I closed my eyes and desperately sent a blast heavenward for any sort of inspiration. Usually, in the past, before the advent of zombies, these requests were horribly self-serving.
“Please, God, help me to get a measly single and drive in this run.”
“God, please save my bacon, and please make sure that grinding noise coming from the engine of my dad’s car isn’t because I forgot to check the oil like he told me.”
“Oka,y God, help me not to look like a total doofus in front of these hot cheerleaders.”
Those were always met with total silence and maybe even a distant and dismissive chuckle, but this request came back with an image of something I’d rather not to have had to re-live. It was an image of Greg, literally on his death bed. He was looking up to me and saying through gritted teeth that I was to take over leadership in case he didn’t make it. Despite my protests, he said I was the best choice because I thought “outside the box.” And that was it in terms of divine inspiration. A quick and dreadful glimpse into my friend’s death.
But it did work. Well, sort of. At least it got me motivated.
Up until that moment, the Lord of the Dead had set the ground rules. He held the cards. But I now knew that I had more power than I gave myself. It was time for me to throw a curveball into the situation, I just had to know which direction and at what speed.
The zombies between me and the bus cut the distance down to only twenty feet in front of me, making them too close for the RPG. The ones coming up from behind me were still a good fifty feet away.
So, I dropped the RPG launcher from my shoulder and reached in my pack again, until my hand fell on my last grenade. I pulled it free, yanked the pin, and, in one continuous motion, threw it into the midst of the on-coming zombies, hoping that none of the shrapnel would hit the kids. Of course, I didn’t take into account that any of it could hit me.
Three seconds after it left my hand, it exploded into the middle of the on-coming zombies. While bullets had trouble with their new armored shells, grenades definitely didn’t. The ones directly in the blast radius took the brunt of it and were blown to pieces. The ones outside that direct blast radius were either missing limbs or knocked to the ground with what was left of their shriveled brains scrambled.
I picked up the RPG launcher and looked for the best approach path. It seemed that the best way was the simplest -- a straight line to the bus. I started through the smoke cloud, using it as a screen to mask my approach as I ran forward. Of course, that meant running directly toward the two kids who were human bombs, but I had to take them out of the equation somehow. Or, at the least, minimize their effectiveness.
I made it to the pile of undead taken out by the grenade, trying not to choke on the smoke, and avoiding falling over the body parts. It wasn’t easy as arms, legs, and torsos lay strewn about like broken Transformers action figures. Only these action figures were undead and not robotic. It was like a macabre game of hopscotch as I jumped between the pieces and parts.
When I broke through the cloud, I found myself only fifteen feet away from the bus. One of the children, a little girl in dirty jeans and a dark hoodie sweatshirt also sporting the telltale backpack filled with explosives, stood near the front of the bus, next to the entry doors. The other child, a boy with dark hair in a filthy track suit, lay huddled in a pile on the ground near the back tire of the bus, cowering from the explosion.
I had to ask myself if the madman inside the bus thought they were too close to the bus to detonate the bombs in their backpacks. If the explosion that took out Travis was any indication, then I would say, “Yes.” But he was the only one who knew.
There was no time to take a full assessment as I saw the zombies starting to recover out of the corner eye. They rose out of the thin cover of smoke, like people waking up from sleep.
To keep the man on the bus back on his toes, I pulled out my pistol and fired spaced shots at the windows as I ran toward the boy. The windows shattered inward and I thought I caught the glimpse of a figure ducking down, but I couldn’t be sure. As I approached the boy, he started to crawl away from me. I saw stark terror in his face and it was like a dagger to my heart.
I didn’t have a lot of time, but I knelt down beside him and said, “Hey, hey, you don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m a friend.” I put my pistol away and let the RPG launcher dangle at my side.
He stopped, just under the overhang of the bus, and looked back me, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looked to be about seven and had those exaggeratedly large eyes that some children have. These eyes seemed to say, “It’s hopeless. I’m dead. You’re dead. We’re all dead.”
“I can help you,” I said, holding out a hand. I took a chance and added, “I can get you free from the bad man, I promise.”
His eyes flashed just a sliver of hope and he hesitated.
“You can trust me, but I need your help,” I said. Each second I spent there seemed like hours. I could only surmise that what was keeping me alive was the fact that I was so close to the bus, the man inside couldn’t get an angle on me with a gun, and I was also too close to detonate the explosives in the boy’s backpack.
I don’t know if it was my suggestive sales technique or whether he saw the truth in what I said, but he extended a hand toward mine. I grabbed it and pulled him close, hugging him tight.
“I’m not going to let that man hurt you anymore, but you need to be brave,” I said. “Can you be brave?”
He looked up to my face and slowly nodded his head.
“Do you know what’s in your backpack?”
His face broke a little, but he got it under control and nodded his head.
“Can we take it off of you?”
This time he shook his head violently from side to side and said, “No, he said it will go off if we try.” The fear swept over him like a wave and his eyes filled with tears of terror.
“No, no, no,” I said softly. “Don’t you cry. I’m going to take care of this backpack, but you can’t run away or else….” I let that hang in the air, not wanting to complete my sentence. “You need to stay close to me, okay?”
