by Reece Hinze
“Are they headed to the barn?” Bridgett asked, holding onto his arm. Luke said nothing.
Suddenly, an engine cranked and a pair of headlights illuminated the yard. The infected in the front of the pack looked towards the light and back at the brothers. A second pair of lights shown next to the first.
Engines roared as Luke watched as his old Dodge and the Atwood’s suburban rocket towards the crowd. The suburban turned towards the road but his Dodge ran directly for the brothers. The headlights rocketed towards them while the infected swarmed like piranhas.
Luke clenched his fists, ready to witness both of his brothers crushed.
”Run your ass off!” Wade shouted, unslinging his rifle. The brothers had just walked out the front door of the house when they saw them, bleeding, screaming, and angry.
“Holy shit,” Paul screamed. He leveled his pistol at the nearest figure and dropping them with two rounds.
“Get to the barn!” Wade yelled. He raised his rifle and blew a quarter sized hole into the chest of a half-naked woman. And they would have to hurry about it because the infected were past the fence and sprinting at them fast. Wade grabbed his brother by the shirt collar and tugged him along. The barn loomed ahead, towering over the yard like an old friend. Wade risked a glance behind and realized the crowd was gaining on them.
“Holy shit they’re fast!” Wade shouted between breaths. He felt the panic rising in him but years of combat training pushed the feeling away. He had to focus on the objective, not the fear. Their boots crunched gravel as they hit the path to the barn. Suddenly, a blinding light cut through the darkness and both men raised an arm to protect their eyes. Wade glanced back. Instead of a swarm of half visible screaming shadows, the light transformed the figures into real people screaming and bleeding and sprinting fast.
He turned back to the light when he heard the engine roar and realized it wasn’t one light but four, the headlights of two vehicles. Suddenly the Atwood suburban skid onto the gravel and shot down the drive. Wade recognized one of Bobby’s boys in the driver’s seat, “Momma” in the passenger seat, and Victoria, with an arm around the other of Bobby’s son’s in the back seat. She smiled at him as they drove by.
Wade started towards the suburban and yelled, “Hey!” but stopped after a few paces because another engine roared. Luke’s old Dodge fired right at them. Wade had only a second to act before he and his brother were crushed. He raised his rifle and squeezed off a single round where he thought the driver would be sitting and grabbed his stunned brother’s shirt, pulling as hard as he could while leaping aside. The big tires spun inches from where his face rested in the grass.
Wade choked on gravel dust as he watched the big truck weave back and forth before slamming into the first of the infected. Bodies tumbled like bowling pins as the big truck mowed down dozens. Like a laser pointer distracting a cat, the truck grabbed the attention of the entire herd but eventually the truck was slowed and stopped by the weight of the bodies.
The brothers pulled themselves to their feet while. A scream, shrill, womanlike, and louder than the rest, cut through the air. A big man, bleeding and angry climbed over the huge pile of supplies stuffed high in the truck bed to the top of the cab and reached down to pull the driver out of his seat. The driver’s spine bent painfully backward as he was pulled from the truck. They recognized Bobby Atwood as he screamed again. The big man straddled his chest, locked his hands together, and pounded and smashed every bone in the doomed man’s face. Bobby Atwood fell silent and never screamed again.
The crowd, apparently satisfied with the big man’s treatment of Bobby, turned their attention back towards the brothers. Several, as if seeing them for the first time, tilted their heads back and shrieked with open mouthed surprise.
“Oh shit,” Wade said. The two turned to run towards the barn.
As they drew closer, Wade noticed his buddy Danny sitting outside the door to the barn in the chair the person on guard usually sat during the night. “Danny!” He screamed. “Danny, shoot some of these bastards.”
But Danny didn’t shoot at anything or try to stop the Atwood’s treason. Danny did nothing anything at all.
