He resisted for about five seconds, trying to dig in, but he quickly realized that was a losing proposition. The zombie was too strong, so he decided to go with it and use the momentum to his advantage. He dropped his rifle and reached down to his holster to grab his .45 automatic. He had three seconds to pull it and had it out and the safety off in 2.5 seconds.
The zombie opened its grisly maw wide, waiting to get a bite of Clayton’s thigh, but instead got a faceful of lead as Clayton unloaded his magazine.
The zombie’s grip loosened, but not fast enough for Clayton as he smashed his boot into what was left of the zombie’s face, knocking it back into the mob behind it. It was such a large deader, it took several of them to the ground.
Clayton heard a loud grunt behind him, and when he looked back over his shoulder, he was sure that a wall was falling on him. But his mind quickly recomputed what he was seeing and sorted it out, and recognized it as a big metal door. It clanged down onto the top of the Humvee.
Jeff’s face appeared over the lip of the roof. A moment later, he climbed up and stood beside the door.
“You gonna get up and help me slide this in the gap there, or are you sitting on your ass all day?” Jeff asked, breathing hard from the exertion of hefting the door onto the Humvee.
“Fuck you, asshole,” Clayton said.
“You can call me any names you want, but those zombies are starting to regroup,” Jeff said, pointing past Clayton’s shoulder.
Clayton jerked his head around and saw that what Jeff said was true. The cluster of zombies was almost on their feet again, untangling themselves from the big zombie he had just shot in the face. That put him in motion, and he was on the other side of the door.
“Let’s get moving,” Clayton said as he grabbed the end of the door.
Jeff wasted no time and grabbed his end of the door, then said, “On three. One, two, three.”
Clayton found out just how heavy the door was, and his muscles strained to lift it.
The two men made the two steps and, without speaking, pivoted on the roof to get it in position. The zombies were on their way. It was quickly becoming a question of which of them would make it to the gap first.
“Tilt it now,” Clayton said.
Both men worked in tandem, tilting the door parallel with the wall just as the first zombie started to reach up to grab the side of the Humvee. They let go, and the door fell like a guillotine, crashing down onto the zombie’s forearm and snapping it in two. It didn’t even blink but started beating its other hand against the door.
Clayton kicked out his right foot and pressed it against the door, slamming it against the wall. He knew this wasn’t a permanent solution, though.
He turned to Jeff and said, “We need to get something to wedge against the door.”
Jeff yelled down to the other man, “Hey Hector, toss me up some of those rocks.”
The man named Hector went into motion and began grabbing hand-sized rocks and tossing them up to Jeff. Jeff, in turn, handed them off to Clayton to jam in the gap between the door and the Humvee.
“Two more,” Clayton said as he pushed a triangular-shaped rock into the gap.
Jeff and Hector did as they were told and got Clayton two more rocks. He promptly placed them against the door, making sure there was no give.
“That’ll hold for now,” Clayton said, but he wasn’t sure how long it would truly last.
A hundred feet away, Henry, Jo, and Bonds sat atop the wall looking down at the damaged back gate’s right side. The rocket had shattered the hinges on the right and the gate listed inward to an alarming degree. The gap between the left and right sides of the gate widened with each second.
“Can you push the gate to the left any?” Jo shouted down to a very nervous looking Kent, who sat behind the steering wheel of the bulldozer.
Everyone knew using a mechanical beast the size of the bulldozer to make a delicate adjustment was like asking someone with a sledgehammer to hammer a toothpick into a China plate.
“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Kent shouted back but never took his eyes off the big metal blade.
Up until then, he had been able to apply just the right amount of pressure to the broken gate to keep it in place. The problem was that the zombies pressing against the gate from the outside seemed to be winning this game of push-me, pull-me, as the gap grew larger and the gate listed further forward. It seemed as if it would topple at any second.
“Is there anything we can get to prop against the gate?” Henry asked of Bonds, who stood next to him.
“We’ve used almost all our spare lumber, and what is left is on the west side,” Bonds replied.
The right gate shifted, and the gap between the two gates widened significantly. A zombie on all fours pushed its way through and past the bulldozer’s blade. Once it got past the bulldozer, it attempted to rise, but a woman in an Army jacket shot it in the top of the head, and it went face-first into the dirt.
Another tried to trail its undead brethren, but Kent shifted the big bulldozer to push the two halves of the gate closer together. This clamped the gates down across the zombie’s midsection with its legs trapped outside the gate and its torso flailing to get inside.
The negative consequences of Kent’s maneuver were that the gate tilted even further inward. The only thing both keeping the gate aloft and the zombies out was the bulldozer’s weight and big metal blade.
“It’s not going to hold,” Henry said.
“What happens then?” Bonds asked, and it sounded like the naive question a child might ask.
“Then they’re getting inside, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it,” Jo said.
“Should we call up front to get reinforcements?” Bonds asked while holding the walkie-talkie up.
“They’ve got their hands full,” Jo said. “Besides, if that gate goes as soon as I think it will, then they’ll never get here in time.”
“And who knows if one of those smart zombies doesn’t blast a hole in the wall out front,” Henry said.
