Dead Man's Land

by R. J. Spears

  Russell paused, taking an evaluation of the armored zombies in the field and the approaching horde behind him. It wasn’t a long deliberation.

  “Can you clear us a path through them?” He asked, pointing to the ones in the field.

  “I hope to hell I can,” she said and went back to pressing buttons. She cursed a couple more times, but then smiled. “We need to go between those two groups.” She pointed to two separate groups of armored zombies. The two groups separated slightly, creating a narrow, but direct path from where the two of them stood and the back of the buildings.

  “Is it safe?” Russell asked.

  “I don’t know for sure, but we don’t have a lot of other choices.”

  Stepping into the field was the last thing he wanted to do, but he knew they didn’t have any other choice as the chorus of moans behind them increased in intensity as the zombies got closer.

  “Let’s go,” he said and they both stepped into the field.

  I got unsteadilyto my feet unsteadily and leaned out the door. The armored zombies were still on their way and for a couple seconds I felt a dread seep into me. Hadn’t I just killed their dark puppet master? Shouldn’t they be statues or off doing something else?

  Then it hit me. The transmitter was still up. I whirled around, scanned the interior of the bus and spotted a control panel just behind what looked like a caged area on the bus. A set of wires led up from the control panel into the roof and onto what I could only expect was some sort of broadcasting antenna. I rushed down the aisle and got to the control panel. It contained a series of dials, toggles, buttons, and little monitors. Some of the small screens were just gauges, but there was a small set of video monitors. Two of the screens were black, but two displayed shaky black and white images. Initially, it was hard to make out what they were, but then I got it. It was The Manor from two different views. Both views were shakily getting closer to the buildings.

  It had to be remote cameras attached to the zombies. This was one clever bastard.

  I didn’t have time to admire his work any longer, and I didn’t have time to figure out how to shut anything off. In my typical brute force method, I just reared back with the RPG launcher and brought it down onto the panel. After several satisfying crunches, the lights on the panel dimmed, and I took a moment to look out the windows of the bus.

  The zombies stopped their march toward us and stood in place, motionless, as if awaiting a new command. I didn’t know how long this would last, but if my past experience was any indication, I knew I only had seconds before they started back in motion. I could only guess, with their evil overlord dead and their signal shut off, that they would resume normal zombie activity -- which was coming after any humans – or better put, walking food. This was only slightly less intimidating than a controlled zombie army and left me with the decision of what our next step would be.

  Since I had no real idea what was truly happening at the Manor, I determined that I needed to get there and see if I could rescue any of our crew that was left behind. That is, if any of them were still alive. The question was, how to do that?

  Another more pressing question became evident when I looked toward the front of the bus and saw Tommy stagger into view. If the term shell-shocked ever applied to any situation or person, it certainly applied to him. His expression was vacant and his eyes seemed not to focus on anything at all. I wasn’t sure he even knew where he was, he seemed so lost.

  While I had been battling the Lord of the Dead for our lives, he had seen his two friends blown to bits and lived with the very real possibility of following them into the next world. There was no doubt in my mind that his past few minutes had been as horrible as mine.

  When you’re in the heat of battle, with your life on the line, you don’t have time to experience the devastation of the loss of those around you. It’s only afterwards that it all comes rushing toward you like an out of control truck. I didn’t know the two children who Tommy had been with, but the horror of their deaths nearly overwhelmed me. I felt the magnetic pull of Tommy’s emotions -- the loss, the horror, the desire to just lie down and die. But I didn’t have the time for it. I had to get us off that bus and back to The Manor.

  I literally willed away the darkness that was starting to crowd into my head and threatened to shut me down. I slowly walked toward Tommy and opened my arms. Something clicked in him and he started toward me with halting, off-balanced steps. We made it to each other in three steps, and I gently picked him up and hugged him tightly.

  “It’s over, buddy,” I said quietly. “It’s over. The bad man is dead. He’s gone.”

  He didn’t say or do anything. He didn’t even cry, the emotional shock was so devastating. I wondered if I would even be able to walk if I had been through what he had just experienced.

  But as usual, there was no time for this emotional exploration. There was only time to survive. I held him in my arms and slowly turned in a slow circle, looking for any path out of the bus and to The Manor. The zombies stood in the field, immobile, as if someone had just turned off the music during a game of musical chairs. A voice deep down inside me knew that this wouldn’t last, though.

  I had half a minute to make a decision. I considered taking the bus out of there, but a quick look out at what was left of the window told me that this bus wasn’t going anywhere. The right front of the engine compartment was a black and smoldering mass of twisted metal. I started slowly turning again, looking for another option.

  As I continued to hold Tommy, my hand brushed along his backpack, and a new horrible realization hit me -- this kid was still a human bomb. The inclination to drop him right there in the aisle and just sprint out of there swept over me. That part of me, sent a wave of absolute panic through my system.

  Hadn’t Tommy told me that the Lord of the Dead said if they tried to remove their backpacks, they would go off? What the hell was I going to do about that? Could I leave and just abandon him?

