The far wall contained a double steel door and it was to this he quickly crossed, gently easing the right hand door open, peering first one way, then the other as he opened it all the way. Like most of the smaller radio stations, this one was no exception. The back courtyard was enclosed with a seven to eight-foot tall concrete block wall, with inset barbed wire posts at the top angled outward. Within was the huge radio tower measuring approximately sixteen feet square at its base on a concrete pad, and to his left was the emergency generator that would power the facility in cases of main power outages. He appreciated that this man Travis remained silent while they reconnoitered the area. Nothing set the evil bastards into lunch mode quicker than the sound of a human voice.
Travis silently followed the Reaper outside and both men unslung their backpacks, digging around inside after setting them on the ground. The Reaper grunted as he watched Travis pull out a small mirror attached to a telescoping rod and, stepping to the nearest wall, slide it upward until he could see over its top edge. Jason pulled his own identical mirror out and did the same to the other side, then both men approached the back of the block wall and together looked over the top of the large heavy double steel doors there. Plenty of zombies around, but none of them were giving the back enclosure a second glance. The Reaper knew they would remain safe here as long as they did not make any loud noises. He gestured again for the young man to follow him and sat down on a bench near the steel doors leading into the station. He kept his voice to a whisper as he spoke.
"We're safe as long as we don't make any loud noises. Good job back there by the way. Thanks." The Reaper paused, then pointed at the other’s rifle which was resting between his legs as he sat there, half-facing Jason. "M14 EBR?"
"Yes."
"Army? What unit?"
"Not Army. They wouldn't take me." Travis slapped his hip and thigh. "Pins from a motorcycle accident disqualified me for service. I picked up the EBR at a National Guard Armory that had been overrun, near Pittsburgh. Been heading west since. East Coast is completely overrun with these undead creatures." He then gestured at the Reaper’s rifle, which was also nestled between Jason's thighs, ready for action if needed. "Looks like an M40A1, which is what they're calling it on the CB, but I see modifications. Didn't realize they made one with a detachable magazine. I thought all those were the newer A5's?"
"Had it modified by H-S Precision. New trigger guard and machined out magazine well with titanium insert for the magazines and feed chamber." The Reaper smiled as he patted his baby. "You're a long way from home, Travis Kreuter. Where are you headed?"
"Call me Travis, Reaper, and I was looking for you."
"Me?"
"Yeah, just helping out here and there and moving west fast. I'm looking for a new home. Somewhere to make a stand, and a difference. Then I heard about you on the CB and this new Colony being set up in Michigan the other day. Word had it you were operating in north Grand Rapids, so I headed here as fast as I could drive. I’d break a car on a few dozen zombies, then grab another. You're famous dude! I want to team up with you."
"Me famous?" the Reaper shook his head. "CB you say?"
"Yeah." Travis opened his bulging backpack again, pulling a hand-held CB radio out, and handed it over. The Reaper saw the top dial was set to 9 and turned it on, keeping the volume down. Instantly chatter issued from its speaker and Jason immediately turned it off again while handing it back.
"Interesting, but I work alone. Doing the Lord’s work, Travis Kreuter. I appreciate the save earlier, but eventually the Lord will reunite me with my family." The young man grinned and shook his head at the Reaper while raising an eyebrow.
"I'll grow on you Reaper. Trust me. What are we going to do now?"
"Well if I was alone, I would climb up near the top and start sending these spawn of Satan back to their master. At night, if needed, I'll douse myself with kerosene and walk away." Jason stopped talking as he saw Travis pulling an almost identical looking quart container of what looked like kerosene out of his pack, then a commercial-looking pink nylon strap assembly. It was similar to his own but this one had "Adam & Eve" embroidered on one side. A heavy leather pad had been roughly sewn into the center, and the Reaper's eyebrows rose higher and he pointed. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Sure. Sex swing I modified to hang from towers and shoot the uglies. Nice and comfortable, although pink isn't my color." Travis winked at him and for the second time that day the Reaper smiled.
