by Javan Bonds
This group of survivors was apparently similar to Mo’s crew. That was clear when the car erupted into a giant ball of fire and fragmented Detroit steel. There must have been some technical genius in the group near the front of the building flipping a switch pressing a button, or pushing a plunger. Boom! What had to be hundreds of the evil creatures were simultaneously obliterated.
For several yards around the automobile, peevies simply disintegrated. As they instantly turned into a fine mist, it was only wishful thinking they could have felt the pain longer. Do you think those nearest the explosion were even able to hear it? Regardless, there was definitely no time to react before they were destroyed.
And still somehow, shit was everywhere. Even after all this time without proper nutrients, they were able to drench almost every inch of the parking lot they touched with black tar. I would imagine being at the bottom of that hill would’ve been like drowning in a pool of black Silly Putty. I cringed at the thought.
It was insane to see the amount of death initiated by just a few ounces of vinegar. The catastrophic play was acted out twice more with the other cars in the parking lot. Morbid delight was my failing when peevies started coming from around the building to join their brethren in fiery, horrific ends. I’m sure the blue Grim Reaper had his hands full today.
Ignorantly, the monsters continued to charge at the tasty morsels now exploded, and laying on the top of the automobiles. They could see their fellows consumed by debris and the massive fireball; it was beyond understanding why they would walk into the next obvious booby-trap. Obviously, their mind-numbing hunger for the fermented solution came above everything else. Uncountable creatures had violently met the end of their un-lives in only a few minutes. Just a few million more to go!
☠☠☠
The building containing The Mall Garden Theaters stood directly behind the mall, attached by a short breezeway. There were exits to the rear parking area of the mall on either side of this breezeway before you entered the theater building. As the blunatics poured out of the woods and overgrowth beyond the rear parking lots, the defenders knocked glass bottles off the ledge near either backdoor. I assumed correctly; these bottles were full of alcohol, bleach, or one of the other disinfectants that would cause the blunatics to steer clear.
Both groups of ghouls visibly slowed when affronted with the hated aroma. The broken bottles only gave the survivors inside a little bit of time. There were other ways into the theater. When the only thing standing between them and delicious victory would be a few panes of glass, the peevies weren’t going to be stopped. More than once, the monsters had been seen using tools to break through obstacles. Those being guarded inside, the sick, young, or the elderly, would soon be in the thick of battle.
Every single rifle on the roof not on the portico was now at the back of the building. We were exploding infected knees, sending reanimated grey matter in all directions, and spilling diseased organs onto the asphalt, but the walkers continued gaining ground. We may have been losing it, but we were making them pay for every fucking inch, in blood and guts!
Priscilla mumbled under her breath. “Shit! There it goes!” She saw the same thing I did. A peevie carrying what looked to be a metal fence post was running full bore toward the glass entrance of the Mall Garden Theaters. One of the defenders was able to hit it in the stomach assuring its real death, but it was too late. The blue battering ram ran headlong into the glass door shattering it with a loud crash. The runner would never see its completed work, but all of the other peevies in the parking lot heard and saw the glass break. Instantly there were hundreds cannibal nudists charging into the broken doorway, flooding the upper area of the mall.
We weren’t the only two that gazed upon impending doom. A woman wearing a blood red shirt screamed at the top of her lungs. “My babies!” She threw her rifle over her shoulder, arose, and madly dashed for the ladder that led down to ground level.
The woman struggled free from the others holding her back, not bothering to halt her climb down the ladder as her fellows yelled at her to stop. Crying out her children’s names was all she could do as several others followed her down the rungs.
Taking a step back, I tried to watch this scene as a casual moviegoer would, with no connection to any of these expendable characters. Hadn’t I seen this film before? I want a refund!
I glanced at Amy, who was nodding in agreement. We knew what must be done. I swiveled my head around to Landers and raised an eyebrow. “Extras?” I soundlessly mouthed. If I hadn’t been looking directly at him, I would’ve missed his nearly imperceptible nod.
