by Davis, James
Chapter Twenty-Three
7:38 p.m. January 4, 2049
Sweetwater, Tennessee
"Open the damn door!" Bud shouted slamming the toe of his cowboy boot into the door several times.
Roosevelt watched as the horde of zombies began to round the last corner and race toward them. The herd was tightly packed and running full speed toward the four men. Bud continued his assault on the metal door as the other three readied their weapons, prepared for their final stand. Zeds bounced off buildings and each other, their screaming growls growing louder as the stampede of footsteps echoed throughout the evening air.
"Open the door!" Bud screamed, panic creeping into his usually deep voice as he continued pounding his foot and now his fist into the metal door. Several shots sounded behind him. He glanced back just as Roosevelt, Dwight, and Mick opened fire on the first small group of zeds that approached.
"Damn it!" Bud cursed, turning, and drawing his revolver. He quickly fanned three shots from the hip cowboy style, exploding three zed heads. The racing zombies stumbled as the bullets pierced their brains, and they fell for the final time. The dead directly behind them tripped over the motionless corpses creating the first traffic jam the small-town street had ever seen. The fumbling corpses quickly recovered, returning to their feet, and getting back to their pursuit. A loud clang filled the air behind them, barely audible over the growing commotion before a voice sounded from the door.
"Come on!" Johnny shouted, moving aside while still holding the door open. Roosevelt, Dwight, and Mick continued firing shots at the relentless horde stampeding through Sweetwater.
"You waiting for a formal invitation? Get your asses in here!" Bud screamed, firing his last three rounds at the three zombies in front. The rounds bought the men enough time to turn and scramble past Johnny. After the other three men were inside, Bud charged past Johnny, grabbing the metal door handle with both hands and began pulling it closed.
A dirty hand with long fingernails shot through the gap in the door grasping at Bud's forearm. A second and third hand followed the first all grasping at different spots on Bud's arm. Sweat dripped from Bud's mustache as he struggled to hold the door closed. Thuds and dings filled the air as zeds slammed into the outside of the door. Johnny reached in with his one good arm, grabbing the handle, and pulling at it with all he had.
"We need to clear them away from the door!" Bud grunted. Mick stepped in and slid the barrel of his rifle through the gap in the door. He squeezed the trigger, firing a long burst out into the night. The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the building followed by a loud bang and glass shattering somewhere nearby. Johnny turned to see Roosevelt at the top of the staircase as he reached into a small red box attached to the wall, triumphantly pulling out a red axe with a point on one end and a short wooden handle. He held the axe up in one hand as he took the stairs two at a time.
"Back up!" Roosevelt ordered Mick, who was already stepping out of his way.
The large man grabbed the axe handle in both hands and raised it high above his head. He gritted his teeth and brought the axe down, connecting with the elbow of one zed. Bone crunched and blood splattered the walls as the axe cut through the arm. The arm fell limp, dangling from Bud's forearm for a moment before gravity took over and it fell to the floor. Roosevelt lifted the axe again and swung with all his might, this time severing the top arm and half of the next.
"One more, Rosie!" Johnny growled, still holding onto the door handle for dear life.
Roosevelt slammed the axe down again, severing the last two arms and sending blood flying through the air. The door slammed shut and clicked in place as Bud fell backwards, stumbling to the ground, grabbing to remove the hands still clenched around his forearm. Zombies slammed and pounded into the door repeatedly.
"Get up there and finish it!" Bud ordered through gasps of breath. Roosevelt and Johnny were the first one to bound up the stairs followed by Mick and Dwight and finally Bud. Seconds later Roosevelt and Johnny burst out onto the roof and darted across to the edge where the rest of the townspeople were already mowing down zombies with automatic gunfire. Johnny used his left hand to pull his rifle around to his chest. He unslung it from himself and dropped down to a knee to take precision shots using the roofs safety wall as a rifle rest. Roosevelt took the space next to him and flip his safety selector to Auto just as Mick and Dwight burst out onto the roof. He took aim and started firing into the massive horde below. Bud stumbled out onto the roof next and made his way over to the firing group and looked down at the sea of dead faces that stared up at them.
