Dead Man's Land

by R. J. Spears

  I’m certain that I would have given up, but someone couldn’t keep their damn mouth shut.

  “Now, you see why you will lose.”

  The voice seemed to be coming from a million miles away, and I wasn’t sure it registered fully in my mind, but it must have.

  “You are weak, while I am strong. My soldiers are legion and they will sweep over your people and you will beg for your lives, but there will be no mercy.” The voice came from the walkie-talkie, still in my pocket and it broadcast loud and clear.

  My systems slowly came back online, power streamed through cables and wires that spanned my body. My fists clenched and I felt my fingernails bite into my palms. A pounding pulse of blood surged into my temple, and where my vision had been nearly black, it was now red.

  I reached down and picked up my pistol and used my other hand to retrieve the walkie-talkie. I heard the clattering and moans of zombies behind me, but I didn’t turn to look as I focused completely on the remaining bus.

  “Ahhh, I see you moving,” the voice said. “What do you think you’re going to do? You are one against hundreds. Your time is over and my legion’s time has come.”

  I brought the walkie-talkie up to my mouth and keyed the talk button. “Talk is cheap, you son of a bitch. I’m coming for you and you’re about to see how ruthless I can be.”

  I tossed the walkie-talkie onto the ground, picked up the pack, RPG, and gun, and took one step toward the bus.

  “That’s it,” the voice over the walkie-talkie said, “make it easy on me. Come and die.”

  I stepped back, brought up my right foot, and smashed it down on the walkie-talkie with such force that it broke into a thousand little pieces. To complete my performance, I twisted my foot on the walkie-talkie, grinding it into the dirt. (I wondered if the Academy was polishing a statue for me. I mean that was grade A macho acting.)

  That’s when reality slapped me in the face. In front of me were a dozen or so armored zombies, ready to rip me to pieces. An utterly ruthless madman was going to do anything he could to kill me. Top it off with the fact that the lives of two frightened children also lay in my hands, along with the fate of everyone I loved. To say that the odds were stacked against me was a dramatic understatement, but when the chips fell, I had no other choice. I had to take this mad bastard out or else all was lost.

  No pressure. None at all.

  So, there was no giving up. There was no running. There was no alternative. I had to kill this guy anyway I could. It would come down to the reality of whether I could live with myself for the choice I was going to have to make.

  I reached into my pack, retrieved the final warhead, and quickly mounted it into the RPG launcher. The warhead clicked into place. I brought the launcher up and started aiming at the bus. Armored zombies shambled toward me, blocking my aim, but I shifted my footing and got a clear view on the bus. The problem was that wherever I aimed, the madman inside the bus repositioned the two kids, each of them yelping in pain. I didn’t have a shot that wouldn’t kill one or both of them, and he knew it. This was the genius and ruthlessness of his plan -- he used our humanity against us.

  The zombies were closing quickly on me, both in front of me and behind, and my window was narrowing. If I didn’t pull the trigger soon, I’d have no choice. I would die and whoever was still at The Manor would probably die with me.

  My mind weighed the consequences. The lives of whoever was left at The Manor, people I’d lived and fought beside, versus the lives of two children I’d never met and that would probably be dead soon, no matter what I did. It was a cold and dark equation, and one that seemed easy on its face, but one that tortured me no matter what decision I made.

  I closed my eyes and desperately sent a blast heavenward for any sort of inspiration. Usually, in the past, before the advent of zombies, these requests were horribly self-serving.

  “Please, God, help me to get a measly single and drive in this run.”

  “God, please save my bacon, and please make sure that grinding noise coming from the engine of my dad’s car isn’t because I forgot to check the oil like he told me.”

  “Okay God, help me not to look like a total doofus in front of these hot cheerleaders.”

