by David Smith
Dad instructed me to follow the truck through the rifle scope and shoot the tires as soon as it came to a stop.
"Why? If I do that I might as well kill them, the way they're surrounded."
"Look son! They're being way to secretive to be up to any good. They didn't want us to know they were following us. I don't want to kill them but we need to level the playing field before we get into a confrontation."
I just stared at him for second, not wanting to see them torn apart.
"Do as I say son. If they get in too much trouble we'll help them out."
There was only about a four-inch opening between the homemade armor and the ground, through which to see the tires. I trained my sights on the front tire but they weren't stopping. I waited until the truck was turned facing us so I wouldn't have to lead it and fired. I wasn't sure I had hit it until they turned left again and the truck dipped so far that the tin on the front left side scraped the ground, peeling it back.
As soon as they came to a stop the dead started closing in. The men in the back started firing immediately, keeping them at bay as one of the men in the cab climbed out through the sliding back window and off the truck. Looking at the side of the truck he motioned something to the driver. It looked as if they still didn't realize what caused the flat. As the two men concentrated their fire to keep the dead away from their friend, more came up to the other side and began reaching up the side of the truck, trying to climb over the tin, which was too high to get their fingers over. One of the men in the back yelled something to him and he got back into the truck as they kept his path clear.
"They're good." Dad noted. "See how they work together."
Once the man was back in the cab, the truck began to move again, but slowly. The steel frame around the truck dug into the asphalt as the tire was now completely flat.
"Can you shoot the back tire on the same side?" Dad asked.
I did and the truck tilted over, the entire side now resting on the ground. There was sudden and intense pain down the side of my neck, starting deep in my ear. Dad had shot an infected that had come up from behind and that's when the men in the truck noticed us. Bullets began ricocheting off the curb in front of our position, chunks of concrete flaking off.
"Let's move."
We backed into the bottom of the ditch and crawled until we were beyond the corner of the building where we were out of their line of sight.
"Do you think you'd have a line of sight on them from the water tower?" He asked.
"Yeah, if they don't shoot me climbing up the ladder. What about the top of the building?"
"That should work. More avenues of escape too."
We ran around the back of the building and found a ladder to the roof, locked behind a chain-link fence about ten feet high. Dad shot the lock off and pulled the chain out of the gate while I shot a few that were straggling toward us. The chain was long enough that once inside we could tie a knot in it. As I climbed, I heard the guns stop firing out front.
"We need to hurry!"
Walking on top of the building we could see down into the store through the many broken skylights. The sun shone down illuminating the darkened store in wide-angled beams leaving much of it still dark, but there weren't any dead inside as far as we could tell. Reaching the front edge of the roof, we had good cover behind the short concrete wall, even had shoot holes that were made for the rainwater to run off the roof. I laid down and crept up to the wall low enough to stay out of sight and took aim through one of the drain holes.
"Okay." Dad started as he lay next to me. "When I get down by the other end of the roof, give a warning shot then I'll do the talking."
Two of the men had made it to the ditch at the edge of the parking lot and we're now walking back to the truck, killing the remaining few dead, one with a machete and the other with a claw hammer. The two in the back got out, slinging their rifles and pulling out knives, to more closely inspect the tires. Quickly realizing that the truck wouldn't move, they shook their heads and the driver got out too. They started grabbing what they could carry and I fired one shot, killing another zombie that was a few yards away from them. They ran and took cover behind the truck but I could tell hey had no idea where it came from by the way they were looking around.
"We don't mean you any harm." Dad yelled.
"It sure don't look that way from where we're standing." One of them yelled back.
"We've got you surrounded, could have killed every last one of you if we wanted."
"Yeah, instead you just left us to die out here."
"We ain't left you…yet."
A few sparse dead were closing in on them. As one got close enough one of the men grabbed it, pulled it to him and took it down behind the cover of the truck.
"Watch them and keep me covered." Dad whispered before standing and revealing himself. "We'll help you get the truck back up and going. I just couldn't let you follow us without knowing anything about you."
"What do you want to know?" One of the men yelled back as the others fought off a few of the dead.
"Are there more of you?" Dad asked.
"Yeah, just a few." He replied.
"Where do you stay?"
"Where do you stay?!" The man shot back at him angrily.
"We stay on the move. That's where we stay." Dad replied calmly.
I was looking through the rifle scope at each of them, one at a time. The first, I could see him from the waist up as he stood with machete in hand, waiting for more dead to come into swinging range. The second, I could see the top half of his head, crouched down behind tailgate, hammer ready. The third was in the back of the truck, digging for more ammo. The fourth had an M-4 like Dad's and held it like a pugil stick, standing next to hammer guy. The one talking was also in the back of the truck, ducked down low behind the cab.
"Look, you've got us surrounded. We're no threat to you so why don't you get us out of here and we'll talk." The man argued.
"How many trips did it take for you clean out that gas station on the north end of town?" Dad asked and winked at me. I supposed it was a loaded question.
