Dead America The Second Week (Book 2): Dead America: Heartland Part 2

by Slaton, Derek

  There was a pregnant pause before the Corporal came back. “Okay, you get two men by the entrance. And just so we’re clear, we see movement on the roof, you die first. A shutter opens, you die first. Are we clear?”

  “Crystal,” Shawn growled into the radio and then threw the receiver down in frustration. “Fuck!”

  “Watch yourself there,” Kowalski warned, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Pretty sure there’s going to be a shortage on high blood pressure meds.”

  “One more fucking word, and I’ll kill you on principle!” Shawn roared, turning to the Private with fire in his eyes. He whirled towards his lackeys by the door. “Get ‘em ready to move. You two are with me outside. Make sure your boys on the roof know what the deal is. Tell ‘em to stay out of sight until my signal. And get a couple of the men from the gym up here, too. I don’t want these fuckers getting away with this.”

  He kicked one of the desks with another scream and stalked out of the detention hall.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Looks like they’re following our orders,” Bretz said quietly from their vantage point behind two back-to-back cars about twenty yards from the school door.

  Baker peeked over the hood for a split second. “Looks like it,” he agreed. “Although I got ten to one odds that they have shooters ready to go.”

  “No doubt,” the Corporal agreed, “which is why we gotta stay frosty.” He nodded to Johnson, who grinned at him reassuringly.

  Linda kept her back to the car, controlling her breathing as she gripped the handle of her new knife. She closed her eyes at the sound of the building doors opening.

  Bretz watched as two armed men came out, guns raised. They took up positions behind a nearby car, exciting the zombies in the pen off to the side of the parking lot. They began to rattle the fence, as if building up a cheer for the two soldiers stepping out into the sunlight. Shawn followed close behind, keeping his handgun firmly pressed against the back of Kowalski’s head.

  “Move it, you loud mouth piece of shit,” he snapped, and then shoved him forward. As soon as they passed the car, the blonde ducked behind it where his guards were. “Here you go! Now get the fuck out of my town!”

  “Where are the rest of the prisoners?” Bretz called out.

  Shawn muttered something under his breath and then peeked up over the hood. “What are you talking about? That is all of them!”

  “No it’s not!” Linda shrieked, and stood up fully, squaring her shoulders at her abuser. “And you know it.”

  Shawn sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry sweetheart,” he said, condescension dripping from his voice, “but these two soldiers are the only ones leaving today.”

  Kowalski and Kersey continued at a slow pace, not wanting to draw too much attention to themselves during the tense standoff. The excited zombie groans echoed on, accentuating the stare down between the woman and her former captor.

  “That’s not the deal, asshole,” Linda snarled. “Everybody gets free today.”

  “Why don’t you sit back down, sweetheart?” Shawn sneered. “The men are handling this.”

  She clenched her jaw. “Call me sweetheart one more time and see what happens,” she warned.

  “Oh, feisty.” The blonde laughed heartily. “I knew you were my favorite for a reason.”

  Linda grabbed the handgun at her side and Baker reached up to grab her wrist. Her face went white and she tore her hand away from him, but got the message to keep herself in check.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, after realizing he shouldn’t have grabbed her.

  Shawn stood up and raised his gun in the air. “That’s far enough, soldier boys!” he called, and Kowalski and Kersey froze, about halfway across to safety.

  “What’s the problem?” Bretz called. “Thought we had a deal, here?”

  “Well your bitch there wanted to renegotiate, so we’re going to renegotiate,” Shawn replied with an arrogant smirk. “You don’t get your men back until I get her.”

  “Not gonna happen,” the Corporal called back immediately. “She’s not going back in there.”

  The blonde cocked his head. “You really don’t value your men’s lives, do you Corporal?”

  “I promise you, I value their lives a whole hell of a lot more than I value yours,” Bretz warned, voice like steel. “I assure you that this is not a road you want to go down.”

