“I’m not a corpse,” Mike shouts from the inside the SUV.
“It’s talking!” Merriweather says, aiming his carbine at the rear door.
“I said I’m not dead, you dim wit!” Mike replies.
“Show us your hands!” Gracey shouts, aiming his own weapon at the car and inching a little closer.
“That’s it, fucker. Just a little farther,” Ben whispers to himself
“I tried to tell you,” Pam shouts.
Mike lifts his empty hands over his head, allowing the soldiers to see them and says, “I heard her. She tried.”
“Keep them where we can see them!” Gracey yells to Mike. “Open the door,” he tells Merriweather. Glancing at the others to make sure none of them have moved, he turns his attention back to the Mercedes and takes a half-step closer to his line of no return.
“Keep going. A little more,” Ben mutters, preparing to apply the remaining pressure to set the rifle into motion.
Dave hears Merriweather shuffle his feet across the gravel and dirt as he approaches, but doesn’t see him turn to look at Gracey, making sure he’s being covered. Dave throws a glance in Ben’s direction, but he’s hidden by the front of the 4x4. He hopes his son will have a clear shot soon because he’s already decided Ben will need to take the first shot. The one holding Pam and the others has to die first. Dave reasons if he shoots the approaching soldier first, the other will still be holding his family hostage and will likely kill a few of them to even the odds. No. He had to wait for Ben to take him out first. Then he’d jump to his feet and put a bullet in the other soldier.
“Don’t any of you even think about moving!” Gracey warns the prisoners. “Open the door,” he orders Merriweather.
“Do you want to do this?” Merriweather shouts back. He inches closer and sees Mike in a surrendering position with his hands still raised over his head.
“Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me,” Dave silently whispers to himself. He tries to get even lower from the possible detection, while still being in a position to jump to his feet the moment Ben starts shooting.
“I can’t keep these up forever. This is killing my back,” Mike says loud enough for both soldiers to hear through the closed car window above his feet. By his tone, Dave could tell his father-in-law was dead serious about his back.
“Keep ‘em where I can see ‘em,” Merriweather orders. Reaching for the door handle with his left, he keeps his right hand wrapped securely on the grip of his M-4 with his finger held over the trigger. Merriweather hesitates, casting one more glance behind him for a quick check on his backup.
“Private. Open the fucking door!” Gracey demands, scuttling slightly closer.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” Dave asks himself. Both about the soldier a few feet away and why Ben hasn’t tried taking a shot.
“Almost…” Ben whispers. Taking in a slow steady breath in through his nose, as time slows for him inside his mind. Placing Gracey’s profiled head in the well of the V in his iron sights, he knows he can hardly miss at this range. At over twenty-three hundred feet per second, the 7.62 bullet will cover the short yardage fast enough to be considered instantaneous. He exhales half the breath and prepares for the next moment to happen. His lips part a fraction. It’s an instinctual reaction in preparation for a sudden, loud noise, and Ben hardly notices doing it, as Merriweather lifts the handle and pulls the door wide open.
“Well?” Gracey asks, taking a step closer to see inside the Mercedes.
“It’s just an old…” Merriweather starts to explain without turning around.
“There,” Ben says by exhaling his remaining breath and applying a few more ounces of pressure with his finger to a single clap of thunder.
“Man,” Merriweather finishes as Gracey’s head explodes like a detonated melon.
The sudden noise startles Merriweather enough to make his hand flex. Causing him to send an unintended burst of rounds into the rear of the Mercedes, as he starts to turn to see where the shot came from. Ben has already pulled his bolt back and ejecting the spent cartridge before Gracey’s headless body hits the ground, having never fired a shot. Zack pulls Brigette down and they use their bodies to cover the boys from any stray bullets coming. Lynn and Pam just stare as Merriweather begins turning their direction. Joe falls on them, attempting to be their shield as Dave gets on his feet and steps from behind the SUV. But Merriweather sees the movement from the corner of his eye and lurches back toward the car, at the same moment Dave lifts Ben’s revolver in his hands. Bullets punch into the Mercedes and Dave’s top half is covered in a sudden spray of crimson at the same instant he pulls the trigger and the revolver erupts.
