by Mark Clodi
“If they go too far they will get behind the shed where we can't see them!”
“I know, but maybe they will pop up too soon, so be ready!” Jerome said.
The mower deck dropped to the ground and with some effort Bill pulled it out from under the tractor. He was sweating profusely and after wiping his arm across his eyes he was startled to see a zombie woman rushing him through the open doorway. His rifle was in the wagon, too far away before impact. Bill had just enough time to get up from where he was bent over and shout a warning before the zombie slammed into him.
The thing immediately tried to bite him, Bill shoved the pliers towards the zombie's face, trying to put them into her mouth, he missed and the pliers slid into her eye, pushing beside it to lodge in the crevice where her eye met her nose, a clear liquid mixed with blood streamed down his hand as her eye was cut open by the rough edge of the pliers. This didn't stop the woman from biting at Bill, if it were not for the leverage of the pliers her mouth would have bitten off the tip of his nose. Vic and Jerome sprang up and came to Bill's aid. Vic clubbed the zombie in the back with his rifle barrel, Jerome went down on one knee and aimed at the woman, who was on top of Bill.
Remembering the wrestling moves he hadn't used in twenty years Bill bucked and tilted sideways as Jerome fired. The bullet clipped the back of the woman's ribcage, then spun sideways and into her torso before exiting her pelvis to hit the ground between Bill's legs a microsecond before that gap was closed by his rolling effort. The woman was young, perhaps seventeen and in good condition, as most of the super zombies seemed to be. She was also very, very strong, her arms, clamped around Bill's shoulders inexorably brought them closer together.
“I will eat you.” the woman whispered, causing Bill to lose his concentration and be pulled a couple of inches closer to her ruined face.
“She talked! She talked!” Bill yelled as adrenaline surged through him again.
“Fuck you girl!” Vic yelled swinging his rifle barrel overhead and smashing the woman on the side of the head. This dazed the girl and Bill was able to pull away enough to let Vic take a shot with his rifle, but when he did so there was an explosion near his hand and he fell backwards screaming. Bill rolled onto his back when Jerome yelled for him to get down. Another shot rang out and Bill felt a damp mist hit the side of his head, then the girls hands clenched tightly before letting go of him. Jerome stepped up and fired into the zombie's head again.
Behind Jerome, Bill saw the little zombie boy dart into the shed towards them, followed immediately by the girl, who came right at him. Bill yelled a warning to Jerome, but the young man was not able to get turned around before the boy hit him around the waist, knocking him back a few steps. Bill swept his leg around and took the zombie girl down before she leapt on top of him, then he kicked her repeatedly forcing her underneath the tractor into the space where he had removed the mower deck. He stood up, but when the girl tried to stand she found the tractor was on top of her and had to crawl out and around the other side. Vic was screaming on the ground writhing and clutching the side of his head and face, there was blood everywhere. In the seconds it took for the girl to get under the tractor and stand on the other side Bill turned and picked up the little boy by his ankles. The kid was strong, but still only weighted the same as any nine year old. The boy's head was streaming blood as Bill swung him around to force the little girl back. Jerome turned about and fired into the girl from point blank range, the bullet flew through her chest and ricocheted off of the cement floor, whizzing out of the shed and hitting a fat, bald zombie by the baseball fence in the eye.
The girl screamed and launched herself at Jerome, smashing a foot down on Vic's head as she went. Bill swung the boy around and up, hitting his head on one of the low wooden supports of the shed roof. He made one more spin and tossed the kid out of the shed, aiming for a pile of broken cement. He didn't have time to see if the little zombie was dead again or not as he turned to help Jerome. The younger man had his rifle wedged between himself and the girl, but she had one hand on his throat, it looked like she was wedging her fingers underneath his skin. Blood was staring to seep out from under her fingertips when Bill grabbed her by the head and twisted her violently to one side, a sharp, wet crack sounded as her neck broke. She was not dead again, but started twitching so violently that Bill couldn't hold onto her, the girl fell to the floor and vibrated up and down like a child's windup toy. Bill sat Jerome down on the edge of the wagon and got the first aid kit out, pulling out bandages while the man tried to hold in his lifeblood. Jerome fell over backwards into the wagon before Bill could get the blood stopped.
