Dead Man's Land

by R. J. Spears

  Then again, it could be that my brain was so jumbled from what had just happened that it was making up its own movie. Why I cast horses in this picture was beyond me, if that was the case.

  The men on the horses began firing at something over my shoulder. I turned and saw Indians (Native Americans for the enlightened) firing back from among a small set of teepees. There weren’t a lot of Indians, but they were defending their people, and I knew they would do whatever they had to do to fend off the attackers. I saw women and children running away from the battle, heading for a grouping of tall pine trees.

  A uniformed horseman cut around the teepees and made a beeline for the women and the children, firing on the retreating Indians. Something in me was horrified, but despite my revulsion, I continued to watch. A male from the tribe broke from the group of defenders and took aim on the lone horseman. He fired, but his shots went wild, and the rider furiously continued on toward the frightened women and children. The tribesman redirected his aim, and the next thing I saw was the horse toppling over, sending the rider in a violent spill. The rider went still. The Indian had shot the horse out from the under him.

  The women and children safely continued their run for the woods, but as for the rest of the story, the scene faded away, and I was left with blackness.

  Well, blackness and confusion. That’s standard operating procedure with these visions – show me something horrific and let me figure it out. I had no idea what the takeaway was from this vision, but God was almost never direct in His communications with me. I had learned to live with this.

  The blackness started to ebb away, and I found myself looking up into a slate gray sky as flat as an endless wall. I was back in reality, and something in me wished I could have stayed with my vision. That nagging something told me that no matter how ghastly my vision was, reality was going to be so much worse.

  That reality swept over me whether I wanted it or not, the sheer weight of it nearly bowled me over. The last two things I remembered were a streak of light whizzing past me accompanied by a violent hissing sound. That was followed by an explosion that lifted me off my feet and tossed me in the air like a child’s play thing, carelessly discarded.

  I lost time for a while. For how long, I wasn’t really sure. It was as if someone had just spliced a vital part of my life away. One minute, I was running, and the next I was sitting up with an insistent buzzing in my ears.

  I sat there staring blankly at a huge smoking hole in the front of the Manor’s main building, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how it got there.

  No, that hole just wasn’t going to work at all. It was going to be hell to fix, but I knew Travis would figure it out. He was good that way.

  My thoughts circled around themselves like this for several seconds, trying to sort out this incongruous picture, until I turned my head slightly and a pair legs appeared in my periphery, lying on the ground a few feet away. They seemed twisted at an unnatural angle. Making this new picture even more disturbing was the copious amounts of blood covering the pants.

  “Joel!” someone shouted from miles away, but I couldn’t make myself pay attention to it. My focus was on those damn legs and all that blood. It couldn’t be a good thing.

  “Joel! Get up!” someone yelled, and it was more distinct this time, but my eyes were still drawn to the legs.

  A small inner voice called out to me, “Don’t look at the legs. Don’t look.”

  But I continued to look, despite that frightened inner voice. I made it worse by shifting my view up the legs and to the torso and head. There wasn’t a lot left of that part of the body. Something had torn into it and shredded much of it. I saw bits of broken rib bones with muscles exposed in a way that they never were intended to be seen.

  It only took a couple of seconds to realize who the bones belonged to. Brandon had been running with me, back to the main building, and then we weren’t running anymore. I was sitting up, and he wasn’t.

  A burst of bullets tore through the air, but the sound was mushy, as if it were being filtered through water. I jerked my head up to see someone sticking most of his body out of a second floor window. It was Aaron, and he was shooting over my head at something. He fired without restraint, and his face was contorted into primal fury. In my current state, he seemed as if he were right there in front of me, but also distant and almost as if he weren’t truly real.

  “Joel, you have to get up,” the voice called, and there was real pain in it.

  I turned to the source of the voice and saw Jo standing outside the front door of the main building, beckoning to me with her arm, a plaintive expression on her face.

  “You have to get up, Joel,” she screamed. “They’re coming.”

  Whatever was making her this frightened I really didn’t want to know, but my perspective took that moment to skew and warp as if reality had been broken and was now repairing itself right before my eyes. There was a loud whooshing sound in my ears, and it was as if someone had hit my reset button as reality slammed fully down on me like Thor’s mighty hammer. I was fully present, in the here and now, as some say. There wasn’t a lot of comfort in that, but like it or not, that is where I was.

  An acrid smoke swirled around my feet and assaulted my nostrils, almost causing me to choke. I swiveled my head and looked over my shoulder at the field behind me. It wasn’t a pretty picture. An army of armored zombies, set against the opaque background of the fog, streamed through the massive hole the bulldozer had torn in the fence. They were controlled by some sort of external force, with most of them headed down the driveway, circumventing the web of metal cables. They would be on the building and inside in a matter of minutes.

  The bulldozer operator returned Aaron’s fire, forcing Aaron to pull back inside. People started firing at the zombies from the guard stations on the third floor. I’m not sure how many people we had up there, but they were firing at a punishing rate, trying to take down some of the attackers. Sadly, their bullets bounced off most of the zombies’ armored shells, and very few of the undead fell.

