Forget The Zombies (Book 2): Forget Texas

by Spears, R. J.

  The soldiers recovered and returned fire, but the element of surprise and bravado was on our side. The one who held the flashlight let it dangle at his side as he ran, throwing light onto the support beams, flashing like a strobe. He was using a handgun of some sort, but his aim didn’t seem all that good as he ran and fired back at us over his shoulder.

  We closed the gap quickly and were only down to a thirty feet away from them. They had no idea how many of us there were and they must have decided that a retreat was in order and started back down the bridge until it became an all-out run. I only hoped that they weren’t running to a detonator.

  I stopped and turned back to the group and yelled, “Run for it, NOW!”

  I didn’t stop to see if they did or not, but continued on. I did see Dave struggling to his feet and start moving forward with Randell and me. We made it to the soldier who had been on spool duty and when we got there, I was surprised to see he was still alive.

  I leaned down to check him and saw a wound in his shoulder. So much for my marksmanship. I was aiming for the center of his chest.

  Randell and Dave roared past me taking wild shots into the dark space that the other soldiers had just evacuated.

  The wounded soldier blinked up at me, seemingly dazed, and held up a single hand of surrender.

  “Can the other soldiers detonate the bridge?”

  “What?” he asked, but his voice sounded far away and dreamy.

  I looked behind me and our people were about a hundred feet back making slow but steady progress. I poked the soldier in the side with the barrel of my rifle and he came further back into land of the living. “Can the other soldiers blow up the bridge?” I asked, getting into his personal space.

  “No,” he sputtered out. “Well, not all of it.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked poking him again.

  “Stop that,” he yelled. “We had to lay new cable. Shrapnel from one of the mine explosions must have cut the original line. It would take hours to find and splice the break, so we decided to just lay a new line. They might have been able to connect up the new line and blow the first few charges.”

  Those would be the ones between us and safety, though.

  “Would they blow it with you on the bridge?”

  “I hope not, but they might.”

  “You’d better hope to holy hell they don’t.”

  I looked up and found Randell and Dave taking cover anyway they could as the other soldiers had made it off the bridge and were returning fire. Bullets winged off the old rusty steel supports, causing flashes of sparks, but up until now, no one had been shot. We were losing valuable time, though. Time the soldiers on the ground could use to connect the new detonation wires and blow the bridge. It was time to be bold.

  “HOLD YOUR FIRE!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “HOLD YOUR FIRE!”

  Two more shots rang but none came after that. The rest of our group held their position and hunkered down about fifty feet behind me.

  “Your friend up here is wounded,” I yelled into the night.

  “How bad?” A voice asked loudly.

  “Not too bad. I think it’s just a graze. By the way, you don’t have to blow up the bridge,” I shouted. “We can bring your man down and go on our way.”

  “We have orders not to let anyone from Texas off the bridge,” the voice shouted back.

  “Would it matter if I said I wasn’t from Texas?”

  “No.”

  “What if I told you that there are only nine of us and none of us are infected?”

  “We have no way to verify that.”

  I took a deep breath and plowed forward. “Listen, you have no idea what we’ve been through. We made it out of San Antonio by the skin of our teeth just over a month ago and barely escaped a refugee camp when it was overrun and now we have a shitload of zombies about crawl up from behind us and eat our asses.

  “Here’s how this is going to go. You’re probably working to get the line hooked up to the detonator. If you don’t let us off this bridge peaceably, we’re going to be forced to make a mad charge at you, firing all the way. Let me tell you, each one of my people is trained and ready to fight. You might get the bridge blown up before we get off and overrun you and you might not. But I can assure you, one of us is going to make it off and we’re heading directly for you. I’m going to give you to three to make up your mind.”

  Getting off this bridge without being shot was going to be hard. We’d be forced down to a narrow space where they could just pick us off at will, but it was the only play we had. If they had the detonator hooked up already, I figured they’d already have blown us to kingdom come.

  “Hold on a second,” the voice said, but I could hear some alarm in his tone.

  “ONE!”

  “Wait,” the voice said, pleadingly.

  “TWO!” I shouted and then said in a lower volume, “Get ready to charge!”

  “Hold on!” The voice shouted.

