Darren pressed his foot to the floor, and the squad car lurched forward.
“What are you doing?" Amanda asked, bracing herself against the door.
"The only thing we can do. We can't turn around—there's too many behind us. We’re almost out of gas, so our only choice is forward and hope we can join the people in that church."
"This trip keeps getting better and better…" Amanda muttered.
"Hang on!" warned Darren as the car accelerated down the road and drew the attention of the few zombies on the far end of the parking lot. The closest one turned, and paused, directly in the path of the car.
"Look out!" Amanda cried.
"Open wide, you sick son of a bitch!" Darren yelled as the car plowed into the zombie, flinging its body to the side in a spray of broken flesh and plastic.
"That's gonna leave a mark," Darren said, laughing.
"Oh, my God!" Amanda gasped.
Alan stared out the window, watching the police car mow down a second zombie, and continue on its path straight toward the wall, despite the front end of the car looking like an accordion. He wondered why the police car looked like it'd been torched—black scoring marred the side of the car, and the paint on its hood and doors had blistered.
"What’s he doing?" the guy next to Alan asked.
"The Lord works in mysterious ways," muttered Alan.
“Here we go!” Darren hollered and braced his arms on the steering wheel.
“Oh, God!" Amanda wailed again.
At the last second, when the car was maybe a dozen feet from the pile of zombies trying to squeeze through the gap in the fence, the handful of those at the back turned to stare at the squad car with blood-red eyes.
Darren could do nothing more than clench his teeth as a sliver of doubt wedged itself in his heart. Had he made the right choice? Would they even survive his foolish plan?
Before he could answer his own question, he felt the car lurch under the impact of three bodies, then the airbag deployed when a crack like thunder, and everything went white.
Alan watched in silent fascination as the police car barreled into the pile of monsters, and body parts flew through the air with a horrendous crash of bone on metal. The car buried itself in the crowd of zombies and emerged halfway through the wall. When the cloud of debris, bits of metal, glass, and plastic settled, Alan smiled.
"That son of a bitch is incredibly brave or incredibly stupid," the man next to him muttered.
"Praise God that He sent us…whoever it is,” Alan murmured.
“There's more than one person in that car! I think it’s a girl!" someone called out the window.
“We gotta help ‘em!”
Alan waved at the others. "Do it! Get the front door open, we can handle the ones on the porch!”
The defenders tore at the pews, the sound confusing the monsters on the porch who were drawn to the car crash, but couldn’t quite walk away from the church.
“Thank you,” Alan whispered, watching the creatures on the porch eventually head for the immobilized police car. Something moved in the front seats, but the airbag was blocking his view.
Darren groaned. "Next time I have an idea like that…shoot me.”
Amanda choked back a cry. "I think something is broken," she said, her voice tight with pain.
Darren turned toward her and grimacing in pain. The rear window was gone, and the trunk was partially open, but it entangled the zombies already gathered behind the car—they couldn’t get in. He unlatched his seatbelt and tried to help Amanda, worried that the things outside would figure out to get inside pretty quick. They had to leave. Now.
“God, it hurts!” Amanda gasped when he released her seatbelt.
Darren looked out the windshield, crossed with spider-webbed cracks. A handful of zombies milled around on the porch, and a few had started his way. He glanced out the rear window through the smoke from the dying car and counted more than dozen ghouls. They really only had one choice—they had to make a run for the church.
He tried his door—it was pinned shut against the barricade and a blood smeared Prius. Amada’s door looked like it might open. It was only a matter of time before the zombies behind them squeezed through the gap.
“Now or never,” he muttered. He reached across Amanda and opened her door. “You need to get out, Amanda. Try to make a run for the church.”
“I can’t even move,” she cried, “let alone run!”
“Can you walk?”
