by Gareth Wood
“Back up!” I called, and we all took a few steps away.
Eric shot again, and another walking corpse fell. I aimed and fired, crack crack, two rounds aimed at the nearest of the remaining undead. This one, a teenage boy at one time, was shaken by the first round that passed through his cheek, tearing it open to the bone. The second bullet went in his left eye socket, and the zombie behind him was sprayed with gore as the bullet tore out large pieces of skull on the way through.
We waited for Sanji to shoot the last one, and then made our way towards the barn. The horse we had found with the bodies was inside, but was being quiet. It must have become used to the smell of the undead, and the sound of gunfire. We carefully moved to the door, and I covered the opening while Sanji stood to my left, aiming back the way we had come. Eric pulled the door back and let it swing open as he stepped back. My flashlight showed nothing in the doorway, so Eric and I stepped inside, covering in different directions. We found the horse in his stall, alive and unharmed, though awake and anxious at the noise and commotion. There was no sign of Chris. We checked the barn thoroughly and he just was not there.
“I swear, I’m gonna kick that kid a new asshole,” Eric muttered. “He fucking well better be alive when I do it, too.”
“Let’s get back to the house and clean up the rest of them,” I said, turning back to the barn doors.
Outside again, we could hear that the shooting at the front of the house had stopped. This didn’t mean we were safe, just that they had run out of things to shoot at. We looked carefully, and Sanji pointed to the left side of the house. Aiming our lights there, we could see four of the undead walking towards us. The leader of this small pack was badly burned, and had only one good eye. His left arm was crispy, and his clothing was mostly gone, leaving blackened rotted skin and bones visible. His face was split in a grimace that showed blackened teeth, and he was covered in a filthy mixture of mud, dried blood, and carbonised clothes. The smell preceding the group was terrible, enough to make our eyes water and make our stomachs lurch unpleasantly. I was glad I hadn’t yet had breakfast.
We spread out, and Sanji checked behind us, then turned back to face the threat approaching. I opened fire first at fifteen feet, another two rounds, both burying themselves in the face of the burnt horror. He sagged to the ground, and flopped in a sickening liquid fashion. The three behind him we shot as they came within the fifteen foot line we had mentally drawn on the ground. They went down one at a time. After that the silence rang, and we waited where we were patiently, looking around for more of them. A few minutes later Darren opened the back door, and called to us.
“That’s it, I think,” he said.
We counted the bodies, and Darren told us how many he and Jess had destroyed out front. Our total was fifteen. I looked at Sanji and Eric, and saw them mentally doing the math. Darren had told us fourteen.
The seven we had killed out back we all counted again, looking at faces to be sure none of them was Chris, and then carefully proceeded out to the front, where we found the rest. It was dark, but a quick glance showed eight. We had to check faces. If Chris was among the dead, we needed to check.
“Jess, Darren, grab some lights and shine them down here, would you?” I called up, and soon after they each had two flashlights in hand and were shining them down at the bodies. I stepped over corpses, shining my light into dead faces, while Sanji and Eric stood guard. A corpse a few feet away twitched, and Eric shot it in the head. It wasn’t Chris. None of them were. I stood amongst the fallen and looked at my watch. It was 3:58 in the morning. Where the hell was Chris?
We left the bodies where they had fallen, and went back inside. We fired up the wood burning stove and made tea, pancakes, and oatmeal. One of us stayed on watch upstairs, and the rest of us cleaned weapons, sorted out gear, and talked. We ate, drank, and packed up all our equipment, and left it in packs by the doors.
“Where the hell is Chris?” I asked for about the tenth time. Nobody had an answer for me. Jess came and stood with me quietly, and I squeezed her shoulder.
When dawn came, we were ready to go. We all moved outside and loaded the gear into the Explorers, keeping a watch around us. After that, we put on masks and went to examine the corpses in the new days’ light. It was clear and cold and the dead lay where we had left them. We started at the back of the house. They were horribly decomposed, and bones and putrefying muscle tissue were visible through missing skin. The burned one was even more ghastly in the light than he had been in the small hours. We moved out front after dragging the bodies together well away from the house and dousing them in gasoline. The scene in front was just as bad as out back. We got a wheelbarrow from the barn, and Sanji and I moved each corpse to the pile in the back, and then doused them in more gasoline. Eric was walking around during this, looking at the ground. I hardly paid attention to that; the lifting and dragging was warming me up nicely, and I pulled my hat off and tucked it into a pocket.
Darren threw a flare onto the pile of bodies, and we stood back and watched them burn for a few minutes. A column of dark smoke rose steadily into the cold air, hardly dispersing at all until it reached a few hundred feet.
“I found tracks where they came in,” Eric said.
“Which way?”
“South, a little east,” he said. I looked at him, and he pointed to where they must have come out of the trees. I looked at the others. It was the best lead we had to where Chris might have gone.
“Let’s go then,” I said, and picked up my C7, checking the safety as I lifted the sling over my shoulder. Everyone else fell in behind me as I started walking.
