by TW Brown
I ignored it.
I did a baseball slide as I reached Amy and felt a stinging pain on my left side that would be making itself known with much more clarity as soon as the adrenaline ebbed. I grabbed Amy’s arm and threw it over my shoulders, jerking her to her feet unceremoniously. She let out a muffled cry as she tried to bite back the pain, but to her credit, she was already limping along with me as fast as we could manage. The minivan loomed ahead like a burgundy-colored wall of safety as a series of gunshots sounded from in front as well as behind me. I wasn’t fully cognizant that the ones in front were from my people until I actually reached the minivan and pushed Amy behind it before joining her.
I had to do a self-examination to make sure that the only injury I’d sustained was what would develop into a semi-bad case of road rash. I looked over at Amy to see that she’d drawn her own handgun and was giving it a quick look to ensure it was ready for action.
Another round of gunfire erupted and I heard somebody cry out, but it was impossible to tell who or what side they were on. I saw somebody run across a yard to my right. The person dove over a downed garbage can that was riddled with bullets a second later. I didn’t hear any sort of reaction, but that didn’t mean very much considering all that was happening around me as people began yelling back and forth and more shooting rattled on.
The battle was getting intense and another trio of Molotov’s exploded on either side of me. One felt like it might’ve been just on the other side of the van Amy and I hid behind and used for cover.
“We’re gonna get picked off here,” she shouted to me over the din of screams and gunfire.
“And where would you have us go?” I yelled to be heard as the boom of a shotgun came from close by.
I will count it as some good luck because I would not consider myself to be some sort of field combat specialist. The shadow that appeared just beyond Amy’s shoulder caused me to flick my left hand up and bring my weapon level where I expected the center mass of a body to be located when it came into view.
I had to adjust down, but my brain was too busy sending signals that would allow me the best chance of survival for me to register why. The figure was decked out in what at first looked like some kind of body armor, but proved to be nothing more exotic than baseball catcher’s gear. I fired off three quick rounds and the body spun away, landing hard on the pavement.
I heard a scream from somewhere and another shadow appeared suddenly. My weapon was already basically aimed where it needed to be and the person ran directly into my next volley of shots. This time it was easy to tell that I’d just shot and killed a woman. I had no doubt that she was dead considering how she jerked to a halt when my first round hit her in the middle of her chest and acted like a giant fist, putting a sudden stop to her advance. The next round left a crater where her right eye should be. I have no idea where the third round hit because Amy was getting up to a crouch and urging me to do the same.
A second later, I understood why. It was as if the minivan had turned into a bullet magnet. I heard the pings and plinks of bullets slamming into it with a thundering roll. The smell of gasoline wafted into my nostrils and I was suddenly very thankful that cars didn’t explode in real life like they did in the movies when they were shot in the gas tank. That didn’t mean a spark couldn’t ignite what was now leaking from who knew how many holes in the gas tank.
It was time to move. I looked over at Amy and saw tears leaking down her face. She was obviously in pain and every step was only making it worse.
“Just grit your teeth and we’ll get out of this,” I said above the din.
She looked over at me with a strange expression and then scowled. “You think this is because of the pain?” she indicated her tears.
I nodded, after all, it seemed like a logical conclusion. She glanced over to the bodies sprawled just a few feet away. I guess I’d simply blocked them out. That was the best way to keep my conscience at least partially intact. Killing people was not something I thought I would ever get used to…at least I hoped that was the case. My eyes brought the two bodies into focus and I felt my insides twist. The woman was already occupying a permanent place in my mind so that she could visit me in my nightmares, but now I saw clearly the figure in the baseball gear.
I guessed him to be perhaps fifteen. His light skin and freckles gave him an even more pronounced boyishness to his appearance and I could easily imagine him cruising down the sidewalk on a skateboard or heading up to Mount Hood with a bunch of his buddies to go snowboarding. Basically, he was the boy-next-door.
“We don’t have time for this,” I said around the lump that had formed in my own throat.
To emphasize my point, one of the Molotov’s arced overhead and landed just about fifteen feet or so beyond us. The wall of heat slammed into me and I was pretty sure the scraggly beard trying to come in with its patchy ugliness got singed back a bit.
I threw my arm across my nose as the smell of burning fuel sent a bitter coil of foulness up each nostril and down my throat. I grabbed Amy by the arm and started for the nearest yard. If we could reach the front door to the house and get inside, we would exponentially decrease the chance of being shot and killed than if we remained out here on the street.
To her credit, Amy moved quick and the two of us reached the door. I gave the knob a twist and felt my heart sink. Of course, it was locked. These people were defending the area and it was safe to assume that this was their home or that they were based nearby. We were the intruders. After what I’d encountered out here in what was fast becoming a wasteland, I couldn’t blame them for their reaction to our arrival.
I looked around and did the only thing I could think of, I shoved Amy into the tall bushes that ran along the front of this house and I ran for the corner, just beyond the garage door. I didn’t dare look back as I heard the sounds of an automatic weapon open fire, quickly followed by the sounds of the wooden garage door I was sprinting past as it splintered from the impact of the bullets.
