said. “Well, maybe. But that doesn’t matter. I finally reached someone on the radio.”
“Military?” he asked as he pulled on his boots.
“Civilian,” Brain told him. “They’re about halfway between Livingston and Jasper and they’re heading our way.”