Her eyes grew wide as tears spilled down her cheeks. Her chin quivered while she stared at the advancing zombies from the church. “They’re coming…I’ll never make it. We’re gonna die…”
The fog in Darren’s mind caused by the accident was clearing. He looked around for a weapon, anything to keep the monsters at bay while they—his eyes fell on his axe, resting on the floor in the back, the head caked in dried zombie blood. He reached back, wincing at the pain in his back, and pulled the axe into his lap.
Movement at the front of the church caught his eye. The door opened and two men rushed out then paused, seemingly unsure what to do but willing to help. Darren’s mind was made up. The world was ending right before his eyes. The girl he’d rescued from Sault Ste. Marie was sitting in the car seat next to him, injured and afraid. Death stalked them from behind and in front.
If Amanda had any chance at survival, it would be up to him to fend off the zombies until she got to the church. He’d deal with whoever was in the church later—if he survived, and that if they helped.
Adrenaline surged through his veins. He lowered his seat and kicked at the windshield, once, twice, three times. He screamed in fury and on the fourth try, the windshield collapsed onto the hood. He growled and pulled himself through the mangled dash, getting to his feet on the hood, surrounded by a cloud of steam rising up from the ruined engine. He locked eyes with the closest zombie and raised his axe high, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. Now was not the time for worrying about pain. Wounds would heal. Death was eternal. And right now, death came slobbering toward him, staggering and snapping and clawing at the air.
“ODINNNN!” Darren roared as he leapt from the hood, swinging the down in a vicious arc that took the first zombie in the temple. The monster's eyes rolled up and it collapsed in a heap of stinking flash and rotten cloth at Darren's feet. He dropped to his knees to recover from the jump and missed the swipe of the next zombie in line. He shifted his grip on the axe and came up swinging.
This time, the axe took the monster just under the chin and almost tore the jaw off. Darren used his momentum to spend around and smash the axe in a vicious backward swing at the base of the creature's skull, nearly severing its head. The second zombie fell to the ground, twitching out of the fight almost as quick as the first.
Darren stepped gingerly over the two bodies and realized the next zombie was too close for him to get a full swing. He loosened his grip on the shaft and only tightened again when he felt the head touch his hand. Twisting his hips to put all his upper body strength into a forward strike, he punched forward, the blade of the axe raking out like a monstrously sharp set of brass knuckles.
The blade bit straight into the bridge of the ghoul’s nose and jerked its head back. It wasn't enough to knock it out of the fight, but it was enough to give Darren some breathing room. He stepped back, wincing at pain in his left knee, and reared the axe for another swing when the zombie’s face exploded in red mist and cherry cobbler, coding him in gore.
He coughed and sputtered, then looked up to see a man at the top of the lighthouse waving at him. The man had a rifle. He took aim and shot another zombie, this one approaching the cop car’s passenger door. Blood, bone, and brains splattered over the passenger window as Amanda screamed from within.
Darren grinned, feeling the bloodlust rise. He embraced the battle frenzy. He had time for a fleeting moment of wondering if his ancestors felt something similar when charging some long forgotten Anglo-Saxon army. Then his axe bit into
the next zombie’s neck and he was swallowed up in the battle once more.
Alan stood by the window next to the door and watched the stranger whirl and slash with…was that an axe?
"Hurry,” he called over his shoulder at the men rushing through the open door, climbing over and around the jumbled pews. “We need to retake the porch while he's keeping them occupied. Hit them from behind!”
Several shots went off almost immediately, completely missing the closest monsters. One zombie turned and staggered toward them, but the man with the shotgun rammed the stock into its face, knocking it aside. As soon as it was down, another man stepped up and put a pistol to its head and fired, point-blank. Once over the initial shock, the defenders quickly dispatched the other two in a flurry of wasteful shots.
By the time the men from the church rushed onto the porch to engage the enemy from behind, half of them were out of ammunition. Those Alan sent back in the church to find melee weapons—candlesticks, broken pieces of wood, tools, anything that could be used to bludgeon or incapacitate a zombie by knocking it over.