I made the rounds for the fourth time and M-4 guy wasn't next to hammer guy anymore. I looked over my scope and when my eye readjusted I saw him, laying down on the opposite side of the truck just behind the front bumper, taking aim. As quickly as I could, I looked back through the scope and found him but it was too late. He squeezed off a burst just as I got a shot off.
Through my scope, I saw his head drop and just a little red spray come out the back and onto his tan shirt. The bullet passed through his head and back into his body between the shoulder blades. The rest scrambled to take cover inside the truck and I got one more shot off before the last one did, catching him in the top of his shoulder and shattering his arm as it passed through, laying his tricep open and blowing out his elbow.
"Dad!” I shouted as the last shot echoed through the woods and back until it was silent again. "I don't have a clear shot on the rest of them."
There was no answer. I turned my head and he was slumped over the edge of the building, one arm hanging limply, blood trickling down the wall, head turned away from me.
"Dad?" I said softly. "Dad!" I yelled again, my voice starting to shake, but he didn't move.
I heard the assault rifle firing suddenly and felt flecks of concrete stinging the side of my face. I flinched then turned my head to see two of them running to the front of the building. I took aim at the shooter first, hearing bullets thumping the wall in front of me, and fired. He fell quickly, dead before he hit the ground and two of the infected were there to fall on him, starting to eat his body before it even settled. A few more climbed into the back of the truck where the one with the injured arm sat, quickly bleeding out and I heard his weak screams as they ate him alive.
The other two were at the bottom of the wall already and running around the building to find the way up. I ran across the roof to the back of the building where the ladder came up. I b
eat them to it and just waited. They came around, one around each corner, knocking down the few dead who were coming to meet them.
More were coming out the woods behind them as they reached the gate and started struggling to untie the chain through the chain-link of the fence. They should have just made a run for it.
"You all by yourself up there, aren't you?" The smaller one with the red mustache asked tauntingly.
"Maybe." I answer just loud enough to be heard.
"Listen. We're sorry about your friend." The other one said and I interrupted.
"He was my Dad."
"I'm even more sorry then." He said, looking back over his shoulder at the dead closing in. Look, come down here and let us in, we just want to talk." He spun around and yanked one that was getting close past him and pushed it into the fence then busted the back of its head with the hammer. "We didn't know he was going to kill him. It's not our fault." He pleaded as the other one kept fidgeting with the chain.
I struggled for a moment with the decision.
'These two didn't kill him, maybe the one that did really was acting alone. I've got no reason not to believe him.'
'If I do let them in and he is lying, what are my chances of killing them before they kill me?'
'If he's not lying and I let them die, I'm no better than the one that killed Dad. I am a murderer.'
'I could use my last few rounds to give them time and a better chance to untie the chain themselves.'
'But their way up is my only way down so what would I do then? Is the risk of losing my life worth the bit of soul and humanity I may be retaining by not letting two possibly innocent men die in the worst possible way? After all, I owe it to Mom and Beth to make it back home. It may not only be my life I'm risking, but theirs too and I can't make that decision for them.'
So I decided to let them die. Part of me knew that I had come to this decision by rationalizing away my moral obligation and choosing cowardice over courage so I decided I would watch just long enough to make sure they had no chance of escape then close my eyes before they were torn apart.
In seconds the dead were covering them like water pouring over ice, too many arms and bodies tangled all together to be able to tell which belonged to who. As they began to scream, I closed my eyes and considered using my last two bullets to end their misery. At least it would relieve my guilt a little. Just before I opened my eyes to take aim, the image of Dad, slumped over the building, the blood leaving his body but everything that made him who he was, already gone, flashed in my mind. I suddenly felt like it didn't matter if they were directly responsible.
This was the first day of my life that I felt like I knew my father and in an instant, he was gone. His body, lying there that way, looked like it belonged to someone I had never met and it felt like I had never had a father at all. There was always a part of me missing, a slight emptiness put there by his coldness. In that moment, that insignificant, barely noticeable pothole became as vast and as void as before God created. So, I used those last three rounds to kill three of the dead that were eating them, to drag out their suffering for as long as I could and use every moment of it to fill that emptiness.
Chapter 7: Damsel in the Dark
I watched the sun setting behind the pine trees through a few forced tears, the kind that well up but refuse to fall so they get caught in and disperse through your eyelashes till things are blurry. It wasn't that I wasn't hurting over his death or that I felt indifferent. That day was the first time I had ever felt close to him and now he was gone but I just wasn't sad enough for the tears to force themselves out. Then I realized I had just never cried before, not that I could remember. Maybe I didn’t know how.
Or maybe I didn't because there was no point in it. I felt the emptiness of him being gone, the guilt of not being able to protect him, the weight of suddenly being thrust into the role of provider and protector but if one was to cry every time something was deserving of tears, one would never stop, so why do it at all? It wouldn't fix or change any of it.
