by catt dahman
Thurman and Tink took shots, but the distance was causing most shots to stray. “I can’t hit much from here, Major,” Tink reported as he did land an expert head shot, putting the man down so that the screams finally stopped.
Len made a circle motion at Warren, “Go. Back way. Get yourself and the others back to the hospital, and don’t stop for anyone or anything.”
Warren launched into the vehicle with some of the others, speeding the opposite way of the crowd, his people inside the car, fearfully staring out the windows.
“Get everyone loaded and moving,” he told Mark.
“Go,” he told Tink and Thurman. “Let’s move, people.” He thought that many could easily overturn an SUV, trapping them. It was harder to run people over than the movies portrayed. Plus, it was a nasty business that none were trained for; if they hesitated and the crowd broke a window, it would be a violent, painful death.
Someone yelled, drawing Len’s attention back as they heard the SUV that Warren was driving, screech to a stop, do a three-point turn, and roar back to them, slamming to a stop. All five jumped out. Len knew at once why they were back, feeling a knot form in his gut.
“There’s a crowd of them at the next intersection; we saw a bunch, but it looked as if twice as many were joining them.”
Len could have screamed. How much was a bunch?
“That many.” Warren shouted, pointing to the crowd still shuffling towards them. The smell, from both directions, was already there, thick and revolting.
Len barked for them to grab their guns and get into the house.
“I don’t like this,” Tink said, “retreats are not always good ideas.”
Len didn’t know. He didn’t want to be pinned in a car under a mob of them, but retreat did sound just as bad. No one had trained him for this, and he had never asked to be the leader. Alone, he would make a run for it out the back; he was in good condition, and a few of them could make it on foot, but now they had a dog, a child, and four old men.
He wasn’t such a good man that he didn’t think about that for a few seconds. He and whoever could keep up would run, maybe even draw the horde away, and then double back. Or keep going. He wasn’t active duty, didn’t have a trained bunch who could barely shoot a gun, and wasn’t under any obligation. Who said he had to be a hero? He had already been brave and honorable for these people and gotten them into a good way. Well, it had been a good way until the crowds of zeds came that way.
But it wasn’t his job. Or Beth’s, Kim’s, Mark’s, or Julia’s…they could bolt for safety.
A gun sounded from the back. Once. Twice. Now, four shots.
Was the old guy that bad of a shot? Len wondered. It was one woman. Why didn’t George just put her down?
“Zeds in the backyard,” Kim stated, joining Len.
They could get past them.
“We aren’t gonna be going on foot either. George got three, and Gina...but…Major, we need a plan.”
George had once said something… ‘I suggest we do like in a war…we don’t hate…we do our job, stand by what is right, execute the enemy with extreme prejudice, and move on as best we can. We are Americans, son, and we are gonna damned sure act like it,’ and Len agreed.
Len knew they had less than five minutes.
He ordered Julia, Beth, and Rita upstairs to shoot from the second floor when the herd got closer and told them every shot better be in the head; they weren’t trained, but sometimes when you ordered people, believed they could do what was asked, and accepted no less, they did it.
The rest began removing interior doors and cabinet doors from their hinges, to be placed across the wooden shutters already on the windows. It was best to nail from the outside since it was harder to push the wood through the window than to push it off as if it had been nailed on the inside. Luckily, the men already had nailed some up outside. This was a secondary provision. Len ordered weight to be added at each window to reinforce them, lifting a door into place as he gave orders.
Beth saw a zed approaching, took aim, and used three rounds before she hit her target.
“Beth, unacceptable. One shot, one kill,” Len yelled.
She blinked. How had he known it was she? Across the room, Julia shrugged and tried her skill.
“Julia, I said one shot, not four.”
“One went down on two…the other two shots were body shots,” she whispered to Beth, “you’re right, Chica; he has a scary talent.”
“Body shots don’t help,” Len thundered back. He sent Benny, Thurman, and Tink to help the women. “And you wish you had my talent.”
Beth flew down the stairs. “Where’s Katie?”
Jeri screamed from the kitchen, calling for help.
Kim, Ben, and George, the closest, got there first.
In conclusion, Katie had opened the back door, looking for her mother. “I saw her, hurt. Her head ‘bleeded’,” she cried. She had looked into the backyard from an upstairs window and saw her mother lying on the chaise, amid the dead zeds, her head bleeding from the single shot placed there; her arm had soaked the bandage with pus and blood.
Seeing and hearing Katie, Jeri was a half second behind the child, grabbing her and pushing her back, as a stinking, bloody woman was reaching for Katie.
Ben scooped Katie to him and then tossed her backwards to George who caught the girl in one arm and held her close to him.
A man, infection dripping from a bite wound to the head, clawed at Jeri, moaning, snapping his teeth at her arm, and hissing with fury in her face. Jeri froze for a second as the smell of decomposition, pus, blood, feces, and vomit, surrounded her and bluish intestines slinked from his belly in slimy coils. It was straight out of the worst nightmare one could imagine; only it was real.
The woman grabbed Jeri’s arm and yanked her out the door, clamping bloody teeth down into Jeri’s throat.