  Relentless as zombies always were, they continued on, their clanking and clattering sounds mixed in with their moans and grunts in an unholy symphony of sound. The only thing different this time, other than their armored shells, was that they were being compelled to come at us by someone: a grand puppet master pulling the strings of death, with his army ready to crush, kill, and destroy.

  I hadn’t even met this guy, but he wanted to kill me and everyone I cared for. What made it worse was that I could see no way to stop him and his army, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to try.

  I got to my feet and started back toward the main building as Jo fired past me.

  Chapter 25

  The Discretion of Kings

  The fog finally lifted, leaving only a slight haze over the battlefield. Anthony reveled in the view. It was a thing of beauty, and it was all of his own doing. He was the creator and master of death. It filled him with no small amount of pride.

  His armored soldiers were on the precipice of entering the building. The fence, once impeding the free flow of his army, lay smashed and wide open, leaving a free and open path for the rest of his soldiers. His enemies were in retreat, as their lone warrior on the battlefield had run in total panic back to the building.

  Yes, he acknowledged, there were still people fighting back, as he saw figures firing from inside. And yes, a few of his soldiers had fallen, but the writing was on the wall. These people’s day had come, and now it was time for them to pay: to pay for all the indignities that he had suffered in his life, to pay for the scars on his body that still ached, and to pay because he would make them pay. They would pay in blood.

  It was time to move up his human soldiers and start the final phase of the attack.

  Anthony keyed his walkie-talkie and said, “Roy, move up on the south side, and get ready to start the mortar attack. It’s time to rain a little fire down on these people, don’t you thin
k?”

  Roy responded affirmatively, and Anthony watched through binoculars as Roy started the trek forward with the mortar launcher.

  “Maggie, move your soldiers forward and onto the field to the north,” Anthony said. “We don’t want them to try an escape in that direction when the walls start falling down around them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Maggie said and did as she was told. A few control key commands later, her soldiers started in a wide arc around to the north side of The Manor.

  As for Felix, Anthony had him continue his assault from the front. The slow-witted Norman and his troops were held in reserve. (Anthony just didn’t trust Norman’s mental competence, but he could operate the mortar launcher to some degree of competence, so he was still of some limited value.) The last part of the plan was to have young Ryan swing his crew around to the back of the complex to box the people inside, completely, from all sides.

  There was one final detail, and that was the removal of a final threat, a threat from within and one Anthony just couldn’t live with any longer. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a long rectangular object that looked like a television remote control. He held it poised in his hand for several seconds as if he were contemplating the decision set before him. This drew out for several seconds before his fingers went to work. He would have no regrets.

  Rex watched, a sly smile across his face, as the armored zombies closed in on the building. The people inside had given up trying to shoot him, as the bulldozer’s front blade deflected all their shots. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a large contingent of zombies moving toward the north side of the building, and he knew that they were Maggie’s soldiers. That was Anthony’s cue that the final push was on and that the people inside of the complex had only a short time to live.

  It was then that something puzzling happened. Rex’s soldier’s paused and stood still, silent sentinels, swaying under the weight of their armor. He ran his fingers over the buttons on his control panel, pressing them insistently, but nothing happened. He pulled up his walkie-talkie and said, “Anthony, there’s something up with my soldiers.”

  Anthony responded, “I’m well aware of the problem and will handle it.” There was a momentary pause, and Anthony came back on the line, “Felix, you now have control of Rex’s soldiers. You know what to do.”

  “Ahhhhh, boss man, you sure that’s what you want him to do? Felix is such a fuck-up,” Rex said, not caring that Felix was listening.

  “I’m completely sure,” Anthony responded.

  Rex started to speak, but a bullet pinged off the metal canopy above the driver’s area of the bulldozer, and he ducked down. That shot came from behind. He popped his head up and saw a muzzle flash come from the woods off to his right.

  He keyed his walkie-talkie and said, “Boss man, they have some people outside the complex, in the woods to the north. One of them took a shot at me. Can you have Norman send some soldiers in that direction?” He felt like a sitting duck out in the open now.

  He held the walkie-talkie to his ear and waited for a response, but nothing but static came back.

  “Anthony, did you hear me?” he shouted.

  “Yes,” Anthony responded, “loud and clear. I’m just not doing anything about it.”

  “Why the hell not?” Rex screamed.

  “Because it’s time for you to get your comeuppance, as they say,” Anthony said coolly.

  “What?” Rex asked.

  “You should have never bargained with me after I was injured and defenseless.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rex roared.

  “You know. I needed you, and you forced me to beg.”

  “How is that different than the life we lived while we’re wearing your fucking collars?”

  “Well, you don’t have yours anymore, do you?” Anthony asked, his voice thick with sarcasm.

  “What the hell are you doing to me?” Rex yelled.

  “Leaving you in the same condition you would have left me. Good luck with that.”

  Rex screamed into the walkie-talkie until he finally got it and his throat felt raw. Anthony was a vengeful god, and the Lord giveth, and he taketh away. Rex tossed the walkie-talkie onto the floor of the bulldozer.

  Well, he thought, I am fucking far from defenseless. I sure as hell am.

