by R. J. Spears
My marksmanship had improved over time, but mostly with a rifle. With a handgun, I was bad, and while my shots didn’t drop him, they did get him to duck down and stop firing for the moment.
I was roughly fifteen feet out of the woods and fifteen feet from the pond. In other words, I was back in dead man’s land again. Only this setting bespoke of romantic picnics with your best girl at your side and not imminent death.
My attacker regained his courage and let loose with a barrage of bullets that ripped through the grass on my left side cutting off my escape path back to the woods. He tore off another round of shots, and I was forced to fall face first into the tall grass, and immediately I began rolling to the right. I felt blades of grass falling on me as I rolled over and over again. I also knew that sooner, rather than later, I was going to run out of land and end up in the pond. That wouldn’t work since that would put me out in the open and fully exposed, not that the grass was doing all that great of a job, but it was something.
I sensed the ground becoming wetter and muddier, and I ceased rolling. When I stopped, I peeked through the tall grass and saw the pond only a few feet away. Then came my newest dilemma. My assailant had stopped firing for the moment, but there was no doubt in my mind that his rifle was aimed in my general direction and his finger, was, no doubt, again poised to fire off another round.
I had two choices, neither of which I liked very much. I could stay low and wait him out, hoping that he approached, and I could possibly fire through the grass and take him out. The fear told me that was the best way to go, but my somewhat intelligent voice told me that he’d probably just start firing in a deliberate manner in my direction, much like someone mowing the grass, and eventually mow me in half. He hadn’t shown a lot of smarts up to now, but it didn’t take an Einstein to know that he had a distinct advantage at a distance.
My other choice was to pop-up in hopes I got the drop on him and took him out. That fearful little voice in the back of my head didn’t like that option, but I told it to shut the hell up.
The once frightened birds returned to the trees around the meadow and started singing their happy little songs, but I could have been wrong about that. The songs may have been, “Who the hell is shooting up our peaceful little forest,” for all I knew.
I inched my body into a position to spring up and fire, feeling my already overtaxed muscles protesting, but I ignored them. I thought I heard the slightest bristling noise as if someone was moving slowly through the grass and took that as my cue to pop-up and fire.
That was where things slowed down in my mind. I came up slowly, my left hand pushing me off the ground. I felt the little blades of grass tickle the side of my face while I made my way up through the tall grass. My view brightened as I came up and the air was dry and sweet. Nothing about the surroundings spoke of death.
I crested out of the grass and spotted my attacker. He had taken the middle ground in the realm of decisions and cut the distance between us down to twenty-five feet. The barrel of his rifle was aimed at where I had been and not where I was, near the edge of the pond, but it would be a millisecond before he snapped it toward me.
Just as I started to bring up my gun, something snagged my wrist and stopped it dead. I took the quickest of peeks down and saw my hand tangled in a thick vine-like rope of grass. I yanked with all I had and then looked to see the barrel of his rifle only five degrees from reaching its target: me.
I wasn’t going to be able to get my gun up in time. In my mind’s eye, I saw his rifle barrel explode with flame as the bullets erupted from its end. I felt the punishing impact of each bullet hit my body and blow out my back, taking muscle and bone with it and painting the tall grass behind me with my blood. I also saw the zombies getting to my friends, and I saw the Lord of the Dead laughing as they tore into them.
All this played out in my little negative theater of the mind in those milliseconds before he fired on me.
It was my good fortune that my mind only played previews of these ugly little movies, because the feature motion picture was canceled as bullets tore through my attacker’s chest, sending a spray of blood into the air. His face locked into a grimace and then went slack as he pitched forward into the grass. I looked past the place he had just vacated and shifted my focus to spot Travis standing just at the tree line, leaning against a tree, his rifle still aimed at the place where my attacker had just stood.
Chapter 30
Battle Plans
Russell pulled out his walkie-talkie and spoke into it, “Jo, come in. Jo, come in.”
He waited two seconds, anxious at every lost tick of the clock. They were to be the last vehicle out and had saved spots for Jo, Brother Ed, and Aaron.
“This is Jo,” a voice responded.
“It’s time to pull out,” Russell said.
“Okay,” she said.
“Can you get Brother Ed and Aaron?”
“Brother Ed’s already with me. He came down when he ran out of grenades.”
“What about Aaron?” Russell asked.
A new voice came over the walkie-talkie this time. “This is Brother Ed. Aaron won’t come down from the second floor. The smoke is drifting down from the third floor, but he’s refusing.”
Kara stepped up next to Russell and put out a hand for the walkie-talkie. Russell handed it over.
“You need to convince him that he needs to come, and he needs to do it now!” she said as forcefully as she could.
“He’s not budging,” Brother Ed said. “He said with Brandon dead, there’s no use going on. I even tried to pull him from the room, but he threatened to shoot me.”
Kara looked to Russell, but he just shrugged. “Then, you need to get here fast. The back field is starting to fill with zombies.”
“We’re on our way,” Brother Ed said.
