As the head rose, I could see a faint glow, coming from under the forehead, and I knew immediately this was no live orphan. This was a dead one and its eyes were in full bioluminescent glow. The head stopped as the eyes cleared the base of the window and it took all of my willpower not to shoot the damn thing, as it was inches from me. I knew it couldn’t see very well, as the windows were slightly tinted, and it was very dark outside, just a sliver of a moon to light the landscape. But none of this was much of a comfort if the zombie decided to make an issue of things and bring a horde of little zombies our way.
The eyes darted around for a few seconds, and I had a moment of panic when they stared down at me. I had to resist the urge to move and bring my weapon to bear, as well as resist the urge to avert my eyes.
As slowly as they had risen, the head and eyes descended, and started to move to the front of the vehicle. I breathed a low sigh of relief and quietly eased myself to a semi-sitting position. I could see over the dash and hood, and saw the little zombie walking slowly away, its little hand running over the hood of the truck. I was actually in a bit of a dilemma, as I watched it walk around the front of the truck. Do I kill it now? Or do I let it go, note the direction it took, and hope it’s part of the larger horde?
As I was contemplating this, the decision was made for me. The passenger side door was suddenly opened on the van and I could hear someone getting out. The zombie heard it, too and walked quickly around the front of the truck and in between the vehicles. If I didn’t do anything, someone was going to have a zombie on them without warning. I didn’t dare fire a shot, because the bullet would go through the zombie, then through the van. If anyone got hit, even just wounded, they were dead, because the virus would likely transfer on the bullet.
I took the easy route. When the zombie passed the driver’s side door, I opened it hard, trapping the zombie between the vehicles, waking up Sarah in the process.
“What…who?” she said sleepily.
“Nothing dear, just killing a zombie kid, go back to sleep.” My words of comfort had the exact opposite effect as the zombie scrabbled and clawed at the door, grabbing my pants as it tried to free its head from entrapment. Sarah jumped up and quickly assessed the situation.
“Hang on, I got it.” She rummaged a bit and produced my trench ‘hawk, exiting the vehicle from the opposite side and circling around the front. One spiked head later and the zombie dropped to the ground.
“You okay?” Sarah asked, checking my leg.
“Fine, very awake, too.” I stepped over the fallen Z and went to the front of the van, where I ran head-on into Charlie.
“What’s going on? I stepped out to take a piss and heard a ruckus on your side,” he said
“Killed a Z that was coming after you. She’d have been on you before you knew it.”
Charlie looked over my shoulder and winced. “Yeah, it would be hard to battle a zombie with my dick in the wind.”
I shrugged off that mental image and was about to say goodnight when the grass around our open area began that clicking sound again. Charlie and I looked around and again I had that feeling I knew what that sound was, I was just having a hard time trying to figure out what it was.
“Those bugs are persistent,” Charlie said, hitching his pants a little.
Sarah came up behind us and said, “I can’t help but think I know I’ve heard that sound before, and it wasn’t bugs.”
I had to agree. I did a quick rundown of the things we had learned about our enemy on this trip and was coming up short. Nothing we had seen was telling me this was anything else but big grasshoppers, but my instincts were screaming at me that it was something else.
I thought about the survivors of the previous expeditions, and I kept coming back to the one camp that had been attacked in the night. That thought led me to the man I had shot over in Illinois. He said some crazy stuff, like clicking and teeth. I often wondered what he had meant by that.
Suddenly it hit me, and I shouted aloud. “Teeth! Jesus!”
Sarah and Charlie looked at me like I was nuts, and I swear Charlie looked at my teeth.
“That’s what that guy in Illinois was talking about. Teeth clicking together! That’s what that sound is. Now I remember where I’ve heard it before. Remember the pit of zombie heads that was like a pond of piranhas?” I looked out over the grass and heard the clicking intensify.
Charlie and Sarah heard it as well, and just as they were about to comment, about twenty zombie kids burst from the grass, racing towards us.
Chapter 33
“Christ! Back in the trucks! Get moving!” I yelled pushing Sarah ahead of me into the truck. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Charlie had made it to his vehicle just in time. In seconds, little zombies, their hands pounding on the windows and grasping at the mirrors, surrounded us.
I yelled into the radio. “Get driving, head south towards the tracks and the silos! Stay close!”
“Got it. Nasty little things, aren’t they?” Rebecca replied. She was driving the van. The big vehicle pulled away, dragging a few of the little creatures with it, as they were pulled under the van.
I pulled away as well, pointing the truck towards the road and to relative safety. We were effectively trapped. Unless we could shake these little rats, and unless we had some serious highway to use, then we were going to have them dogging us for a while. The good news was we were relatively safe in our vehicles. The bad news was we couldn’t get out without getting swamped and killed.
I pulled through the grain elevator main area, with the van right behind me. Behind us, the zombies were running full tilt, and a glance at the speedometer told me they were good for fifteen miles an hour. I pushed it to twenty and the zombies began to fall behind. I couldn’t go much faster, since I had to go around some pretty big obstacles, but that was fast enough.
