A Place Outside The Wild

by Daniel Humphreys

  One of the wall guards, Carter something, Pete thought, was having none of it. “This is insane! We need to get the hell out of here!”

  I could use a First Sergeant right about now, Larry. He pitched his voice into a harsh growl and said, “This is what you signed up for, soldier. You run, people are going to die!” One of the zoms had crept a bit too close for comfort, so he gave it a double-tap to the forehead. As it crumpled, one of its compatriots lunged forward and collected the spear the other had dropped. That was something, at least. If every member of the attacking horde carried a ranged weapon, the survivors would have lost already. Their accuracy sucked on an individual basis, but a mass of spears coming at their defensive grouping would have been fatal.

  The zoms ceased their slow advance, freezing in place. At once, their heads began to twitch rapidly back and forth. Pete didn’t know what they were doing, but the perfect synchronization of the movement left him with a tight, nervous knot in the pit of his stomach.

  “What are they doing?” Jenny whispered. He could barely hear her over the intermittent staccato fire of the LAV’s machine gun.

  All at once, half of the attacking force peeled away and headed toward the center of the community. “Shit,” Pete hissed. “They know they’ve got us bottled up here. They’re not going to waste any more time with us — they’re going raiding.” He turned and fired half a dozen aimed shots at the departing group. Two or three fell, but they were moving too fast for effective fire. All things considered, he would much rather face the limping automatons of the last few years than this new wrinkle.

  “Look out!” The shout came right in Pete’s ear, and strong arms clamped on his shoulder and pulled him fiercely back.

  The spear whistled in on a low ballistic arc that left a hiss of air in its wake. Despite the crudity of its construction, it was well-balanced and flew true.

  Pete’s assessment of it ended when the spear struck him and took his legs out from under him. Here we go again.

  The others began to scream and shout as the remaining zoms charged forward. He got his rifle out from under his torso and added his own weight of fire to the mix.

  A few moments later, silence reigned once more. Metal scraped on the back of the LAV. Pete glanced up as Hanratty stuck his head out. The younger man nodded at him, but when he saw the spear sticking out of Pete’s leg, he mouthed a curse.

  “No worries,” Pete called as he levered himself into a sitting position and grabbed the shaft of the spear. “It hit low.” He grimaced at the feel of the spear shaft; it was greasy and cold. Was that from the hands or some remnant of outdoor storage? He pulled the spear out after a moment of tugging, threw it aside, and inspected his prosthetic. “Damn. This was my good set.”

  The spear had gone in right above the artificial knee joint and wrecked the mechanism. As a result, the leg stuck straight out as though placed in a cast. On the bright side, had it gone a few inches higher into the stump of his thigh he would have had a different problem. The prosthetics were almost as irreplaceable as he was. His backup set wasn’t as comfortable or easy to use. With luck, the damage was repairable. Pete glanced up and winked. “Good looking out, Vir. I owe you one.”

  The other man looked relieved. “When you fell, I thought I was too late.”

  “Nah. Help me up, would you?” He was going to be walking around like a pirate captain for a bit, but needs must. He glanced around and assessed the group. Carter, the one who’d complained earlier, seemed to have settled down. What remained of his team were up and ready.

  Pete’s eyes flickered over the rest of the wall guards. He recognized most of the faces but not well enough to put names to them. He was most familiar with Pastor Dave, who was leaning over another man. The second man was on both knees, his right arm clutched on his left, covering . . . oh.

  He stepped forward and reached for his pistol. Dave saw the motion and raised a hand to still his movement. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “We’ve just finished praying.”

  Pete stopped and nodded. Dave stepped back, and the man on the ground rose. As he pulled his hand away from the wound on his forearm, Pete saw the shallow scratch and the angry black lines crawling up toward his elbow.

  That quick, and from a scratch? Pete swallowed. We’re all going to die.

