by Urban, Tony
Another zombie dropped. Saw raised his gun overhead and fired off a few rounds. “Hello, out there! How many bullets you got”
“Not as many as we do.”
The voice was familiar but it took Saw a second to place it. He spun around and saw Mitch and Jimmy approaching from the rear. Mitch carried a duffel bag and struggled under the weight of it. Denny had an arm around the throat of an old woman as he shoved her forward.
“Mitchy!” Saw said. Mitch dropped the bag just as Saw threw his arm around his shoulders in a half-hug. “You done good, lad. Real good.”
He was shocked at the teen’s appearance. He looked a bit like a Halloween decoration, the kind they sell in the back of the stores out of view of the kiddies. He didn’t think he’d cut him quite that bad. But the ends justified the means.
“Thanks, Saw. But I’m not done.”
Mitch unzipped the bag and threw back the canvas flap, revealing twenty or more pistols, a couple shotguns, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Saw tousled the boy’s hair. They made a good team, they did.
Saw took another pistol. He now had one in each hand and he held them sideways in front of him, just like he’d seen them do in the action movies he watched voraciously.
“Almost no one here has guns,” Mitch said. “This old bitch stockpiled most of them. And there are four or five guys who are wannabe cops. That must be who’s shooting.”
Almost on cue another zombie’s head blew up and it collapsed into the snow.
“Anything else I should know, Mitchy?”
“Yeah, lots. Like the guy who runs this place is a fucking lunatic. But I can fill you in on that later. Right now, I’d rather not get shot.”
Saw nodded. The teen was wiser than his years. “Aw right, Mitchy. Let’s find ourselves the shooter.”
Jimmy almost had the old woman to the cabin when she called out. “I can tell you that.”
Saw turned to her. She looked halfway to ancient. Add a couple bandages and she could pass for a mummy with dirty white hair that fell almost down to her scrawny ass. “You can, huh, granny?”
She nodded. Saw glanced at Mitch who shrugged his shoulders in a “maybe” gesture.
“Well, then, spit it out.”
Delphine tried to move toward him but Jimmy held her back. He tightened his grip around her throat and she barked out a cough.
“Let her go,” Saw said and Jimmy did.
Delphine took a couple steps toward him, not even flinching when a zombie was shot and fell a few yards away.
“I know you’re old and all, but as you can see,” Saw motioned to the dead zombies, “Time, as they say, is of the essence.”
Delphine looked at him from head to toe and Saw thought he was being studied. “I want a promise first.”
He appreciated the audacity that she thought she was in a position to make demands. “And what’s that?”
“When you’re done with the killing here, you give me back my island.”
“Your island?”
Delphine nodded. “Been in my family for generations. Biggest mistake I made was giving it up.”
“Okay, love, let’s say I’ll do that. How can you help me first?
Delphine turned away from him, staring out into the distance. “The man shooting your zombies is named Wim Wagner. And he’s about a hundred yards that way.” She pointed a crooked, bony finger toward the bluff just as Wim took out another zombie.
Saw followed her finger. He couldn’t see anything but he believed her. He turned to Jimmy.
“Kill him.”
Jimmy reached into the bag and traded his own gun for the biggest pistol he could find. Then he jumped on a snowmobile, fired the engine, and disappeared into the white.
Wim was reloading the rifle when he heard the whine of the snowmobile engine approaching. Under the circumstances, he expected the rider to be of the unfriendly variety and decided to head toward a less conspicuous location.
A quick dash through the path brought him to the box. The lock had never been replaced after Delphine shot it to pieces and its door hung slightly ajar. Wim never imagined he’d go back inside by choice, but the snowmobile was very close now and it was the only structure in the area.
“Damn,” he muttered to himself as he stepped inside and pulled the door closed. He couldn’t hold back a shiver.
The snowmobile sped past the box. Wim waited. “Keep on going.” The sound of the engine faded. He started to get his hopes up. Then it stopped. Wim knew it hadn’t gone far enough beyond him to be safe and he wondered if he’d been spotted. Then, he realized his footsteps in the snow provided a perfect map to his hiding spot.
