What Zombies Fear 3: The Gathering

by Kirk Allmond

  “Do you think you could stretch it over the whole park? I can protect the four of us on the ground from the blast, but I'm worried about those on the train getting hit by the shock wave.”

  “I can't guarantee it, but I'll do the best I can. And for the record, I still think you're fucking insane, but I understand what you're trying to do.”

  “You can apologize later. For now, let’s get ready to spring Laura's trap.”

  “Not gonna happen smart-ass. Let’s just try and get out of here alive.”

  Chapter 25

  Victor Tookes, Sr.

  Marshall and Leo's first hop from the train took them to a residential area, but like everywhere else lately, there were no undead about. The houses in this part of Gainesville were small but had good-sized yards. They were set well back off the street, as was the style in the 1950's. That was a time when people used their front yards for everything, before today's houses centered around the privacy of the back yard. Most of the yards were in good shape, despite needing to be mowed. Weeds hadn't taken over yet, which was a sure sign to Marshall that the houses had been well tended.

  "I have ten hours to check two spots for my father, so there won't be time to route around wrecks or pull them out of the way. I need something that can push cars out of the way,” Marshall said.

  "I'll see if I can find something. I'm sure there's a city motor pool that would have a big ute or dump truck," she said.

  "What's an ute?" asked Marshall.

  "Oh, you call it a pickup truck."

  "Okay, keep a look out for a dump truck. I may need the fuel capacity and increased power," replied Marshall.

  "Stay close to here. I'll find it and be back to pick you up," she said as she disappeared.

  Marshall couldn't just stand around. As soon as Leo was gone, he walked through the front yard up to the first house. On the way, he dragged his feet as he walked through the grass to create a very clear trail for Leo should she get back before he was back outside. When he got up on the front porch, he lightly pushed the brown steel door open with his palm. The deadbolt ripped through the casing and made a terrible screech as the metal door bent and finally gave way. He stepped inside, crossed the living room without so much as looking for a zombie, and headed straight for the kitchen.

  In the pantry, he found half a dozen cans of ravioli and three cans of baked beans. There were other cans, but his backpack was full, and he was going to need the room in it for when he found the gun safe. He'd noticed an NRA sticker in the living room window and was anxious to find some more ammunition. Marshall didn't really like guns for killing zombies; they ran out of ammunition too fast. Guns were good for those who didn't understand that just because there weren't any more laws, there were still rules about how people should be treated. Those people seldom saw any consequences to their actions without some show of force.

  Marshall parted the curtains of the huge picture window in the living room slightly. No Leo. He walked down the hall to the first bedroom. It was decorated for a pre-teen girl. The walls were light purple, and there were posters all over the walls of some pop-star kid with blondish hair all in his face.

  The next bedroom was a guest room. Marshall opened the closet and was pleasantly surprised to find a gun safe mounted to the floor in the closet. He ripped the top off like a tuna can lid and then removed the door from the front. Inside was a gun that looked like the rifle Vic carried and a couple boxes of ammunition for it. On the bottom shelf, he found a huge revolver. Big enough that it fit his hand fairly comfortably.

  He put all of the ammunition in his backpack and then placed the revolver on top. He was carrying his matching pistols in their thigh holsters, but he never knew. Worst case he figured he could trade it for something.

  Leo appeared outside while he was searching and followed the trail up to the house. She stuck her head in the door and called to him as he was coming out of the hallway. She jumped backwards and disappeared, reappearing out on the lawn.

  "Don't fucking scare me like that.” She laughed.

  "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Are you hungry? I found some ravioli. They're not that bad cold."

  "No, thank you. I found the city yard. You're going to be happy. They have a pretty new-looking dump truck with a place to put a snow plow on the front," said Leo.

  "Perfect! You’re a peach. Let’s go," said Marshall.

  She put her hand out to Marshall, who enveloped her whole hand and practically half of her arm in his huge paw, and they were gone. The door of the house swayed in the breeze, hanging haphazardly from its frame, creaking back and forth.

