by Joseph Coley
“Or else what?” Reggie asked curiously.
Joe slowly turned back to Reggie, a solemn look across his face.
“Or else we are gonna have a hundred graves to dig by tomorrow morning.”
CHAPTER 14
April 18, 2022 – 1415 Hours
Balboa quickly learned that horses were not meant for high-speed pursuit. It was clear after the initial kick to the flanks that Beefcake was not meant to be a thoroughbred racing horse, too. He was by no means a small man, but the horse was protesting the combination of speed and weight that he was now forced to tote along. Bounding along, the horse didn’t fail him, though. He kept his body low, and his head raised a bit to see if smoke would start to roll out of the center of town. After thirty seconds of looking, he began to wonder what caused the gigantic boom if not an explosion. As Beefcake thundered forward, desperately trying to keep up with Larry and Kody riding Flex, Balboa began to run through what exactly was going on inside the walls of Tazewell. He didn’t have to wait long.
“…near the jail. Wait five…” The radio on his tactical vest crackled, cutting out before he could adequately obtain any useful information. Gripping the reins with his left hand, he grabbed the radio with his right.
“Repeat! We can’t copy!”
Silence.
He hastily stuffed the radio back onto his vest. “Larry! Get on the horn to Joe! I think he wants us to head towards the jail and wait!” He yelled at Larry, hoping the sound of his voice could be heard over the clopping of the horses.
Larry did hear Balboa’s hollering. The radios they used didn’t have the best range on them, and didn’t fare well for battery life, either. Even now as they were nearing the edge of town, he could not hear anything on it.
“Joe! Curtis! Anybody copy?” Larry’s heart began to race as fast as the steed he rode as they came up to the wall. They approached the jail from the outside the wall, unable to avoid the massive building for the route they had traveled. Main Street ended at the jail and its sally port, the only effective way of getting inside. The door to outside the wall was locked, but Larry was one of the few people that had the key to get in. They stopped a few dozen yards away from the wall and dismounted.
A pair of shots rang out in rapid succession.
Larry fumbled for his keys as he swiftly approached the jail door. He grabbed the radio off his belt and tossed it to Kody. Kody caught it, a puzzled look across his face.
“Get hold of somebody while I get this thing open. Joe, Curtis, and Rick all have radios.”
Kody nodded and keyed up the radio. “Uh, anyone copy?”
“Larry? Is that you?” Joe’s voice came across the tinny speaker.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m with Larry. This is Kody, dude. I’m at the jail with Larry. We are trying to get inside as we speak. We heard you say to get near the jail,” Kody said, unsure how to proceed. “Um, over.”
“No! Do not go near the jail! We haven’t had a breach, someone from inside the town started this, and I think it started either at or near the jail. We are rounding up some people to head that way, but we need to make sure the jail is clear first. Do you think the jail is secure?”
Larry finally managed to get the door to the jail open, swinging the heavy door open and motioning for the radio. Kody tossed it to him. Larry caught and keyed it up in one swift motion. “Balboa, Kody, and I are fixin’ to get inside and find out. We will clear it out; get the people safe and get them here, pronto. Did you get the boys and Paige?”
“Yes we did, they are safe and sound. We are with Rick and Curtis at the motel rounding up some more people. I don’t have a location on Jamie or Cornbread, though. I thought I had Cornbread on the radio, but haven’t seen ‘em. Have you guys seen or heard anything from them?”
Larry swallowed hard. Cornbread was at the stable with the horses when they left, close to the jail. He wasn’t sure where Jamie was at, further unsettling him. “No. I haven’t seen or heard anything from either one of them. We don’t have enough daylight to go looking for ‘em right now, either. Just get your ass over here to the jail, and we will go from there. Copy?”
“Shit. I copy, Larry. We will be leaving the motel in just a few more minutes. Clear the jail; we will be along to assist shortly.” The stress and worry that Joe felt was evident in his voice, even across the radio’s small speaker. Larry tossed the radio back to Kody.
