by Jon Schafer
“They’re mobile?” Steve asked.
“The guy I talked to said he was part of a group of ten people,” Brain answered. “They’re coming from Fort Worth and they’ve been on the road for a week now. They managed to fight their way out of the city and now they’re trying to get to a relief center just like we are.”
“What did you tell him about us?” Steve asked.
“I lied and said that we’re south of them and that there are only three of us,” Brain replied.
“Good job,” Steve told him and then asked, “Is he still on the radio?”
“He’s talking to Connie right now,” Brain answered.”Everything he’s talked about so far is legit.”
They entered the radio room and found Connie sitting in front of the CB. Brain had rigged up two external speakers, so the voice of the man she was talking came through clearly as he said, “Some more good news is that we’ve got enough fuel to make it all the way Florida if we need to, over.”
“And the bad news? Over,” Connie asked.
There was silence for a moment before he said, “We’re going to need it. We had to swing way around Livingston to avoid a group of about three thousand dead and we’ve been playing tag with them ever since. This group is huge and it’s moving east on highway 190. Good thing you’re further south, over.”
Everyone in the radio room froze at these words.
After a few seconds, Connie recovered and said, “Yeah, good thing we are. But just to let you know, there are about twenty thousand Z’s on the east side of Jasper, over.”
“That figures,” he said. “I guess we’re going to have to cut south and then east. Maybe we’ll run into you, over”
“Why not north? Over,” Connie asked.
“We already tried that way,” he said. “Everything to the north is more dead than alive. I wouldn’t suggest you try it unless you have a tank. We lost four people trying to get through, over.”
Connie was about to say something when the speakers crackled to life and the man said, “Just ran into a roadblock. Got a fallen tree I have to help clear, so I’ll talk to you later, over and out.”
Steve’s mind spun with the news. They were now blocked in three directions. That only left… “Call Tick-Tock and find out how he’s doing,” he told Connie.
Within seconds, she had him on the radio and was handing the mike over.
“How’s it going so far? Over” Steve asked.
“Clear sailing,” Tick-Tock replied. “What’s up? I just did our first radio check with Brain not even twenty minutes ago, over.”
Not wanting to give up anything over an open line, Steve said, “Just making sure you’re doing okay. I’ll fill you in on everything when you get back, over and out.”
Steve handed the microphone to Brain and said, “Don’t let any of the others know about this. I don’t want them to panic. I’ll go around and let our people know what’s going on.”
“This is really bad, isn’t it?” Connie asked.
“Not if Tick-Tock comes through,” Steve replied.
***
Tick-Tock and Denise were singing at the top of their lungs to the Stone Temple Pilots’, ‘Interstate Love Song’ as they cruised down the dirt road at a steady twenty miles an hour. The music was courtesy of some CDs that Denise found in the glove box, and the slow speed was courtesy of the sharp curves in the road.
The song ended and Tick-Tock hit pause before saying, “It’s about time to check in.”
Cruising through the woods with her man by her side, no uglies in sight and music playing had gotten Denise feeling good. Checking her watch, she said, “We’ve still got five minutes. Play one more song and then we’ll call.”
He was waiting to turn on the music until after he navigated a particularly sharp curve and was just about to twist the wheel when he saw a Z come staggering onto the road from the trees on his right. It was the first one they’d seen since leaving the asylum, and it was particularly gruesome.
Completely nude, its head lolled back and forth on its exposed spinal column in time with its lurching walk. All the flesh had been eaten or torn away on its left side, showing everything from its rib bones to its ankle. Black puss leaked in a slow stream from these wounds and a dozen other smaller ones.
Wishing he were still driving the National Guard truck so he could run it down, Tick-Tock swerved to avoid it. He knew that the last thing he wanted to do was have to stop and pick zombified flesh from the undercarriage if it got stuck.
The dead thing reached out to grab at them as they drove by, raking its hands down the side of the truck and leaving a black streak. One hand hit the side view mirror, knocking it askew and spinning the Z around before it went sprawling into the dirt.
Twisting around in her seat to watch it drop, Denise said, “Jesus.”
“Has left the building,” Tick-Tock added.
Denise laughed then faced forward again just in time to spot five more Z’s. Beyond them, she could see a huge crowd of the dead coming toward them down the road, lining it from one side to the other. The mass of dead stretched back for hundreds of feet. Beyond them, they could see another group heading their way. Tick-Tock braked hard, sending a cloud of dust rolling past them as he called for her to hold on. The trees were too close to leave him room to turn around, forcing him to throw the truck into reverse and start backing up as fast as he dared. Within seconds, he was up to twenty-five miles an hour.
Whipping her head back and forth as she tried to watch both their front and their back, Denise saw that the first ugly they’d passed had regained its feet and was standing in the middle of the road. She knew if they swerved at this speed that they’d wreck, so she braced for a collision.