  The answer came back quickly and it was “No.” There were sacrifices to be made, but this was not one of them. I’d figure out how to defuse this bomb or die trying, but this child had enough shitty experiences. Leaving him would be like killing something essential in myself.

  My eyes caught some motion on the edge of the hill, behind the bus and burning trucks. This wasn’t more good news, either. A small throng of zombies, the rogue type, crested the hill and headed down it to bring only the chaotic fun they could provide.

  The only thing I could think of was, “Great.” That was followed by, “Bring it on.”

  These undead bastards weren’t going to beat me. Unless, of course, I couldn’t find a way to get us safely across the field and back to the Manor. Panic gnawed away inside me as I felt the seconds bleeding away.

  I pulled my eyes away from the approaching rogue zombies and scanned the horizon until I found a possible way of escape. Sitting about seventy five feet behind the bus was a dump truck. This was an ancient over-sized and rusted hulk of a vehicle, making me wonder if it even ran, but it certainly didn’t teleport here, so it had to have been driven to our location. There was a ray of hope.

  Running out of time and options, I grabbed this straw of desperation and started down the aisle of the bus, toward the open back door as fast as I could with Tommy in my arms. I made it to within a few feet of the door when the armored zombies started in motion again. It was as if someone had hit their reset button and it was time to start a new game.

  Fortunately for me, there was a slow ramp up to full power. Their motions seemed more disconnected and herky-jerky, as if they had just come awake. By the time they hit full speed (which was pretty slow), I was off the bus and running toward the dump truck.

  My only obstacles were three spaced out armored zombies. Saying “only” made this sound easy, and it certainly wasn’t. I was running as fast as I could with a sixty pound child in my arms who could explode at any moment. Added to that was the fact that I also had to dodge armored zombie
s, and I can say “only” was mostly an understatement. But I’m not complaining.

  The first two armored zombies started at an intercept path toward me which gave me the choice of taking a wide arc around them, thus taking me more time to get to the dump truck or I could try to dodge them. With Tommy in my arms, I didn’t like my chances of dodging, so I started in the wide arc. This put me on a collision course with a lone armored zombie.

  This particular one looked much more spry than the other two. Its armor seemed less cumbersome, and in better shape. Colorful even. Its breast plate seemed crafted from the hood of a car. A bright yellow car. Strips of that same yellow metal covered its arms. The designer of its suit of armor broke from this yellow trend by using dark blue armor on its leg and head piece. (Not that I was trying for a red-carpet style review.)

  The designer had put some wicked looking metal claws on the zombie’s hands and these seemed to extend further than the other claws I had seen on the zombies. They seemed like long twisted talons and looked every bit as menacing as claws on a zombie could be.

  Whatever adrenaline wave I had been living on for the past few hours seemed to be ebbing. Each step I took seemed like I was moving through a wall of water with all of it surging against me and Tommy’s bulk seemed to be catching up me as he sagged in my arms.

  The dump truck faced away from the long transport trailer sticking off its back. I had about thirty feet to go. The armored zombie broke from zombie protocol and instead of closing on me, stood like a linebacker between me and the truck, just a few feet off the back.

  I could hear an announcer on Monday Night Football in my mind.

  “What we have here is a titanic struggle between two formidable foes…”

  I didn’t feel all that formidable. I felt whipped and beaten. I didn’t have the strength to take another wide circle around it and besides that, the rogue zombies would quickly block that path, so I was left with a direct path, and my dodging capabilities. For whatever that's worth.

  I took 1.5 seconds to decide on an approach path and I started forward, trying to muster any second, third, or fifteenth wind I could find. This was an all or nothing gamble, and I had to take it, or lose it all.

  My shoes pounded the loose soil as I bounded forward. Tommy seemed to sense some impending danger and clung to me tightly. I churned forward on a direct approach, closing the gap between us quickly. At the last instant, I feinted left and cut right, but the zombie’s slow reaction time didn’t take the feint and, instead, put all its eggs in one basket and reached to the right. I saw the long flashing claws coming at me at a frightening pace and, on instinct, tried a spin move, twisting my body in a 180 degree revolution, edging away from the outstretched claws. While I hadn’t factored it in, my spin put me further away from the claws, but moved Tommy closer. I saw the claws descending on Tommy, and I saw his eyes look back and widen in panic as he clutched me even tighter.

  Like huge pincers, I watched as the claws closed on Tommy and he yelped in pain as they closed shut, his scream increased with intensity with each millisecond. I pushed off with my legs, hoping to disengage Tommy from the zombie’s grip and this proved easier than I expected as I fell backwards with Tommy still in my arms. I hit the ground hard, landing on my left hip and upper thigh, and ended up rolling toward the back of the dump truck, leaving us less than five feet away from it.

  When I finally looked up, I saw that the zombie was holding the backpack in its hands, the straps neatly sliced in two by its metal claws, freeing it from Tommy’s back. It clutched the backpack tightly as if it had just won the most amazing prize. I also knew disappointment, and a horrible surprise were likely only seconds away. In most cases, I would have been happy to have a child over a backpack, but knowing the contents of the backpack filled me with a real sense of impending doom.

