Jessie was telling Doug this story as they were filling the buckets, leaning off of the dock and trying to get clean water without stirring up the mud.
“Yeah,” he was saying “I got blisters from that...” but he broke off when he heard Gary whistle from the deck. Something was coming. They looked up the hill toward the house and into the neighbors’ yards.
Nothing. They didn’t see anything. They looked at Gary and he and Sheila both were pointing wildly at the water. From their vantage point, they could see all the way across the lake. Doug saw it then, what they were pointing at. The water had a muddy swirl to it about twenty feet out and they could see small bubbles breaking the surface. The Undead must have been drawn to the noises they were making, the splashing of the buckets and the sounds of their footsteps on the dock.
“I sense a disturbance in the Force, young Padawan.” Doug said as Jessie hurriedly finished filling the bucket and got to his feet. They grabbed the full ones and started hustling up the hill. Before they made it halfway, they heard the keening from the water as the heads of the undead broke the surface and spotted them. The sounds of splashing intensified and the boys dropped the buckets and ran for the stairs. Jessie glanced over his shoulder and saw at least eight, maybe ten waterlogged corpses stumble onto the shore and begin chasing them. They weren’t fast, the days in the water must have done something to them, but they weren’t slow, either.
Their keening screams were drawing others, though. As they mounted the stairs to the upper deck, they both saw a few running in from the street, tearing across the neighbor’s yard. They weren’t ready for this, the stairs were still in place. Could Zed climb them? They’d find out in a few seconds.
“Get the shotguns!” Jessie yelled to Sheila as Gary aimed for heads with his .22.
He was right behind Doug and grabbed one out of her hands as he heard the first of them hit the bottom of the stairs and start running up them.
“And the M-4’s” Gary shouted “I can’t hit shit with this!”
He was firing away but the little bullets were sinking into the bodies without so much as a flinch from them. He tried for head shots but they were running and moving so fast, he was missing. Jessie racked the Mossberg she handed him and shot over the railing at the first of the watery creatures. The top of its head exploded, painting everything red in a 360-degree arc. It fell, causing the others behind it to stumble and then Doug was beside him, blasting away as fast as he could once Gary yelled at him to flip off the safety. The 12 gauge peppered them with shot from less than ten feet away, tearing out huge chunks of waterlogged flesh and pulverizing faces into misty red mush.
“Hold it tighter to your shoulder!” Jessie yelled at him when a quick glance showed him Doug was punishing his arm by holding the buttstock a few inches away. “Tuck it in hard!”
“Hell of a time for a first shooting lesson.” He replied but pulled it in and kept blasting away. When it was empty, he yelled for Sheila to give him another and she was right there with it, taking up the role she’d seen a hundred times in westerns. Reload and resupply the shooters. Gary had an M-4 and its rapid barks were hitting some of the runners, knocking them to the ground. Now he wished they would have kept the AK’s out, even if they were a lot louder. Once the shooting started, it didn’t matter and they had a lot more knock down power from their bigger bullets.
They had to get the stairs torn down, had to keep the zombies off of the deck. If they retreated into the house, those things would break the glass and get in. There would be no escaping them. They HAD to hold the deck. Most of the water zom’s were blown to pieces by the shotguns but more and more were coming off the road, drawn to the noise and screams of the other undead. Sheila was running all of the guns that they had loaded out to them. When that was done, she started reloading the shotguns from one of the ammo cans as fast as she could, breathing hard. Scared. But understanding like they all did, they had to hold the deck. Had to get those stairs torn down.
They were coming. Dozens at first but it didn’t take long before there were scores of them, maybe even a hundred. All following the sounds of fresh meat. Screams of zombies and blasts of guns filled the air. The tumbled dead were stacking up on the stairs leading up to them and the runners were climbing over, taking rounds to the body and charging forward anyway. Jessie threw down the shotgun when it was empty and grabbed an M-4. They needed more time! He needed the chainsaw out of the garage but if he left now, they would be overrun. The three guns firing as fast as they could were barely keeping them at bay. Where did they keep coming from? Did everybody in the whole damn neighborhood turn into one of those things?
He grabbed another magazine when his ran dry and hammered away at more of them. He would hit them in three round bursts, triple tapping the trigger, aiming for the chest and letting the gun climb so the third round usually hit the head. It was a trick his dad had shown him out at the range when “multiple bogies” were attacking. Gun held tight, shooting elbow tucked in and not chicken winging, scanning for the next target as soon as the first bullet hit. They kept coming, leaping over the stacked up dead, and the boys kept shooting. There were blood sprays flying and wood chips splintering from the railing. The wood chips! They could use the bullets to cut the risers! He saw a break in the horde, had a few seconds to spare, and started putting round after round into the top of the wooden riser near where it was nailed to the deck. When the gun was empty, he grabbed one of the loaded shotguns and continued to blast away, splintering and disintegrating the wood. The zombies kept coming. Kept screaming and climbing. Kept reaching for them. Doug ran out of ammo and fumbled grabbing the next gun laid out at his feet, Gary’s AR ran empty and Jessie’s shotgun spent its last shell. The quiet was shocking and all four doubled their efforts to reload and send lead down into the horde as it sprinted up the steps.
