Dead Man's Land

by R. J. Spears

  It met with the same spectacular success as the first one, with the front of the truck exploding in a blossom of flames. They licked out and started in on the trailer. The paint on the trailer began to blister and turn brown and then black as the flames rode their way from the front to the back.

  Just like before, the zombies in the field stopped in place. This didn’t last long and it was as if someone had wound them back up and released the switch as they went into motion. I looked and saw past the zombies in the field, a large group of zombies at the back of the complex were still motionless. It looked as if taking out two transmitters was having some effect, after all. At least, that’s what I hoped.

  Eager to take out the buses, I turned away from the field and saw Travis in the distance. He slowly crossed the meadow behind the vehicles. He was over a football field away, so I couldn’t catch every detail, but he looked to have his pistol in one hand, something else in the other and his rifle over his shoulder. I could only guess that the other object was one of the grenades.

  The zombies directly in front of the buses started into motion again. A set of them came in my direction, while a group of five shambled around the front of the bus and toward Travis.

  So much for stealth. Whoever was controlling them knew we were there.

  That didn’t matter, though. We had brought the big guns, and it was time to shut down their show.

  The doors on the bus farthest to the south opened. There was nothing but shadows; then, I caught some movement. Inside the folding door, a small figure appeared, veiled in the darkness. It nearly stumbled out, but caught itself by putting out a steadying hand. It was a child. It stepped down onto the ground tentatively and just stood there for a moment, looking lost. After a few seconds, it let out a small yelp and jumped slightly into the air. Something urged it to move again as it hopped out of the space in front of the bus door. Another child appeared in the doorway and came down the steps. Both of the children wore yellow collars around their necks and had on backpacks. And both of them looked scared out of their minds. A third child stepped into the doorway and made its way down the steps. They huddled together, as if there was strength in numbers, but something told me that was miles from the truth.

  I felt my stomach tighten and a tremor of unease settle in.

  As soon as the last child’s feet touched the ground, a voice came across the speaker of the walkie-talkie I retrieved from the Lord of the Dead’s minion, “You out there,” There was pause, “the one who is blowing up my trucks? Are you going to kill these innocent children, too?”

  Now, I knew I was dealing with true evil.

  Russell watched the tree intently as he ran toward the woods. Something popped around the right side of the tree, and he yanked his pistol in that direction, firing off two quick shots as he continued running. He was down to twenty-five yards. His heart felt as if it were about to pound out of his chest.

  A head popped out the left side of the tree trunk, and Russell fired on it. The head pulled back. Russell was down to fifteen yards. He just had to make it those last few feet.

  This whole ploy depended on keeping the person behind the tree locked in place. If he came out from behind the tree, he would have Russell have out in the open field, ripe for picking.

  Russell hit the ten-yard line and felt confident that he would make it. Running at full tilt, he hit the five-yard marker and realized that he was about to smack into a tree at full speed. At the last instant, he pulled up and half-slid, half-fell into the side of the tree.

  His lungs burned as they screamed for more oxygen. He gulped down air as he jerked his head from side to side, waiting for his attacker to step around the tree at any moment. Russell realized that the two of them were stuck in a deadly stalemate, but he was at a disadvantage, because his enemy had allies.

  Russell looked out onto the field at the oncoming zombies. They seemed a lot closer than they were before, but zombies have been known to have that effect on people. Even at their glacially slow pace, Russell estimated he now had less than two minute before they would be on him, and he would have nowhere to go. Time was not on his side, and his options were limited -- get shot or get eaten. Neither were savory choices.

  Think, think, think, Russell chided himself.

  The zombies clattered and moaned. Russell heard the attacker shifting around on the other side of the tree. Russell knew then he’d have to make his own luck.

  Searching for any inspiration, he reached into his pants pocket, and his hand gripped onto a spare clip - his last one. He realized that he’d left the rest in the truck. He did have three clips for his rifle, but a lot of good that did him, since he’d left the rifle in the field. He pulled the clip out and examined it for a moment.

  The zombies were about fifty feet away and closing. The man on the side of the tree knew that he held the best hand and just had to wait for it to play out.

  It took Russell a moment, but he finally came to a conclusion that the man on the other side of the tree didn’t know what Russell was carrying. Russell could have had a nuclear warhead as far as the guy knew. He came up with a plan and hoped he could pull it off.

  “Hey, you,” Russell shouted.

  The man remained silent.

  “I think you’d better give yourself up.”

  “What the hell are you smoking over there?” a voice asked from behind the tree. “I got your ass dead to rights. It’s I shoot you, or my zombies get you. It’s you that should be surrendering.”

  “But what if I had a little surprise for you?” Russell asked.

  “Like what? A fucking magic wand?”

  “No,” Russell said, still holding the clip in his left hand, “but what about a grenade?”

  Russell took that moment to act, tossing the clip around the tree with his left hand and stepping to his right. The clip bounced into a pile of dried leaves on the other side of the tree and a split second later, a burly man with dark curly hair jumped right into the place where Russell aimed his pistol. Russell didn’t hesitate and pulled the trigger three times.

