by Maxey, Phil
The ants were moving towards the road which led to the prison. Scuttling and spilling out over the muddy banks.
Out the corner of Evan’s eye he noticed more movement. He swept the view across to the south. To where the secret tunnels eventually emerged on the other side of the small hill and trees. More ants. Lots more emerging from over the distant tree-covered bumps in the landscape.
He went to move his scope once again when an alarm blasted into the fresh morning air.
Johnny and Chet both scrambled to their feet at the same time, the latter falling backwards against the desk.
“They’re coming!” shouted Evan to his two sleepy partners. “Get your shit ready!”
Johnny picked up his sniper’s rifle, cocked it, and placed it on a prearranged spot, so it was leaning on top of a computer monitor. The window in front of it was open just an inch, but enough for the rifle’s barrel to poke through. The other man did the same on the right side of the tower.
The siren continued. Outside, a few people ran from one of the other towers to the side doors of the cellblocks.
“I got movement on the west as well,” said Chet.
“How many?” said Evan.
Chet squinted into his scope. The land to the west was flatter, but had a series of farm buildings blocking a clear view. Vamps, though, still filled every available gap between them. “Five hundred, maybe a thousand, I’m not sure. But they’re moving this way.” He looked down to the six ammo boxes on the desk next to him. Shook his head then looked back through his scope.
Evan’s radio crackled making them all jump. He picked it up. “I’m here. Over.”
In cellblock E, which was the only block not full to breaking point of people, on the second floor, back corner, Joel opened his eyes, although it was his ears that were trying to inform his brain of what was happening.
The prison complex was alive with fear and urgency. The siren cycled around. A whooping noise which started low then quickly increased three octaves, piercing every wall and cell, leaving no one in any doubt that danger would soon be upon them.
He pushed his feet into his boots, quickly tying them, grabbed his jacket, radio, M4, and rushed outside. As he did, he looked back at the small pane of glass which was the small room’s only view of the world outside. The gray had been replaced with blue.
Men and women ran past him on the balcony, some with weapons. He tried catching one of them. “Are they attacking?”
A slim young man looked his way before continuing forward. “They’re all around us!” he shouted back.
Joel ran along the walkway, putting his jacket on, holding his radio up to his mouth. “Anyone read me? Someone give me a SITREP? Over.”
He raced down the metal steps into the main hall then into the adjoining corridor, glancing into the other cellblocks as he passed their entrances. Each one was a scene of panic with people holding their children close to them while others pointed and argued about what to do next.
Carla’s voice came from his radio.
“Thousands of vamps are a few miles from us. Most to the east, south, and west. Where are you? Over.”
“Going to Tower B. Over.”
“I’ll meet you there. Over.”
Joel ran across the yard splashing through puddles while Carla emerged from another side entrance to the blocks.
“Are they still advancing?” said Joel.
“No, looks like they are holding their position.”
The siren stopped its incessant wailing.
“Finally,” said Carla.
They both jogged to the door at the base of Evan’s tower and raced up the stairs.
“We’re coming up,” shouted Joel halfway up.
When he emerged, both of the snipers were at their rifles looking out through the scopes.
Evan was jotting down lines and small scribbles on a notepad on the desk in front of him.
Carla immediately raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes and looked out through the window, but had to squint due to the sunlight bouncing off it.
Evan looked back at Joel. “I’ve been plotting their positions.”
Joel looked at the notepad, pointing to a top section of it. “That’s where the warehouses are, and the tunnel entrance.” He looked at the numbers scrawled next to the exes. “That’s a lot of digits…”
Evan handed the scope to Joel. “See for yourself.”
Joel looked out into the morning sun, and the rich green land which stretched across the Canadian and American border. A multitude of deep green-blue streaks lay scattered amongst the bogs and grass, their ripples catching the sunlight, but everywhere else was darkness. Masses of stained creatures, their clothes ripped and torn reflecting the outcomes of their lives, stood hardly moving, but all looking in the same direction towards the prison. Behind them, more fanged things were arriving.
He slowly swung the scope first left to the east. Puffs of smoke rose into the sky.
“I think they are setting fire to the buildings in the town,” said Evan.
“Yup…”
“They want us to know we can’t return,” said Chet.
“Yup.” Joel then moved it across to the south, trying to keep some mental note of how many he thought there were, and then to the west. He walked a few feet, ending up next to Chet.
“I have definitely not got enough ammo for all of that lot,” said the stout bearded man next to Joel.
“Just any that—”
“That make it over the wall, yeah, I heard ya last night.”
“When the attack starts, barricade the door downstairs and the stairwell,” said Joel.
“It’s good, boss, we got ourselves a hybrid!” said Johnny, taking a break from looking down his rifle’s scope and squeezing Evan’s shoulder.
The young man awkwardly smiled.
“They are about four miles out,” said Carla. “Once they attack, we’ll have about a few minutes before they make it to the outer fence.”
Holland’s voice came from the radios in the small room. Joel clicked his on. “What is it? Over.”
