Breakout

by Craig Jones

  “No, sir,” Bateman replied.

  “Then at least we know there are other survivors. Or at least that there were. Let’s hope Hawkins is right about this supermarket, or this is going to be long and hungry trip.”

  I felt the eyes of everyone on the bus bore into me.

  The convoy began to move on again, creeping its way out of the dead city. Only once did the troops have to move cars out of our path and that passed with no incident. We climbed an overpass and Bateman called me up to the front of the bus.

  “This is where you marked the map, but where is the--”

  “Over there,” I pointed.

  Bateman followed my finger.

  “Oh my God!” he whispered before grabbing his radio. “Sir, eyes left.”

  He paused, unable to take his eyes off what awaited us.

  The supermarket parking lot was filled with the undead.

  15

  The scouting patrol reported back twenty minutes later.

  “I don’t know what happened down there, but they’re all dead,” said Bateman.

  Rogers grinned. “You don’t know what happened? It’s like I’ve said all along. They’ve starved to death.”

  The convoy moved as close as it could to the supermarket. Each vehicle turned around so it was facing the right direction in case we needed to make a quick getaway. Only then were the bus doors opened.

  Rogers marched about the corpses, searching for sign of movement.

  “There are a lot of dead humans here,” he explained. “But they’ve been gnawed to the bone. There’s not enough meat on this one to feed a scabby cat.” He kicked at the butchered body of a teenage boy. I hoped Robbie wasn’t watching. “But there wasn’t enough for them all and they’ve died hungry. Now that’s just about the right way for these sons of bitches to go!”

  There were hundreds of zombies slumped across the ground. Some, it looked like, had even started attacking each other in a feeding frenzy that still hadn’t saved them. A light wind picked up and wafted the most foul and disgusting smell towards me. I was nearly sick all over my shoes as the stench of decay, the putrid stink of rotting flesh, took hold of my nostrils.

  “Form a perimeter,” bellowed Rogers, pointing at the majority of his men. “The rest of you, inside. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “Sir?” Bateman asked. “Can we let them off the buses for a toilet break?”

  “Yes, but keep them out of the way.”

  Bateman signaled for the bus drivers to open the doors and steady streams of passengers stepped off and were guided away from the bodies.

  I followed Chris toward the supermarket entrance, fully aware that I was the only one without a gun. I may have been good enough to keep watch and to lug canisters of fuel but there was no way I was going to be trusted with a weapon. I was glad. It would have been too much of a responsibility. It always amazed me that in the zombie movies I’d watched, everyone suddenly became a dead-eye shot or a ninja with a sword. Real life didn’t work like that, and I was more likely to shoot myself in the foot than I was to splinter the skull of a fast moving Remake. Or even a slow moving Romero.

  Inside, the tiled floor of the store was smeared with blood. It looked like dead or injured humans had been dragged along the ground toward the freezer sections. When Rogers saw this, he shook his head and motioned for us toward the cans and dried goods.

  “No use toting anything we can’t use,” he said. “Hawkins, make yourself useful. Grab some trolleys and start filling them. You two! Help him.”

  The two soldiers and I quickly filled six trolleys and pushed them back outside. The smell was worse out here than it was inside the confines of the shop. When they saw us, the guards keeping watch moved to help us, but Bateman ordered them to stay.

  “Keep watch. You, you...you” he pointed at three civilian men returning to the bus after making use of the outdoor toilet. One of them was Bill. “Grab those supplies and load them onto your bus. Go!” Rogers marched back into the supermarket.

  Bill smiled at me as he took the trolleys from me, and I walked back inside just as Rogers voice bellowed out.

  “Take them down!”

  A group of four or five Romero zombies had stumbled out of the aisles at the back of the store. That sound, the noise I heard my brother make for weeks before he was able to tell me he wanted to die, echoed through the empty supermarket.

  “MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”

  One of the soldiers let off a burst of automatic fire, and two of the zombies were hurled to the deck but both began at once to climb back to their feet.