  Those were always met with total silence and maybe even a distant and dismissive chuckle, but this request came back with an image of something I’d rather not to have had to re-live. It was an image of Greg, literally on his deathbed. He was looking up to me and saying through gritted teeth that I was to take over leadership in case he didn’t make it. Despite my protests, he said I was the best choice because I thought “outside the box.” And that was it in terms of divine inspiration. A quick and dreadful glimpse into my friend’s death.

  But it did work. Well, sort of. At least it got me motivated.

  Up until that moment, the Lord of the Dead had set the ground rules. He held the cards. But I now knew that I had more power than I gave myself. It was time for me to throw a curveball into the situation, I just had to know which direction and at what speed.

  The zombies between me and the bus cut the distance down to only twenty feet in front of me, making them too close for the RPG. The ones coming up from behind me were still a good fifty feet away.

  So, I dropped the RPG launcher from my shoulder and reached in my pack again, until my hand fell on my last grenade. I pulled it free, yanked the pin, and, in one continuous motion, threw it into the midst of the oncoming zombies, hoping that none of the shrapnel would hit the kids. Of course, I didn’t take into account that any of it could hit me.

  Three seconds after it left my hand, it exploded into the middle of the oncoming zombies. While bullets had trouble with their new armored shells, grenades definitely didn’t. The ones directly in the blast radius took the brunt of it and were blown to pieces. The ones outside that direct blast radius were either missing limbs or knocked to the ground with what was left of their shriveled brains scrambled.

  I picked up the RPG launcher and looked for the best approach path. It seemed that the best way was the simplest -- a straight line to the bus. I started through the smoke cloud, using it as a screen to mask my approach as I ran forward. Of course, that meant running directly toward the two kids who were human bombs, but I had to take them out of the equation somehow. Or, at the least, minimize their effectiveness.

  I made it to the pile of undead taken out by the grenade, trying not to choke on the smoke, and avoiding falling over the body parts. It wasn’t easy as arms, legs, and torsos lay strewn about like broken Transformers action figures. Only these action figures were undead and not robotic. It was like a horrific game of hopscotch as I jumped between the pieces and parts.

  When I broke through the cloud, I found myself only fifteen feet away from the bus. One of the children, a little girl in dirty jeans and a dark hoodie sweatshirt also sporting the telltale backpack filled with explosives, stood near the front of the bus, next to the entry doors. The other child, a boy with dark hair in a filthy track suit, lay huddled in a pile on the ground near the back tire of the bus, cowering from the explosion.

  I had to ask myself if the madman inside the bus thought they were too close to the bus to detonate the bombs in their backpacks. If the explosion that took out Travis was any indication, then I would say, “Yes.” But he was the only one who knew.

  There was no time to take a full assessment as I saw the zombies starting to recover out of the corner of my eye. They rose out of the thin cover of smoke, like people waking up from sleep.

  To keep the man on the bus back on his toes, I pulled out my pistol and fired spaced shots at the windows as I ran toward the boy. The windows shattered inward and I thought I caught the glimpse of a figure ducking down, but I couldn’t be sure. As I approached the boy, he started to crawl away from me. I saw stark terror in his face and it was like a dagger to my heart.

  I didn’t have a lot of time, but I knelt down beside him and said, “Hey, hey, you don’t need to be afraid
of me. I’m a friend.” I put my pistol away and let the RPG launcher dangle at my side.

  He stopped, just under the overhang of the bus, and looked back at me, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looked to be about seven and had those exaggeratedly large eyes that some children have. These eyes seemed to say, “It’s hopeless. I’m dead. You’re dead. We’re all dead.”

  “I can help you,” I said, holding out a hand. I took a chance and added, “I can get you free from the bad man, I promise.”

  His eyes flashed just a sliver of hope and he hesitated.

  “You can trust me, but I need your help,” I said. Each second I spent there seemed like hours. I could only surmise that what was keeping me alive was the fact that I was so close to the bus, the man inside couldn’t get an angle on me with a gun, and I was also too close to detonate the explosives in the boy’s backpack.

