by Derek Slaton
Up on the bridge, Kowalski barked a laugh and shook his head as Bretz pulled up behind him and stepped out of the Humvee.
“What’s funny?” the burly Corporal asked.
Kowalski shook his head. “I need to shoot the most zombies or Mason’s gonna owe the others more than he can pay back,” he replied.
Bretz laughed and leaned on the cement railing of the walkway. It was waist-height, and he squinted at the dust rising from the distance.
Kowalski raised his high-powered sniper rifle, peering through the scope at the horde cresting the horizon up the highway. He froze solid, lowering his gun for a moment and blinking in confusion. Bretz furrowed his brow as the Private raised the scope again, and took a deep breath.
“What is it?” the Corporal asked.
“How many zombies did Kersey say were supposed to be coming to Hutchinson?” Kowalski asked, his voice hoarse as if his throat had just gone completely dry.
Bretz pursed his lips. “Two to three hundred. Why?”
The Private raised the rifle one more time, and then swore under his breath before lowering it completely. “Looks more like two to three thousand.”
“Shit,” the Corporal cursed and lifted the radio to his mouth. “Sarge, we’ve got a problem. Whoever fed the General this information was wrong. The horde is two or three thousand, not hundred.”
There was a pause and he watched his comrades below freeze at the news.
“That’s a pretty big margin for error on an estimate,” Bretz said, letting out a deep whoosh of breath.
Kowalski shook his head. “Doesn’t really speak well for the local education system.”
“Okay,” Kersey came through the radio, “how much time do we have?”
The Private raised his rifle and looked again. “About ten, maybe fifteen minutes before they reach the barricade.”
“Take out as many as you can, try to trip them up,” Kersey instructed.
Kowalski nodded. “Yes sir,” he replied before letting go of his radio to line up a shot.
“Bretz, what do you see up there on bridge level? There’s no way we’ll be able to hold them all off down here, we’ll need to fall back to somewhere.” the Sergeant asked as his sniper began to fire, each crack taking out a corpse that would hopefully slow down the horde.
The Corporal paced across the bridge. “There’s a two-story motel just northeast of here, and it looks like a suburb behind that,” he replied.
“Okay, good,” Kersey said. “We’ll hold them off as long as we can here, and then we’ll head to the motel.”
“Sarge, we only have five hundred rounds of ammo,” Mason cut in. “How are we supposed to take out more than five times that in zombies?”
Kersey readied his rifle. “We’re gonna burn ‘em.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Bretz led Kowalski, Mason and Berry onto the motel grounds, everyone fanning out and keeping their eyes sweeping for zombie activity. There was no gunfire from the highway yet, which meant that the horde wasn’t too close. The Sergeant had instructed to wait until the zombies were within twenty yards to maximize ammo.
Bretz banged on the door to the motel office, to draw any corpses from inside to the forefront. He waited a moment and there was no noise from inside, so he flung the door open and crossed the threshold, gun at the ready.
“Clear,” he announced, and approached the wall of keys behind the desk. A few were missing, but enough remained that they had a fighting chance. He emerged with a fistful, and doled out the ground floor ones to Mason. “Kowalski, you take the roof, keep watch and draw the zombies once they’re ready to come this way,” Bretz reiterated the Sergeant’s instructions, and the Private saluted him and jogged off towards the stairs. “Mason and I will start opening doors and searching rooms for anything flammable. Turn on the showers and faucets to try to make as much noise as possible to draw them into the rooms. Berry, you check all of the cars, see if you can find any flammable liquid or bottles to siphon some gasoline if there’s any left in the tanks.”
They both nodded and rushed off, Bretz himself heading up to the second floor. He had keys for all but one of the rooms, so he started at one end and worked his way across. There were no signs of unlife in any of them, but unfortunately he didn’t find any oil or lighter fluid anywhere either. He did, however, find a chocolate bar on one of the side tables and happily gulped it down while he searched the last few rooms.