* * *
We smelled it before we saw it. The cloying smell of decayed flesh wafted over us, not very strong, but enough to tell us that the dead things were near. The tracks had led from the south, and we had followed for about twenty minutes, deeper into the forest. The spruce and willow were the most numerous, none with trunks thicker than my bicep. They were dense together, but low, less than thirty feet high, and the undergrowth was thick. We heard birds, and saw some squirrels, but otherwise it was quiet.
Ahead of us the trees thinned, and the smell increased as the slight breeze carried the odour to us. We stepped out into a clearing that we quickly saw was man-made. The earth was turned in places where trees had been removed, and a chain link fence ran parallel to the edge of the trees about fifteen feet away. A section was knocked down directly ahead of us, the fence pushed down to the ground, and an uprooted steel post lay flat where it had been removed from the soil. The fence stretched away to our right about fifty feet and north another thirty. It enclosed an area inside the clearing, and off to the right we could see a gate with a chain and padlock, and an 18-wheeler box trailer outside the fence. There was a path leading towards the highway, an unpaved track more than a real road.
There was a body lying face up on the downed section of fence, and a crowbar was leaning against the fence nearby. Flies buzzed around the corpse, and it wasn’t moving. It wasn’t Chris. This one was not fresh, and was probably the source of the unholy smell. It looked male, with long hair and a filthy pair of jeans. It had no shoes, and its swollen, black feet were the landing place of hundreds of flies. It wore something that might have once been a black shirt, which was riddled with small holes. Most of the top of its head was gone.
The grass inside the fenced area was flattened, as if something had been walking on it. I could imagine what it was. This was a holding pen for zombies. Why someone would want to keep them here, in any number, for any reason, was beyond me. I picked up the crowbar, and we moved towards the trailer, spreading out and watching the trees. Eric took the lead, and we followed nervously. It was very quiet here, and I wished the birds would make more noise.
“What the hell is this all about?” Darren asked.
“Keep it quiet,” Eric cautioned.
The trailer, sitting alone beside the pen, was white and black, and had the words “KC Shipping Ltd.” p
ainted on the side in tall green letters. We circled the trailer, noticing that it was in good shape, and that it was sealed shut with a chain and padlock. As we didn’t see a key, we decided to break it open with the crowbar. As soon as I put the crowbar into the latch and started to pry we heard something from inside the trailer. A low moan, and a shuffling, like slow steps on a wooden floor.
Fuck.
There were walking dead inside the trailer. I dropped the crowbar and stepped back, reaching for my gun. The others spread out again, our curiosity about the trailer extinguished. From inside the box the thumping started, just one at first, but then more, and soon it was a thundering chorus of dead limbs beating against the inside walls, trying to get out. Trying to get to us.
“Screw this,” Eric said. “Let’s not open that, hey?”
“As much as I don’t want to, man, I think we have to,” I muttered. I really did not want to open the trailer now. It sounded like they were beating the walls apart. How long could they last in there?
“Why? Why should we open that door?”
I looked him in the eye, and my expression said it all. He knew why. They all did. There was a chance, however small, that Chris might be inside there. How he might have gotten inside I couldn’t guess, but it was still something we had to check. I wasn’t really worried that they would escape the trailer. The walls were tough, and I suspect they had been in there for a while. We were going to have to deal with however many of them were inside that trailer soon. Unfortunately it could be a lot of them. A trailer that size could hold a hundred zombies; I was not looking forward to opening that door.
We had some preparations to do before we dealt with this problem, however. We were definitely going to need more ammo. I wanted a way to control the movement of the walking corpses, and Darren suggested setting fire to the trailer, burning the undead within. This might have been a good idea if the trailer was located in the middle of an asphalt parking lot, but in the middle of a forest it was probably not a winning plan. We could end up with an out of control forest fire, and none of us had the training to deal with that except Sanji.
Jess thought about it, and then said, “Why don’t we go get the trucks, and park them nose to nose about fifteen feet back? Then we could pull the fence gates over to the back of one of them. We can shoot over the top of the engine blocks, and the zombies will be funnelled into this area,” she pointed to the area behind the fence, “where we can destroy them without risk.”
“We’d be on one side of the fence…” I said, seeing the rudiments of the plan in my head.
“And they’d be on the other,” Eric finished.
“What about the knocked down section back there? We can stand it up, but it’ll be pretty weak.”
“Won’t be a problem,” Eric said.
“Why not?”
“Because, my suspicious friend, they won’t even notice it. All their attention will be on us. The gap will be behind them, and they won’t even see it.”
He had a good point there. We made our way back to the house and checked again for Chris. Still no sign of him anywhere and I had no idea where to look next. We drove back to the turn-off that led to the trailer. It was a bumpy ride, all roots and rocks. We parked the Explorers like Jess suggested, and I approached the trailer with the bolt cutter we had retrieved from the barn while the others got into position. The undead inside the trailer were quieter now, having settled down a bit. We had also brought along a length of rope, and I tied one end to the door handle, while Eric had the other end. I waited for them to get into position on the other side of the vehicles, and I looked up at the sky. A thin layer of clouds was moving in from the west, and the temperature had dropped a few degrees since this morning. I could see my breath in the air.
