America the Dead

by Joseph Talluto

  We bumped over a couple of sets of railroad tracks and Nate pulled over to the gas station sitting on the corner.

  “We’re not empty, but a couple of our gas cans are, so I’m going to see what I can come up with,” he explained, easing the big rig under the station’s awning.

  “Sounds good. I’m going to have a look around, see if I can’t come up with any supplies,” I said, moving to the gear locker.

  Tommy and Duncan came up from the back. “What’s up?” Duncan asked, looking out the window at the quiet town.

  “Nate’s going to see about some gas for the rig and I’m going to see about some possible supplies. Wanna come along?” I asked, shrugging into my backpack. My SIG was always on me, as was my knife. I picked up my AR and pickaxe.

  “Sure,” Tommy said. “I could stand to stretch my legs.” He grabbed his gear and Duncan did the same. We each snared an empty duffle bag to put supplies in and with a quick look out the window, stepped out of the RV.

  We quickly fanned out into a triangular pattern, moving eastward on a cross road that ran parallel to the railroad tracks. There were a number of businesses along that front I wanted to take a quick look into, especially the pharmacy midway through the block, since medicines were in constant short supply. We moved past a small ticket station next to the tracks and I looked around to see if there was any more evidence the town had been hit by the virus.

  We moved deeper into the town, weapons at the ready, but not seeing anything to cause alarm. I guess that was why I was nervous. I didn’t see anything wrong, yet the whole setup felt wrong for some reason. I had the distinct feeling I was being watched, but I couldn’t be sure. If it was the undead, they would have attacked the moment they had the chance. If it was a hostile local, they had plenty of opportunity to plant a bullet between my eyes. That thought didn’t make me feel any better, but the fact that nothing had happened yet was probably the thing that was bothering me the most.

  I broke the silence to the other two: “You guys got a feeling about this place?” We moved further up the street towards the businesses. I could see a subdivision in the distance, rows upon rows of cookie-cutter homes. The entrance was across the tracks again about a quarter mile up the road.

  “You mean like something is seriously wrong here and we’re just too stupid to figure out what it is?” Duncan asked.

  “Or the proverbial shoe is about to drop and we’re right underneath it?” Tommy added.

  “That would be the feeling, yes,” I said, grinning to myself. I looked around as the wind picked up, rustling through the budding trees. Bits of debris flitted here and there and something hit my foot. I looked down and saw that a small white towel had snagged itself on my boot. I kicked it off and it fluttered in the wind, just like a little white flag. Little white flag…

  I turned to say something and my mouth dropped. Between us and the RV were probably fifty ghouls, shuffling steadily at us in the increasing winds. The RV itself was surrounded and I had a fleeting hope that Nate had made it safely inside. If he had, he could stay there until his supplies ran out, since they had no way of getting in. If not, rest in peace, old friend.

  From the subdivision to the east, zombies were coming out from between every house. Down the street, dozens of zombies were moving out from alleyways. All of them were focused on one thing and one thing only. Us for lunch.

  “Ho-lee…” Duncan started.

  “Shit,” Tommy finished.

  “We need cover,” I said, looking quickly around. I thought briefly about getting on top of the little train station, but the main body of advancing Z’s had already reached it. I looked at the row of houses across the tracks, but zombies were over there as well. Where the hell did these guys come from? It reminded me of something, but I didn’t have time to think about it.

  “This way!” I said, bolting for the pharmacy. It was the nearest building and would at the very least afford some cover and reduce being attacked from all sides. Tommy and Duncan didn’t hesitate, they were right on my heels. That was one thing living on the frontier taught you. If a trusted member told you to do something, you did it immediately. Your survival depended on it.

  As we ran, I heard the horn of the RV and stealing a glance through the pack of undead, I could see several unmoving zombies stretched out near the RV. Nate was probably okay, safely ensconced in the RV. Hopefully he would be able to pull our butts out of the fire one more time. I was glad to see he wasn’t dead.

  Right now, though, I had to save my ass and those of my friends We sprinted to the store and dove through the door. I moved ahead into the darker back area, checking for threats, while Duncan and Tommy threw shelves and counters and everything not nailed down in front of the door to block the way. I made it all the way to the pharmacy counter when the first zombie hit me. I was coming around the condom display and angling back by the stock room when a dark shape reared up out of the vitamins and took a swing at me. I ducked under the outstretched hand and brought the butt of my carbine up to smash the zombie in the face. The blow knocked it back into the zinc supplements, its nose flattened against its face, giving me time to move my carbine to my left hand and draw my SIG with my right. Little brown pills flew everywhere as I exploded the Z’s head into pieces.

  “You all right back there?” Tommy yelled from the front of the store.

  “Fine,” I yelled back. “Just seems to be only one of them.”

  “They’re here!” Duncan yelled and suddenly there was a loud crash, like an ocean wave hitting a coastal barrier.

  “Damn! The whole barricade moved! We need cover!” Tommy shouted as he and Duncan frantically threw more debris on the pile. I could see dozens of hands and faces reaching, grabbing, biting, trying to get past the barricade.

