by Pete Aldin
He touched the sock in his hoody sleeve and said, “Here's what we do. This is a rough outline only; you all need to follow it while it works, then improvise if you need to. Remember the main idea is to take the house if we can. It's a good place to keep them at bay while someone makes a hole through the fences behind it. At the very least, the house will have ammo and food.
“Heng is first man out the door. Angie second. Me third. Dylan and Lewis hang back as long as you can, don't come out till I call if you can help it. Heng, Angie and I get close to take out the closest gumbies, get weapons. The compound is my responsibility and Heng's. Angie, the house is yours as soon as you have a weapon; make sure you clear it fast, but careful.” She nodded, her limbs twitching with adrenaline. “The house is our fallback point. Dylan, you'll be with Lewis, keeping him alive.”
Lewis bristled. “What?”
“Because you'll be busy,” Elliot told him. “Remember the bolt-cutters in back of the SUV?”
“Yeah.”
“When I call your name, you come out of here fast, get to the SUV, grab the cutters and sprint around the back of the house.”
“Wait! You're not sending me away. I want to shoot those biker bastards—”
“Oh? You're a sharpshooter now? Or maybe you want to run across forty yards of open ground toward three men with guns.” A pause while Lewis fumed. “You'll help with a distraction. I'll take care of those biker bastards.” Images of headless corpses flashed through his head, a crow pecking at eyes. He ran his fingers across his head. “Be sure I will.”
“Firearms,” said Lewis.
“Pardon me?”
“You said guns. They're called firearms.”
“Point taken. So, you'll have the boltcutters, right? Round back of the house, you find a sheltered bit of fence where it's hard for people to shoot at you, and you cut the inner fence. Dylan's your support.”
Lewis nodded. “And we make some noise, right? Bring the zombies around to the gap?”
“Exactly.”
“Fine.”
Dylan's gaze whipped between them. “You're kidding me!”
“The enemy of my enemy et cetera,” Elliot told him. “Good news is, Dylan, you'll be armed with whatever weapons you can find in that SUV. Just be smart. And you better have Lewis's back. Against the dead and the living.” He eyed the guy till he swallowed and nodded.
“Not like you haven't killed anyone,” Angie told him. Dylan blushed, dropped his gaze.
“Speaking of killing people,” Elliot said, “I'll take the woman at the gate.”
“Woman?” Heng asked, surprised.
“She's armed. She's complicit in this. I take her out.”
“Or I will,” Angie suggested, still messing with her shiv. She couldn't find a comfortable place for it. “Believe me, I don't mind.”
Elliot beckoned her closer to the door. “How much do you want to live?”
She shuffled over, gave him that you're-a-dead-man stare again. “Seriously?”
“Then take your shirt off.”
“What!” Dylan choked.
“Shut up,” she told him. She slid her tee up and over. “I get it.”
Heng chuckled at the sight of her tiger-print bra. “Stay away from angry tiger.”
She glared at him, then decided the back of her bra strap was a good place for the shiv which was small enough to slip in there sideways.
“Keep the bra on if you want,” Elliot told her. “Just make sure you have their attention.”
“As if I wouldn't,” she snorted.
Farmer Two was fiddling with the door latch now, while Three aimed his rifle at it. Elliot slipped sideways, to let Heng take his place closest the door, with the girl beside him. Her bare skin gleamed with sweat.
“Lewis,” Elliot said with a grim smile and without needing to look back. “Eyes down.”
*
The two farmers kept back from the door as it swung out. Without much breeze, there was no danger of it blowing shut again and neither of them bothered securing it against the truck's side. They kept in a tight cluster, rifles pointed at the soil between them and the people emerging.
As Angie and then Heng slipped out ahead of him, Elliot pulled his hood over his head, hoping to avoid Waxer's immediate notice.
“Hi, boys,” Angie said and minced closer, her hands on her ribcage, chest thrust out. “Surely you don't want to give this away, do you?”