  The injured man removed his gun belt with his uninjured hand and passed it to Pastor Dave. He gave the rest of the group a faint smile as he raised his pistol with shaking hands and pressed the barrel into his temple.

  As one, they turned away and awaited the shot. Call it post-apocalyptic courtesy. They remained there as company, not as an audience.

  The shot was their signal to turn back. The others stood in silence as Dave murmured a few more words. When he finished the prayer he collected the pistol from a cooling hand. Waste not, want not.

  It occurred to Pete that he not only didn’t know the dead man’s name, he didn’t know if he had a wife, or children, or anything. Part of him piped up and said that was a consequence of having so many survivors, but another part offered dark disagreement.

  You cloistered yourself up in your little nest and told yourself it was to watch over these people. You saw this coming and did nothing. This is your fault.

  The renewed thunder of the LAV’s machine gun shattered Pete’s reverie. Even more shocking was the fact that the gun fell silent after only a few seconds of fire. He turned to look in the direction the gun had been aiming. He greeted the sight with more resignation than shock or fear. The reactions of his compatriots testified to the fact that there was plenty of the latter to go around.

  All along the southern fence line, zoms clambered out of the creek bed. Many of them slipped and fell back, but their increased agility combined with the dogged, mindless persistence that they’d always possessed gave them the final edge they needed to overcome the line of defense that had protected the survivors for so long. Once up and out of the depression, they leaped forward with what Pete could only describe as eagerness to scale the wire fence. Their combined weight was starting to pull it down. Even if the wire stood up to the assault, they trickled over the top in ones and twos. In a contained area, that would have been manageable, but the breadth of their line of attack was such that Pete knew immediately that they only had one choice.

  “Fall back!” he shouted. “Get to the shelters!”

  At first, no one seemed to respond to his command; they froze in place at the spectacle before them. Finally, Hanratty added his own weight to the order and broke the gridlock. “Get in! Get in!”

  The mad scramble that ensued was almost laughable. They’d grown so used to do dealing with the creeping doom of the slow undead that this new, quicker variant was more frightening than it should have been. Pete held back and observed the fences as the rest of the group pulled themselves up into the armored personnel carrier in ones and twos. The majority of the fence jumpers were ignoring them and heading toward the center of the community. Why not? They’ve got the numbers; they can come for us at their leisure.

  There was a fierce tug at his shoulder and he turned. Charlie jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the LAV; the two of them were the last ones outside. Pete nodded and let the man help him up inside before reaching down and pulling Charlie in as well.

  The interior of the LAV was claustrophobic, to say the least. In many places, the survivors quite literally sat on top of one another. “What are we doing, Pete?” Hanratty shouted back from the driver’s seat. “We’re dry on the cannon as well as the belt-feds. Best I can do is run the damn things over, but our fuel situation is starting to get a little iffy.”

  “Get to the silos by the observation post,” Pete replied. His damaged leg wouldn’t bend enough for him to sit. He settled for standing up and holding onto the row of seats running down the middle of the vehicle. “That’s the main shelter point — we can gear up and figure out what we’re going to do.”

  Larry came up on his elbows after the explosion rocked th
e compound. The reverberation carried on longer than the initial blast. The contents of the room shook in sympathy before the aftereffects died out.

  In the bed beside him, Lizzie Johnson muttered, “What was that?”

  Larry didn’t have time to answer her; he was too busy trying to listen for whatever came next.

  The popping sound of gunfire wasn’t as audible as the thunder of the explosion, but he’d experience enough firefights in his time to peg it almost instantly. He sagged back into his bed and tried to gauge the chances of getting out without his head pounding off of his shoulders. It was already kicking up a fuss in response to sitting up, so walking didn’t look good.

  Tish and Frannie marched into the room, guided by someone he couldn’t initially identify. For a moment, Larry was the only one who noticed that anything was wrong. Then Lizzie spotted the gun in Jaid’s hands and shouted out.

  “What the hell?”