Molly had been giving Henry a lot of distance, but she decided it was time to ask a question. “So, what you’re saying is that we are fucked?”
“I don’t want to hear from you,” Henry said, glowering at her. The force of his stare caused her to wilt and step back away again.
“There’s got to be something we can do,” Bonds said with a slight whine in his voice.
Henry let his gaze drift along the curve of the wall for a moment, then he looked over the field to the east, filled with the undead. He took long looks to the south and the north and saw that most of the zombies on their side were concentrated at the gate. Of course, that was now the weak point in their defenses. So despite their lack of brainpower, the zombies still had enough raw animal cunning to know that an opening was their best chance of getting inside to feast on the tasty humans.
“My dad used to always say, plan plans, not results,” Henry said, and Jo could see an idea forming behind Henry’s eyes.
“What the hell does that mean?” Bonds asked.
“That means that gate is going to fail, and the zombies are getting inside,” Henry said. “There will be no stopping them, but we have enough time to come up with another plan.”
“Like what!?” Bonds shouted. “We aren’t going to sprout wings and fly the hell out of here.”
It was clear that Bonds was teetering on the edge of hysterics.
Henry pointed to the south, and said, “That field to the south is about empty of zombies.” He swivels his hand to point to the north. “The same to the north.”
“So?” Bonds said, his eyes nearly bulging out,
Henry looked to his feet as if the courage needed were down there, but it wasn’t. When he looked up, he said, “It’s time to abandon ship.”
“What?!” Bond nearly shouted with his voice getting almost as high as a small girl.
Chapter 85
The Wounded
The roo
m was well insulated, but Doc Wilson had been listening to the distant pops sounding through the walls, knowing it was gunfire. He took it as a good sign that it wasn’t getting any closer. If it did, that would have told him that the zombies had made it inside the walls.
There had been a couple loud outbursts that he took as explosions. Those were disconcerting. Still, he remained steadfast, sitting by his patient’s bedside.
For his part, Grayson slipped in and out of consciousness, riding the waves in morphine. Doc Wilson was just glad he was resting.
A loud pounding broke the stillness, and Doc Wilson jumped in his seat so violently, he nearly fell out of it.
“Doctor, open up!” A woman shouted. “We have someone injured.”
Doc Wilson recognized the voice. It was Karen Gray. He wondered why she just didn’t open the door, but he remembered that he had locked it after the last visitor.
His knees cracked loudly as he stood up. Grayson moaned in his sleep but stayed under the morphine haze.
The fist pounded on the door again, this time louder.
“Doctor, please open up,” Karen Gray shouted. “Sergeant Jones is injured.”
That got Doc Wilson moving, bad knees or not. He had his medical bag in hand and was over at the door in ten steps. He flung it open. When the door hit the wall, Doc Wilson saw Karen Gray standing in front of four men, each one, holding the handles of a cloth stretcher. A bloodied Sergeant Jones’ laid on the stretcher undulating and moaning in pain.
“Get him here,” Doc Wilson said as he stepped out of the way.
The men hustled in, but stopped with uncertainty about where to put the stretcher when they saw creature on the gurney.
“Don’t worry,” Doc Wilson said. “He’s no longer a threat. Put Sergeant Jones over there on that other gurney on the other side of the room.”
The men seemed a lot more comfortable once they were past Grayson. Karen Gray side-stepped into the room and gave the gurney with the half-dead zombie a wide berth.
Doc Wilson rushed over to the gurney where the men had deposited Sergeant Jones. Those same men stepped away from him, presumably to get some distance away from Grayson.
“What happened?” Doc Wilson asked as he began to inspect Jones’ body. His left side was dotted with puncture wounds, blood seeping from each one of them. There were burn spots in his uniform with the entry spots.
“He was being rescued when someone fired a missile or a rocket,” Karen said, obviously flustered. “The Sergeant was caught up in the blast, and…” She stopped and let her hands flutter in the air. “Can’t you do something for him? He’s in terrible pain.”
“Yes, yes,” Doc Wilson said as he opened up his medical bag. He stuck his hand inside it and rummaged around. A couple of moments later, he pulled out a syringe and a vial. “Ordinarily, it’s not recommended that you give a painkiller until the patient is diagnosed, but in this case, I’ll make an exception.”
The doctor filled the syringe and quickly gave Jones an injection. He withdrew the needle, and Jones writhing slowly subsided. Doc Wilson went to work with a pair of scissors he pulled from his bag, cutting off hunks of Jones’ uniform. After that, Doc Wilson began to clean and dress the wounds. He took heart in the fact that none of them look all that deep.
After a few minutes, he turned and said, “I can take it from here.”
Karen Gray said, “You men can leave. I’ll stay with the doctor.”
One of the men asked if he should stay behind with her, but she said she would be okay. The men left, leaving the doctor, Karen Gray, Jones, and Grayson in the room.
“Is he safe to be around?” Karen Gray asked as she pointed at Grayson.
Doc Wilson applied another dressing to Jones, but said, “He is in much worse shape than Sergeant Jones. A lot worse.”
“How is the Sergeant?” Karen asked.