The steel walls of the box were most likely bullet proof but all it would take was pulling open the door and Wim would be the epitome of a sitting duck. He decided to not wait until that happened and eased the door outward. All appeared clear. But he took his time and looked both ways before moving into the open.
He made it two steps before he heard the voice. “Put down your gun and turn around real slow.”
Wim set the rifle against the side of the box.
“Halfway there,” Jimmy said.
Wim did a slow 180 until he came face to face with the man who had one of the larger pistols Wim had ever seen aimed at his chest.
“Hands up,” Jimmy said.
Wim obeyed but he thought he saw the top of the pistol trembling in the man’s tight grip. “I don’t know what you’re here for, but no one has to die. I was only shooting the zombies. Not any of you. Although I could have should I wanted to.”
Wim saw the man swallow hard. He realized he was no cold-blooded killer. He was probably easily swayed and had fallen in with a rough lot.
“Trust me, I have no intention of defending this place. If you want it, take it. All I ask is that no one get hurt. That includes your people. I’m Wim, by the way.”
Jimmy lowered the pistol a few inches but still held it ready to fire if the need arose. “Jimmy.”
Wim thought the older man’s eyes looked red and swollen, as if he’d been crying. That solidified his belief that this man wasn’t a murderer. “Well, Jimmy, let’s go back to the others and try to talk this out. I’ll leave my rifle here to show you there’s nothing you need to worry about, all right?”
He saw Jimmy look past him, toward camp, considering the offer. Then he nodded. “Okay. Let’s do th— “
The side of Jimmy’s face blew out in a tidal wave of blood, bone, and brains. He didn’t even have time to look shocked before he fell, but Wim certainly was. He looked toward the direction of the shot and saw Phillip and Buck jogging toward him. Buck held his .44 Magnum in his hand and smoke seeped from the barrel.
“You’re wwww- welcome,” Buck said as they reached Wim.
“You didn’t have to kill him. He was reasonable.”
Phillip sneered, waved his arm toward camp. “Reasonable? You stupid hayseed fuck. Have you seen what they’ve done?”
Wim grabbed the rifle. “I wasn’t talking about the lot of them. Only him.” He glanced down at Jimmy’s body where liters of blood gushed from his skull, melting the snow underneath all the way to the ground.
“You can believe that if you want, but we’re under attack. How about you stop talking and start shooting?”
The two men rushed past him, toward camp. Wim turned in that direction but didn’t follow right away. If they wanted to deal out death, he was content letting them do it on their own. He wanted to find Ramey.
Ramey emerged from the clinic, bursting into the chaos that had consumed camp. She couldn’t believe her eyes. There were zombies everywhere she looked. Some ate. Some stalked new prey. She saw Darry, one of Phillips cohorts on the security force, shoot a male zombie in a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey only to be overwhelmed by five more of the creatures.
His gun kept firing as they forced him to the ground . She saw random sprays of blood, but the zombies continued their attack. She couldn’t tone out his screams a
s they ate him.
Santino, another of the Ark’s cop wannabes, came on that scene too late. He unloaded his pistol into the zombies. Three of them fell and remained motionless. This opened the view and Ramey saw the remaining zombies chomping on Darry’s face and neck. His nose was gone as was one of his ears. Blood bubbled from his mouth. Santino rushed toward them. He cracked the zombie that was eating Darry’s cheek over the head with the butt of his gun and it went down.
The other zombie looked up, a chunk of flesh dangling from its lips. Santino kicked it in the face and sent it sprawling into the snow. He stomped its head with his boot over and over again. As he smashed its skull in, Santino missed seeing Darry sit up, but Ramey saw it all.