“Goddamn it! God damn it!” Bill repeated to himself as he tried in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his soldier. Several minutes had passed when the bleeding finally stopped, Jerome was obviously dead. Turning from the dead soldier Bill looked towards Vic taking a step towards him to help him up. He had thought Vic was not hurt that badly, but the other man too was laying deathly still. “Oh Christ.” Bill said as Jerome started moving again behind him.
As Jerome sat up on the wagon it creaked, alerting Bill to the movement, he whirled to see the man getting up, his face lit up with a smile, thinking he was only mistaken that his soldier had died. The joy died as he noticed the opaque eyes and dead stare of the zombie that had been Jerome. This zombie was not fast, only a shambling shadow of a human. Bill picked Jerome's rifle up from where it lay on the ground and put a bullet through the zombie's head.
“Damn, damn, damn.” Bill watched Vic closely, then knelt to feel for a pulse, as he had been taught in the first aid class the army had given him five days ago. Nothing. And Vic wasn't coming back, either. Checking for wandering zombies outside the shed Bill didn't spot any, the zombie boy's body was not there or anywhere else he could see. Bill turned his attention back to Jerome, rolling the body over to look for bite marks. He recalled the boy's face being bloody as he pulled the kid off of Jerome and sure enough the soldier had been bitten just above the hip where the little beast had grabbed onto him.
“Now what?” Bill said out loud. A shot rang out from the concession stand, seemingly on cue to give him direction on where to go from here. Shaking his head Bill reloaded both his and Jerome's rifles, putting one in the wagon and bracing the other on the tractor. Vic's rifle was badly damaged, it looked like part of it had blown off and into the man's head when he tried to fire it, so Bill left it there, but he did pull all of the clips of ammunition off of the soldiers along with their id tags before driving the tractor out of the shed.
As he passed under the overhanging roof he leaned back to try and get more comfortable in the heavy plastic seat, when he did so the small zombie leaping onto him from the roof missed and hit the steering wheel of the tractor, bending it until it almost touched the dashboard. A pair of small, scabby legs was thrust into Bill's face, he swept them aside with one arm, but the little boy latched onto the tractor's steering wheel with one small hand. Before the last day Bill may have hesitated, now he just struck the boy's head with his fist repeatedly until, dazed, the zombie fell off and was run over by the tractor's rear wheel. Bill grabbed his rifle from where it was propped up and fired three bullets into the kid as he slowly appeared from under the tractor wheel.
Stopping the tractor Bill looked around for any more immediate threats and when none appeared he sat down the rifle again and used both hands to correct most of the damage to the steering wheel. Starting up he kept his rifle in one hand and steered towards the baseball building with the other. As he drove forward the zombies stuck behind the fences paced him, he noticed that some were going to be able to get out of the pen by bumbling their way through the dugouts on each side, but he didn't plan on sticking around long enough for them to catch him. As he pulled up to the only doorway he saw at the base of the building Bill cut the engine on the tractor. He immediately heard running footsteps to the left of him and swung the rifle around. Bill held his fire only for a split second, all the t
ime it took him to recognize that the oncoming elderly man was not alive anymore. The old guy was wearing a faded gray shirt with boxing shorts and Bill's shot hit him right in the face smashing through his jaw and spraying pieces of yellow teeth over the ground behind him. The door opened and Bill pointed his rifle that direction.
“Don't shoot! Don't shoot please!” said the pale, bleary eyed soldier in fatigues as he slowly came through the door with his rifle barrel pointed down at the ground.
Bill looked him over and when no one else came out of the doorway he asked, “Is there anyone else?”
“No, uh, Sergeant.” said the young man looking at the stripes on Bill's sleeve.
“Where is Sergeant Williams?”
“He got killed when they ambushed us at the concession stand. There are some really fast zombies out there, we weren't expecting that.”
“What about your corporal….” Bill let the sentence drag off as he tried to remember the corporal's name.
