Thunder and Ashes

by Z. A. Recht

  Sherman looked over his shoulder at the town’s main street, with its storefronts and supply houses. “Got any place that sells bleach?”

  “Yeah, the hardware store and the market, both,” Keaton said, still looking down at his feet with wide eyes. Next to him, one of the deputies was stepping gingerly from foot to foot as if trying to minimize his contact with the bloodied footwear.

  “Get some. A couple gallons. And a bucket. Oh, and a hose,” Sherman said. “We’ll need all of that. Going to have to decontaminate you all.”

  “Sheriff!” came Wes’ cry from the guard tower. “The shamblers are getting right up on us!”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Keaton cursed. He felt like he should be up in the tower helping guide the defenders, but he knew he had to take care of the infected blood first.

  “I’ve got this,” Sherman said, clapping Keaton on the shoulder. “You make sure you get a nice bleach scrub-down. Hose yourself off afterwards, then get back on the line.”

  “All right, Sherman. I’m trusting you on this one,” Keaton said, nodding.

  “Give ‘em hell, sir,” Thomas added, following Keaton as he led the way to the supply store.

  Across town, Jack and Krueger sat behind their cover—a three foot tall, long brick wall that divided one house’s lot from its neighbor’s—and they were feeling very left out.

  They’d heard the shots echoing across the town and figured that the main attack was underway at the town’s entrance. They tried to call on the radio to get a SitRep, but the men over there were either too busy firing to answer or hadn’t heard the radio call at all.

  “This is useless,” Jack moaned, leaning his head back against the brick wall. “We could be over there doing some good, but instead, they’ve got us on rear guard duty. Do you know who gets rear guard duty? The inept guy who never gets anything done right.”

  “Inept? Look, I’m no Narcissus, but I’m a damn good shot. They could be using me over there right now,” Krueger complained. He shook his head in frustration.

  Across the narrow street, taking cover behind a row of boxwoods, Mbutu and Denton disagreed, and let them know it.

  “I’m just glad I’m not being shot at,” Denton stage-whispered across the street. “Or being looked at like lunch, for that matter.”

  “I agree with Mr. Denton,” Mbutu said, nodding slowly. “It is better to avoid the fighting if we can. I do not mind being at the ‘rear of the line,’ as you call it.”

  “But we’re useless here,” Jack countered. “Just a bunch of civvies taking up space—”

  The conversation suddenly cut off as a loud rustle and snap of a branch from the direction of the woods caught their attention.

  The line of defenders shifted nervously, their equipment making the barest of rattles as it clinked off of belts and buttons.

  Krueger peered around the edge of the brick wall, eyes darting left and right as he tried to identify the source of the unexplained noise. He saw a grouping of shrubs rustle near the border of the town. He held up a restraining hand for the defenders to see.

  “What is—” Jack started to ask.

  Krueger cut him off. “Don’t know. Might be a deer. Might not. Hold on.”

  The shrubs rustled again, and out of them appeared a man dressed from head to toe in woodland camouflage, wielding an AK-47. He waved his hand, and behind him, the forest rustled and snapped as more men appeared from behind trees and out of gullies. They were all armed, and all were moving as quietly as they could manage.

  Krueger narrowed his eyes. This was why they’d been sent to guard the rear. Sherman must have suspected such an attack. They weren’t the inept and the inexperienced. They were suddenly the vanguard.

  Krueger picked up his radio and prayed that there was someone left at the main gates to hear his transmission.

  “Krueger here, on station at the rear of the town. We have enemy contact, repeat, we have enemy contact. Do we engage or observe, over?”

  He waited a moment. Only static answered him. He picked up the radio to repeat the request when a burst of static came over the radio and Sherman’s voice came through, quiet but clear.

  “Engage. Out.”

  Krueger nodded to himself, flicked the safety to his rifle off, and took aim. He looked left and right at the defenders and pantomimed shooting with his thumb and forefinger. Silent replies filtered in—a nod here, a thumbs-up there—and weapons were readied.

