Jackson walked over to the table and picked up the first Kalashnikov. He inspected it to make sure everything looked in order then turned toward the stairs with light, slow steps.
Kathleen raised her finger to her mouth. “Your vest, put on your vest.”
He turned and smiled but his shoulders hunched up at the same time. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot.” He reached down for it and noticed that his hand shook. He clenched his fist into a tight ball, and splayed it back out. It still trembled. He shook his hands out in the air several times and ran sweaty palms over his pant legs. Despite the cool temperature in the basement, some sweat beaded up on his skin.
His eyes scanned the table aimlessly until they fell on something else. “My machete too, I almost forgot that.” He heard his voice tremble, and it felt like the heat inside his body doubled. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, but his tension remained. He lashed the machete on his side, slipped into the vest, and picked up the AK again. “Okay, ready for real this time?”
Kathleen placed her hand on his chest. “Good luck. I know you can do it.”
She nodded, but he noticed her wavering eyes, and it ate a hole in his confidence big enough to fit a truck through. Strangely that gave him some hope, because he always seemed to gain strength when the task involved proving someone wrong. “Thanks.” He kissed her and then turned toward the door. Walking up the steps, his legs felt like his mental image of legs of jelly. The butterflies in his stomach fluttered and begged for release. He closed his eyes for a second, forced an exhale, and kept going.
Jackson reached the top and could see shadows playing in the light under the door. Slowly and steadily he unlocked the first deadbolt. It snapped back inside its housing, and the sound triggered movement beyond. Jackson heard feet scraping on the floor, and hands slid over the wood and pushed with renewed vigor as it creaked. He looked back at Kathleen who stood at the bottom staring up and nodded. “Okay, here goes.” He swallowed and an air bubble slid down his dry throat. The door began shaking as he turned the knob on the second lock. The bolt slid back and clicked, and at the same time he turned and bounded down the steps, taking two at a time.
The door flew open, and the greedy mob pushed and shoved as each one tried to go first. As they crammed through the doorway, the one out front got its legs tied up and went tumbling down the steps.
Jackson reached the bottom and perceived out of the corner of his eye, almost as if in slow motion, that Kathleen’s arm came up and pointed at something. He thought he heard her begin to mouth a word then something crashed into the back of his legs, and he tumbled forward. He smacked the floor, and his finger involuntarily pulled the trigger. Several bullets sprayed out in an arc and went through the cinder block wall beyond. The noise of the gunfire rang in his ears and made his eyes not want to open as his head spun. Struggling to suck in a breath of air, he turned over with a groan and saw one of the undead, who had been a middle-aged woman in life, lying at his feet. It started to get up on its hands and knees, and bit down on his boot and whipped its head from side to side. The thought—thank God for steel toed boots—shot through Jackson’s mind as he raised his other leg and planted his foot in its face. He looked up and saw that the others had already traveled halfway down the steps, and his mouth dropped wide open. One damn problem, just one damn problem! He froze as the one at his feet rolled over, and the pack continued down the stairs. All I had to do was stand at the bottom of the stairs and shoot. That’s it!
He heard Kathleen’s voice pluck at his consciousness, but his mental state could do no better than hearing a voice that sounded similar to hearing a yell underwater.
“Get up Jackson!” Kathleen had started backing away with her hands out and mouth pulled back to scream. “Hurry!”
Hearing a muffled scream snapped Jackson into action. He stood up and smacked the invader across the face with the butt of his rifle, and then shot it in the head as it fell back. With a jolt, he looked up and saw the others mere feet away. He raised the gun up to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. He had no way of knowing at the time how big of a mistake that was as he watched dishearteningly at the first few bullets that slammed into the leading undead, ejecting a spray of blood back onto the ones behind them. The other bullets had no such fate. The force of the gun pushed back into Jackson’s shoulder, shaking it violently, and his muscles locked up. He kept pulling the trigger, causing him to lose control as the gun rode up and hammered the wall. He stopped firing and brought the barrel back down to try again. The first monstrosity had reached the third step. He aimed and fired. One bullet came out and split its head like a canoe then—click. “Next gun! He threw his hand back to receive it and felt only cold, dead air. “Now!”
