by TW Brown
Twice, Jonathan broke off to double-back and take out a few of the closer zombies. We were leading them to the mansion. Only, we had to stay under cover as much as possible, using trees and bushes as we closed the distance to the back doors. Avoiding bullets, luring zombies. It was madness.
We were halfway there when two different doors burst open. One was up a small flight of stairs. Somebody stepped out and fired a flare up in the air. All of us pulled our goggles off, the backyard was now bathed in a blue-white light. Then a second flare was fired. Jenifer and I saw her at the same time. Dominique was on that small landing with three other women and two men. We barely got behind the base of a marble statue as the automatic weapons’ fire opened up. We saw several of the zombies dance and jerk as bullets tore into their bodies with no real effect. A few took head shots, toppling back into the horde, but not enough for it to matter.
We waited for a lull and came out firing a quick volley. I saw one person fall. Then they opened up on us again. A few of the zombies were closing in, and we had no choice but to reload and then take them out. Trying to stand and use a hand-to-hand weapon would earn us a bullet in the back.
I can’t believe we’d forgotten about the creepers. Jonathan was on the right, closest to the fence. His scream caught both me and Jenifer by surprise. One of those damned things had come under the fence. Who knows if it’d been in the cage or simply drawn by the noise. I remember the look on Jonathan’s face. The pain was there, but it was the sadness that broke my heart. He yanked his arm away, and even in the shadows, I could see dark liquid dripping from the tip of his elbow.
Two more flares lit up the sky and I could see the creeper lying beside Jonathan. He’d smashed its head with his handgun. Jenifer was babbling that he still might be okay. It wasn’t certain that he’d been infected.
“But it’s likely,” was all he said. Then he got up. The group on the porch had ceased their barrage for a moment. Jonathan took the offensive. Before Jenifer or I could say a word, he stepped out and took off for the mansion, firing from both hands.
Jenifer jumped up, and before I knew it, I was on her heels chasing after Jonathan. It was stupid. They opened up on the big man. We saw a couple of them go down, and a couple more ducked back in that door they’d come out of. Still, an M-16 is death. Several are overkill. I’d never thought the term “cut in half” was real when referring to guns. But that’s exactly what they did to Jonathan.
I grabbed Jenifer, she’d stopped cold in her tracks, my survival instinct had re-awakened. The fence was several yards to our left, but there were a couple of trees close by to use as cover for a moment. Jenifer wanted to struggle, but I’d not really paid attention and grabbed her left arm...the side she’d been shot. That sorta prompted her to follow me.
We got behind cover, the ground erupting right where my feet’d been just seconds before. I don’t know who was holding who, both of us sobbing. Then I heard her voice. It was nails on the chalkboard.
“Mer-e-dith!” she sing-songed. There was a twisted and maniacal glee in her voice. How could a twelve-year-old girl morph into this angry, evil child I was hearing?
“Did I kill your latest lover?” she called. “Poor Meredith. Can’t keep a man alive, can you?”
“What the hell is your problem?” Jenifer pulled away from me and screamed. “Meredith risked her life to save you, and this is how you act!”
“Jenifer,” Dominique laughed. “Are you still mad at me because the boys liked me better?”
“Liked?” Jenifer yelled. “They raped us! Are you that crazy? Or that stupid?”
“Only the first time,” Dominique giggled.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This delusional little girl had no idea. How off-center did somebody have to be to confuse love with rape? I struggled in my mind for a moment with the idea of killing Dominique. Jonathan’s death wiped the struggle away. Taking a deep breath, I ducked low—a trick Jeff and Rodney taught me—and came around, firing where I remembered seeing that group. I only got off four shots, one of which hit before I had to duck back to avoid a new burst of automatic weapons’ fire.
We were out of time at this location. The zombies were on us again and we had to move. I told Jenifer I would try to give her enough cover and join her in a moment. Dominique was still taunting and ranting. I ignored most of it, but one thing jumped out of one of her statements.
“...and if the undead would’ve gotten the two of you in that building the day after you left me all by myself, then none of your new friends would be dying today—”
“Bitch,” I swore and came around firing. This time I had two pistols in my hands. It was enough to make them scatter good. Jenifer ran for it, and, when my weapons emptied, I followed. I knew I wasn’t in direct danger from the zombies yet, and as I neared the fence, I considered my choices: carefully go under or through the fence like Jenifer; or go over it. I had a good running start. Gauging my chances, I saw the post in the flicker of the latest round of flares that were being fired every minute it seemed. I would plant my hands and vault. Everything worked until I felt something punch me in the back—really hard.
The impact pushed me over and my hands lost their purchase. My controlled vault became an awkward, flying sprawl. The next explosion of pain was my left leg. I don’t remember hitting the ground. I don’t remember the other two bullets catching me in mid-air. One blew off my pinky on my left hand, the other went through the meat next to the base of my neck. Doctor Gene says that one would’ve been lethal a centimeter left and up.
I don’t know who saved me. I haven’t seen anybody from our team. Nobody will tell me a thing because Mean Doctor Gene doesn’t want me upset. Doesn’t he realize that the not knowing part is what will have me upset until I get answers. I know somebody saved me. Was it one of my group? Did Jenifer make it, too? They hit me, did she catch some of that lead, too?
