“Come on, man. What’s the matter with you?” Smith scolded.
“I’m done,” I sighed, slipping the daypack from my shoulders.
Smith took the bag of magazine ammunition and swung the straps around his broad shoulders. I doubled over, panting heavily and wishing I was on some zombie-free, sun-kissed beach someplace.
“I think I need a vacation,” I quipped.
“Never mind a vacation, we just need to get moving, Brett,” Batfish squawked, surveying the numerous looming figures across the flat landscape.
I stood straight and nodded. “I know.”
“Are you okay? You’re not sick or anything?” Batfish sounded genuinely concerned.
I did feel a little nauseous and incredibly exhausted but that was a normal state of affairs since the zombie apocalypse had taken hold of the world some six months ago.
“I’m okay,” I sighed. “Just feeling a little zonked, you know? We always seem to be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.”
“You got that right,” Smith muttered, gazing across the field. He then raised his voice as though he was giving a command to a wounded trooper. “Listen, we got to move or we’re going to be eaten alive in this shitty field. You hear me, Wilde Man?”
Right on cue, a nearby zombie emitted a long, vocal drone. The moan sounded something like a living person might release if they were told they’d been fired from their job and had their house and car repossessed all at the same moment.
I took a deep breath and sucked in some fresh, night air. “Okay, let’s go.”
We darted across the field at a forty-five degree angle to the river, heading further inland but still out of reach of the copious amount of zombies. I hoped they wouldn’t have the sense to close in on us in a crescent shape, blocking our route ahead and cutting off a possible retreat.
Smith kept the pace a little slower so Batfish and particularly I could keep up with him. All three of us had our handguns drawn with the safeties off at the ready. The nearest bunch of zombies was around twenty feet away, the long grass hampering their progress. I had to admit it felt like running through maple syrup and added to my already exhausted state.
“There’s the road.” Smith pointed into the distance, slightly to our left.
I saw the dew covered, shiny blacktop surface running in a vertical line between the long grasses.
“It’ll be easier to move if we stick to the road. This long grass is a bitch to crawl through,” Batfish whispered.
We hurried to the road and continued heading north, doing our best to dodge large gangs of zombies. Their grasping hands loomed from the darkness as we jogged along the tarmac. Smith fired once at a male zombie with a mop of dark, thick hair, who we didn’t notice immediately. The crippled creature crawled on his elbows through the long grass at the side of the road and attempted to grab Smith’s ankle. The gun shot echoed across the open fields and the river, the muzzle flash briefly blazing in the night gloom.
Our feet slapped in rhythm on the blacktop surface. The moans of the undead drifted through the night air. My breathing was rapid and sweat trickled across my forehead and down my back. Too many nights boozing and smoking before the apocalypse had taken their toll on my physical fitness.
We slowed to a walking pace when we noticed a dim light glowing through the darkness, around thirty feet directly ahead of us. We cautiously trod a few steps closer and saw the illumination was a vehicle’s interior light. Probably a pick-up truck of some kind. Two figures lurched around in the front seats. I noticed blood smears across the windshield as we tentatively approached the truck.
“Okay, be careful,” Smith hissed. “We’ll skirt around the vehicle.”
I heard horrible gorging sounds as we moved within a few feet of the battered front fender. The orange colored truck was stopped in the center of the two lane road and the driver’s door hung wide open. The two figures inside the cab rocked from side to side, their greenish, white faces smeared in blood. I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene the dim interior light provided. The figures looked as though they were fighting each other over something.
Smith trod around the open truck door, taking a few paces backwards away from the vehicle. I followed and shone the flashlight beam at the side of the vehicle. The two zombies inside the cab munched and tore at human flesh and the remains of a woman were strewn across the seats. She was only recognizable by the remnants of strands of long blonde hair and a black and yellow top, smeared in blood. The most alarming image was the sight of an empty, blood soaked baby carrier strapped to the middle seat. The undead hitchhikers briefly glanced in our direction, scowled then carried on their feeding frenzy, chewing on entrails and partially devoured body organs. The seats, steering wheel, dash and roof upholstery were all coated in congealed blood.
