by T. W. Brown
To our left was the south end of the main part of the town. From there, the houses petered out and farmland took over. Coming our way was a herd unlike any that I’d ever seen. It was so massive that, now that I was aware of its presence, I could swear that I felt the ground trembling. Easily a mile wide and just as long, the spectacle was not anything that I could ever describe to somebody and do it proper justice.
To the right was the campus of Eastern Oregon University. We’d skirted the edge of it as we approached our target. How had we missed the well over a thousand undead that were now pouring from the area of the football stadium and headed our way? With all the activity that had taken place in this town the past several weeks, I had a hard time believing that these zombies had just been lurking around the university.
The sounds of distant gunfire were starting to simmer down. It would seem that our first strike attack had gone off successfully. I was able to spot three more very distinct plumes of smoke rising from the other locations—or at least in the direction I assumed them to be positioned. By my guess, and judging how quickly the actual gunfire had died down, I had to think we’d been victorious. So why wasn’t I feeling good about it?
I would have to mull that over later. Right now, we obviously had a very large problem to contend with. A herd the size of that one to the south could roll over the town of La Grande and leave nothing but total destruction in its wake. The sheer numbers alone were enough to cause catastrophic damage to anything and everything in its path.
Over the past year, buildings had been subjected to weather and aging with absolutely zero upkeep. Some larger structures might be able to withstand this sea of undead flesh, but many would not. The residential neighborhoods would look like a thousand tornadoes had hit all at once.
“Everybody fall back to the parking lot of the armory!” I said.
We took off at a jog. I was running through several plans in my head, but none of them seemed to be an answer. Once we reached the parking lot of the armory, I was still no closer to a solution. I had everybody take up a defensive position to guard our perimeter while I hauled my butt to the roof of the armory’s conference center.
From there, I was able to get a good look at my surroundings. Also, I had a moment to take a breath and try to come up with something. Based on the size of that herd to the south, if they came for the compound, the fences would not stand a chance; they would fold over in seconds.
An idea began to form. It was sketchy at best, but I saw it as the best shot. Climbing down, I grabbed James and pulled him aside.
“I need a really big explosion,” I whispered. “I also need a fire that will burn for a while, but we need to be able to control it. It would not help us at all if we do this and then burn La Grande to the ground.”
Pulling out the map of the area, James Sagar and I scanned it until James brought his finger to a halt. I looked to where he pointed. It was as good of a place as any…with one problem.
“We have to go right past that freaking herd,” I sighed.
“If I am going to do something big enough to turn that group around and still have the ability to at least try to keep the burn under control, that would be the best location,” James explained.
It made sense. My only concern now was that we could get there quick enough and that he could get set up in time.
I turned to the group and explained the plan. “You are all dismissed,” I said after. “You have done what you were assigned and so nobody has to take part in this mission.”
“Screw that,” a voice piped up. Several heads nodded in agreement as Doubting Thomas stepped forward. “We are in this together. The whole point of this was to secure La Grande, right?”
“Yes, but this is—” I began, but the man cut me off.
“Yeah, yeah…we know. This is more than we signed up for. Well I have news for you…I didn’t sign up for any of this crap. I was a freaking night shift manager at the local 76 Station. I was about ten grand behind on my child support and had just gotten my driver’s license suspended,” Doubting Thomas opined. “I wasn’t a hunter or a fisherman. The fact that I am still alive is a damned miracle. In the past year, I have learned that I was way more capable than I ever believed. I have done things that I never imagined…things that I would see in a movie and make fun of because it was so unlikely.
“I just took part in a raid on other human beings. I probably helped kill women and children. And for what? So that the people that I live with can try to carve out a place that is safe? And just when it looks like everything went damn near perfect…minimal losses for us and all that, a pack of zombies that looks like more than the entire city of fucking Portland is coming straight for us.
“If you think you have a plan that will give us even a snowball’s chance in Hell of living to see tomorrow, then by God I will do my part to help.” Doubting Thomas looked around at everybody who all started to nod their heads in some sort of general agreement.
“Okay,” I said with a nod, “it will be good to have you all helping on this. I am sure that it will make things easier.”
I explained my general idea and then let James tell them what we would need to do. He also put out a list of things that he would require if anybody was able to locate them. Right away, a few people claimed to know where some of the items could be found.
Everybody took off on his or her own errands. We insisted that people travel in no less than pairs, and then James, Darla and I turned to head for what the map had marked as Spence Reservoir.
“Can I go with you guys?” Doubting Thomas called.
“Sure,” I said with a nod, “but I guess I should ask you your name seeing as how we have not actually been introduced.”
“Thomas Grier,” the man answered.
I did my best to stifle a laugh. I guess I did not do a very good job because the man gave me a funny look.
“You wanna share?’ Thomas asked.
“I will make you a deal,” I answered as we started off at a jog for the reservoir. “When this is all over, you ask me then and I will tell you.”