“It looks worse than it is,” Doc Wilson said. “The wounds aren’t that deep, but I think he has a concussion. Maybe worse, but I have no way to deal with anything traumatic. At least not at this time.”
“But will he be okay?” Karen asked.
“I don’t know. Probably. There is any number of things that could happen. He could get an infection. There would be an artery in there I can’t see bleeding away, but if it’s all on the surface like I think, he’ll recover...over time.” He ran a hand through his hair, pushing his hair back off his forehead. “How is it out there?”
Karen pursed her lips, taking a moment to answer. “Not good,” she finally said. “Those...those damn smart zombies are the ones firing the rockets or missiles. They’re playing havoc with our defenses.”
“Why are you here?” Doc Wilson asked.
“Well...well, I’m not all that useful with this war thing,” Karen said, not meeting the doctor’s gaze. “I thought I might be more helpful here.”
“Helpful or safer?” Doc Wilson asked.
“That’s not fair,” Karen nearly shouted, her voice shrill. “I’m doing the best I can.”
Doc Wilson put a hand up and patted the air, “Sorry, I know you are. We all are.”
A few long moments of silence filled the air, but it was broken when Grayson let out a low moan and shifted on his gurney.
“Are you sure that thing is safe?” Karen asked.
“He’s not a thing,” Doc Wilson replied with some sharpness in his response. “He’s human, just like one of us.”
“But he was one of those things,” she said.
“The gas cured him. Reverted him to his human form.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“Because I’m a damn doctor,” Doc Wilson said.
Karen looked to the floor and asked, “Will he live?”
“No, probably not,” Doc Wilson said. “A lot of damage was done to him. Even if he healed up, he’d be totally crippled.” He paused, then continued, “It’s been my experience that our world only benefits the fittest, and he would be far from that.”
Karen Gray turned away from the doctor, brought up both of her arms, and wrapped them around her body, hugging herself for comfort. “It has become a world of survival of the fittest, hasn’t it, Doctor?”
The doctor didn’t answer.
Chapter 86
Through the Ruins
Eli waved his arms in an attempt to disperse the smoke in the cabin of the MAV. Navarro wasn’t screaming any longer, but he held his hands to his face as blood oozed down his cheeks and off his chin.
Something had exploded on the front of the MAV directly on the visor window, blowing it into the cabin and into Navarro’s face. Those windows were supposed to withstand a direct hit, but something must have gone wrong.
From the backseat, Gardner kept saying, “Oh, shit,” over and over again in a breathy voice, sounding as if he would hyperventilate at any moment.
Eli put a hand on Navarro’s shoulder and asked, “Are you alright?”
Navarro shook his head, keeping his hands pressed to his face.
In a calm voice, Eli said, “Let’s take a look.”
“All that tempered glass blew into my face,” Navarro said. “I’m afraid I’ll be blind.”
“We have to look,” Eli said.
Navarro worked to control his breathing and after a few seconds, he dropped his hands. His forehead and cheeks were terribly lacerated. Some of the cuts were deep, while others shallow.
“How bad is it?” Navarro asked.
“Not too bad,” Eli said, his voice even. Almost aloof. “There’s more blood than anything else. Head wounds bleed like that.”
“Don’t shit me,” Navarro said.
“No, there’s some cuts, but we’ll get you cleaned up,” Eli said. “Do we have a med kit?”
Gardner said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Under the seat to your right,” Navarro said.
“Where?”
Eli jerked his head toward Gardner, “Get your shit together. It’s under the seat.”
>
“Sure, sure,” Gardner said, but he turned to the left, which had him looking at the MAV’s wall. He quickly turned to his right, bent over and rummaged around under the seat next to him. After a few seconds, he brought up a small rectangular box with a white square with a big red cross on it. When Gardner extended his hand with the med kit, he nearly dropped it.
Eli snatched it from him and quickly opened it. It only took him five seconds to pick out some gauze packets and rip them open. He started to reach out to Navarro’s face with gauze in his hand, but stopped.
“I’m going to clean up some of the blood,” Eli said.
Gardner jerked forward in his seat and said, “What if that thing is out there and he’s coming in for the kill?”
“Shut up,” Eli said with some snap in his tone. “We need to take care of Navarro first.”
Eli dabbed at the blood on Navarro’s face with the gauze. Navarro winced but remained steady. The gauze came away soaked. Eli tossed it aside, grabbed another one, and went to work. It took four to clean away the worst of the blood, but revealed a long, deep cut that ran from Navarro’s forehead to halfway down his left cheek. The eye looked bad, but Eli kept that to himself.
“How bad is it?” Navarro asked.
“There’s a bad cut on the left side, but the right side doesn’t look all that bad.”
“It hurts like a son of a bitch,” Navarro said.
Something thudded against the side of the MAV and was followed by more thumps.
“They’re here,” Gardner said, panic in his voice.
Eli looked through the broken visor window and saw the undead swarming around the vehicle. They rammed into the vehicle and slapped their hands onto the side of it, clawing and grabbing for handholds.
“Settle down!” Eli said. “They can’t get inside.”
Navarro braved opening his right eye, but it took some effort as it fluttered open and closed several times before he was able to open it fully. It still only opened slightly wider than a slit.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 36
