This went on for several seconds as the breath shot out of me in deep gasps. The last of the cattle came by us and the field was covered in a dust cloud that looked like a dense morning fog.
“Sammy!” I shouted. Randell released me and I stumbled away from him into the field. “Sammy!”
Randell came up beside me. “Where did you last see him?”
“Over here,” I said, moving deeper into the dust cloud until my feet tripped on something and I went down. My hand grasped onto something warm when I went to push myself up. It was an arm. I grabbed it and felt along it until I reached the body.
“He’s here!” I shouted
Randell came up beside me and reached down as I pulled Sammy up. Sammy’s face came into view, or what was left of it did. There was a large hoof print indention on the side of his head contorting his features in a grotesque way. One eye was missing and his jaw jutted out at an unnatural angle. Randell saw it a second after I did and let go of Sammy’s arm. Off balance, I lost my grip and Sammy’s body disappeared into the dust cloud.
Randell spun away and vomited. I stood feeling listless, unable to reach down again or even move.
Randell stopped vomiting after a few seconds and wiped his mouth. “I should have let you go after him.”
“No,” I said. “You did the right thing. He didn’t stand a chance. I would have been just as dead”
A muffled explosion sounded on in the direction of river.
“Now what?” Dave said from the trees. Three more explosions followed.
My body and soul protested action of any kind as my arms hung at my side. Sammy had been a good kid. He had risked his life numerous times to save people in our group, only to die in a stampede. There was no justice in this universe.
Two more explosions sounded through the trees.
“Grant, should we get moving?” Joni asked.
It took every ounce of my energy to make that first step toward trees, but an anger built with each one after it, empowering me to continue on. Anger was always good that way for me. If I couldn’t beat something, at least I could hate it.
Randell was close behind me, but I had no idea what kept him going. We passed under the first tree when Joni asked, “Where’s Sammy?”
“He didn’t make it,” I said.
“Oh no,” Rosalita wailed. “Dios Mios, Dios mios,” She dropped her head in her hands and began to weep. It almost broke me again, but I saw Dave standing with Martin and Jessica and knew we had to keep going.
I walked over to Joni and asked in a hushed tone, “How is she,” and then added, “physically?”
“Bruised. Maybe something’s wrong with her shoulder,” she responded in almost whisper.
“Can she walk?”
“I think so.”
“Then we need to get her up.”
“Grant, she just lost Sammy.”
“We just lost Sammy,” I said. “It’s killing me, but we have to keep moving. Those cattle were running from something and I’m guessing it wasn’t rustlers.”
“You don’t have to be such a hard ass,” she said.
I ran a hand through my hair and said, “You’re right. I’m afraid if we don’t get moving, the Army will blow up the train bridge and then we’re stuck. I don’t like our chances on this side of the river.”
Another explosion sounded and it was followed by two more.
“And I don’t like those explosions,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll see if I can get her up.” She walked over to Rosalita and knelt down beside her, putting a comforting arm around the old woman’s back. Rosalita was keening by now and rocking back and forth in her grief.
Dave broke away from the kids and walked in my direction. As he got close to me, he leaned in and said in a quiet voice, “What are we waiting on?”
“Rosalita needs a minute,” I said.
“You need to get her off her ass and get us moving,” he said, almost in a hiss. “Because if you don’t, I’m taking my family and getting the hell out of here.”
I brought my head up slowly and looked him in the eye and I’m not sure what he saw, but he stepped back.
“Whatever,” he said, throwing his hands in the air, and started to walk away, but leaned back into me, “and I’m not sure I like how chummy you are with my wife.” He walked back to the kids and stood giving me the hairy eyeball for a few seconds.
I brought my attention back to Joni and Rosalita just as Joni was helping the older woman to her feet. Rosalita wiped her eyes and then walked over to me somewhat unsteadily. Just as she got to within a foot of me, she opened her arms and fell onto me, hugging me for strength as she cried some more.
“He was a chico valiente,” she said through the tears. “So, valiente”
“Yes, he was,” I said, patting her back, not knowing for sure that I wouldn’t join in her tears at any second, but knowing that no one needed that, least of all her. We stood like that for many seconds until she pulled away.
“Joni said Sammy would want me to go on,” she said. “She is right. He can’t have died for me to stay behind, so Grant, let’s go.”
I kept an arm around her as we started walking into the woods, the canopy blocking the moonlight, making our walk a very dark one. Moonbeams filtered through the leaves above, dappling the ground with small pools of light. A forest creature scuttled along on the ground out of sight. If I closed my eyes, I might find myself back in the forest journeys of my youth. Unfortunately, another explosion went off in front of us and Rosalita gripped me tighter. I gripped my pistol a little tighter, too.
We followed alongside the railroad tracks for about five hundred feet and came to a place where the tracks became elevated over a large pond of water.
“Do we get on the tracks now?” Joni asked.
“No, not yet,” I said. “We don’t know that the tracks haven’t been blown yet. We can’t be trapped up on a bridge to nowhere.”
