“You are doing great, you do understand why I had you do the first crawler right?”
“I get it.” She says tersely not looking at me.
“Ok, place has been gone over but might still be stuff we can use. Look around but stay within sight of me.”
She nods and moves off to check off some shelving on the left immediately scoring a stray golf club lying on the floor. I catch it in one hand as she tosses it to me and give it a test swing. It makes a good head bashing club and we can always use more of those. I toss it back at her.
I jump behind the counter and find one of the most valuable things beside ammo there is. A true score that has a million and one uses.
Duct tape.
The whole post-apocalyptic world is basically held together with duct tape.
There is an office behind the counter and we both freeze when we hear something move behind the closed door. I hold a finger up to my lips and ease the machete out of its sheath, she is holding the golf club in one hand and the piece of rebar in the other.
Time to play America’s new favorite game show.
What the fuck is behind door number one?
CHAPTER THREE
I give the door a little kick to move the process of answering that question along a bit. Something heavy crashes into the door in response, something that is growling in a hungry sort of way.
Crap.
Now we have to decide if what we might find in the office is worth dealing with whatever flavor of undead is in there. Sounds upright so not a crawler, too big to be anything but a preteen and some of those are big and strong enough to be a handful to put down. The dust basically killed everyone who hadn’t gone through puberty yet and then reanimated them as hungry corpses which left a wide range of possible ages and sizes of zombies.
Fuck it, I didn’t come all the way down here for a rusty golf club and half a roll of duct tape.
I motion for her to move to the side and I kick the door in.
A husky male almost as tall as Joyce comes lurching through the doorway one arm dangling useless at its side. The undead were always fucking themselves up, falling down stairs and through glass windows and what not. They didn’t heal and they didn’t die, they just kept going no matter how damaged until something or someone destroyed their little brains.
It sees Joyce and goes ape shit, waving its one good arm at her and snarling as it stumbles towards her.
I take its head off with a back handed swing of the machete and before its twitching body hits the floor I am through the door and in the office.
A smaller toddler sized zombie drops like a spider onto my back from a tall bookcase as I step in and starts trying to chew its way through the shoulder of my leather jacket. I slam my back into the door way over and over again until I hear the damn things bones snapping, but it hangs on until Joyce drives the rebar spear into its head.
“Thanks. Learn from that one. I was careless you should always completely clear a room before going in. Remember that.” I told her when I caught my breath.
“I will keep that in mind.” She says dryly moving past me to start to search the room for stuff to scavenge.
I see two adult chewed up corpses in the corner, probably another set of scavengers that got fatally surprised. They each have a gun on their hip which I relieve the unlucky bastards of. Already this has been worth the risk. One of them has a nice fake bone handle bowie knife that he won’t be needing as well, that I hand to Joyce as a peace offering of sorts.
She takes it with a small smile.
We are making too much noise, time to wrap this up and be on our merry way back to what passes for home. I grab a handful of pens from coffee cup full of them on top of the gore splattered desk, Big Al is always running short of the damn things from all the lists and rosters and plans he is always making. I stuff them into one of my jackets many pockets along with a few blank sheets of paper and a handful of AA batteries from the top drawer.
“Time to go.”
She takes a quick look around and then shrugs as she slips the knife into her belt. We retrace our steps out of the place and she grabs the golf club on the way.
Right away she needs to use it, two medium sized zombies in such poor condition that they can barely lurch towards us are right outside the door of the pawn shop she swings the club in a smooth arc and shatters the first one’s skull with a meaty sounding smack. I split the second one’s head open with the machete and we are moving away following the wall of the building back to an alley I hope will be a short cut of sorts.
It isn’t.
A mob of at least ten assorted ghouls are waiting just around the corner, too many to do the quiet way. This could go south very damn quickly. They have already seen us and they let out a collective howl at the tasty sight of us. I come to a snap decision.
“Guns!” I bark as I pull out the twenty two magnum revolver just in time to double tap the first fastest one in the head.
She misses with her first shot completely and puts one into the leg of the next. Either she improves a lot in the next few seconds or we are in a shit load of trouble.
My next two shots drop two of the little fucks, which still leaves way too many of the damn things.
Joyce picks up on the fact that her current learning curve is a life or death sort of deal and gets it together, she snaps off six quick shots that all have the desired effect. Six of the beasts drop and I use the last two rounds in my revolver on the last one.
We are alive but that was a hell of a lot of noise, if we are going to stay that way we got to get the hell out here. Already two crawlers are following us from a nearby gutter so we put the guns away, she picks up the golf club she dropped to draw her gun and we run.
I run with the machete in my hand towards the burned out shell of what used to be a popular greasy spoon breakfast spot. We need a place to hunker down and stay out of sight long enough for the zombies to lose interest, they have short attention spans and hopefully something else will catch their attention. Out of sight and smell usually means out of mind for the damn things. Neither of us is bleeding, zombies can smell blood like sharks can, I don’t even have to ask if she is on her period cause I know Big Al wouldn’t have sent her out if she was.
