Six Feet From Hell: Unity: 6FFH Book #5

by Joseph Coley

  “Nice shooting, Reggie. Where the hell did you learn to do that?” Joe asked as the others got into their respective vehicles.

  Reggie flung the pieces of brains and black ooze from the arrows as he walked to the Ram. Once he was satisfied the arrow was clean, he meticulously put it in the quiver.

  “You either learn to shoot something or die of starvation in the winter around here. I’m so goddamned stubborn that I didn’t think that you guys would accept me if I just came up and asked for a gun, so I made the bow. I would rather become more self-reliant than have to deal with that. I had you pegged wrong, Joe, and I hope that we can have an understanding now.”

  Reggie’s answer surprised Joe. The “lone dissenter” attitude had seemingly been just Reggie’s coping mechanism. He simply went on doing what he had done before and let his personal beliefs dictate how he would act. He wasn’t ashamed, just unsure how to ask for help. It had been several weeks since Joe had seen Reggie before yesterday, and judging from his newfound attitude, had been mulling over quite a bit. The outbreak in town had been the catalyst for change.

  “Don’t mention it, Reggie. We can always use another good man. I think I had you pegged wrong, too.”

  Reggie grinned slightly. “Well then, you can tell that honky asshole that he owes me twenty bucks.”

  Joe laughed. “I’ll do that.”

  Larry stood up on the running board of the Ram. “We gonna stand around all day holdin’ our dicks, or we gonna kill some goddamned zombies?”

  CHAPTER 24

  April 19, 2022 – 0724 Hours

  The Ram rumbled past the LMTV as the LMTV slowed at the first building. Since leaving the jail, they had not seen the first zombie. Not a single one.

  This unnerved Joe greatly.

  Joe keyed his radio as the Dodge drove by. “Larry, do what you can to plug the hole. If you don’t think you can do it, don’t try it. Fall back and rally point at the motel if you have to.”

  “Copy. Likewise for you guys. Don’t be all Billy badass if you get overrun,” Larry said over the tinny speaker.

  Joe couldn’t help but to grin. It felt nice to mend the fence with Larry. Something that he rarely got the opportunity to do – apologize – felt oddly alien to him. A welcome feeling nonetheless.

  But he didn’t have time to dwell on it.

  As Joe wheeled the LMTV onto the sidewalk in front of the abandoned school, he was greeted with over a dozen zombies. Walkers in all stages of decay and rot collectively turned to the sound of the loud diesel engine.

  “Time to go to work, bitches!” Captain White exclaimed. There was something about killing zombies that White seemed to enjoy just a little too much. As long as he was in control, Captain White seemed to toy with the undead, poking and prodding at them, fucking with them until he felt it was time to end the miserable creature’s existence.

  White bounded out of the LMTV’s passenger seat and made a beeline for the first few zombies that he saw. The first one was leading a pack of three others right behind it. White reared back and gave the first one a teeth-rattling front kick to the chest, knocking the other three down in the process. As soon as the lead walker hit the ground, White curb-stomped the zombie while he sang.

  “You get a line, and I’ll get a pole, honey! You get a line, and I’ll get a pole, babe!” White gleefully sang as he continued stomping the other three zombies.

  “Keep your shit together, White!” Joe yelled, raising his M4 and easing his finger on the trigger.

  White swung his leg back and kicked a crushed skull like a soccer ball; the severed head went bouncing down an overgrown sidewalk. He stood panting for a few seconds, and then raised his hands, signaling a touchdown.

  “Score! Ha! Ha! Ha! Touchdown, motherfuckers!”

  “Goddammit, White! Would you please stop being such a pain in the ass?” Curtis said.

  “I thought you hicks liked that square-dancing dumbass shit? Just tryin’ to appease the grass-eating natives.”

  Even as gunfire erupted around him, White paid no nevermind. He was too lost in the elation of stomping the life out of the undead that now mucked and slopped beneath his feet. Even after the four were sufficiently killed, he continued to romp on putrefied intestines, splintered rib cages, and broken bones, relishing the few minutes of stress relief he so desperately needed. He had managed to keep his cool until now, but after being locked up for the past four months, he needed to vent.

