Clint howled in pain and loss. He knew what a bite meant and so did Jeb. Jeb showed no restraint and fired onto the zombie, taking out the top of its head, and also killing Clint, too. It was quite a show of ruthless efficiency.
I took that moment to start for my gun again, but Jeb wheeled around and fired a bullet that I would swear passed through my hair.
“Stop where you are, mother fucker!” Jeb screamed.
I stopped, still on all fours.
“It’s time for you to die,” he said flatly and without any emotion.
I believed him. If I saw something in Clint’s eyes, then it was totally evident in Jeb’s eyes. My luck had run out and God had sent a gas cloud and a zombie, but there were no more tricks up His sleeve. My number was up. I took in a big gulp of air, closed my eyes, and waited for the impact of the bullet on whatever place it would strike. If Jeb were merciful, he’d shoot me in head, but he didn’t seem in a charitable mood, so I guess I’d get on in the gut or the leg.
Time seemed to slow down and I heard the hammer go back on his gun, then I heard the explosion of the bullet leaving the gun.
At that moment, I’m sure it was the terrible anticipation and anxiety that staved of the shock of the impact because I felt nothing. No impact. No blast of pain. I kept my eyes closed and waited for the red alarm screeching of pain from my legs or torso, then panicked because there was no pain and I figured he must have shot me in the neck and severed my spine, cutting off all my pain reception. This terrified me because what if I remained awake enough to see the zombies come to the Grant buffat and start to chow down? There are fewer or more revolting and horrible things to contemplate.
A second ticked away, followed by another, and I risked opening my eyes. I found my vision open to the grass below my body and I saw a set of hands set flat against the ground. They were my hands and along with my arm and they were holding me in an all fours position like a dog just standing there, quietly waiting for someone to throw the ball or the frisbee or whatever stupid thing I was supposed to chase.
I heard a scuffling noise and slowly raised my head to look. I saw Jeb shuffling along, stumbling with every other step. His back was to me and he took two steps away, then the strength went out of his left leg. His legs nearly collapsed under him, causing him to swiftly pivot back to me, in jerking motion. When he made it back to facing me, I saw that he held his hands to his throat. His right index finger was still in the trigger hold of the gun, but it dangled loosely in his hand, as blood showered out his neck like a small geyser, shooting on the grass. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. His expression was one big question mark. A bubble of blood burst past his lips and he fell onto his knees just a few feet in front of me.
He wavered back and forth as if buffeted by the wind, swaying there. His eyes opened and closed slowly and he looked my way as if he were trying to focus on me. I’m almost positive that he didn’t see me, but was looking past me and past the physical world at some metaphysical place beyond existence and beyond understanding.
He opened his mouth as wide as it would go as if to explain something unexplainable and let out a sharp, but brief gasp. His eyes snapped shut and he plopped down in the grass right in front of me as dead as a doornail, as they say.
A figure in a robe stood about fifteen feet away, holding a rifle. My eyes still watered from the gas cloud, so my visions was ill-formed and not entirely clear. The figure moved toward me and pulled back its hood.
It was Carla and her expression was flat and empty as a plate left in the desert for a hundred years. She loosely held a rifle in her hands.
“I nearly shot you, too,” she said. She was quiet for a few a seconds, but looked into the darkness. “I don’t hate you, Grant. I know you weren’t the reason my parents died. You did what you could to save my brother, but he was dead as soon as the zombie bit him. The soldier just ended it quicker. But still…” She went quiet again.
I started to get up, but she snapped the rifle into an aiming position at me. I didn’t think she’d shoot me, but I’m not sure she didn’t think she would or not.
“I didn’t really join Jeb’s group,” she said. “I just did it to look for a way to help save the group.” Again, she paused and looked past me. With no cue, she snapped the rifle up and off to my right and fired off three quick shots. I jerked my head around in time to see a female zombie in a badly torn dress topple over backwards.
“But I’m not right to be around you,” she said again in that expressionless tone. “I’m not good to be around anyone right now. It’s just been too much.”
“But you need to be around us,” a voice behind me said and I turned around to see Rosalita sitting up. She looked like hell warmed over, but behind the exhaustion and pain, I could hear her compassion. “We can help you.”
“No, Rosalita,” Carla said. “I don’t think you can. The deeper we go, the more people I care about we lose, the more lost I am and the angrier I get. It’s only a matter of time before I do something we all regret. I can’t stay around you guys any longer.”
“I”m begging you stay,” I said.
A flash of anger fired behind her eyes, but as quickly as it came is as fast as it left.
“I can’t listen to you, Grant,” she said. “Please don’t talk. I’m not strong enough now to stop myself.” She paused again and I caught the glint of a reflection on the tears now flowing down her cheeks. “Tell Martin and Jessie that I love them.” She turned and walked into the darkness. We never saw her again
While there was nothing positive about that night other than we had survived, I felt that moment was one of the lowest points during my whole post apocalyptic experience. I had seen friends die and had even shot one of our own after they had been bitten, but I felt bottomed out as I watched Carla walk away into the darkness. The loss of someone so broken made me feel empty and useless, like life wasn’t worth living.