The bullet hits the soldier in the neck, tearing his throat out and shoving the soon-to-be corpse back and to the right. In the grip of death, Merriweather’s hand spasms again, sending three more rounds into the surrounding forest as he dies. Dave looks from his ruined shirt to the interior of the Mercedes, and then scowls at the dying man. He contemplates shooting him a second time when he hears Pam call his name.
“Dave!” she screams, stumbling to her feet as he staggers to reach her. “You’ve been shot!” she shouts. Pam tries to help him to the ground before his legs betray him due to blood loss. She needed him on the ground so she could tell how badly he was wounded, but he fought her ministrations.
“The blood’s not mine,” he tells her, grabbing her wrists.
“Then who…” she starts to ask, seeing the absence of any bullet holes in her husband’s clothes. His eyes meet hers and he gives her a sullen nod.
“Mike?” Lynn calls out, almost timidly at first but shouts his name a second time when there’s no response.
“I have to check on him,” Pam tells Dave, struggling to free herself from his grasp.
“It won’t help,” he says quietly as he releases her hands. “He’s gone.”
“But you don’t know for sure,” she says, lurching to the open door, but quickly turns away when she sees the interior.
“Is Mike okay?” Lynn asks her daughter. Pam shakes her head, not able to say the words as tears begin to rain from her eyes. “Oh my god! No!” Lynn shouts, stumbling closer, but Pam catches her mother in her arms.
“Mom, don’t,” she tells her. “You don’t need to see him like that.” Lynn struggles in her daughter’s arms at first, but quickly succumbs, wracked with body-shuddering sobs.
“Zack,” Dave shouts, taking control. “Take Joe and go back down the road. There’s an army jeep down there a little ways. Go get it and bring it back here.”
“We’re on it,” Zack said, slapping Joe lightly in the chest. “Come on, brother.”
“You know I hate it when you do that,” Joe replies, rubbing the spot Zack hit.
“You should have said something,” Zack says with a swollen smile as he starts down the dark road.
“I have!” Joe shouts behind him as he follows.
“And take the shotguns,” Dave yells after them. This causes Zack to backtrack a few steps to retrieve his double-barrel from the grass and reload it while Joe picks up Dave’s from next to Ben.
“Brigette,” Dave continues. “Get the boys situated and make sure they’re okay. Get them in your car and then help Pam with her mom. Ben, I need you to help me,” he says, walking over to Merriweather.
He quickly unhooks the dead soldier’s M-4 from its sling and sets the safety after a moment of looking for it. With the weapon secure, he searches the soldier and finds three more loaded magazines in his tactical vest and a Colt .45 holstered to his hip. Liberating the sidearm and its heavy canvas holster, Dave attaches them to his belt and drops the spare loaded magazine into his pocket. Ben completes a similar search of Gracey’s body and finds the same number of loaded magazines. But rather than a semiautomatic cannon, the soldier had a huge, ka-bar style knife and case hanging from his belt, ala John Rambo. Ben easily removed it from the corpse and looped his own belt through the sheath. The knife
was so ridiculously long, it came with an extra set of lacing at the end. Presumably these were to secure the tip of the case to one’s leg to keep it from swinging around. Ben let these dangle for the time being. He and Dave had considered taking the tactical vests from the dead men, but they were mostly soaked in fresh blood and spattered with bits of flesh and bones, so they each decided against it. They’d just finished dragging the soldiers’ bodies from the center of their area when Zack and Joe returned with the soldiers’ jeep. They backed the jeep up near the Mercedes, anticipating the task to come.
“I don’t know how long Brubaker’s been trying to reach these two, but he’s starting to sound pissed off,” Zack says after exiting the jeep.
“They’ve got a sat-link and I think tracking equipment here,” Brigette announces as she inspects the items in the back. “And at least two full cans of ammo for this bad boy,” she adds, patting the fifty-cal.