“We’re surrounded! And I’ve got word they are destroying my town!”
“There’s always another town, Chad. Right now, we have to make sure our defenses are secure. What’s the scene on the north side? Over.”
“The APCs are fine if that’s your concern. Beyond the wall, it’s the same as every other side, south, east, west, it’s all the same. Thousands of the scourge. Over.”
“And the project? Over.”
There was a slight pause.
“Art tells me he’ll get it done. Over.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Marina looked at her watch.
Thirty minutes until sundown. We’re ready. We can do this.
Despite the sentiment, she could feel her heart racing in her chest.
Since the morning, she had been flitting from one side of the prison to the other, inspecting the exits, the windows, and any other entry point into the corridors and blocks.
She had become Holland’s go-to ‘man’ and she wasn’t sure how comfortable she was that. Still, it kept her busy.
She was in the main hall of cellblock C. Around her, sat and stood men and women most armed with handguns and a few with semiautomatic rifles. She looked into their eyes. There was fear, but there was also determination. They hadn’t survived the scourge just to be taken out by an insane vamp with crazy plans to take over everything. That made no sense to anyone.
In the cells were the children, elderly, and infirm, together with a guard in case those outside the secure doors failed.
It was the same throughout all the cellblocks.
We can do this.
A hundred or so feet from her Joel looked at Art in the prison basement. Next to the older man was someone of even more advanced years, Albert.
The engineer briefly looked back at Art and Joel then focused on the panel in front of him. “Okay, Joe, fire it up.”
; Around the other side of a hulking piece of equipment, a switch was heard to be clicked, and the generator shuddered, but then reverted to its motionless state.
Albert stood back up and sighed. “Well… shit.”
“I thought you had this, Albert?” said Art.
“Oh… my bad!” shouted Joe from somewhere in the shadows behind a wall of pipes and cables. “I’m trying again.”
The same clicking noise came from the back of the machine and it shuddered again, but this time it kept on trembling, making a regular chugging noise.
Albert smiled waving his clenched glove in the air. “We did it, babe!”
“You bet ya ass we did,” said Joe.
“Okay, here we go then.” Albert watched as the power output increased then threw the first switch on the metal box in front of him.
A bulb in the basement immediately burned bright then popped, but the others stayed lit.
Art smiled and shook Albert’s hand as Albert’s wife appeared, ducking under the chaos of wires. Art shook her hand as well.
“You probably got enough juice for two days or so then someone needs to take a trip to the store to get some more gasoline,” said Joe, wiping the sweat from just below her gray hair.
“I thought we had barrels of the stuff?” said Joel.
“We do, but the prison grid eats through electricity quicker than bacon through a duck. I would advise only using what electricity you need.”
Art held his radio to his mouth and walked a few steps away.
Joel did the same, finding Carla’s radio by switching frequencies. “Everything ready outside? Over.”
“We got the swat APCs fueled and ready to roll. Anything makes it over the walls we should be able to get to them. Over,” said Carla.
“You got any signals from the towers of movement towards us? Over.”
“Nothing so far… but, Joel? They haven’t stopped coming, they are spread out as far as the eye can see. Where you going to be when it’s dark? Over.”
“Tower A. It’s the closest to the town. Over.”
“Okay, stay safe. Over.”
Art walked to him. “Holland says everyone’s inside and in place. We can go into lockdown when we’re ready down here.”
Joel looked at Albert.
“Just tell me when, boss,” said the older man.
Joel nodded and Albert pulled down a small lever next to the larger main one. The humans next to him couldn’t tell, but Joel could hear in the distance clunks and clangs as every automated door throughout the network of corridors and buildings closed and locked.
Joel looked at the old couple. “You’re probably as safe as anyone down here, and we’ll probably need more of your expertise before this is over.”
They both nodded.
He looked at Art. “We better get back upstairs.”
In the workshops, the scientists heard the door lock, briefly looked at it, each other, then continued on with their work.
“Guess it’s starting then,” said Rachel. Her work table had turned into a mini lab with some machinery she had taken from the medical center floors above including a microscope. She focused the lenses and studied yet another slide of Joel’s blood.
Bill looked at the tablet. It now had more wires attached to it including a tiny finger bandage made from silver with wires protruding from the bandage.
He looked down at the laptop PC he had taken from the prison’s computer room and began running tests again. After a few moments, he looked up shaking his head. “We need another sample, Rachel.”
In Tower B, Evan, Chet, and Johnny looked out into the gloom. From a few miles out and beyond, the landscape had been transformed into a sea of flesh swaying in the wind. Despite how hard Evan tried he couldn’t see where the armies of the scourge ended. They flowed mercilessly to the horizon.
Shadows were now long, merging into one another while the burning orange disc of the sun slowly dissolved to the west.
On the cool breeze that found the gap in the tower’s windows was a stench. It reminded Evan of a number of things. Of when he would pass by the old man that slept rough in the height of summer in the main street of Bellweather. Of the Coyote he found rotting due to being caught in their wire fence that bound their old house. And of himself; someone who had become infected.
