by Smith, S. L.
Many of them leaned in closer at this. There was actually a twinkle in Isherwood’s eye. Padre actually looked over to Isherwood and smiled, knowing the third option was always his favorite. Here we go, Isherwood thought to himself. Plan ‘C’ for Plan Chicken.
“We’re just downriver from where the southern end of False River comes closest to reuniting with the Mississippi. This is also the last area we need to seal up to finish making St. Maryville an island. We can’t afford to go amphibious like we did before,” Padre said looking directly at Isherwood and knowing what he was thinking. “Because the only amphibious spot where both swarms could be united, inside the lines, is in the southern bend of the lake. We can’t just fill the lake up with zombies and not expect terrible consequences down the road once they start scrambling back up the banks, nipping at swimmers’ toes, etc.”
“So that’s everything we can’t do.” Jarrah said, “what’s left?”
“We have this way of using the zombies’ bodies,” he explained to the newcomers. “The bodies, once killed or re-killed or whatever, act as ‘self-building barricades.’ It’s worked great for us, but it uses a lot of bullets. But that mounding of the corpses is what gave me the idea. You see, there’s this factory …”
CHAPTER THREE: THE FACTORY PLAN
“You sure about this?” Karen Gill, who the newcomers just called “Gill,” asked.
Padre was again looking through his binoculars and lying just below the crest of the levy. He had passed the bigger nautical binoculars on to Isherwood before the groups split up. He and a few others, including Gill, were staring into the field which stretched out in front of them for hundreds of acres. The field was ringed with trees made hazy by the distance.
“Doesn’t much matter now,” Padre whispered in response. He was watching the remnants of the northward-marching horde. The main bulk of it had already disappeared around the line of trees at the edge of the fields. Stragglers stretched backward from the main horde for another half mile or so, just forward of their position. “But yeah, the idea came like an idea should come, if it’s coming from the right place.”
Karen looked at him quizzically and almost contemptuously. She could see a smile creasing Padre’s beard, and decided he was just mocking her. She could feel her hands again mashing into fists.
They had left Padre’s Humvee on the River Road a mile back, so the sound of the engine wouldn’t turn the swarm around prematurely. They didn’t want the swarm to notice their arrival until the time was right. Padre kept peaking back at his watch, as the swarm gradually disappeared before them.
After another couple of minutes, Padre lowered the binoculars for the last time. Turning to the others, he cleared his throat to get their attention. “Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s get down the levy and across the fence before we start making noise, though.” The others nodded their assent and soon their small group was trotting down the far side of the levy towards the road. Besides Padre and Gill, there was Holly and Lee Majors. Isherwood and Justin had left with the remaining newcomers, except for Miss Abby and Hill. These were to stay at Smithfield and make no noise while the horde was re-routed past the home by Padre and the others. Chet, Jarrah, and Hoskins had been sent with Isherwood and Justin. Each of these men had some degree of technical ability which might be used to enhance Padre’s plan at the factory. Hoskins, they discovered soon into their planning, had actually worked at a similar type of factory. Padre had taken this as confirmation of his plan. Isherwood, too, had already offered several ideas to enhance Padre’s original idea.
The four of them were soon standing on the warm surface of the asphalt road. “Alright, now. Go.” Padre said, as he pointed a flare gun skyward. The flare streaked red and skittered through the air in a tall arc. When it finally burst above their hands, they felt suddenly the gaze of a thousand eyes turning slowly in their direction. They were utterly exposed. They were a feast of roadkill, just waiting to be devoured.
The others suddenly erupted in a delayed response to Padre’s command. Lee Majors didn’t need much encouragement, despite his outwardly, cynical demeanor. He started hollering like a madmen and shooting his pistol into the air like Yosemite Sam. He was also cursing a blue streak like the Looney Tune. He appeared to be using this opportunity to release his long-pent up rage. Holly huffed in discomfort at Lee’s display of emotion. Padre, apparently ignoring the crazed man’s language, placed one of his large hands across the man’s shoulder to counsel him, “Don’t waste the ammo, Lee.” Then, pointing at a place just astride the road, Padre said, “use it.”