“Tiller?”
“Yeah, Jim, right? Where is he?”
“He got it when we broke out of the concession stand to get here. He turned into one of them, I saw him following the guys with the mower and golf cart.”
“Get on the cart, I'll drive us to the concession stand.”
“There isn't anyone there! Three of the fools wouldn't break out with us and they got mobbed when we left.”
“Then we'll grab their tags and get back across the river.” Bill said as the soldier got onto the wagon behind him. “What is your name son?”
“Barry.”
“I'm Bill, ah, I mean 'Sergeant Carson'. You keep a look out and if you see anything we aren't outrunning you let me know or fire at it, or both.”
“There are zombies coming at us from the fields! I only have, like, ten bullets left.”
“The zombies are slow, worry about the fast ones. The packs there in the wagon are full of ammunition. Put in a fresh clip and reload your other ones. I'm going to get us out of here now at top speed, so hold on.”
Barry immediately did as ordered and Bill started the tractor and drove off at full throttle. The tractor was not designed to compete with a passenger vehicle, but it was designed to mow large swathes of grass as quickly as possible, so it could make a respectable twelve to fifteen miles an hour. Even at that slow speed it easily outdistanced the zombies coming towards them from the baseball fields, Bill was a little less tense as they drove out of the tight confines between the fences and bleachers and onto the open soccer fields. There were still thirty or forty zombies around and on top of the concession stand. Bill halted the tractor fifty feet from the building, cut the engine and said, “Barry start picking them off, there are not that many, go slow and get the ones closest to us.”
“Okay sarge.”
Both men started firing and steadily whittled away at the zombies numbers, being careful not to put the building behind any zombies they were firing at. Once they had shot all of the zombies they could get from their current position Bill drove a quarter circle around the building and they took care of the remaining slow moving zombies. The zombies were from a cross section of society; they shot everything from old men and women, to zombies as young as ten or twelve years old. Most of them were Caucasian and lightly dressed, a few still bore hideous wounds that were probably the cause of their deaths, but others were riddled with pock marks of rifle bullets.
“We really need shotguns for this kind of work.” Bill mumbled to himself as he hopped back on the tractor to slowly circle around the building to approach the main door.
The zombies from the baseball fields were about halfway to them when they stopped at the door, which would give them about three to five minutes by Bill's estimation.
“Sarge, more are coming in from the trees. That is what happened last time. How we got stuck here.”
“Barry we will be here less than three minutes, then we are driving out of here as fast as the tractor can take us.” speaking loudly in the direct of the concession stand Bill said, “Anyone alive in there?” He walked over to the door and had to step on the bodies of the dead to get there, they were not laying next to each other, there were too many of them, they had piled up around the doorway to a depth of two to three feet. Bill kept a close eye on the bodies he was stepping on, to make sure they would not start moving. Pounding on the door he said, “Open up!”
A weak voice replied, “Hold on.” Then there were sounds of stuff being removed from behind the door. Finally the door opened a crack and a dirty face looked out at him.
“Who are you?”
“Sergeant Carson, I've come to get you out of here.”
The door opened wider and Bill was able to see into the room a little better. The smell that hit him reminded him of a sewer and butcher shop combine, a slightly sweet, rotting smell.
“Phew, get out of there private and bring anyone else you have with you too.”
“It is just me and Joe now. The others are gone.”
“What is your name?'
“Glen Edwards.” the young man said dully.
“Get out of there Glen, now, and bring Joe with you.”
Glen turned and stumbled into the dimly lit interior then reached down and helped another man to his feet. Bill thought the other man might be wounded, but he did not appear to be, neither man picked up their rifles as they made their way to the doorway.
“No!” screamed Glen as he caught sight of the zombies slowly approaching from the baseball fields. If Bill had not been there to catch the door, the other man would have slammed it shut.
“Out! Now!” Shouted Bill into Glen's face. He grabbed the man by the shirt at the shoulder and pulled him out of the doorway, then pushed him towards the tractor, which was about thirty feet away from the door. Bill treated Joe with no more delicacy than he had Glen and soon both men were falling and stumbling over the dead to reach the tractor.