  Joe kept firing as White carried on his tap dance of death, dropping a pair of dead farmers, complete with black, stained overalls. It was eerie how the sound of gunfire echoed through the town. Joe hadn’t noticed how quiet the town was without the few sounds that permeated the area. Even on slow days, conversations, generators running, and the sounds of hammering and other repairs signaled the daily life of citizens inside the town.

  Now it sounded like a war zone.

  Gunfire kept up for another few seconds as Curtis fired off several more rounds. Rick and Kane kept watch from the bed of the truck. Kane had stayed relatively quiet over the past twelve hours, possibly noting the change in environment. Rick had done an excellent job in keeping the former Lexington Police Department K-9 officer in shape. As much as he liked giving Kane a hard time, the dog had proved invaluable in his short time with Rick. They were inseparable and an important link in the team. Even though Rick’s specialty was sniping long-range, Kane would often sniff out undead that made little or no noise at all, altering others.

  Rick scanned from the back of the truck, slowly watching over his father, Curtis, and Captain White. The gunfire was sure to attract more undead throughout town. As he watched Curtis drop the last of their current group, a zombie with a filthy WVU hoodie, his assumption was substantiated. Roughly thirty more zombies were gathering a little over a hundred yards away. Rick flipped out the bipod of his AR-10 and propped it on the roof of the Ram. He eased the stock into his shoulder and sized up his targets.

  “Guys, we have about two dozen dead fuckers in the middle of the road, about a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty yards away.”

  Joe dropped his magazine and checked the rounds left in it, which there were only two, and loaded a fresh magazine, putting the spent mag back into his pouch.

  “You got ‘em?”

  Rick flipped the selector to “semi.”

  “Yeah, I got ‘em.”

  With the steady, calm breathing he was used to controlling, Rick leveled the rifle and began to fire. One by one, heads popped and zombies dropped. He didn’t have to waste more than one shot on any them, just a single, well-placed round straight through the brain.

  Rick absently thought about why he had to hit the undead in the brain. Was it the primitive goo that we were all born with gone crazy? Was it that part of the brain that controlled our most basic of functions? The whole thing gave him a headache, but it undeniably gave the undead a worse one. The one thing he did know was that zombies didn’t stand a chance in hell against his 7.62mm rifle at a distance.

  Twenty-six shots and one mag change later, he was finished. The road ahead of them was a straight shot along the route towards the motel. A hundred yards ahead, the pile of zombies sat in the middle of the road, marking their progress on clearing out the town.

  Joe meandered over to the LMTV as Rick picked up his bipod and drew the rifle back into the truck. By Joe’s count, there should have been over sixty citizens unaccounted for. They were far from making a dent in the problem.

  “How many of those were slugs?” Joe asked. “Slug” was the term given to a slow moving zombie, because they moved slowly and generally left a slimy trail behind them.

  “From what I could tell, all of ‘em.”

  Joe stopped and winced. “All of them?”

  “Yeah, near as I could tell,” Rick replied. “You still wondering where our missing people are, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Just wondering if we are gonna find any of ‘em.”

  “Spoke too soon, asshole.
Look!” Captain White pointed out a mass of zombies nearly a half-mile away.

  Running zombies.

  The mass of undead was at least fifty, if not more. Intertwined with the runners were a dozen or more slow shamblers, or slugs, making their way through the sides of the road. A sporadic stint of shots came from the far end of town. Larry, no doubt, was taking care of business. The mass of zombies seemed to split at the sound of the barrage, with some of them headed towards the loud pop of gunfire. Joe pulled up the ACOG sight on his rifle and watched the zombies as they split in either direction, some coming towards him, some going towards the noise. He looked off to the right-hand side of the road, watching where they were coming from. The motel was less than a half mile away, and as Joe thought about it, the horrible realization of what had transpired there came to him.

  A massacre.