The truck hit the dead thing dead center of its tailgate with a loud bang. Denise figured that the body would be pushed down but was shocked to see the force of the impact flip it into the air, and then it landed upside down against the cab. Its legs were sticking up through the rear window, and to her horror, they started swinging around as it tried to right itself. She moved her hand to roll down her window so she could lean out and shoot it, but then saw that it had managed to regain its feet and was heading toward Tick-Tock’s side of the cab. With only its torso in view, she pointed the carbine at it and started pulling the trigger.
The rear window blew out in a shower of safety glass as her .30 caliber slugs passed through it and into what remained of the thing’s stomach and lower chest. It lurched backward in a spray of black puss and let out a screeching whine. Lowering its head, it stared at her with coal black eyes before letting out another whine and lurching toward the rear of the cab.
With her target in sight now, Denise blew off the top of its head.
“Clear,” she called out.
Twisted around in his seat to see behind them, Tick-Tock said, “I can see that. Good job, babe. Now we have to get the hell out of here.”
They had to travel backwards for another quarter mile before they finally found a place to turn around. Once they were heading north, Tick-Tock started rolling his head around on his neck to get the kinks out of it as he said, “Get on the radio and call Steve. Tell him we’re screwed if we go through here.”
***
Steve felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he listened to Denise’s report on what she and Tick-Tock had run into. When she was finished, he said, “Get back here as soon as possible. We’ve got a lot more to deal with than just that, over.”
“Be there in a few hours, over and out,” came the reply.
Handing the microphone back to Brain, he saw the worried look on the tech’s face. Steve gave him a pat on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, there are other points on the compass besides north, south, east and west.”
“Like where,” he asked, “straight up?”
“We can make it overland if we need to,” Steve replied, already knowing this wasn’t a realistic option, even if they left the others behind. “We’re only forty
or fifty miles away from Polk as the crow flies.”
“But we’re not crows,” Brain replied glumly.
“Keep trying to contact someone,” Steve told him as he headed for the door to find Heather. “And don’t worry about it, I’ll figure something out.”
When Tick-Tock and Denise showed up two hours later, he had the beginnings of a plan.
***
The radio operator knocked on the door to the office of his commanding officer and was told to enter. Marching in, he stood at attention two feet in front the man’s desk then said, “We’ve got a relay message from Fort Polk, sir.”
“And that means what to us here in DC?” The Captain asked sarcastically.
The radio officer kept his face blank as he thought of what an insufferable prick his CO was. Trying to keep his tone neutral, he said, “We have been advised that the NSA’s computer is set to flag certain keywords. One of those is ‘immune’, and it came up in a civilian transmission that was picked up by Polk, sir.”
“That’s Fort Polk Corporal,’ the Captain told him in a haughty manner.
“Yes, sir,” he replied, as he realized why subordinates fragged their officers in the field. “Fort Polk, sir. It will never happen again, sir.”
Holding out his hand for the communication, the Captain said, “See that it doesn’t. Dismissed, Corporal.”
Once the radio operator had saluted and left, the Captain opened the folded piece of paper and scanned it quickly. He felt no excitement at reading about someone being immune to the HWNW virus, and in fact, was glad that the dead walked the earth. Eight months ago, he had been a Second Lieutenant in charge of counting mess kits and now he was in charge of the communications center that served the Pentagon. He was one of three people who filtered the information and passed it on to the higher ups that made all the decisions regarding the war.
Considering his duties, his honor, and the fact that it was almost quitting time, he tossed the message on top of a stack of papers already sitting on his desk. Rationalizing that if someone was immune today, they would still be immune tomorrow; he decided to deal with it in the morning.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Happy Hallow Insane Asylum:
Steve, Heather and Tick-Tock leaned over the papers and maps laid out on ping-pong table. Grimm had made them a sketch of the grounds and the area surrounding the asylum, and while it wasn’t to scale, it gave them a good representation of what they had to work with. With no other option left but to stay where they were, they were laying out their defense.
Pointing to the map on the table next to the sketch, Steve said, “To the east, we have a large group that’s in a static position, so we’ll discard them as a threat for now. To the west, we have a large group coming toward us that’s probably trying to join the group to the east. They’re at least three or four days away from us.”
From where she sat on a couch, Grimm said, “Like I told you, they pass through here all the time.”
Steve nodded in acknowledgement and asked, “But what was the biggest group?”
“A few dozen,” she answered.
“Well, this is a few thousand,” Steve told her.
Sitting upright, Grimm said with excitement, “A few thousand? The reaping will be great.”
“As long as we’re not one of the reapees,” Tick-Tock muttered.
Steve drew their attention back to the map, saying, “Show me where you ran into the group coming from the south. They seem to be the closest.”
Tick-Tock traced his route on the map with his forefinger until he tapped the paper and said, “It was right here. I remember because we were coming through all these curves. Like I told you before, I would estimate there was between eight hundred and a thousand that we could see in the first wave. And there was another group further down the road that looked to be about that size too.”
After studying the spot for a second, Steve said, “That’s only a days walk from here, two at the most. That gives us until tomorrow to get ready.”
“Get ready for what?” Grimm asked.
