by Nick Cole
“Got to keep moving...” Holiday gasped at Jesus. “Hurry.”
***
Ritter swiped at a zeke struggling to its feet atop the corpse tower that reached down to the base of the cargo container wall. All the dead-again were piling up, making it easier for the replacements to scramble up on to the wall via the ramp of the dead.
He missed the thing.
He brought the pick around again and caught the scabby bum in the ribs. Some hardwired instinct made the thing clutch at the weapon and pull it from Ritter’s hands as it fell backward and off the wall.
Ritter stared in dumb amazement, his face nothing but pure fatigue.
“We’ve got runners... now!” huffed Dante, sitting on his haunches, pouring water down his throat between gasps. He was covered in blood. His face was gray. “They comin’ out of nowhere and just runnin’ at us. Can you believe that?!”
“Listen everybody...” Frank began.
“No idea they could run. No idea, man,” continued Dante as though shell shock was setting in.
Below, along the palm-lined entrance to their gate, a seething mob of undulating corpses pushed forward. Rising as waves. As though they sensed they were about to break through. That the line in front of them was thin enough. Very thin.
Frank had maybe two hundred bullets.
Even if each one was a headshot...
Don’t do the math, he told himself. Sometimes the numbers won’t ever add up to where you win. So don’t do the math.
Sometimes you can lose, and still win.
He nodded to himself and drew his guns.
“Nice threads...” murmured Dante.
“Nice gats,” whistled Ritter.
“I want all of you to clear off the wall and get your stuff. Go over the back wall and out into Cleveland National Forest. Hide out there. Maybe in a few days you can come back. They’ll probably clear out and go look for someone else.”
Cory struck one and caved in its chest. The thing gave a grave-whisper “Whoof” and tumbled back to the street below, bouncing off corpses as it went.
“What about you, Frank?” asked Ash. A bloody hand brushed away a curling lock of hair that had fallen across her dirty and yet perfect face. “We’re not leaving you behind.”
You have to!
Do it now!
I order you!
It’s the only way!
All things he could’ve said to her. To them all. All things that were true. There was no clearing them off this wall. Those things were coming over. It was now just a matter of when they came over.
Instead he chose something different. Something he’d said a lot to the universe, beginning in the days after his violent trail of revenge. Something he should’ve said so many times when he’d tried to save the ones he loved from themselves, and never had.
“Please.”
And he was just an old man who loved them deeply. Not Frank the king of the castle, or the guy who had the plan. Or the guy who was hard on Holiday the screw up. Tough, but always fair. Drill Sergeant Frank. Not any of those Franks.
Just an old man begging for things to be different than the way they were. This Frank.
“Please.”
Please go and save yourself now. I want you to live.
Ash saw it. Everyone saw it. Even Cory who understood, and didn’t at the same time, saw it.
“Please go. Now,” he said softly, over the constant groaning of the dead pressing just below and coming up for them again.
“I can buy you some time with my guns. I can keep them here and coming for the sound. I’ll put down as many as I can... but it won’t be enough.” He turned to scan the surging sea-grass waving gray mob pushing at their shifting walls. “You can see... it won’t be enough. These gates are gonna fall and then...”
Frank saw the runner. It came out of nowhere. Weaving in through the press. It was a guy, pale and thin, in a tattered three-piece business suit that was once Milan-expensive. His face was wild with craven hunger. He passed through the dead like he was either unseen, or one of them. Came straight at them. And there was an animal intelligence in his eyes. Like some jungle cat. He came straight at the wall. Straight for them.
Zekes were once again reaching the top. Pulling themselves over. Three. Now four. Five more just behind.
Frank aimed and fired, taking off the runner’s head. The man pinwheeled and was lost below the sea of bodies. As though his body had sunk in an ocean of rotting bodies and scabby blood-crusted hands. As though he had drowned in their mindless midst.
Other runners were crossing the street from the tract homes across the way. Coming in small bands. Joining the seemingly unending stream of walking corpses pushing in for the kill.
Frank’s guns began to thunder methodically. Headshots were handed out with cavalier abandon. His bombardier blue eyes squinted against the last of the dying sun as brains and skulls came apart at the end of the day’s dirty heat fading into twilight.
The zekes below began to frenzy as though excited by the fireworks and the life behind them.
Boom
Boom
Boom
Boom
Boom
Ash stepped forward and drove her pole into a dead woman’s skull, forcing her off and down into the mass of seething dead below reaching up for her.
Ritter pulled his snub-nosed nickel-plated .357 with a low muttered “aaiight” and waited until Frank began to reload. Then he fired at the closers, catching a runner in the shoulder. The madwoman looked indignant and clambered forward like some hissing gray raccoon, shrieking murder. Then he thumbed back the hammer and shot her in the face and she was gone from this world.
Dante picked up his axe once more, readying it to cleave anything that even came close to Frank.
“We ain’t leaving,” he declared, glowering at Frank out of the corner of his bloodshot eyes as he watched the entire mass of zombies push forward all at once, somehow driven to a whole new murderous lust by the repeated gunfire. The gate shifted beneath their feet.
