by Chris Lowry
Better to use auto to clear some space, then single shot to make a hole and escape through the line.
The formation was tight on him as they moved down the street.
The move bought them a little time, though the zombies were still stalking them, relentless. Terminal.
“Get me a lead on our direction,” he shouted to his second.
Javi pulled a map in a plastic pouch from a pocket on his vest and coordinated their position with a street sign.
“This way, four klicks.”
Sharp motioned him to point and the rest of the men fell in line one arm’s length behind.
Still the Z kept coming.
They ambled out of the dark spaces between houses and filled the street, turning it into a gauntlet of grasping hands and gnashing teeth.
The soldiers ran the gauntlet, shooting to keep the hole open.
They couldn’t last forever, they needed to get clear.
Sharp reached into his fanny pack and lifted a grenade.
It was a small baseball size sphere, but packed with an incendiary charge by the boys in science.
Z liked fire and the fireball made a big one.
Maybe it would draw some of them off.
He stopped short, popped the pin and lobbed the grenade through the window of the house.
Then he was running again, pulling the rest of the men along with him as they fought to get clear.
The grenade exploded in a gush of flame that blew out windows for the neighboring homes.
Flaming curtains floated through the air as debris settled in the yard, but the bomb did the trick.
Fire flickered through the shattered windows and licked against the dry wooden structure.
It climbed higher, dancing across the roof.
That did the trick.
It drew off the first zombie, then another.
More followed, and it was enough to make the path a little clearer.
It wasn’t much.
The men were still moving and the Z were still in the way, but their attention was divided.
It was all the squad needed to bolt for safety.
“Through the yard,” Sharp shouted.
Javi led them between two houses, across a backyard.
They were up and over a fence, putting a barrier between them and the trailing Z.
The squad disappeared around another corner and found the way clear.
“Got a bead on that jet?”
Georgie pointed.
“Three klicks.”
“Let’s move.”
The men kept close formation as they ran up the street, rifles raised and eyes up for zombies.
8
She wasn’t sure where they were taking her so she kept quiet and watched everything as she was led out of the two-story brick building and onto a street.
The street lights were out.
It surprised her, though she knew it shouldn’t have.
Even in New York, they were on electrical restrictions.
An influx of refugees from the cities that bordered the wall, and people who were able to make it out of the interior put a huge strain on resources, including electric.
There was a push by the Council to work up solar grids on rooftops, but that would mean moving the tent cities that had been erected on top of buildings.
So, there were no streetlights in NYC, or anywhere after.
But there was ambient light that leaked through windows, and created blocks of pale shadows on the street.
Here, they used torches.
They were bolted to old flag holders, long thin poles wrapped in rags and soaked in some slow burning fuel.
The torches weren’t spaced evenly, just enough to shine on a path that led to a smaller building.
The black man from the hospital stood on the short steps waiting for her.
“Up and about.”
His smile was charming if guarded.
She nodded.
“Sorry about your friend.”
Pam shook her head.
“I didn’t know her. We were on the plane together.”
“I wasn’t sure if we would be able to rescue you when we saw you land,” he explained and ushered her through the door.
“By the time we arrived you were the only one who hadn’t been bitten.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You’re the first survivor we’ve seen in a long time. And the first one who ever came in on a plane. We have a lot of questions for you.”
He led her into a room and she stopped to gape.
She hadn’t seen the back of the building in the darkness, but the small front was just that.
A façade.
She stood at the edge of a large auditorium, filled with the quiet murmurs of a packed crowd.
There was a sea of faces staring at her, thousands of them, and as she stepped out onto a stage, the crowd went silent.
Pam felt like she had landed in a science fiction movie.
She was from the City. Nothing was ever this quiet.
She lifted a nervous hand and waved.
Someone started clapping. It was picked up by dozens, then hundreds of others.
She let the applause wash over her and tried to look strong.