  When the two of them reappeared less than a second later, Marshall looked up at a beautiful huge pickup truck. The emblem on the door told him it was an F-650 SuperTruck. It was the size of a dump truck but had a regular pickup cab and bed. It was painted yellow like all of the city trucks on the lot and had the Gainesville county seal on the door. It had beautiful chrome wheels with huge off-road tires mounted to them.

  "Holy shit, Leo. You found a truck that came in my size!"

  "That truck is big, even with you standing next to it," replied Leo.

  "Let’s get it fueled up and see if we can find the keys."

  "You think I'd bring you all the way here without having found the keys? They were above the visor. The gate to get in here is solid and locked; all the trucks have keys in them."

  "Great work!"

  Marshall slid up in the cab of the big yellow truck and fired up the huge diesel motor. The battery was low, but after a little struggle, there was enough juice left to get the motor turning. It fired up on the fourth revolution and idled nicely. Marshall climbed down out of the cab and said, "All that's left is to find the diesel tank and top it off. It’s got half a tank on the left, but the right tank is empty. They look like 250-gallon tanks, but the yard should have a big diesel tank. You can head back to the train now. Stay safe, and don't let Tookes get you killed."

  "He's getting crazier and crazier, Marshall."

  "Trust in him, Leo. He's the smartest guy I've ever known. If anyone can do what he's trying to do, Vic can."

  "What is he trying to do?" Leo asked plainly.

  "Save the world, Leo. How many times have you heard him say he's going to kill every zombie on the planet? I'm pretty sure he aims to try, and I believe he can do it. You've seen him fight; you saw that scene at the bomb shelter in Culpeper. When he finds his power, zombies die when they touch him. If he can learn how to control that, he'll be better at killing them than any of us. Plus, I think there are more of us with enhancements out there than we think. Imagine what a dozen Johns could do with a million rounds each and a safe place to sit, or a dozen like you, Leo? Imagine if we had a dozen of each of us?"

  "I trust him, but he has been pushing that trust a little too much lately, not explaining anything. He just expects us to follow him."

  "That's just Vic. He loves you, Leo. I'd imagine all this stuff with Candi appearing has really screwed with his head. Give him some time. He won't let us down."

  Leo disappeared. Marshall shook his head and said aloud, "Vic, you better not let us down."

  It took no time to find the fuel station; it was aptly labeled, "Diesel fuel, city use only." Marshall pulled straight up to the big white tank mounted on a platform about six feet up in the air, put the truck in park, and hopped down. The twelve-foot hose reached both tanks, so he dragged it to the driver’s side first and walked back to the hand-crank. Most of the work was done by gravity, but getting it started sometimes took a bit of cranking.

  Twenty minutes of cranking later, he had emptied the fuel tanks into his truck and was pulling out of the yard. He'd forgone attaching the plow; the steel bumper of the huge truck was just as strong, and he'd get better fuel mileage without it. He headed down the highway south out of town and flicked the radio on the truck. The seek button ran through all the channels six times before he turned it off and tried the CB radio mounted under the da
sh.

  "CQ, CQ this is two-four calling CQ and standing by monitoring one-niner in five." He reached down and changed the channel on the CB radio. "CQ, CQ, this is two-five calling CQ and standing by monitoring one-niner in five." He followed the same procedure on every channel before switching to channel nineteen to listen for any response. He repeated that process twenty minutes later and twenty minutes after that, all the way down Highway 400, south to Roswell. There was no response except static. He knew it was virtually impossible that someone was listening, but it gave him something productive to do while he drove.

  Operating the CB was one of the things Marshall learned from his father. When Marshall and Victor were kids, their dad had bought a property on Lake Sinclair, a remote manmade lake in the middle of central Georgia. There was no television reception, so the three of them would sit around the travel trailer's kitchen table and talk to truckers driving down the interstate forty miles away on the CB.

  "Breaker one-seven, this is Red Pepper. Who's got their ears on?" his father would say into the big CB base station.

  "Evening, Red Pepper, this is Mean Green, runnin' southbound on Georgia 400," Marshall responded in his head.