“Sounds like a damn war zone out here!” He said to himself as he looked down at the horde. He spotted the reanimated corpse of Miss Mary and sucked in a sharp breath as the ache in his heart overwhelmed him. Mary wasn’t Bud's woman at that point, but he had hoped that she would be eventually but thanks to the damn zeds below she would never be.
“Sonsabitches!” Bud growled as the townspeople fired shot after shot into the turned up mangled faces below. Be drew one of the revolvers on his hip and took aim at Mary’s now hellish features.
“I’m sorry, Mar.” He said under his breath as he fired a single shot into her skull. She fell to the ground and Bud quickly turned away from the action wiping a single tear from his eye.
“Get those guns in here now!” Roosevelt shouted, looking over at Bud as he recovered from what he had just done. Bud didn’t reply with words. Anger at the loss of Mary took his thoughts and he started emptying his pistols into the horde below. The streetlights were providing plenty of light for them to take care of the horde as long as they continued to fixate on the fresh meat above their heads. Johnny was taking slow steady shots with his non-dominant hand. Mick and Dwight were mowing down zeds by the dozen as they held their triggers down and waved the rifles from side to side until their barrels began to glow a deep orangish red color from being fired so much without a break.
“Use your pistols for a while before you destroy those rifles!” Bud shouted after seeing the barrels glowing. Roosevelt was firing slow even bursts to avoid overheating his own rifle. He watched the crowd below as bullets tore through faces and necks. One of the passes Mick had made with his rifle had stitched across several foreheads blowing the tops off each one of their skulls. Lifeless corpses stacked up along the wall of the building pushing the rest of the zeds back farther into the street giving the shooters better points of aim in the streetlights below.
“We almost got them!” A voice at the end of the line shouted in between bursts of automatic gunfire. The horde was reduced to small pockets of the infected, but they were still in a frenzy for the fresh meat above. Johnny took aim at a man that looked to be in his early thirties. He wore blood stained blue jeans and a torn white t-shirt that quickly turned crimson as Johnny’s shot took off the man's entire face. Roosevelt fired three more bursts into the crowd below and then his bolt locked back.
“I’m empty!” He shouted down the line, looking back and forth for someone to toss him a fresh mag. When no one did he assumed that they were all just about out of ammo. He pulled out his Kimber and started firing single rounds at the zeds, but his shots kept hitting them in the chests and stomach. The iron sights were pretty much useless on the dark roof.
“Here, take my rifle!” Johnny shouted over the booming shots as he stood and handed his rifle off to his friend along with two spare mags.
“Make 'em count!” Johnny shouted as he pulled his pistol and fired into the crowd, not caring where the rounds hit.
“I’m empty!” Two more of the men shouted from the line before pulling out their own pistols and joining Johnny. They had all fired several thousand rounds at this point and Johnny was kind of shocked that there were still more than half of the men and women firing into the rapidly shrinking crowd of zeds. Ten minutes later only three men with rifles remained and around twenty zeds still stood in the street reaching skyward. Roosevelt was one of the three left and
he was now firing single shots just as Johnny had been earlier. The group watched as one after another of the zeds fell to the ground with fresh new holes in their skulls. Two more men ran empty leaving Roosevelt to finish the job alone. He continued to fire, taking down a few more of the zeds before his bolt locked back again. He yanked out the spent mag and slammed his last one home. He smacked the bolt release with the palm of his hand, sending a fresh round into the chamber. He dropped back down to a knee and took aim at one of the last remaining zeds. He fired the shot, the bullet ripped through the air hitting the monster square in the nose caving in the things face before exploding out of the back of its head. Finally, after several more shots, Roosevelt took aim at the last remaining zed. He watched it for a long second before Johnny’s voice interrupted his blank thoughts.