We gave the pond a wide berth, as the ground around it was very wet and treacherous in the dark, and continued for the river’s edge. Mosquitos and other insects buzzed incessantly around our heads not bothered in the least by a zombie apocalypse or a stampede of cattle.
A few of the cattle wandered aimlessly among the trees, chuffing and mooing.
When we finally broke from the woods, we came to a short, but steep bank that led down to a sandy narrow shoreline. Cattle milled around at the water’s edge nervously as the water churned by, dark and murky, flowing by at a rapid pace. A few struggled against the current to make it across, but most turned back. Yesterday’s downpour had the water running high and hard.
It was a task to get down to the tiny shoreline, but we made it. Rosalita had to slide down on her butt to prevent any more injury, but couldn’t avoid the insult.
“What the hell is this?” Randell said pushing something dark and meaty with his boot.
“It looks like a cow’s back leg,” Jane said, holding a hand to her mouth.
It was then that a large steer got of the courage to head out of the flowing river to shore on the Oklahoma side of the river. He struggled against the fast flowing waters and strode ashore when an explosion blew him to bits. Parts of the steer showered down around us and into the water.
“Holy shit!” Dave shouted. “They’ve mined the shoreline.”
“But the bridge still stands!” Jay shouted.
It was then that I looked up to the bridge. It was still there in all its rusted glory, but for how long I did not know. I looked along its side and saw small dark protrusions that seemed rust free. Those had to be charges. I wondered why the bridge still stood, but didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Let’s go people,” I shouted. “We have to get across the bridge and fast.”
They didn’t need any more encouragement and started scrambling back up the bank. I helped Rosalita back up and she said, “I should have stayed up here all along.”
“Who knew? I replied.
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br /> We quickly discovered that we were going to have to backtrack because there was no way to access the bridge because it was elevated a good twenty feet off the ground with no ladders are any other way to climb. A sense of urgency flowed through the group as we jogged back through the woods. We encountered more wandering cattle and had to push a few out of the way as their panic was now over.
“Dammit,” Dave called out and I turned to see him bouncing around on one foot with a shoeless foot dangling in the air. “I lost my shoe in the mud.”
“We can’t wait for you to pull it loose,” I said.
“But those are my Michael Jordan’s,” he said, close to whining.
“Are they worth your life?” I asked.
He sat down the socked foot and walked gingerly along without saying another word. We made it around the pond when I heard something crashing through the trees in front of us. It was coming fast, but in the darkness it was hard to make out anything more than a large black form. I reached down and pulled out my pistol. Randell moved up beside me and brought his rifle up, ready to fire.
We peered into the darkness and waited. It wasn’t a long wait as a large steer broke out of the trees and what we saw next was jaw dropping. Hanging on to the side of the steer with its teeth biting deep into the steer’s shoulder was a large male zombie hanging on dear life. The steer ran in sheer terror and didn’t even notice us. The zombie didn’t seem to care we were there either as it had a mouthful of flesh. The steer careened past us bellowing in pain as the zombie munched down on its shoulder.
“Holy fucking shit,” Dave said.
“Dave, language!” Joni said, her voice rising as she attempted to cover Martin’s ears. He just shrugged.
More cattle moved through the woods, coming at us. That could only mean one thing and that was that more zombies were coming our way.
“Let’s move,” I said breaking from my trance. I looked back and literally saw the others shaking their heads before moving forward.
The woods seemed even more dangerous now that we were most likely sharing them with the undead. While we moved along at a good clip, it was cautious progress as everyone was hyper aware of any moving shadows. Through the trees I saw where we could climb up onto the tracks and access the bridge. I also saw several zombies shambling around on the tracks just a few feet away from the bridge.
I decided that caution was no longer the way to go since we would be out in the open soon enough. As I started up the slight grade to the tracks I leveled my pistol and shot the first zombie I saw. The shot took off the top of its head and it went down in a heap. Of course, the other zombies took notice and started our way.
“Get up and on the bridge,” I shouted at the group and took up a shooter’s stance at the foot of the bridge. Randell and Jane joined me.
“Only shoot if you have clear headshot,” I said.
Randell took the first shot and a zombie lost its face, falling to the side and sliding down the gravel embankment. Jane fired and knocked the knee off the next one which was just as effective as a headshot in our situation.
The rest of group members passed behind us and mounted the bridge. We took out two more zombies, but I saw more and more of their kind shuffling towards us in the moonlight. The open field was filling with them.
“We’re all on the bridge,” Joni said.
“Let’s move people,” I said as I fired one more shot into the brainpan of an approaching zombie and turned to leave.
We had at least seven hundred feet of bridge to traverse and that only put us at the water’s edge. After that we were on the bridge over open water. Something about being on a bridge covered with explosives over the water gave me the chills. Call me weird.
We certainly weren’t speeding along because we had to step on the railroad ties or else we’d slip between them and risk a broken ankle or worse. While that worked against us, it also worked in our favor as the zombies coordination didn’t work well on the open air concept. When I looked behind us, I saw them piling up like cord wood as they fell continually The clawed at each other as they tried to get at us. Some even crawled along the track after multiple falls. Let me just say, crawling is a pretty slow mode of transportation, but it was fine with me if the zombies wanted to go that way.