But life did go on as it always did, like the zombies, relentless and cruel.
As Carla disappeared into the darkness, I saw two forms fill the space that she had exited. They weren’t friendly forms either. They shambled towards us looking for the all-night human flesh diner.
I scrambled around, and being less frantic this time, I found my gun. I took careful aim, waiting for the two zombies to get close, and then snapped off two shots. Both shots were blue ribbon award winners as the zombies went down.
“We’ve got to get you up and moving, “ I said to Rosalita.
“I can’t go on,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “My heart is too broken for that child.”
“You have to get up,” I said. “We need you. Jessica and Martin need you. I need you.”
She finally looked up to me. As tired as she was, I saw that survivor instinct in her that had gotten her through a bad marriage, through a rough life, and all that we been through. She raised her hands in the air for me and I stuffed my gun in the waistband of my pants, and took her hands in mine. As gently as I could, I delicately pulled her to her feet and drew her into me. She grunted in pain, but clung to me.
“Did you mean it when you said you needed me?” she asked, her voice still full of emotion.
“Damn tootin,” I said. I broke our hug and said, “Listen, we need to head back to the compound. I don’t know where the hell they are with that truck, but we need to save ourselves right now.”
“Si, Grant,” she said. “I’ll go with you, if you need me.”
“I do,” I said.
I positioned her to take the most weight I could off her bad ankle and turned us to head back toward the compound when a voice behind us said, “Are you leaving without me?”
I had just about had enough surprise voices and appearances for the night.
“Who the hell is that?” I asked swiveling the two of us around as I pulled my pistol. When we got fully turned around, I saw Chuck struggling to sit up.
“You’re alive?!�
� I said.
“I sure as shit am,” he said, finally making it to a sitting position, but looking quite wobbly. He looked directly at me and asked, “Do you think a bad ass ninja who brings an arsenal of weapons to the party comes without a kevlar vest?” He pointed at his chest. “That bullet hit me in the back. It knocked me for a loop.”
“How are you now?” I asked.
“Right as rain,” he said.
“You don’t look it,” I said.
“If I weren’t, could I do this?” he asked and swiveled around in one fluid motion while pulling the dangling rifle hanging of his chest free, and ripped of a hail of bullets at the two approaching zombies shredding them like ground beef. The recoil of the shots knocked him onto his back. He wasn’t right as rain. Far from it.
“Okay, I guess I need to ask,” I said, “Can you walk?”
“If I really had to,” he replied, “Yes. Well, maybe. The shot hit me in the spine and I’m having a little trouble feeling my legs right now.”
“I’m taking that means that you can’t.”
He didn’t say anything as he fought to get back to a sitting position. That was answer enough. I surveyed the area and the gas had nearly completely dissipated leaving only the darkness and the fog to cover us from the walking dead. I made out forms moving in and out of the darkness
“The problem is that the more we shoot, the more attention we get from the zombies,” Chuck said, breathing hard and pointing off into the dark.
He was more than right. Coming out of the dark in multiple directions were loads of zombies, threatening to cut off any escape path and overrun us.
My quick assessment of the situation was that I had two nearly immobile people with me and a small horde of zombies coming at us, hungry and eager to order off our menu. In other words, we were screwed unless the cavalry arrived from compound. I might be able to make a run for it, but they couldn’t.
“How much ammo do you have?” I asked.
“Enough hold them off for a few minutes at best.”
“Throw me a clip or two,” I asked.
He reached into his many pocketed vest, retrieved two clips and tossed them my way. I let Rosalita back down and retrieved them, getting ready for the onslaught.
“You know, you really should run for it,” Chuck said. “I can hold them off.”
“You can barely sit-up.”
“Well, I have these,” he held up two grenades.
“And can you throw those from a sitting position far enough away that none of don’t get a faceful of shrapnel?”
He contemplated this question for a few seconds and then said, “A last resort option,” and stowed them back onto his vest.
By then two zombies had made it to within fifteen of us. I started to target them when Chuck swiveled, aim, and fired. Blossoms of red burst from the two zombie’s foreheads and they toppled over backwards. Chuck held his sitting position this time.
“Not only a badass ninja, but a sharpshooter, too,” I said to Chuck.
“Keep it up and I’m liable to get over confident,” he said.
A wet thud sounded behind me and Rosalita gasped. I whirled around to find a zombie bearing down on the two of us. It was a teenage boy who had been badly mauled by something. His face looked like ground beef, but the unmistakable gleam of his teeth caught the moonlight above. The teeth clacked together like those toy teeth you used to be able to get as gag gifts. The gag gift teeth were funny, but these were frightening.
I took aim and pulled the trigger once. My bullet grazed down the side of the thing’s head, knocking it off balance and sent it tumbling over. It took a couple seconds to recover and came back at us looking a little more wobbly.
“I guess the U.S. Marshall service doesn’t do much target practice,” Chuck said.
“Hey, you have a rifle and I have a handgun,” I said. “Cut me some slack.”