  The first of the raiders reached the fence and knelt, pulling a pair of wire cutters from his pocket. Krueger swallowed as he watched the man work, flashing back to the night before when he had been the one cutting his way through a chain link fence on his way to mete out death and destruction. There hadn’t been a sniper watching him then. His good luck.

  As for the man he was staring at through his sights, well, Lady Luck just wasn’t with him, it seemed. Krueger took the first shot of the engagement, killing the man with the wire cutters with a well-aimed round through the throat.

  Gunfire immediately erupted from both sides. Defenders revealed themselves, popping up from behind their cover or leaning around the sides of trees and houses, and attackers rushed out of the treeline, weapons blazing.

  Bullets tore into the brick wall, and bits and chunks of brick and cement sprayed up into Jack’s face as he fired. He grunted in pain, dropping back down behind the wall and holding his hands to his eyes.

  “I can’t see! I can’t see!” he cried out.

  “Just stay down!” Krueger shouted above the gunfire. He took careful aim at an enemy rifleman who was lying next to a tree and sent a bullet through the man’s head. The enemy jerked as the round hit him, then lay still.

  Mbutu and Denton were taking turns rising up from behind the line of boxwoods, putting loads of ammunition downrange. They weren’t hitting much, but they were causing the enemy to keep their heads down. The rest of the defenders were full of fighting spirit as well, having overcome the initial shock of contact. Rounds rained down on both sides.

  A sudden metallic clang rang out and Denton dropped his rifle with a curse, shaking his hands in pain. A bullet had struck the weapon dead-on, shattering the chamber and shocking Denton’s hands into numbness. He tried to fight off the pins-and-needles feeling as he fumbled for his backup pistol.

  One of the attackers was hit at the top of the forested rise. He screamed, clutching at his shoulder, and spun to the ground. When he hit, he rolled, bouncing off of rocks and tree trunks until he came to a stop next to the chain link fence.

  A defender took a bullet to the face when he jumped up from behind his cover to lay down fire. The back of his skull exploded outward and the man slumped forward over the wall, arms hanging limply.

  Krueger saw the man die out of the corner of his eye and murmured a string of expletives, narrowing his eyes and sighting in on the nearest attacker, a man trying to set up an M-249 at the edge of a drainage ditch. Krueger fired, and the man fell over the weapon. “That’ll teach you.”

  Machinegun fire suddenly erupted from the treeline, peppering the brick wall with dozens of rounds in rapid succession. The defenders lined up there dove for cover, huddling behind the bricks as powderized concrete filled the air around them.

  “Machine guns!” Denton yelled. “The motherfuckers have machine guns!”

  “I fucking noticed!” Krueger crowed over the gunfire. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “I see it!” Mbutu cried out. “Behind the tall tree!”

  Krueger braved the fusillade and leaned back out from behind his cover, staring through his scope. When he put his eye to the magnifying lens, it was as if the battle narrowed down to just what he could see framed there. The sound, the chaos, all of it evaporated. There was no world. There was no battle. There was only Krueger, his crosshairs, and whatever they happened to fall upon.

  Krueger scanned the treeline, letting the crosshairs drift over riflemen and pistoleers, searching for the machine-gunner. He found him exactly
where Mbutu had said, perched at the top of the rise half-hidden behind the base of a towering oak. He was busy firing another M-249. Krueger sighted in, steadied his breathing, and fired. The round nearly missed, flying just a bit too high. Instead of hitting dead-on, the bullet tore off the top of the man’s skull, spraying brain matter and bone fragments into the air behind him. The machine-gun fire ceased at once.

  The defenders, noting the sudden decrease in incoming fire, resumed their attack, popping up to send rounds off at the attackers and dropping back down to reload or take cover when rounds came their way.

  “Is this the kind of fun you were hoping for?!” Denton shouted across the street.

  Jack, still clutching at his eyes, answered back: “Everything except the pain part, yeah!”

  Across town, the main gates were once again under attack. The shamblers had reached the town and were on their final approach toward the half-ruined fence. Already rifle shots were ringing out, but these came only from the best marksmen the town had. They didn’t have infinite ammo, and, though the shamblers were slower than their cousins, only a precise head shot would drop them. Anything else was a waste of ammunition.

