by Woods, Shane
“Dinner’s UP!” I called to the horde, moving back toward the door and reaching down just long enough to wedge it open with the foot of the nearest fallen infected.
I turned and ran to the stairs bellowing “IT’S ME!” just before I rounded the corner. Leaping up three steps at a time, I nearly literally ran into the arms of the remining members, backed by a pair of clearly frightened strangers. After repeating the news of James, the first infected hit the bottom of the staircase.
It careened into the staircase, actually. The infected man, looking much like everyone’s favorite barbecue father, burst around the corner, hit the first step, and carried his momentum right into the wall. The sheetrock cracked and broke free in places as he rebounded and scrambled for purchase on all fours, nearly pulling off a Looney Tunes cartoon burnout as Dave and Rich opened fire.
“Controlled bursts, make them count, we’re gonna need all our ammo!” I instructed, then turned to the two newcomers. “There any way out of this floor?”
“Windows are barred, mate,” the man replied in a strong British accent.
“On the second fucking floor?” I asked, incredulous. “Who the fuck bars the second floor?”
“Well,” said the woman in a matching accent, “there was a robbery, and- ”
“Where?” I asked, incredulous. “Here?”
“Well, no,” she dragged, “down the street but it still bothered me.”
“That’s why you get a gun, lady!” I spat to her. “Something besides that ancient double barrel pops here is holding!”
“Well I’m sorry I’m just not comfortable with-” she started.
“Later,” I shot, moving to check the bedrooms. All the windows were barred. Shots rang out from the hallway as I peered out and scanned the mass of freaks gathered in the front yard.
Christ there was a lot of the fucking things. A crowd rung in like a horseshoe pushed and fought for access through the front door, while others tried the windows despite heavy burglar bars. They were ravenous, and completely determined to gain entry one way or the other.
“They’re coming!” Dave called in as a new fusillade of shots flew down to the first floor. I ran to join my friends.
The man came to aid, loading new shells into the aging side-by-side. He was dressed in such a way that it appeared as if he were about to go on a fox hunt. A matching jacket, trousers, and bowler cap all woven in the kind of brown that looked like it would be better suited to furniture in the mid 90s. His round face flushed as he brought the shotgun up and dumped both barrels into the upper half of a teenage boy in track shorts. The boy fell and added to the eight or so bodies already piling up as the remainder of the pellets from the massive old cannon found another freak behind that one.
More infected tried to hit the gap for the stairs and missed their entry by a margin. So much blood and body matter pooled at the bottom of the steps already that even the carpet was slick. The air hung thick with the coppery scent of them, infected B.O., ancient feces, and gun smoke.
I joined in as the swarm tried to make their way upward, none making it further than halfway as they slid down to trip up the next one in line. As the ones from the front fell, they pushed back those below them.
I’ll be damned. Funneling them was working like a charm.
More freaks could be heard infiltrating the house as they clamored through the open front door, shrieking and knocking loose everything in their path on their way to a meal.
I cycled through the rest of another magazine and swapped it out for a new one, readying the weapon again.
“Rich! Dave! Korin!” I ordered. “Take the windows, get what you can hit for sure! Jimmy! On me; help keep them downstairs!”
They barely spoke a word as they broke contact at the stairs and rushed away. In a mere moment later, I could hear them shattering glass elsewhere on the floor and opening fire. The cacophony continued as what seemed to be a never-ended flood of the infected followed the commotion we were making
Somewhere between the bursts of weapons fire and all the other commotion I heard a new noise. Very familiar, yet alien, I felt it as much as I heard it. A moment later it came again.
BOOM!
The sound split our entire world in one large concussive blast.
“What the fuck was that?” Dave shouted from a nearby room.
“I brought toys!” Rich shouted back.
“Is he gone mad?” asked the woman.
“No!” I shouted back. “He’s crazy, probably only mad that he’s here!”
“No, I meant mad as in-” she started. “Oh, no bother.”
