The Blackhawk chopped hovered in, hanging a few feet off the roof. I brought my rifle up and shot two zombies in quick succession, their brains splattering Paul's shirt.
"GO!" I shouted at the others. "Get in that fucking helo!"
Fields was the first to be yanked in, then Sisko. Peter's shoved Cushing toward the chopper, then turned and fired at another zombie that had decided to get at us. Delacroix took the opportunity to clamber aboard the bird.
Seeing we were getting away, Paul bent and picked up grenade Delacroix dropped. With light in his eyes, he turned and looked at me while one finger curled into the pin.
"No!" I shouted, as Peters and Cushing leaped back down and dragged me toward the chopper. "Paul! Don't do it!" Paul turned his back on me and stood before the coming zombies. Peters cracked me in the chin, dazing me. While Cushing tossed my rifle into the chopper, Peters tossed me in and then followed. Seeing stars, I looked down at Paul, holding the grenade in two hands, while standing in the midst of the zombies. In a blinding flash of light, he disappeared, taking the small roof entrance and a bunch of dead fucks with him.
I stared at the building as the attack chopper came in and hosed it down with rockets. As the Blackhawk lifted and spun away, all I could wonder was why? Did Paul know he'd be a freak in the Enclave, just a subject for experiments? Or did he no longer want to live his half-life, neither dead nor alive. I'd never know.
I never did leave the active service. I went on more missions, spent time at other Enclaves. No one else had ever come across a zombie, or non-zombie, like Paul. Eventually the plague of the dead ended and life started to return to some normalcy. A few years after the rise stopped and the area was considered secure, I returned to Smithville and searched the ruins of that building. All I found was a skull with a crack in the bone. It was blackened by fire and worn smooth from the weather, but I took it and gave it a decent burial.
I swore that to the day I died, I'd never forget Paul Barron and his sacrifice.
Authors Afterword:
The back-story of Enclave, or what a long, strange trip it’s been….
Zombies. Wow. Who would have ever thought they’d become the media darlings they are? Years ago there were a few great zombie movies and (like today) a bunch of films, that unless one is among friends, rarely admits to seeing. Still, the zombie aficionado had to see every one…
I never intended to write zombie fiction. Years ago, I wanted to be a comic artist, perhaps write them as well. Then as I got on with High School and college, I realized that my writing was vastly outpacing any artistic skills I had. So while I still draw from time to time (mostly to block out how something will look to describe it better when writing), I began concentrating totally on writing; mostly science fiction and historical fiction So why Zombies? And specifically why flesh-eating zombies?
That’s a good question and to answer part of it, we have to go back to October of 1970. A month before my tenth birthday, a friend and I went to a local theater (the long gone Beverly in Brooklyn, NY, which, interestingly enough is the name of my wife) to see a long gone tradition; the Spook Show. The place was packed! The main feature was a best-forgotten film by Hammer called “Creatures That The World Forgot” (film that should have been forgotten would have been better), which was a dinosaur and caveman film without the dinosaurs. But it did have lots of breasts, which, to a bunch of kids, pretty much kept our attention. Then they had a Corman film, I forget which one, then a guy dressed as Frankenstein and some rubber bats. Finally the bottom feature was shown, likely there due to it being Black and White, so wasn’t considered a top bill film.
The film? Night Of the Living Dead… to date, it’s the only film I’ve ever seen that scared the hell out of me. How badly? I didn’t watch it again for a decade. Now I watch it all the time.
Let’s skip ahead to 1978 and Dawn of the Dead. This was the film that sealed me as far as zombies are concerned. It was Dawn that set my feet on the path of Zombie fiction. The story that became the germ of this novel was written in 1989, while I was working in the private sector. I wanted to put my own twist on a world where the dead have risen to eat the living. So I wrote Bodysnatchers: School Daze. The original version was a direct sequel to the events of Night and Dawn, right down to the dates. When I decided to write this novel, I left these references in, but later discarded them. While any zombie fiction today is basically a homage to George Romero (there are a few winks in here for fans and for you, George) I wanted the world of Enclave to stand on its own.
I hope you, the reader have as good a time reading this, as I had writing it.
Thanks for visiting my little world, please come again.
Drop me a line at either [email protected] or [email protected]
Rob Morganbesser
NYC, NY
P.S. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR: ENCLAVE 2: HUNTER.
Enclave: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 57