Travis dropped his aim and waved at me almost sheepishly. I expelled a huge sigh of relief and then ripped my hand free of the grass it had been tangled in. Travis came out of the tree line and moved toward me cautiously, looking side-to-side, his rifle at the ready.
“Thanks,” I shouted.
“That guy has been chasing me for the last ten minutes or so, but then he must have seen you and changed his direction,” Travis said as he walked up to me. “I decided to follow him.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” I said. “Listen, we don’t have time to talk.” I reached down into my pack, plucked out two grenades, and handed them over to Travis. “We need to get going.”
I retrieved the RPG and the pack of warheads.
“Where are we going?” Travis asked.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “We need to take out those buses and the trucks. They have transmitters that allow the zombies to be controlled.”
“But if we take the transmitters out, that still leaves us with the zombies,” he said.
“Yeah, there’s that, but at least they won’t be on his side.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Russell’s Lord of the Dead. He and his henchmen, like the guy you just killed, are controlling the zombies. Come on.”
We weaved in and out of the trees, making decent progress, but it didn’t seem fast enough. I knew there was a battle going on, and this little diversion had cost valuable time. The sound of gunfire carried across the field, but there were only a few shots. That didn’t bode well for our friends back at The Manor, but I couldn’t deal with that. My only hope was that they had escaped.
“What have you seen out here that I need to know about?” I asked.
“There are the two buses and three semi-trailers,” he said.
“Three?”
“Yes, three, plus a dump truck with a trailer on the back.”
“That had to be for pulling the bulldozer,” I said.
I took a mental inventory of what we had on hand, and it didn’t seem to be enough.
“I have three warheads for the RPG, and you have only these grenades. How the hell are we suppos
ed to know if we take out all their transmitters?” The question was mostly rhetorical.
“We’ll do what we can,” he said, “Dad always said, Pray about it.”
“We’ll give that a try once we run out of weapons,” I said.
He frowned at me.
There was no more time to plan, only action. We approached the field at a slow jog, and I could see glimpses of zombies trudging toward our complex. When I looked westward, I saw all the vehicles sitting just over the ridge. The semi-trailers were in neat rows, facing away from the field, with the trucks’ backends pointed toward the field. Our attackers must have unloaded their undead cargo from those. These trucks were closer to the west woods than the other vehicles. The buses sat at a perpendicular angle to the ridge, leaving their sides open and exposed. One was sitting closer to the top of the ridge than the others.
“Let’s switch,” I said, “you take the RPG launcher, and I’ll take the grenades.”
“No way,” he said, “you couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.”
“I used to play baseball, you know,” I said.
“Did you ever start a game?” he asked and eyed me with a sideways glance.
“Listen, the grenades require getting up close and personal. I’m the one that should do that.”
“And I’m the one with the better arm, and I have the grenades,” he said.
There really was no time to argue.
“Is there a better way to approach them?” I asked.
“I think so,” he said as he took a long look at the ridge, “you can come in from the north, and I’ll make an arc to come at them from behind. I’ll need a little more time to get in position, but don’t wait on me if you can’t.”
“Let me know when you’re in position. Double click your walkie if you need to talk to me, and I’ll do the same. Once you’re there, I’ll cover your approach if I can.”
“Okay,” was all he said, and then he jogged away along the tree line and away from me. In a movie, we would have done a man-hug, a fist-pump, or something, but this was real life happening at real time, and there was no time for any sentimentality. Besides, I wasn’t in a sentimental mode. I was getting ready to kill some people.
Chapter 31
Prelude to the End
Anthony surveyed the battlefield and saw that, while his losses were more substantial than he had anticipated, he was satisfied with the outcome. His soldiers had breached the main building and were streaming steadily inside, looking for any of the remaining rats. Someone was still inside firing (rather ineffectually) down onto the armored zombies, so that meant that some of the rats were still home.
Yes, he had lost some human minions, but they were expendable for the greater good. Then he corrected himself. For the greater bad. This caused him to chuckle a little.
He had no illusions about himself. He wasn’t some twisted genius who saw his life’s work as misunderstood and underappreciated. He knew that he wasn’t one of the men wearing the white hat. He had tried to be on the side of the angels before the Outbreak, and that had only gotten him heartache and ridicule. The black hat suited him just fine, and he was okay with that.
No, in this post-apocalypse, it was better to rule in hell than to serve in Heaven. And, in his mind, hell was a lot more fun, because he was in charge.
But before he could call this day a victory, he knew he had to wrap up the one who had called him out. The one on the walkie-talkie, who had spoken so brashly. He was still out there.
Anthony keyed his headset microphone and said, “Norman.” He paused for three seconds and spoke again. “Norman, report in.” This time he patiently counted to ten before speaking again, “Dammit, Norman, report in, or I’ll fry your ass.”
There was nothing but static.
A small seed of doubt began to blossom in Anthony’s mind, but he pushed it away. He considered giving Norman a shock treatment to see if maybe he had made a run for it, but decided not to.
“Maggie, Roy, check in.”
Roy reported in first, “I’m here, on the south side of the building.”
