by Alexa Dare
Black smoke shot from under the abandoned truck’s hood. The explosion of the gas tank rocked the truck’s chassis. Shoved open, the hood smacked the windshield. Doors and other metal pieces and parts flew outward.
The open hood ripped off and slammed the left tree-sized metal gatepost.
The post tilted inward and the gate’s top canted inward.
Fire, yellow, orange, blue, white, eager and hungry devoured the damaged truck and set the nearby feeding zombie pack aflame.
Falling debris pelted the tank and rained from the sky to splat over the Inn’s bright green recently mowed lawn.
In the extra-hot warmth, the gate rocked and swayed as if made of rubber.
“Crap. Double crap, and triple crap.”
Heat from outside battled Abe’s fever within the tank. He gripped the tank’s gearshift and yanked. With a jolt, he reversed down the drive.
A thump and a clang sounded overhead.
On the gate’s other side, zombies writhed and burned. None of them had breached the fence. At least not yet.
From the upper hull, a knock pounded against the metal.
“We’ve got to bolster the gate,” Brody yelled. He turned the creaking latch and pulled open the hatch.
“The fence. I was ticked off. The flame-thrower fire and the heat from burning truck overheated the iron. We’re screwed.”
Brody lowered himself into the metal cocoon and pulled the hatch closed behind him. “Merv said to drive the tank up to the fence and push the gate upright. Park it there.”
Abe shifted into drive but stomped the brake harder. “The fire seems to be killing some of them.”
“The one they shot in the head didn’t get up.” Brody, the bruise-smudged outer rims of his eyes stretched wide, ducked to look out the peepholes. “Looks like the ones where the upper parts of their bodies burned aren’t moving.”
Two of the zombies—a nearly skeletal bleached looking one, most likely someone from the barge crew and a big-bellied man with his cheeks and one eye gouged out–writhed and crawled along the driveway. The lower bodies burned, while their upper continued to move.
“They ate the militia-type guy,” Abe’s voice shook as he worked to slow his breaths.
Brody peered out the front peepholes. “Something about the whole zombie thing is off.”
Something inside Abe snuffed out like a candle flame. “Like too easy.”
“Yep.” Brody patted Abe’s shoulder. “This place is too overheated and closed in for my taste. Let’s do this and get back to the others.”
Abe shoved his foot so hard on the brake his knee shook from the pressure. “I screwed up.”
“Welcome to the world-class screw-up club.” Brody tapped his index finger to his forehead in a lame salute. “I’m a platinum member.”
The two of them chuckled and the jittery tightness in Abe’s chest and belly eased. He drove the tank over a piece of shattered windshield, wiper blades, scattered motor parts, and a door.
A loud pop banged the hull’s side, then a hit slammed against the metal of the plated-armor shell in a huge bang.
The tank’s steering levers jerked in Abe’s hand. The right pulled out of his grip and the vehicle veered hard to the side.
“Shut it down.” Up and out of the hatch, Brody’s backlit somber expression peered back down into the hull. “The track link broke. Man, this ride’s going nowhere fast.”
Shock blasted through Abe worse than the tank’s vibrating motion ever had. “That must’ve been what Merv said needed to be repaired. We can fix it right?”
“Don’t know. Uncle Merv might.”
Outside the tank, Abe scampered over the hull.
The metal plates of the right track curled on the ground like a giant snake asleep in the morning sun.
Gunpowder and machine oil bristling in Abe’s hair blew away in the breeze carrying the stench of burning rubber and blazing zombies .
Brody and Abe climbed down and ran across the gently sloping yard to the columned front porch.
“Not good, guys.” Hannah stood in the crack of the barely opened front door.
“Understatement.” Brody shook his head.
Once inside the big, fancy house, Abe, close to sickened by the bacon and egg smells, grunted, “No duh.”
“Get a move on boys,” Merv called out. “We’re heading out.”
“You can fix our tank, right?” Doubt burned hot and low to squirm in Abe’s guts.
“The track’s metal plates weigh close to a hundred pounds apiece. The bolts needed tightening and were in need of Brody’s soldering, but now there’s no going back.”
“Maybe we could rig something,” Abe said. “Uh, maybe, uh, Brody could come up with a way to wrench the tracks in place somehow.”
