Haven From Hell (Book 3): A Young Man's Game

by Won, Mark

  “Just curious. I was thinking about heading into Paxton, to the south of here, to see if we could find any food or ammunition. What do you think?”

  “Sure, I’ll come, it could be fun. We’ll have to move quietly, though. Trust me, once you start shooting it’s almost impossible to scrounge as many bullets as you use up clearing the town.”

  “What do you recommend?” asked the sheriff.

  “I usually leave Blue parked outside the city limits and move in on foot. Unless I know exactly where I’m going, I start with the outlying buildings, clearing them with Abby and Polly. Even private residences can have a lot of good stuff. From there I move in toward the more promising structures, like strip malls and such. We’ll always have to be ready to run. I got a few walkie talkies with Blue that we can use. Maybe someone can stay with our rapid withdrawal/transport vehicle.” By which I meant Mr. Moon’s RV. It could hold all of us who went out plundering, or haul the plunder, whichever we needed most at the time.

  Neil said, “So you’ve done this a lot, Gideon?” Duh!

  “I guess. I mean, what do you call a lot? You get low on stuff, its got to come from somewhere. The trick is to not wait too long before going in. If you run out of ammunition before you even start then you might have a tough time escaping if things get rough. It’s important to remember to not try and fight the whole town at once, too, if you can help it.”

  Melissa said, “I can’t believe that we’re making a plan based on the advice of a twelve year old.” Ouch.

  “Hey, I’m fifteen and you’re really old!” My quick wit shut her up in a hurry. Twelve! That was just plain insulting.

  Connor said, “I’ll go talk it over with the others and see who wants to come along. We’ll head out at first light.” ‘First light’; I liked that. It sounded like something a sheriff should say.

  After everyone had gone to bed that night I heard some raised voices in the distance. It sounded like arguing between a man and a woman. Then I heard a slap followed by more angry man voice and girl crying. Color me curious, I got up to investigate.

  I thought I was being sneaky on my way to the door, but just as my hand touched the latch I got a strange vibe from everyone else in the room. None of them were actually sleeping, they were all just pretending. I wondered, What the heck?

  I quit trying to be quiet and barged through the door with Tracer by my side. We went straight to the sounds of crying and there I found Lin sobbing, huddled between a car and a tree. She had another bruise, that time on the other side of her face. From there I could hear more sounds of violence in the distance. She was way too upset to listen to anything I had to say, so I kept moving toward the sound of violence.

  In order to reach the source of the noise I had to leave camp. We’d built a simple gate into our fence, so I went through that and traveled another forty yards through the dark, overcast woods. That’s when I came upon Jimmy Seltzer slapping his wife around. I froze.

  I’m not proud of it, but there you have it. My first time freezing in a potential combat situation. It wasn’t so much the violence as the weirdness of it all. Think about it: For Jimmy to beat his family he had to first get them outside the camp, in the middle of the night, a distance from everyone else. And, why would he? I mean, what’s the point of it? I’ve heard of such things, of course, but I wasn’t sure it was a real thing until just then. Then, too, why was Jan letting him hit her without fighting back? Why didn’t she cry out for help? Why didn’t she run? If it were me I’d have killed him already. Finally, I wasn’t sure what the proper normal person etiquette was for a situation like that. I was pretty sure no one wanted me to kill Jimmy (the good Lord alone knows why) otherwise someone would have done it already. I felt constrained by societal limitations. I hated that feeling.

  What else could I do except walk over to Mr. Seltzer, and say, “Good evening,” in my most bestest Dracula voice? With a motion of my hand Tracer began to howl, so I followed up with, “Ah, the children of the night, what sweet music they make,” because I think Dracula said that, too.

  That was when Jimmy froze, which made me feel a little better. When he snapped out of it he said, “Shut that *$%^&* dog up or I’ll kill him!” I motioned for tracer to pipe down and he, obediently, did so.

  Looking down at Mrs. Seltzer, half on her knees, half on her side, holding her belly and trying to crawl away from her husband, I asked, “So, what y’all doin’?”