Part of it was because she wasn’t sure what everyone was clapping about, or why they were clapping for her.
Maybe they were just glad she survived.
Anyone survived.
But a thought dawned on her and she let it light a smile on her face.
They were clapping because she was from outside.
She came in on a plane, and that gave them hope.
These people looked like they needed hope.
The black man moved up beside her and spoke over the sound of the crowd.
“I’m Jacob. I’m in charge here.”
“Pam.”
“Take it in Pam,” he advised. “Because once they’re done, we get to the questions.”
He didn’t wait for them to finish.
Jacob waved them to silence.
“Can everyone hear?”
Someone from the back shouted to indicate the acoustics were good.
“I was going to start this by saying as some of you know, but judging by the size of our group, I think you all know who this young woman is.”
Random laughter punctuated the crowd.
“I haven’t seen all of you here in quite some time, but before I turn it into a lecture on civic duty, let’s get some information. Would that work for everyone?”
Pam admired the way he handled the crowd, the easygoing tone that assured them he had their best interest at heart.
He turned to her.
“What’s your name?”
“Pam. Pam Ballantine.”
“Hello Pam,” some of the crowd said together.
She waved again.
That opened the floodgate.
“Where are you from?”
“We haven’t seen a plane in months.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Is it like this everywhere?”
They were all shouting, voices raised louder to be heard over each other and it was chaos.
She held up her hands and brushed a stray strand of curly hair away from her eyes.
“Hold on, hold on.”
“Yeah, people damn,” the tall black man moved onto the stage next to her. “She just survived an attack by the walking dead. Let the woman breath.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet. You still got a lot of questions to answer. I just bought you a little time, that’s all.”
Pam took a deep breath.
“I could use time.”
She pointed to the woman closest to the bottom of the porch steps.
“Alright you, what was your question?”
“Are there more survivors?”
“Yes,” Pam answered. “I came from New York and I was going to Los Angeles. They�
��ve been affected by the infection too, but they’re still standing.”
“How many?”
Pam shrugged.
“I don’t know an official count. I don’t think anyone does, yet. We don’t know how many we lost inside the wall, or how many made it to one of the refugee centers before we closed it.”
“What’s going on?!” a man in the back screamed. “When are they going to save us?”
“I don’t know,” Pam sighed. “I don’t think anyone is coming to save you.”
That set off new murmurs in the crowd, people in the middle shoving. Pam could see a distinct line down the middle as people took up sides.
She couldn’t blame them. This confusion was everywhere. It was the reason her father created the Council, the reason he ran it with an iron fist.
Pam glanced at Jacob. She admired the way he had spoken to the crowd earlier, but now he just stood back and let them argue.
He didn’t have an iron fist.
Maybe no fist at all.
“People!” she shouted. “People!”
They stopped. Mostly.
“I don’t have all the answers,” she said. “There are big questions you have, big questions you want to know about. But I will tell you what I do know. We think it started in Florida.”
The crowd listened as she told them about Florida, and the spread. How the government collapsed and a group took control to save humanity.
“What about the Army?”
“Gone,” she said.
“All of them?”
“We still have the coasts, and some survived. Just like some plumbers survived, some carpenters, and some salesmen. But all of the military was on the front lines in the zombie war.”
She let that sink in. Americans had a vision of their military as being unstoppable.
She just told them most of it was gone.
And that meant no one was going to come help them.
“We’re on our own?” a woman said in a soft voice that carried across the room.
Pam glanced at Jacob, but he hung his head.
“We’re on our own,” Pam answered. But she kept her head held high.
9
“Does that look empty to you Captain? Cause from where I’m standing that looks like a metric fuckton of zombie.”
Sharp glanced up at the man who stood head and shoulders of everyone else in the squad.
“If I was a betting man Bear.”
“I’m betting they’re ain’t nobody left alive in there.”
“How about out here?”
Sharp called to Specs, their sniper as the man cast about for a trail.