  I don’t know if it was my suggestive sales technique or whether he saw the truth in what I said, but he extended a hand toward mine. I grabbed it and pulled him close, hugging him tight.

  “I’m not going to let that man hurt you anymore, but you need to be brave,” I said. “Can you be brave?”

  He looked up to my face and slowly nodded his head.

  “Do you know what’s in your backpack?”

  His face broke a little, but he got it under control and nodded his head.

  “Can we take it off of you?”

  This time he shook his head violently from side to side and said, “No, he said it will go off if we try.” The fear swept over him like a wave and his eyes filled with tears of terror.

  “No, no, no,” I said softly. “Don’t you cry. I’m going to take care of this backpack, but you can’t run away or else….” I let that hang in the air, not wanting to complete my sentence. “You need to stay close to me, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said in a tiny voice.

  “We need to get your friend and we need to get on the bus.”

  He started shaking his head side-to-side.

  “It’s the only way,” I said, reaching and taking his chin in my hand, stopping his head from shaking. “If you run, it will be bad.”

  He looked into my eyes, asking for anything else, but despite his fear, I could see a penetrating intelligence behind his eyes that knew the truth. He nodded his head again.

  “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Hillary,” he said in that small voice. “I’m Tommy.”

  “Okay, Tommy, I’m Joel. We need to...” I started to say, but I was interrupted by the sound of smashing glass above my head, and I felt small bits of safety glass bounce off my head and shoulders. When I looked up, I saw the barrel of an assault rifle sticking out the window.

  Where the hell is he? Anthony asked himself as he pivoted his rifle from left to right, scanning the area just outside the bus for any movement that wasn’t from the undead. The lone attacker had been trapped in a no man’s land between his soldiers in the field and those in front of the bus, now he was nowhere to be seen.

  Anthony also wondered where his little secret weapons were. His fingers slipped to the detonation buttons for their backpacks. They caressed the tops of the buttons, but a sense of caution made him withdraw his fingers. They had been his special ring of protection, but now that they were so close to the bus, he couldn’t detonate their bombs without fear of blowing himself up. A cloud of doubt passed through his mind, making him think he may have misplayed his pawns in this instance, but he pushed it away. He still had his soldiers. They would sweep this rat away like a piece of garbage.

  His fingers played across the array of keys on his chest console, and a new set of armored zombies left the field and started their trudge toward the bus. His attacker was just one man and Anthony took comfort that he had an army. Time and strength of numbers was on his side.

  I watched, staying as motionless and as quiet as possible as the barrel of the rifle drifted from left to right, back and forth. After three of these sweeps, it withdrew back into the bus, and I heard the sound of footsteps moving inside the bus away from where I was.

  If I had one more grenade, I would have considered jumping up and tossing it inside, but I was out. I had the RPG, but I was too close to use it and stepping far enough away would put me out in the open, where I could be cut down easily, leaving the two kids alone. Plus, there was the fact that a small horde of zombies was on its way. I checked on their progress and the ones I had blown up were starting to rally. Another group from the field was heading my way, along with the original group. At best, I had two minutes before the first group was on me.

  Again, I felt my choices narrowing. My smartest decision would be to slide under the bus, take off behind it, and then turn around and blast the son of a bitch, but that would mean killing the two kids. If I tried to take them with me, he’d blow all of us up. My only choice now was to turn his weapons into my allies.

  I grabbed Tommy’s hand and gave a gentle tug, nodding my head in the direction of the front of the bus and the little girl. He seemed to understand and nodded back. We slowly moved along the side of the bus and made it to the little girl. She was huddled in a small, tight ball on the ground next to the front door. I don’t know if she heard us coming or not.

  Something in me was hesitant to even touch her, but there was no time to waste. I gently put a hand on her back, but she barely stirred.