  Jimmy strode right up to me and tried to punch me in the face! I was surprised by his lack of self preservation instinct (he had to know I was armed), but at his overwhelming display of stupidity I most assuredly did not freeze. I kicked his knees in a bit (not enough to maim him) and slapped him around some. Once I had the fight out of him I took him by the ear and dragged him off, away from his wife.

  I’d noticed Samantha, Jack, Rob, and Melissa coming up behind me during the ‘fight’. Melissa asked me, “Where are you going with him?”

  I answered, “Look, none of you wanted to do anything about this before, even though you all knew. You didn’t want to get involved then, you don’t need to get involved now. I got this. You all can just go back to bed!”

  Samantha and Rob were both looking after Jan, but Jack and Melissa followed me farther from camp. That’s where I began to teach Jimmy a lesson in humility I was sure he’d never forget. I was real careful. No broken bones (except his nose), no ruptured organs, just a lot of bone deep bruises. At first he kept threatening to kill me while I was pounding on him. Then, while I was still giving him his thrashing, he begged Melissa to save him, but she remained happy to merely watch. He was pathetic. Finally, I broke through his unfounded arrogance and had his full attention. It took longer than usual.

  “This is what I’m going to do to you from now on if I see any more bruises on Lin or Mrs. Seltzer. Look over at them,” I motioned to Melissa and Jack, “They didn’t help your wife. They didn’t help your daughter. They won’t help you. Why should they? You’re human garbage. I’m not even sure why I haven’t killed you yet, but if you keep making me mad, I will. Oh, one more thing, you don’t have to come back to the camp if you don’t want to.”

  Then I went back to bed.

  Chapter 13

  “This house is clean,” I pronounced in my best magic munchkin voice. We’d been clearing the outskirts of Paxton, a bit south of our campgrounds, for over half the morning and I was glad we’d scrounged up enough for everyone to grab a quick brunch.

  The events of the previous night had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the camp. Both Norm and Steven had told me ‘good work’ and ‘way to go’. Norm seemed especially sincere when he added, “I wish I’d done that myself a long time ago.” Steven added, “He had it coming, the *$%^&*,” (person whose parents are not married).

  Clearing the houses had been slow going at first because I was the only one armed with a decent weapon fit for the job. No one else had even considered a melee weapon as an option. Eventually we stumbled across a house with an extensive collection of hand tools fit for pitching hay and hammering the heck out of zombie noggins. Things picked up after that.

  In the last house we cleared, Rob went in with a pitchfork to hold a zombie, then Neil bashed its head in with a claw hammer. Working in teams like that was pretty effective. I was thinking about asking Connor if we should split up, since we could cover more ground that way.

  It was Connor, Neil, Norm, Steven, Hunter, Rob, Jack, and Mr. Reese with me, knocking on doors (metaphorically speaking). The nine of us (not counting Tracer) would sometimes get in each others way with all of us trying to bean the same zombie. On one particularly amusing occasion Connor tripped over Hunter’s spear and fell into Neil. Altogether, they pulled down Jack with them, leaving Norm to put an arrow through an approaching zombie’s eye. When I asked Connor if he was alright, He said to Neil, “I knew we were cops, I just didn’t know we were Keystone Cops.”

  After brunch I overheard Connor on the walkie talkie telling
Mr. Moon that everything was okay and that we were going to split our group up. Mr. Moon would need to turn on another walkie talkie and set it to a different channel to try and keep communications separate. I didn’t think we’d need that, but what the heck? In the last few houses we’d found a lot of spare batteries.

  The sheriff addressed us, “I think we can afford to split up now. I want to take one group deeper into the town until we reach ‘Gunny’s Guns’. I’m hoping we can get all the ammunition we need for the foreseeable future. I’ll take Gideon, Hunter, and Steven. The rest of you keep clearing homes and call Jeff,” that was Mr. Moon’s first name, “as soon as you have enough to fill his RV. We’ll call for pick up once we have the ammunition.”