Kim shot the woman through the head, awkwardly dodging the man; Ben and he were blocking the way of anyone else’s helping as Ben tried to fire.
Ben, losing his grip on Jeri’s shirt, stumbled, falling on all fours in front of the man; two more red zeds tore into Ben’s arms and scalp. They pulled at him, and he slid belly-down, swatting at them. A woman bit into his face, ripping away his nose with a bloody sweep; a teen snarled as he tore away Ben’s lips and chin. It was all that fast.
Mark slid like a runner coming into home plate, firing upwards, while George got behind to help in case he could get a shot.
Kim and Mark put all of them down and added a round each for Jeri and Ben so they didn’t get back up. While it made sense to fire at once, it was difficult to fire at a healthy, live person, fighting with zeds. Training was hard to override.
Once the door was slammed and locked, the rest, faces full of shock and horror, had two doors to hammer into place. Kim slid down the wall next to Beth who was holding Katie. Mark crawled to the side.
“Damn fine work,” George told Mark and Kim. “Very good move there, Son.” He patted Mark’s shoulder.
“My God, we lost two people.” Mark was pale.
“And you protected every one of the people in here,” Len said.
“Major? George?” Tink yelled.
“We’re good, Tink,” George called back.
Len frowned as he understood he was being called ‘Major’ by most of them now. Damn that Julia. “Could have been any one of us. They were brave folks.” That was his simple salute to the two who had died. He had to get his team moving forward again. It was hell seeing friends die, worse to see them viciously chewed to pieces.
Misty and Rita sat in the dining room crying, and Len asked Rita to take Katie upstairs and not let the little girl out of her sight. He wanted Rita to explain, in a milder tone than he would have used, to Katie how serious the situation was and to extract a promise that she would not do that fucking shit, again. With his jaw tight and eyes staring, Len dared Rita to say she couldn’t handle that one chore. He had Rita take Dallas with her for Katie.
Maybe the damned dog could watch the kid better than they could.
“Beth, upstairs with George…one shot, one kill, Beth. Don’t waste the ammo.” He glared at her. “Cover the backyard. Misty, you and Tom stand duty on the stairs. Anything happens, you cover until the rest can back you up.” Upstairs, sporadic shots were fired as they acquired targets.
“Major, Len.” Beth tried, eyes sad.
He had to snap her out of it, or she’d take the blame, and it would eat her alive. Like the zeds would. “Beth, you have a job to do, carry on. Good job on noticing the kid was out of your sight, way to be alert. I need you watching the backyard.”
“Incoming, Major. Almost all of them,” Julia called down.
“I’m going up to shoot. Kim, Tom, and Warren, I want you patrolling the house down here. All rooms. If you hear or see anything hinky…do not…I repeat, do not engage, but call us immediately. Mark and I will come down to help. Kim, you’re point man down here; stay alert.”
Len ran up the stairs with Mark, yelling for a sitrep as he went.
Julia and Beth called back, making him feel a wash of pride in them. He didn’t ask for this, but here he was with a rag-tag bunch of civvies: some were poor shots, cried too much, and couldn’t keep an eye on one child; others were old men, but all were surrounded by crazies who wanted nothing more than to disembowel and eat them. Yet, he was just as proud of them as he had been of any other of his subordinates. They didn’t ask to be in his company but followed loyally, learning quickly what he demanded, and showing dependability.
He blamed himself for the loss of Jeri and Ben, reacting with self-anger and growls at others. So be it. He would shoulder the blame. He might have fared better with well-trained soldiers, but this group had heart.
“Julia, stop jerking the trigger,” he called out to the other room, earning a weak grin from Mark and Tink. “Drives her crazy,” he whispered to Mark.
“How does he do that?” Julia complained.
“Quit yer bitchin’ and hit the target,” Len sighed. If they survived this siege, he had a helluva team.
If.
7
The President
He had not been where most thought he would be; he was still alive, was immune, it seemed. His small staff had looked at him in silent expectation. What did they expect? He had a tiny military to command, few advisors, a concern for his own family, and little hope.
Fact: The scientists who were left, few that they were, had no cure, only a vaccination that worked some of the time, no idea why the red zeds had been biting, had been crazed cannibals now, or zombies. The scientists had not known why it had spread so fast to those bitten, had claimed that they were not all undead, but had not been positive about that or anything else, anymore. Few were not even in touch anymore.
Fact: All who had been bitten by Red turned.
Fact: All countries had been over-taken, including the US.
Fact: Reds were still turning and might be for another week.
Fact: The power grids, all water, and every resource: everything had been finished. Nuclear reactors had been shut down. Nothing was expected to be working in the near future, if ever.
Fact: He had a headache.
Not one piece of positive information had been shared with him. If he didn’t do as the rest demanded, he would be relieved of duty, maybe via a bullet. It made no sense to him that they had wanted to destroy the rest of the world and their own soil in waves of mass destruction, taking out every zombie, every sick person, and even those survivors who had been trying their best to recover.
With anger, retaliation, and fury at an enemy they wouldn’t otherwise harm, they had sought to hit back.