  “Hillary,” I whispered, “I have your friend Tommy here and we need your help.” I waited for her to move, but she stayed collected in her tight little state of safety. “Honey, I’m here to take you away from the bad man, but I need your help. Can you help us?”

  She didn’t move a muscle this time, and who could blame her? She had most likely been tortured for God knows how long. She had just seen one of her friends blown up. At her age, my mind would have imploded, and I would have been useless for years.

  My soul ached for her and what I really wanted to do was to take her in my arms and rock her for a week, until she felt safe again. But there was no time. “I don’t want to scare you any worse than you are already, but if you don’t move, we’re all going to die. The zombies are coming and we don’t have much time.”

  This got her attention and her head slowly rose to look up to me. Her cheeks were streaked with a broken trail of tears. She had once been an innocent little girl, playing My Little Pony, then the world had gone to shit. She had to face unimaginable horrors, probably losing her parents and then this monster got a hold of her. Again, my heart broke, but something in me started to simmer again. I needed to end this guy...and fast.

  “Listen up,” I said, leaning in towards the two kids. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect us. You can’t run, though. No matter what. I’m going onto the bus, you need to stay behind me, but out of view. Okay?”

  I looked to each of them and Tommy nodded immediately, but Hillary looked petrified.

  “Hillary, I need your help with this. Can you do this?”

  She found some courage and nodded her head.

  “We don’t have any more time,” I said, trying to portray as much confidence as I could. In reality, I felt like I was getting ready to live my last few seconds on the planet. The moans and grunts of the approaching zombies played like a terrible low-budget horror movie soundtrack in the background. I had always wanted to go out on the theme song from one of the Rocky movies, and I got this instead. Karma, I guess.

  I moved up to the folding doors and pushed my fingers into the crack, checking for some play. It gave some, which hopefully, meant I could open them from the outside if I could apply enough force. It was a tight fit, but I worked my hands into the crack, widening it, while scraping off copious amounts of skin in the process. I got my hands wedged in there and started pulling slowly at first, but then realizing that it was going to take all I had to pry these suckers open. I conceded and gave the door a yank. It resisted at first and then sprung open, nearly spilling me backwards, but I caught myself. I half expecte
d to take a bullet to the face in that next second, but none came. I picked up the RPG launcher in my left hand, pulled my pistol with my right, took a deep breath, and stepped into the bus.

  I brought up the RPG launcher and headed up the stairs, still waiting for that first bullet. I ducked down as much as possible, leading with the launcher, and came to the top of the stairs, keeping most of my body shielded behind the seats. A man stood in the aisle, about two-thirds of the way back. He held an assault rifle carefully aimed at me in one hand, with his other poised over a chest console with a set of control buttons similar to the ones I took off the kid I ran into in the woods, but this one was more expansive and elaborate.

  Physically, he was about six feet with kinky closed cropped hair. His skin was odd looking with a striking white pallor, but badly scarred around the neck and up his left cheek. It looked like burns, but he was too far away from me to really tell. He wore riot gear with what looked like a Kevlar outer covering. I found that pretty inventive, but this guy was the inventor type for sure, if remote controlled zombies were any evidence.

  We stood in silence until I broke the quiet, “I see your fingers on those buttons. I just wanted to let you know the kids are just behind me. If you decide to detonate whatever’s in their backpacks, I’m guessing you’ll go with us.”

  “Yes, you did neutralize my little surprises, didn’t you?” He asked, and I thought I saw a smile form at the corner of his mouth. His voice sounded raspy, as if his throat was perpetually dry.

  Now, that I was up in the crazy bastard’s face, I wasn’t sure what I really wanted to do. Of course, I wanted him dead, but how was I going to do that? I was much too close to blast him with an RPG -- that is, if I didn’t want to die with him. I had my pistol, but he had a nasty looking, tricked out assault rifle, so he had me outgunned. It was these details, and the fact that I had two human bombs behind me, that made me doubt my strategy, but there I was, and I had to make the best of it.