  "Whatcha haulin', son?"

  "Nothin' but ass, Red Pep. I'm headed to Roswell looking for my dad. Shit's bad out here, and I haven't heard from him in about six months." Marshall let his imagination run with the conversation.

  "Mean Green, don't you worry about the old man. You keep yourself and your brother safe out there. There's a shit storm coming down, and you and your brother are heading right into it."

  "I have to find out what happened to you, Dad. I need to know. I miss you."

  When he got to the Haines Bridge Road exit, he swung the big truck up the exit ramp and bounced over the curb to bypass a big pileup. He'd learned on his many trips around Charlottesville not to look into the crashed vehicles after he saw a little zombie baby locked in a car. It couldn't have been more than a year old, standing on the seat beating on the window. He hadn't had the heart to kill it.

  At the top of the exit ramp, Marshall passed his favorite bar. He'd spent a lot of time in The Pickle Barrel; now it was a burned out shell. Fire had swept through this part of town. The entire strip mall was burned down. It must have been intense fire, Marshall noted, because several of the abandoned cars in the parking lot were also burned out. Then he spied a couple of bodies.

  Marshall slowed the truck and drove over the curb into the parking lot. As he idled through the lot, it became clear there had been a significant fight here. The fires were long since out, but there were burned corpses strewn about the parking lot. The fire hadn't spread to the cars, but they'd been torched too. Beside two of the burned out cars were remnants of mason jars.

  The vicious nature of humans was apparent everywhere. It looked like a group had taken refuge in the Publix in the center of the strip mall and a second group wanted what they had. An assault was launched, and the entire strip mall burned down. Everyone ended up dead, and no one got any food. It was all so senseless. He drove out of the parking lot, turning left towards his old home.

  Most of Roswell was passable in the huge truck. He'd had to push a few cars out of the way, but this huge vehicle didn't even slow down when he put the steel bumper against the side of a car and pushed it out of the way. He parked the yellow truck at the end of the cul-de-sac and ran down the very steep driveway towards the gray-sided house at the bottom.

  Chapter 26

  Battle at Centennial Park

  Part 2

  Leo put her hands on John and Tookes. Vic closed his eyes and felt the pressing cold of the way she traveled. A blink of an eye later, the three of them were standing on the steps of a building with a marble facade. The zombies from this end of the park had all pushed towards the center. This area was relatively safe.

  “Ren, you here?” he asked the thin air.

  Renee appeared at the bottom of the steps and trotted up towards them. “I put those pipes where you told me. What are they?”

  “Bombs.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” asked Leo.

  “I’m going to blow the park. Even better, I just learned that Laura has a bunch of bombs set too. The plan is to lure her down to the middle and spring her own trap on her.”

  “If she’s got the place rigged to blow, why would she come down there?” Leo asked again.

  “Because you are going to bring her down. I’ll keep her occupied. On my signal, pop up to the roof and teleport her down next to me. Then grab John and Ren, get to the train, and ride out of here.”

  “How are you going to get to the middle?” asked John.

  "That's where you two come in. I'm going to need all my energy to keep Laura busy. I need you two to clear me a path and a small area. Once that's done, I can hold it," he said. "John, how much ammo do you have?"

  "Thirteen magazines and sixty-four rounds."

  "Is that enough?" Vic asked.

  "Can't help shit happening, mate. If it ain't enough ammo, I'll pull the knife out and go Dundee style. Guns aren't my only trick," he replied.

  "Sorry, mate. I didn't mean to imply that they were. They're just the fastest way."

  "Ren, you ready to scrap? Let’s get a move on."

  Victor looked back at his little sister. She was half covered in gore and holding a pair of long kitchen knives. Her hair was slicked back with sweat, even though it was almost down to freezing. She had a long blood smear going up into her hair under her left eye. It looked like she'd used the back of her hand to wipe sweat from her cheek.

  "I'm ready," was all she said.

  "Let’s go then. Laura's got her finger on the trigger; I'd like to beat her to the punch."