“Come on man squeeze the trigger!” Roosevelt made sure the red dot was placed on the gaping hole where the thing's nose used to be. He slowly eased back on the trigger after letting out a deep breath. The rifle bucked and the round smashed into the last zeds forehead sending gray matter splattering all over the lifeless pile of corpses below.
Chapter Twenty-Four
9:03 p.m. January 4th, 2049
Sweetwater, Tennessee
The street below was completely covered with hundreds of bullet riddled corpses. Spent brass layered the roof of the building everyone was still standing on. The last remaining townspeople stood around laughing and enjoying the moment of their victory. Bud waved a hand to quiet them all.
“First of all, I want to thank you all for an outstanding job but at the same time we need to keep our guard up. I don’t know if you noticed but it sounded like world war three out here while we were all taking down the horde. That's sure to get the attention of zeds for miles around so we need to be ready just in case more of them show up.” Bud stated as he glanced around the dark roof.
“We’re all out of rifle and pistol ammo. There is no way in hell we could hold off even twenty of those damn things.” A man with a curly mullet said from the side of the crowd.
“Good point Charlie but the good news is that I’ve still got quite a bit of ammunition in the station. We have all of this brass too.” Bud said kneeling down to grab a handful of the shiny spent cartridges.
“I’ve got everything we need to start reloading. I can set three people up in my basement. If we run them at least 8 hours a day, we’ll have more ammo than we’ll know what to do with.” Bud added.
“We can talk about all of that tomorrow. For now, let’s just get home and rest. Tomorrow is a brand-new day.” The group of people climbed down from the roof and all headed in separate directions. Bud Johnny and Roosevelt stood off to the side discussing where Johnny and Roosevelt would sleep.
“You guys just come on over to my house. I’ll help keep an eye out tonight so we can all three get some rest.” Bud said, heading for the side by side. Johnny and Roosevelt followed and climbed in behind him. Roosevelt got into the small utility bed so Johnny could have room to move around with his injured shoulder. A few minutes later they were walking into Buds home. He showed them around to the bathroom and the kitchen and told them to make themselves at home.
“I’ll take first watch and then wake one of you up in a few hours to take over.” Roosevelt said as he stepped into the kitchen.
“You have coffee?” He asked, looking around the countertops. Bud moved past Johnny.
“Does a bear shit in the woods and wipe his ass with a furry white bunny?” Bud asked with a chuckle. Roosevelt laughed.
“I suppose he probably does.” He said looking at Bud then Johnny while they all three chuckled. The coffee pot started to gurgle and churn sending the sweet smell of the roasted coffee beans into the air making all three of the men salivate.
“Will you help me check this wound before we call it a night?” Johnny asked. Bud nodded.
“Yeah no problem. Get that shirt off and that old dressing while I grab the first aid kit.” Bud said heading down a hall to the bathroom. He came back a few minutes later with a small red duffle full of medical supplies. Johnny pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and took a seat as Bud set the bag on the table and started pulling out various bandages. He put on some rubber gloves and grabbed a small bottle of peroxide and a wad of gauze before pouring the bubbling liquid into the angry looking wound in Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny sucked in a breath and bit down on his knuckle as the peroxide cleaned the wounds.
“Damn Bud you could have warned me before you just dumped that shit on there.” Johnny whined.
“Stop crying, you big titty baby.” Roosevelt said as he took a seat to decompress his back. Bud wiped away the crusty dried up blood and used the ends of the gauze to probe the wounds for shrapnel. Finding nothing he took one last look at the angry wound making sure there wasn't any infection in or around it. A few minutes later Bud was finishing up the dressing. He had taped a thick layer of gauze over the wound and then got up to throw away his small plastic trash bag.
“You’re all set.” Bud said as he stepped back from the trash can and removed the rubber gloves. Johnny thanked him and stood up from the table.
“Now where can I get some sleep around here?” Johnny asked, his sore shoulder sending waves of searing pain down his arm.
“Follow me. You can have the guest room till it’s your turn for guard duty.” Bud said.
“Night Rosie.” Johnny said, waving his good hand over his good shoulder as he followed Bud.