We made it to the water’s edge, but I saw Jay standing stock still with his hand held up in a motion for us to stop and be quiet. I edged by Rosalita and Joni and came up to Jay’s side.
“There’s someone out on the bridge,” Jay said in a whisper. “I think it’s soldiers.”
I peered down the bridge and saw silhouettes moving around about 150 feet away. One of them had a very bright flashlight and was shining it down onto the tracks where two other men were working. At this distance, it was hard to make out the details, but I could see one of them had a large spool and was unwinding cable while backing across the bridge.
An icy lump formed in my gut. I knew what they were doing and we only had seconds to act or we were going have the bridge blown out from under us.
“Randell,” I hissed back down the bridge. He was guarding our back. “Get up here.”
He turned and carefully made his way to me. “What’s up?”
“There are soldiers down there,” I said pointing across the bridge. “They look to be running denotation cables to the charges on the bridge. If they make it off the bridge before we get across, this thing is going down with us on it.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked looking a little lost.
“If we charge them, then maybe they’ll blow the bridge or be able to fend us off until they’re able to get off the bridge and then blow it.”
“And?” he said.
“You’re the best shot we have. You’re going to have to shoot that soldier. The one with the spool.”
“What?” he asked, as if not comprehending the situation we were in. “I can’t shoot them, they’re U.S. soldiers.”
“They’re going to get us killed.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s us or them.”
“I can’t do it,” he said and held the rifle out to me.
Dave pushed his way beside Randell and said, “Give me the rifle, I’ll do it.”
“Have you ever shot a gun before?” I asked.
“Sure, as a kid.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Twenty years.”
“You’re out of the marksmanship competition.” I said.
“Then what about you?” he asked with a definite challenging tone.
Why not me? I thought. Having Randell do it was sort of chicken shit, but I guessed he was a better shot. I had already killed in the past few days. Living breathing men. I thought maybe it would get easier, but I knew I was really only lying to myself. These soldiers were just doing what they were told and offered no direct threat. It just so happened what they were doing was going to get us all killed.
I took the rifle from Randell knowing that this was the only way our people would make it across this bridge alive, if we would make it at all.
Before I aimed, I turned back to the Randell and said, “Once I do this, they might shoot back or they might run. We have to be prepared to be shot at. It would be best if we charged them firing to keep them off guard. Dave, you’ll need to part of that charge.”
“Okay, I got it,” Randell said.
Dave didn’t look like he liked the plan, but to his credit, he didn’t back down.
“And someone please keep an eye on the zombies,” I said behind us as the zombies tried to navigate the bridge, but failed spectacularly. As far they were concerned, we had some time. When it came to the soldiers, the window was closing quickly.
I lowered myself to one knee and got into a shooter’s stance. I felt some trembling in my thighs and did what I could to quiet it. I raised the gun into a firing position and aimed.
The soldiers were not much more than dark shapes moving in the dark. The only thing making this any easier was the fact that
one of the soldiers was illuminating the scene with a flashlight.
The spool they were using wasn’t all that big. Another soldier was working the front of the spool, pulling out cable and letting it fall on the tracks while the other one backed up.
I steadied myself, but felt a cold ball of sweat roll down my back and I twitched. I had to re-target the soldier with the spool. Sweat dripped into my eyes and I wiped it away.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” Dave said.
“Shut up,” I said.
I hadn’t had a lot of practice with a rifle in the recent past, but I did check one out periodically on the job. I would never win the department marksmanship award, but I wasn’t half bad. This rifle didn’t have a scope so I had to just use the sights which raised the level of the challenge, but the soldiers were only about 150 feet away and I wasn’t trying to hit the center of the bullseye. Only a man. And that was my problem.
The soldier with the spool moved back and forth and fell into the center of my aim. I breathed out, asked God for some forgiveness, and pulled the trigger. The rifle shot sounded like a cannon in the silence. In my state my mind at that moment, the recoil felt like a gentle nudge.
The bullet traveled at nearly 1,000 miles per hour and was on the soldier before he knew it. He fell backward with arms flying up and tossing the spool in the air. It clattered along the bridge for a few feet. The other two soldiers stood in stunned silence.
Randell and Dave charged past me and ran across the bridge taking random shots and yelling at the top of their lungs. I sprang from crouch and followed as quickly as I could.
The other two soldiers stood dumbfounded for at least two seconds, and then turned our way. The one with the flashlight spun it our direction and I got a faceful of blinding light before ducking my head down. Still, white hot spots danced in my vision. Dave didn’t get his face down in time and was immediately blinded. He lost his footing and went down, grunting on impact.
Who would have thought a flashlight would be better than a gun?
Randell charged and continued to fire with a handgun. I’m not certain, but I think he aimed over their heads. I ran forward with my rifle, stopped, and fired a couple shots off, but really didn’t aim, then ran forward again.
Forget The Zombies (Book 2): Forget Texas Page 12