"How many rounds you got for that popgun?"
"About seven hundred give or take. You?"
"A little over five hundred for me. OK then Travis, let's make the line in purgatory a lot longer, shall we?" The Reaper pulled his own harness out and, shouldering his ammo sack, started climbing. Within minutes, both were a hundred feet off the ground and suspended between the steel uprights on the inside of the tower. The Reaper settled himself comfortably and flipped the magnetic scope covers up on his Leopold.
"First one to miss buys the beer, old man," Travis called down.
The Reaper smiled and fired his first shot, and the demon dropped with his head half gone. Seconds later Travis followed suit and another dropped, twenty meters from the first and to the west. They had decided the Reaper would shoot south and east while Travis would shoot south and west. They continued to plug away at the uglies, neither man missing in the bright mid-morning light.
*****
Chapter 2
DAY 8: 0830 ET FRIDAY NOVEMBER 11TH
Johnny leaned against the concrete block wall, resting briefly from his bi-hourly rounds along the barrier keeping the rehabilitation clinic safe from the guppies. Thank Loki they'd managed to get the decorative gates closed a week ago or they'd all be guppy food right now. Clear Haven Rehab had two large drive-through decorative entrances in the front, along with three other wide pedestrian openings, one on each of the other sides. The side entrances had proved relatively easy to close and lock but the front entrance gates had been a bitch, for they weren't ever meant to be closed. Only with tremendous effort along with the help of a couple of cars had they managed to break them free from their cement foundations and push them into closed positions. Now the entire wall surrounding the complex was lined on the inside with assorted cars, trucks, plastic gardener sheds and desks. Anything and everything was used which would allow them to see, and strike, over its eight-foot walls.
It was time to get moving, so he limped further along the roof of the mini-van he was currently standing on, and looked again out at the horde of guppies surrounding them as he rested his weight on his sword cane. There were too many too count. Every day there were more of them, and it was important to show the guppies they were being watched. The assholes were getting smarter, or showing a higher level of instinct. He was not sure which. All they really did know was that for the last four or five days they were attacked every time they left a spot of wall unguarded. The undead things waited for a moment of weakness on the clinic's part then used it, or tried to use it, to their advantage.
Now they just stood there, some shifting slightly, faces in various states of decomposition and disrepair, watching and waiting. It was depressing, and harder on the survivors because they had to have someone every twenty feet along the walls as a show of force. They had learned the hard way that anything less would invite an attack. He saw several of the kids and some adults with autism walking around on the tops of cars while clapping or beating sticks against the walls. He grinned. Anything worked, as long as the dead were kept at bay. And that they were dead was obvious. Most of those down below had grievous wounds, some even missing limbs, with the jagged ends of bones poking out where those arms and legs used to be.
He leaned harder on the cane in his right hand, taking more weight off his left side. Right about now, having cerebral palsy really sucked. Correction. Having cerebral palsy always sucked, especially now when he needed more use out of his body. He was exhausted from the past week of fighting. He was pushing hims
elf harder than he ever had in his life, while seeing friends die, and others slip into catatonic shock. There was never enough sleep with everyone demanding his attention.
Celeste had also climbed up and was following slightly behind him with her left hand resting on his right shoulder, her white cane tucked behind her belt. Over her right shoulder, an M4 Carbine was slung, and around her waist, a Katana hung in its scabbard. The M4 was Johnny's gun, and a present from a dead National Guardsman, but the Katana was all Celeste's, given to her by a one-armed vet who preferred to use his pistol along with his backup weapon, a simple crowbar. Celeste was carrying Johnny’s rifle as he had a hard time carrying it while walking, or limping as tired as he was. Besides, Celeste just wanted to be with her man and did not mind carrying the weapon for him.
A commotion up ahead made him look up. Fuck me, he thought as he saw guppies piling up against the fence, using each other's bodies to climb higher at a spot devoid of sentries. Where the fuck are my people? He groaned and slid down the windshield on his ass, then down the short hood of the van, and started running as fast as he was able toward the deserted spot.