Turning back to my girlfriend in the crimson leotard accented with black, I directed her forward with my eyes. “Come on. We all know what happens to redshirts.” Walking forward, she looked at me questioningly.
As if it had been scripted, every single defender not on the portico dove head first into impending doom. Standing at the manhole, my copilot gestured for me to be the first of the three visitors down the ladder. Because he approved, I hurried down, standing with the others. Why the hell do I always think that his approval means I will be okay? Maybe I’m supposed to meet my end this time. Would he allow that? Well, the fact that I’m writing this and you’re reading it means I must’ve made it.
☠☠☠
As our small force made it to the ground floor and rounded the corner, there were more crazed blunatics flowing in from the theater entrance. There were multiple undead climbing, pulling, and attempting to lift the roll down gate over the entrance to one of the very last stores in the mall near the theaters. Children were crying and wailing from within mixed with the frustrated screams and rabid barking from outside the cage. Less than an inch of fortification stood between the peevies and their food. They would do anything to satiate their unquenchable thirst for flesh and blood.
It’s hard to call anything pure luck anymore. I guess you could say it was advantageous that the store housing the children was located where it was.
The Crossroads Mall was on a hill, from front to back. At the rear of the main hall, at the top of the hill, were the theaters, which stood higher than the entrance. Just past halfway in, was a series of three long ramps paralleling stairs which patrons would have used to move smoothly up or down the concourse, one level at a time.
We came around the corner of what would be the center of the mall with the ramps and stairs to our left. The peevies were on the upper levels flooding toward the store where the innocents were housed. The children behind the cage had moved into the rear of the store. Not having to worry about accidentally shooting anyone in the store our group was free to fire at will on the enemy. Taking position behind benches or against planters, the defenders opened up. Fate looked to be on our side, at least for the moment.
Peevies were dropping with each round sent in their direction. Having no real cover, they didn’t realize where the fire was coming from at first. Their only option was to withdraw tactically. Not being able to retreat to any of the other stores, which were all locked down, some ran into a nearby hallway leading to the bathrooms. Most attempted to escape back into the theater. Untold numbers of bodies lined the floor.
☠☠☠
Burned in my mind is the part of the battle that happened when we rounded the first corner before the zombies were aware that we were firing high-velocity lead at them. As the monsters clamored to reach the children, protected by the metal security gate, they were climbing one on top of the other. One of the attackers was directly above another when one of the first bullets from our group grazed the upper zombie in the front of its thigh. An undoubtedly painful, but not a mortal wound.
After clipping the closest leg, the round sliced through its scrotum. With the peevies, being so malnourished and wasted, genitals were usually at least even with this monster's thigh muscles. It wasn’t important now what happened to the bullet. I was too morbidly interested with those shriveled, blue balls.
Infected testicles popped like shrunk
en, blue kiwis. Bloody, cloudy slime dropped out, plopping onto the matted hair of the creature nearest the floor. It looked up, as the gelatinous mass sloughed to the ground behind it. Just as it raised its head like a turkey in the rain, the tiny balls spilled out of the sac of the above revenant. One of them merely bounced off its forehead and rolled away. Guess where the other one went. It dropped straight into the mouth and must’ve continued down the throat. The sumbitch swallowed a nut!
Even if I had been firing already, I would’ve had to stop and just blink. I wasn’t sure if I should be grabbing my own nuts, sickened, or just plain weirded out. How long would you have to go to counseling if that was you? It could have been that it didn’t realize, but it probably didn’t care what just happened. The scourge acted like it was just another day in the neighborhood, continuing to climb around and shake the mesh violently! The creature should have fucking thanked me for the 5.56 round I sent through its rotten brain.
Azrael 2, the AC-130 gunship I captained to Guntersville had chain fed guns on it, so I was used to automatic fire. But so many different calibers of rifles going off continually, and simultaneously, felt strangely surreal. Countless, and now truly dead reanimated corpses were extinguished in just the first few volleys. Even more of them met their blue maker as they attempted to flee. It appeared we were winning, driving the animals back! Of course, this entry would be much shorter if everything went smoothly.