“There might be a way.” Brody tapped his finger to his chin. “A horse and a pulley system might—”
“No time, and I got a better use for the horses. Come on.” Merv shoved a slice of bread into his mouth as he crammed loaves and packages of giant muffins into a grocery tote bag.
“I meant to scare the name-callers off.” Dizziness from his fever rushed in swirls behind Abe’s eyes, making standing difficult, if not plain old impossible. Unsteady, he held on to the carved wooden ball of the stair’s front-post banister. Queasy lurches flip-flopped in his belly. He gulped. “I only wanted to help.”
“You screwed up, big time.” Hannah pursed her face so that even the tip of her nose narrowed and pointed accusingly at Abe.
“What’s done is done.” Passing the bag to Irene, Merv combed his fingers through the bushy scraggle of his chest-wide brown beard. “You fellows haul in the rest of the supplies from the tank. Ladies, let’s pack up as much grub and as many supplies as we can carry on the way out the door. I’ll see about breaking into Colonel Dorsey’s gun safe. We’re going to need as many guns and as much ammo as those horses can haul.”
“But I like it here. A lot.” Darcy Lynn frowned a little-girl-wronged pout. “The French toast was the bestest. Can we take the chocolate chips?”
“All you can carry. How’s that sound?” Irene crammed food supplies into a duffle bag.
In less than ten-minutes, on the run between the inn and the barn, Abe glanced over his shoulder.
Out at the driveway, the two leftovers growled and clawed their way toward the partway fallen gate. Although their bottom halves were burned and charred, their upper bodies remained moving and undead.
“Wait up.” Abe eased toward the front of the house. He stared.
Their drawn-up lips revealed bruised gums and blood-soaked teeth. They sniffed, and, as they crawled, dragged their lower bodies. One gnawed his own blackened tongue, so that blackish liquid dripped over his chin to join smears of blood.
“Burn.” Abe aimed his gaze.
Both zombies’ heads caught fire. Their heads, like the exploding truck, blew apart.
Bits of fractured bone and chunks of brain spewed, and the two wilted against the hard-packed gravel. Covered with low sizzling flames and soot, the zombies lay unmoving.
A rising breeze whipped the blaze and lifted the black road kill-tainted smoke to blend with the clouds.
“Another storm’s coming.” Abe eyed the roll of the gray sky.
“Figures,” Hannah dragged an old-fashioned suitcase that clunked with pots and pans along the ground.
Brody handed Abe a backpack and a duffle, while he himself dragged a human-body sized duffle toward the barn.
Step by step, Abe’s fever shot from simmer to high broil in three seconds flat. Ahead, the wood-planked double doors stretched farther and farther away.
His sister turned. Her mouth opened and muffled noises blobbed in Abe’s ears.
Thanks to Hannah, cool mist dusted his skin.
He glanced back.
More zombies shuffled between trees and into the road, lurching in the inn’s direction.
As if herding cattle, the SUV and van from before edged along b
ehind the herd.
Shots blasted away the quiet of the morning.
The undead dropped dead in a driveway where the ruined iron-barred gate would no longer keep the zombies, locals, or militia guys at bay .
His fault.
Abe gripped the backpack a small duffle and trotted to the barn as blame burned, like churning lava, deep in his gut.
Chapter 19
Between the four-columned mansion that served as an ultra-protected Mountain Springs Bed & Breakfast Inn and a red-painted barn built more sturdy than most folk’s houses hereabouts, Brody tugged the heavy duffle bag full of blanket-padded rifles, handguns, and assorted ammunition in aching pulls.
Leaving the maple syrup, bacony hominess of the house, he followed the others and headed toward a barn ripe with hay and horse poop aromas.
Uncle Merv didn’t plan to go unarmed. Smart man, especially with locals outright out-of-their-minds, panicked folks, Yates’ whacko militiamen, and real-live, er, not-so-dead zombies on the attack.
From inside the barn, a woman’s scream rang out.
As if bombed with a flashbang stun grenade, Brody ducked and shielded his head.
“Brody, Abe, one of them’s got Merv,” Hannah yelled as if she used a megaphone like the locals trying to break into the Mountain Springs grounds.
