Zombies! (Book 5): Greater Love Hath No Man

by Merritt, R. S.

  Kyler pulled on the expensive looking NVGs he was handed and let Rodriguez show him how to turn them on. The goggles were meant for special operations teams so were very ruggedized. They also had secure communicators built right into them. At a guess each set probably cost more than a nice car. Kyler didn’t care about the cost but loved that they were being given some cool toys. If only the mission wasn’t to find a family and drag them out in the street so they could video their execution. Hopefully the family was long gone. He was hoping this just turned into a night of terrifying encounters with Zombies that yielded nothing useful

  Kyler, Rodriguez, and Krantz were being sent out with three men from Roberts crew to check a subdivision that was close to the first exit off the highway. It would’ve been the first place the family would’ve seen after the plane crash. It would’ve been their first chance to stop to look for supplies or a place to hide and rest. It was as likely of a place for the family to be as anywhere else.

  Getting to the subdivision they were assigned to search ate up the better part of an hour. They moved through the darkness from building to building staying low and quiet to avoid attracting any attention. If all went well, they’d get to the subdivision and check it out without running into any Zombies. If they did have any encounters, they’d do their best to take them out quietly. Any loud noises would pretty much ruin the operation for the night since no one would be able to move around with Zombies all over the place.

  Krantz had been placed in charge of the mission out of deference to his rank. The three men that came with them were all experienced at these types of night ops. They moved with the easy confidence of long-time professionals. Kyler felt like he was the only person there who didn’t fit the mold. He felt like a poser when he took his turn to move across the street to the alley on the other side. Like a kid playing dress up and the adults were humoring him by letting him play with a set of NVGs and a fully loaded automatic weapon.

  The expensive toys were pretty awesome. Kyler was a huge fan of actually being able to see where he was going when running through the dark. He’d had his share of trampolines and swing sets almost killing him when he’d been running full speed at night through backyards. The steel toed boots he habitually wore were an absolute necessity in this line of work to avoid breaking your toe every time you had to run through debris strewn streets. He was thinking if he could snag himself a pair of these goggles, he may be able to get away with just wearing a pair of running shoes instead.

  Krantz held his hand up when they got to the sign in front of the subdivision. Everyone stopped moving and keyed off his hand signals. Instead of approaching via the road leading past the open gates into the community Krantz led them into the woods surrounding the houses. They stopped again at the edge of the woods to survey the homes. They’d do a quick loop of the homes first to see if they noticed anything out of the ordinary. Any sign of lights in a house, any noise coming from a home, or any homes that seemed to have attracted the attention of a bunch of Zombies would be immediately targeted.

  Krantz split the team in half with the three soldiers they’d been assigned going left and Krantz leading Kyler and Rodriguez around to the right. They moved low and quiet keeping their eyes and ears open. They met up ten minutes later with the men who’d gone left. Neither party having seen anything they stayed split up and went back through the homes they’d just looked at. There was no time to do more than a superficial check of each home since the neighborhood had well over a hundred houses. Considering the family that they were searching for would be trying to hide seven people though even a superficial search should do the trick.

  By the tenth house Kyler was positive this was a huge waste of time. Not only was there no way they’d be able to finish sweeping the entire neighborhood before dawn he also didn’t think the family would’ve stayed around to be found. Krantz opened up another gate and they rolled into yet another backyard to see what they could find. Rodriguez went and tapped on the sliding glass door a few times to see if he could stir up any action on the inside of the home. He heard noise from inside and stepped back to see what would happen. A few minutes later a small family of Zombies were in the living room sniffing the air and looking around. The smallest one walked right by the sliding glass door and Kyler could see its arm was broken and just flapping around in the soiled onesie it was wearing.

  They backed out the gate and hit the next house. This one nothing came to the door, so they had to actually go inside and check it out. Hatchets and machetes at the ready they stacked up and entered the home. They took about ten minutes to clear it then left. They kept this up until there were only a few houses left to check. They only had an hour before the sun was due to start coming back up. On top of that they’d just been notified that they’d be flying out to Chattanooga first thing in the morning, so they absolutely had to be back on time if they wanted a ride.

  Krantz led his exhausted team into the second to last home they needed to check. This one had all kinds of Dungeons and Dragon looking stuff everywhere. A barefoot guy in a suit of armor was lying at the bottom of the stairs. Congealed blood was pooled up all around him. Rodriguez went down on one knee and poked at the blood. It quivered around showing its liquidity and indicating this death hadn’t occurred too long ago. If the knight had just fallen down the stairs and broken his neck, then why was there a knife laying in the pool of blood? Who’d taken the time to carve up the Zombies neck like that? Without a word spoken between them hatchets and machetes were tucked away and the real weapons came out.

  They cleared the house paying a lot more attention to everything this time around. Kyler had noticed the broken coffee table and wreckage on the fireplace when they’d first come in but hadn’t really thought about it possibly being recent damage. Krantz took the camera out and snapped a couple of pictures of the ruined coffee table and the barefoot knight. Blinking from the light of the flash Kyler made sure to look away the next time the camera was used. For a little camera it put off a bright flash. Not seeing anything else suspicious in the house they went out the back door and through the gate.