It hadn’t taken long. There were already three of four of the stragglers from the main group nearing them from the far side of the road. After dispatching the first zombie at a surprising distance for a pistol – over twenty yards – Lee had turned along with the women from his group to flee down the road.
“Wait,” Padre said.
“Wait?” Gill asked indignantly. “Are you nuts?” Holly, as well, sighed in mock-agony.
Lee, instead of complaining, actually turned around at Padre’s instructions and returned to his side. “Dumb Dora,” he said, shaking his head and patting his forehead. “He’s right. We can’t leave until we see the main mass of those things come back around the corner.”
The redhead was nodding in anger. Her lips were pursed so tight, it looked as though her whole body was about to be sucked through a straw into the vacuum of space. There was also a crazed look in her face that grew and then softened. “If that’s how it’s gonna be, fine.” Gill grabbed Holly’s hand, surprising the other girl out her teenage angst as she lurched forward. “Boys,” she said, tipping an imaginary hat as she passed Padre and Lee dragging Holly behind her.
Gill left Holly teetering on the edge of the road, as she hopped across the deep ditch that ran alongside it. “Sure,” Gill said. “Stay there, Holland. Pop their little heads if they come stumbling into the ditch. When Gill had first let go of the other girl’s hand, Holly’s face was a mess of emotions, mostly indignation. When Gill looked back, Holly’s mood had clicked to an entirely new setting. She looked both resolute and sinister. A firmly rooted shadow, looming above the ditch with knives gleaming from either hand.
Padre was watching all this and nodding. “These two may be very helpful.”
“Oh yeah, they’re acid-blooded killing machines from hell when the mood takes them.” Lee said matter-of-factly. “You wouldn’t believe where we first came across them. They were threading their way through a helluva swarm. It was right in the middle and under an interstate interchange. Crap-freakin’ central. The hordes had pushed us back and back and back until we were in the heart of the city’s swarm nest. They were literally raining down on us from all the overpasses –exploding like blood slushy water balloons. We were goners, just trying to go out in a blaze of glory with Old Mother Hubbard looking on from her wheelchair. We were dropping like flies, and then all of a sudden, we weren’t. They were like a freight train and we were the hobos. Freakin’ majestic.”
Padre was nodding and watching Gill and Holly ply their trade as he listened to Lee. “Then why cower in fear as the swarm passed the house by? Why come this way at all?”
“Old Mother Hubbard, that’s why. Hello!” Lee answered with disgust. “Plus, moods don’t last and neither do miracles. We couldn’t stay in the city long term.”
As they watched, Gill was storming across the field as if she were on horseback and the battle standards of the War Maiden of France were trailing after her. Padre looked at her dumbly for a second, wondering where she had been storing her weapon of choice all this time. It was a bo staff. He had noticed her long legs, as much as a priest could notice such things without causing trouble for himself. But there was no way she could have concealed a whole staff down her jeans, he thought, no matter how long. And then, in a flash, he understood. “Clever girl,” he said aloud, though Lee ignored it. Gill carried a collapsible bow staff, like a blind man’s folding cane, but stout
.
“Watch this,” Lee said, removing one hand from his folded arms to point at Holly. The younger girl, Padre saw, was crouched down and fiddling with her Converse All-Stars. “Don’t know how she keeps them so white,” Lee snorted.
The edge of the oncoming swarm had started tumbling dumbly into the roadside ditch. Louisiana’s river roads were lined by minor ravines instead of shoulders. They looked like the helmetless ghosts of World War I-era doughboys staggering through the trenches. Holly had clearly seen this spectacle coming, or else had plenty of experience with the phenomenon. As Padre watched, the high-schooler stood back up after adjusting her shoes. A moment later, the priest thought she had gone mad or else was re-enacting the chimney sweep rooftop scene from Mary Poppins.