  I let that hang in the air for a second or two. “Do you want me to stop counting or are you letting us off the bridge?” I asked.

  “Shiiit!” the voice shouted into night. There was a long pause. “You can come off the bridge. Bring our guy.”

  I felt like the weight of the world had just lifted from my shoulders, but still I didn’t relax. Maybe the mob of zombies behind us had something to do with that or, maybe, it was because we could still get shot.

  “Okay, but don’t get any ideas about changing your mind,” I said.

  “We won’t.”

  “Jay, come up and help me.”

  “I can help,” Carla said and both she and Jay helped the wounded soldier to his feet. I moved slowly up to Randell and Dave.

  “Let’s move slowly off the bridge,” I said in a soft voice. “Dave, you take the left, Randell the right, and I’ll take the center.” I took the lead as we moved down the bridge. It was only a hundred feet, but seemed like the longest hundred feet of my life. It was the last few feet that frightened me the most because it was then that we’d be framed as pretty as a picture ready to be shot.

  We slowed to a crawl despite the fact that zombies were coming up behind us. I considered jumping off the side of the bridge but envisioned impaling myself on the broken trunk of a long dead tree. That or falling on a landmine and being blown to bits. The imagination can be a powerfully frightful thing.

  I passed the final girders and stood just where the track started to descend to the ground level. “I know you guys are hiding in the trees,” I said loudly. “You can come out.”

  “You might shoot us,” a voice said from the shadows of the trees beside the tracks.

  “I think we’ve already decided that we’re past that, right?”

  “Yes,” the voice said, and I could swear I could detect some relief in it.

  I started down the tracks to ground level and when I got about halfway down, two figures moved out of the shadow. One was tall and lanky while other one was sort of stocky.

  I closed the gap and made sure I stood between them and the top of the bridge just in case they decided to start shooting. It was comforting to know that the rest of my group would make it, but chilling to know that the soldiers would be shooting through me to hit them.

  The soldiers didn’t even raise their weapons, though, but instead, fidgeted about nervously.

  “I’m going to tell the rest of my group to come on down,” I said. One of the soldiers nodded. “Randell, Dave, you come down first.”

  Footsteps sounded behind me, but I stayed focused on the soldiers. About fifteen seconds later, Randell appeared on my right and Dave came about five seconds later on my left.

  We had them outnumbered now and that had to make them nervous. “You guys can relax,” I said. “We’re not shooting anyone.” I paused and then added, “Unless we have to.” You can’t let them relax too much.

  “Okay,” I yelled, “the rest of you can come down now.”

  More foot
steps came down from the bridge, but again, I didn’t look back.

  “Look at that, Bill,” the lanky soldier said, “there’s just some women, kids, and an old lady.” He looked at me and asked, “I thought you said you had hardened warriors or some other bullshit?”

  “I lied,” I said.

  “Shit,” the stocky one said in a big exhalation.

  “What kind of soldier are you anyway?” Randell asked.

  “We’re not really soldiers,” the lanky one said. “We’re combat engineers. Mostly engineers, though.”

  “So, that explains why you’re crappy soldiers,” I said.

  “Hey, watch it,” the stocky one said getting agitated, then he stopped. “You’re right, we suck being soldiers,” he said looking down, but looked up and added, “but we’re pretty good engineers.”

  “And that’s why you were sent to blow up the bridge,” I said.

  “Yeah,” the lanky one said. “The detonation line got cut by shrapnel and…”

  I cut him off, “Yeah, yeah, we heard that already.”

  “Can we get our guy?” the stocky one asked pointing over my shoulder.

  “Sure,” I started to say, but the lanky one jerked his rifle up and fired a shot over my head and my heart dropped into my stomach. He had suckered us down here to shoot us.

  I started to bring up my pistol, but Randell shot out a hand and pushed it down. I spun around and saw a zombie rolling slowing down the decline of tracks to ground level. Several more entered the scene and Dave turned and mowed them down, expending entirely too much ammo, but I didn’t care.

  The shooting stopped, but more silhouettes shambled across the bridge. Some stumbled and fell, trying to navigate the spaces between the railroad ties, but more were making it, walking over their fallen undead comrades.