“C'mon sarge! We gotta go!” yelled Barry after getting the other two loaded up.
“You hold tight! I gotta go get the tags off the dead.” after saying that Bill ducked inside, pulling out his pen light as he did so. Walking around the small building he kept repeating 'Please, please, please!' to himself, hoping not to find John's body among those on the floor. There were only four bodies, three soldiers and one civilian and Bill was happy to see that John was not one of them. He grabbed the tags off of the soldiers and picked up the three rifles that were sitting on a counter not too far from the doorway, then got out of the building.
Outside Barry and Joe were restraining Glen, who was yelling and spitting at the other two, his screams were incoherent, but served to draw even more zombies towards them. Bill made his way to them and slapped the young man across the face, “Shut up Glen!”
The slap did nothing to the man except make him struggle more. Reluctantly Bill used more force to get the man to quiet down. A punch in the stomach quenched the screams long enough for Bill's words to get through to the man, “Shut up so I can drive us out of here, if you scream more of them will come. So shut up!”
All of the soldiers were looking at him, “Now sit down, Barry, Joe make sure your rifles are ready and fire at any zombies who get close, Barry you aim towards the front and right side, Joe, you aim towards the left and back.”
“What about me?” asked Glen weakly.
“You keep your goddamn pie hole shut and stop making problems. I came here to get you out, not to get killed.”
Bill jumped back on the tractor and sped off towards the access road that William's squad had cut through on their way to the athletic park only sixteen hours before. The road was little better than a four wheel drive muddy lane, but the tractor had no trouble getting through the notch cut in the trees. When he reached the rail road grade he angled sideways and the tractor almost tipped over, somehow he wrestled it back into balance and shot up onto the rough gravel rocks that made up track bed. The men in the wagon fired their rifles at any zombies who got close to the
m, but the roughness of the ride and their fatigue made most of their shots wild and inaccurate. In minutes Bill had the tractor to the bombed out section in front of the bridge, he gunned the engine and hopped for the best as he hit the rough terrain. A cry went up from the wagon behind him, but he couldn't slow down or he risked stalling, when he finally fought the machine up to more level ground he stopped and looked back. Joe had fallen off the wagon and was rolling around in the dirt, clutching his leg. Bill put the tractor in neutral and hopped off of it. Zombies and pieces of zombies immediately made the landscape come alive, it was like the ground was moving and Joe was in the middle of them.
“Barry, you stay here and cover me. Glen stay in the wagon. I am going to get Joe. Bill ran back the twenty yards to the fallen man whose lower leg was twisted sideways and bent in a spot that didn't correspond to human anatomy. Reaching down Bill pulled the man up and said, “Sorry Joe, it was a rough ride, this is gonna hurt, but we are almost there.”
Rifle shots whizzed by the men as Barry fired at something behind them. Bill watched as Glen crawled out of the wagon onto the tractor seat.
“Get Glen off the tractor! Don't let him drive on the bridge!”
Barry shook his head and kept firing behind the men, finally Bill heard a meaty thunk of a bullet hitting flesh, from what sounded like only a few feet behind him. Barry then turned and tried to stop Glen from driving the tractor forward onto the bridge. From across the other side Bill saw Ruben and a couple of other men from the squad making their way across the bridge with their rifles. Barry barely grabbed the back of the wagon as Glen started driving forward, then was carried along dragging on the ground for a couple of seconds before he rolled free. When the tractor jerked forward Joe too was thrown out onto the ground from the kneeling position he had taken in the wagon. One of the pack straps was wrapped around his leg and it got caught on the end of the wagon, dragging him along. Ruben and his men were waving Glen to stop driving the tractor forward, but the man didn't notice or didn't care, he drove it right into the crater in the bridge. As the tractor drove over the edge Joe pulled out a knife and slashed at the backpack holding him to the wagon, the strap didn't give and the man turned over onto his belly and plunged the knife into the rocky gravel, trying to gain some traction and not be dragged into the hole.