“Our little Rockette,” Lee mused with a fatherly bearing. It slowly dawned on Padre that the girl hadn’t been just tightening her shoelaces before battle. She had been fixing bayonets. She had somehow managed to secure her knives to the front or underside of her shoes, Padre couldn’t tell which. A red-black slurry quickly covered her from the knees down.
She was kicking and sidestepping her way along the side of the ditch. Each time she kicked, or almost every time, one of the zed-heads exploded. Was she, Padre wondered to himself, humming a tune as she went? Padre crossed himself.
*****
Justin was driving his modified Escalade, thinking about his old blue truck. They had left his truck on the Audubon bridge, using it and other vehicles to create a wall across the bridge. That had been weeks ago, Justin was thinking. It wouldn’t stop living people that could climb, but it should be enough to slow the zombies, if not stop them altogether. A random stray, they could take care of that. When was the last time we checked on the bridge, he was thinking.
“Heads up, bro.” Chet said to Justin, tapping the driver’s shoulder before turning in the passenger’s seat to check either side of the roadway. Justin shook his thoughts out of his mind to see the dark shape of the rising walls of stacked cars that marked Fort Livonia.
It was just them for this part of the plan. Isherwood’s Jeep had peeled away from their little caravan when they passed the factory a couple miles back on the highway. Isherwood had Jarrah and Hoskins along with him. Justin was supposed to give them a couple hours before rolling in with a couple thousand zombies following him. Isherwood and the others thought that, given a couple hours, they could get moving whatever might still be functioning at the factory.
The highway leading to Livonia from the northeast, Highway 984, was nearly completely free of wrecks. The Livonia crew had cleared all the adjacent roadways to build the walls of their fort. It made for easy movement between St. Maryville and Livonia. As they got closer to the stacked car walls, however, they could see that the road was not clear of other things. They could see gray shadows moving along the base of the walls.
Justin checked his watch. “What’d’ya think, Chet? Go time?”
“Is this thing right?” Chet tapped the clock on the dashboard.
“Uh,” Justin hesitated. “Just look at mine.” Chet looked at Justin’s outstretched wrist then to the moving shadows ahead. The road ahead was already beginning to fill with patches of zombies. Chet also looked back the way they had come. There were far fewer of the creatures staggering behind them.
“We’re supposed to get there for noon, right?” Chet asked, running some numbers in his head.
“High Noon,” Justin nodded. He was watching the nearest zombie, as it stumbled against the wide reinforced grill of his Escalade. “At O. K. Corral, no less.”
“Better be better than OK,” Chet grumbled. “Yeah, I saw we get this show on the road.”
“Okay,” Justin answered. “Here’s the play …”
*****
About ten minutes later, the Escalade had backed nearly all the way into the thickening crowd. At about twenty yards from the wall of stacked cars, the brake lights kicked on and Chet popped out of the turret at the top of the vehicle. He was not a big man. He had probably just started growing his near-middle-aged paunch when everything started falling apart. He had a dark mop of hair and thick, patchy scruff across his face. He really wished he had a loudspeaker. “Hey!” He yelled. “People in there!”
“Very articulate,” Justin murmured from the driver’s seat.
“Shut up,” Chet shot back in a whisper.
“Livonia people! Can you hear me? Tommy, Phil!” Several acres of zombies were lurching now full tilt towards the Escalade. “We’ve come to lead this crap away, you got that?”
“Yeah, I can hear you, over. click-shhh.” Chet heard Justin say from inside.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were just gonna get ‘em on the radio? You jerk.” Chet kicked at the back of the driver’s seat. He could hear Justin giggling in the front seat. A smile, partially of embarrassment, cracked on Chet’s face. “Whatever. Not cool, man.”
“Hiyo, silver,” Justin murmured as he shifted the car back into drive. “Away!” Instead of slamming the pedal down and bursting forward, the SUV began crawling forward. Several blood and mud-stained hands squeaked across the glass windows and thunked against the tires secured around the vehicle’s sides.
“Grab the z-sticker,” Justin called back to him.