Wade saw his friend’s head leaning backwards against the tin siding of the barn and wondered how in the hell he could sleep through all this commotion. He had never been a heavy sleeper. “Danny,” Wade called again but heard no response. His boots skid to a stop as he reached his old friend. “Get your ass up Danny,” he shouted, slapping his friend in the shoulder. Danny didn’t budge and suddenly Wade noticed his friend’s eyes were stuck open, staring at the Apache moon. His mouth was slack. The rain pummeled his face and he didn’t blink. His throat had been slit from ear to ear.
Wade’s heart sank. “Danny!” he shouted. Paul fired several rounds at the infected. A small boy with a missing arm sprinted ahead of the pack and Paul took dead aim, blowing the top half of his head into the sky. He turned his aim to a beautiful naked woman so absent of blood you couldn’t tell she was sick save her blood-filled eyes and snarling teeth. He aimed, squeezed the trigger, and heard nothing but a click.
Empty.
“Danny!” Wade screamed, holding his friend tight. Tears streaked down his cheeks, mingling with the rain.
“He’s dead Wade,” Paul shouted. He tried prying his brother off of the corpse but he clung tight, silently sobbing. The horde drew closer with every heartbeat. “Wade!” Paul shouted, finally ripping his brother away and throwing him to the ground. Paul threw his empty pistol to the ground and ripped the AR-15 from Danny’s lifeless fingers.
Wade’s world was upside down. More so then when the plague ripped through his town, more so then when he stabbed a school principal to death, and more so then when he found his father, half dead in the forest.
How could this happen? How could his best friend be dead?
Paul shouted but he didn’t care. Suddenly he remembered his mother’s stories and the Atwood’s suburban. At that moment, his heart filled to bursting with hatred. “No!” He screamed, sitting up, firing blindly and wildly into the approaching crowd. “No, no, no,” he bellowed as he fired. The infected seemed unfazed by the bullets ripping past them and charged on, mere feet away.
“Nooooo!”
He felt a hand grab his collar and pull him through the open barn door.
”What was that?” Tim Slaughter thought. He was groggy and his head was spinning. He was in the woods hunting with his son. They were finally getting somewhere, breaking through that hard exterior when…
“He’s waking up,” a voice he didn’t recognize said. Tim opened his eyes but saw only fuzzy grey shapes, some darker than others.
“But…” he began, only to be cut off by a deafening bang. The sound blasted again and a loud pinging overlaid everything else. “Where am I? What is happening?”
“We have to move him.” Tim recognized the gruff voice of old Clifford Worsby and felt the man’s boney hands grab hold of him. “I’ll help,” the strange voice said again.
He felt an intense pressure on each of his arms and an uncomfortable edge protruding into his back. He blinked and began to see shapes forming in front of him. He could tell he was in the hallway of his home at the foot of the stairs. The uncomfortable object in his back was the lowest stair. Anne, his beautiful wife, cradled his cheek and looked into his eyes worryingly.
“I’m here sweetheart. Just tell me what’s going on,” Tim said but she didn’t respond. She just patted him on the cheek.
What is going on here? Why won’t she talk to me?
A dead man lay near his feet. His world was shades of grey except the red blood stretching across the hardwood floor, bright and vivid. He focused on the blood.
Am I dreaming?
Glass shattered somewhere in the house. The sound shook him from his study of the scarlet puddle. His head bumped up a few more stairs as they dragged him. Suddenly, a face he recognized but couldn’t place appeared in the doorway that led to his be
droom. Cold eyes of the same scarlet color, stared at him angrily.
Anne screamed.
No! He must protect his family. He tried to stand, but his legs would not respond. The man jumped for his wife. A wooden bat connected with the scarlet man’s face and shattered to pieces. A large chunk of wood slammed into Tim’s cheek at about the same time the man’s body fell on top of him but he felt neither. More blood, this time from the familiar man’s corpse, pooled on the old hardwood floor. The color was so alive.
