by Sharp, Tracy
“And they are not neighborly, asshole,” Ozzie said.
“I already said I’m sorry,” the man said. “And I got a name other than idiot or asshole. It’s Wilson Brantford.”
“Now’s not the time for introductions, Wilson.” Ozzie drew out the name, the same way one might draw out the words “Eff You”.
Ozzie continued looking up at the ceiling, then down at the windows, gripping his UV light in his hand. Kyle stood still.
“I don’t think they can see very well,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I was trapped in a car I rolled the other night. Had two of them crawling all over the car, looking in, sniffing at the cracks in the windshield. But Hank and I stayed really still and they went away.”
Everyone turned and looked at me, their interest piqued.
“Sorry. I forgot to mention that,” I said.
“Good to know,” Kyle said.
“I doubt it would’ve helped us out there,” Ozzie said. “Zeke was after us, too.”
Kyle nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t the ideal situation in which to test the theory.”
“My dad might’ve been okay, if we’d known that,” Wilson said, his voice low. He was thinking out loud.
“Your dad would’ve forgotten it as soon as you mentioned it,” Ozzie said, softening a little. “I’m sorry, man.”
Wilson nodded his thanks.
A part of me wanted to be mad at Wilson for leading the crawlers and deadies to us. But people react differently to abject terror. Not everyone can have grace under fire when the dead are walking, and they are after you to eat you alive.
The situation sucked. But chances were, the crawlers would’ve found us pretty soon, anyway. They came from a hole in the woods only meters away.
It would’ve been only a matter of time.
“That hole the snakes came out of, that was new, wasn’t it?” Sherry asked. “If it had been there before, they would’ve come after us sooner.”
Mina nodded. “I’d say it’s pretty fresh. Maybe they dug their way out here over the last few nights. We’re in the compound before dark. And it’s pretty soundproof to the outside.”
We all watched the ceiling.
“Kyle,” Sherry whispered. “Turn off the lights.”
“No,” I said, softly. “Nobody move.”
Kyle had mentioned that the place was soundproof and triple insulated. I hoped it would help keep the lizards from hearing or sensing us in the compound.
Hank curled up at my feet, his ears perked straight up, listening. I stroked his fur, comforting myself as well as him.
Everyone remained as still as we could, listening to the thumps and scratches late into the early morning hours.
They stopped all at once. The sudden absence of sound jarring.
That’s how we knew dawn had finally come.
* * *
“I think they knew we were in here. If they didn’t they know now.” Logan looked miserable as he sipped coffee, staring down at the table.
Kyle and Ozzie pulled the sliding steel window covers back, letting in daylight. They looked squinted through the windows, searching for movement.
“There’s a few Zekes out there,” Kyle said. “We’ll need to take them down as quietly as possible. We don’t need a horde surrounding the compound. We’ll never be able to leave it.”
“There were a shitload of them last night,” Ryder said. “They must be around.”
“Or wandered back off into the woods?” Wilson said.
“Let’s get some food in us, first,” Ozzie said. “Then we’ll deal with them.”
Sherry turned the lights off. “We need to plan the rescue mission.” She turned to look at Kyle, her face haunted, and her eyes too large for her face. “We need to try and get Melody back. “Same with Marnie, Penny and Diane.”
“And Kelly. My sister,” I added.
“And Cassie,” Mina said.
Susan nodded. “Absolutely. There’s a reason those things took them. I’m sure they’re still alive.”
“Before they get to us,” Ryder added.
Everyone was quiet for a moment, and I couldn’t figure out if it was because everyone thought it would be a suicide mission or if they were trying to come up with ideas.
“Yeah,” Mina said. “We can’t just sit around waiting for them to figure out a way to get in here.”
“Are they smart?” Logan lifted his tired eyes and looked around at everyone. “Or are they just driven by instinct, like snakes and lizards are.”
