A shiver of fear went up Damon’s spine as he realized that four of the zombies were reaching for him all at once. He thrust his knife wildly as he pushed and kicked at two of them to buy himself some time. The closest zombie was at least a foot taller than him, so he kicked the side of its knee, and the zombie fell to the ground. A chubby thirty-something woman stuffed into a tiny swimsuit grabbed his left arm, and he thrust his knife upward, hitting her chin. The knife stuck in her jawbone for a few precious seconds as he tried to pull it out. He kicked her in the stomach as the knife fell free, and she lost her balance. As she fell backward, he shifted his focus to the two zombies on the right. A teenage girl about his age stood stark naked with thin fingers reaching for him. She had a lump of flesh missing from her neck, which caused her head to flop around freely. He desperately grabbed for her hair and plunged his knife into her ear just as the other zombie tried to grab his arm. He knocked its hand out of the way and tried to reach for its hair, but it brought its other hand up and grasped his shirt. Full-on panic settling in, Damon grabbed the zombie around its neck and stabbed it through the eye. The first two zombies that he had knocked down had both found their feet again. He tried to stab the swimsuit zombie but missed as she slowly reached for him. He grabbed her by her hair and finally drove his knife home.
As Damon fought four zombies on his own, Joey was unexpectedly left with just two for himself. He made quick work of the first, a hunched-over little old lady who could barely stand. The second looked to be a bodybuilder in his previous life. He dwarfed Joey in height and width. Joey shoved and kicked him to buy himself time to figure out how to kill it. It grabbed Joey’s shoulder, and Joey went with it. As the zombie brought its mouth closer to his face, Joey stabbed it through its eye. It fell so fast and so heavily that it took Joey’s knife with him. He looked to his right and saw Damon struggling with the last of the four zombies. It was freakishly tall with incredibly long limbs. Without thinking, Joey jumped on its back to throw it off balance so Damon could kill it. The risky gamble paid off as Damon finally thrust his knife into the beast’s eye.
“Holy mother of shit,” Damon said, breathing heavily. He had thought he was a goner for sure.
“Fuck. I didn’t expect them to split the way they did. Sorry, man,” Joey said. He felt awful that Damon had just gone four on one.
“It’s done, at least it’s done,” Damon said. At the sound of a snapping twig, both boys looked up to see three more zombies headed their way.
“Motherfucker. The yard’s been breached somehow. We have to take them out, or else they’re going to draw more to your fence,” Joey said as he caught his breath. He hurried to pull his knife from the huge zombie lying on the ground.
“Joey, there’s more coming behind them,” Damon said.
“We’ve got no choice,” Joey said as he rushed the closest zombie. A middle-aged man wearing shorts and a polo shirt was covered in bites. There were so many holes in his body that Joey was amazed that the man had reanimated. He reached for the zombie’s arm, and his hand went right through a bloody hole with stringy flesh and tattered muscle. His fingers slipped on the detritus and brushed against bone, so he grabbed the bone in a firm grip and pulled downward to stab the zombie through its eye.
Damon easily took out the second one, a young child half his height. The third zombie was an old man wearing pajamas and worn-down slippers. It moved slower than the others and didn’t seem to hear or see very well because it turned in Joey’s direction just as Damon was about to kill it. He thrust his knife upward in its neck at the rear of the base of its skull, and it dropped to the ground just as he slid his knife out.
The first three zombies were down, but more appeared throughout the heavily treed yard. The boys started to fear that there were way too many for them to take out by themselves, but they couldn’t stop now. There were so many shuffling toward them that they might be able to take down the fence.
“Shit, there’s gotta be at least two dozen of them!” Damon said.
“Let’s just try to keep them spread out. Kill one, then zigzag around even if you’re not going to the next closest one. They’ll keep moving around, trying to keep track of both of us. As long as they don’t all clump together, we should be able to do it,” Joey said as he took out the zombie closest to him.
“Make sure you watch your own back since we’re splitting up,” Damon said.
