The Living and the Dead

by R. J. Spears

  “Screw you,” Kinsler said and started down the hall towards the wounded soldier.

  He made it ten feet when the third soldier, who had been in the room closest to Russell, craned his head out the door and fired on Kinsler.

  In retrospect, no one understood why the soldier did this. Maybe he was disoriented from the blast? Maybe he didn’t trust anyone at the moment? Whatever his reasoning, he was shooting anyone and anything that moved.

  Kinsler tried to dodge, but he didn’t stand a chance. Two of the bullets caught him in the chest and spun him around. His body went slack as he collapsed in a heap. Small ripples of convulsions wracked through him. This went on for several seconds as no one moved in the hallway.

  One of his hands reached up into the air, grasping at something only he could see. Maybe it was hope that the wounds weren’t that bad? Maybe it was hope that he would survive, but neither hope was answered as his hand fell back to the floor and never moved again.

  A large black man in a soldier’s uniform stepped out from around the corner at the end of the hall. Russell recognized him as Sergeant Jones. Jones had a rifle and fired without hesitation on the soldier who had just killed Kinsler. Jones fired before he could withdraw back into his room and safety. The soldier’s body jerked from the impacts as he bounced off the door jamb and ended up face down, his weapon clattering down the hallway.

  The blinded soldier fell to his knees and covered his head, hoping not to be shot as the bullets whizzed by him. Fortunately for him, Jones was an excellent shot and none of his bullets had missed his desired target.

  Russell maintained his total attention on Sergeant Jones, wondering what would happen next. Questions bounced around in his head. Why had Jones shot the soldier? Was he shooting down the hall at me and hit the soldier by accident? What the hell was going on?

  He strongly doubted that Jones had shot the soldier by accident, but then he questioned what that meant and this only led to more questions. He knew Jo had talked with Jones, but nothing definitive had been spelled out.

  The questions were cut short with no answers when he heard a scream of pain behind his back. He whirled around, thinking one of the soldiers who had originally been in the room had not been killed and had ambushed Maggie, but what he saw puzzled him. Maggie stood ten feet away from him, near the corner of the room, her body jerking convulsively. It was a horrifying sight as her hands fluttered about like frightened birds in the air. He could see that her eyes had rolled up into her head. Tiny wisps of smoke drifted off the control vest near her neck, wrapping around her face like a veil.

  He watched, unable to move for several seconds, but broke from this spell and stepped toward her. Just as he reached out to grab her, a violent crack sounded within the vest and Maggie convulsed backward as if someone had smacked her with a two-by-four. She slammed onto the floor, her feet still kicking. They gently slowed, until they went still.

  Russell didn’t take this stillness as a good sign.

  “There are people coming out of the woods with weapons,” a panicked voice shouted from the walkie-talkie speaker. It was one of Lodwick’s soldiers and his voice was as high pitched as a little girl’s.

  “Well, fight back!” Lodwick shouted, the cords in his neck straining from the force of his scream.

  “We can’t,” the soldier responded.“ They’re coming from all directions. They’re overrunning us. We have to pull back.”

  “DO NOT PULL BACK,” Lodwick screamed again, but it was clear to see that this wasn’t going their way. Looking out into the darkness, he could see that the few men he had left alive were hightailing it back toward the building. He also saw attackers in close pursuit and these pursuers were firing at unrelentingly at the retreating soldiers.

  “SHIT!” Lodwick bellowed. “Where did they get those guns!?” He took three deep breaths, knowing it didn’t matter where the guns had come from. They had them and that’s all that mattered. “Third floor, third floor guard towers, report in.”

  Static came back for several seconds before he repeated the call, but this time with a long thread of curses followed by explicit threats that were hard to ignore.

  Finally a soldier replied, “Ferguson here, sir.”

  “Why aren’t you firing on the attackers?”

  “They’re too close together, sir. I might hit one of our men.”

  “Well, shit,” Lodwick said quietly, without the talk button depressed. “Where are the men at the other stations?”

  Ferguson took a moment, but reluctantly said, “I think they abandoned their posts, sir.”

  Lodwick raised the walkie-talkie above his head and it looked like he was about to smash it to the ground. Instead, he brought it down in a vicious arc, letting the momentum of his movement spin him in a frenetic half-circle as he let loose with a slew of curses.

  The soldiers near him pretended not to pay attention, but his performance didn’t inspire any confidence. His volatile behavior, on top of Kilgore’s insanity, combined with the most recent desertions, weren’t raising morale. The report from the second floor brought the news that all the men in the sleeping quarters had been wiped out. That was the last report from the second floor.

  No, morale was at an all-time low and trending downwards like a boulder rolling down a mountain.

  “You need to provide covering fire,” Lodwick spat into the walkie-talkie. “Can you do that?” His tone with the question sounded almost pathetic.

  Ferguson took a moment, but responded, “Yes, sir.”