Not knowing exactly why he moved out on the porch—with his two prosthetic legs, Alan wasn't exactly going to be any good at hand to hand fighting—and got a firsthand view of the…
“He looks like a viking,” Daniel said breathlessly at his side.
Alan found he couldn't argue with the younger man’s assessment. The man who'd driven the cop car had flung himself into the fray with an axe of all things—flashing in the sunlight and red with blood. But that wasn't what conjured the image of a viking in Alan’s mind. Sure, the guy had shoulder-length hair that flew about his face, and his unkempt beard certainly lent the air of the barbarian, but it was the chain mail that tugged at Alan’s imagination.
Alan shook his head, not comprehending where in the world the stranger had found a set of chain mail, but it was effective. Several zombies had attempted to grasp and bite him, only to find the links of metal impeding their attack on his flesh. He yelped and shrugged off several blows, then dispatched the offending zombies with what looked like an expertly timed swing of that flashing axe.
Alan watched, enthralled, as the man dropped into a crouch, swung the axe up and nearly decapitated a monster in the process, then used his momentum to swing his body around and strike into the face of a second zombie who snuck up from the rear. No matter where he moved or where he turned, Alan noted that the axe continued to spin and twirl, conserving momentum and making every strike hit with maximum force.
It wasn't anything like he'd seen in the movies or on TV, where vikings hacked and slashed with swords and axes, using their weapons to chop at people like firewood. The way this man was fighting seemed incredibly natural, fluid, and almost graceful.
Eventually the gunfire stopped, and the last of the defenders retreated back to the church to find weapons, where others were coming out, holding the broken shaft of a flagpole, a heavy candelabra from the altar, or the leg of a pew.
It was at that moment that Alan realized they may have made a fatal mistake in coming to the aid of the mysterious people in the car. For starters, he believed that the car had completely plugged the wall, and while it was true, the zombies on the other side of the wall couldn't get them, there were more zombies trapped inside the side the wall than he'd expected.
When he'd ordered his men to charge out onto the porch, he’d only been focused on the dozen or so creatures that had been immediately in front of the church. He’d forgotten about the ones that had repelled the earlier flanking maneuver back around the side of the church. Those now joined the fray.
Alan's heart sank. A second wave come around, fresh troops joining the fray.
"Behind you! Shift to the left!" he shouted over the din. A few of the defenders heard his warning, and shifted their position to take on the newcomers, but Alan realized that it was too little too late. One of the defenders went down screaming, then another.
Without the great equalizer of firearms, it was going to be a losing battle—the people from the church didn't have the fighting skills that the man in the police car evidently possessed.
Alan watched another few seconds of the whirling dervish of death as the stranger twisted and the axe flashed its way through the zombies, coming closer and closer to the church. The defenders were now in a tight ring, backing up toward the front door. They were so close, but they’d never reach the newcomers. They’d all be killed if they didn’t get inside soon.
"Get back to the church!" he called out. “Get inside!”
One by one, the men in front turned and ran until only one man remained. He fired one last blast from the shotgun, then dropped the weapon and ran.
Alan stopped cursing at that. The heavy shotgun could've at least been used as a club—there was no sense in dropping it and running, but it was too late now. He followed the others inside the church and they closed the door as several zombies clambered after them, ignoring the single man locked in mortal combat with a handful of their brethren. The monsters worked their way back into the position in front of the door and recommenced pounding and slamming at the door.
Alan had to rouse the exhausted, defeated defenders to once more place the pews back in front of the door, but they were now two men short, and several others had been injured—he didn't know if they’d been bitten or just hurt themselves some other way, but they were effectively out of the fight. That meant he only had four men left to seal the doors.
That quickly became worse when two of them decided they'd had enough, turned and ran for the back of the church, saying they were going to get their families and run out the back door, now that the zombies were occupied out front.