His voice jerked Kathleen back into reality. Still recovering from the surprise, she scrambled to grab the rifle. She saw Jackson’s arm out shaking, and she swept the fresh gun off the table, pulled the used one out of his grasp, and slapped the new one into his hand.
Jackson brought the new gun up to his shoulder and aimed. This time he planned to adjust his rate of fire to create small bursts. The next undead in line fell into his sights, only five feet away. He squeezed, but the trigger did not budge. What? His eyes washed over gun as his jaw dropped. He squeezed again harder, nothing. Then he checked the trigger assembly. “The fuckin’ safety’s on!” He screamed as he clicked it off and commenced firing. In his haste he pulled the trigger too hard again and jerked the muzzle up. Bullets collided with the first three heads and sent chunks of flesh hurling backwards. Jackson let up on the trigger before the barrel climbed too high. He tried to focus on the gun's sight, but his eyes drifted up as he stared at the undead filling the entire staircase, and more crowded the doorway. He grimaced and fired.
The bodies piled up as they slid to the bottom. He kept shooting, finally gaining a modicum of control over the gun’s kick, and he got into the rhythm of firing in three round bursts. As the bodies dropped, they piled up on the stairs when the floor space filled, and the ones still walking started getting tied up in a web of limbs and torsos. A few lost their footing and tumbled head over heels to the floor and landed on still carcasses. This forced Jackson and Kathleen to fall back from their positions near the base of the steps, dragging the table with them.
The ones that smacked the floor below the steps scrambled to their feet and lurched forward. Jackson looked at the table holding the next gun and all the ammo and gritted his teeth. He stepped forward and shot the two on the floor and continued firing up the steps. “Next gun!” Their hand-off had hit its rhythm, and he continued firing. He started to see some light at the end of the tunnel as his shot placement improved. However, his hands started to go numb and his arms felt the same as they did at the gym after several sets of bench presses and curls. However, with his own, his wife’s, and their unborn child’s mortality hanging in the balance, he dug deeper and adrenaline surged. He put bullets into every head he could see.
He kept emptying the guns, and Kathleen reloaded them, the numbers incredible. Every time one of the dead came crashing down the stairs he had to fall back, lower the gun to fire, and move back toward the stairs. He finally started to gain the upper hand. When he had pushed them just over halfway back up the steps, he knelt , assuming the original firing position laid out in the plan, and continued to pour on the savagery.
Smoke rose from both gun barrels, and Jackson shot the last one as it tried to get up off the floor from all fours. He watched with a haggard grin as fragments of its brain and skull sprayed the floor, and it collapsed with a flat thud on the concrete. Jackson peered up to the door and immediately raised the gun and waited for another to stagger through. Wide-eyed and covered in sweat, he craned his neck to listen, but the doorway remained empty. After a few more seconds he let the gun drop and sighed. His shoulders automatically slumped, and he collapsed to both knees. He tried to rest his hands on his thighs, but his arms gave way similar to bent straws. With a loud groan he manage
d to get to his feet and stagger to the table where he slumped into a chair. “Oh Jesus!” He rubbed his temples and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I’m wiped out.” His voice had gone hoarse sometime during the fight.
Kathleen came over and sat beside him and massaged his neck. “You did great honey, really great.”
Jackson nodded without uttering a word or lifting his eyes from the floor. After a while he managed to pick his head up and look at the pile of bodies on the stairs. “How are we going to walk up those? They’re covered in blood and bodies.”
“Yeah, you’ll have to move them all first.”