  Mr. Moon was waiting in his motor home in case we needed to flee. There were another three cars with him. The sheriff’s idea was to fill the trunks of all three extra cars with bullets if he could. I thought that sounded a bit optimistic, and would’ve been happy if we came out ahead after expenses (by which I mean all the bullets we’d end up using just getting out alive). I was glad to be included in the group going on the trip. It promised to be exciting.

  We broke from the main group and made our way south, deeper into the city. Tracer and I took point, figuring that was the only way we were going to get even close to our target destination. We moved back and forth, in and out, steadily moving through the town. I chuckled a bit when I realized that I felt the most alive when sneaking through a town of the dead. Uncle would have called that ‘irony’.

  Around one corner a small clutch of zombies saw us and began moving and moaning. Steven kept an eye out while Hunter and I reduced their numbers using our slings. When they got close Connor helped us finish them off using his new hammer. Then we moved on.

  About half way there a ghoul spotted us and charged. With no time for target practice I ran straight at it and chopped it down in mid-leap. I was concerned that there might have been more of them lurking about, waiting to spring some kind of lame trap, but the coast was clear. Again, we moved on.

  When we finally came to the weapon shop, I liked what I saw. There were a lot of big windows at the ground floor but they were neither smashed in nor out, thus implying a place free of zombies, a place yet to be looted. I took out my phone and snapped a photo (I had recharged it while in the RV, on our way to Paxton). I’d been taking the occasional picture as we went along to show everybody when we got back to camp. Steven thought that was funny.

  When we got to the door of ‘Gunny’s Guns’ we found the door locked. Connor said, “Steven, smash it in.”

  I almost raised my voice, “Wait! We can’t make noise now. Just let me pick it.” It was a pretty standard lock and I’d remembered to bring my tools. All in all, the job only took sixty-eight seconds. I had Hunter time me. Then we entered the building.

  Inside, all was what one would expect. A long counter for the proprietor to stand behind on one side, with a selection of wares lined up in various cases with various much more complicated locks on the other. Naturally, all the firearms on display had trigger locks, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they were missing firing pins, to boot. All that was okay, though, because all we really wanted was a bunch of bullets.

  We began to search while Tracer peed in the corner and Sheriff Slim stood guard. As I was opening a safe, Connor asked me, “Where did you learn to pick locks, Gideon? I promise not to arrest you if you tell me.” He was such a kidder.

  “Uncle taught me, of course.” Where else would I learn something like that?

  “I wish I could have met him,” he responded.

  “Don’t worry, you will.” After all, isn’t that one of the things Heaven is for?

  Suddenly our peaceful looting trip was shattered by the sound of gunfire in the distance. A 12 gauge by the sound of it. I had to figure that one of our number had finally had to open fire. Probably Mr. Reese since he’d been the one holding a shotgun. Oh well, I knew we’d wake the town up sooner or later. At least the Zombies would all be drawn away from us.

  Sheriff Slim was on the walkie talkie trying to find out what was going on while Hunter and Steven were back to back, one with a shotgun and the other with a spear. I was sensibly hiding down on the floor with Tracer, where I couldn’t be seen by any casually passing horror.

  Various zombies were shambling out onto the street from every back alley and broken open building up and down the street, and probably all over town. There would be thousands out by now and we were going to have a harsh fight on our hands if anyone did anything stupid, like open fire. I’d seen such things before, so I knew the smart move was to wait for the monsters to forget what they were doing and go back into hibernation (or whatever you want to call it when they stand around stupidly, doing nothing). Unfortunately, Steven panicked.

  One zombie had noticed us and had started pounding on the glass door. Instead of just letting it in and killing it quietly, Steven blasted the top of its head off, and that was that. Now we had a situation, and I didn’t like our odds anymore.

  I made sure to get a couple more photos. The one I got of Steven’s expression was priceless.

