“No Mom! No!” Andrew screamed to no avail.
“Get away from me, Dad!” Ryan added.
Old man Hastings came to a stop about 50 feet away in the van and reached for his carbine. Then he opened his door to hop out. But, he had forgotten about his seatbelt. It took a second to get unentangled and it was a second the grandkids didn’t have. As the zombies continued to gain ground, the old man stepped carefully out of the van. He may have had parachute training and rappelled out of helicopters long ago, but now the step down out of the van was a careful operation. Once he was on the ground, he reached back into the van to retrieve his old carbine. The dead just marched on.
Mom reached out and grabbed Andrew by the arm. The boy squirmed, but his mother’s grip was firm. Andrew’s eyes met his mothers. There was a momentary flash of recognition. Was it recognition? It paralyzed young Andrew for a moment. He couldn’t even scream. Then he raised his skateboard in an attempt to get it between himself and his monstrous mother. The monstrous mother smacked the young boy’s skateboard aside and pulled him close. She bit him deeply in the neck sending blood everywhere. The boy’s skateboard clattered to the ground. At that point, Andrew could scream, but only for a moment. His dead mother’s hands clawed at him with wild animal’s ferocity.
Greatpa saw none of the struggle as he was just turning around with his carbine. The mother turned monster leaned in for more bites, but a shot rang out and her head exploded into a gruesome spray that no one should ever see. Ryan stopped in his tracks in shock. His father approached with arms outstretched and a ripped face that bared his bloody teeth for all to see. As he reached Ryan, another shot rang out dropping the dead dad even deader. By this time Greatpa had turned around, registered the shock of seeing his great grandson, his grandson, and his granddaughter-in-law dead on the ground. He couldn’t stay shocked for long with the rest of the grocery store horde closing in.
“Get in the van Ryan,” he ordered.
Pivoting from left to right, he unleashed a half-dozen accurate headshots on the closest zombies. As the front rank of the dead dropped, the old man saw that there were more. As he pivoted back from right to left, he also saw the zombies dropping from left to right. Greatpa noticed a rifleman methodically shooting the zombies from up on the rooftop to his left. Line after line of zombies dropped as Ryan clambered into the van and slammed the door closed.
After a few more shots, there was a lull and Greatpa looked up to the figures on the roof.
“Thank God for that sniper,” he thought to himself looking up to his rooftop savior.
As the sniper stood with rifle in hand, Greatpa looked again. He noticed the sniper’s small stature, slender figure, and long hair. The helpful sniper was a young woman.
“It’s a sniper girl,” the old man said to himself. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
The woman and two young men ran along the edge of the roof with a ladder. Greatpa saw they were coming in his direction so he kept an eye out for more zombies. The old man braced himself against the van and fired shots at a few more zombies as they shuffled around the corner of the grocery store. Then, as his carbine ran dry, Hastings grabbed one of his X marked magazines. He fired three more shots at the straggling zombies and then the World War 2 era carbine went click. The spent casing was sticking straight up out of the action. It was a stovepipe jam. Years ago, Hastings would have cleared it without problem. But, now with diminished dexterity and arthritis, he struggled to rack the slide and take out the spent case to make way for the next round.
The old man heard the sniper girl’s ladder drop to the ground, but a trio of zombies was getting too close. A series of pops by his side took his worries away. Ryan had hopped out with the .22 rifle and dropped all three with a series of fusillade of fast shots. As the nearest zombies dropped, the helpers from the rooftop arrived.
“Can we drive you home?” a breathless young Indian woman inquired. “We can take you back to our complex for now.”
“I guess so,” the old man said softly. “We have nowhere else to go.”
Thank you!
I really appreciate your taking the time to read this short story. I hope you enjoyed it and invite you to check out my full length novel, Zombie Complex: The Battle for Chattahoochee Run.
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Zombie Complex | Short Story | Neither Seen Nor Heard Page 3