He shot her a wide-eyed stare and mashed his palm into his face. “Okay, but I can’t do it now.” Jackson got up and walked over to the steps and stared at the pile of twisted corpses. His skin went white, and he held his hand to his mouth, but a sudden stir of flesh several steps up tore him from it. He jumped back and involuntarily raised his fists as one of them turned and rolled down toward his feet. “What the hell!” Jackson jumped back as it dumped on the floor, totally limp. He looked up and saw a bloody hand raised out of the mesh of carcasses. An arm shot out and planted a soiled hand on everything it could reach until it finally found a post on the railing. The arm pulled and revealed a former young man caked in dry blood. A bullet had mangled its lower jaw, and venous fluid oozed down its shirt. The top lip curled back into a snarl and revealed the only teeth it had left. With only half the mouth to bend into aggression, it looked strange and almost funny except for the tragedy of it all.
Jackson drew his pistol, aimed, and finished it with a bullet in between the eyes. “This is awful.” His head dropped down, back hunched over, and his legs followed suit. Then he picked his head back up and stomped over to the table with a growl no more human than his prey. His lips tightened up revealing the edges of his teeth, and he grabbed the AK in a tight grip. Resolutely he marched over to the stairs and fired indiscriminately at the mound of bodies while screaming. “Is that enough? Huh? Any of you still alive? You fuckerrrrrrrs!” He screamed until he emptied the clip, and smoke rose from the barrel as the last few shell casings ricocheted off the concrete floor, making the same ping sound dropped bottle caps do. He squeezed the trigger a couple more times despite the hollow clicks.
Enough Jackson! It’s over. It’s over.” Kathleen wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her head on his back. “It’s okay.”
Still pointing the gun at the twice-dead, his face contorted into the image of terror. The lines around his eyes stretched out, and his mouth hung open revealing his teeth. Wrinkles on his forehead bulged out above his arched eyebrows above the whites of his eyes. Slowly he lowered the gun and collapsed on the floor. Unable to check himself for the second time since it all started, Jackson wept and fell over on his side.
Kathleen held onto his shoulders and knelt down behind him, and they curled up together in tears.
Chapter Sixteen
The youthful group drove through the night taking turns at the wheel while others slept. They occasionally saw some of the undead swag on the road, almost looking human for a second in the headlights’ wash. Whenever they encountered large numbers of them, such as east of Nashville, they detoured on more back-country roads. They managed to avoid as many towns as possible, always finding a road leading them east. They completely lost track of whether or not they had driven southeast toward Georgia, or northeast toward Virginia. They had taken so many switchbacks during the night that they only knew they had reached the edge of the Appalachian chain. As the foothills rolled into mountains, the winding inclines grew longer, steeper, and more foreboding. Occasionally they would chance across an abandoned car on the side of the road. After fevered glances in every direction they would scurry to the car, clear the inside, and quickly siphon its fuel which they dumped into gas cans they had picked up along the way.
They drove through the night hoping that some place to stay might jump out at them, but the fate of the dead always dashed those dreams. Anything that looked promising always seemed to offer as many disadvantages as rewards, too many exits or too few exits; something always seemed to make them move on.
They left the radio set on Seek throughout the night, and occasionally a voice rattled through the cab, but then flat static returned just as quickly, seemingly hell-bent on extinguishing all hope. They had long since begun shifting in their seats and contorting at funny angles to stretch out their legs, but they did not have the courage to set foot outside for something they did not need. The mountains rose higher and seemed to offer some hope against the waves of disappointment, but a little mountain town always seemed to appear around the next bend, urging them to press on deeper and higher. Their imaginations did not help their plights either. The terrain changed with the elevation and patches of evergreen foliage would entwine the twists and turns, or hang over sheared off rock faces, and their mind’s eye always saw an intrepid threat skulking in the shadows.
A stuffy silence enveloped the group that seemed too thick to cut until common sense finally surpassed shock and desperation.
Laura twisted in her seat and peered out of the window. “We need to get into the forest and just hide out for a while.”
Donnie shook his head and changed his grip around on the steering wheel. “Too open, we don’t know if those things are wandering through the woods or not. We need some place secure that we can lock ourselves into and hold out for a while.”
“What about a mall?” Jim’s face tightened as it always did after he spoke up.
