They didn't even get another five minutes toward the camp before they passed another zombie. It was droning on behind a barren hedge lining the front yard of a house. Sarah wished they could just pass it by without any trouble, but Kenny was already marching toward it.
He didn't even bother taking out his knife, and she thought it was going to be less gruesome. But she was wrong.
He rushed up to it and gave it a hard shove, lifting it off its feet and slamming it into a tree. It bounced off and fell onto the ground. Before it could twist around, he braced himself against the tree for balance then lifted his leg and stomped on its head. He stomped as fast and as hard as he could. There was anger on his face as his testosterone pumped through his blood and the sickening sounds filled the air.
The sight was brutal and she once again put the boxes down and took a moment to kneel off to the side, closing her eyes and covering her ears. She normally didn't feel much for the zombies, but they had still once been someone's family; a sister, a wife, a husband, a son. They were to be killed in self-defense and with respect. But this was something else entirely... it was carnage.
Once he had mashed its skull to pulp, he came back and picked up the boxes, telling her to hurry up. She followed him, keeping away from his hulking mass as he walked down the street. She didn't want to be there anymore, and she couldn't understand how Noah could let such a barbarian into camp, let alone put him in a position of power; he reminded her of the bandits more than anyone else from Noah's Ark. But she repressed her feelings and focused on the task.
There were no more incidents on the way, and they soon came to the edge of Zed's camp.
"Not a peep," he whispered to her.
She followed him through a dilapidated wooden gate and across the overgrown backyard of a pale blue house with worn-out shingles. She could see a thin view of the road on the other side of the house and she saw the edge of the familiar old trucking warehouse that Zed and his band of murderous men called home.
They silently entered the house through the back door and walked up to the second floor, finding an empty bedroom overlooking the camp. They stayed well away from the window, not wanting to be spotted, especially with the morning sun not shining on the south face of the house and giving them cover.
"Put one of those boxes down over there," he told her, motioning toward the edge of the room next to the window.
She trundled over to the edge of the room and put one of them down. Her arm screamed out in joy at the heavy weight lifted from it, and she put the other one down on the floor to give the other arm a rest, too.
"Not that one," he said. "Come on, we've got other houses to visit."
She didn't question him and instead just picked it back up and followed him down the stairs and out the door into the backyard. He flanked around the back of the houses, being very careful not to be within view of the camp or the men keeping watch on top of the tractor-trailers or the roof. They went around to the west and came in through the back door of another house that was across the road and farther away than the first one, but still overlooked the camp. All the houses in the neighborhood were two stories high, and they walked up to the second floor and she carefully placed her second box by the window. Her arms tingled as the blood in them navigated a minefield of pins and needles.
He didn't say a word as he led her back out and they continued their circle around the block, placing one of his boxes in a house on the south side of the camp and then the final one on the closest house to the east.
She finally worked up the courage to ask what they were doing before they left the final bedroom.
"Call it a little insurance policy," he said. "In case Zed don't act the way he's supposed to."
"So what's in the boxes?"
"Nothing sinister. Just two pairs of binoculars per box. They're for recon. If there's reason to suspect that Zed's not playing fair, we want to keep a close eye on what he's doing."
"And Noah wanted us to do this?"
"This is my operation," he said. "Noah gave the go-ahead, but he let me go hog wild with the details. It'll be a good one."
She stared out the window at the warehouse. The windows of the building that she could see were grimy, the interior of the building dim, and she didn't know how much there would be to see, even with binoculars, but as much as she felt uneasy around Kenny, she knew that Noah would always make the right decision.
"Well, we're done here," he said. "Come on, let's head back."
The two of them went downstairs and slipped out the back of the house through a sliding patio door and quietly made their way back to Noah's Ark where she would eagerly await Noah's return.
The sun had crested the horizon not far into their journey, and heading east, it created a blinding cover for the landscape in front of them. Just as they cleared a row of houses and Highway 70 came into view, they saw them.
Zed and Delroy were already there with their groups of men, just like they had been waiting bright and early for Noah's team to show up the day before in the square. They were similarly carrying bags of equipment and were armed to the teeth with weaponry, ready to take on the monumental task in front of them.
Noah, Wayne, and all five of their men felt their heart rates increase as their brisk footsteps carried them closer to their task. They knew what they had to do and they were sure of themselves, but they knew they had to pull everything off exactly right, or there would be a chance none of them would be coming home.
"You finally made it," Zed said to Noah with a grin.
"So where are we setting up?" Noah asked.
"Over there on top of those storage units," he said, pointing.
They all made their way across a parking lot to a series of storage units overlooking a park on the other side. They climbed up a dumpster sitting against the side wall of one of the units and hoisted themselves up onto the roof one by one. As soon as they got on top, they had a clear view of the rumbling horde filling the park.
An extra parking lot in the back stretched out to a road, with the park starting on the other side, about thirty yards away. The sea of zombies tightly moved about through the trees, wandering, but not straying too far in any direction. Their absent groans filled the air, sounding like the rushing waters of a tidal wave.