  They went to the next house more keyed up than earlier due to seeing the evidence their quarry had actually come through here recently. Rodriguez tapped on the sliding glass door and they waited the requisite thirty seconds to see if that stirred anything up inside the home. A Zombie with long stringy hair came tearing through the living room and flung itself at the glass. The slider vibrated with the impact. The Zombie stood up and started screeching and beating on the glass. It did that for a few seconds while they were backing away.

  The Zombie stopped screeching and started doing that sniffing thing they did. Once it started that the three of them turned to leave the yard. Kyler glanced back over his shoulder one more time and saw a little girl run out from behind the couch and hug the Zombies leg. Another little girl came out and dragged her back behind the couch almost immediately. Kyler whipped his head back to the front.

  “You see something?” Krantz asked looking back at Kyler oddly.

  “No sir. Something’s going on with these NVGs. I think the sun may be coming up.”

  Krantz slipped his off and looked around. He looked back at Rodriguez and Kyler and motioned they could remove theirs as well. Without another glance at the house they met up with the other three soldiers they’d been working with. Looking at his watch Krantz had them double-time it back to meet up with Roberts. They were all wondering what the urgency was in needing to get to Chattanooga.

  Chapter 19: Fish out of Water

  Deciding that trying to move around on the night the helicopter had landed in town may be overly ambitious they made up the den to spend the night in. The den was a closed off area sporting a really nice sectional. Easily big enough for a large family to sit around watching movies together. It must’ve also doubled as a guest room since there was a pull-out mattress. They made a canned food feast from what they’d scavenged from the houses before working on gettin
g everyone to sleep. It’d been a long and super stressful day, so it didn’t take a lot to get the kids to nod off.

  Kelly and Randy were likewise exhausted so Myriah and Caitlyn got volunteered for the first watch. They were to let their parents sleep for four hours then wake them up to take their turn. Typically, they’d have split it up more but with the helicopter nearby and it being the first day they’d gotten loose it seemed smart to double up on the watch. Myriah and Caitlyn each took a bedroom upstairs on opposite sides of the house. Caitlyn focused on the front of the neighborhood while Myriah looked out over the backyards and the large open space in the middle of all the homes.

  An hour after the sun set Caitlyn was daydreaming about meeting Justin Bieber at a refugee camp when she thought she saw some movement outside by the front of the neighborhood. All thoughts of the Bieb were pushed aside as she moved closer to the window to try and see if there was actually anything there or not. A couple of minutes later she saw some shadowy shapes run across the street before splitting off in different directions. They moved so fast if she hadn’t been staring at the exact right spot, she’d have probably missed them.

  Caitlyn crawled on her hands and knees out of the room to tell Myriah what she’d seen. Myriah nodded and started paying a lot more attention out the window. If there were people looking for them then there was a good chance that they’d come at them from the back. Caitlyn could’ve simply spotted some Zombies running around outside, but it seemed unlikely since it was the middle of the night. They weren’t in a position to take any chances anyway.

  Caitlyn told Myriah to stay upstairs and on high alert without doing anything that could be seen from the outside. Unable to think of anything else to do she headed down the stairs to let her parents know what she’d seen. Moving quickly and quietly through the pitch-dark house she rapped lightly on the door to the den before sliding the heavy barn door to the side and walking in. The den was completely dark, so she had to feel around on the couch to finally figure out where everyone was laying.

  Normally they’d have put out some glow sticks to see by but, in this case, they were way too weary of how close the people searching for them may be. They knew that if someone was searching the area, they’d probably come at night which meant no lights for them. It wasn’t that big a deal since they all wore their boots to bed anyway in case they needed to wake up and get out quickly. The boot habit also helped with avoiding stubbing their toes as they stumbled around looking for somewhere to pee in the middle of the night. To cover the bathroom in this case they’d taken a bucket and filled it with a few scoops of Tide from the laundry room to mask the smell. They’d set it up right in the corner of the den. No one wanted to walk through a house full of corpses in the middle of the night to go pee when trained killers may be surveying the neighborhood.

  Caitlyn found her dad and nudged him until he finally woke up. She immediately whispered that it was her and not to freak out. You never knew what may happen when you woke someone up since nightmares were a very common occurrence. If you started poking someone and they happened to be dreaming of a Zombie poking them there was a good chance you’d catch mouthful of fist if you woke them up too soon without identifying yourself immediately. In this case Randy just sounded sleepy.

  “It’s two in the morning already.” He grumbled trying to see Caitlyn in the darkness. “That sucks I feel like I just fell asleep. Everything good?” He asked casually sitting up on the couch bed while trying to wiggle out from underneath Zoey and Ali’s feet. Middle of the apocalypse or not he still got stuck with feet while Kelly got the less painful and much more loving top parts of their children. The girls had even gargled their way through half a bottle of Listerine before going to bed. They’d been having ‘gargle matches’ so their breath was like walking into a spa. He’d gotten stuck with getting kicked all night while enjoying the apocalyptic aroma of the bottom of the children’s footwear.