“Jesus! What a mess,” Batfish whispered. She was close behind me clasping the back of my shirt.
A creature that sounded like a rabid dog, emitted a throaty growl from somewhere by the side of the truck. I flicked the flashlight beam down and to my right and gasped when the beam shed light on two gnarled faces also covered in fresh blood. Their cataract-like eyes reflected in the light beam. The undead ghouls were filthy and emaciated, wearing grimy shredded clothes and impossible to distinguish if they had previously been male or female.
Both zombies snarled and kneeled at each side of another prone body. The corpse looked like a guy wearing the shredded remains of a red and black checked work shirt and denims. His guts were torn open, internal organs and intestines slopped from the huge wound.
One of the zombies attempted to rise to its feet. Smith fired a shot which penetrated the creature’s forehead. The force of the gunshot sent it hurtling backwards into the side of the truck bed. Smith switched his aim to the other zombie and blasted it in the face before it had time to stand. The ghoul’s head exploded into a mist of decayed blood and fragments of skull. The body toppled sideways and splattered onto the blacktop.
I shone the flashlight around in small arcs to check no more undead lurked close by. The beam illuminated around a half dozen exterminated zombies lying around the truck. I flicked the flashlight towards the truck bed and saw the interior was piled with boxes and packing containers. I shone the light back onto the poor dude who’d recently bought it, lying by the truck. His face was ripped and chewed almost in half. The skin and flesh was a bloody pulp from the right side of his neck up to his scalp. A hunting rifle lay on the road, a few inches from his chewed fingers. The brown, wooden butt was coated in blood and small pieces of bone.
Smith picked up the rifle, carefully avoiding touching the contaminated gore at the stock end. He drew back the bolt and peered inside the chamber.
“No ammo. This poor guy and his woman were probably fighting for their lives and ended up using this damn thing as a club.” Smith let the rifle drop. The ineffective weapon clattered onto the road surface.
“You think it was them sending up the flares?” Batfish asked. Her voice was nothing more than a hoarse croak.
“I doubt it,” Smith muttered. “These guys have been dead for at least thirty minutes. Around the time we heard that last radio message. Shine that flashlight under the truck, Wilde.”
I did as Smith requested, crouching on my haunches and sweeping the flashlight left to right between the truck’s tires. We saw a green colored, old style walkie-talkie with an extending silver aerial lying in the vehicle’s shadow.
“It must have been them shouting for help across the airwaves,” I sighed. “Too bad we were too late to help them.” I felt an uncomfortable pang of guilt. Probably another symptom of survivor syndrome.
The moans of the undead drifted out of the darkness behind us and echoed across the flat ground.
“Nothing more we can do here,” Smith said, glancing back down the road. “We better get moving before those bastards catch us up.” He nodded in the direction of the pursuing zombies. “Maybe this fresh meat will keep them occupied for
a little while and give us a chance to put some distance between us.”
I nodded, feeling slightly relieved to leave the scene of carnage. The shuffling, scuffing sound of the undead dragging themselves over the blacktop increased in volume. I glanced to my left and saw silhouettes of lurching, swaying shapes emerging from the gloom.
We turned from the pick-up truck and carried on down the road at a jogging speed. Although we moved faster than the zombies, I couldn’t help thinking we weren’t using a particularly safe mode of travel.
Smith slowed to a brisk walking pace and pointed into the distance. “That’s the Blue Angel plane up ahead, isn’t it?”
I squinted into the darkness trying to make out the static aircraft, which marked the side road we needed to follow to gain entry into the military base. I saw a dark silhouetted shape resembling a missile at a horizontal angle.
“Yeah, I think that’s it,” I gasped. “We’re nearly there.”