“See you in the morning bro.” Roosevelt replied as he got to his feet. He walked to the front door and stepped out onto the porch sipping his steaming cup of coffee. Darkness blanketed the landscape beyond the porch light as he stared out into its inky void. The night was calm and quiet now allowing him to relax a bit as he continued to watch the area and take slow sips of coffee. He looked up at the sky and the stars beyond seeing the dim white light of each one winking back at him. He spotted the red planet shining its faint red glow and smiled inwardly. He could not believe that only two weeks prior he had been on that planet studying ancient ruins of a long dead civilization. He shook his head at the absurdness of it all. He had gone from being on Mars doing something he had dreamed of his entire life to being back on Earth struggling to stay alive in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Thoughts of Ruby came smashing into his mind as he stared up at the sky. It dawned on him that he hadn’t thought of his dead wife since they left Florida. He didn’t have time to as they were fighting to stay alive every day now.
“I miss you bad baby.” He said in a soft voice as he thought about all the fun times they had shared. Before he could get too far down the rabbit hole of his wife's memory a loud roar shook the night. Roosevelts head snapped down toward the forest beyond. He heard that same strange roaring earlier in the day.
“What in the shit is that?” He demanded, watching the darkness for any movement. Grunting and crunching leaves and twigs followed the loud roar as Roosevelt tried to get a bead on whatever it was but it sounded as if it was coming from every direction as the noises echoed off of the surrounding homes and buildings. The noises began to fade into the darkness leaving Roosevelt standing there with his pistol drawn and a confused look covering his face. He stood there for a long time waiting for the creature to return but it never did. Around three a.m. his watch started to chirp letting him know that it was Buds turn to take watch so he could sleep for a few hours. He and Bud had decided to let Johnny skip guard duty and sleep so that his wounds could heal properly. He turned to head inside but Bud was already coming out the door, a steaming cup of coffee in his left hand and a thin cigar in his right.
“You sleep alright?” Roosevelt asked, trying to get past the pleasantries as fast as possible. Bud gave a short nod and took a long pull from his stogie.
“Always do.” Bud said, dismissing Roosevelt's attempt to chat first thing in the morning.
“Heard that same roar again a little while ago. It was close th
is time. I could hear the leaves and twigs crunching under its feet as it moved around out there.” Roosevelt said, pointing his chin to the dark forest. Bud turned his gaze toward Roosevelt.
“You sure it was the same thing we heard yesterday? It couldn’t have been a cougar or mountain lion?” Bud asked. Roosevelt shook his head emphatically,
“No definitely not. It was the same exact sound we heard on the road yesterday.” Bud slowly nodded his head and turned to look back out toward the dark forest.
“Alright well go ahead and get some rest. I’ll wake you up if it comes back.” Bud said before taking a sip of coffee. Roosevelt thanked the older man and finished his own cup of coffee before turning towards the door. He headed inside and sat his dirty cup in the kitchen sink before making his way back to the couch for some well-deserved sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
5:22 a.m. January 5, 2049
Sweetwater, Tennessee
Roosevelt woke to the sound of clanging metal pots and the bright beams of sunlight peeking through the window and into his face. He sat up on the edge of the couch, wiping the sleep from his eyes and smacking his dry lips. Once he started to feel halfway normal, he stood up and headed for the bathroom.
“Hey, if you shake it more than twice, you're playin’ with it! Hurry up! Breakfast is almost ready.” Bud sounded from out in the hall.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll probably go blind to if I keep at it.” Roosevelt replied with a chuckle as he washed his hands. He dried them with the burgundy hand towel and then looked himself over in the mirror.
“My God you’re one beautiful specimen of a man!” He said to no one but himself before making two finger guns and popping off both rounds at his reflection in the mirror. He spun around to leave the bathroom already feeling one-hundred times better than he did when he first opened his eyes. He opened the door and jumped back, fists up and ready to fight as the figure lurched passed him into the bathroom. Johnny didn’t even bother waiting for Roosevelt to leave before he started to urinate in the toilet.