“Oh, they’re smart sons-of-bitches,” Ozzie said, finally sitting down in a rocking recliner. He ran a hand over his face. “They orchestrated an entire invasion. Had this shit planned for years. Look at what they’ve accomplished so far. Gotta love that team spirit.”
Kyle snorted. “Yeah. If the human race would’ve been so willing to work together, the world might’ve been a better place while it was still ours.”
“It will be ours again,” I said. “We just need to take it back.”
A wide smile spread across Ozzie’s face. “I like her, Kyle. She’s got balls.”
“She’s right,” Kyle said. “We need to take it back. And we will. We just need to figure out how.”
Sherry put a pot of coffee in the middle of the table. “Well, we can’t plan to take the world back on an empty stomach. We need coffee and breakfast. So, pancakes?”
Ryder smiled. “Pancakes, then counter take-over plans. Sounds good.”
Wilson, who had remained quiet, merely looked around, hands wrapped around his mug. He seemed to be in some kind of shock.
I didn’t blame him, but thought that he’d better snap out of it, and quick.
“Yeah,” Ryder said. “Let’s take it back.”
Mina poured herself more coffee. “How hard can it be?”
* * *
Logan and I helped Sherry get breakfast ready. He fried bacon while I flipped pancakes. Sherry set the table and brought plates of pancakes out as I finished with each batch. Each of us got two slices of crispy, heavenly bacon. None of us were worried about hardening arteries, given the current state of affairs.
Logan’s dark blonde waves hung over his face as he cooked, and I couldn’t see the expression he wore.
“You like to cook?” I asked him.
“Not before everything happened. But it helps to have a task. You know? Keeps your mind off things.”
“Yeah. I get that.” I flipped pancakes over in the pan.
He nodded, and continued moving the bacon around in the pan. A few were burning.
“I love crispy bacon,” I said. “Here, let’s get those onto the plate.”
“Oh, shit. Sorry.” He lifted the bacon onto the plate I held for him. “I’m just a little freaked out from last night. You know? I mean, they know where we are now.” He looked at me, his eyes frightened and his face pale. “They know.”
I took a shuddering breath. “I know. But listen, we’ll get them first. Okay?”
He looked at me, doubt and uncertainty on his face. “Yeah.”
I gripped his arm gently. “Logan, we will.”
He nodded.
“Now is not the time to fall apart. We need our wits about us. We’ve made it this far.” I felt like a fraud. I was scared out of my mind.
“Yeah.”
“Okay then. Let’s go eat.”
Breakfast was delectable, and even enjoyable. Everyone seemed to understand that we had to take things moment by moment, because we really never knew for sure what would happen in the next moment. It was possible that one or more of us could die today. The likelihood had become all the more real after listening to the lizards clawing all over the compound last night.
So we enjoyed the hell out of breakfast.
Wilson, who seemed to be coming out of himself in small measures, finally spoke. “I feel like I need to say something.”
“Go ahead, Wilson,” Sherry said.
Ozzie glowered at him. “Yeah. By all means.
We’re all ears, Wilson.” Apparently he was still a little sore at Wilson for making such a racket last night. But I was betting he was more afraid than he was angry. Anger is just easier for some of us to swallow than fear.
Wilson shot Ozzie a look, then looked down. “First, I am sorry, for bringing the deadies and those alien things to your safe house. If it weren’t for me and my dad screaming, they wouldn’t even know you were here.”
“Well, we don’t really know that,” Sherry said. “I think they were on the verge of discovering us. Those holes weren’t out there a day ago.”
Kyle nodded. “A bunch of us check the perimeter each day, man. It was just a matter of time. I think you just quickened the process a little.”
“It was going to happen anyway,” Mina said.
“Still. I’m sorry.” Wilson looked at Ozzie. “Ozzie, you have every right to be pissed. You work hard each day to keep your people safe and I . . . I messed that up pretty good.”
Ozzie studied him over his mug, took a long swig, then placed the mug on the table in front of him. “All right. I got it. But now that you have screwed it up, I expect that you’ll work your nuts off to help keep us safe from here on out. That includes killing Zekes and the exploratory expedition we’ll be embarking upon today.”
