Stronghold

by Ron Tufo

  He was just heading back into the compound when he heard Ron’s truck wailing up to the mountain entrance road.

  Gary knew I tended to baby my vehicles to the point of over-the-top tender loving care. The fact that I was hightailing up the mountain would not be good. Sure enough, as he watched us roar into the driveway, everyone jumped out of the truck and quickly headed inside. He and then Steve were right behind us. The girls and kids were out in the yard having some fun playing a pickup softball game with shortsides. You know, the kind of game where when you don’t have enough people on each side, so if you hit to right field it’s an out, and you only get one strike. Makes for a fun game and a lot of good-natured arguments.

  Tony went out to the field, pulled the adults back in with him and told the kids in rather terse words that no one was to leave the area and to stay together. He made it absolutely clear they knew how unhappy he would be if the request was not obeyed. He got nods of worried committal from all of them. Not his usual kid-friendly style, but then, this was not a kid-friendly time.

  Once all the adults were gathered, Wink laid out the issues. Two points were urgent. Timeline: At their sluggish rate of approach, the zombies were about six hours away and it was noontime now. Chances of penetration: virtually one hundred percent. There was pretty much no way for them to bypass us if they continued to plod up the mountain.

  Gary’s walk around the camp gave us an up to the minute status of conditions. We had almost enough people to put adults in all the places of defense they needed to be. Almost, but not quite. It was promptly pointed out that the northwest corner was the most vulnerable. A short, energetic brainstorming session ensued, proving that Lyn’s corporate skills really did have a place in the apocalyptic world. It was suggested we use the eyes of the kids to watch the that side from the windows of the house, leaving the adults free to defend in other spots. We had decided as a group that passive-defense was not a good option. Who knew for how long the zombies might mount a siege and we didn’t want to fight like cowboys and Indians from inside the fort. That strategy just closed off too many options we wanted to keep open.

  The remaining hours were spent checking the strengths and readiness of weapons. Gary’s Grenades, as the mines along the road were now called, were activated by Wink. The Gatling gun was mounted up in its tower. This brought a kind of maniacal, bloodthirsty smile to Mark’s face. Sort of reminded me of Doctor Evil. Kinda creepy.

  Tony had the insight to realize that it would most likely be dark when the attack came–advantage to the zombies. We needed more lights or we wouldn’t even see the damn things until they were on top of us.

  With great trepidation and warnings of horrifying revenge if any harm should come to my trucks, and all the while looking at Gary, I suggested we strategically place them where we could surprise and confuse the enemy when they got close enough by shining high beams and plow lights on them at the right moment. I was assuming it’s possible to surprise and confuse something without any upper level cerebral functions; it sounded good, anyway.

  Wink’s inventive toys allowed him to communicate in his own area, but none of us liked the fact that we couldn’t communicate with the other homesteads inside the compound. Other than running taut strings and Dixie Cups, there just weren’t any viable options yet. Squeak had nervously and unintentionally been pressing Wink about not having come up with a working Walkie-Talkie setup for everyone. You could tell Wink was getting a little hot under the collar. He snapped back about doing what he could in the time we had so far and with the shortage of parts. I knew he was trying to fab up a system that would be akin to a WWII backpack radio arrangement. Bulky and cumbersome, but workable. He growled back at Squeak that he had one all set to go and mumbled something about he could have that one so he could move around and talk to himself.

  These two guys really had a lot of like and respect for each other; their sniping goes to show that the situation was beginning to grind on all of us. My father deftly stepped between the two as if he was separating a couple of dogs ready to go at each other. They both took the cue and backed off with grumbled apologies. You could hear the breath whoosh from dad as he grinned a small grin at me and whispered, “Ron, if I was a cat, I would believe I just used another of my nine lives!” I was just watching this whole exchange, basically too stunned, and more than a little afraid, to get in the middle of it.

  Constructive chaos was the rule for the next few hours. As twilight came on, Wink, Meredith, and Nancy went back to Hom and Wink’s end of the compound to double check weapons there and provide the man (and woman) power for them. Not sure if anything would come their way, but it was still necessary to protect that direction. Squeak, joined by Steve, Lyn, and Jesse, went back to his place and finished their preparations.

  All the kids were upstairs in Tony’s house and were doing their best imitation of snipers, armed with nighttime scopes which came right off the shelf at Talmart. (Buy two, get one free!). They were each at a window to spot any zombies attacking from that direction. They were thrilled to have such an important purpose and to be a part of the defense. Frankly, we were all just as thrilled to have them there. They really were providing a needed bunch of eyes on the field. They were also out of the way and as safe as we could have them be. The boys picked Iza to be the one to run down and tell an adult if any zombies were coming from their direction. She couldn’t have been any prouder of her new responsibility.

  The only tactical order in place for the evening was this: If your position was about to get overrun, fall back quick and regroup at the next house. No heroes, please!

  One of our biggest problems was making sure no one shot any friendlies. I never, ever wanted to again hear: “and he was killed by friendly fire.” Stupidest fucking oxymoronic saying the military ever came up with. Sure we were all trained and certified on our weapons, but precious few of us had seen anything even resembling a combat situation.