Donnie shrugged. “Well that would be nice, but malls are close to people, and those things are all over the place in towns and cities. Where can we go that’s uninhabited, secure, and safe?”
Another deafening silence descended, disturbed only by exhales from blank faces.
Jeremy broke the stillness with rushed words. “How are we ever gonna get more supplies if we avoid all the populated areas? We need food and water. Do you know where to find that stuff if we go hide on a mountain top? What if it stays cold, or gets colder? Where are we going to get better clothes and shelter?”
Meg stuck out her lips and nodded. “That’s a good point. We can’t run away from everything we’ve lived with our entire lives. We’re not survival experts.”
Donnie mashed a palm into the steering wheel. “All right…all right. We’ve got to find somewhere small that has enough to survive on but isn’t overrun with those damn things.”
Another gas station peeped out as they rounded a bend. Donnie pulled into it and looked around. “Anybody see anything?” Nobody answered, and he saw shaking heads out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t see anything lit up, we can’t get any gas here.”
Jeremy moved things around in the back and leaned toward the front. “We’ve got a full gas can back here. How much in the tank?”
Donnie broke his scan of the station and glanced down at the display. “‘Bout half, should be alright for a while. I don’t see anything, looks okay to get out here.”
The sun had just come up, making no greater progress than to change a black sky into a mottled gray. They exited the vehicle and walked forward slowly as their eyes darted from window to window.
Donnie and Jeremy stepped inside first with the rifle and sawed-off shotgun leading the way. The store had open sight lines due to low shelves, and nothing stirred between them. They lowered their guns and started rummaging through the shelves examining cans and boxes of food.
Laura picked up a state map, grabbed a candy bar, and popped the top on a soda can. She spread the map out on the counter and began looking at it while ripping the candy bar wrapper open with her teeth. The dawn light peeked through a window and dimly enveloped the map. She planted her finger on a line to find the one that shared the same number as the road they were on, and backtracked along it until she found one of the previous routes they had traveled. The others joined her and began looking at the map with furrowed brows.
“Where are we?” Jim
squinted at the squiggly lines all over the map and pursed his lips. “Are we near Georgia?”
Laura still ran her finger along a line and then tapped a spot. “I don’t think so. I think we’re here.” She pointed her index finger at the map in the mountains near the midway point between Tennessee’s north and south borders. “It looks like the next town is named Purdah, a few miles up the road.”
Jeremy snorted and smiled. “That’s a hillbilly name if I ever heard one.”
“Coming from the knuckle dragging jock, like you should talk.” Jim smiled derisively. “I see some red on your neck too.”
Jeremy took a step toward him. “You shut up.”
Jim leaned back and cackled. “Nice comeback.”
“Stop it both of you!” Donnie rolled his eyes and exhaled forcefully as he smacked his hands on the table, then turned his attention back to the map. “It looks like there’s not another town for a good while after that. I know the Cherokee reservation has a decent number of people, but that’s much deeper in. This is not a bad spot because we can always flee farther into the mountains if necessary. Shouldn’t be many of those things if there aren’t many towns around, and look here.” He circled his finger around a point on the map. “Gatlinburg isn’t unreasonably far away. There’d be a lot of ‘em there. I’ll bet you the hungry ones out in the middle of nowhere migrated to Gatlinburg, just like those ones we saw headed toward Nashville. This town, Purdah, might be somewhat deserted. We should check it out.”
Laura nodded as she stared at the map. “Yeah, and if we run out of supplies there we can raid the outskirts of the city or some other nearby town, grab what we need and get out.”
Donnie squeezed his jaw with one hand as his eyes scanned the map. “I came through this area not too long ago.” He brushed a finger over the map near the state park close to Purdah. “There are little towns every ten miles or so, and there’s always some big mart or a mega-outlet centrally located. It’s a good opportunity to have some supplies close by and stay away from riskier areas.”
The Inroad Chronicles (Book 1): Legion Seed Page 17