“I’m not kidding, kids!” shouted Frank over the roar of his blazing guns as new magazines went in and he began to fire calculated shots into the skulls of the closing dead. “We’re all going to die up here if you don’t get off this wall and run now!”
“Then we die together, man,” said Dante, and suddenly exploded with a rage-filled swipe, cleaving a staggering zombie in two. Blood and gore exploded across the last of the orange day. “C’mon... we can do this!”
Ash was at Frank’s back.
And when Frank heard her voice asking him for the rest of his ammunition and spare magazines so she could reload for him, he wanted to cry. He wanted to beg her.
Because...
Because...
Because his daughter could’ve grown up to be just like her. And this had been his chance to save her. Because hadn’t that been some kind of gift from the universe, from God, to have her back? Even if it wasn’t her.
To be with Marie.
And just like his Marie... she would do it her way.
Just like the two women he loved.
Some things just are, he thought, as he shot two runners in quick succession. Both of them seemed like hunting cats as they hurtled over the tops of the dead, making straight for Ritter. Some things will just be no matter how hard you want to change them.
Or save the world.
Or... just...
Save the ones you love.
Some things just are.
And that is every day.
Every day is what you have to live with, and through, because maybe, just maybe there is a somewhere over the rainbow. Maybe.
Boom
Boom
Boom
Every day.
***
Holiday hear
d the gunfire. Heard it echoing and careening out over the storage container yard. It bounced off the hollow metal shipping containers and the concrete canyon walls of the equipment yards.
He turned back to Jesus.
Jesus whispering prayers. Jesus sweating and waving his hand to create a hot breath of air from the stillness of the burning yards.
“C’mo...” was all Holiday could manage. Gasping. Holding the empty military-grade shotgun in sweat slick hands. He ran toward the fight.
My friends, he thought frantically.
And...
There’s still a chance.
He hoped.
He ran on and Jesus followed, the man’s asthmatic wheeze the only sound besides the thump of Holiday’s Docs and the slap of Jesus’s work boots against the white, hot concrete apron.
They exited the yard and climbed the embankment up to the toll road.
From there they could see the dead, surging inward toward the distant gate beyond the neighborhoods in between. And more zombies coming from the surrounding homes, streaming in ones and twos toward the crowd pushing their way toward the unseen gate.
“Gotta get them...” Holiday leaned over and spit.
Jesus flopped to the ground, clutching at his bulbous belly. He fished around in his canvas sack and pulled out a secret candy bar, as though it were some emergency ration he’d patiently held onto. He bit the wrapper and mumbled behind closed eyes, then inhaled it.
“...Away from the walls...” continued Holiday. His legs felt like jelly. He turned, looking for something. But he didn’t know what for. Only that he knew what he needed to do next. He needed to...
Come in hard from the flank and drive straight into the battle. Disrupt their attack, maggot.
As though that were obvious.
As though he’d done it before in a thousand battles. And always won. Stunned the enemy and driven them off the field.
Broken them.
Maggot.
***
Frank felt the top container shift again. Felt that sickening feeling when the wobble above doesn’t match the movement of the base below. That sickening moment of nausea where you realize that being crushed to death might be worse that being eaten alive by dead people.
Except that both might happen in the next few minutes.
A zeke surged forward from the crowd and grabbed onto Candace, trying to pull her down into the seething mob. That not-living, not-breathing mob that was now just feet below and coming up at them all at once, might swallow her. And make her into something that was no more.
Ritter closed quickly with rapid strides of his long legs, stuck the .357 in the thing’s mouth and pulled the trigger. Its brains sprayed out the back of its head and into the crowd of undead below. It reeled and fell like a sack of flour at their feet atop the containers. Two more scrabbled forward to take its place.
Ritter fired a bullet into each one’s head. More surged upward behind them. It seemed like a hundred of them were now just a few feet below and coming up.
They were losing.
That much was...
A gigantic blast from some ancient dinosaur erupted, drowning out the silent whisper-screaming roar of the dead below pushing upward.
Everything seemed to stop.
Dante raised his axe once more, just as he would until he couldn’t. His face was a mask of rage and horror and determination.
Ash. Worried. Loading shells. Crouched behind Frank’s back. The hot shells were hitting her bare shoulders and arms. The girl who was a surgeon and had saved a life despite the end of everything. Because that’s what you did. Even when things looked rough... you just did your job. Despite all that other stuff.
And there was Cory. Raining ponderous blows left and right. Wincing every time Frank’s guns rang out. Shrinking. Withdrawing from their cacophony. But then rising once more to strike out and crush the bad men. The strangers. The Stranger Danger.
And Ritter who wasn’t all bad. But whose bitter stare of disgust told them even he knew they were goners in the next few.
And Candace. Horrified and looking for bites.