  A moment later, shots could be heard from the third floor and Lodwick could see his men retreating. Ferguson’s fire from the third floor had slowed down the attackers just enough to give his men time to make it back inside.

  Lodwick brought the walkie-talkie back up to his mouth, keyed the talk button, but didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he finally said, “All stations report in.”

  This took a few minutes, but not as long as it should have. Lodwick ticked off the tally, and he was down ten stations, but he wasn’t sure how many men he had left. Enough, he hoped.

  Enough for what was his big question. He had no idea what these people’s next step was. He only knew they’d have to pay for this rebellion and he’d like to see it be their final payment.

  He took a moment to gather his courage and spoke into the walkie-talkie, “Stations four and eight, gather any of the Manor folks we have left. Take them to the dining room. We’ll see how they like it when we have what they care about. Everyone else, prepare to defend the building, but pull back to the cafeteria.”

  “Did you hear that?” Henry asked, feeling a sense of dread come over his body as he held up the walkie-talkie to Del. He had picked it up from one of the dead soldiers.

  Their two teams, as meager as they were, had pressed their advance to just outside the exterior where they had recombined. Their counter-attack had been mercifully brief, but also costly. Henry had lost the only useful fighter he had. Del’s team didn’t have any fatalities, but Stanley had taken a hit to his thigh and was out of the fight. That took another person out as Doc Wilson had to attend to him. Although it was doubtful that Doc Wilson would fight, anyway.

  That left Henry, Del, and a woman named Cynthia. Henry knew that the plan was for people to evacuate out all sides of the building if they could. Since only a handful knew about the weapon caches in the woods, Henry imagined that they might be the only ones with weapons.

  Cynthia looked a little shell shocked at the moment, her eyes wide and her breathing coming in jagged gasps. The field crossing and attack had been the first time she had fired a gun in her life, let alone the first time she had ever done a full charge on armed soldiers. Henry could tell that she was nearly overwhelmed by the experience.

  “You, okay?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice jagged and on edge. “No.” She was near hyperventilating. “I’ll be okay.”

  He didn’t have any more time to bolster her up. Morale
took a backseat to survival. He felt the time window closing on their people inside the building. Lodwick would have them rounded up soon and then he would have all the power.

  “We have to get inside and do it now,” he said. “My mom’s still in there.”

  “So is my sister,” Cynthia replied.

  “My son’s still inside,” Del said, “along with my girlfriend.”

  Henry looked at the three entrances on their side of the building and guessed that there were soldiers inside guarding the doors. He knew they could be ready to take them out as soon as they came inside. They’d have to find another way in.

  “Let’s go in a window,” Henry said, “they’ll be expecting us to come in a door.”

  He started walking along the edge of the building when he heard a low guttural moan come from behind them. They all turned to see a lone zombie shambling after them.

  Del raised his rifle, but Henry shot out a hand and pushed the barrel down.

  “We don’t want to announce where we are,” Henry said.

  “What do we do?” Cynthia asked, looking both perplexed and frightened.

  “We knock the shit out of it,” Henry said, stepping away from the others while rearing back with his rifle. The zombie closed the gap between itself and Henry. Just as they were about to meet, Henry swung the rifle forward, leading with the butt end. The butt collided with the upper part of the zombie’s skull with a horrible cracking noise. The zombie collapsed on the ground while Henry stood above its body.

  As if fighting the soldiers wasn’t enough, Henry looked up and saw more shambling figures in the field heading their way, drawn in by the sounds of the gunfire.

  Del said, “There’s more coming in?”

  “Yeah,” Henry replied.

  “More what?” Cynthia asked.

  “More zombies,” Del said.

  Cynthia jumped into the air, spun, and ended up facing out toward the field, her rifle pointed at the zombies, ready to fire.

  Henry reached out and gently put a hand on her shoulder. She jerked from the surprise of the touch and nearly fired her weapon.

  “Don’t shoot,” Henry said. “There is only a few of them.”

  “But they’re going to come for us,” she said, her voice pitched up a couple octaves.

  “At this point, they are only a mild distraction, but if more come, then things will get interesting,” Henry said. “Their only upside at the moment was that they are probably as distracting to the soldiers as they were to us. The downside for us is that the soldiers are inside, and we are outside and more susceptible to attack.”

  Del said, “You sounded a lot like your dad just then.”

  “I can never fill his shoes,” Henry replied.

  “Well, he’d be proud of you,” Del said, then looked up to the third floor. “Why aren’t the men up there shooting at them, or us?”

  “Maybe they’ve all pulled back,” Henry said.

  Static came from the walkie-talkie and Henry pulled it up closer to his face. A moment later, Lodwick’s voice came from the speaker, “I need a comms man here on the double.”

  A moment later, a voice Henry didn’t recognize spoke, “Sir, Meinke went with Colonel Kilgore.”

  “Someone has sabotaged the radio,” Lodwick replied. “I need someone in HQ to fix it or come up with a new system. Who do we have?”