Then there was the first tepid breeze of the evening, out of the south and suddenly I felt a sort of relief. It wasn't just the physical comfort of it blowing the heat of the day away and cooling the sweat on my face and arms. It somehow lifted my spirits as well and I looked at the horizon, orange fading into pink, pink into purple overhead, purple into a black night full of stars behind me. The tallest pines swayed back and forth slowly like mourners at a funeral as a song Mom sang every Sunday morning, a song about death and resurrection and the everlasting soul of the redeemed, started playing in my head. It was a befitting funeral and I smiled at the thought of what Mom would've said if she were there, that God created everything there for that moment when I needed it the most.
I needed to get back home but I dreaded breaking the news to Mom and it was getting too dark to risk going back. The breeze that was such a relief only an hour earlier was now cooling the sweat on my shirt till I was starting to shiver. Lost in thought and grief, I had almost forgotten about the dead, down below, and was made suddenly aware again by the droning sounds of hundreds of feet, dragging on grass and pavement. Even after so long, I could still hear the sounds of flesh tearing from bone every now and then, chewing, swallowing and the wet plop of guts hitting the ground after what they had taken in came back out through the holes in their bellies.
I had to get inside for the night. There was no moon as of yet but there were a million stars that gave enough ambient light to discern between the flat parts of the roof and the skylights and to tell which ones were broken and even to see one that had a tree growing straight up through it, reaching a height of seven or eight feet above the roof.
I walked over to it as quietly as I could, the gravel of the roof crunching under my feet. Everything seemed so quiet in the cooler night air, sounds separating and being more distinct from one another and I felt the need to keep the noise down as much as possible. I'm not sure why. I could have jumped up and down, screaming at the top of my lungs and the dead couldn't get to me up here. But there seemed to be a reverence and peacefulness to the darkness and I didn't want to break it. Another thing I didn't want to break was the roof. There were places where it moved up and down when I stepped, like it didn't want to hold my 145 pounds.
I made it to the tree and reached out, feeling my way down the trunk to the edges of the broken skylight. It wasn't a pine or any other kind of tree I had seen in the woods so I guessed it had not volunteered but rather, been placed there by someone. There wasn't enough room to slide down in between the trunk and the broken edges of the glass to fit between them without breaking more of the skylight and I wanted get in as quietly as possible just in case there were dead somewhere inside.
I kept looking, moving quietly along the roof. The first two I looked into, there was no visible bottom. Getting down on my knees, covering the sides of my face to block out the starlight and getting my face as close as I could to the darkness, it was so absent of light inside I may as well have been looking into outer space. It gave me a disoriented feeling even trying to imagine how far it was to the floor.
Finally, looking down into the third broken skylight, I could faintly see the shape of what looked like the top of a shelf, flat and white. It was hard to tell how far down it was so I eased myself down over the edge, feet first. I slid down and hung onto the side till I was dangling, fully extended. My feet still weren’t touching the shelf and I didn’t know how much further it was but the metal edge was starting to cut into my fingers and I didn't think I had the strength to pull myself back up. I dropped down, only two feet or so before stopping precariously on the top shelf and in that split second of free fall my heart leapt into my throat and stayed there until I was stable. It felt a little shifty at first but once my mind found equilibrium in the darkness I started to ease myself down into a crouch, feeling the white metal of the shelf with my hands. As soon as I was sitting securely, or so I thought, on the shelf, it all gave way. I crashed down th
rough each of the succeeding shelves, some bending under my momentum and some coming unhinged all together and coming down with me. I stopped on the floor in a cold pile of metal and what felt like stuffed animals that probably saved me from injury. It still knocked the wind out of me though and I lay there trying to catch my breath and listening to the metallic echoes subside in the hollow silence.
I lay there, catching my breath and imagining the sounds that used to fill this place; the rattling of shopping carts, the muddled voices, the ring of cash registers. But there was no sound at all except the sudden sound of a gun coming off safe and a flashlight click. With the beam blinding me I heard a very young but stern female voice.
"Are you alive?”
There was a double entendra revealing itself in her voice. ‘Are you a dead thing that’s going to try to kill me?’ on one level and, ‘I hope you survived that fall because I am really frightened and tired of being alone’ on the other. I put my hand up to block the light from my eyes and heard her quickly take a step back, then the squeak of a child’s toy interrupted by the violent report of a gunshot. I had never been shot before so didn’t know what it would feel like or if I would feel anything at all. The only thing I did feel was the same sharp pressure as before but this time, in my good ear. After a moment I realized I was still alive and my breath had suddenly returned.
"Give me a minute.” I gasped and was immediately embraced, her weight on top of me and me trying to get up and her clumsily pushing me back down as she began to cry and laugh hysterically all at once. Finally, I gave in and just held her. I could feel her tears wetting the collar of my shirt and with my hand I could feel her ribs in her back. She didn't weigh much, long in the limbs, gangly and frail.
Once she had calmed down I took her by the arms, my hands almost reaching all the way around them, and pushed her away enough to get to my feet. She grabbed my hand and started leading me through the darkness without saying a word. We walked through the store tripping over things until there was a light, flickering form somewhere ahead of us. There was also a smell of death that got stronger the closer we got to the light.