That seemed to be a good enough answer. The man fell in with us as we made our way east to get around the edge of the big herd. The ones pouring from the university would have to be somebody else’s problem. As it was, I figured they would probably end up being swallowed—figuratively of course—by the big group.
***
“Push those carts over to that large open area!” James called.
I had been surprised at how fast my crew had returned with damn near everything on James’ wish list. I had basically stepped aside and now the curly headed man was running the show as he scurried from one item to the other.
I had been blown away when five of my group arrived pushing a large flatbed pushcart with knobby tires and two big blue barrels strapped on. How they knew just where to go for kerosene I had no idea.
“I thought that fuel was pretty much useless,” I said to James as I helped him muscle the barrels into place amidst a pile of God-knows-what-else that he had amassed.
“Kerosene has a shelf life of about a year, but the folks out here are pretty good at being prepared for the worst. Most of the farmers use chemical treatments that keep their fuel in the best possible condition. The stuff is probably damn near useless as a stable fuel source, but it should work for what I need,” James explained as he made long cuts across several bags of some sort of fertilizer.
In what was probably record time, we had a hodge-podge of crap assembled, and James was ordering us all to take cover behind a large concrete building that had a men’s room at one end and a women’s bathroom at the other.
“The herd is just starting to hit the outskirts!” Thomas called down from the lookout spot he had taken up on a nearby hill where a single cell tower stood out amidst the tall grass, brush, and handful of pine trees.
James nodded and produced a pair of flares. “This is absolutely a cowboy move,” he said with what sure sounded like
a great deal of glee.
“Are you sure it is going to work?” I asked nervously.
“Not in the slightest,” he chirped with a shrug as he popped the cap on the two flares. The bright reddish-white glow came with a hiss. James took another look at his handiwork and shook his head. “They would drum me out of EOD School if they saw the slapdash job I did here,” he said with a wistful sigh.
All eyes were on those two sticks of burning strontium nitrate (according to James, that was what made flares glow their bright red color) as they arced lazily and then landed in the midst of his little science project. There were a few sputters and then smoke.
“Everybody down!” James barked.
There was a few more seconds of nothing more than the hiss of the flares, and then a concussive blast that shook the ground. My ears popped and I had no time to cover my mouth and nose before the rolling cloud of dirt and debris practically choked me to death.
I finally managed to get a gasp of clean air and made my way to my knees. There was an acrid, foul chemical smell that burned my eyes, nose and throat. A few feet away, James was climbing to his feet. He peeked around the corner of the building and then jumped and started clapping his hands.
“Look at that baby!” he exclaimed.
I peered around the same corner. All I saw was a big cloud of smoke. A few flames licked at some nearby trees and brush, also, a big patch of tall, waist-high grass was burning. I turned back to him and the confusion must have been obvious.
“Other than the grass, which I suggest we start grabbing those buckets and get to dousing, there is almost no fire. The explosion was relatively clean and contained. All the materials will burn out in a little while right there on that big slab of rock.”
I looked back, and James gave me a nudge. “Seriously…get somebody on that grass fire now!”
I barked out instructions and then turned back to the man who was smiling like a proud father witnessing his child pedal away without training wheels for the first time. I looked back to the plume of smoke and then searched for the second most important person in this little operation.
Thomas was still up on that hill atop the defunct cell tower. He had the binoculars to his eyes. Handing my bucket to Darla, I headed up the hill to get a report. I reached the crest and discovered that I did not actually need one. Just as we’d hoped, the massive herd of zombies was starting to wheel around and head our direction.
For this plan to actually work, we now needed one more thing to happen that we had no control over. The gunfire from the other locations had died down. We needed that to continue for this to have the best chance of being successful. From what everybody agreed upon, zombies seemed to react to the most recent stimulus. At the moment, that would be our explosion. By the time they would reach this location, we would have the last smoldering remains thoroughly watered down to prevent any chance of creating a wildfire that might make our securing of La Grande a moot point.
“Should be almost an hour before they reach us,” Thomas said as he climbed down the tower.
“As long as nothing else pulls them back, we should be golden,” I added.
“You might want to make a suggestion to the folks in charge about setting up some sort of massive sound-based decoy. It wouldn’t matter what sort of fence we built, nothing short of a fortress wall would keep something the size of that,” he hiked a thumb over his shoulder for emphasis, “from stomping right through town and wiping us out.”
I nodded at Thomas’ observation. However, my mind was taking it several steps further. What about if they came at night? These days, there is a whole new level of darkness that comes after the sun sets. Add in some cloud cover—which is a fairly common occurrence here in the Pacific Northwest—and you can get a degree of darkness that makes it easy to understand where man’s innate fear of the dark came from.
I’d been out in the woods a few times in just those sorts of conditions. If there is no campfire, you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. Spotting zombies from a distance would be unlikely if not impossible.