  Larry forced calm into his voice. “Jaid, everything all right?”

  Her face twisted into something recognizable, then morphed into laughter. “That’s all you’ve got? Good God, you’re an idiot, Larry.”

  The crackle of gunfire intensified to the south and east, but he resisted the urge to break eye contact. “You’ll have to forgive me,” he said in an even tone. “But I’m suffering from a head injury, and I’m not as quick on the uptake as usual. Do we have a problem?” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the gunfire.

  “No problem at all,” she said, airily. “Just taking advantage of the opportunity to clean up a mess.”

  Despite the pounding in his head, he grasped her meaning almost immediately. “That was you, last night. And you killed Ronnie, too.”

  “Of course I did! None of you people get it! Staying quiet is the only thing that’s kept us safe! Night and day, it’s all I can do to get you to do anything about it.” Her voice quivered with rage. “If you’d had the damn courtesy to tell me you were setting up an ambush for Ivan I’d have stayed in bed, but no, I had to go and almost get caught.” She shoved the barrel of her pistol into Tish’s back and pushed her forward. “You think I want this? You people are quieter than most, you’re not part of the problem, but I know you won’t understand me.” There was another boom from the southeast, and Jaid cocked her head to one side and considered the noise. It hadn’t been as pronounced as the explosion that had kicked everything off, but it was still enough to shake the building again. “From the sound of it, though, I don’t think it matters.”

  “Jaid, what have you done?” Tish demanded before Larry could will her to silence with a look.

  She scoffed, and pushed Tish again, driving her to her knees. “Don’t blame me. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that it’s going to attract the wrong type of attention.” She grimaced. “I’ve been trying to tell you people, but does anyone ever listen?” Tish remained on her knees, but she twisted around so that she was facing the other woman. Stay right there, kid, Larry mentally urged her. Don’t take the risk. “Every day I make note of the people who can’t keep their stupid mouths shut at night. Every day I mark down the noise complaints. And what do you do? You slap them on the back and have a good laugh about it. Laughing at me!”

  He noted then that Frannie and Tish had arranged themselves so that they were between Lizzie and Jaid. She’d pushed them too far into the room for them to shield him in such a way. His sudden rush of pride was out of place for the here and now and was immediately tempered by the fear he felt for his daughter. Larry forced his emotions down and spoke. “All right, Jaid,” he said. “I may not agree with what you’re doing, but I understand it, at least. What do you want?”

  She shifted her point of aim toward Larry, and he relaxed. It was crazy, but it was much less nerve-racking with the gun pointed away from his daughter. “There’s no room for negotiation, here. I don’t think you understand this at all.”

  “Jaid, don’t be . . .” He almost said ‘crazy’ but decided that was not the way to go. “. . . Hasty. We can figure this out. If you’ve got a problem with me, that’s fine. We can go talk about it. But these people, my daughter — they don’t have anything to do with what happened last night. They don’t see the noise complaints. That’s all me.”

  “You’re still not getting it!” she shrieked, and he winced. “I need to clean things up. The only people who might know about what I did to Ronnie, what I did last night, are in this building. Even if your precious daughter didn’t know about it before, she knows now. Sorry, but that’s how it goes.” She took a deep breath and flipped the safety off.

  “Jaid,” Tish said, “What did you do to Carter?”

  “He’s not a problem anymore,” Jaid said, and Frannie picked that moment to make her move. She lunged forward and tackled Jaid, driving her to the floor. The other woman pulled the trigger as she fell, but the gun discharged into the ceiling as they grappled.

  Tish straightened and shoved Larry’s bed to roll him out of the way. He snapped, “Forget me, get the gun, get the gun!”

  She jerked away and leaped for the floor. As Tish descended, the gun fired again, only this time the round hit something. Frannie screamed in pain. From his position, Larry couldn’t make out what was happening. Jaid was on the floor, Frannie was on top of her, and Tish was sweeping down to join in the scrum.