  “Can you guys still blow up the bridge?” I asked.

  “Sure,” the lanky one said, “we have enough charges. We just need to get the line hooked to the detonator.”

  “If we help you do that, would you let us go on our way?” I asked.

  “Hell yeah,” the stocky one said. “We’d get our ass chewed…no, we’d probably get shot if the General knew we’d let you across. We’re not saying a damn thing.”

  “We’ll keep the zombies from getting off the bridge while you do your work. Okay?”

  “Sure,” they said in unison.

  “You heard me,” I said to Dave and Randell, “start shooting.”

  And they did. Randell convinced Dave to take it easy on the ammo and for the next couple minutes and they went to town. Zombies went down like stock prices, some plummeting over the sides of the bridge and into the water (sans the tops of their heads) and some just toppling onto the bridge.

  “We’re ready,” the lanky soldier said.

  “Everybody back,” I yelled and we all pulled away from the bridge to a safe distance.

  About thirty seconds later, one of the soldiers yelled, “Fire in the hole!” and a second later the explosives on the bridge went off in succession from closest to the shore, moving across the bridge. The concussions shook the air and Martin clamped his hands over his ears. With each explosion, a huge smoke cloud rose into the air, combining with the others to form what looked like a thunderhead, and a mournful groaning started. It reminded me of a dinosaur dying. It was a low metallic, yet melancholy noise, the cry of a beast in its death throes.

  The bridge listed to the left and the momentum took the structure down slowly like a huge metal house of cards. It was almost beautiful, in a tragic sense, as it fell. Water splashed at least twenty feet in the air when the bridge finally hit the water, sending up a cool spray that I felt on my face.

  Just as suddenly as the show started, it ended. Both groups stood in silence for nearly twenty seconds, watching what was left of the bridge start to drift away on the current. Zombies trapped in the tangled mess flailed their arms uselessly as they were taken off by the waves.

  “That’s the end of the show, folks,” I said.

  “Ohhhh,” Martin said.

  “Sorry, bud,” I said. “There’s only one bridge blown up each day.”

  “We’re out of here,” the lanky soldier said while supporting the soldier.

  “Don’t say anything about us, okay?” I said.

  “About who?” the stocky one said asked. “We didn’t see a thing.”

  They started to walk away, but something came to mind. “How are you going to explain that he’s shot?” I asked pointing to the wounded soldier.

  “We’re in the middle of a freaking zombie apocalypse, explaining one gunshot wound is the least of our worries,” the lanky soldier said and they disappeared into the dark. As soon as we knew they were gone, the group gathered in around me.

  “Where to now?” Carla asked.

  “Northward.”

  We followed the tracks for about a half of a mile until we saw some dim lights in the distance. If my memory of the map served me, that would be Terrell, Oklahoma.

  The sun was starting to rise in the east and I looked over our motley crew. I can honestly say that we looked like crap, but we were alive. At least, most of us were. There seemed to be a collective ache in our souls over losing Sammy, but we went on because that’s what we humans do. We continue on. We struggle to survive. It’s our way.

  We trudged alongside the railroad tracks toward Terrell, exhausted and nearly asleep on our feet. A small caravan of military vehicles came down the highway that paralleled the railroad tracks and I was just too beat to tell our group to try to hide. Screw Em if they wanted to detain or shoot us. They’d be doing us a favor.

  We passed a small stand of trees and I saw a house up on our left. It was a two story house with a deck on the second floor. We slowly approached the house, plodding along tiredly.

  Just as we got in front of the house, a door opened on the second story and an elderly man came out onto his deck, holding a cup of what I assumed was coffee. He looked us over as if a small group of filthy armed people were something he saw every day.

  He leaned over his porch railing and took us in. He finally got up the gumption to say something. He asked, “Are you folks from Texas?”

  There was a very long pregnant pause and then we all said in unison, “NO!”

  A Note from the Author

  First, let me express my gratitude to you for reading my book. Writing a book is a long journey that ends with you as the reader. It is my deepest hope as an author that you enjoyed the book. I only ask that you consider writing a review of the book on Amazon. As an independent author, reviews are the lifeblood of my future success. Thanks again.