I rounded the corner and skidded to a stop. Three zombies were lurching my direction from the neighboring yard. The closest one was a good ten feet away so I quickly drew a blade and stepped into it, plunging my knife into its eye socket. I did away with the second one in the same manner and shoved the third one away as I yanked the gate open to gain access to the backyard. It stumbled back a few steps and then jerked once and fell as a bullet tore through its skull and ended it. I had no idea if the shooter had been one of ours or one of theirs, but I didn’t care as I slipped into the fenced in yard and pulled the gate shut behind me.
I ran to the steps that led up to a large patio that had probably once hosted a few barbecues and maybe even a kid’s birthday party—there was a swing set in the corner of the yard. As expected, there was a sliding glass door that gave entrance to the back side of the house. I fought the urge to rush in and surveyed the interior.
I would be coming in to a dining room with a heavy and ornate table surrounded by six high-backed chairs. That wasn’t very remarkable. My eyes locked onto a pair of bowls sitting on the counter of the breakfast bar. The food was still steaming.
I gripped the handle and gave a tug, almost anticipating the door to be locked as well. I was surprised when it slid open. Bringing my Glock up, I swapped out magazines since I’d lost track of how many rounds I’d fired up to this point. The last thing I wanted to do was confront somebody and pull the trigger to discover that I was out of bullets.
I stepped inside and heard something scuffle overhead almost immediately. I hurried past the stairs, my eyes trained on them, and then dashed through the living room to the front door. There was a small square pane of glass set at just about face level and I peered outside.
I could hear the sporadic sounds of gunfire and saw figures popping up and taking shots at not only each other, but also the newly arriving undead that were starting to trickle in; no doubt drawn by all the racket. In short, it was full-blown pandemonium outside that front
door.
I shot a glance over my shoulder to be certain that whomever or whatever I’d heard moving around upstairs was not coming for me, then I unlocked the front door. I risked opening it just a crack.
“Amy,” I hissed in between the waves of sound that were so much louder just from the simple act of opening the door the tiniest bit. There was no response and I had to repeat myself before I saw the bushes move a bit.
Suddenly Amy exploded out of the glossy greenery. For some reason, my mind picked this moment to inform me the bush was a Green Mountain Boxwood, apparently digging up this knowledge from back in high school when I worked with a landscaper. She rushed the door so fast that I didn’t have time to get back far enough. I ended up getting knocked on my butt when I tripped over my feet combined with a small table set just inside the door smacking into me right behind my knees.
She stepped inside and slammed the door behind her. The next thing I knew, she was diving on top of me. At first I thought she had become a zombie. Her speed caused part of my mind to reject that thought, but the other part told me that maybe there were fast ones and slow ones.
Less than a heartbeat later, the door shook and pieces of it flew inward as bullets peppered it. I found myself looking directly into her eyes. That provided immediate relief when two tracer-free orbs stared back. They were showing a lot of the whites, but I’m not sure which of us was more frightened at the moment..
“They’re coming!” she managed as she rolled off me and brought her handgun up.
The two of us backed away from the front door, retreating into the hallway that branched off and led to the kitchen. It was also where the stairs were located. The soft whimper from behind us made me spin just as another volley was fired at the front door, swiss-cheesing it.
I spun, bringing my pistol up and applying just about half the pressure needed on the trigger to fire at our potential attacker. The darkness of the hallway prevented me from seeing any details, but the outline of the figure that stepped out from the stairwell was maybe a shade taller than three feet.
I had seconds at the most to determine if this child was living or undead. I can’t begin to describe the battle that took place between my adrenaline-fueled self and the finger wrapped around the trigger of my Glock. I raised my arms and retracted my finger just as the shadow made a noise.
“Please don’t make me dead,” a little boy’s voice sobbed.
I rushed to him, just a stride or two ahead of Amy. As I drew near, his features became clearer. The talking was the first clue, but seeing him and once again a pair of eyes wide with fear so that the whites shown very clearly, I knew he wasn’t a zombie.
Just as I reached him, the door exploded inwards and three people charged through it. The one in the lead had a pistol-grip shotgun and was swinging it back and forth in search of a target. I also knew right away that he wasn’t one of ours.
I jumped past the boy and grabbed him by the shoulders. In a split second, my brain made a decision.
The boy yelped as I shoved him through the arch he’d just exited from. He fell on the stairs and I dove over him, my body effectively shielding his.
I heard a boom and a crash quickly followed by a bunch of yelling. My ears were still ringing from having been that close to the business end of a shotgun barrel that spewed flame and death, so it took a moment for the words to separate from the high-pitched whine in my head.
“…that thing away, you idiot!” a woman screamed at the top of her lungs.
“B-b-but—” a voice sputtered.
A meaty slap came and then there was nothing. I felt the boy start to move under me and could now hear his muffled cries.
“Jimmy!” the woman’s voice called. There was a hint of hysteria coloring the edges and my mind made short work of the puzzle.
“He’s here and he’s safe,” I called back.