  Wink must have been a fortune teller in a former life. At three minutes past six o’clock, Melissa spotted the first intruder. At three minutes and one second past six, that particular zombie had four holes in her head, adequately displaying our penchant for overkill. All my dad’s training about watching your triangle of space went out the window as soon as Melissa said, “I see one!” Out of the corner of my eye I could see my father shaking his head and saying to himself, “This is going to be a long night!” It was the first of many zombies to come through the woods, over the hill, or down the road. It seems Abner and Ida’s little entourage had, indeed, picked up quite a few more recruits along the way.

  Everyone was clenching various sphincter muscles. Too soon after our first shots, the sounds that came from the woods were not the friendly chittering of woodland creatures. Truck lights got flashed on around the whole house.

  Gary’s position was the next to make contact and in a big way. He was firing from the prone position, but that changed quickly as it took him too long to get off his elbows and grab magazines to reload. Dad was the reserve and shifted over to his side to take some pressure off. Then all hell broke loose. Zombies started coming through faster than we could take them out. We started in a circle pretty close to the house but far enough away from it that no one had to look around corners to see what was going on next to them. Great tactic in theory. Didn’t work for shit past the first few minutes. We were all steadily backing up from the onslaught.

  No matter how hard I yelled, I could not get Mark’s attention. His orders had been very specific. Do not fire the Gatling Gun unless you received a direct order. We needed to make sure we pulled any of our own out of his wave of fire before he lit up an area. Andrew had been running ammo for us. When he got some to me, I told him to give Gary and my dad a twenty count and then pull away from that side of the house. Andrew was to use that twenty-seconds to run up to Mark and tell him to lay fire on Gary’s triangle. Mark had his little reminder map with the areas all drawn up. We were working with unbloodied defenders here. Ma
ybe I was being over the top with instructions, but cut me some slack. As much as I joke about shooting my brother, I couldn’t quite manage to justify even a giggle about having my son take him out from the back with a rotating nightmare.

  I saw Gary and dad vacate the area post-haste. My dad set a new land speed record in the Senior Division. He knew how much Mark liked to shoot the Gattler and was taking no chances.

  Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Right on the twenty-second click. Like someone was pounding on a metal door with a twelve-pound sledgehammer a few times every second. The sound was deafening. The effect it had on the closest zombies was frightening. Body parts spewed in all directions. Even when it was not a head shot, which was more often than not, the result was total annihilation. That zombie may be still be animated, but it couldn’t do much more than lay there and gnash its teeth. That is, assuming there was enough of a spinal cord left to provide messages to the jaw. It would suck the next morning when we had to go out and administer the final shots to end some of them and then clean up the mess.

  I found myself next to my dad–no better place to be in a fight. I was pouring fire into a group that had just come out of the woods. I had laundered the area pretty well. When I went to reload, I asked him how he was doing for ammo and didn’t get an answer. Asked him again to make sure he had heard, since the combination of mature ears and the heavy sounds of continuous gunfire do not make for good verbal communication. Still no answer. I looked over at him–he was frozen.

  Just a blank stare out of unfocussed eyes. I shook his arm and then shook it harder. He came back in a blur and apologized when he realized he had been away. He had broken out in a chilled sweat that covered his whole head.

  “Dad? You okay?!”

  “Yes. No. Damn, I don’t know, Ron. I was back in the jungle on Guadalcanal in WWII. I was just a kid…never so scared in all my life. Japanese soldiers were banzai-ing into us and were only moments away from overrunning our position. Our lieutenant was screaming into the radio for some support. It was going to be close. I remember him swearing into the microphone when he heard there was no infantry left that could help us but the private on the other end would call for artillery support. The falling shells would be only yards from our own location. I never dug a foxhole deeper or faster in my life. I never thought I would make it out of there; thought I would die in a jungle, by myself, so far from home. I was just there again. I mean right there! I could smell the rot and the gunpowder–just like it is here and now.”

  “Dad. Take a rest. Please, we got this now.” Yeah, a big fat lie, but I could see he would try to push himself beyond reason. At least I got him to sit down for a minute and reload a couple of guns. Thank goodness our little slice of heaven was not too busy at the moment.

  Mark was getting a new string of ammo ready for his gun. The woods he had fired into were looking more like a meadow as only about half the smaller the trees were still standing. He had the biggest crazy-assed smile on his face. Even wider than when he’d won his last Magic tournament. Yes, I was jealous.

  He got behind his weapon again and started to fire, walking it from left to right, away from the good guys and into the bad ones. Good man, I thought, nicely done, son. His shots were once again ravaging anything they hit.

  His fire was just sporadic enough that you knew he was picking his spots and directing his shots where they would do the most good; he wasn’t just rotating the crank as fast as he could and using the spray and pray method. He had learned well. I was proud in a sick kind of way.

  Then he let out with the loudest: “Oh shit. Oh fuck no!” I thought maybe the gun had jammed, or worse, he had hit someone on the good guy side. My mind was racing as to how to get back up over to him and see what had happened.