  General Sherman was solidly in charge, barking orders that the townsfolk, perfect strangers to him a mere twenty-four hours previously, followed without question. His commanding presence allowed the townsfolk to work as a mostly cohesive unit, responding to threats as they appeared.

  “You there!” Sherman shouted from one of the guard towers. He was gesturing wildly at one of the riflemen in the opposite tower. “Drop that shambler in the red shirt! Yes, that one! He’s breaking off from the main group, and we don’t want him circling around to give us grief later! Willis, concentrate on the ones heading for the damaged fence section!”

  Below, volunteers were busy shoring up the damaged fence. They’d taken spools of wire and were busily cutting them into lengths, then re-tying the chain link fence to the posts that held it upright. One man wielded an acetylene torch, melting the hurried wiring together. The repairs were slapdash, but they looked to be effective. As the first shamblers came within arm’s reach of the fenceline, Sherman belted out more orders.

  “Repair crews, back away from that fence! Any of you with pistols, up front! Drop those shamblers!”

  The men and women with the spools of wire hurriedly moved away from the combat zone. The welder snapped off his torch and raised his facemask, giving Sherman a wave. Sherman realized it was Jose, the mechanic, and gave the man a curt nod of recognition before turning back to survey the battlefield. About a dozen and a half of the shamblers had moved en masse toward the weakened section of the chainlink fence, stepping over the bodies of their sprinter cousins, and began to pull and push on the mesh once more.

  Defenders stepped up to the line, firing pistols into the mass of shamblers. Three of the infected dropped backward immediately, bullet wounds in their heads. Others were near misses, with sprays of brackish, coagulated blood flying out of torn throats or shoulders. In the field, another shambler went down after a neat shot by Deputy Willis.

  “Keep firing on those shamblers by the fence!” Sherman shouted down. “Keep it up!”

  The defenders were willing, but not entirely able. None were trained marksmen, and most of them unconsciously took steps backward from the fenceline, driven away by the stench and appearance of the decaying shamblers. Their pistol shots were going wild, and although another shambler dropped dead, the remainder stayed on their feet, absorbing near misses and not reacting at all to the sound of rounds whizzing by their ears. The pulling and pushing on the fence intensified, and the makeshift welds began to snap, one after the other.

  “Damn it, put those shamblers down!” Sherman screamed, watching as the fence began to come loose. He yanked free his own weapon and fired down into the mass of undead. One of his bullets struck home, punching through the top of a carrier’s skull and exiting from under the creature’s chin. It fell to its knees and slumped against the fence.

  With a rending screech, the last of the makeshift welds popped free and the entire section of chainlink fence came crashing inward. Defenders backpedaled as the fence toppled toward them. Even so, three were caught underneath as the fence hit the ground. They tried to pull themselves free, but the weight of the shamblers stepping through the breach onto the chainlink kept them pinned. The shamblers slowed as they advanced and fell to their knees around the pinned defenders, reaching through the links to grab at them. The screams of the trapped men and women were heart-wrenching.

  “Get back in there!” Sherman shouted, pointing at the swiftly retreating townsfolk. “Fill in that hole! Don’t let them wander loose! Cut them down, damn it!”

  It was no use. The townsfolk had seen their line breached, their friends trapped and devoured, and had cut and run for the safety of their own homes. Sherman’s pistoleers had abandoned their line. He breathed a curse.

  “Willis!” Sherman said, spinning in place to face the deputy, who was still taking careful potshots at shamblers on approach in the field below.

  “Yeah?”

  “Shift your fire! We need to kill the ones that’ve breached the line or they’ll wander off into town and then we’ll have a real hunt on our hands!” Sherman punctuated the order by unloading the remainder of his clip into the carriers below, to little effect.

  Deputy Willis shouldered Sherman out of the way, rested his rifle on the edge of the tower, and began firing into the shamblers. His more accurate shooting had the immediate effect of dropping the lead shambler, who was just making its way into a nearby yard. The remainder of the shamblers that had breached the line numbered around eight, and Sherman didn’t want a single one to get lost in the streets of Abraham.