Abe, carrying two bags like giant footballs tucked under his arms, charged through the opened barn doors.
Brody tightened his grip on the strap and bent at the waist and knees and sort of chicken walked at a fast pace. Step-by-step, he limped in quick surges and lunges across the expanse of the backyard.
Uncle Merv had his sidearm, the .380 Walther pistol, right? So why no shots?
In his hurry, the toe of Brody’s good foot hooked the heel of the military boot on his weaker, injured foot. Knees folding like a laptop lid, he pitched forward while the person-sized bag stayed put and the strap yanked out of his grip. Knees banging, he winced at the stabs jabbing through the healing gunshot in his shoulder and the slice in his foot.
Grateful the pain wasn’t wet-your-pants level hurt anymore—maybe Merv’s healing had kicked in—he fumbled backwards for the duffle.
“Errraaahhhgrrrrr.” Footsteps scuffed the ground from the opposite end of the bag.
Brody’s Adam’s apple stuck solid.
Must not look back. Don’t look.
With a trembling hand, he reached back. The farther he stretched his arm, the more his hand shook. When his fingers nudged the canvas edge, he grabbed, yanked, and knee-walked to his feet.
The eighty-pound canvas bag jerked from his grip.
Something reeking like a two-day-old, run-over possum fell onto the over-stuffed carry bag, and more somethings growled and shuffled dragging steps closer behind Brody.
A grasp swiped his hair at the base of his skull.
He ducked, swerved to one side, and staggered on.
Dang, without ammunition and weapons…
More screams echoed.
He slid inside the opening, slammed shut the wobbly doors. One door canted higher, so he struggled, but finally banged a hinged plank into narrow slots to barricade the door.
“The ammo and guns.” Twisting about, he pressed his back to the wooden planks. “I tripped and…”
Oh, man.
As if his heart stopped and restarted, a tight burning, churning spasm banged under his ribs.
Guts and gore—crimson-red, tar-black, shiny, stinking like meat going bad—slicked the floor.
A fallen cinnamon roan struggled to get up. The horse’s hooves slipped, and shiny pink loops slithered from its ripped stomach.
In their stalls, other frightened, freaked-out horses kicked and squealed.
Four zombies, having left the fallen horse, clawed at Uncle Merv and backed him into one of the hay-filled stalls. Blood smeared Merv, practically head-to-toe, but mainly his head and upper body.
His? The horse’s?
On the opposite side of the roan, Irene shoved Darcy Lynn behind her and brandished a butcher knife, blade flashing a metal glint in the lantern-chased shadows.
Hannah and Abe held a leather horse’s rein draped around one of the zombie’s necks and pulled the snapping, growling zombie off Brody’s uncle.
“Help pull them off,” Abe yelled. “I can fry their brains, if we can get them away from Merv.”
Irene, knife raised, rushed around the edge of the widening blood puddle.
From behind the one in overalls with sprouts of hair jutting from above both ears on an otherwise bald head, she stabbed. The knife veered off the thing’s skull, slicing the scalp. Syrupy black ooze poured from the cut in thick stringy drips.
The heady scent of copper and decay seared Brody’s nose hairs.
Horse squeals and screams, his too, rose to the barn roof to echo off the tin.
Scratches and thumps grated against the wood at Brody’s back.
“Computer geek. Not a zombie killer,” Brody glanced around the gentleman’s barn for a possible weapon. The guns lost to who-knew-how-many zombies remained outside.
One of the zombies veered off. Arms outstretched the once-upon-a-time, blond-headed woman attacked the pitiful injured horse’s throat.
The horse’s squeals gave way to chomps.
Irene jumped on the feeding zombie.
Grabbing the should-be-dead female’s hair, she sunk the blade of the butcher knife deep into the flat-glazed, stark white eyeball.
With a gurgling exhale the stabbed creature dropped.
Junior, sitting on the hay-strewn floor against the smaller back swinging doors, shoved a long-handled shovel out into the floor.
In one amazing Amazon-woman move, Hannah scooped it up and swung.
The metal-scooped blade bonged the back of the partially scalped zombie. Black goo splattered. The zombie spun and arms out lurched toward Hannah.
Hannah, revulsion twisting her young face, squealed and dropped the shovel.