“Bloody hell, girl,” the middle-aged woman grumbled and marched over to where the two farmers stood frozen with eyes popping, slipping off the workshirt she wore over a tanktop one sleeve at a time, juggling the shottie awkwardly. “What are you, a bloody stripper?”
Angie's gaze brushed Elliot's for the barest of seconds, telling him to wait. He slipped his fingers into his opposite sleeve, pretended to scratch, cinching the length of sock into his palm. Heng shuffled at Angie's heel, shoulders stooped in feigned defeat, hands on hips. Elliot mimicked the old man's posture, slumped over.
“Get this on, ya little slut,” the woman said, holding out her shirt. The shotgun hung loose from her right hand but her trigger finger was still inside the guard.
“Or maybe I'll take this off, huh?” Angie said. She winked at the blushing men with one hand at her bra clasp, the other reaching for the shirt.
She lunged, snatched at the woman's wrist, pulled her close as the shiv came around. The wooden spike buried itself up and into the side of the woman's neck. Red squirted, eyes widened, mouth drooped. Angie swung her around with great grace, laced an arm over her shoulder, and grabbed her gun-hand from behind, slipped her own finger through the guard, brought it up.
Heng and Elliot started moving. In shock, neither Famer Two nor Farmer Three paid them heed. Three hadn't raised his .22; Two had his own double-barrel up, hesitating, not wanting to shoot the woman blocking Angie.
Angie shot him in the chest. He crumpled, falling on top of his weapon. Farmer Three finally thought of using his, but Heng was on him, shivving him twice in the stomach, then wresting his rifle free and swatting him to the ground with it. Spry as ever, the old Cambodian knelt, aimed at the four men across the compound who, stunned, were only now reaching for weapons. He squeezed off a round and they scattered for cover, the bikers heading around the van, the Fencer toward the pens at the back of the yard. Only Farmer One stood his ground, firing, working the bolt.
“Make your shots count,” Elliot told him, then shouted “Lewis!” while he tossed his useless kosh and scrambled to get a grip on the squirming, keening Farmer Three. He got a handful of shirt and another of grey hair and pulled the injured man back toward the cover of the truck. Farmer One's second shot whizzed over his head, passing between him and Angie who was still fighting to hold the chubby woman up as a meat shield. “Drag her back here! Then check her pockets.”
Lewis and Dylan slid from the trailer as Elliot got back behind it. They sprinted around the side toward the SUV and Elliot put them out of mind, slipping his own shiv from his boot. He rolled the farmer onto his stomach and plunged it into his brainstem, left it there while he started checking pockets.
“Got him!” Heng cried after his third shot and Elliot didn't care which one.
He yelled, “Under the truck, Heng!” and hit pay dirt: a full five-round mag, and eight spare rounds. Plus his SIG. As Angie continued struggling with her opponent, trying to put her down, Elliot met Heng by the back of the truck and lay the ammo down on the ground for him. “Behind the tire,” he said.
Heng nodded and squirmed his way underneath, dragging the spare rounds with him.
Elliot cast a longing glance at Farmer Two's body. There was a shotgun there, maybe spare shells, but it was too risky. “Shit.”
Angie and her opponent struggled on the ground now, Angie underneath with arm locked around the woman's heavily bleeding neck, squeezing. The woman clawed at her. The shiv was out though Elliot couldn't see it, leaving the blood to run free. A minute, maybe less and she'd di
e on her own. They didn't have that time. The woman saw him coming, her struggles increasing as he got the Shrade out and unfolded the blade.
“Hold her!”
She sobbed then, and Elliot saw her for who she was, not wanting to. Just a country girl, gotten older and lost her looks, finding herself in a bad place and a bad time, doing what the others told her in order to survive. And Elliot was just a soldier, performing another in a long line of shitty things this shitty life had made him do, and damned if he'd apologize for it. He got on top, grabbed her chin as Angie dropped her arm, stuck the blade's point into her throat and put his weight on it, felt it pop through, pulled it back, rolled off as her breath turned to choking. He went back for the SIG. Halfway to it, light flared around the edges of his vision. His chest constricted. And he was no longer there.