Several more bloodied faces appeared in his bedroom doorway. A woman looked right into his eyes and reared her head back, opening her mouth in shock as if this person he never met was amazed at seeing him alive. The pressure on his left arm disappeared and was replaced by a rough ashy grip like the one around his other arm. He could hear Mr. Worsby grunting hard as the old man pulled him up several more stairs. Anne scrambled and suddenly Tim felt her gentle hands helping Clifford drag him. And then the infected dove for him.
Leaping over his head like an action hero, a man reeking of cigarettes, landed in the crowd of infected. His shoulder caught one in the stomach while he stabbed his broken bat into the eye socket of another. While that one reeled away, grabbing and tearing at the protruding piece of wood, the cigarette man leapt to his feet and produced a large knife from his boot. He punched and stabbed frantically as Tim felt more stairs roll underneath his back. Anne and Clifford had managed to drag him to the landing at the middle of the staircase.
“Richard!” Anne screamed but even Tim could see it was too late for him.
Richard’s knife ripped flesh but more infected swarmed the small room. A big black man in a police uniform swung a merciless fist at the back of Richard’s head and he went down in a heap, his knife flying across the room. Several infected bent down to continue the beating. Fists flurried and smashed into his flesh, the squishing sound was like a hammer pounding a sack of ground beef. Richard held up a desperate hand to fend off his attackers but a topless woman in a ripped business suit closed her mouth around his hand, down to the knuckles and bit hard.
Richard’s cries finally stopped but the relentless pulverizing of his flesh did not. The infected gathered in a circle around the doomed man swinging their fists in an orgy of violence.
“Go!” Clifford shouted. The topless woman looked up the stairs and locked eyes with Tim. She opened her mouth, as if shocked to find another victim so close, and Richard’s fingers fell from her mouth to the floor.
She screamed and was joined by a chorus of screams.
“Now,” Clifford said again, his voice urgent.
Tim felt the stairs pass underneath his back more quickly now and heard the footfall of the infected charge up after them.
“Hold on!” Paul shouted.
Wade’s world was in slow motion. Children’s screams of terror mixed with infected screams of rage. John simply stared into Wade’s eyes but he suspected his mind was far away. Fists and bodies pounded on the barn door.
“Wade,” Paul screamed. Wade looked at his oldest brother who said his name again. He was a big man and his immense frame was the only thing blocking the onslaught of countless bodies trying to thrust and shove their way into the barn.
“Prop the door Wade!” And it hit him like a surge of water from a broken dam. He looked to his right at the children, who would all die if he failed. John wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead, he curled his arms around his feet and rocked back and forth in the fetal position. Wade glanced in all directions. His eyes fell on what he was looking for. He sprinted to a pile of old cedar fence posts propped against the far wall and grabbed two. In a moment he was with his brother at the door. Each man grabbed a post, placed one end against the door and the other against their foot. Other adults came rushing from the loft to brace the door.
“Hang in there,” Paul shouted above the mayhem. “Just hang in there!”
Countless bodies swarmed the homestead. Either the entire town was infected and they were all here, Luke thought, or they grouped together in San Antonio and made their way here. Either way, the sight of so many running, screaming, bloodthirsty people was both awe inspiring and terrifying. A large group chased the Atwood’s suburban into the dark of the night while a larger group ripped someone apart near the old Dodge. Luke was too far away to see who. The barn door with all of the children was holding for now but person after person swarmed into the house.
“We have to do something,” Bridgett pleaded.
Luke turned on her in anger. “Do what?” he shouted with tears in his eyes. But Bridgett had no answer so they crouched in the tree line. They had survived to witness the destruction of society and now, as fate would have it, they would survive to witness the destruction of all they loved. Bridgett was trembling and Luke pulled her close. He turned her face away, letting her sob into his shoulder as he watched the endless horde of infected ebb to and fro like a school of fish.
They sat like that, swathed in despair, until the sun began to rise in the sky.
So this is how it ends.
Some people believe the new day brings hope. Some believe it is the answer to prayer and others still simply see it as a ball of plasma rotating on a preset destination around a rock.
That day the dawn brought a tank.