  Johnson narrowed his eyes at the sight of one of the shutters on the second floor moving ever-so-slightly, and the glint off of the tip of a barrel in the sunlight. “Contact!” he yelled, and leapt to his feet, opening fire immediately on the threat.

  The shutters imploded, and the gun barrel disappeared inside.

  Linda took the opportunity to point her handgun at Shawn and fire a few shots. She missed by a mile, but the offensive move sent him barreling back into the building to take cover.

  Kersey and Kowalski skidded around the two cars, having sprinted as soon as Johnson fired. Kowalski felt a hard impact on his back and flew to the asphalt, bringing his arms up just in time to break his fall.

  The Sergeant cried out and grabbed him by the back of his vest, dragging him behind cover. “Holy fuck, are you okay?” he demanded.

  “I am gonna kill the motherfucker who shot me!” Kowalski snapped, clenching a fist.

  Kersey shook his arm. “Are you okay?” he asked firmly.

  “Yeah, it just caught my vest,” the Private assured him, shaking him off. “Motherfucker!”

  More guards came out of the woodwork in the school, opening fire on the soldiers ducked behind the cars in the parking lot. Shutters opened, and snipers popped up on the roof, a few more guards bustling out the front doors and taking cover behind their own cars.

  “Great plan, General,” Kersey drawled, raising an eyebrow at his Corporal.

  Bretz shrugged. “Hey, you’re out, aren’t you?” he asked, holding out his handgun.

  “We’ve gotta fall back,” Kowalski said as he took another handgun from Johnson.

  “Hell no!” Linda cried, slapping her hand on the side of the car in frustration. “We’re not leaving my people in there.”

  “Lady, we’re pinned down,” Kowalski argued. “So unless you have a way to flank those ground shooters and keep them occupied long enough to take out the top shelf assholes, we need to fall back.”

  She pursed her lips in response.

  “That’s what I thought,” the Private snapped.

  Linda glanced down at Baker’s utility belt, and snatched one of the grenades free. She held it up in front of Kowalski’s face and pulled the pin out, giving him a wink before lobbing it over the car and straight towards the zombie pen.

  The grenade smacked into the brick wall of the school, skittering across the pavement to rest a few feet from the chainlink.

  The guards barely had time to react before the explosion racked the battlefield, shrapnel flying in all directions. As the smoke cleared, everyone peeked up from their respective cover to see the zombie pen in tatters. Quite a few of the corpses that soaked up the blast painted the pavement and walls with rotted goo, but the remaining ones from the back flooded out into the parking lot.

  The guards ducked behind cars screamed and turned away from the soldiers, firing on the horde closing in on them. Many of them not being highly trained gunmen, they were unable to hit the zombies in the head, and couldn’t fell enough of them to protect themselves.

  “Help us, help!” one of them screeched up at the windows, but the angle was too hard for the second-floor shooters to hit anything substantial.

  Two of the guards managed to make it to the front doors, but when they yanked on them, they realized they were locked. Shawn had barred the door from the inside. They turned around just in time to meet the gnawing teeth of the rotted angels of death descending on them.

  “Fuck this!” another guard threw his weapon and raised his hands, jumping out from behind his car. His partner followed suit, looking hopefully at the soldiers in
hopes that they could surrender instead of facing such a grisly fate.

  The soldiers held their fire, but one of the second floor shooters obviously adjusted his aim down at the two defecting guards. Bretz and Baker spotted it and shot them, shredding the shutters on that window and destroying the position. The rest of the soldiers stood up to join, but all of the shooters on the roof had retreated back inside as well.

  Johnson and Kowalski dove out and grabbed the surrendering guards, shoving them back behind cover and pinning them facedown on the pavement.

  “It’s real simple boys,” Kowalski grunted as he secured his prisoner’s hands behind his back with zip ties. “You stand up, we’re going to put you down. And if you think it’s a good idea to go back on your surrender, just know that we’re all about bullet conservation. So we’ll feed you to those things rather than waste the ammo. We clear?”

  The two bound guards nodded furiously, holding position and keeping their mouths shut with wide eyes.