  “Head shots,” Rogers reminded. His men and Chris dropped to one knee, bringing his rifle up to his shoulder. His first shot hit one of the creatures in the forehead and the back of its skull flipped open, spilling brain and blood over the floor. Rogers drew his handgun and advanced on the remaining undead, aiming with precision, shooting each in the head until only one remained standing.

  “That’s how you do it, boys,” he said and lined up his final shot. The zombie snapped its teeth towards Rogers’s gun barrel, which flared once more and with a splatter of gore it fell to the floor, its brains making a grotesque pattern on the tiles.

  “Head shots,” Rogers reminded again.

  “Sir, look out!” Chris screamed as an unseen zombie stepped from a side aisle and knocked Rogers’s gun from his hand. It spun away from him and under shelves housing breakfast cereals. The zombie clawed at Rogers’s face, but he snared each of its wrists in his hands and began a grim dance of death with his attacker.

  “I can’t get a clean shot!” yelled Chris.

  I was frozen to the spot, as were some of the other soldiers around me. Only Chris seemed primed for action, but he was as useless as the rest of us when the two of them were wrapped so closely around each other. Even as Rogers battled the undead in hand to hand combat, he had time to look at us in disdain for our inability to act. He grunted loudly as his boots slipped on the ground. The hungry beast seemed to sense it had gained the upper hand and lunged forwards at Rogers, teeth bared and snarling.

  And then Rogers head butted the zombie, his cap flying off backwards, revealing the full length of his scar which ran along his forehead and right back to his crown. I heard the crack of skull on skull and saw the monster staggered backwards. Without pause, Rogers dropped low and swung his left leg in a wide arc, sweeping the zombie’s feet out from under it. Even through smashed to the floor, Rogers was up and ready with the heel of his boot. He drove it down into the creature’s face time and time again, until its brains were smeared like spilt yogurt in the shopping aisle.

  Rogers wasn’t even out of breath as he pulled his cap back over his shaved head.

  “Are you going to stand and stare at me all day or are you going to--”

  Screams and then gunfire from outside silenced him.

  16

  The dead had risen. Again.

  The mass of corpses that we had all thought were finally expired had taken to their feet and were attacking the soldiers and civilians. The faster, more agile ones swooped down on the troops, and while some were picked off by gunfire, there were too many. It was clear that the perimeter guards were going to be overwhelmed. The slower breed, staggering unbalanced from foot to foot, were heading in the direction of the transports, looking to feed on the unarmed passengers.

  The sounds of automatic weapons being discharged almost drowned out the yells and shouts for help. Nothing was louder than the hungry growls of the zombies as they attacked. I took in the whole scene in a moment, but it took me a few seconds, standing and staring in terrified confusion, to see that there were both Romeroes and Remakes amongst their ranks and that they had an order to their attack.

  “It’s a trap!” Rogers bellowed and began firing on a crowd of slow moving creatures as they advanced to the nearest bus. “Take them down!” Inside the store his men, frozen in fear, suddenly found their bravery and began indiscriminately firing into the death
ly horde.

  Unarmed, I felt useless, like a piece of meat waiting to be devoured. When we were collecting gas, I’d been sure I’d seen something and now I was sure I really had.

  One of the undead, watching us, reporting back on our plans and all the while knowing that this was the only place we’d find food. No one had listened to me and now there was nothing I could do about it.

  And then I remembered the one thing I could do.

  “Robbie!”

  I sprinted for the farthest bus. The one Robbie and I had been travelling on. No zombies had gotten that far yet and I hoped that if I got there first, I would be able to at least drive that bus to safety. I ran in a wide arc, away from the battle, but unable to take my eyes from the frenetic scenes. I saw a soldier open fire on a group of zombies, their heads exploding as the bullets hit their mark before he saw swatted down from behind by a bloody claw. I saw someone running, looking over their shoulder as two women, teeth bared, blood dripping down their snarling faces, hunted him down. Then he fell, his arms going up into the air like a soccer player fouled in the penalty area. I saw it was Bill, and I dragged my eyes away as the bloody bitches fell on his back with triumphant howls.