He kicked in the door of the one he didn’t have a key for, and scoured it. He found a few lighters on the desk and pocketed them, though he didn’t think the little bit of fluid inside them would do much.
“Corporal!” Mason called from the bottom of the staircase.
Bretz leaned over the railing. “What did you find?”
“One of these units looks like it belonged to the manager,” he replied, holding up a keyring. “I found the key to the maintenance room. Looks like this place has oil heating.”
The Corporal grinned and hurried down the stairs, following Mason into the dark room at the far end of the strip. They approached the giant tank and Bretz knocked on it in a few different places along the side.
“Sounds about half-full,” he declared, and clambered up on top. “Go see if Berry found any containers.” He took the large cap in his hand and twisted, pulling it as hard as he could and barely budging it. He gave it a few more hefty reefs with his triceps screaming, and finally loosened it enough to twist it off. The pungent scent of heating oil hit his nostrils just as the two privates bustled inside with three gas cans in tow.
“One of the trucks had these in the back, fuck knows why they wouldn’t have taken them,” Berry said.
Mason pulled a garden hose from the wall and drew his knife to cut it to an easier working length. “So that we would find them,” he said simply, and the trio froze at the sound of gunfire echoing outside. It was too far away to be Kowalski, which meant that the zombies had come close enough to the car barricade.
“Double time,” Bretz said, as Mason successfully cut a length of hose and passed an end up to him. The corporal fed it into the top of the tank and then slid down as Berry gave the hose a hearty suck to start the flow. He had to suck twice, and crimped the hose just before he got a mouthful of oil.
Bretz held out an open gas can and Berry fed the hose into it, the splatter of oil on plastic like music to their ears. As soon as it was full, Bretz transferred the hose to another can.
“Start at the top floor, furthest unit, douse as much as you can, and make sure to make a path from room to room and down the stairs,” he said, and the private ran off. Mason took the next can and started at the furthest end of the ground floor. At the sound of Kowalski firing above, Bretz took a deep breath.
This needed to work.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kersey readied his rifle, still signaling for Baker, Johnson, and Edwards to hold their fire. They needed to wait until at least twenty yards had closed, to make sure they were maximizing their ammunition.
“Aim!” he cried, as the horde closed in closer.
They were moving at a quick pace, more of a power walk than a jog, but as they caught sight or scent of their new potential prey they perked up.
“FIRE!” Kersey screamed, and the quartet opened fire into the horde. Corpse after corpse dropped, rotted heads squelching on the asphalt, the ones behind not letting up as they pushed towards the hope of a meal.
As the zombies trampled their fallen brethren and smacked into the line of cars, the soldiers continued to fire, headshot after headshot as accurately as they could. Before long, the bodies piled up so much that the zombies had a decent ramp to trudge up and slip and slide over the tops of the cars.
“Fall back!” Kersey instructed, and the line of soldiers began to walk backwards as they continued to shoot. They took their time, making every shot count, but moving backwards to draw the zombies towards them. Like pied pipers, the group led the horde of groaning corpses up the ramp towards t
he motel.
As soon as they were in Kowalski’s view, he waited patiently for the zombies to enter his field of vision. He fired off a shot, taking one corpse down, and on that cue, Kersey and his team bolted for the stairway of the motel. They aimed at the horde, firing as accurately as they could to continue to drop zombies but draw them closer to the building.
Kowalski made use of his bullets picking off stragglers, hoping to keep the horde to their mission of the meal in the building.
Once the zombies reached the grounds, Kersey and his team barreled inside, hooting and hollering as they ran through the hallway to the emergency exit out the back.
Meanwhile, Bretz, Mason and Berry made as much noise as they could in the upper level to draw the corpses upstairs.
“You guys need to hurry up,” Kowalski came through the radio. “It’s just a sea of bodies down there, and some of them are heading around the building.”
“Get off the roof and set the fire,” Kersey’s voice came back. “Bretz, you guys get out of there, now.”