I re-targeted the zombie, aimed for the forehead and got a winner this time as my shot took off the top of the zombie’s head. Two down and countless others to go.
“How many zombies were in that pit?” I asked.
“A hundred to a hundred and fifty, I think,” Chuck said. “I didn’t stop to count them.”
“How did you get them out?” I asked scanning the surroundings for any movement.
“I cut through the fence surrounding the pit, got some large planks of wood, and made ramp for the to walk-up and out.”
“That sounds tricky,” I said.
“It was. I was hoping to herd them into the compound and create a distraction and then do what I could to rescue you all, but it took longer than I thought and there you all were, coming across the field.”
“The best laid plans of mice and men,” I said almost under my breath.
“Steinbeck, right?” Chuck said.
“A well read man. You never cease to surprise me,” I replied.
He jerked to his left and cracked off three shots. He managed to remain in an upright position, but looked shaky doing it. I looked into the mist and saw two zombies go down for the count.
I’m a decent shot, but I could never have been that accurate from a sitting position.
A gunshot sounded off to our left and something whizzed by my head. I spun in time to see the muzzle flash of another shot. A clump of grass exploded into the air just two feet off to my right.
“Get down,” I yelled and threw myself to the ground. The reality was that of the three of us, I was the only one standing. I sighed. As if the zombies weren’t enough, there was still one of Jeb’s crazies out there shooting at us.
I targeted the place where I had seen the muzzle flash, but saw only blackness there. I stared intently into the darkness that I began to see phantom shapes forming and then dissolving before my eyes. I doubted any of them were real, but couldn’t take a chance as I aimed at each one.
“You see anything?” I asked Chuck.
I waited for an answer, but he was silent.
“Chuck?” I hissed out, but again he didn’t say anything.
Another shot whizzed by me and Rosalita let out a short scream.
“Rosalita, you okay?” I asked.
“Si, Grant,” she whispered. “That one was very close.”
“I’m going over to check on Chuck. Stay down.” I crawled across the wet grass, keeping my body as tight to the ground as I could. When I made it to him, he was on his back. I could hear him breathing, but his breaths came in hitches.
“Chuck, you okay?” I whispered. It was so dark, I could barely see any details. I reached out and shook him and he moaned. I didn’t know if that was a good sign, so I felt around on him looking to see if he had been hit or not. I felt no holes or blood, but it was difficult with all the hardware he was carrying. Since he wasn’t using it, I decided to take his rifle since my handgun wasn’t too great at shooting at a distance. I felt around some more and pulled off something that felt like binoculars. In the dim light, I saw that they were night vision goggles.
I quickly put them on and flicked the on button. The world went from black to varying shades of green, running a spectrum from a white-hot lime green down to a green so dark it could only be found in the darkest of caves. Initially, it was quite disorienting, but I had worn them before and quickly acclimated as I scanned the horizon, moving from right to left.
What I saw made me want to take the goggles off. Zombies shambled this way and that. One very large male zombies stood still as if he were sniffing the air for some sort of scent. I didn’t know how much smell played into them finding fresh meat and didn’t want to find out at that point in time. His head rotated on his shoulders like dog waiting for the racoon that got away to suddenly show up again.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have spent so much time on the zombie. A muzzle flash exploded just past the zombie and its brilliance cut into my eyes and right into my brain like a red hot ice pick. I shook my head to get away from the pain, nearly knocking off the goggles.
I
f I had made the mistake of focusing on the zombie, then whoever was out there made the mistake of firing from too far away. From what I could tell, my attacker was over fifty yards away just off to my left. They were kneeling, and from what I could see, they were bobbing their aim back and forth, clueless of where I actually was. At least, that’s what I hoped.
They popped off a quick shot and the bullet flew harmlessly off into the darkness. The sniffing zombie whirled around as fast as a zombie could whirl and went off in the direction of the shot.
With the night vision goggles, I held a distinct advantage over my adversary. I could see him, but he could only guess where I was from our past shots. It wasn’t really fair, but I didn’t give two shits about fairness. These crazies were ready to feed me to a pit full of zombies.
Even with the goggles, targeting my attacker was still at the far end of my abilities, so I considered just letting him shoot until the zombies zeroed in him. But I had Rosalita and Chuck both down and at any moment a zombie could stumbled over any one of us. So, I knelt down and took aim.
The big zombie was getting closer to my attacker, shuffling in one direction and then moving back. It wasn’t a collision course, but it was going to be close.
I guess my attacker got the heebie-jeebies because he took aim and blasted the head off the approaching zombie. This, of course, got the attention of the other zombies in the area.
The attacker must have seen his predicament and decided it was time his own re-enactment of Little Big Horn. When he rose, I saw it was the giant. All six foot six of him. Through the night vision goggles he looked like the Jolly Green Giant, but just not very jolly.
I had suspected, after the beating Chuck gave him, he’d be out all night, but that’s what I get assuming anything in this zombiefied world. He let out an intimidating roar and started his charge right at me, firing as he came. Bullets whizzed by me and couple cut up the grass in front of me.
Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America Page 10