I WANT ANSWERS!
Sunday, May 24
I saw Jeff this morning! It was so good to know for certain that somebody else made it out. He came in a wheelchair pushed by some girl I’ve never seen before who scurried out like she was afraid I’d attack her. I mean serious gun shy stuff.
Jeff rolled up beside me and his first words were, “Still got my watch?” I waved my wrist and told him he could have it back the day he could physically take it. Then we laughed until both of us had to stop because of the pain.
He said he’d been sworn to secrecy by Doctor Gene not to say anything, but that he’d been kept in the dark, too. He only knows of one other person in our group that made it and that supposedly we were both going to be told tonight. That’s what I’m waiting for now. I’m writing...stopping every time I hear footsteps at the door.
There was something else I could see in Jeff’s eyes. Something he’s not telling me. I have no idea what it is, but I can tell. Jeff has always been an eye-contact kinda guy. You know, the one who locks gazes and doesn’t blink or flinch. After a while, you start to feel like a bug under a microscope. Well...he looked at his lap a lot in the thirty or so minutes he was in my room.
I did find out a few things. After we split, Jeff made it into the mansion through a window on the ground floor. He found a room full of children and four women who were taking care of them. He rescued seven of the nineteen children. He’d had to kill each of the women. One of them doused her body with kerosene and lit herself on fire. Apparently she’d doused several children as well.
That’s something I’ve never understood about these so-called Christians. And trust me, I got nothing against people who go to church and do the whole “Praise Jesus!” thing. It’s these fringe types. The ones who don’t believe that they can exist without building a private compound away from society. The ones who would rather burn their world to the ground and give cyanide-laced beverages to children. That’s not Christian...that’s crazy. Contrary to some beliefs, the two are not one in the same.
Voices! Footsteps!
Monday, May
25
Jenifer, Rodney, and Shandra are here! Rodney is almost scratch-free. Shandra is worse than Rodney only in that she has a sprained ankle. Jenifer is in bad shape. We all were allowed in to see her, but through a tent of some sort. Basically she’s in a bubble. She’s burned badly. Doctor Gene says almost fifty-percent of her body.
Most of the power in the Mitchell house is being used to keep things running that help Jenifer. She is in a room (Doctor Gene had some fancy name for it) where the air is constantly being blown out. It’s as germ-free as they can manage, but she is at a huge risk for infection for a while.
Here’s what I know:
She pulled me into the woods after I was shot. Jeff showed up to find her trying to bandage me and plug all the holes. For no training he’d been surprised at how well she’d done. (I think Snoe taught her some tricks way back when.) He took over and let Jenifer tell him everything that had happened. The whole time they were talking and bandaging me up, the mansion was starting to really catch. Flames were visible on the upper levels.
They were ready to move me when a five-person team came running at them. Jenifer and Jeff opened fire. These people hadn’t been running at them as much as away from the mansion. They dropped three in a hurry. The other two split and ran. Jenifer screamed a name. (I asked Jeff if it was Dominique. He was pretty sure it was.) She took off, sliding under the fence and running after the girl. Jeff didn’t want to abandon me, but he didn’t want to just let Jenifer go alone. He decided he had to get me out of there. He saw her disappear into the burning house after who we are now pretty certain was Dominique.
Shandra picked it up from there. She and Kenny were leading or carrying the children that Jeff had rescued down a trail. They were staying low because the zombies from all over were being drawn to this new beacon. Between the screams, gunfire, and flames, every zombie for miles would be converging on the mansion.
Kenny was carrying a little girl no more than two or three. Shandra had an infant in her small backpack that she’d slung in front. It was a little awkward, but doable. They got down to a service road and ran into a cluster of zombies. Up to this point, the children had been quiet. Kenny motioned for everybody to head into a thick bush across the road. They could almost slide down the hill the rest of the way to where the train tracks were located.
Then the women I’d freed showed up. The zombies were in the middle of the two groups. Shandra said that, while you couldn’t make out details clearly, the moon was bright and provided more than enough light in this little strip. Being on the road, there was no canopy of trees. One of the women screamed. Then, the children began to cry.
Things got a bit hazy after that. Zombies were coming at both groups. Shandra quickly decided that the women were on their own and ushered the children through the brush and sorta bundled them close and got them scooting down the hill. Kenny reached the bottom, shoved the little girl he was holding in his arms to Shandra, and took off back up the hill to the screams.
There are eleven women here thanks to him. The way they describe it, they were surrounded by several dozen zombies with no way out. Some had picked up branches, but most of them had been too deeply gripped with shock to react in any way other than to stumble blindly through the woods and away from the mansion.
Kenny burst from the trees screaming some sort of battle-cry. He plowed into the undead horde swinging an axe in one hand, and firing point-blank with his pistol in the other. He opened a small gap that a few of the less-terrified women slipped through. The last anybody saw of him, he was leaning over one downed, crying woman, firing up at a handful of zombies closing in. One woman swore she saw him shove the barrel of the pistol in his mouth as two of those things were tearing chunks out of him.