Chapter XVIII: The End. The Beginning.
Luke and Bridgett’s held hands as they crept over piles of tangled corpses laying still in the bloodied yard. They had witnessed the butcher’s work from a safe distance at the edge of the woods. Now they tread up the big hill to see who remained of their family and friends. That hill had served its purpose well over the years, protecting the house from torrential floods and all manner of storms. Today, instead of rain water, the hill drained the contagious life’s blood of countless souls down its gentle rolling slopes. The small creek that lay at the foot of the hill stood knee deep with crimson blood and gore. Bodies floated face down, gently bumping into one another. For half a heartbeat, Luke was tempted to drink deeply and be done with it.
“Just close your eyes sweetheart,” Luke said. “Don’t let go of my hand.”
There was no need to climb the barbed wire fence that circled the yard, as they did on their way to the make love, because the horde had smashed it to pieces hours ago. Instead, Luke focused on avoiding the bodies that littered the place like an organic carpet. The floor is lava, he thought and nearly laughed.
Perhaps he would find his family’s corpses amongst the dead. He would ask the butchers.
Strange men stood around their tank, silently watching the pair approach. All of them stood at least six feet tall and wore armor the color of gunmetal with cascading oval plates flanking twin breathing filters. They stared with fierce, motionless, metal expressions. To Luke, the lights on their face made them look angry. And maybe they were angry? What did they want?
“What do you want?” Luke called to them. He held Bridgett protectively behind him, as if he could do something if these machines attacked him.
The one with the red eyes said something in a hushed tone. Without a word, the machine with angry yellow eyes stepped towards them. He strode confidently and without the delicate, corpse avoiding steps Luke had been so careful to employ, flattening body parts like pancakes, stepping in the center of a man’s face. His eyes popped and oozed out either side of the man’s boot.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Luke half anticipated a fight but instead of attacking, the yellow eyed machine spoke.
“My name,” the man boomed. His voice was deep and terrifying. He flipped a switch on his helmet and twisted. A young black man with matted helmet hair smiled warmly at them. “Is Corporal Tupac Breaker.” The man turned back and gestured at the others. “And these are my rag tag companions.”
As if on cue, the barn door cracked open to reveal Wade’s puzzled face.
“Wade,” Luke called to his brother. Paul peeked his head out a moment later and Luke called to him as well. “Come on over
here, quick.”
And they did just that, their exhausted limbs carrying them at a jog. “You’re soldiers then?” Bridgett asked, wide eyed.
Tupac laughed. “Yes, we’re soldiers.”
Luke glanced to the leader of the group, a tall man with red glowing eyes. He didn’t introduce himself as their leader but he knew. The man nodded in response to his inquiring gaze.
“You don’t look like any soldiers I’ve ever seen,” Paul said in way of greeting.
Wade looked over to his brothers with tears in his eyes. It was the first time Luke had seen him cry since they were children.
“That’s because you haven’t,” a strange voice said. Although their voices were synthesized while inside their helmets, this one sounded lower, scratchier. Hurt. The man who Luke knew to be their leader stepped forward, his glowing red helmet eyes staring. His suit was the same as the rest but it looked rugged and warn. This hadn’t been these soldier’s first battle.
“Everyone in the barn ok?” Luke asked.
“They got Danny. The Atwoods, not the infected.”
Bridgett stepped forward, shrugging off Luke’s reaching grasp. “Please, we have people in the house…”
“Bridgett,” Luke said. The man with the red L.E.D. eyes held up an armored hand, silencing him.
“A wounded man with a fishing shirt, a middle aged woman… and another man who likes to smoke a lot and… and old black man.” She started to sob. “The infected swarmed the house and we heard… screams.”
Their leader help up a hand. “I understand,” he said in his booming voice. His hands moved fast as lightning signaling commands to his soldiers who snapped into action just as fast. Even the large tank roared to life and lurched in the direction of the house. Its huge treads crunching flesh and bone into the mud.