The sight of the stationary aircraft gave me a little psychological boost. At least we were on the right track. We continued at a swift walking speed, still with our handguns poised for any attacks. The undead followed and stumbled around the grassy banks on each side of the road.
Another red flare whizzed into the sky at the moment we reached the Blue Angel aircraft mounted on the bank at the corner of the side road. The flare had been released directly above the Airbase, somewhere not too far from our position.
I took a glance over my shoulder before we turned the corner. A mass of writhing silhouettes of a large crowd of undead followed on the road twenty yards behind us. I wondered what assistance we could possibly muster to a bunch of military guys who were already armed to the teeth with all kinds of heavy machine guns, various explosives and modified heavy-duty vehicles.
The road was still littered with abandoned vehicles and I could see the canopy that straddled the road in the distance.
“What happened here?” Batfish asked, peering inside the interior of a stationary Buick.
“The base was locked down and sealed off at the start of the outbreak but one or two people were already infected on the inside. They obviously turned and started feeding on the living. Nobody could get out until some guys blasted the gates and took off into the great beyond,” I explained.
We walked under the canopy into the dark shadows towards the security booths in the center of the road. Our pace slowed to a sluggish plod and I felt my heart hammering inside my rib cage. I didn’t like the total blackness we were walking into so I switched on the flashlight and shone the beam directly in front of us.
The beam illuminated a pair of milky white eyes a few feet away. The skinny female zombie caught in the light hissed like a cat, exposing broken and battered teeth. Her matted hair hung either side of her cracked, pale face. A whole bunch of undead stood alongside her, partially visible in the flashlight arc. I swung the light slightly left and right. Ripped clothes and rotting flesh loomed in the yellow glow.
“Shit! There are loads of them,” Batfish hissed. “What do we do?”
Chapter Four
“We can’t go back, there are a shit load of them behind us,” I whimpered.
The flashlight beam illuminated the throng ahead of us, now jostling and bumping their way towards us.
“Back up,” Smith ordered. “There’s no place else to go.”
“But there’s a whole bunch of them chasing us from the rear,” I reiterated, in a louder tone. I turned and swung the flashlight back down the road towards the static Blue Angel. The pursuing undead already crowded the width of the corner of the side road.
“We’re closed in, Smith. There’s no way through,” I stammered.
“Keep that fucking light facing front,” Smith barked. “They’re closest to us and we’re going to have to start firing soon. How many spare mags have we got in the bag?”
“About three each, I think.”
Firing into a crowd, trying to achieve headshots was never going to be easy in the dark. Even if all our shots hit the target, we were still going to be way short of ammo. This was it. The zombie mob was closing in both sides. The stationary cars and large concrete traffic calmers caused a kind of bottle neck that hemmed us in on either side. Tall, wire mesh fences ran beside each side of the road, blocking the sideways route.
“Maybe we can jump in one of these vehicles?” Batfish suggested.
Smith shook his head. “The batteries will all be flat and it won’t take this bunch of bastards long to smash their way through the windshield glass.”
I held the flashlight out in front of me as though it was some sort of Jedi Lightsaber and the M-9 in my other hand, aiming at the female zombie who led the approaching horde. The three of us closed in together in a tight little bunch, back to back, Smith aiming to our rear and Batfish and I training our handguns towards the undead amongst the canopy’s dark shadows.
“If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears,” Smith whispered.
“When you said we were going to help these guys out, I didn’t realize the plan involved getting ourselves killed in the process,” Batfish growled.
She was right. We’d stumbled back to the Airbase in the dark, knowing the place was crawling with zombies and without any kind of logical strategy. In our blind haste to provide assistance, we’d completely disregarded our own safety.
I glanced around, desperately searching for a way out, any kind of temporary escape route. A brown, UPS box truck sat on sagging tires at the side of the road on the shoulder, behind the line of abandoned cars.
“How about if we climb up on top of that truck?” I pointed to the side of the road.
“That plan is not going to get us out of here,” Batfish warned.