“Okay,” he said in a tiny voice.
“We need to get your friend and we need to get on the bus.”
He started shaking his head side-to-side.
“It’s the only way,” I said, reaching and taking his chin in my hand, stopping his head from shaking. “If you run, it will be bad.”
He looked into my eyes, asking for anything else, but despite his fear, I could see a penetrating intelligence behind his eyes that knew the truth. He nodded his head again.
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Hillary,” he said in that small voice. “I’m Thomas.”
“Okay, Thomas, I’m Joel. We need to...” I started to say, but I was interrupted by the sound of smashing glass above my head, and I felt the small bits of safety glass bounce off my head and shoulders. When I looked up, I saw the barrel of an assault rifle sticking out the window.
Where the hell is he? Anthony asked himself as he pivoted his rifle from left to right, scanning the area just outside the bus for any movement that wasn’t from the undead. The lone attacker had been trapped in a no man’s land between his soldiers in the field and those in front of the bus, now he was nowhere to be seen.
Anthony also wondered where his little secret weapons were. His fingers slipped to the detonation buttons for their backpacks. His fingers played with them, but a sense of caution made him withdraw his fingers. They had been his special ring of protection, but now that they were so close to the bus, he couldn’t detonate their bombs without fear of blowing himself up. A cloud of doubt passed through his mind, making him think he may have misplayed his pawns in this instance, but he pushed it away. He still had his soldiers. They would sweep this rat away like a piece of garbage.
His fingers played across the array of keys on his chest console and a new set of armored zombies left the field and started their t
rudge toward the bus. His attacker was just one man and Anthony took comfort that he had an army. Time and strength of numbers was on his side.
I watched, staying as motionless and as quiet as possible as the barrel of the rifle drifted from left to right, back and forth. After three of these sweeps, it withdrew back into the bus and I heard the sound of footsteps moving inside the bus away from where I was.
If I had one more grenade, I would have considered jumping up and tossing it inside, but I was out. I had the RPG, but I was too close to use it and stepping far enough away would put me out in the open, where I could be cut down easily, leaving the two kids alone. Plus, there was the fact that a small horde of zombies was on its way. I checked on their progress and the ones I had blown up were starting to rally. Another group from the field was heading my way, along with the original group. At best, I had two minutes before the first group was on me.
Again, I felt my choices narrowing. My smartest decision would be to slide under the bus, take off behind it, and then turn around and blast the son of a bitch, but that would mean killing the two kids. If I tried to take them with me, he’d blow all of us up. My only choice now was to turn his weapons into my allies.
I grabbed Thomas’ hand and gave a gentle tug, nodding my head in the direction of the front of the bus and the little girl. He seemed to understand and nodded back. We slowly moved along the side of the bus and made it to the little girl. She was huddled in a small, tight ball on the ground next to the front door. I don’t know if she heard us coming or not.
Something in me was hesitant to even touch her, but there was no time to waste. I gently put a hand on her back, but she barely stirred.
“Hillary,” I whispered, “I have your friend Thomas here and we need your help.” I waited for her to move, but she stayed collected in her tight little state of safety. “Honey, I’m here to take you away from the bad man, but I need your help. Can you help us?”
She didn’t move a muscle this time, and who could blame her? She had most likely been tortured for God knows how long. She had just seen one of her friends blown up. At her age, my mind would have exploded and I would have been useless for years.
My soul ached for her and what I really wanted to do was to take her in my arms and rock her for a week, until she felt safe again. But there was no time. “I don’t want to scare you any worse than you are already, but if you don’t move, we’re all going to die. The zombies are coming and we don’t have much time.”
This got her attention and her head slowly rose to look up to me. Her cheeks were streaked with a broken trail of tears. She had once been an innocent little girl, playing My Little Pony, then the world had gone to shit. She had to face unimaginable horrors, probably losing her parents and then this monster got a hold of her. Again, my heart broke, but something in me started to simmer again. I needed to end this guy...and fast.
“Listen up,” I said, leaning in towards the two kids. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect us. You can’t run, though. No matter what. I’m going onto the bus, you need to stay behind me, but out of view. Okay?”
I looked to each of them and Thomas nodded immediately, but Hillary looked petrified.
“Hillary, I need your help with this. Can you do this?”
She found some courage and nodded her head.
“We don’t have any more time,” I said, trying to portray as much confidence as I could. In reality, I felt like I was getting ready to live my last few seconds on the planet. The moans and grunts of the approaching zombies played like a terrible low-budget horror movie soundtrack in the background. I had always wanted to go out on the theme song from one of the Rocky movies and I got this instead. Karma, I guess.
I moved up to the folding doors and pushed my fingers into the crack, checking for some play. It gave some, which hopefully, meant I could open them from the outside if I could apply enough force. It was a tight fit, but I worked my hands into the crack, widening it, while scraping off copious amounts of skin in the process. I got my hands wedged in there and started pulling slowly at first, but then realizing that it was going to take all I had to pry these suckers open. I conceded and gave the door a yank. It resisted at first and then sprung open, nearly spilling me backwards, but I caught myself. I half expected to take a bullet to the face in that next second, but none came. I picked up the RPG launcher in my left hand, pulled my pistol with my right, took a deep breath, and stepped into the bus.