“Do you know how to use the satellite link or the tracking stuff?” Dave asks, not having any idea what the correct names for the equipment were.
“Maybe,” she replies with a shrug.
“See what else you can find,” Dave tells her. “Ben, give her a hand. Zack and Joe, help me get everything moved from the Mercedes to the back of the jeep but do not look in the backseat if you can help it. We don’t have any time to screw around, so let’s get moving. If Brubaker isn’t already on his way back, he will be soon and they’ve got another jeep just like this one,” he says, referring to the chain-gun mounted on the tripod in the back. “In the meantime, get that gun aimed back down that road in case we have uninvited company.”
“What are we going to do with…?” Pam asks, nodding toward the Mercedes. Dave looks back at her, feeling helpless because there was only one thing they could do.
“Mom will ride with us,” Dave replies, skirting the question. “Joe and Ben will drive the jeep.”
“I call shotgun,” Ben shouts loud enough for his brothers to hear.
“That’s crap,” Joe protests.
“You snooze, you lose,” Zack tells him. “You know the rules.”
“Knock it off!” Dave shouts the moment he hears the radio in the jeep crackle to life.
“Private Gracey. Private Merriweather. This is your sergeant. Come in. We’re sitting at the on-ramp to 70 and we’re getting goddamn tired of waiting for you, over!” Brubaker says.
From his tone, Zack had been right in the fact he did sound pissed off. Dave retrieves the mic from its cradle and raises it to his lips, prepared to impersonate one of the dead soldiers when the radio comes to life once more.
“I say again. This is Sergeant Brubaker. The major and the rest of the squad are waiting for you to rendezvous with us at the on-ramp to west 70. Come in, over.”
“That’s at least the fourth time he’s tried,” Zack says, setting a case of bottled water in the back of the jeep.
“That we know of,” Joe adds, setting down another on top of the one his brother had been carrying.
Dave couldn’t help noticing the dark red droplets speckling the outer plastic keeping the contents of the twenty-four-pack contained. He stares back at the mic, trying to recall if either of the soldiers had an accent, but he can’t remember. It was the next message over the radio that forced him into action.
“Privates. This is Major Brooks,” says a woman over the radio. Just her tone makes Dave think of scorched earth and charred remains. “If you force us to come back and look for you, you can count on a field court-martial, followed by an extremely prejudicial punishment by a four-man squad. Is that clear, over.”
“Well damn,” Brigette says. “The bitch sounds hardcore.”
“Does she mean what I think she means?” Dave asks.
“Uh-huh.” Brigette nods. “Firing squad.”
Dave lifts the mic to his lips, knowing he has to say something to buy them some time. Before he can depress the talk button, Brigette sets her hand over his to stop him.
“Keep it short and simple. Having radio trouble but on our way,” she tells him.
“Got it,” Dave replies, knowing exactly what he’ll say. “Ha-ing ra-io… ouble serg… on our …ay,” he says, grinning back at the mic with his brilliant deception.
“You didn’t say, over,” Brigette scolds him.
Dave’s stomach plummets from the radio silence and sinks further at the sound of a branch cracking somewhere behind them in the blackness of the forest. He doesn’t feel the least bit relieved when Brubaker comes back on the radio.
“Hold your position. We’re coming to find you,” Brubaker replies.
“Fuck!” Dave says, dropping the mic onto the seat. “He didn’t buy it.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? You have to say, over!” Brigette says.
“Next time. But right now, we have to go,” Dave replies as more sounds come out of the darkness. “Like right, fucking now,” he adds. “Leave everything else,” he shouts to everyone. “Pam, get Mom in our car. Ben and Joe, take the jeep. Zack and Brigette, get your asses turned around. We’ll lead the way. You follow us in the middle and no matter what happens, do not get that fucking car stuck in one of those ruts! Ben and Joe, you stay at the back. When we get to the highway, we turn west. If they get behind us, you light ‘em up with that big fucking gun, okay?”
“A-firmative,” Ben answers, looking at the 50-cal with a bewildered expression.