  He picked up the rocket launcher and reached for one of the extra warheads. As soon as he picked it up, he knew he had been screwed with his pants on. This warhead weighed less than half the weight of a normal one and was obviously disarmed. He grabbed the last one and found it to be in a similar condition.

  Another shot winged off the side of the bulldozer, and Rex ducked down. He popped his head up and saw a shadowy figure in the woods, moving among the trees.

  I still have my AK, he thought. He knew he probably had half a clip left on the gun itself and three back-ups. A chill went down his spine as he picked up the bag of extra clips. He pulled them out one-by-one, only to discover that each one of them was empty, and his rage started to build.

  That left him with a half a clip in the AK and his sidearm with a full clip and one extra. But that isn’t what stilled his racing heart. He had a way out of this mess. He had a ride. A big fucking ride. This bulldozer would plow its way through all of Anthony’s soldiers, and Rex would ride it right up Anthony’s ass. He would show that backstabbing son of a bitch.

  That was when the bulldozer’s engine shut off as if someone had stabbed the beast in the heart. It sputtered one last gasp and went silent. Rex frantically turned the ignition key and jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, violently pounding it down again and again until he almost jammed his ankle.

  The remote kill switch on the ignition Anthony had installed worked like a charm.

  Anthony’s voice came across the speaker of the walkie-talkie lying at Rex’s feet, “Now, you know how I felt, lying beside that bus, waiting to die. Only now, no one is coming for you, and begging won’t help.” He paused and then said, “Felix, it’s time.”

  Rex caught movement out of the corner of his eye, turned, and saw his soldiers slowly rev back up as if their internal power source had been turned back on and put in motion. Only they didn’t head in the direction of the buildings, but instead, were coming toward the bulldozer. Although he knew it wasn’t possible, because these dead things didn’t give a flying fuck about anything, he thought he saw something akin to eager anticipation in their eyes.

  “Revenge is a dish best-served undead, don’t you think, Rex?” Anthony asked over the walkie-talkie.

  Rex pulled back on his massive booted foot and brought it down on the walkie-talkie, sending pieces of metal and plastic in every direction. “Fuck you!” he screamed.

  He surveyed his options, checking both sides of the bulldozer. To the south was a field filled with armored zombies on their way to the buildings. To the north were his soldiers, slowly making their way toward him, and past them were the woods. He measured his choices and decided getting to the woods was his only real option. He looked that way and saw the narrowest of gaps in the group of oncoming zombies. He knew he’d have to widen that gap a little with his AK if he were going to make it through, but he also knew that would deplete all of his rounds.

  Live for the day, he thought. No, live for the minute and steeled himself for the run, turning the safety off on his pistol. This wasn’t going to be any cake walk, but then again, what was in the apocalypse? The problem was that he thought he’d always end up on top. By being at Anthony’s side, he knew he’d be the one with all the toys and he would be looking down on all the rest of the little people.

  I should have shot Anthony when I had the chance, he thought, but, there was no looking back, only forward.

  He sucked in two big gulps of air, aimed into the group of zombies heading toward him, and let loose with a withering round of bullets. Some shots pinged uselessly off of the zombies’ armored hides, but some took out a few zombies entirely, while other shots stunned them e
nough that they fell back, making Rex’s escape path just a little wider.

  With his pistol in hand, he sprang from the bulldozer with a single-minded focus, running through the narrow gap of undead, and sprinting toward the woods. He passed the first few zombies with ease, but the others started to recover, and the gap started to close. Still, if he could just get past the middle of the group of zombies, he should be able to shoot his way through the last few.

  He reached dead center of the mob surrounding him and battered his way through the clutching arms and hands the way a star fullback made his way through defenders on the football field. A zombie raked the side of his face with one of its metal claws, and he felt the hot sting of blood running down his cheek, but he paid it no mind. Keep going. Move forward.

  He made it past the middle but saw the door was closing at the end of the tunnel of undead. He felt the zombies filling in his path from behind him.

  He raised the pistol and began to fire, aiming for the zombies’ heads, hoping for some luck and getting it. His first shot landed in the eye of a zombie and tunneled into its brain. The zombie toppled over backward, and Rex hurdled over it before it even hit the ground.

  He fired again, but this bullet slammed into a thick metal plate covering the next zombie’s forehead. While it didn’t put the undead thing down, the concussion of the bullet stunned the creature, knocking it off stride. Rex lowered his shoulder and plowed into the zombie’s midsection, bulling it out of the way just enough to continue on, but the impact sent a wave of electric pain down his arm, numbing it. There was no time to lose, though, and he plowed ahead, shooting into the crowd of zombies closing in on him and making the slimmest of progress toward beating them back.

  He nimbly side-stepped a set of hands desperately reaching for him and saw an end in sight. But a big problem was that a single, and very large, zombie stood in his way.

  He had counted each bullet as he fired them and knew he was down to a final one. There was no time to reload, so he just lowered his head and thundered on, imagining himself carrying the football with the score tied and the final seconds ticking off the clock. The truth be told, the clock was running out. A hand covered with jagged and rusted metal raked down his back, sending stinging pain along each path it opened. He felt the blood dripping down his back almost immediately.