The men lay flat on their stomachs on the roof, keeping low and undetected. The zombies were just about in the dead center of the park, the first rows of flesh eaters about seventy yards away. Noah, Zed and Delroy huddled together in the middle of the men and went over the plan.
"So what you figure?" Delroy asked.
"My men have been scouting out the park for the last few days," Zed replied, "so I have a pretty good idea where to plant the explosives to make them move." He reached his arm out and extended his finger, tracing across the landscape in front of them. "There's a ridge right about there, behind them, that comes up pretty high. Noah, why don't you run someone behind there and set some charges at the edge of it to start it off. If you skirt around wide enough, you can hide behind it and they won't see you coming, but you can still get pretty close to them. It should be enough to start shifting them all toward us."
"Consider it done," Noah said. "What's next?"
"Next we need to set some charges near that tree. You see that big sucker next to that little bump over there? Once they start coming toward us and they get close enough, a big blast from that direction will start funneling them south, right along there. Where we ultimately want to get them is down in that valley." He pointed at the south end of the park where the earth dipped down into a wide hollow. "We can set off some charges to the sides as they go to keep pushing them toward the bottom, and then once they're all huddled in that dip, that'll be where the bulk of our explosives will be planted. Poor fucker's won't even know what hit 'em. And any that are left, we can finish off with machine gun fire."
"We'll take care of the flank charges on this side," Delroy said.
"I guess that leaves us with th
e ones on the other side," Noah said. He looked at Zed. "I take it you want to go for the big finale at the bottom?"
Zed grinned. "Finders keepers. I found them, so I get to blow them up." He traced his eyes through the park, reiterating the plan in his head. "Is everyone good with that?"
Noah and Delroy both agreed.
"Well all right then," he said. "Let's get it on."
Noah turned his attention to Wayne and they nodded to each other. They had been working together for so long that most of their communications could be expressed and understood with a simple nod.
All the men lowered themselves off the roof of the storage unit and climbed down the dumpster to the parking lot.
Before they split off and took care of their duties, Zed added, "We'll all meet back here when we're done."
Everyone nodded and they split up.
Noah took a moment to talk to Wayne and the five other men with them and relegate individual tasks to each of them.
They went off and he skirted around the park and came up to the ridge from below while Wayne took care of the flanks next to them that would funnel the zombies along the path they had set out. He stayed low and crawled across the ground with a small nylon sack over his shoulder as he approached the top of the ridge. The sea of groans became deafening this close to all of them. The closest zombies were only five yards away, and even one of them seeing him would set off a chain reaction that would not only ruin what they were trying to accomplish, but would very likely end his life.
He dropped down onto his side and flipped the sack onto the ground, reaching into it and pulling out the C-4 charges. He started at the right side of the ridge and placed each of the five charges he had along the very edge of it, covering the width of the horde. When he was done, he grabbed the empty sack and slipped down the hill, making his way back toward the storage units on the other side of the park. Wayne and the other men had apparently already finished their work as they were nowhere in sight along the way, and when he made it back to the parking lot, everyone was standing there waiting for him.
"Everything go okay?" Zed asked.
"That should make them move," Noah said.
"All right, let's get back up and take a look."
They climbed back up to the roof with their detonators at the ready. Zed went over the plan one more time with everyone, and was very careful to make sure everyone knew when to set off the blasts.
"Okay, everyone get ready," Zed said.
Everyone held the detonators to the explosives they had set, ready for the green light.
Zed paused. "Isn't this fun?" he asked suddenly. "Isn't it so much nicer to get along?"
Noah rolled his eyes sarcastically. "Let's worry about this first."
"Whenever you're ready," Zed said, his eyes narrowing and gazing at the park in front of them like a general looking over a battlefield.
"Here goes nothing," Noah said.
He activated the detonator and the ridge behind the zombies disintegrated, sending a tremendous clap of furious sound rushing toward them. A huge cloud of white smoke and zombie viscera flew high into the air. The far end of the horde was shoved inward, creating a wave that rippled throughout all of them and making them stagger toward the front of the park near the storage units.
The zombies started walking toward the men, almost unaware of why they were doing it, but so far the plan seemed to be working. Their groans became angry and confused, and the tightly-clustered ball of the undead came right up to the wide tree on the flank that Delroy's men had laced with explosives.
Delroy used his detonator and another huge explosion ripped the earth apart, felling the tree and causing it to land on top of the zombies straggling at the edge of the horde, crushing them.
They shifted to the right and started to head toward the valley. The already tight cluster was forced even tighter as a series of flanking charges exploded, funneling them down.
Suddenly, a charge near the front of the zombies went off unexpectedly. The dead at the front were blown backward and collided into the rest, causing the group to shift back toward the storage units.
"Too early! Too early!" Zed cried.
Another explosion went off next to the zombies in a location that was never part of the plan at all.