Suddenly one of the older children on the other side of the security cage took the opportunity to send a shotgun blast at the enemy along with our rifle rounds. At about waist level, the blast ripped into a peevie still hanging on to the fencing. The animal received a stomach full of pellets and crashed in a bloodied heap. The scattergun wielder did what he set out to do. He also damaged a small part of the security gate. The ghouls realized this before we did, being in the line of sight with the roll down mesh.
Pieces of the thin barrier began to break and were being pulled back by the undead, widening the hole. Though the insane number of rounds spent pretty much deafened the majority of the defenders, several people cried out alarms. “Stop the ones opening the mesh!” was the summarization of most of the shouts.
Concentrating our fire on that small area wasn’t enough. No longer having to worry about being shot in the back retreating, zombies were turning around from their theater retreat and racing back to the mall proper. They were basically standing in line, just waiting to get shot. One or two bodies would fall to be immediately replaced by a couple more. Slowly but surely, the opening in the gate was widening. Blue cadavers were even being used as cover by the nudist pillagers still functioning. They were piled so high, the truly dead reanimant cannibals prolonged their still living fellows’ lives.
So much lead passed through the cooling corpses that some of them no longer appeared even to be former humans. Bones shattered, blood and every other type of inhuman juice flooded the area. Dead bodies became nearly a blue paste to mix with the discolored fluid on the ground. Though I wanted to be sick, I had no time. Everything I had was required to keep the demons from the people inside. I don’t guess time was on my side!
The floor was now three feet deep with the massacred bodies of peevies. Somehow, they were still pulling the cage open, one strand at a time. But the panicked shooter in the store pounded more buckshot into the beasts. Though it dropped the targeted enemy, this action was helping the other team as a whole. More and more of the insignificant fortification was steadily being eliminated and with bare hands. As far as we knew, the zombies were aware that dinner was about to be served!
Virginia Morrison, the woman in the crimson shirt, screamed something unintelligible to our overloaded ears and unexpectedly charged forward. The same direction the bullets were traveling. It was breathtakingly stupid. A few feet was as far as she got when she started taking rounds in the back.
A bullet caught Virginia in the left elbow as her forearm was parallel with the floor. The round traveled through the bone exploding her arm like a balloon for a brief second before the bullet reached the wrist exploding her hand into hundreds of bone and muscle fragments. That was followed by a torrent of blood spraying out in front of her like a garden hose. The force of the impact spun her, peppering her right side with hot lead. It happened so fast; most offenders weren’t able to stop shooting before she’d already taken several fatal rounds. Thankfully, she was far enough to the right that none of my crew’s shots hit her.
Without a sound, she dropped, dead before she hit the floor. Firing immediately ceased as the others ran to their comrade. As if there was anything they could do to assist a bleeding-out corpse. Blue cannibals instantly and acutely picked up on the scent of uninfected, accessible, and fresh human blood. Nearly through the cage, their undead minds completely forgot about the living humans on the other side and instead focused on the free food only a few yards away. They also ignored the other humans had boomsticks.
As the peevies were coming down the slope, they were charging with their usual lunatic ferocity and speed. They seemed to be running in fast-forward. “Here they come!” I shouted to the idiots standing around the body. Did they choose this moment to prepare to fucking defend themselves? I could stop writing now because you can guess where this is going. But I feel compelled to chronicle another horrific battle scene, if for no other reason than to learn from others past mistakes.
I learned the names of the fallen after-the-fact. Neal luckily survived to tell me some of the stories. Assuredly, he saw nothing good in this fortune. Perhaps, after decades of safety in Guntersville, he wouldn’t feel guilty for being the only member of The Crossroads Mall residents to have made it. Maybe he would one day tell his grandchildren of how he was where he was supposed to be.