I shot a look at her as there was a sudden lull in the action from the stairwell. She was unremarkable in most ways. A rather short, and shapeless individual but what stood her apart from other people would have been her darkly dyed red hair and green eyes. These features were framed with an almost perfectly square chiseled jawline and a pair of bushy dark eyebrows that reminded me of wooly bear caterpillars in the autumn. It gave her a nearly comical appearance at any angle, almost a caricature in profile view. I turned back to focus on the work at hand before a chuckle left my lips. My God, what a pair!
Just then, the entire environment shattered for a moment as one blast, followed by a second, then a third much, much larger one that shook the entire house. Hell, it shook the air in the house, followed by a loud crash from the front.
“Everybody okay?” I called out and was met with the right number of ‘yes’ answers in one form or another.
Just as these calls came back to me, the bottom of the stairwell flooded with a redoubled number of the freaks. So many new faces showed up to join us, upturned eyes and mouths barely taking themselves away from the sight of us even as they clamored for position to be first in line at this glorious buffet.
“Back to the stairs!” I shouted.
“They’re all inside now!” Dave yelled as he came flying into view from the bedroom. He turned to face down the stairs and unleashed a full magazine from the AK down the steps, shredding everybody in sight, moving or not. He drew his pistol forward, allowing the rifle to fall limp on its sling, informing me, “Out of ammo for the big boy!”
“What about Charlie Chaplin over there? Trade him!” I instructed.
“I’m low, too!” the guy answered, then, “And it’s Ash, you wanker, not Charlie Chaplin!”
“You’re kidding me, right?” I answered, perplexed.
“Sorry? It’s a common name!” Ash informed.
“No, it’s cool,” I replied. “I just thought a guy named Ash would do better in a house surrounded by monsters!”
Catching my reference, he actually chuckled, grinned, and dumped two more loads of buckshot downstairs while saying something I couldn’t quite catch.
In the proceeding moment, Rich appeared, holding a section of steel pipe the length and diameter of a man’s forearm.
“You guys should go to the attic!” he informed us, his frosty blue eyes flashing in the low light from outside, then eyeing the device he held, “The, uh, far side of the attic.”
“Oh god he’s back on his bullshit,” I stammered. “Okay y’all heard him! Upstairs! MOVE!”
We scrambled upstairs. Starting across the uppermost floor of the house, I stopped and watched for just a moment, and took a headcount to make sure we still had everyone.
The last thing I could hear after that for several minutes was the flick of a Zippo, a soft hiss, and Rich’s footsteps as he bolted upwards behind us. Then the world ended. Again. But, just for a moment this time.
The sound hit with physical force greater than any we’d felt before. I could have sworn the floor of the attic jumped with the concussion, and nothing was left to behold but a ringing in my ears. A ringing so deep it was as if my own brain had turned into an old dinner triangle.
In the silence, the first form appeared after us, bursting through the doorway and into the attic. I unloaded an entire magazine into it from the Sig, my rifle on its las
t magazine.
A second and third form broke into the dark of the attic, falling silently to more gunfire, then nothing. Nothing but the ringing in my ears as we scrambled in perceived silence to check each other. The first sounds I heard as my ears found their places were my friends. Everyone’s okay. Then immediately, the woman started in.
“Look, I appreciate the rescue, really,” she began, her voice coming from miles away, “but I don’t like you just barging in and acting like I was wrong for doing something because my windows were barred. It’s not nice and ordering us around is just, well, it’s controlling!”
“What’s your name?” Dave asked her, trying to distract and diffuse, but I was having none of it. We just risked everything to rescue these two, and she was bitching about how we talked to her?
“My name?” she asked. “Oh! I’m Lara!”
She gave a beaming smile at Dave that somehow did nothing but highlight the premature wrinkles on what should be a youthful age. I guessed her to be about my age, give or take, and a good fifteen or more younger than Ash.
“Lara?” I interrogated, echoing her attitude. “A British chick who just happens to be named Lara? What are we, fifteen? You don’t even like guns, and I highly doubt you’ve been raiding many tombs in your shape.”