Shandra led the children into the tunnel and arrived to find Scott Colson sitting up. Rodney was the last to talk. He and Darla had come in from the front of the place. Together, they were efficiently dispatching the security patrols. Rodney began with the vehicles, stuffing rags into every gas tank. Darla’d likely heard all the commotion (probably us) kick up and decided to try and create a diversion. She climbed into one of the trucks and started it. Rodney turned in time to see her race past, headed right for the big house. A few yards before impact, she dove clear. Rodney said she did everything right. She hit the ground rolling, popped to her feet with a big “thumbs-up” gesture, running back towards him. Whoever was up in that window was a hell of a shot because she knew to zig-and-zag with no pattern. The bullet entered the back of her skull and blew out most of the left side of her face. He said she still had a huge grin plastered on what was left of her face—even in death. She never knew what hit her.
By then, every window of the mansion seemed to be bristling with guns. He saw flashes inside, and was lighting his second truck-bomb, when flames whooshed out one window on the right side of the mansion. He lit the other three and ran for it. He looked back to admire his work when a dark haired girl burst out the front door. He said he felt a sick feeling in his stomach. That girl was going to run right into the cluster of trucks he knew was going to blow up any second. Knowing you were responsible for collateral damage was worse if you physically witnessed it. But instead of running straight for the driveway and the quickest way out, the girl turned and bolted along the front of the house, disappearing down its left side.
Then, Jenifer emerged. He said he could tell she’d been shot. A large, dark bloom was easily visible in the light of the small fire started by Darla’s truck. Jumping up, Rodney yelled a warning. Jenifer must’ve misunderstood because she ran towards him. Then the first truck exploded.
When he got to her, he thought she was dead at first. She was lying where the blast had thrown her, still burning. All of her hair was gone. He’d wrapped her in his coat and carried her. Twice he’d had to literally shoulder past zombies. He met up with Jeff, each of them carrying a bundled up female on the edge of death. Together, they reached the mouth of the tunnel when a half-dozen men and women came running down the tracks from the direction of the amphitheater. During the brief shootout, Jeff took one bullet in the thigh, it lodged in the femur. Somehow, he still carried me the rest of the way. Doctor Gene says he shouldn’t have been able to support his own weight, much less carry me.
Jamaal and Antoine say that the mansion is gone. Burned to the ground. Zombies are everywhere. A lot of them are new. There is no way to tell how many of The Genesis Brotherhood survived. Also, it seems likely that Dominique got away. The women we rescued were all questioned about any knowledge of a fall-back location. None of them know a thing.
Figures.
Friday, May 29
While I’ve been laying here on my back, occasionally being allowed to go out of my room for a short walk or a trip to sit in the room with Jenifer, Rodney has been busy. He went on a one-man recon mission. This morning he returned.
I HATE being down like this. He spent the last three days at the mansion, or, better yet, the ruins of the mansion. He came back with news: Dominique is alive, and so are at least fifteen other members of The Genesis Brotherhood. He wouldn’t engage them when he saw them because there were simply too many.
According to Rodney, they came in early yesterday morning. Since there was a lot of residual zombie traffic, they came in with heavy firepower in the back of a freakin’ armored-car...van...whatever; those things that used to pull up and collect all the money. A trio of two-man teams came out quick with .50 cals mounted on tripods and mowed down anything moving. That was probably the real reason Rodney left them alone.
Afterwards, they sifted through things, salvaging anything they could. One thing happened that was weird or peculiar. Although, when dealing with lunatics, I don’t know if anything they do can be considered weird for them. One of their numbers got bit. They were spread out, rummaging—five women and ten men split in two-to-one groups—when it happened. The guy screamed. He came out with a bodiless head clamped onto his hand. More than likely a result from their machine
gun razing of everything. If the brain isn’t damaged, a head is a zombie-landmine.
The group converged on this man, and after dealing with the head, turned on the guy. But they didn’t kill him. They trussed him up nice, then built a cross. Yep, you guessed it, they crucified the guy. When they left, he was still screaming for them to please kill him. I’m so proud of Rodney...he left that bastard to turn and rot.
These folks aren’t too far away. The Genesis Brotherhood are now licking their wounds in a very nice house on the Portland side of the West Hills. According to Rodney, this was a house worth seven figures back in the day. It juts out of the hill on metal supports. It’s beautiful, all glass on one side so that whoever used to call it home could look down on the twinkling lights of the city at night or gaze out at Mount Hood by day. It has a brick fence around the front that is a huge arc around an overgrown, but still beautiful garden. There is a big gate that would open inward back when there was electricity.
We’ve talked at length, Rodney and I. He is fairly certain he knows where to acquire some C-4 and even some dynamite as an added bonus. He will leave in a couple days. He told me exactly where he is going. We aren’t saying a word, and I won’t say anything if asked. We both have the feeling that everybody is a little upset with all the killing lately. It’s one thing to kill zombies, but we’re engaged in an active war with living, breathing people. Strange how these feelings get twisted up for some folks. Personally, I have no problem with this. The Genesis Brotherhood needs to die.
Monday, June 1