Too much speed caused fumble fingered mistakes. Sheila screamed. The whole deck shook with the thundering of the undead footsteps, a dozen or more on the stairs. Gary dropped the magazine he was trying to slide into the well. Jessie stood frozen in place, wide-eyed in terror. Doug let the shotgun slip through his fingers for the third time as he frantically reached for it, watching a fat man with bloody jowls pounding up the stairs straight for him. Its mouth was open wide, anticipating flesh, its black eyes fixed on Doug’s. It was over. All they’d been through. All their planning. All the pain. All the horror. All the killing. It wasn’t enough. It was over. The screaming monster would be on him in two more steps.
The shotgun from behind them roared and Sheila screamed even louder as the recoil kicked it out of her hands and the man’s chest disappeared in a plume of hazy mist. It left a gaping hole they could see right through and the zombie behind him flew over the rail backward, most of it’ head missing. She had fired both barrels of the coach gun that had been loaded with double ought buckshot. Eighteen steel balls traveling at 1295 feet per second. 3600 pounds of force slamming into him at nearly point blank range. Like being hit by Thor’s Hammer. The impact sent the fat man flying backward, streams of blubber and intestines trailing through the air. He plowed into the masses below him, causing a domino effect of falling bodies and one side of the staircase, the riser Jessie had been shooting at, gave way under the sudden impact of all the weight. The whole thing twisted, stair treads separating and screws breaking free from the wood. Half of the stairs collapsed and Jessie recovered from his moment of frozen indecision. He grabbed the last loaded shotgun and started blasting away at the remaining riser. Gary seated the mag he’d been fumbling with and joined him, shredding it to sawdust in seconds and it fell on top of the heap of undead twelve feet below them. They all looked over the railing, breathing heavily from the fading adrenaline-fueled rush, their nerves still jangling.
“Boss Fight.” Gary said, a nervous laugh on his lips
Despite the terror still making his words a little unsteady, Jessie said “It always gets harder right before you level up.”
“I
think we’d better load every single gun in the house and leave them in every room.” Sheila said. “That was too close. I want guns everywhere, even in the bathrooms.”
Chapter 3
970 Miles to Go
Day 7
Martha and Cookie had another buffet style breakfast laid out by the time the sun was peeking over the horizon. Sleepy eyed kids stumbled over for milk and the grownups stretched and worked kinks out of their backs. The sleeping accommodations were tight. All of the drivers had taken on passengers and most of the trucks had an extra bunk but there were still a few who had to sleep on the seats of the bus. Scratch had both Lars and Stabby riding with him but with the guard duty rotation, they all got to sleep on a bed for a few hours. The fuel stop they picked out for the next morning was a small Mom and Pop place with only a few other businesses at the exit.
“Same procedure.” Cobb said and everyone shuffled around to get into the appropriate vehicles before they took off. The refuelers ready to get smelly, Gunny’s full cab of heavily armed vets ready to hop out and cover Jellybean as he ran his PTO pump. Sara zipped in and did a quick circle then took off back towards the trucks, a small crowd of runners behind her. Gunny took them out with ease as she shot past him. The off ramp was deserted as they made the turn but he saw a problem as soon as they swung into the little truck stop. There was a tanker truck parked in front of the fuel drops, blocking them.
“Plan B.” Gunny came over the radio. “Jellybean, run your hoses underneath it, there is still plenty of room to get the trucks in. My guys will spread out and cover both sides.”
“Roger that.” Came the reply and as Gunny swung wide and let the shooters out. Jellybean slipped in tight and began unfurling the hoses. There were a half-dozen shots from the guys as they rounded the tanker then it was quiet.
A few minutes later, Cobb came over the radio as Gunny was getting refueled. “Heads up, we’ve got people on the roof of that building.”
Gunny leaned down low in his seat, trying to see past the top of his drop visor on the windshield. Sure enough, there were a group of people up there waving their shirts and yelling, trying to get their attention over the noise of the trucks. Gunny flashed his lights at them, letting them know he saw them and got back on the radio.
“I see them. Sara, you copy?” he said.
“Roger. What do you need?”
“Circle the building, see if the ladder up is surrounded by infected, give us a sitrep.”
She took off, swinging wide around all the corners to ensure she wouldn’t be surprised and tackled off of her bike like she was when this all began. When she appeared again, she stopped near Gunny and activated her two-way. “I didn’t see a ladder or any zombies. It must be on the inside.”
Scratch cut in. From his vantage point at the top of the overpass, he had a better view than anyone else. “I can see the top of the ladder, it’s in the middle of the building. Looks like there are six of them up there. Aaaaannnnd I gotta go clear the road, we’ve got some groupies coming in.” He took off to add more bodies to his kill count and Gunny moved out of the way to let the next truck start.
“Alright,” he said over the radio, “when we finish topping off, clearance team meet up at the tanker. This will be good practice for that Wal-Mart. Stay with your trucks until then. How much more room do we have on that tour bus?”