  Johnson and Baker kept their guns focused on the second floor, Bretz focused on the roof. Linda and Kersey kept their eyes on the small horde, still clustered around the door and feasting on their now-quiet meal.

  “Looks like everybody retreated,” Bretz mused.

  The Sergeant turned to him. “So, what’s your plan, General?” he asked, unable to keep the playfulness out of his voice.

  “You know, keep calling me that and I’m going to assume it was a real promotion,” the Corporal teased.

  Kersey chuckled. “We can’t have that now, can we?”

  “So, what’s the layout like in there?” Bretz asked, tone back to business.

  “Long hallway when you get in, classrooms on either side,” Kersey replied. “Gym is on the left and the stairs are straight ahead.”

  The Corporal sighed. “So basically a shooting gallery and we’re the ducks.”

  “Pretty much,” the Sergeant agreed.

  Bretz pursed his lips. “Any idea on numbers?”

  “At least five, based on who was shooting as us here,” Kersey said.

  Kowalski shuffled up next to him. “We saw at least a dozen or so armed men in the gym too, who knows how many more hostiles are in there.”

  “They aren’t all hostile,” Linda cut in.

  Kowalski gave her the side-eye. “They looked pretty fucking hostile to me.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, some of them are.” She put her hands up, palms out. “But a lot of them are just afraid of Shawn. You cross him and you get selected to play the rope game.”

  Bretz furrowed his brow. “The rope game?”

  “Gym glass from hell,” Kowalski explained.

  “Fun,” the Corporal said flatly.

  Kersey sighed. “So, any ideas on how to get them not to shoot us?”

  “The principal’s office is five doors up on the right,” Linda suggested. “If you get me to it, I could make an announcement that Shawn’s reign is at an end.”

  “How you gonna do that?” Johnson drawled. “There’s no power.”

  “It’s an old school system on a battery backup,” she explained. “Also doubles as the town’s tornado warning system, which is why they made it work without power.”

  There were some fresh excited groans as a few of the zombies finished their meal and turned towards the source of conversation in the parking lot.

  “Baker, see what you can do about them, will you?” Kersey asked.

  The Private stopped his second floor sweep, and drew a long knife from his belt. He kicked the first zombie in the chest, sending it tumbling back, and then slammed his blade into the second one’s face. Before the first one could get back up, he descended on it and plunged the knife into the back of its skull.

  The noise unfortunately attracted a half dozen more of their friends, and Baker backed up. “Shots coming,” he warned.

  “Just make them count,” Kersey instructed.

  Baker sheathed his knife and drew his handgun, carefully lining up each shot, timing his breaths and steps backwards as he dropped each corpse. Falling into the zen state was almost peaceful, and dropping zombies that wanted to eat him was always a source of satisfaction in this cruel world.

  “Well, I think we have us a plan,” the Sergeant declared as his Private came back around the car.

  “Half of one, at any rate,” Bretz corrected. “Not really looking forward to a run down a long hallway Those assholes aren’t the best shot in the west, but I’m betting they could hit us in that scenario.”

  Kowalski glanced over at the remaining zombies approaching, and tapped Baker on the shoulder as he began to take them out as well. “Hey, make sure you leave one of them alive. I have an idea.”

  “Do I wanna know?” Baker asked.

  Kowalski grinned. “Probably not.”

  “Well he might not want to know, but I sure as hell do,” Kersey piped up.

  “This thing is dinged up and probably isn’t gonna stop another shot in the back,” Kowalski said as he unclipped his bulletproof vest. “I figure if we put it on one of those dead fuckers we can use them to lead the charge, get some good use out of it.”

  Bretz shrugged. “Guess it won’t really matter if a bullet cracks through it,” he agreed. “And frankly if one of those boys manages to land a shot that goes through two kevlar panels and a torso, we deserve to catch a bullet.”

  “Kowalski, go help Baker,” Kersey instructed.

  The Private nodded and moved over to his reloading friend.

  “Which one do you want?” Baker asked, motioning past the large pile of corpses.