Sarah was busy next to me, setting out magazines and getting the rifles ready. I was about to turn the truck towards a building when the radio popped on.
“John! Check your six!” It was Charlie and his voice was tight.
I looked back and could see the van, but nothing else. “What the hell?” I said aloud.
“What?” asked Sarah, looking up from her work.
“They’re gone!” I was incredulous. “They’re really gone!”
“Who, Rebecca?” Sarah turned her head around and looked back. “They’re right there, silly.”
“Not them, the zombies.”
Sarah looked again. “What the hell?”
“Exactly. I’m starting to see why those communities fell so easily.” I pulled the truck into the silos by the tracks, and the van pulled alongside. Between the two of us, there was only enough room to open the doors on the driver side on the truck and the passenger side on the van. Tommy and Duncan jumped out of the van loaded for bear and I pointed them to the opposite sides of the silos. Charlie, Rebecca, Sarah and I stood in the bed of the truck, giving us a chance to talk and cover the other two.
Charlie started us off. “What the hell?”
I concurred. “No shit. I’ve never seen a zombie break off pursuit, especially when it could still see us. That’s just wrong.”
Rebecca shook her head. “It was wrong. We’re fighting these guys as if we’re still fighting the first years of the Upheaval. If these little guys have had the time for the virus to simmer for a while, then chances are it’s evolved into something we aren’t used to.”
Sarah nodded. “We’ve seen zombies that were able to learn rudimentary behavior after a lot of trial and error, and retain enough memory of the action to be able to do it again under similar circumstances. In this case, they have spent years learning and learning, and now they’re free, we’re just trying to catch up.”
I looked over at Charlie. “I guess we know who the thinkers are of this group.”
Charlie shrugged. “I know, I married up.”
“Let’s get back to the basics. What do we do?” I asked. “I’m wi
lling to admit these are the smartest zombies we’ve come across, but they are not the smartest humans ever and are still motivated by hunger and the need to survive. They can be tricked and they can be killed. We just need to make sure we do both.”
Everyone agreed, and we hopped off the truck in time to see Duncan running back to us.
“They’re coming! They aren’t running, so they may not know where we are yet,” he said, checking his weapons.
I looked over at Tommy and whistled softly. Tommy looked over and shook his head. Nothing on his side. I had a feeling, so I told Charlie, Sarah and Rebecca to go to the front with Duncan, and I was going to be in back with Tommy. Charlie looked at me funny, so I answered his question. “If these things are smart, then they might split up. If they do, we can offer a surprise from our rear.”
Sarah winked at me and took off for Duncan’s position, checking her mags as well. Charlie loosened his ‘hawks and Rebecca switched on the red dot sight on her rifle. She hopped into the bed of the truck and was going to be our backup from above should the need arise.
Chapter 34
I went back towards Tommy and took up a position next to him. He was kneeling and had his rifle trained towards the side of the silo. Spare magazines were ready and waiting on his leg. I moved a little further to his right and settled down in the same fashion. From my viewpoint, I could see just a little further. In front of me was a long set of railroad tracks that stretched out into the night. Long grass swayed slightly and bits of small stone turned over when a small gust of wind blew in from the south, stirring the area.
“Should we provoke?” Tommy asked, very quietly out of the side of his mouth.
“No, they can’t know where we are until we kill them.”
“Wish we could sneak a peek around the corner.”
“Me, too.” The hardest part of a situation like this was waiting. Most of the time it worked and we killed the Zs. Sometimes it didn’t and we had to go out and find the zombie again, sometimes surprising them as much as we were surprised.
I did know that once the ball opened up on the north side, that the zombies would be attracted to the noise, but if we left our rear unguarded, we could be wiped out in a hurry if they circled around.
Everything was silent for a few long minutes. The wind picked up a bit and rattled the roof of the silo, causing Tommy and myself to jump a little. We shook it off and waited some more.
After a few minutes, I could hear them. They were walking slowly down the long road, nearly marching in unison. I could hear the crunch of the gravel as dozens of small feet walked towards our position.
By Tommy’s stiffening posture, I could tell he was hearing it, too. We brought our rifle stocks to our cheeks and put our aperture sights on the area just next to the silo. The second anything showed up, we were going to blast it to hell.
Suddenly, the crunching gravel stopped. I looked over at Tommy and he shrugged slightly. This kind of behavior was way past what we were used to and I couldn’t help but feel we were really behind the learning curve.
My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden blast of gunfire to the north. I could hear Charlie’s rifle barking and Sarah’s as well. Duncan was holding off until he had a shot. Rebecca was probably nervous in her perch, but I knew she was steady.
The firing stopped and there was a pause. Tommy and I waited, and then I decided to see what was up. Slapping Tommy on the shoulder, I sprinted for the north and stopped by Charlie. I could see six or seven small bodies out on the parking lot and that was it.