“This is gonna be a long drive,” Chet mused to himself, still looking back at the growing throng of zombies dragging their rotted, mostly bare feet after the car. He was slowly pulling a long pole out through the turret hole. It was a beefed-up version of a frog gigging pole. He would use it during the drive to the factory to nudge away any zombie track stars and maybe kill a few in the process.
There was an older, white man stumbling around in a night gown. Somehow, Chet noticed, the old zombie was keeping pace with the car. He stabbed the frog-gigging pole into the man’s chest through his ragged and torn nightshirt. “There you go, Ebenezer,” Chet groaned as he tried pushing the Dickensian-looking zombie away from the truck. When he tugged the pole back towards him, however, he found he was dragging the man back towards the truck. Crap, he thought to himself, the very first one and gotta get it stuck in his sternum.
Chet struggled with the old zombie, pushing and pulling on him, as if it were a little dance. “Bah humbug,” he groaned.
“Try twisting the pole loose,” Justin advised as he sat watching the grisly scene reflected in his side mirror. Whatever Chet did next seemed to work, as the man in the night shirt soon tumbled away, crashing, as he did, into a pack of three zombies.
“Nice,” Justin chuckled. “Take out the Ghosts of Christmas past through future, while you’re at it.”
“Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal.” Chet shot back, as he stabbed the pole instead into an eye socket.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE O. K. CORRAL
Isherwood was standing along a metal railing looking northward through the marine binoculars. He was standing on the metal landing of an outdoor stair well. The stairs and platform were bolted to the side of a raised operations facility for the factory. Apart from the operations room, the factory was for the most part entirely outdoors. It was a stone-crushing factory. Four long mountains of gravel blotted out large sections of the sky behind him.
“How far out now?” Jarrah called up to Isherwood. Only a few zombies had stumbled across their path upon entering the tall chain-linked fence that completely enclosed the factory. No doubt this was because the gate was still locked tight. The lock had been a challenge for Isherwood’s bolt cutters. Both Hoskins and Isherwood had to pull on the tool’s long arms.
Isherwood was now standing at the tallest point in the factory, aside from the tops of the conveyor belts that poured crushed stone onto the peaks of the gravel mounds. He was able to see both clouds of dust approaching the factory. There was one from the north and one from the south. The cloud coming up the highway from the south was closer. This would be Justin and Chet leading a swarm away from their Livonia outpost. Padre, Lee, and the ladies were leading another throng of zombies pas
t Smithfield. Padre had the longer road.
“I’d say Justin and Chet are about a mile and a half off. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Padre’s group really only just came into view. They’re another hour or so away.”
“That should work out.” Jarrah said, nodding his head. “If the priest gets here too fast, he’ll be pinned between the two swarms. Pinned like a bug. That’s no good. Chomp, chomp.”
“I get the picture.” Isherwood answered, masking his anxiety with frustration at the man’s frequent questions. “How’s Hoskins coming with getting the power on? You helping him?” But Jarrah didn’t answer, having walked outside of earshot. Isherwood guessed he just didn’t want to answer.
Isherwood was also in radio contact with both crews. Padre’s signal was growing stronger, but there was still a lot of static.
Isherwood took another look at the approaching dust clouds of the two swarms and then lowered the heavy marine binoculars. He turned and tugged on the metal door to the operations control room. Though the factory’s fence had been locked tight, the rest of the place was wide open. The workers had obviously left in a rush. Isherwood picked up a fallen clipboard as he returned to the broad panel of displays, dials, and buttons. He look ominously into a mug of coffee that had been left behind in the rush to leave. There was still some coffee left inside, but the remaining liquid had grown a thick, colorful skin of something.
Most of the capability of the operations center was lost without the electrical grid. Nevertheless, they expected some of the place to come back to life once Hoskins got the generators back up and running. He had found plenty of diesel stored in above-ground tanks beside the large shed that housed the generator area. He would likely need to hand crank the gas if refueling was necessary. Nearly all the fuel gauges in the bank of diesel generators displayed at least half a tank.