  “I saw people.” Caitlyn said quickly. She was nervous as hell. People could come through the front or back doors at any second with guns blazing. No way they were escaping again. Getting away from the Brotherhood the last time had taken the mother of all miracles mixed with a crap load of luck. They couldn’t be caught again. Caitlyn put her hand on her pistol and gripped it hard. She knew how she planned to go out if the Brotherhood decided to come through the door guns blazing.

  “What do you mean you saw people? Hang on a second.” Randy poked Kelly hard. She woke up gasping for air and swinging her arms around wildly. Doreen cried out from being knocked off her mom. Zoey yelped in surprised pain when her hair got caught in a button on Kelly’s sweater. Realizing his mistake Randy worked to help quiet the kids down and get Kelly pulled out from under the pile of children she’d accumulated on top of her. Once those tasks had been accomplished, he asked Caitlyn to finish up what she’d been saying.

  “I was looking out the window and I saw something over by where the sign is but wasn’t sure what it was. Then I saw a group crossing the street really fast. I think they’re here looking for us.” Caitlyn said trying to keep her cool even though she was freaking out.

  “How many?” Kelly asked. No answer came back from Caitlyn.

  “How many did you see cross the street?” Randy clarified.

  “Oh. I don’t know. Like between six and ten of them. It was just something I caught out of the corner of my eye really. It’s pretty dark outside.”

  “Let’s get the sheets and towels off the corpses and huddle up in the den. If they come in, we blast them right back out. Hopefully they just peek in the windows and keep going. No way they have time to check every house in this whole neighborhood. Not with one helicopter full of guys.” Randy said.

  “What if we make a run for it?” Kelly asked.

  “Too risky. We don’t know where they have men setup to watch for us. They’ll be expecting us to freak out and make a run for it. These guys Caitlyn saw may be here just to try and flush us out.” Randy answered.

  “What about the kids? We can fight but the littles can’t. There’s got to be somewhere safe we can hide them.” Kelly was starting to freak out. She was pissed they’d let themselves be trapped like this. They didn’t have anything to show for their day other than a bunch of canned food and some flea market knight crap.

  “The car in the garage.” Caitlyn said. “We tested it while you guys were out and it’s working. The keys were hanging on the hook right by the garage door.”

  Randy held himself back from snapping at her. Why hadn’t she mentioned the car in the garage was working? That was a way better asset than the spear thing her mom had replaced her hoe with. Biting back his frustration Randy tried to think of what they could do with the car. Kelly was pissed at not being let in on the car working as well but she recognized they were all freaking out right now so let it slide.

  “Let’s put the littles in the trunk. Show them how to use the lever to get out. The car should protect them from any stray bullets if it comes to that.” Kelly decided and instantly started getting the little kids moving. It was chaotic trying to get them through the pitch darkness of the house into the garage to climb into a trunk then show them how to open it from the inside. They were all scared to death and tears were flowing freely. None of them wanted to get shut into a trunk in a dark garage. Kelly’s tears were flowing harder than the kids and she was having a hard time keeping her sobs quiet.

  Once they had the kids crammed into the trunk the rest of them went back in the house and positioned themselves around the first floor with the weapons they’d taken from the plane. They had three pistols and two AR-15 assault rifles. Most of them had a full magazine but they didn’t have any extra. The pistol Kelly had was missing the bullets she’d used on the men she’d killed in the plane.

  Kelly setup in the kitchen. Randy positioned himself in the den and Caitlyn and Myriah were both upstairs on the balcony. They were attempting to have multiple angles of fire to wipe out anyone who came in through eit
her the sliding glass door in the back or tried to kick in the front door. Kelly was loving the open concept floor plan at the moment since it gave them all kinds of advantages in defending against people coming in the house.

  They got setup and started waiting. They waited so long Kelly went out to bring the kids in the trunk some snacks and make sure they were ok. They’d all fallen asleep cuddling with one another, so she’d shut the trunk and walked back in the house. It occurred to her as she was walking in that if all of them were killed then the kids would just be stuck hiding in a trunk in the middle of a Zombie apocalypse. She couldn’t think of anything she could do about that at the moment other than make sure they didn’t lose.

  The continued to wait. Kelly’s mind wandering back to the kids suggestions to put a couple of Zombies on the bottom floor of the house. She wondered if they could’ve gotten the guy in the knight suit to wander over if they hadn’t killed him so fast. She felt around on the counter for the Twizzlers they’d looted from the house next door. Maybe some sugar would help her come up with a better idea than sitting in the house waiting to die. She found the Twizzlers in between the random cans of beans and absently started gnawing on one of them. One nice thing about the apocalypse was that running for your life kept you in great shape. Calorie counting didn’t even make it into the top hundred things to worry about anymore.