Elixr Plague (Episode 6): Refugees

by Richardson, Marcus

  The shotgun boomed again behind him, and he spun on his heels to reprimand the shooter, when he saw the result of the mistake. One of the two zombies pinned in the gap in the fence had been obliterated with the point-blank shotgun blast. The way was now clear for a third zombie, lurking behind, to force its way through the gap. It got halfway across the hood, as the defenders screamed and yelled at each other to reload faster, before a single shot cracked out from above and the zombie fell, a hole neatly punched through the top of its head by Cade and his AR.

  "I said cease-fire!" Alan roared again. As the man with the shotgun raised the weapon to his shoulder one more time, Alan leaned over and used his cane as a baton, smacking the weapon down before the man could shoot. He jumped and looked at Alan in utter shock.

  "Stop shooting, dammit!" Alan yelled.

  "What?" the man yelled back. "Can't hear anything!"

  "Look,” one of the men at the middle of the porch shouted. A large section of fencing wavered back and forth. Several pairs of hands appeared at the edge of the planks and with a not-so-unified effort, the whole center section of the wall fell over on the hapless zombies, leaving a huge gap.

  Two zombies immediately clambered over the fallen section, compressing it down upon their comrades, and tripped on the shifting angle as those on the ground squirmed. One fell face forward into the side of a Prius, smashing the driver’s side window with its head before falling to the ground. The second one through the gap fell over the first and landed half in the car. Before it could extract itself, two more climbed up on top of it, and clawed at the roof, attempting to gain leverage. A third stumbled to the side and fell on the hood where it was dropped by Cade. Two more rifle shots dropped the zombies immediately behind it.

  "Somebody give me a count—how many more do we have left?" asked Allen.

  "I see a dozen…maybe thirteen!”

  “Still?” asked Alan. “I thought that’s how many there were when this started…”

  “They're moving so much…" complained the man at the far end of the porch. “It’s hard to tell.”

  "It's not holding! Look at the wall!" cried the man who'd fired the first shot.

  Alan turned and waved at a young man named Tom, standing in the doorway of the church. “Tell Cade to fire at will—if we don’t stop them, we’ll be overrun!”

  Tom nodded, his eyes wide. He turned and disappeared inside the church.

  A few moments later, Cade’s AR barked over and over again, each shot meaning the end of another infected person on the other side of the wall. Alan watched with grim satisfaction as the number of their enemies dropped steadily. But a sickening reality settled in his gut. For every one that Cade dropped, two more appeared in the gap. After only a few moments of his concentrated fire from the lighthouse where there had been only a dozen, now there were close to 25 walking corpses.

  “I’m out!” one of the pistol-toting defenders yelled, backing up.

  “Go, get inside and find some more ammunition,” Alan ordered in an even voice. He turned back to look at the trembling wall. Dozens of hands, grimy, bloody, and raw, picked and pulled at the makeshift barrier. Taking that kind of abuse all along its length, he knew it wouldn’t last much longer.

  “Left flank!” Alan bellowed. The man with the shotgun and his partner turned to look at Alan. “Fall back! Get inside the church. Everyone else, wait for them to get inside and then we fall back as well. Got it?” They nodded. “Good! Move!”

  Another rifle shot cracked from above, and a woman in a tattered dress fell on her back. With dogged determination, another creature took her place and continued forward, tripping and stumbling over the bodies of the other zombies, drooling blood and clacking its teeth, hands outstretched and still pressing forward.

  The others moved inside the church behind him, and Alan thumped after them, stepping aside so the front door could be shut and blocked with heavy pews stacked up on end. He looked at the semi-circle of faces and did a quick head count. “Is everyone inside?” he asked, realizing he didn’t know exactly how many people were supposed to be inside.

  Mary Whitmore stepped forward, drying her hands on a washcloth. “They are, pastor. We’re all present and accounted for.”

  Alan felt a little pressure ease from his shoulders. At least they were all safe.

  Something thudded against the door behind him. Children cried, and more than one woman squeaked in surprise, but the pews held fast. It would take a lot more than—

  Several somethings crashed into the door at once, making a horrendous noise and forcing everyone back a step. The pews shook, and one slid down from its position about a foot. Two volunteers raced forward and shoved it back into place.

  Now Alan could hear groaning from the porch. A relentless cacophony of sound rolled into the church as the zombies threw themselves at the door and scratched and clawed at the walls, windows, and anything in their way of getting to the survivors.

  Alan turned to face Mary and the others. “Get everyone to the back of the church. Go, get them to a safer place, quietly please.” He glanced at the defenders as the others quickly retreated. “You men with weapons, see how much ammo you can find—”

  “We already did, pastor,” the one with the shotgun said, stepping out of the way of a woman and two children. “There isn’t much more…”

  Alan flinched as the door shuddered again and a pew scraped against the floor as it shifted. The men quickly put it back in place, but it was only a matter of time before the door failed completely. There had to be a way to reduce the numbers of zombies on the other side—other than Cade, still picking off targets from the lighthouse.