“Today?” Wilson looked at him, wide-eyed.
“Yeah, sweetheart. Today. And you’ll have our backs. Because I won’t rescue your ass again. Savvy?”
Wilson slowly nodded his head, but his mug of coffee had begun to tremble slightly. “Yeah. Sure. I’ve got your backs.”
When the dishes were stacked and washed, we got down to the first bit of business.
Which was to kill some deadies.
* * *
There were six deadies wandering around the entrance of the compound. They must’ve seen Kyle and Ozzie run back into the building. We saw them through the window facing the front area outside.
“You ever kill any deadies, Wilson?” Ozzie asked him.
“Just one. My girlfriend. It was by accident. I hit her in the head with a cast iron frying pan. I was in the kitchen when she came at me. It was on the stove, the closest weapon at hand.” He looked momentarily sick. “I had to hit her a few times before she went down. But I didn’t mean to kill her. She just kept coming at me. Trying to bite me.”
“Same technique,” Ozzie said. “But use a knife, hammer, screw driver. Something that’ll penetrate easily. We don’t use guns unless we have to, it draws more of them.” He handed Wilson a screw driver. “This will do fine. Get them in the eye, the ear, anywhere you can reach the brain. You have to kill the brain. Get that?”
Wilson nodded, looking scared and nauseous at the same time. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. We were going to get married this summer. I just started a new job. Now I’m about to stab walking dead people in the eyes.”
“Stop your whining, asshole. Your plans have changed. Roll with it.” Ozzie unlocked the door and got ready to slide it open. “Everyone ready and steady?”
Everyone responded in the affirmative. Most of us merely nodding.
I gripped my claw hammer, claw pointed outward.
Kyle tipped his head down, gripped his hunting knife and said, “Let’s get ‘er done.”
Ozzie grinned like a maniac. “Let’s show them some love.”
He pulled the door open.
And faced a crowd of deadies standing at the door, all standing docile, heads hung, as if asleep.
A moment after they heard the sound of the door sliding open, their heads lifted, one by one, and they began moving forward, hands clawing toward us, faces in various levels of decomposition. Their teeth gnashed and clicked as their scratchy, unearthly screeches rose. They moved frantically at us, trying to get to food.
There had to be twenty or more.
Kyle tried to slide the door closed, but it was too late. The dead were coming through it, falling and climbing over one another to get inside.
They were in, and there was no hope of getting out the door with the wall of dead coming at us.
Logan was pushed down by the dead as one of them fell on top of him, biting and tearing at his arm. His screams rose, shrill above the screeches of the dead. Blood spurted outward from his arm, bathing a deadie as it fed on him.
Hank barked wildly behind us.
My blood turned cold and the flight or fight instinct screamed at me to run.
I fought against it and swung the claw hammer into the head of the deadie feeding on Logan’s arm before it took another bite. “Help me get him out!”
Ryder and I each pulled one of Logan’s arms and he screamed, high and long as one of the dead took a chunk out of his thigh.
Ozzie shot it in the head and it fell. He kept shooting. There were too many to stab. Kyle’s gunshots joined his as they worked to kill the Zekes.
We pulled Logan back, and Sherry and Mina immediately set about trying to stop the bleeding.
When I turned back toward the door, more dead were climbing over the fallen. I struck one after another, swinging and yanking the claw out of dead skull after dead skull.
Ozzie and Kyle shot at their heads. They fell one by one, and more started climbing over the fallen dead. It seemed impossible to keep up.
“Back up!” Ozzie screamed. They’ll get your legs!”
We all ran backwards, Ozzie and Kyle shooting one deadie after another.
“GUNS!” Kyle screamed, shooting every zombie head within site.
Dropping my hammer to the floor, I grabbed my gun, aiming at every dead head within my sights. But I kept missing. I’d get the throat, shoulder, or chest.