  “Give me ten seconds to find the route upstairs!” I shouted back as I kicked in the door to the stockroom. Upstairs was our only hope. We needed to control their access, or we were dead meat.

  “We can give you five!” Duncan yelled, firing his rifle into the mass of ghouls. He had no chance of stopping them all, he was just making more of a barricade.

  I slid past boxes of school supplies and shelves of adult diapers. A lot of stuff was on the floor, but I had no time to see if any of it was useful. I found a door and yanked it open, but it led down into a basement. The stairs just led down into blackness and there was a decaying odor wafting up, telling me exactly what waited for me down there. No thanks.

  I heard a loud slamming and a ‘Dammit!’ from Tommy coming from up front. I had to hurry. Cruising down a row of shelves behind the pharmacy counter area, I stopped as my flashlight caught something sticking out of the shelves. Grey flesh reached out and I nearly fired a shot, but a realized that the zombie had to be standing on the other side of the wall to reach like that. Tapping the arm with the barrel of my rifle, I knocked the severed forearm and hand off the shelf and it thudded to the floor.

  Strange place to store a snack, I thought as I stepped over the tidbit and reached the end of the row and found another door. It was tucked away in the corner and was positioned in such a way as to make it impossible to open without being directly in front of it. Crap. I had room to open the door, but had no retreat on either side.

  I opened the door cautiously and shined my light on the stairs heading up. Good so far. I stepped up and shined the light up to the top, but all I could see was a banister and what looked like a table. I turned back to tell the guys when I heard a small wheezing noise at the top of the stairs. I brought my flashlight back up quickly and lit up a small zombie, probably an eight-year-old. He was staring down at me and his ashen face was twisted in a vicious snarl, his teeth exposed through a torn cheek. He wheezed at me in that particular way young zombies had, curious and creepy at the same time.

  I brought up my rifle just as the little bastard launched himself down the stairs at me. I had no chance at a killing shot, so I backed up quickly and let him slam himself onto the floor at the bottom o
f the stairs. Hate-filled eyes locked onto mine as he slowly lifted his body off the floor. I targeted those eyes and fired a killing shot right before he charged.

  I grabbed a handful of his dirty shirt and hauled the lifeless body out of the way. I had no time for regrets, I needed to clear the damn upstairs. I could hear more shots being fired and I knew I had used up whatever time the guys downstairs could give me.

  I sprinted upstairs and quickly looked around, seeing a small apartment dwelling. The kitchen was a mess and there was dried blood here and there, indicating more zombies, lucky me. I cleared the kitchen and small living room, then worked my way down the hall. Two small bedrooms were clear, but the door at the end of the hall was closed. I moved quietly to it and tapped softly on the door.

  When I listened at the door, I heard nothing, so I was about to open it when the door shook hard, rattling in its frame. Something on the other side was pounding up a storm and by the way the door was shaking, it was big.

  I watched for a second, seeing if the door would hold and when I was sure it would, I went back to the stairs to get my friends.

  I was on the ground floor and halfway through the row of shelves when Duncan and Tommy came barreling around the corner.

  “Go! Go! They’re right behind us!” Tommy shouted, waving his hand at me to turn around.

  I didn’t need to be told twice. I spun around we ran up the stairs and back into the apartment. I let Duncan clear the landing, then I threw the table and chairs down the stairs to stall the horde, which was just reaching the door at the bottom of the stairs. Tommy ran down the hallway and Duncan and I were right behind him. He moved into the room on the left and we followed, slamming the door closed and looking for something to brace against it.

  A quick look around revealed this room was not going to be a safe haven. It was a boy’s room, probably belonged to the little Z I just wasted. There was a plastic race car bed, a little pressboard desk and dresser, a plywood toy chest and a fishbowl that had some brackish water, but no fish. Absolutely nothing that would hold back the advancing hordes.

  As we caught our breath, we could hear crashing sounds as the zombies fought their way past the table and chairs. In hindsight, I probably should have tossed down the fridge as well.

  “Find an exit,” I told Tommy, realizing for the first time this room had no windows. “Bust up that desk,” I told Duncan. “We need splinters, anything with an edge.” Duncan pulled his close quarters weapon, a modified war hammer and set to work with gusto.

  I went to the door and listened, hoping against hope that the zombies might lose us and leave or at least leave few enough behind to be dealt with easily. I could hear shuffling in the hallway and the attention was focused on the twit banging away on the end of the hall. I then heard something that chilled me cold. A small scraping sound, then a click. I realized instantly what had happened.

  The damn zombie had turned the doorknob and opened the door!

  I relayed the information to the other two and they just looked at me for a long moment. This changed a lot and I hoped like hell it was an isolated incident, otherwise it meant a whole new dimension to zombie fighting. If they could turn a doorknob, they could problem solve, which meant one very frightening thing.

  They were starting to learn.

  “God help us,” I whispered.

  “No shit,” Duncan replied as he brought me some splintered desk legs. We stuck the pointed ends into the space between the door and the door jamb, putting four of them to good use. The hinged side we left alone, because it wouldn’t have helped.

  I looked over at Tommy, who was busily ripping a wall apart. He cursed as he struck brick, then cast his eyes on the floor. He looked at me and I shook my head.