“What the hell was that big explosion, Joe? We heard it on the way back to town. Is everyone alright from that? Any injuries?” Kody asked.
There was a long pause. Joe wasn’t proud of the fact that he had plowed down the wall. “Yeah, about that. We had to crash the wall down to get into town. We didn’t know what was going on, but it sounded like some serious shit going down.”
Larry’s eyes quickly widened. “He did what?”
“Joe said that they had to crash the…” Kody started to say.
“Rhetorical question, Kody!” Larry fumed. “Shit! Why the hell would they do that?”
“As bad as it sounded, I’m sure they wanted to get in and help. They did what they had to do under the circumstances.” Kody shrugged. As bad as it sounded from their end of town, it was reasonable to assume that Joe heard the same, albeit much closer.
Survival instinct was a pain in the ass sometimes. You did what you had to do to make sure that as many lives were saved as humanly possible, but at an expense sometimes.
Larry motioned for Balboa and Kody to follow. He was incredibly pissed, but he had a job to do as well. As much as he didn’t want to, he needed to clear the jail, post haste. He clipped the radio back onto his belt and drew his sidearm, a timeworn SIG/Sauer 9mm. He pulled the slide back, ensuring there was a round in the chamber. The golden glint of brass let him know it was ready. He turned to Balboa and Kody.
“Balboa, I know you have a sidearm. Kody, what do you have?”
Kody grinned. He reached behind his back, into his waistband, and pulled out a Colt 1911 .45. He looked at the gunmetal gray pistol longingly. “I always have this one on me. My 1911 Rail Gun never leaves my side.”
“Good enough. How many mags do you have for it?”
“One in it, and one extra. Not a whole hell of a lot, but I suppose it’ll have to do. Self-preservation has a way of keeping one’s…”
“Don’t get all philosophical on me right now, Kody. We ain’t got the time for that shit,” Larry interrupted.
Kody shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Larry turned and peered into the dark doorway. The lack of light made it difficult to see anything past the entry. No movement, and no sound greeted him; he took that as a good sign. The less that was in his way right now, the better. There were already several more locked doors between him and the other side of the wall, not to mention they needed to lock and secure each door behind him. It was a tedious task that he did not envy, but it had to be done. There were more questions than answers now, but the fact of the matter was the jail needed to be secured. The fact that they had an idea of what was going on was an unusual luxury, and one that would not be wasted. Joe had told him that thought the breach had come from inside the town, and that it may have originated at the jail. If he was right, then there was a likely possibility there were undead in and around the jail, inside the town, and other random areas. Too much to do, and less time to do it in.
Larry brought up his SIG, aimed eye-level, and took a deep breath.
“Here goes nothing.”
* * *
Three hundred and sixty degrees of protection guarded the LMTV and the Dodge Ram. Joe and the rest of his crew kept their rifles at low ready, constantly scanning the area for more hostiles. There was an unsettling sound of moans and the occasional choked gurgling coming from all around them. The growls were close by, but did not get any louder, as if the dead were taunting them, waiting for them to step out of line, ready to snatch up the unsuspecting. The moans however, were steadily getting louder, building up like a storm of macabre sound
. It was eerie and very unnerving; it felt ominous, hanging over the group like a fog.
Joe slowly walked away from the back of the LMTV. There was something amiss, something he couldn’t put his finger on, but he could feel. As he stepped away from the back of the truck, he looked towards the end of the road. The street they were on ended at the wall, and then made a left turn back towards the chow hall. The gaping hole in the wall was less than a hundred yards away from there. Joe made a mental note to park the LMTV in front of the hole and try to keep it secure as possible. Even though the threat had most likely came from inside the walls, the problem would be dealt with and the town would hopefully regain some normalcy with little interruption to everyday life. He hated losing even one person, but he was afraid there would be more casualties before it was all said and done. They would go to the jail – after Larry and the others had cleared it – and hole up for a little while, at least for the night. It would all blow over soon enough, with any luck.
A single zombie shuffled forward at the end of the street, about a hundred yards away.