He knew the others in the small room smelt it too, but they kept it to themselves. The sight of certain death was bad enough.
His radio came alive with Joel’s voice.
“Hey, Evan, look east. To Tower A. Over.”
Evan and Johnny both looked to their left. In the distance, just visible beyond the reflection of the setting sun, was a shadowy figure of a man waving. Evan waved back.
“I’ve got a blanket. I’m going to be up here with Kyle and Rhianna until daybreak. Remember what I said, as soon as they start moving forward barricade that door at the bottom of your stairs. Over.”
Evan nodded then realized that, even with Joel’s vision, he wasn’t going to see his head motion. He clicked on the radio. “Will do, Joel… Joel?”
“Yeah?”
Evan looked back to the south. The vamps were now one continuous dark mass enveloped in shadow. “Nothing. Over.”
He looked to the west. Everyone was looking west. The orange disc had deepened to a watery red giving the landscape that was still available to the sun’s rays a rosy hue.
They all watched as it sunk ever lower with purples and pinks being impressed on the clouds surrounding it.
Evan wasn’t the only one who wondered if it would be his last sunset.
His radio crackled again. The snap and fizz coming from the speaker slowly snapped him out of his trance.
“I got movement on the north side. Over,” said a male voice.
Evan heard Joel responding.
“Who is this? What tower are you? Over.”
“This is Holt, I’m in D. Over.”
“This is Sarah in C, I’m seeing movement too. Over.”
Those in Tower E, followed suit.
“Look! They’re coming!” said Johnny. He cracked his neck from side to side then settled back down looking through his scope.
“Yup, same here,” said Chet.
Evan clicked on his radio. “This is Evan, Tower B. They’re all moving. From the south and west. Over.”
Two hundred yards to the north, Carla sat in the driver’s seat of the armored personnel carrier. Emblazoned across both sides of the dark blue exterior was the word ‘SWAT.’ To her right sat Keller. Behind her, a few of her people while the others were in the other APC, all fully armed and dressed in body armor.
They had all been listening to the radio exchange, so despite their view of the outside world being blocked by the walls they knew they wouldn’t have long to wait.
She clicked on her own radio. “Everything ready, Holland? Over.”
There was a pause before the voice of the former prisoner spoke. “If any get inside, we’ll crush ’em. Over.”
She hoped he was right. The population of Westlands had been divided up into the six cellblocks. Each one with its own fighting force and the arteries which connected them all also had guards.
She looked up into the darkening sky. Any other time, in any other place, it was a sky to gaze on and contemplate the good things in life. A few stars were already twinkling, only obscured by a whisper of cloud.
A roar bellowed out, making her jump. For a moment, she thought the creatures had already made it over the wall, but then she realized this was a noise that was being carried on the evening breeze. The monsters wanted their prey to know they were coming.
The ground beneath the vehicle started to shake.
“What’s happening, Joel? How far out are they? Over.”
In Tower A, Joel watched as a wall of scrambling, scurrying things swept forward, devouring everything in their path. Trees cracked and were ripped apart and pylons fell taking their power lines with them. The wires were dead but still cut d
own a swathe of vamps before they hit the ground.
He clicked on his radio. “Thirty seconds. Over.”
The sun that was now beyond the horizon still offered some forgotten light to the sky, and everyone watched for the wave to crash against the prison.
“They’re about to reach the first fence,” said Joel, forgetting to say ‘Over’.
The fifteen-foot-high, chain-linked obstacle fell without a fight. The claws of thousands of fanged creatures tore through it and charged onwards, doing the same to the second fence.
“They’re at the last fence!” he shouted into the radio. A tornado of noise was descending on him.
In Tower B, they watched the wall of hungry things envelop the last fence like it wasn’t there.
Evan spoke under his breath.
“Fifty feet…twenty… ten…”
The tower rocked as if it had been hit by an earthquake.
Evan threw his arms out to steady himself while Johnny and Chet grabbed their desks.
For a moment, Evan wondered if the structure he was standing in would withstand the combined weight of the creatures pummeling it. But he was still standing, so he guessed it had.
He looked along the wall to Tower A. There were no vamps visible at the top yet.
Joel’s voice came from his radio. “Everyone in the towers, report in. Are there any breaches? Over.”
“Tower D here, not seeing any yet. Over.”
The other towers reported the same.
Evan looked at the undulating waves of vamps pushing up against those in front. The scourge had become a living sea of hunger, and the prison was the last piece of land on earth.
An ear-piercing bang came from a few feet away. Johnny had fired his first shot. A vamp teetered on the top of the wall then fell away.
Another boom, this time from Evan’s right.
“They’re getting to the top!” shouted Chet.
The repeated sounds of rifle fire could now be heard in the distance.
“They’re coming over the wall!” shouted Sarah from Tower C.
Evan watched as vamps started falling from the top of the wall, landing with a clump on the ground inside the prison. They remained still for a few seconds then slowly started to get to their feet as their broken ankles fused back together.