Darry’s face was mostly gone but he had one good eye and that eye found Santino. He flopped onto his knees, then staggered to his feet. He fell against Santino’s back, his hands catching in the tall man’s belt and pulling his pants down enough to expose his ass crack. Santino tried to turn around to see what or who had hold of him, but Darry’s weight made movement difficult. Darry’s teeth chomped into that exposed section of flesh between his back and butt. Santino groaned and managed to pull himself free of the zombie’s grasp, but it was too late.
As Santino was being eaten, Ramey remembered his cold eyes as he dragged Wim to the box. Men like Santino were almost as big of parts of the rotten core of the Ark as her own father. She was so caught up in watching the situation unfold that she didn’t see the zombies coming at her from the side until they were close enough to smell. She spun around and saw two of the monsters were less than five feet away. One was short and round, a fireplug of a man. The other was a gray-haired woman in a bright pink jogging suit. Fortunately, neither were fast of foot as Ramey had no weapons. Rather than fight with her bare hands, she ran.
Wim shoved open the door to Doc’s cabin. Their trailer had been empty and this was his next guess as to where Ramey could be, but as he scanned the quarters it looked like he’d struck out again.
He hadn’t been inside the cabin since the day he arrived - or was brought to - the Ark. The man’s desk was cluttered with papers and notebooks but the main room was empty. Wim moved on to check what laid behind the three closed doors.
The first opened to an empty bedroom. The second to a cramped bath. The last door revealed an oversized closet but instead of clothing, it was filled with books and journals. He almost left, but a photo of Ramey caught his attention and he moved to it.
He realized it was attached to a file and he opened the folder. There were basic statistics, height, weight, date of birth. Then what looked like a medical history. Much of it may as well have been in a foreign language for as much as Wim understood it, but one column made a sort of sense. It was headed with ‘Vaccines’ and contained dates for diseases such as chickenpox, the mumps, measles, etc. The last line was curious though. It was dated three years earlier and labeled only ‘Test’.
Wim sorted through the files underneath. They all had photos of men and women he knew only from the Ark. All had vaccine records and all had more recent entries in the ‘Test’ column. A gunshot outside the cabin stole his attention but before he left, he folded Ramey’s file in half and shoved it inside his coat.
Outside Doc’s cabin Wim saw Butch shoot a bearded zombie in a blaze orange hunting jacket. The bullet ripped through the creature’s forehead and exploded out the back of its head.
Butch spun toward him, pistol raised, until he realized it was Wim and not another zombie. “Wwww - what were you dddd-doing in DDDD - Doc’s cabin?”
Wim shook his head and moved toward him. “There’s no one inside. You don’t think they got Doc, do you?”
If Buck had been smarter, he’d have realized Wim didn’t give a fig about Doc’s well-being, but the man wasn’t a bright bulb. “He’s in the llll-lab. He’s safe there.”
More gunshots came from closer camp. Buck looked in that direction, then back to Wim. “YYYY - You gonna help or not?”
“I’ve been helping.”
Buck headed toward the sound of gunfire. Wim followed only because it took him closer the clinic which was his last hope for finding Ramey safe. If she wasn’t there, he knew she was either out here in the chaos, or that the attackers already had her.
Of all the people Ramey could have run into, the last one she wanted to see was Phillip, but that was who she literally crashed into as she made the corner around the mess hall.
He looked panicked and afraid, his pale freckled skin flushed. He tried to mask his fear with anger. “Why aren’t you still with Doc?
“How long have you known he was crazy?”
Neither had an answer for the other and, as a group of nine zombies approached, there was no time for follow ups. Phillip shot and sent a round flying through the afro of a black zombie. It kept coming.
“Give me a gun,” Ramey said.
Phillip glanced her way before shooting again. That bullet hit the zombie above its left eye and it collapsed. “This is the only one I got.”
“Bullshit.”
She knew he usually kept a gun in an ankle holster and she also knew he’d never head out into a situation like this with only one firearm. “Come on, Phillip. Let me help. I can shoot.”
Ramey hadn’t fired a gun since before coming to the Ark and even then, she was far from a crack shot, but she knew she’d feel more comfortable with a gun in hand rather than nothing at all.