As the words left my mouth, a new smell made its way through the sensory overload and adrenaline which was now ebbing at a painful rate. There was a coppery hint mixed with the acrid stink of feces. I knew this smell.
“No,” I whispered as I pushed up from where I had the boy covered and shielded.
I stepped out into the hallway to the sounds of hammers being pulled back, shotguns ratcheting, and the general shouts of surprise mixed with demands that I not move. I tuned it all out, going so far as to turn my back on it.
My eyes took in every detail of the woman lying face down just a few feet away. The blast from the shotgun had taken Amy square in the middle of her back and sent her flying a few feet past the stairs. A pool of blood was already seeping from under her sprawled figure and I had to imagine that the blast had probably blown her chest out. Despite knowing her fate, I couldn’t stop from kneeling beside her. My hand went to her neck to confirm my suspicion.
Just as I pulled away, somebody grabbed my shoulder and jerked me back. “Give me a reason!” the same mealy-mouthed person who I’d just heard get silenced by a slap growled.
I was spun around to see a shotgun just inches from my face. Unfortunately for the wielder, it was pointed at the ceiling since he was also the one trying to yank me to my feet.
“Here’s one,” I spat.
I had never put away my Glock and it was still in my hand. That is why it was so easy to shove it into his gut and pull the trigger twice. His eyes went wide in shock, and I pulled him to me close so that I could see past him to the figures still standing at the end of the hallway just inside the front door. One of them was kneeling with arms open wide to receive the little boy that was stumbling her direction. The other, a man who looked like he would be much more comfortable behind a desk or the teller window of a bank than holding the rifle he had slung across his body, was staring open-mouthed and in shock at what he knew was about to happen as I thrust my left arm under the right arm of the man who was now leaning limply against me.
I fired three rounds, sending bank teller-man stumbling back through the shattered front door. I dropped my arm and let the shotgun-wielding dead man fall to the floor. As I stepped over the corpse, the little boy reached the woman and threw himself into her open arms.
“Mommy!” the youngster wailed.
At that exact same moment, a lone zombie stumbled through the front door. Its head cocked to the side, drawn to the sounds of the boy’s sobs.
16
Small World
The female zombie was strangely fresh. Even creepier were the two relatively new bullet wounds from where she’d been shot in the chest as well as another bullet from something pretty powerful that had blown most of her lower jaw off. Her tongue was dangling from that gory mess, twitching back and forth like an angry cat’s tail and her hands were reaching for the woman that still had her back to the situation. The woman’s eyes were locked on me and the Glock as her arms wrapped protectively around the boy as he buried himself in her embrace.
I raised the Glock and took aim. I was confident in my ability to shoot…on a range at a stationary target that didn’t include a mother and child in between me and it. The woman saw my arm raise and opened her mouth. I imagine she wanted to plea or bargain or whatever it is that people do when they are staring down the barrel of a gun with no chance at escape or defending themselves.
I tuned that out and focused all my attention on the zombie that was about to attack her. My mind was a whirl of thoughts. How could she be that close and not smell it? Was she so dialed in to me and the child she held that she could not feel the specter of death as it swooped in on her in the form of the walking dead?
I pulled the trigger.
There was a single fraction of a second where I considered all the possibilities. The biggest being that maybe I wasn’t as good of a shot as I’d led myself to believe.
The bullet smashed into the zombie’s forehead and sent it teetering back. It had only been a step beyond what remained of the front door, and since there was nothing but a big gap behind it, the zombie fell back outside.
�
�Don’t hurt us,” the woman said, apparently finding her voice at last. “If nothing else…spare my son.”
“Lady,” I dropped my weapon to my side, “I don’t have any desire to kill you, and I certainly wouldn’t hurt your boy.”
“Evan!” Marshawn’s voice sounded like the roar of a cannon. The woman and I both jumped at the suddenness of it.
The man waded through where the front door used to be. He had a shotgun in his hand that I didn’t recognize and after shooting a glance at the woman and child crouched just inside the main entry hall, he swept the area with the muzzle of the weapon. Three more people rushed in behind him, all looking like they were expecting a fight. They were from our team and I felt myself relax just a fraction as the fact that I no longer heard gunfire coming from outside registered.
“Hey,” I answered with a wave as I slid my weapon into the holster and turned back to Amy’s corpse.
“I hate to be a dick, but we have to get moving,” Marshawn urged as he approached me and glanced down at the body sprawled at my feet. “We have zombies coming in from pretty much every direction. This is not a good location to make a stand from.”
“Sara!” the mother of the boy wailed. “That can’t be possible.”
I turned to see that the woman had shuffled her son behind her and was looking out at the body of the zombie that still lie sprawled on her back on the porch. Her head had fallen over the edge of one of the steps leading up to the landing which amplified the grotesqueness of her lack of the lower part of her jaw.
“You know this…person?” my nemesis, Neil Pearson, said, sounding skeptical.
“Sara was my neighbor.” The woman took a step forward and cocked her head to the side as she studied the corpse on the patio.