They zigzagged through the rear of the yard, taking out zombies as they went. As Joey plunged his knife through the eye of a ragged face covered in dried blood, he felt a hand grasp at his ankle. Before it could lock its grip, Joey kicked the crawler in the head, snapping its neck. He stomped on the head as hard as he could until he finally heard the skull crack, and squishy brain matter started to ooze out.
They continued further into the deep yard about halfway to the house. They couldn’t tell if the house or the fence had been breached, but they knew they had to take out all of the dead before they concerned themselves with that. For every zombie they killed, it seemed like one or two more took their place.
Even with their night vision limited, they could see at least three dozen zombies stumbling around the property, which led them to believe that there were probably more that they couldn’t see. Damon was struggling with three zombies coming at him from every angle when he heard Joey yell for help. Nearly frantic with worry, he kicked one of them to the ground and managed to kill the other two before looking for Joey. He ran past a few zombies shoving a couple of them to the side as he looked for Joey.
“Fuck no!” Damon yelled when he saw Joey fighting off six zombies at once. One of them had a solid grip on Joey’s arm, limiting his ability to maneuver and about to seal his fate.
Out of nowhere, a tall, bearded man dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and a cowboy hat brought his ax down on the zombie arm that had grabbed Joey. The hand remained affixed to Joey’s arm, but the zombie’s head was severed from its body with another swift swing of the ax. The man held a knife in his other hand and wore a handgun in his holster. He quickly took out three more while Joey removed the dead hand from his arm.
“Holy shit, thank you,” Joey said, nearly breathless.
“Don’t thank me yet son, we’ve got at least three dozen more deadheads to deal with,” the man said as he swung his ax down and split a zombie’s skull cleanly in half. He was tall, fairly muscular, and he moved fast. “Y’all spread out, or they’re going to swarm us,” he yelled as several more zombies closed in on them.
Damon and Joey broke away and shoved a few zombies so they could spread out and take them down in smaller groups. For every zombie they killed, the man killed three. Adrenaline alone had kept the boys going, but once the man showed up to help them, they regained their confidence and were determined to clear out every last zombie.
For Joey, it was personal. They had killed his dad, and his grief was fresh and devastating. With every zombie he killed, he felt he was getting a little piece of vengeance. He got louder and moved faster as he tried to kill as many as possible. He pushed, kicked, stabbed, and stomped zombie after zombie, but they kept coming.
“Where the fuck are they coming from?” Damon yelled, although he didn’t expect an answer. Killing them didn’t feel personal to him. It was simply necessary. He felt no hesitation or remorse whether they were pint-sized or twice his size. He recognized a kid from school and thrust his knife through the boy’s eye without a second thought. They were monsters, not people.
The stranger helping them didn’t look familiar. Damon briefly wondered how the man had even come across them but didn’t dwell on it because the zombies required his full attention. They had finally made a dent in the number of the dead.
They continued moving around the entire yard, keeping some space between them to kill every last zombie. Bodies lay everywhere. Shattered skulls, crushed decapitated heads, occasional limbs, entrails, and guts were strewn throughout the property.
“Boys, I think we got them all,�
�� the man said as he, Joey, and Damon gathered together near the rear of the house to catch their breaths. “Keep your eyes open, because it’s dark as hell out here.”
Joey and Damon were both covered in gore. Bits of flesh, slippery lumps of oily fat, brackish blood, and putrid fluids had sprayed them nearly head to toe. They were both exhausted. The battle to kill the zombies had quickly turned into a fight for their lives that had lasted nearly an hour.
“Thanks. We wouldn’t have made it without your help,” Joey said. “I’m Joey.”
“Damon. How did you find us?” Damon asked.
“My name’s Lance, son. I was cutting down the street there when I saw dozens of them deadheads focused on this old place. I figured someone must have been trapped inside until I saw them all pouring through the gate into the backyard. I got a little closer and heard you boys fighting them off,” Lance said as he introduced himself. He had a bit of a southern drawl to his voice.
“I wonder what drew them here in the first place,” Joey said.
“We’ll probably never know son, but all it takes is for one of these deadheads to walk a certain way, and then all of the others follow it. I’ve seen it time and time again since the shit hit the fan,” Lance said.