  Alan opened his mouth to speak when the window next to the front door darkened, then shattered. A pale arm streaked with black veins and barely clothed in the tattered, bloodstained remains of a suit, burst through the jagged hole and flailed about. Alan watched, fascinated, as the zombie sliced its own arm open on the broken glass and ignored what would have been an excruciating wound to a normal human. Black blood smeared the window and dribbled down the arm that continued to swing at the air.

  The man with the shotgun stepped forward before Alan could say anything and fired point blank into the window. The blast not only temporarily deafened all the defenders, it removed what was left of the window—along with the zombie that had broken through.

  “Stop that!” Alan yelled when he could hear himself again. “We have to conserve the ammo…”

  “For what?” demanded the man with the shotgun.

  The door shuddered again and the groaning and moaning from the porch increased in volume significantly. God only knew how many of the cursed things were milling about on the porch now.

  “For when they break through,” Alan muttered. He turned to the others. “Quickly now, someone get another pew up there to block that window—and the other one, before they break through that one, too.”

  The defenders scrambled to gather two more pews and haul them over to the windows. “Pastor, this isn’t going to hold very long…the windows are too small, we can only use one pew at a time and that’s too easy for them to just knock over.”

  “Well, it’s better than just glass—unless you’ve got a better idea?”

  “What if we sent a few people outside—out the back—and they came up the side of the church and attacked the ones on the porch that way?”

  Cade fired twice, continuing the steady stream of lead from the lighthouse and doing his best to thin the herd. Alan sent a prayer heavenward to make the younger man’s aim true—without him, they might have already been overrun.

  “Do it,” Alan said. “But only two men and watch your backs. When they spot you flanking them, they’ll move in your direction—”

  “They don’t move all that fast, I think even Bill can outrun ‘em,” the man with the shotgun said.

  “Hey! I’m not fat, I’m big boned,” replied his comrade, sporting a pistol.

  “If you’re going to do th
is, then go!” Alan snapped. “We don’t have time for bickering.” To the others, he said, “Let’s make some noise and keep the ones on the porch occupied to allow them to get into position.”

  They stepped closer to the broken window and started shouting and insulting the zombies throwing themselves at the doors and windows. The other window shattered on the opposite side of the door, but the pew kept any creatures from taking advantage of the opening. They crashed into the door with renewed vigor and one of the pews actually slid to the ground with a horrible crash, but the barricade held.

  Daniel skidded to a stop, breathless, behind Alan. “Pastor!” he called. “There’s too many of them…there’s a big gap in the wall—”

  “Yes, we know, we saw them come through before we retreated,” Alan said quickly to keep the boy from unhinging the men still brave enough to face the creatures on the porch.

  “But—”

  Another rifle shot made Alan pause. “How much ammunition does Cade have left?”

  Daniel blinked. “I don’t know—I’ll go find out!”

  After Daniel left the church and ran back to the turret room, Alan focused on the door again. Cade’s shots seemed to be slowing in tempo. The zombies, perhaps sensing the survivors were quickly losing the ability to defend themselves, renewed their efforts to tear the door open with brute force.

  Then gunfire erupted from the side yard. The two flankers had arrived and began pouring lead into the east side of the porch. A horrible racket ensued as zombies fell under the withering onslaught. Their comrades toppled over, growled, screamed, and fought each other to get at the two men.

  Alan took a chance and peered through the battered pews to see out one of the broken windows. A wall of pale, darkly veined flesh filled the opening. There must be two dozen of them still on their feet on the porch. Fear gripped his heart with an icy hand.

  We’re not getting out of this church alive.

  “Run for it!” One of the men outside yelled. The zombies flowed past the window and gave chase.

  Alan moved to the side of the church, peered out a window set well above the sloping ground level, just in time to see the two flankers disappear around the back. He also saw half a dozen zombies stagger around the porch and begin the shambling, stumbling march toward the rear in pursuit of the two survivors who’d decimated the creatures on the porch.

  Sweat trickled down Alan’s back. “Hurry,” he said to the others, still gathered by the front door. “We need to get some pews down the hallway to the back door! They’ll be there any second!”

  Daniel came pounding into the room from the turret staircase. “Cade doesn’t have more than a dozen shots left, pastor,” he reported. “And we got trouble—we saw a bunch of ‘em leaving the porch and heading around back after those two guys. We’re gonna be surrounded in a minute.” Daniel stepped closer and lowered his voice. “And there’s still more coming in through the gap in the wall…they’re all piled up so it’s kinda blocking the hole, but it looks like half Beacon Point is out there.” His eyes were big, round pools of white. “What do we do?”

  Alan let the air leave his lungs in a deep sigh. He lowered himself to the closest pew and sat, letting the unyielding wood take the weight from his aching stumps. He looked up at Daniel, ignoring the commotion as men dragged other pews across the church floor and zombies attempted to batter down the front door.

  “We do the only thing we can,” he muttered. “We pray for a miracle. We are all of us in God’s hands now.”

  9

  Berserker

  Beacon Point, Michigan

  Darren paused at the intersection of a small side road heading north through the trees. They’d lost track of the car fleeing Beacon Point and he couldn’t tell which way to go. There were an awful lot of buildings and houses out this way that hadn’t been ravaged by the fire, so depending on how many people were still alive—and not infected—they might find help and supplies…if he chose the right road and didn’t end up leaving the town behind. That would mean a costly delay and doubling back, wasting more gas…

  “Which way?” asked Amanda.