“Alright, alright,” Ash interjected, offering a prize-winning smile. “Let’s stop this. Just now. Her real name is Lauren, Lauren Dennis. I don’t know why she chooses Lara, either.”
“Guys,” Rich added another two cents. “This is ridiculous. We still aren’t safe, and James is dead. Please.”
“I agree,” Korin added. “James was nice to me, he helped everyone.”
“And I’m not letting his sacrifice go to waste,” I stated firmly. “Let’s get ready. Mr. Chaplin? Groucho Marx? Get your things. We’re leaving.”
Ash chuckled, and Lauren glared at me like I’d kicked her dog, but she kept her mouth shut this time and in a moment they were ready.
“Rich, you’re still driving, you’ll go first. We’ll follow,” I ordered to all present. “Jimmy, you have the good shotgun, follow Lauren, you’ll take the rear. Let’s go, guys. I only see a couple slow ones outside. We can make that. I’ll carry James.”
All responded to the affirmative and we departed the attic. Each person with a gun out, ready, and covering their own unique direction. Most of us, at least.
We swept through the second floor, finding only one lone straggler. She looked around aimlessly and didn’t even seem to notice us as Rich pushed a round through her skull and kept the line moving forward.
We moved as quietly as possible until we hit the stairwell for the first floor. It was a mess of bodies, fluids, and broken building material, and was difficult to pass through in the least. Rich did his best to use his foot to roll infected corpses aside, but they were so piled up he could buy almost no extra room. This resulted in an awkward passing for all leaving a few, myself included, to slip in the thick stew of remnants left over by whatever the hell Rich threw down there.
The entire back of the first floor was blown out, showing a backyard unpopulated by our tormenters. The floor closest to the gap had been blown clean through to the basement. A pool of thickening gore followed the dip that now warped the floor and ran into the basement of the house, leaving thick splashing sounds as it fell to the floor.
The place reeked, as well. Burnt hair, carpet, and burnt infected flesh all did their best to assault my nostrils, leaving my stomach on the edge of retching. Others did their best to keep composed as we each stole a chance to peek at a very proud Rich Lester.
The smell didn’t seem to bother him at all, neither did the gore, as the insane Irish fuck took in his handywork, very likely already planning improvements.
We made our way around, then out through the front door and into the sunlight that was beginning to break from the cloud cover. I decided as I passed that I’d leave James where he lay for a moment and make sure we were clear before retrieving him for a proper burial.
That decision was ideal, as I was about to learn. The few shamblers that resided in the yard were evicted as we broke cover, and the nightmare came back home to roost.
Rich appeared first into the sunlight. No sooner had his heel breached that threshold, the first high-pitched dinner bell shriek sounded, and my heart nearly turned into one of Rich’s explosives.
“RUN!” I cried so loud my own breath hurt. “Rich, drive, lure them! Guys go with Rich!”
The first half of our line broke free and sprinted for the truck as the rest of us started to fall back.
The infected were still horde strength as I could now see. They spilled from the sides of this house. They came from cover across the street. They even came from inside of other houses. A couple of dozen in number at least.
As Dave and I fell back to the house, following Jimmy and Lauren, more shrieks sounded from within the home. Before I could process what was happening, monsters from all angles inside rushed forward. A shot load of freaks filtered between and over furniture as even more came in through the gap in the back of the house.
The first one hit Jimmy before he could even react. It came perpendicular from the front room, the momentum carrying them both out of sight as one shrieked and the other screamed.
“TRUCK!” I shouted, and we all reversed direction a second time and sprinted, the infected already darting around within reach of us, testing us, and feeling us out. Dave and I hit the bed of the pickup just as it started spitting sod and soil from its tires, grasping for purchase towards our escape.