Splattered glops, like snail slime, from the metal scoop’s impact, streaked Hannah’s pale face.
Brody gripped the shovel, with no memory of how the wooden handle got into his hand and swung. The doink of metal to the back of a dead one’s skull sent a numbing hurt vibrating through Brody’s wrists, elbows and shoulders.
His second frantic swing knocked the zombie down.
“Destroy the brain.” Abe shoved a leather-strap wrapped body toward the barn wall. The old dead woman’s long gray hair streamed over her camo outfit in slimy red-tinged strands.
Brody’s heart galloped. A cramp flared in his chest. No, not healed. With a roaring warrior yell, he brought the metal blade down on the thing’s crunching, crumbling skull again and again.
Bone slivers shot out like wood chips and black-on-gray gore pooled.
“Nasty.” Hannah screwed up her mouth as if she’d bitten into an unripe persimmon.
Darcy Lynn’s scream stretched a mile long, then the girl stumbled in halting back steps to join Junior at the backdoor. Her mouth, as if screams blared like sirens inside her head, hung open.
The splat of Brody’s shovel joined the penned-up horses’ agonized squeals.
Caught in Abe’s gaze, the old lady zombie’s ears and nostrils puffed smoke and her stringy haired head burst into flames.
Abe dragged the creature to the ground and stomped the burning head until the skull split, the face sunk in, and the head flattened like a pancake, and the fire, in rotten sizzles snuffed out.
Abe’s ear-to-ear grin—a heck of a lot like Cantrell’s successful-mission smile—matched the prideful sickly one spread across Brody’s lower face.
Brody’s foot slid.
Down on one knee, his hand sank into stinking rotting mush. The shovel banged the floor and the handle yanked out of his grip.
A snarling Uncle Merv sank a hunting knife under the last one’s chins, piercing a wiggling tongue, and sinking the blade into the thing’s head with a wet swoosh. The ten-inch-long serrated blade
pulled out chased by a rush of dripping black gunk.
Stepping back, Merv let go of the thing’s shirtfront, and it dropped like a stone to the gore-layered floor.
Horse’s hooves stomped wood, and their whinnies and bodies bumping the planks of their stalls, joined the group’s frantic panting.
Merv swiped his arm down his face. “I’ve been bit. You gotta leave me behind.”
“Not likely,” said Irene.
The barred front barn doors banged. The plank rattled in the slots.
“I dropped the weapons duffle.” Brody rubbed his grungy hand on his upper pant leg and scuffed his splashed military boots in more gore in a useless attempt to scuff the soles clean.
“I’m already wounded.” Merv scrubbed at his jaws with both hands, as if the bloody mess stung like a dose of acid and he hurried to wipe it away. “If I could get to it, bring it inside, you all might have a chance.”
“We don’t know how the stuff is spread,” Brody said.
“This may not be like the movies.” Deep pink flushed Abe’s face.
“Too close to bad B movies, with or without buttered popcorn, for my taste.” Hannah led a crying and cringing Darcy Lynn to Irene for a girls group hug.
“Aw, shucks, Irene, I screwed up. Guess I’m just too fat and sassy to pay close attention to the details like I used to. I let my guard down because I was just so relieved to have found food and shelter.”
Irene left Hannah and Darcie to rummage a shirt or blouse out of one of the bags. With gentle swipes of the balled white cloth, she cleaned Merv’s face.
“And to rest,” Uncle Merv said, “and to spend time with you. I’ve disappointed you and these kids.”
“Your lovely foolish man.” Irene closed the space between them in a rush. She grabbed his cheeks, and on tiptoes, pulled his head down and pressed her lips to his.
Uncle Merv’s back hunched as if the will to resist her leaked out his toes. His broad shoulders shuddered, and his eyelids rocketed open. His ham-sized hands gripped Miss Irene’s tiny wrists and pushed her away.
“What have you done?” Merv’s eyes popped wide and his lower jaw dropped.
“Close your mouth before you let the flies in, Merv.” Like a cat tasting away the last drop of milk, Irene licked her upper lip. “Whatever happens to you, happens to both of us. In the meantime, until they’re forced to bash our heads in, we do right by these precious and gifted children. Understood?”