“Wait! You can't leave! There's too many of them out there!" Alan pleaded. "Your families—”
“Have a better chance out there, than being trapped in here with those things getting ready to break in,” one man snarled from the doorway. He turned and disappeared down the hallway, calling for his wife and children.
"What the fuck was that about?" one of the defenders yelled over his shoulder at Alan as he wrestled the pew into place. "You sent us out there to get killed!"
"Hey,” the man next to him yelled as the first dropped the pew on his foot. “Pay attention! Shit, that hurts!"
While the two remaining defenders squabbled over the pew and tried to lift it enough for the man to get his injured foot out, Alan watched in horror as the zombies continued to pound away at the doors. One cracked open. A blood red eyeball appeared in the gap, followed by gray fingers, wedging through and pulling at the door, while others pushed and shoved at the other side.
"They're getting in!” Alan warned, pointing with his cane at the door. “Get that door shut!"
“Ah, fuck it!" As the uninjured man turned to run, the heavy pew slid to the floor and crashed, breaking in half, allowing the front door to open another six inches. One of the zombies stuck arm through and reached around, grasping the injured man's hand. He shrieked, ripped his hand free, and fell back, scrambling on all fours to get away.
Alan stood by himself in front of the door by the crumbling barricade as the zombies continue to throw their bodies at it, pushing it back inch by inch with every below. He shifted his stance, lifted his cane, and held it like a sword.
"Lord, give me the strength to die well. Give me the strength to protect those under my charge. I commend my soul to You and thank You for the life You've given me."
Alan prepared to face the zombies alone, and then he wasn't. Cade appeared, quiet as a ghost, holding a chunk of the broken pew like a baseball bat.
Cade looked Alan up and down, then nodded, satisfied, apparently, but Alan was uninjured.
“My old friend…you don't need to do this.”
Cade looked at him and smiled crookedly, a rare event on that weathered face. He turned back to the door, set his shoulders and took a batter’s stance.
From the screaming and hollering about Odin outside, Alan gathered that the newcomer
was still fighting for his life. He wondered if he’d ever get a chance to thank the man for plugging the gap and saving them—at least temporarily—from their fates.
Then the door crashed open, the pews tumbled to the ground with a rib-shuddering impact, and the zombies poured in. One ran straight for Alan. He swung with all his might, missed the zombie completely, and thrown off balance on his prosthetic legs, fell to the ground with a grunt.
The zombie turned, and instead of attacking him, seem to fall on him. Alan did the only thing he could and braced the handle of his cane on the floor, holding the shaft up like a spear. The zombie fell straight down and Alan shifted his aim at the last second, driving the foot of his cane straight through an eye socket. The impaled zombie twitched, spewed blood on Alan's chest then collapsed on top of him, unmoving.
Alan’s skin crawled, feeling the vile wetness leak from the zombie. He screamed and struggled, but it was no use. The dead weight pinned him to the floor on his back. He could only wait for another zombie to arrive and finish him off. He called out to Cade, but his friend was fighting desperately against two ghouls who had him pinned against the wall. At least they hadn’t bitten him yet.
Alan yelled in frustration. He didn't understand—he’d done everything according to God's plan. He’d taken in the weak, cared for the sick—even those who harbored the Elixir virus. At great risk to everyone who came in through those doors, he made sure never to turn anyone away—and it had resulted in bloodshed and discord among his little flock. Now, just when he thought a savior had been sent from God to help break them out of the siege, his own hubris had destroyed them all. Sending the defenders out to attack the zombies’ flank would be the undoing of the mall.
He lay pinned under the corpse—thankfully not moving anymore—and watched Cade’s last moments, his jaw clenched tight as his faithful protector backed up, step-by-step, under the onslaught of a half-dozen zombies that forced their way into the church. The inner wall had been breached, the last barrier between the women, children, and elderly in the back of the church.
Elixr Plague (Episode 6): Refugees Page 9