  Halfway down main street, Sheriff Keaton and Thomas were busily decontaminating themselves. They’d dragged a metal trough into the street and had filled it halfway with water and copious amounts of bleach. The fumes rising up off the concoction made their eyes water and mouths itch.

  “All right, I guess I’m first,” Keaton said. He took a deep breath, held it, and jumped into the two-foot deep pool of bleach. He hurriedly splashed the mixture on his arms and legs, leaving his bloodstained shoes on to absorb as much of the virus-killing bleach as possible. Just as fast, he jumped back out. Already his bare arms and neck were turning red from exposure to the bleach—they had poured gallons of the stuff into the water. They hadn’t been sure how much would have been enough, and it was always better to err on the side of caution.

  “Come on, come on,” Keaton said, raising his arms above his head. “Wash it off! Wash it off! The damn stuff burns!”

  Thomas was happy to oblige. He held in his hands a well-fed garden hose with a spray nozzle on the end. The old sergeant almost seemed to grin with sadistic pleasure as he twisted the nozzle, sending a spray of icy-cold water all over the sheriff. Keaton took it like a man, gritting his teeth and turning in a slow circle as Thomas hosed him down. When the sergeant had finished, the sheriff stood, sopping wet in the middle of the road, all traces of infected blood gone from his person. He was shivering, and looked miserable. Thomas looked over the shoulder of the sheriff to the three deputies who were all waiting their turns.

  “All right, who’s next?” Thomas asked.

  The deputies looked at the miserable sheriff, over to the enthusiastic Sergeant Major with the garden hose in his hand, down to the trough of bleach, and back at one another. They seemed unwilling to go through the same process their leader had.

  “It’s either this or I get to shoot you as an infected,” Thomas added, his malicious grin fading into a deadly serious expression.

  Two of the deputies immediately jumped into the trough, fighting over which one of them would get to wash themselves off first.

  In the distance, shots echoed from the rear of town. Keaton, who had taken a seat on the curb and was trying to warm himself up by vigorously rubbing his arms, leapt to his feet. He stared off in the directio
n of the gunfire.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered. “Sherman was right. There’s an attack coming from behind!”

  “Give it three minutes, Sheriff, and we’ll all be back in fighting shape,” Thomas said, opening up the hose on the two newly decontaminated deputies. They grimaced and held up their hands against the blast of freezing water.

  Keaton picked up his rifle, impatiently pacing back and forth behind Thomas. He wanted to get back to the conflict as soon as possible.

  More shots rang out—this time coming from the direction of the main gates.

  “God damn it!” Keaton yelled. “Now we’ve got a fight on two fronts at once!”

  “Sherman’s at the gates, Sheriff,” Thomas reminded him. “He’ll keep things under control.”

  “Ah, fuck this waiting!” Keaton snarled. He took off at a flat-out run toward the main gates, praying that the fighting at the rear of the town would go well enough without reinforcements. The sheriff’s feet pounded pavement, and a million and one grisly situations played out in his head. In one version, he saw his town overrun by the carriers, his friends and neighbors among their ranks, wandering the streets in a mindless search for prey. In another, he saw the raiders standing over the bodies of himself and his friends, burning the town, looting and pillaging. None of the fantasies ended well.

  Keaton could see the tops of the guard towers as he neared the main gates, and passed a pair of townsfolk running in the opposite direction, still clutching their weapons. Keaton skidded to a halt, turning to yell after them.

  “Hey! Hey! Where are you going? What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get back on the line!” Keaton’s orders were all in vain; the townsfolk had seen enough and were in a full retreat. Nothing he said even slowed them down. He cursed, turned, and resumed his run. Only a block separated him from the fighting.

  Keaton came sprinting around the corner and nearly collided with a shambler, only a few feet in front of him. It was a nasty specimen. The lower half of its jaw had been torn off and its chest was cratered and pockmarked with bullet holes, exposing decaying organs and fragments of ribcage. Keaton recoiled, fighting back his gag reflex as the thing’s stench washed over him. He recovered himself, raised his rifle, and fired a shot that punched a hole neatly through the shambler’s left eye socket. As it fell, the rest of the battlefield was revealed to Keaton, and the sight wasn’t a good one.