Joe raised his rifle. He didn’t want to take the shot, even though it would be an easy takedown, but he did want to keep an eye on the singular zombie. It moved slowly, much slower than the few that they’d seen so far in town. It hadn’t been recently turned. It was from outside the wall.
Shit.
Joe stood for a moment, anchored to one spot, and watched, as one zombie became two, two became three, and then a deluge of undead began to turn the corner. Even though they moved slowly, it seemed as if they all poured in at once. Fixated on the end of the road, he didn’t hear Rick and Captain White yell for him. He was stuck, unable to move. It took him a few moments to pull the ACOG from his eye. A thousand ideas ran through his head, and it was not the time for most of them. All he needed to do right now was get his people to safety.
“Hey! Shit-for-brains! We’re ready to move out!” Captain White yelled from the front of the Ram, nearly ready to get in the vehicle. White held out his arms in a what the fuck manner, waiting for Joe to rejoin the conversation. He rapped his knuckles on the bed of the truck, another vain attempt to get Joe’s attention. It didn’t work the second time, either. Rick looked down from the bed of the truck and shrugged. White returned the gesture, unsure why Joe wasn’t moving.
Joe couldn’t help it; he was stricken with a combination of fear and anger. How dare the zombies traipse into their town? How dare they intrude on their protected life?
A hand on the backside of his head snapped him out of the daydream. Joe spun around, meeting Captain White’s gaze. White had a wry grin, until he noticed what Joe was seeing, now less than seventy-five yards down the road. The swarm of undead turned from a trickle to a steady stream, with several dozen zombies within a hundred yards of them. His grin turned dour.
“Damn.” It was all he could manage. “Fuckers probably heard us crash the gate. All the goddamned noise in town must’ve drawn ‘em here. There’s no way in hell that’s the horde from the tunnel.”
Joe started backpedaling. “Yeah. That’s what I thought too.” He grabbed White as he backed up. “Get in the truck, Captain. We need to get the fuck out of here.”
White paused. “We can take these. We have more than enough ammo in the LMTV to get the job done. Between the M4’s and the .50 cal, we have plenty.” He raised his M4 to take a shot.
Joe swatted the rifle back down. “No. We get these people to safety first. We can’t go off half-cocked with no plan and no backup. We get to the jail, make sure it’s safe, unload these people, and wait until morning. We only have a few hours of daylight left, less than that considering its overcast. So, let’s roll to the jail.”
Again, White didn’t agree with Joe’s assessment of the situation, but he didn’t protest. He lowered the rifle all the way down, and then slung it over his shoulder.
“Alright, you’re the boss. I think we need to take ‘em out while they are all grouped together. If we wait until morning, the whole goddamned town is gonna crawl with zombies.”
“That can’t be helped. Get in the truck, White. We gotta roll.”
White cursed under his breath, but made his way to the passenger’s side of the Dodge nonetheless. Boyd was standing at the driver’s side. Joe gave him thumbs up, and then climbed into the passenger’s side of the LMTV. He took one last look back before ducking into the truck. The mass of zombies wasn’t getting any larger, but they still made a formidable sized force. White was right; tomorrow, the town would be crawling with zombies. He couldn’t worry about that right now; he had to get his people to safety first. The undead could wait until morning.
Maybe.
CHAPTER 15
April 18, 2022 – 1415 Hours
Larry would have given his left nut for a flashlight. It was impossibly dark in the bowels of the jail. He couldn’t see anything and, excluding the occasional muffled pop of gunfire outside and the footfalls of Balboa and Kody; he couldn’t hear anything, either. Step by step, scanning back and forth, he watched each corridor and hallway, praying that Joe was wrong. The notion that something had broken loose from within the wall wasn’t out of the question; it had happened before with limited interruption to daily life, but this one felt different.