He passed a group of a half dozen kids in the back of a large pickup. They were all between eight and fourteen or fifteen years of age, with various casts and disabilities including two with autism, but they had three huge slingshots set up on rigged tripods, using the elastic exercise bands from physical therapy. The bigger kids were pulling them back while the smaller ones and the two with autism were placing rocks in the cup holders. Little suckers were proving great shots with the decorative marble stones from the hedges. One of those babies could crush a guppy head if it hit right. Johnny saw they had already angled themselves to hit the guppies as the assholes cleared the wall. Most of the stones were hitting them hard enough to knock them backward off the wall, but it was not enough.
There were many people shouting and screaming and he saw other reinforcements coming at a run, but he was closest. Celeste had followed him off the minivan and he saw she was running to some extent with him but was drifting to the right. Hell, she was blind, after all, and it only took a second to grab her outstretched left hand, pulling her along with him. Her Katana was already drawn and held in her right hand, angled high overhead. She did not want to poke anyone by mistake. Johnny grinned slightly. What a nut she was, but he loved her. As they got closer, he dropped her hand, yelling.
"Baby. They're straight ahead. I'll be to your left about six feet away and a bit forward. If anything comes near you just whack it." Then he was twisting the head of his cane with his right hand and withdrawing the twenty-nine inch spear-tipped blade from its aluminum sheath.
"Good to know baby."
Johnny didn't need to look to know she was grinning in his direction. She loved this whole fighting side-by-side with her man, using skills she’d never dreamed would be put to the test of survival.
Time slowed down as the adrenaline hit his system, and rolling his wrist, he flipped the sheath around to use as a club and glided sideways, lunging forward while taking the first guppy in its right eye socket. The fine needle point on his cane sword easily punched through the thin bone of the eye socket, then his arm automatically jerked right and left as he let the six inches of hardened high-carbon steel inside the skull scramble its brains.
Instantly the creature dropped, but he wasn't looking at it anymore. He was eyeballing the three that took its place. “Fuck Loki,” he muttered as he lunged forward again, hitting one to his left over the head as hard as he could with the sword scabbard while simultaneously taking the one to its right in the left eye. He actually tried to hit the asshole in the right eye socket but the fucking guppies jerked so much it was hard to hit those tiny targets on the run. Both went down and he wacked the bludgeoned one twice more with the sheath until he felt the skull crack. The whole skull crack thing was another technique they had learned the hard way. Make damn sure the brains are mush or they'll get back up and eat your skinny ass.
Johnny followed Loki, a God of Asgard. After studying many different religions throughout his life he chose to follow Loki when he discovered that he is a chaos god and trickster. To Johnny this mean that Loki was also the god of evolution. His thinking was simple. You can't have growth without chaos after all and everyday is a test, Hel, every action is. If you make the wrong choice you die, and stupid does not need to breed. Hel is Loki's daughter and commands the dead. So when the dead come back to unlife Johnny figured it was all Hel. He also had no respect for the rest of the Asgard as he figured Loki is the only one still doing his job.
Johnny tried to jump backward as the third lunged at him and his left leg gave way, causing him to fall sideways. Oh, fuck, he thought as he fell. Desperately he tried to bring his sword up to bear, knowing he would probably be too late, when a long galvanized pole struck like lightning, making a noticeable U shape in the guppy’s head. Fuck yeah! Samson was here. Then a muscle-bound hand attached to an even more muscle-bound arm was gripping his jacket and pulling him to his feet. Samson was in his wheelchair, swinging a six-foot steel pole one handed like a crazy man while helping him.
"Thanks man!" Johnny told him.
"Get off your ass, fearless leader, and keep fighting. We got this one. Nobody dies this time! Semper Fi man!"