“Why don’t you tell them?” I asked. Suddenly I was curious about Doubting Thomas. The moment that I’d met him, he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder. Yet, I’d seen him out in the field. He was not afraid to get dirty, followed directions, and had what seemed to be a good head on his shoulders.
“Nobody would listen,” he answered with a shrug and a tone that indicated that the answer was fairly obvious. It wasn’t.
“Why not?” I pressed. “I bet you have a few ideas rattling around already about how to combat this problem.”
Thomas stopped and turned to face me. I had not really taken the time to examine him closely. I took time now. His eyes were almost sad, and there was a hint of scarring from what was probably some pretty wicked acne from his younger days. His teeth had a slight yellow tint, and he looked a bit more wrinkled and worn than your average person; my guess was that it was probably from a combination of smoking and coffee.
“You ain’t from around here,” Thomas said softly. “Lots of these folks here know me from…before.”
“Yeah…so?”
“I was the guy who woke up Saturday mornings in the drunk tank more often than not…spent more than a few stretches of time in county jail for one thing or the other. It was never anything big until the last time…”
His voice trailed off. I kept my mouth shut and waited. If he had more to say, I’d let him, but I was not going to press. At last, he started talking again.
“I swear to God that I don’t remember nothin’ about what happened that night. I went out with the fellas for a few beers and the next thing that I remember is waking up in jail. This time though, it was different. I wasn’t in the normal holding cell. I was in a real cell. I knew the difference. Like I said, I’d been in and out a few times.
“When one of the deputies stopped at my cell, he was looking at me like I was the lowest form of trash in the world. I asked him what the hell was going on, but he just gave me a dirty look and walked away. That was when I realized that my hands hurt. I looked down at them and they were all scuffed up and there was a nasty gash on one knuckle. I’ve busted a few fellas in the mouth in my day, I knew a tooth divot when I saw one.
“A few hours passed and nobody would even give me the time of day…until my court appointed lawyer showed up. He had a five-page report and a folder full of pictures. According to the paperwork, I’d gone home and messed my wife up pretty bad.” Thomas took a deep breath and I could see the rims of his eyes starting to well up. I sure as heck didn’t want to be standing here while some guy I barely knew started crying. I was about to suggest that we hurry down to the others, but he started talking again.
“I was sitting in county jail and about to go up on felony assault charges when all of this shit happened. I was looking at a five-spot if I got lucky. Then…one day…nobody showed up with the breakfast cart. Or the lunch. Or the dinner. Things started getting a bit cagey and I could hear folks yelling and screaming. When the gunshots began, I was sure that something crazy had happened. You always hear that there is a standing order in jails and prisons if martial law is declared that they can just go in and shoot all the prisoners. I ain’t got no idea if it is true or not, but I was thinking that I was about to find out.
“A whole bunch of folks come in, a few of them wearing uniforms, and start opening the doors of every cell. They get to mine and one of the old timers, Trace Midden, he says to me that it’s the end of the world. He says I got two choices, be a part of trying to save the town, or a quick death. He don’t even let me answer when he adds that I might want the second choice since folks are being eaten alive by friends and loved ones.
“I was confused and scared, but I knew for a fact that I did not want to die in that damned cell. They let me out, and I didn’t hardly wait long enough to say my thanks before I took off to my house.
“I was less than two steps out the door of the jail when I saw
the first one of them groaners…damned if it weren’t that young deputy that had given me the stink eye the day I woke up in jail. He was tearing into somebody, but I couldn’t tell who from all the blood. I didn’t know what I was seeing for a few seconds, I mean, it ain’t like it was normal to come up on some fella eating another person.
“I turned and hauled ass. My home weren’t far. I reached my street after passing more than one terrible scene after another. My brain kept tellin’ me that I weren’t awake…everything had to be a nightmare. Then I was at my house.”
Thomas stopped, and I was really hoping that he was done. By now, all of my group had migrated up and were standing in a loose semi-circle around us. I scanned the faces, not sure what I would see. It was a mixture ranging from knowing and sharing in the man’s pain, curiosity, and a few cases of what I had to guess was actual disinterest.
Jeez, I thought, how bad of a reputation did this guy have for anybody to regard such obvious pain with complete apathy? My reason for not wanting to hear his story was based on an approaching herd of zombies that might number in the millions. Sure, we had them guesstimated at an hour away, but I was not in the mood to check our ability to calculate the average speed of a zombie.
“My Patty came out of the house as I reached the walkway…” Thomas finally continued.
Screw it, I thought, we had a few minutes. I was of the belief that he had not ever told this story to anybody out loud. If he was the social pariah that he claimed, I doubted that he’d been given the chance.
“…she still had a dark smear of greenish-yellow around her left eye from where I’d punched her in the face, but her eyes looked funny…them damn black squigglies,” he spat. “There was a bandage around her left arm and blood was already leaking through. She come runnin’ to me, all tears and carryin’ on about our neighbor, Old Man Tibbets. She was sayin’ how he bit her just a few hours ago when she’d gone over to check on him.”
