Everyone snapped their heads around to look in the direction of the explosion, and what we saw was a huge mushroom cloud climbing into the sky over what was once Kingsport. Everyone had forgotten the circumstances we were presently in. It would have taken an extremely disciplined person to not look at the big red cloud climbing into the sky. It would have taken a person who had spent years training to be singularly focused on the task at hand. A person who had the will power to not let themselves be distracted by anything. A person like Amanda Asare.
When everybody turned to look at the cloud in the sky, Amanda didn’t. Amanda watched as Randy and Charles lowered their weapons spinning around to look towards the sound of the explosion. She took maybe half a second to adjust her aim and then she put a bullet into their heads. They were both dead before they even turned all the way around.
As I looked up to the sky I noticed both scouts falling and I heard Amanda’s guns roar even over the explosion. The king’s head snapped back down and he saw his two scouts falling as well. He turned in anger and leveled his gun at Amanda just as she pulled both of hers back to be aimed at his head. Now the standoff began anew, but I was no longer part of it.
“It’s time for you to drop that gun before I decide to drop you,” Amanda hissed at the king.
“I’m not dying alone today.” The king answered back.
I looked from her to him and back again. I was trying to figure out what there was that I could do when I heard Judy’s voice. Quietly she said, “Charlie, we are being surrounded.”
I looked beyond our current situation. The dead that had been over on the road and by the apartments were slowly staggering their way into the grocery store’s parking lot. They were not dangerously close yet, but it wouldn’t be long. I had to get us out of here, and I needed to do it now.
“King of Gray! You told me that this was between the leaders. Don’t disrespect me by dealing with her now. I am still here. It is still between us.”
The king looked at me for a moment then his gun slowly slid over until it was pointed at me instead of Amanda.
“Yes. I would much rather kill you than her. Especially if I’m about to go myself.”
“Now king, we don’t have to do this. All we want to do is leave. All you have to do is let us go and this ends now.” I said.
“Oh, I think it’s much too late for that, Mr. Collins.”
“If that’s how you want to do it then it doesn’t need to involve anyone else but the two of us. The two leaders like you said earlier. Drop your gun and let’s settle this ourselves, just me and you.”
“Yeah, right. You ask me to drop my gun while your girl has two pointed at me.”
I turned to Amanda and asked her to lower her guns. She didn’t look at me and her guns didn’t lower. So, I asked again.
“As soon as I lower these guns, he will kill you.”
“That’s on me, Amanda. Please.”
She paused for a moment, but then her guns dropped to point at the ground, her eyes never left the king.
“Now King of Gray, drop your gun and let’s finish this.”
To Amanda’s, and I guess in truth my, surprise he lowered his gun and let it drop to the ground. He stepped forward and untied his cape letting it drop to the ground as well.
“Before we do this I have a question for you?” I said. The king looked at me as if to say what now? I almost had him where I wanted him, all I had to do was stall him another fifteen or so seconds and this would all be over.
“Do you remember when we first met and I asked how you had survived all of this? You told me that surviving in this world was not hard; all you had to do was remember two things. What were those two things? Do you remember what you told me?”
The king gave me a distrustful look. He was trying to figure out where I was going with this, and I was trying everything I could to keep my eyes focused on his face.
“I said that you needed to remember that, in this world, you are never safe and that you have to always be aware of where you are.” The king said. I nodded and looked at the ground for a moment. When I looked back up I was trying to keep an expression of compassion on my face as I spoke.
“My king, I believe you have forgotten where you are.”
His eyes narrowed as I spoke. Like earlier in the day I could watch the expression on his face change as he turned the idea over and over in his mind, trying to figure it out. At last his eyes went wide as the realization hit him. He spun around, but it was far too late. The zombie was already on top of him. He threw his arms out to try and push the dead man away from him, but it was too close. The zombie fell upon the king, slamming into him with all of its weight. The king screamed as the zombie bit into his shoulder and clawed at the back of his neck. Both fell to the ground in a tangled heap, the king screaming as the dead took bite after bite. Amanda raised her gun shot them both in the head.
“We’re surrounded,” Sass said. The apartment zombies were spreading out across the parking lot like water washing up onto the beach. Some, but not all, had spotted us and were working their way towards us through the abandoned cars. We were standing in the middle of one of the lanes of the parking lot with cars on our right and left, leaving a clear path to us on the two sides where the cars would have pulled up or down the lot looking for that front parking space that always seemed to elude them.
“Do we run?” Veronica asked.
“It’s too late for that. Get your weapons ready, we will have to fight. Form a circle and don’t let anything get past. Kill everything that stands in front of you. Keep fighting till nothing is left. Don’t break the circle unless the person beside you is about to be overrun. Keep yourself where you are supposed to be and keep your lane clear. They will keep coming but they won’t be able to swarm us,” Amanda said.
I looked behind me as everyone began to spread out. Amanda had taken the position of the open lane facing the store. With there only being seven of us somebody would have to protect a wider portion by themselves. Amanda was the only choice for this as she still had both of her handguns out and had set her rifle on the ground by her feet. I was to her left, protecting that side of the group with Veronica. I had my baseball bat and still had my hammer in my belt loop. Veronica had picked up a metal pole that was about three feet long as we left the store.