Bretz fired into the shoulder-to-shoulder shuffle of zombies approaching them in the hallway, guarding the middle unit on the backside of the top floor.
“Go!” He motioned behind him into the unit. Their escape route was a balcony where Berry had parked one of the Humvees below for them to jump down onto. The two Privates hurried inside, and he backed into the unit, closing and locking the door behind them.
They peered down, and saw that zombies were already milling about down there.
“Fuckin corpses are way too close for comfort,” Bretz muttered, and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “I’ll go down first and start trying to clear the way. Mason, jump down to help me, and Berry, when you get down we’ll cover you while you get into the driver’s seat.”
The other two nodded and he leapt over the railing, taking pause on the other side to loosen his legs and then drop to the vehicle below. He immediately took a knee and began to fire on the zombies closest to him, dropping as many as he could. There was a loud thunk as Mason hit the roof next to him, and knelt at his back, firing at the other side.
When there was no thunk signifying Berry’s descent, Bretz looked up at the ashen face of his teammate.
“Come on, man, hurry up!” he bellowed.
Kowalski shot the few zombies in his path upon hitting the asphalt and pulled out the molotov cocktail that Mason had given him. He chucked it through the open window on the first floor. There was a smash and a whoosh and then inhuman screams, and that was good enough for him. He took off as fast as he could into the suburbia behind the motel to meet up with Kersey and the others.
“Berry fucking jump!” Bretz cried, and finally the Private let out a fearful scream and leapt over the railing of the balcony. His boot slipped on the side of the humvee and he went face-first into the roof, his body flopping down onto the asphalt just a hair too quickly for Bretz or Mason to be able to grab him.
“Berry!” Mason screamed, and fired into the zombies, but they already had his legs. The Private shrieked for help, his cries coming out in painful wails, but Bretz and Mason knew it was too late. The zombies made quick work of him, gravitating towards his flopping form.
The soldiers regretfully had to take advantage of the distraction, and hopped down to get into the vehicle. Bretz took the wheel and muttered curses under his breath as he backed over as many zombies as he could before squealing the tires and heading off down the side street towards the suburb.
They skidded to a stop in the middle of the street where Kersey, Baker and Kowalski were standing on the sidewalk to meet them.
“The others are scouring the houses for something to fight with,” the Sergeant explained as his somber-faced teammates exited their vehicle. “Where’s Berry?”
Bretz shook his head. “He’s gone.”
Kersey nodded and gave Mason’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, but there was no time to mourn. “How many do you think we took out back there?” he asked.
“Seven, maybe eight hundred,” Bretz replied. “The rest are avoiding the blaze and heading this way.”
“So about seventeen hundred to go, then,” Kowalski replied, and cocked his gun for effect. Groans echoed towards them, and they all took aim into the oncoming horde, only a little smaller and not that much less intimidating than before. They walked backwards as they fired.
“I’m out, Sarge!” Mason cried, and Kersey glanced over his shoulder at the duplex behind them.
“Get in there, try to find anything to use as a weapon,” he instructed, and Baker slung his empty rifle over his back and followed the him.
They tore through the house, eventually ending up in the kitchen. Mason flung open a broom closet and kicked at the heads of a few brooms, so they had a few wooden staffs to use. Baker opened up one of the drawers and found a junk drawer, snatching up a roll of duct tape.
“Give me one of those,” he demanded as he held out his hand, and Mason handed it over. Baker grabbed one of the butcher knives from the knife block and duct-taped the handle to the wood, creating a makeshift spear.
Mason raised an eyebrow. “Not bad,” he said, but there was no time for an answer as the rest of the team backed into the front of the house.
Kersey closed and locked the door, and Bretz helped him move a cabinet in front of it. “What do we have, boys?” the Sergeant called, and Baker and Mason emerged with three broom-spears and a bottle of Scotch.
“Holy Christ, is that Dalmore?” Bretz gawked, and reached for the bottle. Before he could take it, however, Kersey snatched it out of Baker’s hand and tore a strip from a nearby curtain, stuffing it inside to make another molotov.