  The bullets exploded out the barrel and flew fast and true.

  The man’s expression was one of surprise and regret as the bullets struck him in the chest. The control panel, with its field of buttons, broke into pieces as the bullets smashed through the thin plastic and into the man’s body. The man came off his feet, dropping his rifle, and fell back into the dry leaves, where he ended up on his back, hands limp at his sides.

  He didn’t die immediately, but lay there, gasping for breath as one of his lungs collapsed. He coughed, and a bubble of blood burst from his mouth, coating his lips.

  Russell moved over the man’s body, still aiming his pistol downward. He studied the man and quickly realized that it wasn’t his Lord of the Dead. This man was only a lackey, and that frustrated Russell for a few seconds, but he consoled himself with the idea that he was still alive and his friends had escaped. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

  In a breathy voice, the man said, “You tricked me.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Russell let that hang in the air for a couple seconds. “You would have killed me and all my friends. I’d do whatever I had to take you out.”

  The man’s lips moved, but no sound came forth. His lips stopped moving after a few seconds and he took two labored breaths and then no more.

  Russell looked over his shoulder into the field to check on the progress of the zombies that were chasing him. They had stopped in their tracks. They weren’t totally motionless, but they were no longer in pursuit.

  This puzzled him, but he didn’t have any answers and no time to search for them. He was one man versus an army of the undead. The odds were not in his favor if he didn’t do what he always did -- which was run. He had faced down one enemy and lived to fight another day. That would have to do.

  He took the man’s rifle, which lay in the dried leaves and retrieved his clip, then headed into the woods away from the dead and undead
.

  He made it about thirty yards into the woods when he ran into a small mob of zombies, coming toward the complex, drawn in by the sound of the battle. None of these zombies wore the control collars. These were just your run-of-the-mill rogue zombies, but just as deadly without armor. He tried to find a way around them by moving in a wide arc through the woods, but he found he was blocked at every path. Eventually, he was forced to turn around. He had seen some big mobs of zombies back in the city, but this was a monster horde and he knew nothing good would come of them. He also factored that his chance of making it around them was slim. He wanted nothing more than to try to catch up to Kara and the others, but he knew that ship had sailed. He was forced to go back the way he came, making sprints from tree-to-tree, barely escaping the notice of the oncoming zombies. He pushed through the bushes and brambles and came out at the edge of the field. He was back where he started -- back at The Manor.

  It was time for a heroic last stand, he thought as he started into the field and back to his new, and maybe, final home.

  Travis made slow, but steady progress on the backside of the bus. I, on the other hand, was locked in place, frozen by fear and indecision about what to do next. Just moments before, the plan had been simple. I pointed the rocket launcher; I aimed, I fired. It was all over in an instant.

  Now, the tables had been turned so quickly and radically that I felt as if my world was spinning. A wave of vertigo swept over me and I staggered a single step to my left.

  With those kids standing in front of the bus, there was no way I could fire on it without hurting or killing them.

  As I stood there, trying to decide what to do next, one of the children, a small boy of no more than six or seven, cried out and reached up to the collar around his neck. Two seconds later, he fell to his knees and screamed. A voice carried from the bus, but I was too far away to make out what it said. The boy slowly stood, trudged around the front of the bus and stood in the field where Travis was approaching.

  My walkie-talkie came to life and Travis said, “Who are these kids?”

  I retrieved my walkie-talkie and said, “He’s using them as human shields.”

  “What?”

  “Whoever’s in the bus has two more kids on my side,” I said. “I don’t have a shot on the bus as long as they’re in the picture.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  I had no idea, but whoever the evil bastard in the bus was, he started making choices for us. Three of the armored zombies on my side of the bus started in my direction and four started around the front of the bus toward Travis. They clanked and clattered along like robotic versions of the undead, but were nonetheless just as deadly, if not more so, than the conventional models.

  “Can we get the kids to run to us?” Travis asked.

  “They’re wearing those damned shock collars. He’d shock them,” I said.

  “Can we get to them?”

  “We’d have to get past the undead and also hope he doesn’t shoot us.”

  “I’m going to make a run for the kid at the back and see if I can get the collar off,” Travis said. He was braver than I was.

  “I’ll cover you, but give me a second. I’m going to take out that second bus and maybe that will give you some cover,” I pulled up my rocket launched and sighted in on the second bus, hoping that none of the kids would be hurt when I fired. It was a calculated risk, but I knew I had to do it if my people had any chance. As soon as I was confident I had the bus targeted in, I pulled the trigger. Just like before, the rocket hissed out of the launcher and less than a second later, the bus exploded into a fireball.

  I quickly looked to the two kids standing beside the bus, finding both of them cowered down. A little girl in soiled and tattered clothing, frightened by the blast, broke and ran. She didn’t make it fifteen feet before the man inside the bus cut her down.

  She let out a horrible high pitched scream and fell backwards as if someone had yanked her back with a rope. Whatever intense pain she was suffering took away her voice as she bucked and rolled on the ground in agony.