  If I had thought I was out of adrenaline before, I must have found a new wave to manufacture it, because I felt a jolt of energy pulse through me. I didn’t know how much time I had, but I didn’t waste another second as I got us moving. There was no time to get up and run, so I pulled Thomas tight, and I rolled over him, starting us in a barrel roll to get under the back of the dump truck before the explosives went off. Tommy cried out as I pushed down onto him, but I blocked out his yells, putting all my effort and concentration into getting as much distance between us and the zombie. My only hope was that the Lord of the Dead had put some delay in the trigger to detonate the backpack.

  After the first revolution, I watched as the zombie lifted the backpack into the air and then brought it toward its open mouth. On the next revolution, I saw it bite into the backpack. On the third revolution, the shadow of the dump truck enveloped us, and I only hoped it would offer enough shelter from the oncoming blast.

  We started on the fourth revolution when the bomb went off.

  Chapter 36

  Still in Harm’s Way

  Russell and the woman were running full out, legs churning and arms pumping, when the woman stopped dead in her tracks. Russell smacked into her back, nearly knocking her off her feet. He lost his balance and almost fell, too, but caught himself and stayed upright.

  “What the fuck!” she said, seemingly unfazed from being ran into, as she looked around at the now motionless armored zombies.

  “What’s going on?” Russell asked, looking just as perplexed as she was.

  The armored zombies all around them stood in place as if God himself had commanded them to stop. They weren’t unconscious, as far as he could tell, but he could see them swaying from side-to-side as if caught trying to answer some unfathomable question.

  “This can’t be good,” she said, “I think the command signal has stopped being transmitted.”

  “What does that mean?” Russell asked as he tried to look in every direction at once.

  “I don’t know, but it’s not going to last. We had better haul ass to the building.”

  She didn’t wait and took off with a single minded focus on the back of the building. Her boots pounded the dirt, sending up small puffs of dust with each impact. Russell took her cue and sped after her. Deep down, he felt a stopwatch ticking away to some dreadful cut-off time. He only hoped that it was enough time to get them the hell out of the field. He really had no idea if they’d be safer once they were in the building, but anywhere was better than where they were.

  The light of the explosion was the first thing to reach us as we continued to roll under the dump truck. It enveloped us in its volcanic heat and force. It was like being thrown into a broiler and I’d swear I felt the hair all over my body start to curl from its intensity. It came on me so quickly that my body didn’t have time to break a sweat.

  The concussion followed a millisecond later and I felt my body being pushed by an enormous, invisible, but very angry hand, swatting us away like we were bugs. I did my best to hold onto Tommy, but in those moments, I wasn’t even sure I was truly conscious as the force of the blast stunned all my senses.

  I came back to reality as we rolled behind one of the large sets of tires. Skin was missing from my elbows, knees, and hips from being pushed along the craggy ground. Flames roared around and by us, wrapping around the tires, its long tendrils licking out at us. I pulled Tommy tightly to my chest and curled my body around him as I felt a searing heat paint my back.

  As quickly as it had come, the flames retreated and I waited. I waited because I was afraid the worst was yet to come. I waited because I didn’t know if my back was on fire. I waited because I was simply too stunned and beaten to do anything else.

  What prodded me to action was the sensation of heat on my back. When I finally rolled over, the sensation abated somewhat, but curls of gray smoke wafted from under me. I could only guess that my shirt had been ignited by the flames.

  Tommy lay across my chest, unmoving. Although he had been through enough and there was nothing I wanted to do more than to give us a moment's rest, there was no time to waste. I gently shook him and his eyes ope
ned. It was then I noticed the singed sections of hair on his head. Small wisps of smoke wafted up from the dark ends of his burnt hair.

  “Are we alive?” he asked in a timid voice.

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure, but I was certain that death couldn’t hurt this much.

  “Yes, I think we are.”

  I swiveled my head to evaluate our situation. Small fires burned in the dry grass under the dump truck, while other sections just smoldered.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “My back and arms hurt from rolling across the ground, but I think I’m okay.”

  “Did you get cut by the zombie’s claws?”

  “A little on my arms, but I was more scared by it than hurt.”

  “We can’t stay here long. Can you move?”

  “Yes,” he said and crawled off of me.

  Now, the question was whether I could move. My biggest fear was the burns. The flames had been both intense and vicious. I knew from looking around that the only thing that had saved us from being blown to bits was the dump truck. It was a multi-wheeled monstrosity, and our bodies had come to rest past the second set of wheels from the back. The back of the truck had taken the brunt of the blast and prevented us from becoming post toasties.

  Still, I knew there were instances where people were burned so severely that they no longer felt the pain of the burns because the nerves had been seared away. From childhood, I had lived with the fear of being badly burned. There was no logical reason for it. It wasn’t like I was a pyromaniac like several of my friends, but I had this irrational fear of being caught in a fire.

  Pain flared down my back as I rolled onto my side. I saw abrasions up and down my arms and felt insult and injury all up and down my body.