Protecting the other open lane of the parking lot was Sass and Shawn. Both had baseball bats, and I knew somewhere hidden away, Sass had his tire iron as well. Protecting the area behind me and Veronica was Daniel and Judy Craig. They both had some type of gardening utensils that I really don’t know the name of. They had picked up their weapons while fleeing the store. Everybody was sucking in air quickly as fear began gripping us all.
“Let them come to you. Don’t leave your positions. It will be hard, but let them come to you.” Amanda said right before she started pulling the trigger and dropping the dead on her side as they turned the corner and came into view.
“It’s easy for her to tell us to let them come to us while she’s shooting them in the head twenty feet away.” Veronica said to me.
“I looked to my right, to Amanda, and then looked back to the zombies that were weaving their way through the cars in front of me.
“If you get in trouble give me a yell and I’ll come in to help.” I said to Veronica.
“Same for you. I used to play softball in high school. I’m going to be knocking dead heads over the wall.”
“Deal,” I said, and I meant it. If she was an ex softball player she was probably going to be much better at this than I was going to be. I heard metal clinking against the pavement of the parking lot and, looking to my left, I could see Sass and Shawn hitting their bats on the ground like they were just coming up to bat. They were drawing the zombies to them not being content to simply sit back and wait. I could see that they had spread themselves out further than they had been before, giving each other enough room to get a good swing of their bats.
“Here we go!”
Veronica said over the continuous barrage of gunshots from my right. On my left I could see Veronica take a step out and open up a swing that arced so close to my head I heard the wind off it. When her metal pole connected with the zombie’s head, it exploded on contact. This girl had more strength than I could have ever imagined. I didn’t have the time to think about it very long though because I could see the dead coming out from between the cars towards me as well. I took a step to my right to give Veronica more room to swing her weapon, and I picked my bat up and readied my own first swing.
It seemed as if the fight would never end. I have no idea what the others were doing during the course of the battle. At one point I watched as Amanda dropped both of her guns and knelt down grabbing her rifle. She began sighting and shooting the zombies from her kneeling position and I understood why she had been keeping them so far away from her. She knew that she would run out of ammunition and would have to fall back to her rifle. She needed to have a nice cushion of room between her and them when that happened. I was aware of Veronica swinging her weapon to my left. She was fighting with everything she had. I could see her pushing and kicking zombies back into the cars as she lined up target after target. I was doing the same myself, and I had even learned a trick where I would sweep the legs then stomp on their head as I stepped forward to swing at my next target. Only once did my stomp not kill the zombie underfoot.
We were lucky to have the cars in front of us to keep the dead funneled into specific lanes and keeping us from having to deal with them trying to swarm us. I found myself wondering how Sass and Shawn were fairing as they defended the other open end of the circle. With no cars to create single file lines of attackers, they had to be having a much harder time protecting their side than the rest of us. I wanted to turn and see if they were okay, but there was simply no time. Zombie after zombie kept pouring in. I could feel myself running short on breath and wearing out much faster than I knew I should.
“This isn’t working. There are too many,” Veronica said to me and I had a feeling that she was right. It was the whole zerg strategy that I had told Sass about earlier. Eventually, we were going to be overrun. There was nothing we could do about it; the numbers game was going to catch up to us.
“Amanda, we can’t keep this up. We need to move.”
Amanda was still in her kneeling position sighting her next target and firing over and over. She took a moment and looked around.
“We’re half way through. There’s nowhere to run, just keep fighting. We have no other choice.” Amanda lowered her face to the gun’s sight and began shooting again. I swung my bat and knocked a zombie back into the others that were coming at me between the pickup truck and an SUV which gave me a moment to concentrate on the other lane I was defending between the drivers side of the SUV and a Camry. The dead staggered towards the opening and I took a step forward kicking the first zombie in the chest sending him crashing backwards. I backed up to my spot in the line and saw that there were two bearing down on Veronica. I made to take the one that was closest to me when Veronica swung her metal pole at the one on the far side taking it down and letting the momentum carry her around in a circle. She replanted her feet and brought the pole smashing into the face of the second zombie so hard that it nearly ripped the thing’s head right off its body. The entire move looked like something Luke Skywalker would do during one of the many fights with his daddy.
“You’re awesome!” I yelled at Veronica then turned back to my lanes swinging my bat at a zombie just as it regained its feet.
Before much longer, the paths between the cars on our side were so clogged with the bodies of the dead that they weren’t able to come at us anymore. Veronica shifted left and I shifted right which put her with Shawn and Sass and put me with Amanda. I knew that Judy and Daniel would be doing the same thing, but didn’t have the time to look over at them and check.
“We’ve clogged the side access. I’m at your end now.” I said to Amanda as I took aim at a zombie working its way through the cars.