Trees ripped apart and the dead started to scatter in every direction, angry at the chaos that erupted all around them.
"What's going on?!" Zed yelled. "Who set that?"
All the men on the roof looked at each other accusatorially as confusion and panic swelled amongst them.
"What the hell's going on?" Noah asked.
Another explosion went off in an odd location, sending the bulk of the horde toward them.
"What the hell?" Delroy said.
Another explosion went off, but this time it wasn't even from the park; it was set underneath a car sitting at the end of the back lot, causing it to flip onto its roof and skid along the ground. The shockwave knocked each of their heads back and disoriented them.
"Shit!" Zed yelled. "Get out of here!"
They all scrambled off the roof in a cluster as they jumped down onto the dumpster and retreated from the storage park, splitting up and escaping in different directions in the confusion.
Noah looked around for his men to get his bearings, but in the chaos he couldn't find them. He backed away from the storage unit and started to flee across the parking lot just as a red pickup truck thirty feet away from him erupted into a pillar of flame and the shockwave knocked him to the ground, making his head bounce off the pavement and causing his vision to go blurry.
He lifted his head off the ground and looked around, the world spinning around him. He heard screams and gunfire and the unmistakable cacophony of the dead's groans. Then everything went dim.
14
Paranoia
Sarah stood at the top of the wall at Noah's Ark. She and Kenny had only been back for half an hour, but she had spent all of it perched atop her lookout, staring off to the east where Noah and Wayne had gone with their men. She knew it would be a while still before they returned, but she couldn't stop thinking about him; she just wanted him to be safe.
A distant bang echoed across the city and made her jump. She knew it was part of their operation, and that meant it was underway. She waited on pins and needles.
Another bang echoed in the distance, and few moments later another one, then another. She jumped with each one, but before she could react to the next series of far-off explosions, someone in the camp started screaming. She twisted around and scanned the camp. It sounded like it was coming from the cafeteria.
She ran for the ladder and climbed down as quickly as she could, sprinting for the doors to the cafeteria. The guards on top of the wall looked on in concern, but didn't abandon their posts. She pulled open a door and ran inside where everyone had been sitting around eating breakfast, but now they were all staring at something in the middle of the large hall.
The screams continued, like loud and wailing moans. She knew the voice.
Mark was on the ground, curled up into a ball. His eyes were scrunched closed like he was in pain, and he had his hands pressed to his ears, his mouth ajar and omitting his sustained and torturous yells. Jenny was kneeling down beside him, frantically trying to help him to no avail.
Everyone in the cafeteria was alarmed, their mouths open in the middle of shoveling food into them while they watched.
Sarah knelt down beside Mark and tried to find out what the problem was. "What's going on?" she asked.
"I don't know!" Jenny cried. "We heard those bangs in the distance and then he just started screaming. He's been really edgy lately and I think they just set him off. He won't calm down!"
Sarah leaned over him. "Hey! Mark, it's okay!" She placed a hand on the side of his face and tried to get him to look at her, but it was like he was in his own world.
Kenny suddenly marched up to them. He stood between two tables, his huge body taking up the entire ai
sle with his hands balled up into fists by his side. "What the hell's going on?" he demanded, confusion and anger on his face.
"It's okay!" Sarah tried to tell him. "He's just having a panic attack! He'll be all right."
Kenny twisted around on the spot and yelled toward the open cafeteria entrance for the guards to come. "Get out of the way," he said. "We'll put him in lockdown until he settles down."
"No!" Jenny cried.
"No, Kenny, please," Sarah said. "He'll be okay, I promise. Please let us take care of him—we'll get him right to bed and he'll settle down."
And as if a gift from God Himself in answer to her prayers, Mark started to settle down, still moaning, but becoming quieter.
Six guards rushed into the cafeteria and came up behind Kenny, waiting for orders. Kenny stood there fuming, staring Mark down and deciding what to do. Sarah had been so anxiously waiting for Noah to get back so that she knew he was safe, but now she was even more desperate for him to come back so she wouldn't have to deal with Kenny being in charge.
"Kenny, please," she repeated. "We'll take him up right now."
After a moment, he relaxed and his fists loosened. "Make it quick," he said. "Get him out of here and I better not hear another peep out of him."
"Thank you," both Sarah and Jenny said, though neither of them was especially grateful.
Mark began whimpering as tears rolled down his face and clung to his stubble. Sarah and Jenny helped him up to his feet, and he was still clearly disoriented, but he went along willingly. They led him out the back of the cafeteria toward the stairs at the back of the building as Kenny and everyone else in the cafeteria stared at them.
Jenny was so humiliated, but she just wanted her husband to be okay and she was glad that their kids were still asleep in bed.
They helped him up the staircase and brought him into the family dormitory. He had become quiet, just very softly whimpering with his eyes still closed. They laid him down in bed and Jenny pulled open the curtain to the next bed and checked on Sam and Jake, who were just starting to rouse from sleep.
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