”Okay, we’re ready here,” Eric said, and I cut the chain. I pulled it out and the noise started again from inside, the unending pounding and battering on the walls. I pulled up the latch, and jumped back, but the door didn’t instantly swing open. I climbed over the hood of one of the trucks to stand beside Darren, took up my rifle, checked the action, and took aim. Eric pulled the rope, and the door opened. A wave of stench from decayed flesh moved over us, and the interior of the trailer was revealed.
The trailer was packed nearly full of walking corpses, and they spilled out of the open door onto the ground. The first ones fell, landing on the muddy ground with bone-snapping impact. Pressure from the back pushed the next dozen or so out, to land on the first ones. Within seconds there was a tangled, moaning mass of twenty-five undead sprawled about, and more were coming out of the trailer, falling into the pile and adding to the chaos. In another few seconds a few of the first ones managed to get up, but were knocked down again when the next wave landed on them. Others were crawling to the side, standing, and looking around. One of them, a man in coveralls covered in blood and leaves, spotted us and started towards Eric. Eric had long since dropped the rope, and was now aiming his C7 rifle at the zombie staggering towards him. He let it get to the fence, and then shot it once in the head. The creature fell backwards and was silent, but the shot alerted the others, almost all of whom were out of the trailer now. I couldn’t begin to count them. We started firing. My first shots were echoed by Jess on one side, Darren on the other. Sanji fired his shotgun, pumped a new round, and fired again. I saw the first three undead take hits and fall back, and then more replaced them, lurching towards the trucks in a mass. We stepped back, and moved towards the fence on our right. The undead followed, and we fired into the main mass of them from the other side of the chain link. The plan called for us to stay about ten feet back from the fence and fire single shots at them, and this is what we did. At this range we seldom missed, and if we did miss the one right up against the fence, odds were good the bullet would strike the one behind it.
I ran empty, and had to change clips. From either side of me, the firing was nearly constant. Sanji had to reload more often, and after firing twelve shot shells he switched to his Browning, taking individual shots at the undead. The greatest number of them were pushing at the fence, and the dead were starting to pile up. I suddenly realised the problem with this plan when a few of them started to climb over the bodies of the others, and clamber up to the top of the chain link. I shifted aim to the climbers, and brought two of the three down. The third fell over the fence, landed heavily, and was starting to get up when Darren shot her. The bullet passed into her ear, and sprayed brain matter and blood out the other side, painting the faces of several other zombies, making them look even less attractive, if that was possible. More were climbing up the corpses of the others now, and we were forced to retreat. We stepped back, still firing, and I ran empty again. Four climbers fell to the ground and started to stand again, and I dropped the C7 and drew my Browning. I just didn’t have time to reload, so I swung up the Browning, clicked off the safety, and opened fire. The dead man I aimed at was open at the stomach, and great loops of rotten intestines were trailing at his feet. He tripped on them and crawled towards us, moaning and reaching. I shot him three times in the face as he looked up, he twitched and fell, and already I was searching for another target. Darren had dropped his rifle as well, and had his Browning out. He was trying to keep the undead from flanking us, since they were spreading out as they came over the fence.
Sanji and Eric were doing alright on the other end of our line. Sanji had reloaded his shotgun and was using it again. His shot shells knocked the undead off their feet even if they didn’t kill them outright, giving us a few moments of breathing room. I looked back and realised we had killed every undead that had so far made it over the fence. We paused, and looked around. There were maybe a dozen left on the far side of the fence, and the ground on this side was littered with another fifteen or so corpses. The pile of bodies against the fence was four deep, and the last twelve walking dead were now climbing over them to get to us. We spread out a little, and let them come. As they fell over the fence we all waited, and once they stood
up again we shot them. The first one over was shot by four bullets at once as we all opened fire on it, and its skull simply vanished in a disgusting spray of bone and blood and rotten tissues. The next few we took out individually, first Darren, then myself, then Jess shooting. Sanji waited for the next two, and knocked them back over with his shotgun blast. Only one got up from being struck by the pellets, and Eric shot it right between the eyes. We shot the last five as they climbed over, and then stopped. Silence.
“Goddamn…” muttered Darren as he changed clips.
“Yeah,” I agreed. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. I had shot the full clip on my Browning, and two on the C7, and the others had fired a similar amount. Not all my bullets had struck home, but I had killed a lot of undead today. The numbers of corpses lying around us were astonishing. And the stench! I was glad I was wearing a bandana over my face.
“We should check for any still active,” Eric suggested, “and get a body count.”
We did just that, and found a few that were still moving around. Three of them were buried under the pile, so we shot those, and another was one of the first to be out of the trailer. All of its major bones were broken, and it thrashed weakly as we approached. Sanji crushed its skull with the crowbar, and we started counting the bodies. We came up with a total of one hundred and five, and then counted again. It came up the same. We checked to see if Chris had somehow gotten mixed up in there, but he wasn’t to be found. The next few hours were hard work. We pulled all the corpses into the cleared area, making three piles. We soaked them in gasoline, and torched them all. Now I really needed a drink.