Johnny grunted and thrust forward at the next guppy to fall off the car in front of him. Samson was their rock in this place of Hel's. A double amputee and a Marine Corp veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, he was completely fearless. Christ, he had been in shit deeper than this and survived, well, minus two legs anyways. Johnny thanked Chaos for making sure Samson was here when all Hel broke loose. The man was solid and always cheerful. Before he lost his legs he had been close to six-feet tall and built like Hercules. Now he was about four-feet tall without his prosthetics and still built like Hercules. The wheelchair he rode barely slowed him down, but he claimed it was faster than walking. Half the guns they were using were from the back of his van, along with those of a few other disabled veterans in their midst. Johnny wasn't sure what it was about veterans, disabled or not, but his feeling was they felt naked without an arsenal around them. Sure had helped though, and the only reason Samson had come in seven days ago was because he was sweet on one of the nurses. Like Johnny, he had priorities and the opposite sex was right at the top of that list. He had quietly let Johnny know that having no legs had nothing to do with sexual prowess.
Further to his right, he noticed there were five bodies in front of Celeste. Bitch was very deadly with that damn Katana. Just DO NOT get too close to her when she was swinging. Hel, she got excited, and even though she had preternatural hearing, she might still take a swing at you before she realized you were a friendly. She was stepping forward carefully as her head slowly turned right and left, searching for unnatural sounds. Another guppy bounced to the ground in front of her and her Katana was instantly tracking through the air, cutting it off at the legs about two feet up, then an overhand cleave to the head as it moaned while writhing on the ground. She didn't miss when she could hear them. Then the female National Guardswoman Nelson was shouldering Johnny aside with an aluminum baseball bat in her hands, taking out the last two to get over the wall as he saw others swarming up the car to drive them back. Fuck me, close call, he thought.
"What the Hel just happened?" Johnny shouted to everyone in general. Time had finally sped up again, and he was pissed. "Why was this section left unguarded?"
"My fault, Johnny." It was Doctor Rossi. "I told them to go get breakfast and I would stay here but then one of the patients needed me so I had to leave. I forgot to get someone to take my place. I'm really sorry Johnny." His head hung and he actually did look repentant. Johnny wasn't sure though, as the doctor had issues with Johnny being in charge. Johnny would gladly have given Dr. Rossi the privilege except for one thing. The man had zero common sense and would most likely get them all killed within hours. Johnny sighed.
"Alright Doctor Rossi. I understand." He turn
ed to Samson. "Take Dr. Rossi off the rotation schedule for the barrier. Let's not make the same mistake twice."
"I already did, fearless leader!" Samson grunted with a glare at the doctor, who looked back in confusion as Samson pivoted his wheelchair and rolled away.
Johnny turned, ignoring both of them, and after placing Celeste's hand on his shoulder, limped away while lost in his own memories.
*****
DAY 8: 0845 ET FRIDAY NOVEMBER 11TH
Rosita was scared, yet happier than she had ever been in her entire life. As a first generation American and married to Miguel, an ex-Federale, they had never managed to have children of their own, which was unusual for a Mexican family where the average was four children. Now she had several. She was extremely happy about that. Of course, the children were recently adopted but who cared! In her spare time, she was starting to teach these orphans Spanish, though they were very young. It might be the end of the world but she finally felt complete. Even though she and her man had never slept apart their entire married life except for brief moments, Miguel had been more than happy to give up the queen-sized bed to her and the four children and sleep on the floor. The children were all off playing or helping the other kids in chores and she needed to get going also. She was only waiting for the soldiers to arrive, the ones that would take her to the nursery just outside town.
She smiled, thinking of her Miguel again, then looked over at Ashley asleep on the fold-out bed. Rosita was very worried about that girl. She slept like the dead and nothing could wake her, but Rosita knew Ashley was dreaming, for she could see her eyes moving under their fluttering lids. Maybe she was dreaming about that horrible father of hers. Rosita clucked her tongue in disapproval. That was one man that was getting what he deserved down in Hell. And he a man of the cloth!
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