“We should check the house. Make sure no one’s hurt or trapped,” Damon said even though he was so tired he felt like he could sleep standing up. “At least make sure the doors are secure.”
“Yeah, this place was secure yesterday,” Joey said. “We cut through the yard, and nothing was out of place.”
“Well, that might just be what did it, son. Just one of these deadheads could have seen you and pushed on the gate. Eventually, there were enough of them to force it open,” Lance said. “But I’m good to check the doors and windows on the house with y’all just to be safe.”
They quietly climbed the rear deck stairs and walked toward the patio door only to find it intact, locked, and blood-free. A quick look at the rest of the back of the house showed nothing out of the ordinary, so they decided to go check the gate. If everything was clear, they’d repair the gate and call it a night.
“Now y’all be sure to keep it extra quiet up by the gate. More of them deadheads could have followed from the street,” Lance said. They found that the gate was wide open but unbroken. He took a quick look at the darkened front yard and didn’t see any threats. “Looks like all the deadheads cleared the area and wound up in this yard.”
As he turned back to Damon and Joey, a massive zombie stumbled out from behind a tree just a few feet from the gate. It must have weighed four hundred pounds. Dressed in suit pants and a button-down shirt bursting at the seams from the rolls of fat hidden behind it, the zombie stumbled forward as it reached for Lance. Its grossly obese body fell into Lance’s back and knocked him to the ground so fast that he didn’t know what hit him. Joey and Damon both leaped forward but not before the gargantuan creature sunk its teeth into the back of Lance’s neck.
Lance screamed and writhed in pain as the zombie ripped a tennis ball-sized piece of flesh and muscle from the back of his shoulder. It shook its head like a dog with a new chew toy. Joey grabbed it by the shirt collar and plunged his knife through the monstrosity’s ear. It went limp, still on Lance’s back. Damon helped Joey roll the dead zombie to the side.
“Well, I’ll be damned. I can’t believe one of those deadheads got a little taste of me,” Lance said weakly. With that, his eyes closed.
“Holy shit,” Damon said. He’d never seen anyone get bitten before. It was nothing like seeing Mr. Wright nearly dead on his living room floor. This guy was alive, talking and killing zombies five minutes ago.
Just as his eyes started to open again, Joey knelt over Lance and thrust his knife through his ear. He began to weep, wondering if this was how his dad went. He grabbed the man’s knife, ax and handgun then darted back through the gate. Damon hurriedly pulled the gate closed and latched it. They quietly made their way back through the yard, climbed the fence, and headed to the house with their arms around each other.
It was nearly three in the morning when they walked in the front door and replaced the lift bar. Lucia was tossing and turning in her sleep, but the noise woke Michelle, so she got up to see what was going on. She wanted nothing more than to see Max and Anna with Camille in tow. As she walked down the hallway, she saw that it was Damon and Joey who had just come in.
“What the hell happened?” She asked. They were both covered head to toe with dried blood, slimy guts, and who knew what else. “Are you okay?” She demanded.
“We’re fine, Mom,” Joey said tiredly. “Not our blood.”
“We were doing a perimeter check, and the yard behind us was full of zombies. We didn’t realize how many there were until it was too late. We were stuck and had to take out all of them, or they would have taken down the rear fence,” Damon explained.
“Why the hell did you go by yourselves in the first place? We could have all gone together,” Michelle admonished them, her voice rising.
“We didn’t know, Mom,” Joey said. “We thought there were six of them, and there ended up being around seventy of them.”
“Seventy? Holy shit. You killed seventy of them?” Michelle asked.
“Yeah,” Damon answered. “We had some help, though. This guy came out of nowhere and took them down fast. He probably killed nearly half of them himself.” Damon looked down, thinking of Lance’s last moments.
“He got bit at the end. We secured the property and latched the gate. No more will be coming through there,” Joey said with a finality that made it clear he was done talking. “We need to shower.” He turned away and headed for the bathroom.
“I’m going to use my parents' shower, and then I’m going to sleep,” Damon said.
Michelle was left standing there feeling a bit startled and speechless. The boys were no longer kids. They’d matured nearly overnight.