Maggie came back next. “I’m on the north. I saw several vehicles ride out the back.”
“WHAT?” Anthony almost howled. “Why didn’t you say anything? Weren’t Ryan’s soldiers back there?”
Maggie stammered for a moment, then said, “Yes, but they don’t seem to be attacking anything.”
That’s when Anthony got the message. He had no visuals for the back group to allow him to properly lead them, and since Ryan wasn’t there to guide them, they didn’t know what to do. He didn’t need a line of sight to control them, but it sure as hell helped to know where to send the soldiers.
“Dammit!” Anthony yelled, “can’t you people think for yourselves?”
He considered giving them both corrective shocks, and his fingers even lingered over those keys for an instant, but he knew better than to do that in the heat of battle. No, that’s bad timing.
“Maggie, send your soldiers to the back to block any more escapees. I’m moving Ryan’s soldiers to the north side.”
Anthony felt a rising heat deep inside, like a pot about to boil over. He sucked in large gulps of air and slowly expelled them. After ten deep breaths completed, he felt decidedly calmer.
That’s better, he thought, it’s always better to kill people when you’re calm.
Things were getting messy, and he didn’t like messes. Ryan was missing in action, and Norman wasn’t responding. Another shadow of doubt passed through his mind. Maybe killing Rex wasn’t such a good idea? He pushed the question away as fast as it had come to him. There was no time for second-guessing. That was a fool’s errand. But a second one filled the gap quickly. Maybe the person or persons in the woods had taken Norman out?
Still, he wondered if he should take precautions. He had seen them use grenades and he knew they had rifles of some sort. What if they got close enough to use grenades? Or came on a full out assault?
This wasn’t second-guessing, he told himself. This was proper caution.
With Norman missing, he didn’t have anyone on the ground to fend off an attack. That made him feel vulnerable. Yes, I have my soldiers, but will they be enough? He considered his options, and a phrase came to mind: the best defense is a good offense. He didn’t have an offense, but he did have a defense. He turned his head and looked to the small caged area built into the bus, just behind the driver’s compartment. It wasn’t that big and didn’t need to be, really. Just big enough, he thought. He saw the forms in there, sitting quietly, heads bowed.
Yes, it was time to get out his back-up plan.
An alarm went off in Russell’s head. It was like some internal ping of a timer. Time was up. Whereas the earlier trucks had a clear path out, zombies now moved into the field behind the building, starting to fill in the easy escape paths. He seriously considered leaving right then when the door to the dock burst open. Jo was in the lead, her face covered in places with black soot. Brother Ed came through the doorway, just behind her. Like her, he was covered in a sticky black soot. Trailing behind him were three elderly people. One was old man Schultz, a crotchety old fella who complained a lot and always had a sour look on his face. The other two were elderly sisters, Gertrude and Clara. Both had steel gray hair and moved haltingly. Gertrude was the elder of the two and used a cane.
“Where did you find these three?” Kara asked.
“They were hiding in one of the back apartments,” Jo said. “They said they didn’t want to take a spot from the children.”
“We have enough spots for the kids and our senior members,” Kara said.
“But what about you, young people?” Mr. Schultz said. “Where are you going to ride?”
“There’s no time for a discussion,” Jo said. “You’re going. Now, shut up, and get in, or I’ll carry your ass down there.”
“Oh, my,” Clara said, holding a hand to her mouth.
Jo put a hand on Mr. Schultz’s back an
d gently guided him down the short set of stairs toward the truck. Brother Ed helped the two ladies down and into the truck. It was a tight fit with the two kids and Jason, but they were able to make it work.
Kara looked to Jo after the seniors were situated and asked, “No Aaron?”
Jo just shook her head.
Abandoning one of their own went against everything Kara believed, and every fiber in her being rebelled against the idea, but time was working against them. Like Russell, she sensed that if they didn’t leave now, they might never be able to.
“So, who’s going, and who’s staying?” Russell asked, knowing that there weren’t enough seats for all of them.
Almost at once, all four of the remaining people at the dock said, “I’m staying.” If the situation hadn’t been so tragic, it could have been funny. Still, they smiled. “Do we draw straws or is it rock, paper, scissors?” Russell asked
“No, it can’t be random,” Kara said. “We know who has to go and who has to stay.”
“Well, I know I’m staying,” Brother Ed said.
“Me, too,” Jo said, setting her expression to, “and don’t say anything different.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Kara said, sounding a little exasperated. “Going is just as heroic as staying, so there’s no brownie points for staying. Those seniors and my kids need someone to drive them out of here.” She realized that this was the first time she had referred to Madison and Naveen as ‘her kids’, and something caught in her voice.
“Then, you’ve got to go,” Jo said to Kara.
“But --” Kara started
“There is no but,” Brother Ed said, “you have, to go. Those kids need you.”
“And, Russell,” Jo said, “you’re riding shotgun.”
He started to protest, but Brother Ed interrupted. “You heard the woman: there’s no extra credit either way. You’re just as valuable there as you are here.”