“You got that right,” Smith hissed. “But it’ll do for now. We’ll make our way towards the truck. Stay back to back and open fire at any motherfucker who gets too close.”
We edged away from the canopy, between the motionless vehicles towards the UPS truck. Smith led, facing the truck, while Batfish and I shuffled backwards, still facing the canopy. Batfish was the first to fire her weapon. The cat-like female zombie flinched with the motion of the 9mm round but the shot only grazed the side of her head.
“Shit! I missed,” Batfish moaned.
I fired one round at the female leader, who was around fifteen feet from our position. She dropped to the blacktop on her back, disappearing from the flashlight beam and falling amongst the following horde.
“Don’t fire blind,” Smith warned. “Make sure each shot counts.”
Smith fired two shots and scored two kill shots at two male zombies who loitered around the side of the UPS truck.
“You get on the roof first, Wilde,” Smith instructed. “That way we can haul Batfish up if we need to.”
“I’m not useless,” Batfish snapped back. “You think I can’t climb, just because I’m a girl?”
“I didn’t mean that. What I was trying to say was, you’re a little on the short side and might have trouble crawling up on that hood. It’s slanted so getting a foothold might be a bit tricky.”
I glanced around at the truck. The hood sloped down at a forty-five degree angle and the windshield was high and slanted backwards from the engine. I wasn’t going to have time to slip and slide across the surface; I was going to have to get up on that roof quickly.
Batfish fired another shot at a fat, bald male zombie looming forward into the light beam. The shot was too low this time but sliced the guy’s guts open. Rotten stomach entrails and gray, sausage-like intestines spewed from the wound and splattered onto the blacktop. The guy rocked backwards for a second then continued stumbling towards us, oblivious to his horrific injury.
“Oh, man, that’s disgusting,” Batfish wailed and held her free hand over her nose and mouth. “Aw! That fucking stinks.”
I gagged at the stench of rotting guts and opened fire at the disemboweled zombie’s dome shaped head. The round caught him in his left eye and the exi
t wound sent a spray of brown blood into the faces of the undead behind him. The fat guy tottered on his heels for a second before slumping to the ground.
“Come on, a few more yards,” Smith encouraged us from behind. “Don’t hang around climbing up there, Wilde. Think like a gorilla at the Bronx Zoo.”
I briefly wondered if they actually housed gorillas at the Bronx Zoo and if they did, were they still alive and roaming their enclosure or had they starved to death? I silently wished them well, whatever state they were in and turned my head to study the front of the box truck. There may well have been a ladder around the back of the vehicle for easy access to the roof but we had neither the time nor the space to go exploring around the rear.
Smith peeled away from behind us and spun around so his back leant against the side of the truck’s hood. The crowd of zombies following from the road closed in to around twenty feet away from us. The whole gang of undead emerged from the canopy shadow.
“Shit, there are more of them than I thought,” Batfish wailed.
The moans and throaty shrieks from the undead increased in volume. Maybe they were anticipating a feeding frenzy or just plainly getting turned on, as much as a dead person can.
“Go, Wilde. Go on, get up there,” Smith hissed.
I shoved my M-9 down the back of my waistband and slipped the flashlight into the side pocket of my combat fatigues. I twisted around and leapt at the truck’s hood, grabbing the side mirror frame as some sort of hand hold. My boots clanked on the smooth metal surface of the hood but began to slip down the sloping front slightly. Smith fired off a couple of rounds at two zombies who came within a few feet from the truck.
“Hurry it up, Wilde,” he barked.
Batfish fired a shot into the undead crowd, drawing nearer from the canopy side. My feet kept slipping on the hood and the windshield glass. Maybe my stupid plan was doomed to failure from the start. I hauled myself to the left side of the windshield, grasping the side mirror frame. Smith fired again and I briefly glanced to my left to see both mobs of enclosing zombies had merged into one large semi-circle around us.
The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink Page 2