He was in an arid place, sandy soil and tiny rocks and a wide black crater with his team in pieces and—
Stop this.
He was in a dusty village hovel with a baby hugging the leg of its mother who lolled half-on-half-off a beanbag with blood streaming from a hole in her chest, diving back out into the street as a hand grenade rolled from her hand—
Stop this. Please.
He was in his classroom listening to the teacher explain that Tommy Harrison had met with an unfortunate accident at the train tracks and the room lost its air and it spun around him and all he could think was it was his fault his fault his fault—
STOP THIS!
He sucked in a breath, hands on knees and centered on the grey dirt of an Australian farm, the tire-print between his feet, a stick with black ants running along it. Blood thumped in his arteries. Tinnitus screamed in his ears. The vision was gone from his left eye. The world had lost its oxygen. It wasn't working. Not fast enough. People were counting on him. He was in danger. There was—
He felt the ghost of a slap across the head, Uncle John's punctuation to his favorite saying. Too much thinkin', not enough doin'.
He felt a light touch on his shoulder, Tommy's mom rubbing it, asking him if he was okay, if he needed to talk, if he'd like to join them for dinner. The hand moved to his hair, massaged his scalp.
“You're okay,” Angie was saying. “You're okay.”
He pushed himself upright, forcing oxygen into his lungs. “Yeah,” he said. “I'm okay.”
“She had it coming.”
“She did,” he said. He squeezed his eyes closed and opened them. The vision in the left one was back but stippled with white. “And she didn't.”
Angie let go of his head, looked down, realized the same moment he did that one side of her bra had slipped up; under the circumstances, Elliot found he could care less. She pulled it into place, the fabric sliding easily on a lubricant of sweat and blood. She cracked the double-barrel open as Heng changed mags under the truck. She pulled out the spent shell, checked the other was good and replaced it.
Elliot pointed to the now dead woman. “Shells in her pockets. Get 'em and take that house.”
The Shrade was still in his hand. He could see and hear well enough. And John—goddam him for all the wrong things he'd done and said in his life—had been right about this one thing. He wiped the blade on his sleeve, folded it, dropped in his pocket, found his SIG. His head pounded like a bitch, but he'd deal with that later. Vision clearing, he took a peek around the truck. Farmer One lay wounded on the ground, chest heaving. The Fencer was visible between the rails of the sheep run. It had been maybe forty-five seconds since Angie had fired the shotgun. Lewis should be on his way to the fence by now. The Fencer had a sawn-off; though he'd briefly have an angle on Lewis from there, it was unlikely he'd hit him over that distance. Waxer was nowhere to be seen, but his friend popped out from behind the black van, fired his pump-action, ducked back.
Elliot squatted and reached in under the truck for the empty mag Heng had ejected, started loading spare bullets as he picked them from the dirt. “Don't shoot the van: may be people in there.”
If the Druids were collecting human chattel, it was certainly possible. Shit, what if Lewis's sister was in there; what if they took her on long trips as entertainment? That was one lie he'd no doubt have to face up to one day. Well, if it meant surviving this day, he could live with that.
Heng grunted. “Then what I shoot?”
“Can you see the asshole in the sheep run, behind the steel fence over there?”
“Wait. Oh, yes.” Heng squeezed off a shot. Elliot's ears rang with the crack of the .22.
“Get him?”
“Not yet.”
“Wait. The fuel tank, the diesel tank. Put a round through it.”
Heng twisted around to frown at him. He had black road dirt smeared on his cheek and shoulder off the tire. “Blow up?”
Elliot shook his head, got the fifth round into the mag and tossed it beside Heng. “Only in movies. But that idiot doesn't know that. Might panic. If he runs, then—pow!”
“Waste fuel,” Heng said.
“We're not staying to use it.”