  During our search I’d noticed a stairway going up in the back, behind the counter. I told everyone to follow me and headed for it. Everyone except Tracer, that is. I yelled at him to ‘run and hide’. As long as he laid low the zombies would leave him be. As I began to climb the steps a zombie appeared at the top of the staircase and began to descend with the tread of an ogre. Still hoping to keep things as quiet as I might, I chopped its skull and ran up over its back, trying to reach the second floor as quickly as possible.

  Once there, I looked back to see everyone was hot on my heels. Then I heard the whole glass front of the shop come crashing inward and knew we had a heck of a lot of guests. If I’d thought that they were all just zombies, I wouldn’t have been too concerned, but I had to figure that there would be some ogres and ghouls in the mix as well. At the top of a staircase, I could kill regular zombies all day. It was the prospect of all the ghouls climbing up the outside and attacking from behind, while the ogres tore the walls out from around me that had my heart pumping.

  Connor had finally gotten through to Mr. Moon and requested an extraction. In anticipation of potential conflict we had bolted a few extra bars on to the RV just before our outing, hopefully they would be enough to keep the ghouls out. The motor home was pretty big, so I thought it probable that it could wipe out an ogre with a head on collision, but I hoped that nobody put that to the test.

  I asked Hunter to guard the staircase while I used Polly and Abby to chop at the wooden stairs. The way Steven was casting about for an enemy I told him to keep an eye on the windows. I knew the ghouls would be showing up soon.

  The upper floor was clearly built as a domicile and not very defensible. A simple bedroom, a bathroom, kitchen and dining area, master bedroom and entertainment room was all there was to it. The head of the stairs opened into the entertainment area and there were windows everywhere. Finally a step gave in to my insistent hacking. That would slow them down.

  I noticed a small balcony just off the room we were in, on the other side of sliding glass doors. From my vantage point I also noticed the side of a ladder. It was some kind of fire escape. With a horde of zombies struggling up the stairs in front of me I turned aside to open the way to the balcony.

  That was what the ghoul on the roof had been waiting for. I heard him in the instant of his jump. He came plunging down in front of me and took Polly right in the kisser. I kicked him off my sword and looked to see that everyone was close behind me. From there I made my way up to the roof.

  Once there I felt slightly better. There was no way zombies could climb up some semi-broken stairs and then a ladder. Ogres could still be a problem, but not if we killed them before they got inside the building. And, as for the ghouls, although they could come at me from any direction, I had enough space to see them coming and move around to my advantage. Everyone
joined me shortly; the sheriff came last.

  I wasn’t wrong about the ghouls. It didn’t take long before they started climbing the walls, and I got quite a work out for a few minutes. Every time one leaped over the roof’s ledge I’d rush off to intercept it. By the time that one was dealt with two more would have climbed up the opposite side.

  It was nice to see Hunter and Steven working so well together, even if it was just a bond born of terror. Hunter would skewer a ghoul, twist it to the ground, and Steven would blast off the top half of its head with his 12 gauge. Of course, all that noise made us the center of a lot of attention. Meanwhile, the sheriff was still on that stupid walkie talkie.

  A ghoul popped over the ledge, Hunter had it spit and pinned, and ‘click’ Steven was out of ammunition. The ghoul began trying to pull itself up the spear shaft while two more ghouls came flying onto the roof. I had my own work cut out for me so I couldn’t help. Finally, Connor dropped the radio and began pitching in. I have to admit he was an adequate shot at very short range. At least nobody got bit. So far as I knew, most who got bit either turned into a zombie or died.

  Sheriff Slim said, “They’re on their way. All we have to do is hold out.”

  I said, “Oh. Well, if that’s all.” That’s when I heard the ogre’s roar and felt the roof tremble. My guess was that one or more ogres had managed to get inside the gun shop while we’d been distracted with the ghouls. Along with the ogres came the mass of zombies. Unable to find us they seemed to have decided to take out their frustrations on their surroundings.

  We each ran over to a separate wall and looked over the side. I heard Steven shooting at something and ran over to see what it was. He’d managed to head shoot an ogre (after an ogre is dead you kind of have to take the shooter at his word because ogres look just like regular zombies). I put the girls away and drew Bob.