  Jaid shrieked, but it was a noise of frustration rather than pain. Tish got back to her feet, and this time, she held the small black automatic in her own hands. She kept it aimed at Jaid as Frannie rolled off of the other woman.

  “Talk to me, Frannie,” Tish said in a steady voice. The other woman groaned as she clutched her side.

  “Through and through,” Frannie said through clenched teeth. There was a spreading bloodstain on the right side of her scrub top. “Don’t think it hit anything vital, but damn it, that hurts.”

  Larry held back a sigh of relief.

  “Scoot back, idiot,” Tish barked, and directed with the pistol. Her face was hard and furious, but Jaid crab-crawled backward and leaned up against the wall. Tish wheeled and pressed the pistol into Larry’s hand. “Cover her, dad.”

  Bemused, he switched it from his left to his right and kept it trained in Jaid’s general direction. Ruger LCP, he noted. Chambered in .380, which was not only hard to find these days but underpowered. He imagined that Jaid had snagged it from a bin of similar odd duck weapons in the warehouse and no one had ever been the wiser.

  It looked and felt new enough that it just might have come off one of the shelves in his shop. How was that for irony?

  His daughter paused in the doorway and announced, “Keep some pressure on it, Franny — I need to grab some stuff.”

  Chapter 35

  The doors opened in, and that one decision by an anonymous architect might just save their lives.

  Miles hadn’t paid much attention to the doors when they’d entered the elevator shack. He’d gained an intimate familiarity in the last few minutes. They were solid, heavy steel, supported by four hinges and latched in the center. The lower half of each door featured a three-foot square metal ventilation grate, to keep the interior cooler in the summer, he supposed.

  Janacek stepped back and muttered, “Think it’ll hold?”

  “It has to,” Miles said. “But only for a little while.”

  The exterior handles of the shack doors were squared-off ‘C’ shapes. They were longer than they were deep and bolted to the door at top and bottom. Each handle had a push-button locking mechanism at the top. Even if the SEALs hadn’t drilled one out to enter the shack, it would have been a moot point. The handles on the inside were of the type that unlocked when pulled for safety reasons.

  While Foraker and Ross made their own preparations, Janacek and Miles repurposed the cable they’d made up to power the elevator.

  They’d spanned the door brackets with a pair of long adjustable wrenches and interwoven the heavy cable in and around them. It looked ridiculous, but when they pushed the door
s in, they opened a few inches before the wrenches hit the surface of the door and jammed up against the handles. Frodo and the Fellowship had used halberds in the mines of Moria. Miles would have been happy with a shovel or two. The wrenches would have to do.

  Since the doors opened inward, the jamb would do much of the work of keeping the door shut. The press of undead flesh coming their way should hold them tight and keep them from pulling the door open.

  As they’d seen in the other building, though, enough pressure against the door would blow it out of its frame. This was one of the two weak points of their plan, but the small amount of space between the doors and the edge of the elevator shaft should help. They shouldn’t have enough room to build up the mass required to break the frame itself. Of greater concern were the ventilation grates, as it wouldn’t take much force to push them out of their frames. If there was a mob pressed up against the doors, they’d find their way through the grates sooner or later.

  The smaller gaps would slow them down, but they couldn’t depend on that giving them the time they needed. For that, they had Ross and Foraker, and their own preparations.

  Each SEAL carried a pair of claymore antipersonnel mines in their load out. While Miles and Janacek secured the door, the other men staged the mines in pairs, with each set placed further back on the roof. The ductwork and heat exchangers of the building’s HVAC system made convenient mounting points for the mines and kept the point of aim for the explosive force at head height.

  Their job finished, Janacek led Miles away from the doors and to the edge of the roof. Miles’ skin crawled as they passed through the kill zones created by the angled claymores, even though Ross was still running the firing wire back to their final position. They’d make their last stand here, on the roof’s edge.