  I kept my eyes facing forward, knowing that if I let what was going on around me overtake my emotions, I’d fall to the floor myself, yelling like a man gone insane. Focusing on the bus ahead, I could see faces pressed to the glass as people peered around the makeshift protection of the stadium seats that were still welded across the side of the vehicle. I could see Amanda, and I prayed she’d not seen her husband butchered. I saw Emma, their daughter, tight against her mother, and then I saw Robbie. My heart smashed against my ribcage, and I was pumping my legs as fast as they would go when I heard the scrabble of footsteps behind me.

  “Get down!” came the call as the soldier who had been driving our bus swung the front doors open and aimed his rifle right at me. I dove down and to the right, scuffing my elbows and knees as the shot rang out. I rolled onto my back as the zombie on my tail fell to the floor with a muffled clump and a hole in its head. I let out the deep breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding.

  “Get up! Get--”

  Three Remakes hit him at once and his gun spun across the parking lot towards me. Two of them had him pinned to the ground, and the third ignored his pleas and dug his teeth deep into the soldier’s windpipe, ripping it loose in a shower of bright red blood that the undead let wash over them like a macabre shower. Beyond the feasting Remakes, a group of Romeroes ambled into view, and I knew that if I didn’t act quickly Robbie and everyone on the bus would be dead.

  I snatched up the gun and locked the stock in against my shoulder like I had seen the soldiers do, and then I pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening and the recoil flipped me up into the air. The gun fell from my hands. I knew that if I survived until the next day, then I was going to have a huge bruise in the fold of my chest and shoulder. I landed flat on my back and the wind was knocked out of me, but despite the world of pain my body seemed to be experiencing, I rolled towards the gun. I grabbed it and positioned myself on one knee, just like Chris did when he was targeting the zombies from a long distance. Only the creeping Romeroes were left.

  Somehow my errant burst of fire had sliced through the skulls of the three Remakes, and they lay shattered and broken next to the bus tires. The slow moving monsters continued their deadly advance and the first put its foot up and into the bus as I fired again. Screams rang out from inside the bus as the zombie clomped each decaying foot up the steps and the shots I had fired rattled off the bodywork of the vehicle. I couldn’t have gotten lucky twice in a row. In fact, I’d been far from lucky.

  I heard a visceral screech from across the parking lot and saw that my gunfire had attracted the attention of at least one Remake. It halted its approach to General Rogers’s small band and began to pace towards me, slowly speeding up into a wide legged gallop. Despite the potentially disastrous events about to unfold on the bus, I did the only thing left for me to do. I ran. I hoped that once I was out of its sight it would forget about me long enough to give me the chance to form some sort of strategy. I sprinted around the back of the bus where Robbie’s petrified face stared down at me from the huge rear window. I laid the gun on the floor and leaped up, grabbing at the plastic seating and snapping it off its metal base until there was a person sized gap in the glass.

  The screams from within the bus indicated that all three Romeroes had now boarded and I could only guess that the Remake, whose attention I had grabbed, was on there with them.

  “Down!” I hollered, shouldering the rifle again. Robbie’s face disappeared as I shot out the glass with a short burst on the trigger. My shoulder screamed at me as it absorbed the recoil. The pane shattered, the fragments chiming as they landed inside the bus. I didn’t need to tell Robbie to get out. I just had time to drop the gun before he hurled himself out and into my arms.

  “You have to help them!” he cried, but I knew I’d be no use with the gun. “Emma and Amanda!”

  I looked up to see Amanda forcing her hysterical daughter out through the broken glass. I reached up and grabbed the girl around the waist then lowered her safely.

  “Go!” I instructed, pointing at an abandoned car as Amanda began to climb clear. “Hide behind that!”

  Robbie ran but Emma stayed where she was, visibly shaken, looking up at her mother. The noise of the battle beyond my vision was as intense as ever. Shots, screams, slaughter. The sound from the bus was unreal. The cries for help had reached a crescendo, and the snarls from the undead were more like that of a guard dog, keeping its victims in check. Amanda dropped down and was replaced at the window by a tall bald man.

  “I’m next, I’m next!” he blabbered and then a mottled hand wrapped itself around his throat. In a moment he was gone.