  Kowalski cocked his head and tapped his chin, then pointed towards a six-foot-tall zombie missing a significant portion of his face and neck. “Let’s get that big boy over there,” he said.

  “All right,” Baker agreed, and took out the last two on either side before holstering his gun. “Any thoughts on how to do this?”

  Kowalski nodded. “Get behind him and secure his arms.” He waited for his companion to flank the creature before clapping his hands a few times. “Hey big fella, come at me!” He stamped a foot and the zombie screamed, lunging at him.

  Baker took the distraction and leapt forward, grabbing its arms and pulling them back hard. He was able to hold its wrists with a firm foot planted in its back, keeping its snapping jaws safely in the other direction.

  Kowalski reached for his knife, and then remembered it wasn’t there anymore. “Shit,” he muttered.

  Baker paled. “Shit? What do you mean, shit?”

  “Hey lady,” Kowalski barked, turning to Linda, who was closest to him. “I need your knife.”

  She headed over and drew it, handing it to him, hilt first. “Here you go, soldier boy.”

  The Private took it and braced a hand on the zombie’s chest before gently shoving the knife up into the bottom of the corpse’s chin. He was careful to angle it so that it wouldn’t pierce the brain. The zombie tried to snarl but the knife held its mouth closed.

  “Thanks.” Kowalski grinned at Linda.

  She shrugged. “Anytime.”

  “Hey Sarge, we got one,” the Private declared. “Help me get the vest on him and we’ll be good to go.”

  Kersey picked up the vest and headed over, Bretz on his heels. They managed to shimmy it over the confused and enraged creature, and then the Sergeant turned to Johnson.

  “Go get that door unlocked, but leave it shut,” he instructed, patting their new pet zombie on the shoulder. “We’re gonna do this thing.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bretz held fast to the back of the zombie’s vest, the corpse struggling and unable to understand it didn’t have the ability to bite. Johnson finished unlocking the door before moving behind the Corporal, holding tightly to the back of his vest, to keep him steady for their charge. The other four stood behind them, checking their weapons as they got ready to breach the door.

  “Bretz, Johnson, Kowalski, you three push forward and get to the stairwell to secure it,�
� Kersey instructed. “If anybody’s hostile, don’t be afraid to shoot them.”

  “That definitely wasn’t going to be an issue, Sarge,” Kowalski quipped.

  Kersey nodded. “Baker, Linda and I are going to hit the principal’s office. Hopefully when that announcement goes out, we’ll have people laying down their arms.”

  “What are we going to do with them if they do?” Bretz asked over the frustrated grunting of his undead prisoner. “There’s only a handful of us.”

  “There’s a cage in the gym with people who need to be freed,” Linda explained. “They’ll be able to help out.”

  Bretz shrugged. “Good enough for me.”

  “Okay, let’s do it,” Kersey said, and nodded to Kowalski.

  The Private reached around the zombie and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the door. He gave a silent countdown from three with his fingers, and then yanked it open.

  The bulletproof zombie caught a shot in the chest as soon as it breached the door, followed quickly by several more cracks as Bretz maneuvered his meat-shield forward. There were only four men firing, two in the stairwell and one on each side of the hall, poking out of classrooms.

  The soldiers moved at a swift pace, easily shoving the giant zombie with their combined weight. Kowalski and Baker leaned out from opposite sides of their single-file charge, firing downrange towards the guards. Their shots missed, but it forced their attackers to get back into their cover.

  When they reached the principal’s office, Baker dove for the door, taking cover there to lay down fire at the shooters. Kersey and Linda slipped by him into the office, the Sergeant sweeping the area quickly to make sure there were no straggling hostiles there.

  “It’s clear,” he said, “get to the intercom.”

  Linda didn’t need to be told twice, and rushed over to start it up.

  Bretz pushed on, nearing the stairwell. The zombie was no longer walking, as most of its body had been completely shredded, chunks and limbs falling off in droves by the time they got closer to their attackers.