Chapter 5
Night 3
Anna and Emily drove through one subdivision after another, dodging occasional zombies and stranded cars. Anna continued to follow the roads and developments north to south as they slowly headed in a western direction that would lead back to her house. They were two blocks off of the main street when Emily spoke up.
“Slow down, Anna,” Emily said suddenly. “Listen.”
Anna slowed the SUV to a near crawl before realizing what it was that Emily had heard; shuffling, stumbling footsteps. A lot of them. Probably hundreds of them.
“Another horde?” Anna asked in disbelief and desperately hoped it wasn’t anything like the first horde they had experienced. She quickly cut the headlights and peered ahead in the darkness to see the zombies passing by on the main street.
“I don’t think they saw us, but I was yelling for Camille, and the headlights were on. I think we’d better find another way out of this development and fast,” Emily said hurriedly.
As they watched, they saw dozens of the dead break off from the pack and turn down the street they were stopped on.
“Hell, I think enough of them saw us,” Anna said. “They’re heading straight for us.” The zombies were nearly two blocks away, but there were so many that the SUV would be surrounded and overcome if they didn’t get out of there quickly. Anna turned around in the nearest driveway and sped down the street in the other direction. She made several turns, one right after the other, and kept her speed up to put some distance between them and their followers. Before she knew it, she’d gone almost two miles. There was plenty of distance between them and the mini-horde, but nearly two miles of streets and homes that she’d passed without searching for Camille.
“I don’t know what to do,” Anna said in anguish. “Camille could have been back there somewhere. We could have driven right past her and never known it.”
“You’re no good to your daughter if you’re dead,” Emily said. “We’ll keep searching, and if we don’t find her, then later on, we’ll go back and check that area. We can’t do anything w
ith so many zombies back there.”
Anna sighed and started driving a new grid search. She turned down another side street then turned into another small development. They called Camille’s name as they drove and started dodging more zombies in the street. Nervous about the number of dead in the area, Anna decided to try to cut sideways through the development and loop around. It wasn’t until after she made her turn that she realized her mistake. The dead were everywhere. They were all shuffling aimlessly with nothing to garner their attention until they saw her SUV. A couple of hundred zombies honed in on them from every direction. They were nearly surrounded almost immediately. Anna hit the gas to try to plow her way through the crowd before the dead could find handholds on her vehicle.
She drove straight through at least a dozen of the dead. A man wearing a full suit and tie landed on the windshield, instantly cracking the glass. His face and especially his hands were shredded so terribly that all of his fingers were ripped off. This kept him from finding a grip near the windshield. When Anna jerked the wheel, he slid right off the hood, but another quickly took his place. What had probably once been an attractive twenty-something brunette in a cute jogging outfit was now a bloody mess with bites of flesh missing from her arms. She hit the damaged windshield with enough force that it shattered inward, and she fell into the front seat with it. Most of her body landed on Emily’s lap, but her head fell back up against Anna’s leg. Before Anna could react, Emily thrust her knife through the jogger’s eye. The putrid, milky, bloody fluid that escaped when the eye popped ran across Anna’s leg. Emily shoved the body to the floor in front of them, smashing it down with her feet, making sure it was out of Anna’s way as she continued to drive.
With a couple of hundred zombies bearing down on them and no windshield to offer a measure of protection, Anna had no choice but to continue driving straight through them. They were everywhere. There was nowhere to swerve, nowhere to turn, so Anna kept driving forward. She winced as the SUV drove over several bodies, the bouncing vehicle throwing both women around inside. They simultaneously heard a loud crunch as a skull was flattened by a rear tire and a loud pop as the tire blew out. The SUV instantly became more difficult to control but she pushed forward on just three tires because she had no other options. The only thing that was working in their favor was that the zombies moved so damned slow. She continued to hit those right in front of her with some glancing off the front of the SUV, some falling to the sides and others sliding beneath it. They were almost through the crowd and had to keep going.
SUBURBAN JUNGLE: A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Survival Thriller (Chronicles of the Undead: Book 2) Page 4