  “I don’t know,” Darren admitted. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “That way might lead away from town,” he said, nodding out the windshield. “This way looks like it heads back toward the lake, so maybe that’s the western side of Beacon Point…” he added, looking out Amanda’s window. “But I don’t know…without a map we’re just guessing.”

  Amanda’s sharp intake of breath made Darren’s heart race. He looked around for the source of her surprise and froze when he saw it. About fifteen yards in front of them, a zombie had emerged from the trees and staggered across the road, heading north. Three more followed it. One paused in the middle of the road and slowly turned its head to stare at them, seemed to debate whether to go after them or follow its friends, then chose to follow.

  “Well, that was weird,” Darren whispered.

  “I don’t want to go that way,” Amanda whimpered, pointing straight ahead.

  “So you want to follow them?” asked Darren, incredulous.

  “That way is clear,” Amanda pointed out, looking right. “Those things are moving through the woods, not on the road.”

  “But…” Darren began as more zombies emerged from the trees, all moving north. “Where the hell are they going?”

  “The road looks like it might curve back to the east a little,” Amanda said, peering at the side road. “I think we should go that way.”

  It was Darren’s turn to gasp when a zombie crashed into his door, smearing blood on the window and growling incoherently as it pawed at him from the other side of the glass. “Yup, I wanna go that way, too,” he said, shifting the car into gear.

  “Where are they all going?” asked Amanda as they turned and sped down the tree-lined side road.

  Before long, they both found out.

  The road emerged from the trees into an open space surrounding a big lighthouse, perched on a cliff overlooking Lake Superior. It was quite striking, and Darren slowed to admire the view.

  That would make a hell of a painting. He hit the brakes and brought the car to a jarring stop.

  “Fuck me,” he muttered. While the road they’d taken had twisted on itself and emerged from the woods in a spot free of zombies, that wasn’t the case for the lighthouse. A small army of the damn things had encircled it. There looked to be a wall of some sort—it was made of random boards and planks and piles of loose bricks leaning on cars of all things—sealing off the front of the building. But trying to break through the wall was…Darren couldn’t count fast enough as they were all moving, but it had to be at least twenty or thirty zombies. Not to mention the ones milling around the side of the lighthouse.

  “Someone in there is having a really bad day,” he mused.

  “That’s a church!” Amanda blurted. She looked at Darren, her eyes wide and expressive. “Darren, there’s people in there!”

  “Not for long,” he mumbled, excitement over finding survivors fading into depression upon realizing it would take an army to wipe out that many zombies.

  “We’ve got to do something!” Amanda pleaded. “We can’t just leave them…”

  “What exactly to you want us to do? We’ve got a pistol…”

  “We could check the bag in the trunk…maybe there’s more guns…”

  Darren looked at her. “Have you ever shot a gun? I haven’t…”

  “But…” her voice cracked. “There’s so much death and misery…we’ve got to do something. We can’t just walk away from this.”

  A rifle shot barked and Darren caught a muzzle flash from the lighthouse tower. “Someone in there is fighting back…”

  “Oh, God, those poor people,” Amanda said, clasping her hands in front of her face.

  Darren narrowed his eyes and stared at the church and the zombies, analyzing the lay of the land. The road wound more or less in a straight line to a small parking lot—littered with
bodies, hopefully of the undead kind—at the far end of which sat the makeshift wall and the mass of zombies trying to force their way into the gap. So far, none of them had seen their arrival. Others were still trickling in from the woods to the west, a good fifty yards away, and they didn’t take any notice of the cop car, either.

  He pursed his lips in thought. There were a lot of zombies over by the church and all they had was the car. Eyeing the gap in the crude wall in front of the church, a smile formed on Darren’s face.

  “What is it?” asked Amanda.

  “Make sure your seatbelt is tight.”

  “Pastor!” Daniel said, sliding into the main room of the church. “Cade has three shots left—”

  “It’s okay, Daniel, God will protect us,” Alan sighed, looking up from his pew.

  “No, that’s not what I meant to tell you—I mean, yes, but—”

  Alan smiled. “Just take a breath and tell me, son.”

  Daniel inhaled deeply, then exhaled, puffing out his cheeks. “A car just pulled out of the woods—it’s sitting there on the road that leads to the parking lot. A cop car.”

  Alan clambered to his feet and leaned forward on his cane. “What do you mean, just sitting there?”

  “I see it!” a man yelled from the side window. “I can just barely see it, but there’s definitely headlights over there!”

  “What the hell’s he waiting for?” asked another. “Come on, man, get over here and help!” he yelled, as if the cop could hear him over the din on the porch.

  “Maybe he’s got supplies,” one muttered.

  “And how would he get them to us?”

  “As I said, the Lord will protect us,” Alan replied with a smile. “But he also helps those who help themselves. Everyone get ready—whatever that cop has planned, we’ll need to be ready to help.”

  “How will we know when it’s time to help?” asked Daniel.

  “We’ll know,” Alan replied.