  The explosion rocked the whole area. The resulting flash was more brilliant than all our lights combined. Even the zombies turned to look at the atomic-like mushroom of smoke and radiance. He had swung his line of fire over to the area where a few of the trucks were parked. His last cartridge had buried right into the gas tank of my just out of the showroom, still full of new truck smell, absofuckinglutely gorgeous marshmallow white Ford F-450.

  He wisely ducked down into the cover of the tower half-wall. I could still hear him loudly mumbling, “Dad is gonna fucken’ kill me. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.” Personally, I was jumping back and forth with, “Do I run up there and strangle him or do I just wait until his head pops up from behind the wall and take him out from here?” Although I knew I would never pull the trigger, I began to raise my rifle when I felt a hand press the barrel down.

  “If you take out my grandson, you best be prepared to join him.”

  “Dad, I am your firstborn son. And he just took out one of my favorite trucks.”

  I was still trying to raise my rifle when Mark yelled out, “Dad, I am so sorry!” The breath I was withholding went out in a protracted sigh. It seemed like everyone else had been holding the same breath, waiting to see my response. The collective air was released just after my gun started to droop back down. That is, from everyone except Gary. He was too busy giggling and returning his concentration to some more zombies.

  As soon as my dad was convinced his grandson was safe from “friendly fire,” he looked over the zombie situation and noticed Gary had the only action going on and was having a tough time holding them back.

  He gave me the, “Can I leave you alone and you won’t try to do anything stupid so I won’t have to kill you?” look and then went over to help Gary get his wedge of area under control again.

  I yelled to Andrew for more ammo. Mark was still not sure if he was going to live and cautiously peeked over the wall. He noticed I was looking at him and apologized again with my burning truck backlighting him in the tower. Not a good scenic view for his apology.

  I was just out when Andrew showed up with a few more magazines. He put them on the ammo table and I started to change out. A zombie came around from a blind spot on our right and was in my face before I knew it. Andrew pulled his sidearm and puffed his entire load into it. That would have been a bit more dramatically amusing if another zombie hadn’t been right behind the first one. Now we had no bullets in our chambers and there was a zombie in our midst. Not good!

  “Abner,” I yelled to Andrew. “That zombie is Abner. I thought he was still alive, but I guess I was wrong. Funny, he doesn’t look like a zombie. At least not completely.” All this was said while we were backing up and I was fumbling my magazine. This was just too good. I would love shooting that crotchety old excuse for an ex-human being.

  As Abner came up on me, I rushed to reload, loving the way this was playing out. I was fingering the trigger when Andrew came around my left and began a baseball bat swing with a length of steel fence post that had been lying against the house. I never even had a chance to yell at him to get out of the way. He was directly in front of me and blocking out my target completely. (No, I didn’t shoot him by accident. Geesh, I am not that incompetent!) He may have thought he was Mickey Mantle, but his swing was more like Bob Uecker’s on a bad day. He missed Abner by a foot and his follow through caught me right in the trigger hand with my finger inside the housing. I swear I heard the crack of breaking bones over the thwack of steel pipe on my fingers.

  Seeing what happened, Andrew starts yelling, “I am so sorry Mr. Talbot. I didn’t mean it! I really didn’t!” I held my breath, trying to get my rapidly purpling and swelling finger out of the trigger housing. Kind of tough to do when your pain level is in the upper atmosphere somewhere and any moving or stretching of tendons around bone chips is so tantalizingly adding to the fun. At the same time, I was trying to back away from our friendly zombie impersonator, who had no sense of personal space. Some ex-people are such assholes.

  The shot whizzed past Andrew’s temple and into the same part of Abner. A splash of delightful pink and grey mist added to the sparse early winter zombie enhanced landscape. Gary had seen what was happening and had stepped up to get a better
shot. Actually, to get any kind of a clear shot. He smiled at us, said, “You’re Welcome,” then looked at my hand still in the housing and said, “Ooooh, that looks like it hurts. Well, gotta go back to my side now. Bye.”

  Andrew was looking at me with tears streaming down his cheeks. Me, I am in so much pain I can’t do much of anything except think about what a sucky day this had become. First I lose a truck. Now I lose a hand. What else was in store to make this day a perfect triple play?

  As the shock subsided a little, the sarcasm returned. “Andrew, grab the barrel of my rifle and stand right in front of it to hold it steady while I try to get my finger out of the housing.” Of course, I wasn’t really going to shoot him now either, but it was somewhat enjoyable watching his reaction to gauge whether I was serious or not. And it took my mind off the misery, for a moment.

  Made no difference how I tried, my finger was not going to come out. Goddamn! How much can one finger swell, anyway? Andrew got the magazine out, but there was still a round in the chamber. I’ll be a son of a bitch if I was going to fire that round and deal with the recoil, but ejecting it whole would have been just as painful. Wrenching the weapon in any way added whole new levels of excruciation. My dad came over to see the carnage. Gary must have coached his response because his first words were, “Ooooh, that must hurt!” Nice, very nice.

  Always one to be safe around a firearm, dad asked me if there was still a round in the chamber. When I nodded in the affirmative he grabbed the bolt and ejected it. Before my brain could pull back the words, “What the fuck are you doing!” it was over. Dad, being dad, began to lecture me on my swearing ways.