  “Move!” I shouted and ran for Robbie’s position. Amanda was at my side for the first few strides but then she slowed, stopped and turned around.

  “Emma!” she shrieked.

  The little girl, her blonde locks blown by the light breeze, stood where we had left her, just at the rear of the bus.

  “Mommy...” she whimpered as a wet patch spread down from the top of her thighs and a pool of liquid gathered at her feet.

  “Oh, baby,” Amanda sobbed, her arms going out to her child as she took a step back towards the bus.

  “Mommy!”

  The mottle hand returned, attached to a gorily disfigured body that lurched out through the hole I’d made in the glass and grabbed a handful of Emma’s hair. The zombie sneered in victory, and its sallow grin looked to be taunting us as it lifted the screaming girl up and back into the bus. Emma, like Robbie’s sisters, was gone.

  “NO!” Louder even than the war going on around us, Amanda’s bellow drew the attention of a group of Romeroes. Their arms stretched for us just as she had reached out for her daughter, and I had to wrap a hand around her ample waist to get her moving.

  “I’m saving you, at least,” I told her and half pushed, half dragged her towards where Robbie was waiting. He pointed towards the side of the supermarket farthest away from the undead.

  “That way?” he asked.

  I glanced around. It was the only way.

  17

  A wooden fence, six feet tall, ran to our left. To the right was the brick wall of the supermarket. To me it looked as foreboding as the Death Star trench must have to Biggs Darklighter. It would have been a gallon load worse had there been any zombies down there, but for now it was clear, and we quietly eased our way into the narrow canyon.

  Amanda exploded into an animal-like wail. I doubt she saw Bill bundled to his demise, but she had probably just realized that her whole family had been taken from her in a few short seconds. The life she had known, even in the days since the second epidemic, had been safe. Protected. First by Bill, then by the Army in the stadium. And now she was left with nothing. But I had to shut her up.

  I slappe
d her across the face then clasped her head in my hands so she could look nowhere else but right at me.

  “You have to be quiet or we’re--”

  “Too late,” said Robbie from behind me, pointing back towards the parking lot. “They’ve seen us!”

  “Dead,” I sighed, and she wailed again.

  Robbie’s footfalls slapped as he ran past, and then his training shoes squeaked to a sliding stop as he let out a wretched moan. I followed his pointed finger and saw that zombies had appeared at the far end of the path, cutting off our exit. Just then, four zombies shuffled around the corner behind us, cutting off our retreat towards the way we had ran.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I cursed, letting Amanda slump to her knees. “Robbie! Quickly!”

  I laced the fingers of my hands together and gestured with a nod for Robbie to place a foot into the stirrup I’d created. He reacted instantly, placing his hands on my shoulders for support while I boosted him up to the top of the fence.

  “Is it safe?” I asked, my words desperate.

  “Clear!” he shouted, and I pushed him upwards. He grabbed the top of the wooden panels and dragged himself over the barrier, landing softly on the other side like only a kid could.

  “Amanda! You’re next!”

  Her sobbing told me that she was resigned to her fate and if I was honest, I doubted I had the strength to lift her.

  “Damn it!” I hissed, lifted my foot and started stomping at the wooden fence. At first it wouldn’t give, but then the board splintered with a vicious crack. With two or three more kicks, it broke in two. I pulled the bottom part of the wood away and began booting the next section, not wanting to look up to see how close our executioners were getting. I could smell their decaying flesh. I could hear their ravenous sound.

  “MMMMMMMMMMMMMM.”

  Sweat dripped down into my eyes, blurring, stinging, and mixing with tears of frustration. I continued to kick the board on one side of the hole I’d made. Robbie worked away at the slat on the other side, and in seconds we’d created a gap wide enough for me to dive through. My knees and elbows, already scraped from my tumble in the parking lot, hurt like I’d been burned, but I drove myself up to my feet. I reached back and grabbed both of Amanda’s hands in mine, dragging her towards me. The gap wasn’t big enough and her wide hips snagged, stuck fast. She looked up at me with big, tearful, bloodshot eyes.