Forcing myself to focus, I shoved away my fear, and began hitting them in the head.
I heard guns going off behind and beside me. My ears popped and all sound went away. Everyone in the compound was shooting, trying to keep up with the dead.
Then I heard Ozzie cackle like a maniac, the sound muffled in my nearly deaf ears, and saw his hand jerk as he pulled the trigger on his pistol again and again.
One deadie squeezed through, falling over the pile of Zekes and fell over them, to the floor.
I continued shooting at the ones closest to us.
“Back up!” Kyle screamed. “Back up, we’ll get trampled!”
Again, we backed up.
I was so focused on shooting the oncoming dead that I forgot about the one that had squeezed through. By the time I saw it, it had pushed itself to its feet and was lurching toward me. I aimed my gun but I didn’t have enough time and it fell on top of me. It gnashed its teeth, screeching in my face as I pushed against its dead chest. This one had been a woman, and I was pushing against her once ample breasts, which now hung and felt squishy and loose beneath my hands.
I screamed, and suddenly she fell on top of me.
Someone kicked her off me.
“Sneaky one.” Wilson grabbed my hand and pulled me up.
“Thanks,” I said.
“The least I can do.” He went forward, his face a study in determination as he stabbed a deadie in the eye, dropping it in front of us.
They were in the compound. Although there weren’t as many moving, it was terrifying that they had breached the safety of the building.
Ozzie and Kyle shot the ones moving straight ahead while the rest of us got the ones moving forward from the sides. They were crawling over the ever growing pile of dead.
The pile began to spill forward, further and further into the compound, and the Zekes climbed and crawled over them to get to us.
Finally, Ozzie shot the last two.
For a long moment, there was no sound except for the heavy breathing of everyone as our adrenalin levels began sinking back to normal. We all had the adrenalin shakes, and each of us stood there quaking, lifting our gaze over the pile of dead and toward the woods for movement.
“Oh, shit.” Wilson said, looking straight ahead, eyes widening.
We all followed his wild gaze.
Breaking from the shadows of the trees, more figures shambled forward.
* * *
“There are a few coming,” Ozzie said. “Must’ve heard the gunshots. Let’s take care of them before we get another horde. I can’t do this all damn day.”
We climbed over the dead, our feet sinking into rotting backs. Organs spilled out, stinking like nothing I’d ever smelled before. I gagged, but kept going.
Don’t think. Just do.
I fell onto the grass and launched myself forward, following Ozzie and Kyle.
There were about fifteen more coming through the tree line.
Ozzie got there first, and began stabbing, followed by Kyle.
I headed for a middle aged man in a grey suit, which still looked surprisingly clean and unwrinkled. He must’ve recently died, because other than the stupid, glazed look in his eyes and the unnatural, jerky movements as he quickened his pace toward me, he looked pretty normal.
Anyone could mistake him for one of the living and ask him for help. Especially a child, who wouldn’t know until the deadie was way too close that he wasn’t alive, and meant to sink his teeth into you and rip out your flesh in chunks.
Rage overtook my fear and I jumped up swinging. I smashed the claw into the top of his head. The claw made a satisfying crunch as it sunk in, and the suit fell sideways.
Mina gripped a long, nasty looking knife with a thick blade between her hands and brought it down on the forehead of a teenage girl with half her face and much of her belly missing. Someone had done some chewing on her.
What a horrible way to die.
Ryder held a fireplace poker in two hands and did a running jump, jamming the poker through the eye of a large man in a police uniform. “This guy gave me a speeding ticket last week! He was a total tool!”
Kyle looked back at him as he pulled his knife from a dead woman’s ear. “Yeah. That’s Teddy Picket. He’s been a bully since the first grade. But Ozzie knocked one of his teeth out for him in tenth grade.”
“Way to go, Ozzie,” Mina grinned, wiping her knife free of deadie blood.
“He took my chocolate milk.” Ozzie came walking toward us, shoving his butcher knife into his tool belt. “That just ain’t right.”