Inside reeks of smoke and rotted garbage which should cover up the yummy smell of us just fine. I drop to the floor near the rear wall and she drops down next to me gasping hard trying to catch her breath.
That had been really fucking close.
All in all one hell of a first time out for the girl.
Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and all that bullshit.
By that particular theory we should, all of us survivors, be freaking superman by now.
We stay perfectly still and silent, we can hear them rooting around in the streets outside making the high pitched shrieks and snarls they go into when they are excited by the hunt. As we listen the sounds gradually move away from us, not anywhere fast enough for comfort but moving away just the damn same. Just to be sure we sit tight for a bit longer in a tense silence, weapons at the ready, praying we won’t need to use them.
I stand slowly up and motion for her to do the same and I chance a quick look through a shattered window into the street. All clear for the moment so we take a moment to reload and prepare to move out.
A sudden scuffling noise comes from somewhere behind us and we both spin around ready to kill whatever it is.
Joyce holds a finger to her lips and points at a large cupboard against the wall, some kind of big wardrobe sort of thing. As we stand there another scuttling sort of noise comes from it.
We are not alone.
One idea is to simply blast whatever is in there through the closed door but the noise will just bring more of the fucks down on us. Another idea is simply be on our way and leave well enough alone, I hate that idea. I never let the chance to kill one of these things go by if I can help it, unless like early we are outnumbered and a fight makes no sense
. Everyone that we kill is one less to deal with in the future. Big Al says that we are fighting a war of attrition, there are only so many of the little fiends out there and no more are being created. Problem is, they are such efficient killing machines that they far outnumber the living now.
We have a lot of catching up to do.
I am more than willing to kill my share.
“Open the door and get the hell out of the way” I tell Joyce in a grim whisper as I put the machete away and pull the baseball bat out.
She nods and walks slowly and quietly up to the wardrobe and stands slightly to one side with her hand on the handle of the door.
I nod at her and get ready to swing the bat at whatever hellish thing gets ready to charge me.
Moving fast she jerks the door open and slides to the side bringing the piece of rebar up and holding it at the ready.
A little blonde girl with huge blue eyes looks out at us, she is filthy and bedraggled and painfully thin.
“Please don’t hurt me.” She says in a tiny voice.
A tiny living human child’s voice.
CHAPTER FOUR
We have a very limited amounts of walkie talkies that we bring on runs, they don’t work very well and we are always low on batteries for them but we carry them for emergencies.
Joyce and I just found the only living child anyone has seen since the day the dust fell, pretty fucking sure that this qualifies as an emergency.
“Listen up whoever is on duty, this is Jake on the pawn shop run with the newbie. We are coming in hot, loud and dirty and we will need the snipers to help bring us in. We have a survivor, repeat we have a survivor. Have Big Al at the door when we get there, he is going to want to see this.” I hissed into the walkie talkie.
“You’ve brought in survivors before Jake, hell we all have what’s the big deal?” A thin nasally voice on the other end demands.
“Shut up and have him there, this one is….different. Repeat coming in hot dirty and loud be ready.” I snap at him and then put the walkie talkie away.
I can barely wrap my damn head around it, Looking over I see Joyce holding the child in her arms and murmuring comforting noises into its, her ear and I know that I am not hallucinating but I have trouble believing my own eyes. This brings up a thousand questions that we can’t deal with right now. Right now our job is to get the child back to the safety of our barricaded building and then worry about answers.
We are burning daylight and I don’t want to do a slow creep back and risk traveling during darkness. No, fuck that. Like I told the idiot on the other end of the line, we will do this hot, loud and dirty.
She will be carrying the child so this pretty much is going to be my show. I make sure all of my guns are fully loaded and stuff the two extra ones in the waist band of my pants. I have the 45 in one hand and the small bore revolver in the other as we step out of the building.
Joyce is cradling the child with one arm, the little girl’s head resting on her shoulder. She has the gun Big Al gave her in the other hand, she has had to ditch the rebar and golf club so the gun is all she has except for the knife in her belt.
Oh yeah this is going to be fun.
Game face on.
“Stay close, this is going to get interesting.”
And we move out. We are going right down the road directly to the building, one straight line as the crow flies, what could possibly go wrong?
Three blocks down the road we find out.
Five zombies come out of a filth choked alley to our left and I don’t let them get any closer, without breaking stride I put them all down. I start with the revolver because it is marginally quieter than the 45.
Joyce pops a couple of bigger undead and the little girl has her face buried in her shoulder now, but at least she isn’t screaming. That would be like carrying a screeching car alarm down the street.