The men and women on the roof of the Little Cheyenne Fuel Stop weren’t sure what to make of the band of trucks that had rumbled into the parking lot. They had huge plows welded onto the front of them and most of them were covered in old blood and matted body parts. They looked like extras in a post apocalypse film, including the one all in leather on the motorcycle. Even it had an exoskeleton welded onto it. The truckers had acknowledged them, they knew they saw them but they appeared to be leaving. One by one, as the trucks fueled up, they swung around and got back in line to get back on the freeway. No one was coming over to help them. They tried yelling at the men and women they saw surrounding the tanker truck with their guns but they ignored them, keeping their attention glued to the areas they were covering. The two women expressed the most hesitation at getting rescued by this hard-looking lot. Were they jumping out of the frying-pan and into the fire? The shooters had killed the crazies that had been milling around the store, maybe they could climb down the gutter pipe now, drop down on top of the dumpster. Maybe they didn’t want this group of highwaymen to help them after all. They had been up here for days and the few supplies they had managed to get up the ladder as all the crazies broke down the maintenance room door were nearly gone. The police hadn’t shown up. There had been only a handful of cars pass on the freeway. Their phones didn’t work and they were as afraid of what they didn’t know as much as what they did. When the last truck had filled up and the bobtail had stowed his hoses and pulled off to join the back of the line, the last of the trucks shut off their engines. The quietness was complete. No traffic noises. No horns honking. No background noise of electrical things moving around and humming. The doors opened on some the trucks and more men with guns ran back to meet up with the five that were already there. There was a dark haired man sporting a bad haircut and long, sharp spikes on each arm and a bearded man with longish dirty blond hair. The blonde man hailed them as they got close. The rest of the team had spread out and were keeping their eyes only in the sector their guns were pointing, giving the two 360 degrees of protection. This was a military group, they could tell.
“We’ll have you down in a minute.” He yelled up to them as they kept moving towards the front of the store.
As they approached the entrance door, they could see a few of the agitated undead milling around inside. They had heard the noises of fresh meat but didn’t know how to get to it.
“As soon as they see us at the door, it’s gonna be a stampede,” Gunny said quietly. “Let’s make some noise, draw them to us. Griz and Shakey, think you can hold the door, try to only let them out one at a time?”
They both slung their AR’s and got ready to put some shoulder into the metal framed glass door. “Just remember we’re here, don’t be firing this direction,” Griz said as Gunny pulled his Glock and prepared to make head shots as they came through the entryway. Once the first one was down, it would make a stumbling block for the rest of them.
“Ready?” he asked, and they tightened their grip on the door handle as everyone else drew knives and Stabby prepared himself for action. Gunny would be the only one shooting and the knives were just on the off chance one got through, not quite permanently dead. He nodded and they opened the door a few inches. Gunny leaned in and whistled, wrinkling his nose at the stench of rotting meat, fruit and bodies. Their reaction was instantaneous and faster than anyone had anticipated. Instead of the two shambling around pawing at the windows that they expected to react, they saw a half-dozen or more heads pop up over the tops of aisles and look their way. The screaming started and the racks tumbled over as all of them took the most direct path to the living, breathing meat that needed to be conquered. Infected. A new living host that must be used to add to their numbers, a base command they didn’t understand but were compelled to carry out by any means necessary. They scrambled over the tops of the falling shelves, leaping from one to another, inhuman strength and speed sending boxes of candy bars and bags of chips flying. “Should have brought a 12 gauge.” Was all Gunny had time to think as he started popping off rounds and seven charging bodies slammed headlong into the door, shattering the glass and sending Griz and Shakey flying backward and onto their asses. He started firing at the ones coming through the now wide open door, trying to sink a round into their keening faces but they were moving so fast, the magazine was empty and only two were on the ground, tripping up the others who had plenty of holes in them but none in their heads. As he dropped the mag and was seating the other home, Stabby came flying at two of them snarling their way over the fallen bodies jammed in the doorway. They were keening with desire and reaching for him wit
h dirty, outstretched fingers. Stabby’s spikes sunk deep, the full weight of his 170 pounds slamming both arms into their skulls, punching straight through eye cavities and squirming brains then out the back of their heads. Bone fragments and red-black blood made Rorschach patterns on the front of the building. He twisted and slung them off of his blades and dropped into a crouch as the next one scrambled over the corpses with the splattered heads from Gunny’s bullets. He thrust his fist up under its gnashing teeth, snapping them off as the spikes continued up through its brain and out of the top of its skull. Griz spun his M-4 around on its single point sling, fingers finding the grip and trigger on instinct. Still sitting on his backside, he opened fire on the others trying to make their way over the fallen bodies. The barking snap of the .223 bullets joined the heavier thud of everyone else’s pistols. They scattered heads and jars of pickled pigs feet, sent bottles of soda and cans of beer fizzing and hissing all over the store. The bullets found their marks and heads were exploded into an unrecognizable pulp.
Then it was quiet.
Their eyes darted, searching for targets. They listened, the cacophony of rapid fire weapons still ringing in their ears, but nothing else came out from the dim interior.
Zombie Road (Book 2): Bloodbath on the Blacktop Page 3