“And use this until we can find another C.B. radio for that thing,” Dave says, tossing one of their remaining three walkie-talkies to Ben. Another he hands to Zack, doubting his hand to eye coordination is reflexive enough at the moment to catch it. “We’ll keep one in each vehicle for now, or until something better comes along. Any questions?”
“Hey Dave,” Joe says, raising his hand like he’s in school.
“What, Joe? And put your hand down,” Dave replies.
“Nothing. It’s just, I don’t think I’m the only one who’s gotten a little turned around after all this. So, for the record, which way do we turn when we get to the highway? Left or right?” Joe asks.
“I was a little confused too,” Zack admits.
“Right!” Dave gasps. “We turn, fucking right!”
“Got it,” Joe says, climbing into the driver’s seat of the jeep with Ben getting into the other.
“I’m good now,” Zack adds, heading for his car.
“What about Mike?” Lynn asks after Dave closes his door.
He looks at her expression in the rearview mirror. Her eyes are swollen from crying and her cheeks look sunken. Lynn looks like she’s aged five years in the last fifteen minutes. But Dave has no idea what to say to her. He’d spared her from seeing Mike’s bullet-riddled body, all bloody and contorted in the backseat of the Mercedes. He didn’t want her to be tortured with the memory of how the left side of his face had been blown off and splattered across the back of the passenger seat. Even if Mike had survived being shot, which he hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been anything they could’ve done for him. But just like Dakota, they were forced to leave him behind and he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“Just go,” Pam says, turning the key in the ignition for him.
He looks at his wife, wanting to tell her thank you, and feeling like a piece of shit because of it for not having anything else to say. Dave settles for the silence and drops the transmission into gear, checking his mirror once more. Lynn turns away from his reflection and he’s blinded by the glare from the military jeep’s high-intensity lights Lynn’s head had been blocking. Dave slaps at the switch on the bottom of the mirror used when some asshole is tailgating you with their brights on. He flips the toggle to dull the glare. As they start to roll forward, Zack starts his engine and turns on his headlamps. The trees are flooded with light and Dave see scores of eyes reflecting in the brilliance. Shadows shaped like people begin moving in the trees and at first, Dave thinks the soldiers have already arrived to take them. But there’s little relief when the
first of the shamblers emerges from the surrounding forest.
The man’s face and neck are caked with dried blood from the bite wound on his ravaged cheek. His short-sleeved shirt is hanging open at the middle, the buttons having been ripped off during his attack, exposing more bite marks and smears of dried gore. A disheveled looking woman follows on his heels, dressed in ragged jeans and a dark, stained shirt. The gruesome woman attempts to push past the man to reach for the tasty treats hiding in the car. Most of the flesh on her left forearm, along with the hand, is missing. The broken arm bones are exposed at the end of the stump and stab into the back of the man in front, who shows no reaction to the punctures, and remains fixated on Zack’s headlights. But his shuffling feet become entangled in the undergrowth as the woman shoves at his back, driving the jagged bones deeper into him. The zombie goes down, still entranced by the lights with his arms extended toward the promise of food. An errant stick in the grass punches into his throat and black goo spills down the shaft. Two more men force their way through the bushes, the twisted branches tearing at their skin. The woman steps on the first creature’s back, forcing him down and driving the broken branch deeper and pushing it through the back of his neck. As she steps off him, the zombie struggles to his feet with the foreign object still protruding from his throat. It moves up and down as the fiend chews the air in anticipation of raw flesh. Several more men, women, and children of various ages stagger into the small clearing. A trio of the hideous abominations fall onto the recently departed soldier and begin tearing through their fatigues to get to the rapidly cooling meat. They rip into the corpses with their hands and teeth, devouring the easily gotten flesh to feed their sickening hunger.
“We’ve got zombies behind us,” Dave shouts into the walkie before dropping it into Pam’s lap as more invaders emerge from the shadows. A young girl slams into Zack’s car door. Gray mucus from the preteen’s mouth smears across his window as her teeth gnash against the glass as a different set of crusty hands slap onto the hood of his car.
The F*cked Series (Book 4): Hard Page 13