  It hurt Vic to let Leo and John go first, but he knew he had to save his strength for his assault on Laura. He had to hit Laura hard and fast. As they fought, he planned every move he would make. John, Leo, and Renee killed the vast majority of the zombies in the path. Victor moved almost like one of the shamblers as he worked out every single detail of his upcoming fight. He watched shadows of Laura and himself dancing around, contemplating every move and counter move. Every time he mentally lunged, she parried. There had to be a way, if he could go further. He pushed farther out than he ever had, watching seven, eight, nine moves ahead. It was always a standoff. Every time he pushed for advantage, she had a counter. He needed to eliminate variables.

  His voice floated from outside of himself. "John, in the building straight ahead, behind the train, there are four zombies on the twenty-fourth floor. Kill the outside two, please. When you fire, they're each going to dodge right by a foot. When you fire the second shot, they're going left one foot. On your third shot each, adjust your aim by a head down and a hand's width right. You'll hit both between the eyes. Shoot now."

  Victor vaguely heard six shots ring out as fast as John could fire them. A huge plate glass window four floors above Kris shattered, littering the ground with shards. Seconds afterward, a pair of corpses tumbled forward out the window and flipped to the street behind the train.

  “Two Lieutenants down,” Victor thought to Kris. “Now she knows we're here and we know she's there. I'm going to bring her down in just a minute. Any time after that for that shield would be a good one.”

  John and Leo were spreading out, and Renee was fighting behind him. They were clearing a spot.

  The shadows shot out of Victor again. He watched. With two of her lieutenants down, he was gaining ground.

  "Get ready, Leo. On my mark, she's still in that building. Can you see her?"

  "Yea, I got the bitch. Are you sure she's gonna let me just carry her down here?"

  "If you're fast and you go when I have her distracted, I believe so."

  "Fast is what I do," she replied.

  "Then get ready to be fast. Here goes," Victor said as he launched his first assault on Laura.

  He thinned his aura down to a razor's edge and then sent a single stream
out to Laura. It was an attack he used on her before, and he knew she would see it coming. When he struck at her brain, it felt like he hit a brick wall. Tookes saw stars as her voice filled his mind.

  “Really? That's what you bring to the table?” her voice thundered in his head.

  He fought to maintain concentration. Pushing on the brick wall as hard as he could, Vic tried to drive that little sliver through it as he sent another line up towards her. It slowly snaked its way up the side of the building.

  “Stick with what you know, right? You continue to be a cowardly bitch, hiding up there in a tower, and I'll keep coming for you,” he sent back.

  The second stream entered the floor above Laura. Victor thickened it, from a single strand up to a large cable, and poised it over her head. He poured more and more of himself into that second line, sapping his strength, until it was as thick as his arm. When it was the size of his thigh, he paused, holding it there.

  "Leo, now!" Victor said as he drove the blunted stream into Laura's mind. In his own mind, the weight of his entire being was behind that thrust. Every thought he had, every hope, and all his love for Max added power to his drive. He felt the brick wall smash. Then Laura was gone.

  Victor opened his eyes and saw Laura standing in front of him, one hand to her head, the other going for a gun at her waist.

  “Great job, Leo! Get everyone else out of here!”

  "Did you really think you could beat me?" Victor said aloud. "I've got thirty-eight years of experience with the human brain. You have, what, six months?"

  Leo, Renee, and John disappeared, and Victor heard the giant diesels of the train fire up. He just had to hold her here for a few more minutes to buy them time to get clear.

  "Once again, you've failed. We've slipped through your fingers. You threw everything you had at us, and we won. Do you know why?" Victor asked, swinging his hatchet and driving a spear into her mind. He was vamping, trying to get her to go off on some tangent like a bad movie villain. Victor saw from the shadows that shot out of her that she was going to fire her gun. Halfway through his swing, he changed directions, raising the head of the small hand ax exactly as she squeezed the trigger. Time slowed. He watched the hammer pull back and drop in the gun. The tip of his hatchet caught Laura's wrist, barely nicking the skin and altering her aim slightly.