Nearly three months before Joe and his crew had arrived one of the workers outside town had been bitten. He didn’t tell anyone of the event, and less than an hour later, he was dead. Thankfully, he fell asleep in his room at the motel, locking the door before he did. He knew what was going to happen, and took necessary measures to ensure that he didn’t escape once he turned. The next morning, Larry and Cornbread checked the room after someone reported that something was banging around in the room, making a lot of unnecessary racket. Larry used the duplicate key for the room to unlock it, and Cornbread grabbed the freshly turned zombie, tossed him onto the asphalt, and ended him with twelve-gauge judgment. A hairy situation, but nothing like what was going on outside the walls of the jail.
Joe was rounding up stragglers along the way to the jail, grabbing the few people that he saw on the move. Word had gotten out the jail was the rally point for all the citizens in town. Three zombies had turned at the jail, and in turn, bitten three more, killing two instantly and starting the dreaded exponential effect of turning most of the town into the walking dead. Once the pattern started, it was difficult to contain, let alone stop. The fact there were another two hundred undead through the gate just added to the carnage. Joe and his people had the ammo and equipment to take care of an incursion this size, but it would woefully drain their resources. The supply run not only had taken them away from town at a bad time, but now most of the ammo would be for naught.
As Joe was having a little luck finding people, Larry was having less trying to clear the jail. He couldn’t see into every corner, every cell, and every hallway, but he was doing the best that he could. Every step was slow, every sound was explored, and every round was still in their respective pistols as they reached the fourth floor.
No zombies in the jail.
As they checked the last of the cells on the fourth floor, Larry got on the radio to Joe.
“Joe, the jail is clear. Meet on the second floor entrance, and we will let you in.”
“Copy. We are pulling up now, and we got company! We got at least two hundred dead fucks about a quarter mile behind us. We need to get unloaded, and quick!”
Larry vehemently waved Balboa and Kody to follow as he reached the end of the hallway and bounded down the stairs to the second floor. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, but he still got there in time. As he headed for the entrance on the inside the wall, he remembered Roy and Beverly were supposed to be watching their “patient.” He detoured for a moment to go down the hallway where he had left the pair, and their charge.
“Roy! Beverly! You guys okay in there?”
He didn’t have to wait for an answer, as it presented itself in the hallway. The lack of satisfactory lighting didn’t
matter as he rounded the corner and smelled the distinctively metallic smell of blood, mixed in with the smell of piss and shit. There was no distinguished way to exit this world, and your body’s natural reactions made sure of it. Blood, entrails, and other indiscernible bits of human anatomy were strewn all over the short hallway and room where the woman had been kept. Larry followed several bloody handprints as they made their way to the door, the same one that Beverly had propped open. There was no mistaking it; the outbreak inside town had started here.
“Son of a bitch,” Larry whispered under his breath. He took another deep breath and closed the door. It wasn’t the only way to get into town, and as far as he was concerned, there was no reason to go back to the scene of the crime,. He made sure the door was shut and locked before heading back to meet Joe. No sense in letting more zombies in. Hell, they couldn’t contain what they had.
When Larry made it back to the main entrance on the second floor, Joe had already got all the personnel out, and started getting the ammo and rifles out of the LMTV. Fewer than twenty people had made the trip with him, only about a quarter of the town’s population. Many more had already been turned, or were just missing. There were a handful outside the wall on various tasks, but they were unaccounted for as well.
Joe tossed a box of uniforms down from the back of the LMTV as Larry approached. The cardboard box landed with a thump at his feet. Curtis and Captain White were keeping watch on either side of the truck, as was Rick and Kane. The German shepherd kept a constant low growl, his hackles raised and ready to pounce on anything that moved.
Larry grabbed the box of uniforms, looking at Joe, puzzled. “I think the guns and ammo are a little more important than these, buddy. What are we gonna do with all these?”
Joe tossed down another box, this one full of knee and elbow pads. “Everyone that’s left is going to need some clothes in the next day or two, so they can wear these. People left everything and came here; they need a little comfort right now. Plus, we are going to need a lot of this stuff when we take back the town. Trust me, the ammo and guns are coming with us, except the fifty cal; it’s gonna stay in here. I have an idea for it.”