“Keep an eye down the side as well, some may make it over the wall you’ve built or crawl underneath the cars.” Amanda said as she dropped her rifle to the ground and stepped forward enough to pull the two scouts rifles to her. “We are nearly through this. Don’t get sloppy now.”
She had a point. I took a swing at the closest zombie to me. As I brought my attention back to the front of the line I saw the king’s gun laying on the ground. I picked it up.
Standing up I saw a zombie bearing down on me from between the parked cars. I leveled the gun at him and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped in my hand as the bullet flew out striking the zombie in the shoulder. My wrist felt like I had just broken it and I dropped the gun without even realizing I had done so until I saw that my hand was empty. I hefted my bat back up and finished the zombie off as I heard Amanda laughing.
“Not as easy as it looks, is it?”
For some reason I heard myself laughing as well, “No, it’s really not.”
Not long after that, it was over. Amanda was finishing off the ones on the end and I had slid back down the parking lot as I had spotted a zombie crawling out from under a pick-up truck. I swung my bat like a golf club and ended any threat that would be coming from my and Veronica’s side of the circle. I looked back to where Sass and Shawn were and saw two piles of bodies in front of them. They had been very smart how they handled their side of the circle. They had each taken a corner and made a pile of bodies which, after a while, forced the other zombies into a bottleneck. The only path to their dinner was to come between the two piles. This had allowed them to take their targets down one at a time. I was watching as Sass finished off the last member of the dead conga line when I heard Judy scream.
Judy and Daniel had apparently not heard Amanda’s warning to keep a watch for zombies coming out from under the cars. There was one halfway out from under an old jeep. He had Judy’s ankle in both of his hands. Judy was trying to pull herself free from the zombie’s grip, but she lost her balance and went tumbling over backwards. She had no control of herself as she crashed onto the hard asphalt of the parking lot. I could hear her head bounce off the ground as she hit. Once down she didn’t move. The zombie was pulling itself on top of her as Amanda took aim and blasted the top of the zombie’s head into the grill of the jeep.
Daniel ran to his wife to make sure she was okay. After a moment her eyes opened and she asked weakly, “Who do I thank for saving me this time?”
“Um, that would be Amanda this time.” Shawn said.
Judy looked up at her, “Thanks. I thought he had me.”
“I thought he did too.” Amanda said.
“I told you this whole plan was too risky.” Daniel barked at me.
“Daniel, it was equally risky for all of us. Don’t start yelling again. Please.” Judy’s words had the desired effect on Daniel. He looked down at her and placed his forehead against hers saying softly, “I thought I had lost you. I don’t know what I would do if I lost you.”
“We’re fine.” Judy said as she smiled at her husband. “Now help me up, we can’t lay around here all day.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Amanda said as Daniel helped his wife stand.
“Okay. Now that we don’t have to worry about the king coming after us, I say we take the open opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge.” I said.
Amanda and I led the group down the hill to where the access road ran back out to the main road. At the bottom of the hill the residents of Gray appeared as if by magic. At first I thought that we were about to be thrown into another fight but these poor souls had no fight in them. I guess that is really how the king came to power. His subjects didn’t want to think for themselves. They didn’t want to be responsible for keeping themselves safe. And now they were leaderless. They were lost and were looking for a warm body to fill the recently vacated throne.
“You killed them.” A skinny man said.
“We need somebody to help keep
us safe.” Another voice from the crowd said.
“You all can stay and do it!”
“Yes! You beat the king so it’s only fair you get his job!”
The crowd exploded in shouts and cheers now saying, “Yes!”, and “You will stay!”, and “It makes sense!”
The thing was, it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. We had gotten into this fight because we had wanted to leave. Now they thought we would decide to stay? The very idea of it was insanity.
“Look, guys. I am going to Johnson City. If any of my people want to stay, they are more than welcome to. Also, if any of you want to come with us, you are more than welcome. I’m not the bad guy here. I’m just the guy that’s going about seven or eight more miles down the road.”
The people of Gray had gotten quiet as I spoke so I turned to my group and asked, “Do any of you want to stay here and be responsible for these people?”
Everyone looked around at each other and slowly each person said no until we got to Daniel. Daniel looked at his wife.
“We can be safe here. We can do things our way and make sure that we are safe.”
Judy looked at Daniel for a moment and her eyes looked like she was about to cry.
“Then stay Daniel. Stay for you, not me, because I am going with the others to Johnson City. If you feel this is the best for you then I want you to stay here. But I can’t.”
Daniel drew back as if he had been slapped. He looked at Judy, his eyes wide, wounded.
“Why would you say that? Why would you think that I would ever leave you?”
Judy shook her head. She smiled at Daniel and placed the palm of her hand against his face.
“We were doomed as soon as we woke up this morning. I don’t know how long we’ll make it, but I do know that eventually we will lose. In time, they will simply out wait us. Even if we find places to live where they can’t get us, there will be less and less of us with each generation. If nothing else, attrition will wipe out humanity. You can’t stop it, nobody can. We are as good as dead already. The only question is how long it will take to catch up with us.”
A Good Distance From Dying Page 25