  When the citizenry realized what was going on, those who were not rounded up with the others in the Ram and LMTV would have went to the motel, hoping to be rescued. While it wasn’t a bad idea, it ultimately proved to be a fatal proposition. The slugs, although slow, more than made up in numbers what they lacked in strength. They would have massed at the motel and easily overpowered and shattered the flimsy windows that made up each room. Once the rooms were breached, those who weren’t taken with the initial attack would ultimately be caught trying to escape.

  “Dammit, they got into the motel. The people we didn’t pick up would have gone there, and I bet there isn’t many of them left,” Joe said, thinking aloud.

  “Larry to Joe, come in. You’ve got a shitload of walkers about a half-mile out from you, with some slow ones in tow. Looks like they got into the motel. Over”

  Joe keyed his radio. “Yeah, we were just discussing that. How’s the wall look?”

  “You guys did a number on it, but nothing we can’t fix. Get the LMTV up here as soon as you can, though. The Ram isn’t gonna be able to cover the hole.”

  “Copy. You guys have some runners headed your way, too. Watch your ass and we will try to run over what we can on the way to you. The gunfire seems to be drawing them out, so we may have our work cut out for us, at least the ones inside the walls.”

  “Copy, yeah we see some of ‘em coming now. We got this. By the way, the battery is dying on my radio, so get on down here, unless you wanna send smoke signals.”

  “Gotcha, we will be down shortly.” Joe swallowed hard. “You guys didn’t happen to see Jamie or Cornbread over there did you?”

  A long pause.

  “Negative. I haven’t seen ‘em - dead or otherwise.”

  “Copy. Be with your shortly. Over and out.”

  It was a question that he needed answered, but one that he didn’t want the answer to. Chances were that both men wouldn’t be found, at least not the way that he wanted to find them. The slim possibility still existed that they would be found alive, but that chance dwindled with each passing minute.

  “What’s the plan, chief?”

  Captain White had been standing behind Joe, eavesdropping on his conversation.

  “I’ll drive. You three get in the back and take care of the stragglers that I don’t run over. We are gonna meet up with Larry and plug the wall, and then make a couple passes through town until we can go building-to-building safely. Once most of ‘em are taken care of, our job should be a lot easier. You and Curtis clear around this building and then we will get outta here.”

  White grinned devilishly. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  Joe turned White around and lightly shoved him towards the back of the LMTV.

  “All right, all right, I’m going. Mount up, boys, time to move out.”

  * * *

  Larry smacked the side of the radio. The LCD display was fading quickly, the batteries giving their last hurrah before being unusable. Rechargeable Ni-Cad batteries and alkaline ones alike would be useless after around ten years. Even the strongest of them wouldn’t hold a spark after a decade. Larry stuffed the radio back onto his LBV (Load Bearing Vest) and swung his rifle up. The M4 caught on the gas mask carrier that Joe had insisted that Larry wear. He had tried to maneuver with the bulky mask, but was unable to because of the restricting nature. It was a calculated risk, but one that he thought was worth it. There was no use in protecting his face if it took away from the ability for him to defend himself.

  Balboa was kneeling in the back of the Ram, using the sides of the bed as a support. Brass plinked in against the metal bed as he fired off rounds. During his military training, he had been an excellent marksman, and now was no different. Each shot was well-placed and dropped oncoming zombies quickly and cleanly. Well, as cleanly as a walking corpse could. He was surprised at how many of the undead were still pouring towards them, even after dropping his full thirty-round magazine and shoving another in its place. He smacked the bolt release and chambered the next round.

  Boyd was taking deliberate shots as well with his Marlin 336 30-30. Joe had given him an M4, but for the moment, he preferred the long-range scope on the Marlin as opposed to the iron sights of the M4. Unlike Joe’s rifle, the stock M4 didn’t have a red dot sight, foregrip, or anything else to set it apart from one straight off the shelf. He knew the scope on his 30-30 to be true, so he stuck with it. He fired off another shot, the rifle booming, and exploded a skull over a hundred yards away. He’d told Larry there were more zombies coming down the road, and fast ones, too. The quick-moving undead made for difficult shots, as they weren’t hobbled by decay or broken bones. Some of the people that Boyd fired at had been people he recognized. His second-grade teacher, the pharmacist from CVS, and others were dirty and decayed targets now. What made him pause and hate the undead were the ones he recognized from within the town, the ones that before yesterday, had been his friends.