“What’s up, are we done?” I asked.
Duncan spoke up. “There was way more than that in that group. Don’t know where they are.” Duncan looked agitated, as if we would blame him for misreporting the number of ghouls.
“They have to be out there, and if there are more, they sure know where we are now,” I said.
Charlie nodded. “Should we pull out?”
I shook my head. “No, let’s see if they try it again. We’re in a good spot and we can thin the herd if they charge.”
As I walked back towards the vehicles, I threw a wink at Rebecca, and then sprinted as I heard Tommy yell.
“John! They’re here!” His rifle punctuated his words as he fired at his targets.
I skidded to a stop next to him and didn’t bother to kneel. I fired at a glowing spot that moved quickly towards me and knocked a little zombie dead. I fired again, trying to shoot after Tommy did. He dropped three and I killed another two, killing the second barely two feet from our position.
“Getting closer,” Tommy said, dropping his magazine and replacing it with a fully loaded one. He took a few loose rounds out of his vest and refreshed the used mag.
“I know. I feel like we’re battling living people,” I said, aiming my rifle at a clump of grass across the tracks that looked like it was moving.
“That’d be easier, since we could just shoot those anywhere and put them down,” Tommy said.
I reflected for a second. “After all these years, I doubt I could shoot anything anywhere but the head.”
Tommy contemplated that one for a second. “You know, you might be right.” He looked hard for a second. “You see anything out there?”
“You mean those glowing eyes about a hundred yards out?”
“Yup.”
“Rebecca!” I called.
A quiet reply floated down to us. “I see him.” A loud crack, and a dead Z later, there was a second reply. “Got him.”
That must have been some sort of signal, because suddenly there was a rush. A dozen little zombies burst from the grass and launched themselves at us. I didn’t waste time trying to line up every shot for a kill. I just wanted to slow them down some. By the firing going on next to me, Tommy was feeling the same.
“Dammit, they’re fast!” He said, quickly switching out another magazine.
“No kidding. Got you, you little bastard!” I cracked another one in the head and his headlong rush tumbled him another five yards. A second zombie jumped over the still corpse and raced towards us. Tommy fired and put him down, and then a trio of little girls came racing around the corner. I couldn’t fire, because Tommy was right in my way.
“Your left!” I called.
Tommy swung his rifle up and just emptied his magazine at them. The bullets halted their forward progress and pushed them back, two of them being struck in the head and falling for good. The third, a girl of maybe eleven years, slowly got back to her feet. Her right arm was useless, having been shattered at the elbow by a bullet. Two more bullets tore her face, and her skin hung in ragged chunks, where a bullet had gone through her mouth. She glared at Tommy, and snarled with what was left of her mouth. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
Tommy looked at her for a minute and then shot her between the eyes, killing her on top of her friends. He looked down at the tracks in the gravel and whistled when he saw the footprints just four feet from his spot.
“Too close. Way too close,” he said.
“We got them, maybe that’s it,” I said.
No sooner had the words left my mouth than Rebecca shouted to us.
“John! Tommy! Hurry!”
Chapter 35
We ran up to the north side, taking opposite sides of the truck and van, and saw Duncan, Charlie and Sarah fighting for their lives. Sarah was kicking over a small zombie, while stabbing another in the eye. Duncan was holding off three with his sword, and Charlie was holding one by the neck while killing another with his tomahawk. In the open space to the north, I could see ten more sprinting across the parking lot towards us.
I quickly raised my rifle to fire, killing three before the rest split off and ran to the sides of the silo. Tommy killed another two on his side.
“About time!” Sarah yelled, bracing for the charge of the one she had knocked down.
“Just in time, I’d say,” I said, drawing my pistol and blowing a huge hole in the head of the zombie scrambling to get up. I fired again at one of
the zombies Duncan was dealing with, dropping him from the side.
“My thanks!” Duncan yelled. He leaped forward, swinging hard. His sword connected with a small zombie, lopping her head off. Duncan brought the blade around for another swing, this time kneeling when he struck, adding power to his swing. The long blade sliced a zombie completely in half, including the arms. The body fell in four pieces, with the severed torso struggling to use arms that suddenly had been shortened by half.
Charlie threw the struggling corpse of the zombie he was holding against the silo. It landed in a heap, but sprang up faster than it had fallen. When Charlie turned to deal with it, it was already on him. He managed to fling it off again, but not before the little zombie managed to bite him on the arm.
Charlie roared in pain and anger, and brought out his second tomahawk. The zombie boy, probably no older than seven when he originally had died, scrambled up again and charged one last time. Charlie chopped him into little nasty chunks, saving the killing blow for last.
Sarah was the first one to notice Charlie had been bitten. She touched my arm and pointed to Charlie. I stopped scanning the grass for more threats, and then waved Rebecca down. Charlie was holding his arm, staring down at the reddening wound on his forearm.
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