“Hell of a waste of good whiskey,” Baker muttered as he passed off one of the spears to Bretz.
The door began to give under the weight of the pressing horde, and the group took defensive positions, ready to take out as many as they could before vacating through the back of the house.
“Do what you can, but keep falling back,” Kersey instructed, molotov firmly in hand. “We’ll back out through that sliding door and burn this place, too.”
There was a sharp snap as the door gave way, and the soldiers yelled as they stabbed as many skulls as they could, all the while backing into the kitchen. Kersey threw open the sliding door and held it, waiting for the three spear-wielding soldiers to be out before chucking the molotov inside. He spotted a large in-ground pool in the neighboring yard, and led the team over there as flaming zombies staggered out of the house. Others swarmed the back fence, and it didn’t take long for it to give way underneath the pressing monsters.
The team used their spears and some of the long pool cleaning nets to knock clumsy zombies into the pool as they approached, trapping them in the pit.
“Gone swimming!” Kowalski cried as he kicked one of the corpses into the deep end. The disoriented zombies attempted to get out, but the pit quickly became a writhing pile of pissed off corpses.
“Head to the front!” Kersey called out as the horde began to overrun the backyard, and the team dropped the pool tools, sprinting with guns bouncing on their backs and spears in hand around the second house to the cul du sac.
As they burst out onto the street, they froze at the sound of a throaty engine revving.
“Outta the way, boys!” Johnson came through their radios, and the team dove to the side as a huge truck screamed past them. He’d found a big farm truck and outfitted the grill with hunks of sharp wood and rebar to make a zombie-killing machine.
Johnson drove into the backyard, skirting the pool to do donuts in the backyard, crunching and stabbing corpses all the while hooting with glee.
CHAPTER SIX
Edwards came out of the back door of one of the houses on the edge of the neighborhood and spotted a gas station on the dirt road running behind. He crept through the backyard, keeping low along the bushes, and peered out at the parking lot. There was a heating oil truck there, and he checked his rifle, peering around
before making a mad dash across the grass.
He peeked in through the passenger side door, but there were no keys inside. He darted across to the gas station, where he found the front door completely shattered. He ducked through the jagged doorframe and did a quick sweep of the store, finding it empty. He grabbed a chocolate bar from a display case on the way behind the counter, stuffing the candy into his mouth as he searched. A drawer beneath the register housed a keyring, and he held it up, the same logo from the truck on the fob.
Edwards grabbed a few packs of cigarettes from the wall behind him and stuffed the side pockets of his pants. He snatched the rest of the packaged pepperettes from the counter and shoved them in beside the cigarette packs before ducking back out the front door.
He barely registered the groans before something slammed into his side.
He hit the asphalt hard, and whipped around and fired, taking a zombie right between the eyes. As it fell, another tripped over it, diving into his abdomen before he could react. He screamed as pain exploded in his stomach, the zombie latching and tearing right through his shirt into his flesh. He dropped his gun and grabbed the corpse’s head, throwing it to the side and straddling it, punching it repeatedly in the face.
His blood boiled and rage blackened the edges of his vision as he pounded the zombie’s head into mush, the body going limp and his fists connecting with wet gobs of rotted flesh.
Edwards finally stopped, falling back onto his ass. “Motherfucker,” he hissed as he peeled up his shirt, examining the jagged bite wound. “Mother. Fucker.” He almost put his head in his hands, but then remembered that his fists were full of pungent grey matter.
He took in a deep ragged breath, and got to his feet, reclaiming his rifle and slinging it over his back. He stepped back into the gas station, and headed for the washroom. He managed to get himself as clean as he could, and removed his shirt, using it to mop up his wound with clenched teeth.
He tore into a few bandage packages in the small travel section, and gauzed and taped up the wound as best he could. There was a wall of knock-off sports t-shirts along the far wall and he pulled down a Royals t-shirt, struggling into it to conceal his wound.