  He shot a twenty-something female zombie that he’d fucked about six months ago.

  He took out a man that he once traded goods with.

  He nearly decapitated another woman that had taught him how to sew.

  It was a stressful few moments for him as he continued firing.

  Reggie stood as the lone person not firing a rifle or any other firearm. He had taken one of his arrows out and kept it ready to draw. He’d told Larry when he’d been asked about not shooting that if he had to fire an arrow, then they were in deep shit. He was accurate to within fifty yards or more and so far, no zombies had come close to his range. He kept a constant watch behind them, however.

  The Ram was parked in the sizeable hole in the wall, doing its best to keep it from being breached further. Pieces of the wall lay all over. Boards, tin roofing, and a broken phone pole were scattered on the ground.

  Larry did his best to gather the items that were still of use in hopes that they could reuse them. Building supplies weren’t easy to come by; a trip outside the wall to dismantle a house wasn’t out of the question, but was a long way down the road in terms of feasibility.

  “Keep me covered for a minute, boys. Joe will be here any second!”

  Balboa dropped another magazine and reloaded. “Barrel is getting hot! I don’t know how much longer we can keep this up! It’s wearing out the rifling from the heat! I’ve got four mags left!”

  Larry picked up a piece of tin siding and tossed it into the bed of the Ram. He grabbed his rifle from behind him, gave it to Balboa and patted him on the back. “Use mine for a while! The iron sights are dead on, just keep it up for a minute!”

  Balboa nodded and sat his M4 down, the barrel sizzling as it touched the scant amount of water in the truck. He grabbed Larry’s flipped the selector to semi and began lining up shots.

  Kody jumped into the bed of the truck, rifle in hand as well. He’d gone through only two magazines thus far, and was trying to steady his aim on the bed as well. He was about to fire when he felt the truck bump slightly underneath of him. Taking his eye off the sights and looking around, he spotted a big problem.

  Zombies at the opposite side of the truck.

  �
�Shit!” He exclaimed, and moved to the other side of the bed. He raised the M4 and began taking point-blank shots on the heads of the undead that were amassing beneath him. “Larry! We got a problem here! The noise is drawing them in!”

  Larry hopped into the back of the truck and drew his 9mm. He started firing at their unwanted guests as well, desperately trying to get some breathing room.

  “Dammit! Get back, you undead pieces of shit!”

  The zombies were not fazed by insults.

  Several more meandered over to the truck and began pounding on the sides. The beating became so intense that Balboa stopped firing and looked over his shoulder.

  “What the hell is going on back there?”

  “We got more company!” Larry yelled, chambering another pistol mag.

  Balboa whistled loudly at Boyd and Reggie. Both men turned and acknowledged.

  Boyd sat down his Marlin and began firing his M4.

  “Get in the truck!” Balboa yelled.

  Boyd turned back towards the mass coming from the motel. He didn’t have time to react to the zombie quickly bearing down on him. It was another one that Boyd recognized.

  It was his uncle.

  Boyd quickly swung the buttstock of the M4 at his undead uncle, clipping the zombie just enough to throw off his pursuit. The rifle flew from his hands and clattered against the ground, skittering away from him. The zombie was quick to regain his bearings, getting his feet under him and making another charge. Boyd quickly grabbed the Ka-Bar knife out of the sheath on his belt, and an M67 frag grenade. Each one of the men that had left the jail had two of the fragmentation grenades on them, just in case.

  Boyd grinned as his uncle bore down on him again.

  His unfortunate relative had been bitten on the face and top of the shoulder, as evidenced by the large bite marks and smattering of blood along his neck and face. It did not slow him down, though. Boyd’s uncle growled, saliva dripping from his mouth, tinged with blood.