Leaving Heng to it, Elliot got up and ran around the back of the truck, 9-mil ready. Another crack from the .22 and Elliot wondered if it would work. No sign of Lewis or Dylan, the pot-bellied woman on the porch, or even Angie who'd sure moved fast. The front door of the house was wide open as were the back doors of the SUV. He checked the inside—Dylan must have taken the tomahawk Elliot had taken from Jock's home.
A shotgun blast from inside the homestead. He ducked, waited, heard nothing else and left it to Angie, moving further up the side of the truck. Nearing the cab, he caught a flash of flannelette shirt along the holding pens, vanishing behind the garage. The Fencer. Working his way round. Heng could hold off the bikers; Elliot would have to—
The window in the cab shattered above Elliot's head. Then he heard the gunshot. He ducked, swung the SIG round in a two-handed grip, found the woman in the open door of the garage, working the rifle bolt. Elliot squeezed twice, watched her drop. He moved to the garage at a run, put shoulder to the door, checked the room and moved inside. He kicked the 30-06 away from the hostile's reach, realized she was dead already, trotted past a tractor to the rear door of the garage.
A shotgun boomed from the direction of the barn. A shot from Heng, then another.
He risked a look, leant out and swept the pens beyond for hostiles. Nothing. Nothing but a woman with grey hair lying dead behind him, a woman who'd lost her life at his hands.
Tinnitus. Nausea.
Later. Deal with it later.
The pens on this side ran into a long shed, maybe used for shearing, all aluminum sheeting, with a couple of dirty windows set five feet high on this end, perfect place for Fencer to pick him off if he broke cover. He pulled back, squatted by the woman's body and checked her for spare rounds, then the rifle itself. Nothing. No more rounds. She'd had one chance and blown it. And the weapon was useless to him.
He listened. There was nothing for a time, but the pop and crackle of temperature change in the tin garage, the hoof-clatter of frightened sheep in the truck. Heng and the Bikers had either reached an impasse or one side had killed the other. Nothing further from the house and there was no telling if that was good or bad. What if Angie was down? What if someone was slipping out their back door now, taking aim at Lewis by the fence, finger on the trigger … ?
Lewis hollered at zombies as planned and Elliot flinched. The young man shouted again and hammered a metallic rhythm on chain link fence with bolt-cutters. Elliot let out his breath. Time to get into the house and let the undead clear the yard.
*
He stood one side of the open front door, Heng the other. Despite the rows of solar panels he'd glimpsed in the yard behind the garage, there were no lights on in the house. A single hallway split the dwelling down the centre, gloomy without skylights. A window in a room at the far end flared with light, making it hard to see down the corridor. But one body was visible face down at the end. He and Heng had left the bikers under cover on the far
side of the compound and had to hope the zombies would take care of them while they took the house.
“Angie,” he called softly.
A moment, then from one of the side rooms, “In here! House is safe.”
“Go to the end and see if Lewis is coming,” he told Heng and followed him down the hall.
A head appeared at a door halfway down on the garage side of the house. “Got two in here,” Angie said.
He stood in the doorway and regarded the two old women with disgust. They sat pressed against each other on an aging couch in an aging living room complete with lace doilies, porcelain dolls and a china tea set in a glass cabinet. They wore murderous expressions. Angie's sawn-off was on a sideboard by the door and she held a long-barreled pump action on the women.
Angie handed him the sawn-off. She was buzzing with adrenaline, her breaths short, voice husky. “Loaded. I got the rest in here.” She raised the pump-action.
He jerked his head at the female body painting the hall runner red. “Her?”
“Tried to shoot me. I got in first. Haven't seen any other weapons but there's no one in the house.”
He put the SIG in his belt, got out his lock-blade. The two women wimpered. He pulled a lamp's plug from the wall socket, cut the cord at both end, tossed it to Angie. “Tie one of them up, hands behind her back, tight.” From the same power board, he unplugged a DVD player and cut its cord too, covered Angie while she set about tying them.