And Skully, pointing and calling out the runners. The walkie-talkie on his belt. Still too weak from being shot to actually wade into the combat on their makeshift line. But desperate and nervous nonetheless, with eyes so sharp, he’d saved them all with his “Watch out!” alerts as fatigue wore them down.
All of them on the wall. Together. They all heard it. A behemoth from an age that would never be again, it rang out at the battle for Helm’s Deep, as Skully had called their stand atop the gate.
“Stay down there, kid,” Frank had told him, not wanting the scrawny drug addict who’d been accidentally shot by Holiday to tear stitches and reopen a wound they had no more medicine for.
“What...” he’d cried, his eyes wide with fear, and nervousness. Excitement too. “And miss Helm’s Deep, Frank?”
Aaaarrrannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnkkkkkk!
Went the blast once more, echoing out over the suburban wasteland. Like some signal for all that was ending to finally end.
And then they saw it. A massive cement mixer coming into view at the top of the entrance. Holiday behind the driver’s side window, shouting into the walkie-Talkie in a blur of excited static behind frantic eyes.
“I’ll draw them away!” his voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “Frank, I’ll draw them away!”
The big truck was idling, its massive engine causing the whole rig to shake with violent tremors as zombies began to peel away from the crowd at the wall and stumble back toward it. Some even turned away suddenly from the top of the wall to fall back down into their own massing brethren as they reached for the grumbling truck that had blasted its horn.
Holiday gave another blast and more zombies turned toward the rumbling giant.
Aaaarrrannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnkkkkkk!
He shifted into gear, intending to drive off and lead the zekes somewhere else down toward the coast, forgot to gun the engine, and stalled the truck. Then he let out the clutch and it slipped out of gear and began to slowly roll back down the hill.
“Uh....” came Holiday’s voice over the walkie-talkie crackle.
***
Holiday had spotted the giant cement mixer a mile down the toll road. Dragging Jesus to his stubby feet, he’d pulled the smaller man after him.
And it was a good thing he had.
Holiday had hoped there might be a key in the truck. He’d checked all the places he and Ash had looked for one in the flatbed.
The glove compartment.
The visor.
The ignition.
Nothing.
The distant gunshots rang out as Holiday slammed his palm into the steering wheel. Poor Jesus stared up at him from the road, worried dark eyes casting nervously about for anything that might come up and suddenly try to get them.
And then Jesus was gesturing, waving at Holiday to get down from the truck. Jesus climbed up, crawled behind the wheel and then turned to crawl onto the floor.
“Por favor, lo siento Dios mio,” he murmured over and over again as he worked at something Holiday could not see.
And then he was up and behind the wheel. His foot on the pedal. His closed eyes shut tight. His face writhing in agony as he fumbled with a wire below the steering wheel. Face cast upward as though seeking something. As though appealing to someone for help yet again.
And the giant vehicle rumbled to life with a smoky black belch of exhaust.
The cherubic Mexican grabbed the wheel, beaming a joyous smile out the windshield for all the world to see, and he turned the wheel side to side, looking at Holiday and then shaking his head. Indicating he did not know how to drive. He moved over to the passenger seat and beckoned Holiday up.
Yeah, Holiday could dr
ive. A tiny sports car. But not this... this was different. They stalled it three times getting off the toll road and back onto the side street that led past the equipment rental yards. Another couple of times and Holiday had the hang of it. Each time, Jesus had to fiddle with the wires to start the huge cement mixer again.
Each time murmuring his Spanish prayers for forgiveness as though stealing the same vehicle afresh once more was a whole new sin for him to be forgiven for. His face was a mix of pain and joy as once more they started to move forward, only to have Holiday stall it again another twenty feet on.
But by the time they hit the hill leading into the tract homes, the neighborhood he and Ash had run through in their mad dash to the WalMart, he had the hang of it.
Sort of.
And then, at the moment things looked like he might actually save the day and get the dead off his friends... he’d stalled it one last time in front of the gate. And no matter how hard Jesus jiggled and played with the wires, the thing would not start, as more and more zekes stumbled after the drifting vehicle.
It finally came to rest with a terrific smash, slowly crushing cars parked at the bottom of the side street.
Holiday keyed the walkie-talkie again as the dead surrounded the truck.
***
Frank and the rest watched the giant cement mixer slowly roll backward, disappearing behind the walls of the Vineyards, heading toward the other neighborhood down the street. Watching Holiday’s stunned, almost comical look, as the silent truck drifted backwards in slow motion.
Most of the zekes along the wall stumbled away after it. As though sensing its vulnerability and easy prey. Runners streaked through the crowd, racing off out of view and presumably down the hill to catch it. To be the first.
Please lock the doors, thought Ash. Please. Holiday. Please lock the doors!
“Uhhh... Frank...” it was Holiday. The walkie-talkie popped and crackled and his voice sounded small and somehow not afraid. “I actually don’t know how to drive this thing.”
A moment later, there was the sound of rending metal.
Candace gave a short scream.
The zekes had topped the entrance drive that led down into the gate, now they were disappearing down the street, careening down the hill, streaming out of sight.