☠☠☠
What Happened Next
In
Neal’s own words:
“Kevin Wright was trying to resuscitate Virginia. Of course, he had no success. There was no telling why he was trying to do CPR on a woman that had more bullet holes in her then she had years in age! Every one of us looked up when you hollered out that the peevies were coming. All we could see was a tide of blue flesh and gnashing yellow teeth.
As soon as I saw them, I started running backward. I began firing along with the others, sending off a couple of rounds. Then I decided it was best to save the ammo I had left for when things got too close for comfort. Crouching behind a planter, I was about to stand to look at the battle when it felt like a hand brushed across my shoulder.
Looking back to see nobody, I questioned. ‘What the hell–?’
An explosion from more than one rifle made me stop. It turned out the fire wasn’t from in front of me; it came from a different direction. Andrew Williams and the rest of the guys from within the portico had come inside to join the party. They came around the corner to the right and opened up on the damn zombies.
A single trigger being pulled by one of the six caused a knee-jerk reaction, and multiple rounds flew at the enemy. The only problem was, everybody else was caught in the crossfire. Undoubtedly, more than one shot hit the charging monsters. Quite a few hit them only after passing through a friendly.
A bullet from David Hall’s rifle slammed into Chris Carter’s back just above his left shoulder blade. The round punctured his heart before breaking through his chest cavity and spewing arterial blood on the floor in front of him. He dropped without another sound. If the bullet continued traveling very far, it wasn’t noticeable.
Standing at Chris’s side, Shane Evans had turned just as the deadly round was fired from David’s gun. He shouted in rage. ‘David! What the fuck, man?’
David called back over the gunfire and screaming. ‘I didn’t mean to. It was an accident!’
I didn’t know Shane or David very well so if they were friends or there was bad blood between them, I couldn’t say. Obviously, they had been close enough for Shane to ask for forgiveness of the thoughtless reaction.
Shane snarled, ang
ry at the death of the man beside him. He made a decision in the heat of the moment that was as quick and unthinking as David’s. ‘Oh yeah? Apologize to Chris when you see him!’ He then launched three rounds in David’s direction.
Two rounds sank into David on either side of his jugular. Arteries began pumping into the open air, as the vital connection between the brain and the rest of the body was lost. Breathing or screaming would no longer be possible. David flailed in a panic at the wound in his neck before collapsing and growing still. He might get the chance to apologize to Chris!
The third and final bullet missed David. Instead, it slammed into the side of the man closest to him. The piece of lead that ripped into Joseph Antosh’s abdomen traveled cleanly, destroying several things necessary to prolong life. Joseph was stunned into silence for a moment. He glanced down at the injury, then up at the man who made it, and soundlessly moved his mouth.
Finally, Joseph was able to speak. He seemed too shocked to be rash. ‘Why?’
Shane was sincerely sorry. ‘Shit man, I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking.’
Again, Joseph seemed too surprised to be angry. Reading people was never my strong suit. ‘Well, I guess you can apologize to David after he tells Chris how sorry he is!’ Joseph started firing his rifle, but after four shots, I lost count. This whole series of events was becoming unbelievable!
A round caught Shane in the top of the right hip. Before he could double over, the next round impacted him just below his sternum. His entire upper body seemed to fold in as he toppled onto his back. Before Shane even hit the floor, Joseph collapsed in a bloody heap and took his last breath. Blood began pooling around both human bodies. The peevies were elated; four new courses had been laid out in front of them for their dining pleasure!”
☠☠☠
As Neal had described, it was a bloodbath. There was no way to get a good count of the humans still standing. So many swarming zombies came rushing in to chow down on the dead and bloodied bodies. It made getting a clear shot impossible. Living people screamed for help as they were grabbed and carried away. They knew that they would be slowly slaughtered. Even over the gunfire, crying, and the ever-present roaring of the undead, the slurping up of eviscerated organs, gulping down of scrambled grey matter, and the chewing of still warm body parts was somehow sickeningly noticeable.