Fact: He had had no real hope, despite being the president and had been expected to tell everyone to pull together and rebuild, to have hope and be strong, and to wait for rescue. Rescue wouldn’t be coming.
He looked at the map again. Maybe there was hope.
The youngest president ever elected, he was strong, determined, and scared to die like this. There had been no fair chance at fixing this national crisis. There hadn’t been a budget problem or a war, a health crisis or an education situation. This had been a plague of zombies. Really unfair.
They had wanted the infected wiped off of the earth.
“Mr. President…” He had been urged. Or maybe it had been a veiled threat.
Fact: This was a situation he could not win.
“I have chosen a time,” he had said aloud. Then he had looked at them with sad eyes that had held a spark of raw fury, “May God damn you all to hell.”
He had issued the order.
8
Back in the Neighborhood
Benny, Misty, and Julia served food to those who were ready to eat; some were upstairs on duty. While he worked, Benny outlined his theory, “It’s gotta be the smell. Some of those didn’t have eyes left, and they still headed this way.”
“Sound,” Beth said, grabbing the beans to serve.
“Possible…that moaning calls them…they call each other when they find us, I mean. They flock like birds.”
“Like the movies,” Mark agreed.
“But then, they started going away…so that makes no sense.”
Mark thought, “’Cause they couldn’t get to us.”
“Really? Is that in the movies, Chica?”
“No.”
“So if we assume they can call one another, then assume they can smell us…as if we were…food…”
“That’s sick, Benny,” Tink argued.
“Sick, yes, but maybe true. So what I’m thinking is…maybe they can’t really smell us anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Look at the ones we killed out there…there has gotta be…a hundred? That’s what they smell now. They can’t see us or hear us…we stay hidden, and now they can’t smell us.”
Mark nodded, “That makes sense.”
“I thought of it while watching Dallas. He uses his nose,” Benny told them.
“They don’t do it out of hunger,” Julia said, “George says they attack and bite to get the virus spread. Bigger bite area, more saliva, faster change.”
“The fuckers swallow.” Mark grimaced. “They bite and eat...it’s not as if they spit the flesh back out.”
“Well, not as if they can fix meals and eat like normal, now. They’re more like animals the way they hunt,” Benny suggested.
Len was scribbling on paper, looking up to think occasionally and listening to the theories. They needed their minds and bodies busy. He had a plan for four guards upstairs, two downstairs, and one with Katie, in shifts of four hours each. They would leave the house, hopefully, a little after dawn.
They used the fresh beef, vegetables, the rice and beans that Julia seasoned to fill themselves, aware that fresh food was about to become a thing of the past until they could make their own gardens. The smell of the sick and events had left them sick to their stomachs, but Len encouraged them to eat.
Beth watched the front beside Kim. “I keep thinking that later, I’ll have a good cry when this hits me.”
“That might make you feel better.”
“Or worse. Len is keeping us busy, which is pretty smart.”
“We have several smart ones here,” Kim said.
Beth stretched. “The shower felt so good; do you think he’s right that we have a good team?”
“Sure. And we have the others from the hospital. Roy’s an ass, but he’s helpful…Hagan…several.”
“Julia is a star pupil.”
Kim laughed. “She is trying. The old guys have it going on.”
“I like them. You and Mark are good shots. I dropped the ball in not watching Katie. I caused two people to get killed.”
“If you had, Len would have yelled at you; it was an accident that Katie opened the door; we all dropped the ball if anything. We didn’t tell her not to. It could’ve been any one person, and we can look at how many things have gone wrong or at wha
t we didn’t do right to cause this.”
“I feel as if I caused it.”
“Really, whoever caused the virus caused the deaths. The virus caused the deaths. Beth, sorry, but people are gonna make mistakes, and people are going to die. We just have to always be a step ahead of what could go wrong.”
“I’m a bad shot.”
“You just need practice and confidence. Misty is a possibility, too.”
Kim moved to watch shadows across the street. He pointed to his eyes and then to the window; Beth nodded and shifted to see better, as Kim darted from the room.
Downstairs, George, Len, and Warren, laboriously opened the front door and took positions with Julia and Kim behind them.
Beth shivered, realizing Kim had left her to cover the front alone. The shadows darted across and to the end of the lawn, hesitating when they saw three guns pointed at them. Three teens. In a second, they moved forward again, closer to the men. She could faintly hear them talking.
A zed moved into the light, into range, missing an arm and hand, along with parts of its stomach and face. Only the long hair told Beth it might be a female, dressed in tattered clothing, and barefoot. She looked into the scope, breathed out, squeezed, and saw the zed drop with a hole neatly through the forehead.
The front door closed and was sealed again; the shadows had been three young people who crept away down the street in the opposite direction on the other side of the street.
“Good shot,” Kimball said, returning.
“I got lucky. It just stood there. What about those people?”
“Len is watching them in the other room; we couldn’t let them in; one was bitten, one might have been bitten but was hiding it, hiding something anyway, and the other wouldn’t leave the two.”
“I feel bad for them.”
“Len told them about Gina and what she did and how she turned.” The guys didn’t look real happy about that outcome, but they didn’t want to be here with us so much after they found out that we weren’t allowing sick people to go with us.”