I put the nearly empty revolver away and draw one of the guns I scavenged in the pawnshop office clicking off the safety. It is a cheap piece of crap but I am putting holes in zombie’s heads at close range, not shooting the wings off of butterflies at fifty yards.
We make it a couple of blocks without trouble, well almost without trouble. I end up kicking a couple of crawlers out of our path as we go, deciding speed is more important than stopping to kill them. I can see our building now but it is nowhere near enough for me to feel good about that yet.
“Pick it up!” I bark at Joyce and bless her she does. A toddler sized ghoul comes scuttling at us like a rotting crab and she lets it get way too close before shooting it. She has been a trooper during this little outing but she is still green, hopefully we all live long enough to continue her education.
A rabble of undead come lurching out of three different alleys and are now blocking our path, there are at least a dozen of them. Make that two dozen with more coming.
Things are going to get messy.
I start firing into the crowd as quickly as I can, we have no choice but to keep moving towards the little fucks as I fire. We have to get back to the building one way or the bloodier.
Zombies are dropping, but just not fast enough. For each one I take down it seems two or three more come from somewhere to take its place.
That is the bad news.
Worse news, I am rapidly running out of bullets.
Joyce fires at a couple of the fasters ones coming at us and they go down but I then hear the unhappy sound of her gun going empty and locking back. She uses it to club one of the little bastards away from her and the child.
There is a large male screeching at me as it comes waving, reaching for me with its scrawny arms and I raise the 45 just in time to hear the thing go click instead of boom.
I hate it when that happens.
Before I have time to panic the things head explodes splattering me with slimy gore. I then hear the crack of rifle fire that can only be coming from the roof of our building.
In the next few seconds lots of zombies lose their fucking heads in the same way and Joyce sees it before I do.
“They are clearing us a path!” She yells and I instantly see that she is right. I draw the bat and we smash our way down the trail they are making for us. Joyce stays right behind me as we go.
Zombie brains are splattering us as we go but we are making it, the sniper fire is almost continuous now and that and the meaty smacking sounds I am making with the bat are pretty much all that I can hear right now. A couple of ghouls get their hands on us but we are pretty much covered in tough leather so their nails and teeth sort of slide off of us long enough for me to deal with them with the bat or for them to step in the way of a high velocity bullet.
The little girl is screaming now, not that it matters much, don’t think we could be drawing much more attention right now if we tried. We get within a half block or so of the entrance we came out of, what seems like a bloody eternity ago. The doors burst open and a half dozen or so of our guys come out with shotguns and AK-47s and kill enough of them that the only thing left to do is for them to escort us all quickly in and lock the doors behind us.
Before we can catch our breath though, we have new problems.
Every single person in the entry bay is holding a gun.
Every single gun is pointed at us.
Including Big Al himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Have you lost your fucking mind?! Bringing one of them in here with us? What the fuck Jake?” He bellows at me as he cocks the hammer of the Desert Eagle .50 caliber hand cannon he carries.
“She is alive! She isn’t a zombie, she has a pulse, she is breathing and she talked to us.” Joyce says calmly in a loud voice turning away from the mob and shielding the child with her body.
“We found her hiding in a closet boss, I swear to God she is alive.” I tell him holding my hands up and not making any sudden moves.
There is a stunned silence in the room. Nobody here has seen a living child since the day that the dust fell. What used to be beloved c
hildren are now nightmare creatures that exist only to feed on us and we have steeled ourselves to see them as such, so that we can kill them without hesitation.
The silence is tense and everyone still has their guns out and pointed at us, I find myself holding my breath because this could go either way really easy. I lock my eyes with Big Al’s and I don’t fucking blink.
Slowly he lowers his gun and after a couple of heartbeats everyone else follows suits. Joyce slowly turns around and shows the crowded room the little girl they wanted to riddle with bullets, who stares back at them with frightened eyes. She is sobbing softly and I think that is what helps turn the tide.
Zombies don’t cry.
“Joyce bring her down to the doc and have him check her out, she is confined to the infirmary under guard until further notice. The infirmary is off limits to all non-required personnel effective immediately. Keep it cool people, we’ve all seen freaky shit before.” Big Al barks out orders and as always they are instinctively obeyed.
Four armed men fall in around Joyce and the child and they escort her out of the entry bay past a lot of shocked and mumbling people.
He points at me with a finger the size of a cigar and I remember to start breathing again.
“You! In my office now.” His tone as always doesn’t invite a lot of debate or discussion so even though I am bone tired and covered in zombie slime and gore I nod at him and start making my way through the crowd.
Some are slow to get out of my way, just staring at me like I have grown a third head or something, but in the end the crowd parts and I make it to the big man’s office.
“Shed the gear outside, you stink.” He tells me flatly as he goes in before me and sits down behind the slab of plywood resting on two piles of concrete blocks that serves as his desk.
Zombie Extinction Event (Book 1): Suffer The Little Children Page 2