Knowing that they would need Grimm’s help, Steve said, “My plan is to let the group from the south hit the fence. We’ll attract them away from the gate, and then escape with as many as we can once we’ve thinned them out.”
“Escape to where?” Grimm asked
“We’ll head south, just like we’d planned, and then head east through Kirbyville,” Steve told her. “We’ll be past the Z’s so the way should be clear. You’re more than welcome to come along with us you know.”
Grimm shook her head and replied, “I’m happy here, in my home. The raggedy twins will stay with me but Igor will come with you because he must guard the girl.”
“But what happens when the group from the west comes through here?” Tick-Tock asked.
“I will deal with that when it happens,” Grimm told him. “I’m not afraid of dying and going to Hell, since Satan still has that restraining order against me.”
With a laugh, Tick-Tock said, “The offer’s open.”
“I’ll be fine,” Grimm told him as she approached the table. Looking down at her sketch, she said, “Now we need to figure out the best way to defend my home and get you out of here. You may be able to lure my children away from the gate, but they’ll still be a threat to me. Like you said, the gate faces south, so that’s the area that they’ll hit first. If we plant some explosives in a staggered pattern across the field beyond it, we should be able to clear out a lot of them and then use our weapons to take out the stragglers.”
“If we had explosives,” Steve said.
“I have a case of dynamite that I scavenged from my wanderings on the road,” Grimm told them. “Around here, they use it to blow tree stumps out of the ground. It’s not that uncommon.”
They all looked at her in surprise as Steve asked incredulously, “You have dynamite?”
“I just said so, didn’t I?” Grimm said with a laugh. “The problem is that I only found five blasting caps.”
“Do we need blasting caps?” Heather asked. “Can’t we just shoot it to set it off?
Tick-Tock shook his head and said, “It doesn’t work that way. You need a smaller explosion to set off the big boom. You have to have a blasting cap to do that.”
Studying the sketch, Steve asked, “How many sticks in that case of dynamite?”
“One hundred,” Grimm answered. “With five blasting caps, we can do five bundles of twenty.”
“What about wire?” Tick-Tock asked.
“They only had a small spool in the truck I took the explosives out of, but we’ll need some more for what we have planned,” Grimm told him.
Turning his attention to Grimm, Steve said uncomfortably, “I saw that you put the storm panels up over the first floor windows, but aren’t there supposed to be bars over them?”
“No,” she replied with a laugh, “We aren’t violent here at Happy Hallow. We aren’t the type to cut our mom’s head off and leave it on the fireplace mantle for dad to welcome him home from a hard day at work. The glass is double pane shatterproof with wire mesh in between, but the windows can be opened with a key. There are alarms and motion detector lights all over that are hooked into the central security center, but they don’t work anymore.”
Steve stood silent for a moment as his mind went over all the information he had. When he finally decided he’d taken everything into consideration that he could, he pointed to the sketch and said, “We dig shallow holes to plant the dynamite on the south side of the fence and string the wire back to one common point. We can use one of the car batteries to set it off. I want two people to go out and scrounge enough wire to do that. Twenty sticks are going to make a pretty big bang and I want to keep it as far away from the fence as possible. That fence is our first line. If we can keep them from crossing it, we have a chance.”
Taking a breath, he continued, “Our plan isn’t to kill them all. We just need to take enough of them out to leave Grimm and
her crew in a good position and to clear the road so that we can get out of here in the trucks and the vans. We take two of each and pile everyone in. We only take three days of supplies to lighten the load and hopefully give us better gas mileage. I want everyone on the ground and ready to go when they hit us. Since Grimm and the twins are staying, we have to make sure we secure the gate behind us after we go through. If the Z’s do get over the fence and we can’t hold them off, I want everyone to fall back to the house. If we have to, we can pick them off from the second floor windows and the roof until we’ve cleared enough of them to get away. I also want someone to drive south and check where the Z’s are, so we can figure out when they’ll get here.”
“We don’t have a lot of ammunition left,” Heather told him.
“I might be able to help with that,” Grimm told them. “I have found much in my travels.”
Steve gave her a sideways look and asked, “Why are you helping us with the dynamite and the ammo?”
With a light laugh, she said, “Because you are going to help me bring so many of my children home.”
***
Steve rested on his shovel as he watched the truck drive down the lane. When Tick-Tock spotted him, he steered off the gravel and bounced across the grass, stopping only a few feet away.
Tick-Tock rolled down his window and asked, “How goes the planting farmer Brown?”
“This is the last of them,” Steve replied. “Did you find wire?”
Tick-Tock nodded and said, “Didn’t find anything on the road, but then we came across a burned out farm a few miles back. The barn was still standing so we checked it out and found all kinds of good stuff.”
“Get it to Brain so he can finish setting up,” Steve told him. “He was only able to get two done with what he had.”
“How many more holes do you have to dig?” Tick-Tock asked.
“This is the last of them,” Steve said. “When I’m done, I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep before I have watch.”
Denise leaned across the seat and asked, “Did you hear from Heather yet?”