A zombie which Ramey recognized as a man who dished out food in the Ark’s mess hall headed the group coming at them. She saw he was missing most of its fingers and several large chunks of skin on one arm. Phillip shot and killed him, then squatted down and grabbed the small gun off his ankle. He pushed it at Ramey.
“It’s loaded but only holds six.”
Ramey accepted it and chambered a round. She shot at a zombie who was missing so much flesh on its cheek that Ramey could see her teeth. The shot missed.
Well, my accuracy sure as hell hasn’t improved.
Phillip looked at her and opened his mouth, likely to insult her, but before he could get out the words, a gaunt, Asian-looking zombie grabbed Phillip’s coat. Shocked, Phillip squeezed the trigger of his pistol and sent a bullet into the snow. He tried to squirm free but another zombie, a fat man in a tattered three-piece suit, got ahold of his arm.
The rest of the zombies were at them now. Ramey fired the pistol and hit a zombie that didn’t look much younger than herself, in the mouth. She saw its teeth shatter and its arms flail as it fell into the snow. She steadied herself and aimed at a zombie wearing a blue scarf with white snowflakes embroidered on it. The bullet hit the woman just under the center part of her hair and she fell.
There was a garbled mixture of a grunt and a squeal behind her and Ramey turned to see the other zombies had forced Phillip to the ground. They had his jacket open and were ripping at his shirt. Ramey shot one of them in the back of its head and it fell on top of Phillip’s legs.
The zombies had torn Phillip’s shirt and were working on his stomach. Ramey saw their long, ragged fingernails puncture his almond white flesh. Dark red blood bubbled from the wounds. Then their fingers went deeper. She could see their digits writhing under his skin, like his belly was full of worms.
Phillip screamed as their hands jerked and yanked and pulled at his flesh and the tissue underneath. She heard the wet tearing sound as it gave way and his intestines were revealed. The monsters moved on to them and ripped them free, eating them like sausage links.
Ramey couldn’t bear to see any more. She looked away from the carnage and her eyes found Phillip’s face. It was a mask of agony. Tear streamed from his eyes. Snot from his nose. Blood and saliva from his mouth.
“Shoot me!” He cried. “Please, kill me!”
Ramey knew it was the humane thing to do. Phillip’s time on Earth was down to seconds. There wasn’t any coming back from this.
She raised the little pistol and closed one eye as she aimed the peep sig
hts at his face. As she started to put pressure on the trigger, she remembered what she’d seen in her father’s lab. The things her father had said. Phillip knew everything he’d been up to down there. Not only knew of them, but took part in them.
With that in mind, Ramey decided he deserved everything that was happening to him right now. One of the zombies had progressed past his intestines and pulled free a kidney, or maybe it was his liver. She hadn’t done well in anatomy. The organ came free with a thick sucking sound and Phillip shrieked again.
Ramey turned her back on him and listened to the sounds of his death as she walked away.
Doc’s lab was on the opposite side of the center of camp and between it and Wim were the tractor trailers, the zombies, and the men who had attacked camp.
Buck sidled up next to him as they surveyed the scene. “You thththth - think we can take them?”
Wim thought the odds were against it and all he really cared about was getting to the clinic. He pondered their situation for a moment and came up with something resembling a plan.
“Not head on we can’t. We need to stay hidden. I’ll go left, you right, but stay out of sight and don’t waste any ammunition.”
“What about the aaaa - assholes who brought them here?”
“Do what you want.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll work on the zombies.”
Wim didn’t wait for Buck’s opinion. He dashed away, taking refuge at the corner of a small building that served as one of the Ark’s outhouses. He poked the rifle barrel around the corner, aimed, and began to shoot.
Saw hunkered down behind one of the oversized wheels of the dump truck. Mitch was on his heels. The zombies - his zombies - kept dropping. Another fourteen since he’d sent Jimmy to find the shooter. Now Jimmy hadn’t returned and the shooting had recommenced and Saw didn’t need to be a MENSA candidate to figure out what happened.