I brought up the RPG launcher and headed up the stairs, still waiting for that first bullet. I ducked down as much as possible, leading with the launcher, and came to the top of the stairs, keeping most of my body shielded behind the seats. A man stood in the aisle, about two-thirds of the way back. He held an assault rifle carefully aimed at me in one hand, with his other poised over a chest console with a set of control buttons similar to the ones I took off the kid I ran into in the woods, but this one was more expansive and elaborate.
Physically, he was about six feet with kinky closed cropped hair. His skin was odd looking with a striking white pallor, but badly scared around the neck and up his left cheek. It looked like burns, but he was too far away from me to really tell. He wore riot gear with what looked like a Kevlar outer covering. I found that pretty inventive, but this guy was the inventor type for sure, if remote controlled zombies were any evidence.
We stood in silence until I broke the quiet, “I see your fingers on those buttons. I just wanted to let you know the kids are just behind me. If you decide to detonate whatever’s in their backpacks, I’m guessing you’ll go with us.”
“Yes, you did neutralize my little surprises, didn’t you?” He asked and I thought I saw a smile form at the corner of his mouth. His voice sounded raspy, as if his throat was perpetually dry.
Now, that I was up in the crazy bastard’s face, I wasn’t sure what I really wanted to do. Of course, I wanted him dead, but how was I going to do that? I was much too close to blast him with an RPG -- that is, if I didn’t want to die with him. I had my pistol, but he had a nasty looking, tricked out assault rifle, so he had me outgunned. It was these details, and the fact that I had two human bombs behind me, that made my doubt my strategy, but there I was and I had to make the best of it.
“What do you propose I do?” the man asked. “Lay down my weapons and surrender my army to you?”
“That’s an option,” I responded. “If you want to live.”
My bravado must have tickled him, because he started to laugh. It was a deep, resonant laugh in the confines of the bus. This went on for several seconds before he started to cough. This took him a couple seconds to get under control.
“You act like you’re in control,” he said. “It’s obvious that you have no real appreciation for the scene before you. I have taken your precious home. I have routed whatever resistance you put up, and my soldiers will be coming soon to take you apart. So, no matter what you do, I will win the day.”
I brought the RPG launcher up and aimed it at him, “But what if I decided to shoot you with this?”
This caused him to pause for a moment, but then he said, “Then we would both die and you don’t want to die.”
“What if I’m willing to die to stop you?”
I guess he hadn’t considered that someone might be willing to make that kind of sacrifice because he paused again, with his mouth partially open.
“What if I told you that the two of us dying wouldn’t make a difference?” He asked. “What if you knew my soldiers would just continue on with the attack regardless of us dying?”
Now it was my time to contemplate the consequences. I had seen the armored zombies stop in place after I had blasted the trucks. I’m guessing with this final transmitter destroyed, the sway that he held over them would be broken. Yes, there’d still be a shitload of zombies on the scene, but they’d be on their own and not under his control.
“I’m guessing that once I take out your last transmitter, you’ll no longer control t
hem.”
“That’s your guess, but you don’t know. You don’t know if they’ve been conditioned enough to continue the attack. You don’t know if I might even have more human allies out there ready to continue the attack.” He reached down to his side with his free hand and pulled up a walkie-talkie. “Maggie, come in. Maggie, this is Anthony, come in.”
A woman’s voice came over the speaker, “Yes, sir, I’m here.”
A smile came to his face and he spoke into the walkie-talkie, “Continue with the assault on the complex.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, but started to continue, “but I did want to let you --” He turned off the walkie-talkie.”
“So, all that you’ve done is merely a waste,” he said.
“Then why are you even talking to me?” I asked. I had been wondering this since we started with our conversation. Why hadn’t he just blasted me when I came on the bus? Maybe he was afraid that if he shot at me, I’d still be able to get off a shot with the RPG? Maybe it was because he really didn’t need to do anything?
That’s when Hillary started screaming. I jerked my attention towards the two kids and saw the armored zombies just a few feet away, their arms out, ready to pluck the children off the bus. I lowered the RPG launcher and reached for the lever to close the door. The Lord of the Dead used my distraction to start firing. Bullets pounded at the seats on either side of me and slammed into the dashboard just above my head. Bits and pieces of plastic and metal showered onto to my head and neck like tiny pieces of shrapnel. I felt a searing pain in my right ear as a piece of hot metal cut into the soft flesh.
My hand slipped off the lever that closed the door, leaving it partially open. The zombies were just outside the door now. With no place to go, Hillary panicked, jumped out the door and tried to climb under the bus. A zombie grabbed her and started pulling her along the ground as she screamed in terror.
Bullets continued to rain down on me like a tempest. In sheer panic, Thomas tried to come up the steps, but slammed into my leg and fell back against the side of the stairs.
Books of the Dead (Book 3): Dead Man's Land Page 23