“Somebody was out here. More than a couple.”
“How many more?”
The short man squinted up at him.
“Hard to say Sir. Z been through here and scuffed it all to hell. I can see boo coo footprints going,” he stood and pointed with the tip of his rifle away from the plane.
“Thataway.”
“You trying out for a Western?”
“Been watching a lot of John Ford back at the FOB.”
“Good work.”
“There’s a shoe in with the boots. Kinda small.”
“Like a woman small?”
SPECS shrugged.
“Maybe a woman small.”
Sharp noted the Z making note of them and he rallied his men to move out.
“Let’s go see where they lead.”
10
“Tell me about this place,” she said.
She and Jacob stood on the porch in front of the auditorium after the meeting let out.
There wasn’t much more she could tell them, she thought.
Outside the wall, they were safer. Right now, they were surrounded, isolated and alone in a vast wilderness full of zombies.
At least on the outside, there were no more Z, unless someone died or was killed.
Even then the Council had organized responses, and her father had made sure the SOP’s, standard operating procedures were in place, known and practiced.
The elderly were monitored in their homes, bars had emergency call buttons to summon a response team if someone was shot or stabbed in a fight.
Hospital staff were trained on Z prevention, which was a nice way of saying they taught nurses how to shove a long thin icepick through the eyeball of the recently deceased.
“What are you a reporter?”
He said it in jest but there was an edge to his voice that made her raise an eyebrow.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Things have been a little tense of late.”
“Yeah, surviving a plane crash and zombie overrun is a relaxing way to spend a Sunday afternoon.”
“Is it Sunday?”
“You guys don’t have a calendar?”
“To be honest we don’t keep up with it in here because it’s not important. Sunrise, try to keep everyone fed and alive. Sunset, try to make it through the night. A zombie apocalypse can make you fairly myopic.”
“I call that Darwin’s rule. A fight to survive.”
“I don’t think Mr. Darwin envisioned zombies as an evolutionary step.”
He poured water from a pitcher into a glass and set it beside her on the end table. She took a tentative sip and grimaced.
“Rainwater,” he shrugged. “We put barrels under the downspouts to catch all we can. People are used to running water, but when there’s no power to prime the pumps we make due.”
“Tastes better than New York water,” she took another sip.
The man nodded.
He knew she was lying, but it was a little white lie of intended kindness. He appreciated the gesture.
“I was a city councilman for our fair town, one of six. I know that may sound small to you compared to the Big Apple, but we were content with our little disputes. Arguing over a stop sign versus traffic light seems so trivial now.”
“I think a lot would seem trivial now, at least inside the walls.”
“What made them pick the lines? I suppose if we thought about it, the mountains are natural barriers but putting walls up on the mountains would seem a daunting task.”
“My father thrives on the impossible,” she said with a hint of pride.
“Was your father a man of the people?”
“No,” she grinned. “He hated people. He hates people. He was the head of a company that owned a television network. But what he is good at is leading. Leadership.”
“It is an art,” Jacob sighed. “One I am learning through the University of hard knocks.”
“They elected you?”
“I came to it by default. Most people in a time of crisis look to someone they can lay the blame on if things go wrong. I’m in the winning spot of the blame game.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“It is. And worse. There are two factions behind our gates. One makes it almost impossible to live with the other, yet both sides must work together to survive.”
“It’s like that even outside the walls,” she said. “People are scared. They’re confused and don’t know what to do. Everyone has lost so much.”
Jacob didn’t answer then. His eyes grew sad and misty, and she thought he was thinking of all he had lost.
It had been worse for them in here, of course it had.
Worse than even she could imagine, because her father was still alive, her friends in the City were still alive, and it was easy to go on living almost as they had before the zombie plague.
Places were less crowded, and the restaurants didn’t always serve what they had listed on old pre-Z menus.
There were far fewer people on the streets, because even the survivors who lived outside the walls felt safer hiding indoors.