  Conflicting emotions boiled within me. On one hand, my heart nearly broke as I watched the little girl suffer. On the other, I wanted to kill the son of a bitch inflicting all this pain on her. Anger won out as I pulled up my pistol and fired on the bus. The side windows shattered inward, sending glass flying around the interior like tiny bits of shrapnel.

  I barely saw what happened next as my rage nearly blinded me, but Travis started his sprint forward. It was like a macabre football game as he came at a small pack of the undead. He cut to the left and started in a wide arc, drawing the zombies away from the bus.

  I continued to fire, hoping to draw all attention to me. The bad thing about getting all that attention is that it seemed to excite the undead on their way to me.

  Travis reached the apex of his arc and made a quick cut, angling toward the small boy on his side of the bus. I looked back to the girl and found that she lay still on the ground. I hoped that she was still alive. The other boy on my side of the bus just stood locked in place, crying. His tears cut into me like a knife.

  Travis dodged the outstretched hands of two zombies, made another quick cut, followed by a fantastic spin move and was on the glide path to the child. I stopped to reload and when I looked up, the little girl stirred, her arm patting the ground next to her.

  Relief washed over me, but I knew she was still in a terrible situation.

  The three zombies coming my way closed the gap and had it down to thirty feet. I was running out of time. I could try to take them out with my pistol, but doubted my bullets would pass through their metal hides. I knew I had another warhead, but I was holding that back to take out the bus.

  I was reaching a failsafe point as the zombies hit the twenty feet mark. They were too close for the rocket launcher. I knelt down and rummaged in my backpack as I watched both the zombies and Travis. He was closing on the kid.

  My hands felt past the last warhead and found one of the two remaining grenades I still had. I yanked it out, pulled the pin, and tossed it at the approaching zombies, and then back pedaled as fast as I could.

  Two seconds into my brief retreat, the grenade went off and the three zombies were caught up in the blast, fire and smoke enveloping them. After the cloud of smoke lifted, the picture revealed the broken bodies of the three zombies, missing limbs, heads, and huge hunks of their bodies, taking them out of action. That was three down and hundreds more to go, so the victory was short lived as the numbers worked against us. Still, I had a slight breather away from imminent death.

  I looked through the smoke and saw Travis dodge around the last two zombies and then swoop down on the child. He snatched the boy up and made a little half circle turn, starting back toward the field and away from the bus. His trip back was going to be more treacherous, as he had to dodge the zombies again, only this time, he was carrying a sixty pound child in his arms.

  He made it look effortless, as he sped away with the child hanging limply in his arms. I began to wonder why the sadistic son of a bitch on the bus didn’t shock the child. Then I got my answer.

  Just as Travis, with the child in his arms, closed on the first zombie, the bomb in the child’s backpack went off.

  Chapter 34

  Revising the Final Act

  With his finger still on the detonation button, Anthony thought; now, that is a showstopper.

  He knew their Achilles heel. He knew, they wouldn’t be able to resist saving the children. He knew, they wouldn’t be able to risk killing even one of them to take him out.

  A sense of utter satisfaction swelled within him as he knew that he would win, because he had no sense of sentimentality and no one to make him vulnerable. The bond that held them together as a group was their weak link. They would risk anything for each other, while he saw anyone as expendable. Love was weakness. Friendship was a vulnerability.

  One down, one to go, he thought and turned his attention
to their last man in the field.

  One moment, Travis and the child were there and the next they were gone, replaced by an explosion of fire and fury. A dark plume of smoke lifted off from the point of the explosion and what I saw nearly made me vomit. With the zombies that I had just blown up, much of their bodies were still intact, but there was almost nothing left of Travis and the child. There was only the faint smudge of red against the blackened hole in the ground where they had once been.

  It felt like someone had cored out everything essential inside me as my legs felt weak and I began to stumble. I couldn’t get enough oxygen to my brain and my head felt light. My vision began to tunnel down to blackness with pinpricks of color at the edges, blue and yellow, as I went to one knee. My hands alternately tingled and felt numb as my pistol tumbled loose and fell to the ground. Any sound around me seemed to drop in volume and became mushy and indistinct, as if someone had literally sucked the sounds around me out of the air.

  I don’t know how long this lasted. I sensed movement both in front of me and behind, but they seemed remote, as if in another plane of existence. A distant voice in the recess of my consciousness told me I need to get moving, but I couldn’t get my body to react to any of it. It was if an “Out of Order” sign had suddenly gone up over my head. All my systems were shutting down, the signals stopping and the lights dimming. Any thoughts of the rest of my friends on the run became distant memories, receding away like faded images in an old dusty photo album.

  Blackness swirled around me as I felt my head bow down and I was certain that those seconds would be my last on the earth. Surrender seemed to be the best and only option. The cost of going on was too much. There was no need to go on, we had lost. It was better to give up and move on to the next world, where all this pain and suffering was nothing but vapor and ancient memories.