  “We’re right over the store area, which would drop us right into the middle of it,” I said, pushing hard on a makeshift wedge.

  “Dammit.” Tommy looked around, got his bearings, then stood on the small chair to punch a hole in the ceiling. “If it’s bricked up here, I have no plan.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. “Just find us room to get through, a vent, crawlspace, attic, whatever.”

  “Yeah, I just hate getting drywall in my eyes.”

  “Poor baby,” I retorted.

  “Listen you two—” Duncan started, but his eyes drifted to the door and his voice died away. I looked down and saw what he did.

  The doorknob was starting to turn. Slowly, slowly, but it was turning. I grabbed the knob to stop it and the door shook as the dead on the other side groaned loudly and threw themselves against it. The wedges held, but Duncan had to pound them in with the war hammer because they had been loosened.

  Tommy tore at the ceiling with both hands as the pounding increased. I leaned against the door to hold back the horde and felt the staccato drumbeat as a dozen dead hands flailed in the opening. Duncan waited with his hammer to pound back any pegs that worked loose.

  Suddenly, the door heaved inward and all of the pegs clattered to the floor. I pushed as hard as I could against the door, avoiding the hands and arms that struggled to get around and grab hold of anything they could reach.

  “Shit!” I yelled. “Tommy! We need an exit, NOW!”

  “Just a minute,” Tommy sing-songed back.

  “Haven’t got a minute!” I shouted, heaving against the door. Duncan was pushing hard as well.

  “Your dilemma is important to us. Please hold and our next available representative will be with you shortly.”

  “The one good thing that came out of the Upheaval and you ruin it.” At least the end of civilization had taken telemarketers with it.

  I heard crashing sounds behind me as a zombie pushed its nasty head into the opening and tried to squeeze into the room. The door pressed against the sides of its skull, causing the graying skin to crack down the center and peel back away from its eyes and cheeks. Those milky eyes rotated a bit before they settled on me. Another hand came through the doorway and grabbed at my arm.

  “Not a chance, pal.” I cursed, leaned against the door with my shoulder, and drew my SIG. I put the barrel in the Z’s eye and blew it to hell. The body slumped to the floor, but just as I pulled the trigger I realized I had managed to block the door from closing. This was turning out to not be a good day.

  “We’re good!” Tommy yelled above the din.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw a pair of hands sticking out from the hole in the ceiling he had made.

  I glanced down at Duncan. “You first.”

  “You can’t hold this door by yourself,” he said and proving his point, a sudden heave by the zombies nearly opened the door by a foot, but we managed to thrust it back.

  “Grab that wedge and shove it under the door,” I said, pointing to the stick by his foot. Duncan complied and saw what I wanted him to do. He grabbed the other three and pounded them under the door as well. It wasn’t much, but it would have to buy us a few precious seconds.

  “Come on!” shouted Tommy from above, the hands shaking furiously.

  “Go!” I said to Duncan.

  Duncan impressed the hell out of me by stepping away from the door, bringing up his rifle and firing five times through the opening. Thumps against the door proved his accuracy.

  “Thank me later,” he said as he stood on the small chair, grasping Tommy’s hands. In an instant he was up through the opening, then two more hands appeared. I let go of the door just as the zombies fell against it again, cracking it open and surging into the room, falling down over their dead companions. I leaped for the hands, knowing if I missed I was dead.

  Thankfully, strong hands grasped me and I was pulled up through the ceiling with both men lifting me, zombie hands literally sliding off my boots as I passed from their clutches.

  I stepped down onto support beams, realizing that this was an unfinished part of the attic and we could still fall through the ceiling if we weren’t careful.

  I looked over at the two men. “Thanks,” I said.
/>   “Anytime.” Tommy said. “But we aren’t safe yet.”

  “Right. Let’s look around and see if we can’t find a way out of here.” I moved carefully into the attic, stepping around a brick chimney and heading over to what looked like a window.

  Below us, the dead groaned at the hole that ate their dinner, unable to comprehend what had happened. They could likely still smell us and hear us, but they had no way to pursue. Thank God.

  The window was nailed shut and painted black, but a tap with my knife handle cracked it quickly enough and I looked out the hole at the side of the building next to this one. I peered down, seeing there was no way we were going to make it down three floors without injury, so jumping was out. The building next to us was four stories, so we couldn’t escape that way, either.

  The cracked window let in a decent amount of light, enough to see the other window on the far end of the attic. Tommy worked his way over there and popped a hole in the glass of that window. Looking around, he smiled back at us.

  “Good news,” he said.

  “What’s that?” I replied.

  “Got a fire escape here.”

  “Any bad news?”

  Tommy looked out again. “Quite a few Z’s out there, but they look to be moving towards the other side of the building.”

  “All right. Well, let’s hope they stay true to form for a bit and don’t look up. Let’s get the glass out as quietly as possible, then we’ll make our way up to the roof. These buildings are close together, so we should be able to make it back near the RV, or someplace where Nate can get us,” I said, pulling out my pickaxe to pry out the glass in the window.

  “Think Nate’s okay?” Duncan asked, wincing as a piece of glass cracked under my work.