I felt a fresh, hot round from Dave’s pistol breeze past my ear as it found the throat of a nearby infected. Likely, it blew out the spine because the creature crashed face first into the lawn, nearly impacting one spinning truck tire as it slid to a pause. Then I heard a yelp that was half squeak, half bark as a linebacker-sized infected pummeled Lauren.
It hit the small woman from behind at a dead run that was nearly twice her own speed. They both hit the dirt half the distance from the swaying trailer where she had been a mere heartbeat before.
The truck began picking up speed and it hit me that this was it for her, the woman was gone.
“Hold Ash back!” I yelled to Dave, just as the man lurched forward yelling for Lauren. Dave grabbed him in time to keep him from going over, and we departed the scene in a cloud of smoke and spray of topsoil. The entire back end of the truck jumped and shuddered as we found pavement and began to gather momentum, then it started to even out.
Deciding to try for mercy, I turned to face the scene behind us. As runners gave chase, Lauren and her new friend finally stopped their momentum.
The bruiser of a monstrosity perched over her, nearly insect-like in his posture. Just as she rose to flee, tearing clear two of her fingernails in an attempted escape, it buried its face deep into her back just below the shoulder blades. The monster brought its head back, a sickening snap and crunch issuing forth from the scene, audible over even the vehicle’s noise. It swallowed its prize nearly whole and swiped at her, rolling Lauren to her freshly wounded back.
She no longer moved. Her gasps and screams told us the woman still lived, yet she ceased any further fight against the freak that held her captive to the surface of the planet.
Somehow, her fight had left her already, but her screams of terror only grew. It soon became apparent to me. The why, that is.
His first bite paralyzed her, I thought.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered as I stood and braced myself with the ladder rack over the truck bed. I brought my rifle to my shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The weapon bucked just a little in my shoulder as it let out a bark.
Miss
Her shrill screams continued as the nearby smaller and also the slower infected moved in, calling their first dibs on the fresh meal. They began low, each taking a section of leg and digging in, lower on her flaccid form than the big guy had perched.
As more and more freaks dove in, and the
distance grew, I began to get a hopeless feeling deep in my gut. Christ, she knew she was being eaten and couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t even feel it. Could do nothing but watch herself be consumed. Helpless.
I squeezed the trigger several more times. Again, and again. The moving vehicle adding its own factor to the shots, and each missed. Rounds kicked up dirt and debris, they winged monsters and dug into infected, but none hit their true mark.
“FUCK!” I shouted as I started firing all I had left. I had hoped to at least hit something. Something vital, something keeping this poor woman alive, but it wasn’t happening.
My rifle clicked on empty, and the distance grew. The crimson puddle around the feast expanded. Encircling them like a bullseye. The buck stops here, kiddo.
The only thing that diminished with the distance was the pursuit that was against us, and the volume of her screams.
Ash’s screams for Lauren finally began to fade as we lost sight of the area. They were replaced by silence as the man stared blankly at the houses we passed. Only occasionally would a new tear fall to forge its own path through his scruffy long cheek stubble.
The only thing that was said for the rest of the ride home was by Dave. He asked Ash, in sympathy, if Lauren was his girlfriend or sister or something.
“Cousin, mate,” Ash spoke softly. “Favorite cousin. I was here on holiday to visit her.”
No suitable words could find me, and so none left. We watched as the neighborhood passed, each person in the back of this truck stuck in their own thoughts. We had all lost somebody, mostly in the first days of the end, but the hits and losses never seemed to stop coming. There was always somebody hurting, somebody dying, and I had a feeling in my gut that we were nowhere near the end of it.
We nearly coasted through the neighborhood as we went. I had just about had enough to force my thoughts away from James when the radio on my hip chirped, and I touched my earpiece and spoke the go ahead.
“Should we circle back and grab what we’d staged? Over.” Rich’s gravelly voice crackled in my ear.
“Negative,” I informed him as a pair of freaks broke my line of sight and stopped as if trying to figure whether or not we could be caught. “Look around us. These neighborhoods were practically empty. Now they’re everywhere. Over.”