  One part of the plan was to get into their headquarters and take out their ability to communicate. It seems that someone had been able to do that in the chaos.

  There was a pause of several seconds. Cynthia never took her eyes off the wandering zombies, shuffling along in the field. One of them seemed to have heard the exchange on the walkie-talkie and headed their way, slowly, but steadily.

  “One of the zombies is coming our way,” she said. “You need to turn that thing off.”

  “I’ll turn it down,” Henry said as he turned the volume down.

  A voice sounded from the walkie talkie. “Corporal Lodwick, I have a man with me who was nearly comm certified. I’ll send him your way.”

  “On the double,” Lodwick replied.

  “What does that mean?” Del asked.

  “He wants to talk to someone,” Henry said. “That can’t be a good thing. If he gets reinforcements, we’re done.”

  They listened for another minute, but nothing was said.

  “That one is getting really close,” Cynthia said.

  Dell asked, “What window should we try?”

  “Just pick one,” Henry said.

  “No,” Cynthia said. “Take the third one to our right. The laundry is in there. I know that area really well.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Del said and they started along the side of the building with their little black sheep in tow, shuffling behind them. Cynthia never took her eyes off the creature as they made their way to the window.

  As soon as they got beside it, Henry looked in and saw that the room was empty. The fluorescent lights bathed the room in a cool blue glow. The room looked like it did every day -- innocuous and safe. Henry worried that looks could be deceiving, but the burden of the ticking clock in the back of his head necessitated immediate action. He did what he had to, and despite the noise, he smashed the window in with the butt end of this rifle.

  To him, the shattering glass sounded like the percussion section of a marching band playing at full volume.

  “Inside, quick,” he said, motioning for everyone to climb in. They followed his cue and Del knocked out any shards of glass stuck in the window sill and then he helped Cynthia climb in. He climbed in behind her quickly.

  Something crunched behind Henry and he whirled around to see their undead little friend just feet away. Since breaking the window had given up their position, he gave up on stealth. He whipped up his rifle and fired two quick shots into the zombie’s head, sending a spray of blood and brain matter into the air.

  Just as he turned to climb inside, he saw another shape heading his way. He brought the rifle up again and started to sight it before he noticed something strange about it. Unlike the zombies, it wasn’t shambling or shuffling, it was jogging right at him.

  Could it be another soldier? He asked himself, but thought they had taken all of them out, but who was counting? He aimed directly at it and his finger started to depress the trigger when the figure spoke.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Mrs. Hatcher shouted as she shot her arms up above her head in an exaggerated gesture of surrender.

  “Oh shit,” he said. He had forgotten totally about her. “I almost shot your damn head off.”

  “There are zombies out there in the woods,” she said, flinging her hands in the air absentmindedly along with her pistol. “I think one of them ate Steve Hampton.”

  “Be careful with that thing,” Henry said.

  Her mouth opened into a large O and she looked at the gun as if she hadn’t remembered it was there.

  Del stuck his head out the window and said, “Are you coming?” Then he noticed Mrs. Hatcher and just shook his head.

  “We’re coming,” Henry said and blew out a long breath.

  Chapter 35

  Through the Smoke and Fury

  I had been in battles before, but nothing like this. This was a war zone. Man versus machine and machine seemed to be winning, but I didn’t know for how long. The helicopter was spewing out thick bellows of smoke and the flames that had been there before were now a full-fledged fire. Adding to the spectacle was a barrage of bullets coming down from the back gunners, making it like a giant flying fireworks show.

  The return fire from the ground had petered down to random bursts from behind buildings and intact vehicles. Marlow’s men had been depleted down to only a token army. Marlow was still out there, but I had lost track of him. Maybe he had been taken out, but I had no way of knowing.

  I raced along the side of the parking lot, running along a line of burning or exploded vehicles, trying to stay out of the way of the bullets from the c
hopper. The searing heat from the fires felt like it would blister my skin and the smoke burned my eyes. Because of the helicopter above, I was forced to run the long way to the building where I suspected that Marlow had taken Kara.

  Some sixth sense told me to take a break from running to get my bearings. So, I slowed down and tucked myself into a slight depression in the building I was next to. It was hard to judge anything in the chaos. Smoke billowed in clouds across the parking lot and fires flared up into the sky. I shifted along the wall a few inches, getting a better angle, and saw through a break in the chaos. The administration building was just fifty yards away. The only thing standing in my way was hell itself, burning and frightful. Really, could it be any other way?

  Just as I took a step forward, two figures came around the corner ten feet in front of me. My immediate reaction was to jerk my gun up and shoot them, but I quelled that momentarily. Still, I had my finger tensed on the trigger.

  They didn’t attempt to shoot me, but instead started in my direction while taking frequent glances at me, while also keeping an eye on the chopper. I could only guess that they thought that anyone on the ground was on their side. Well, that and the general chaos and a haze of smoke in the air could lead to that assumption. Too bad for them.

  One was big and tall with a gawky gait, while the other was short and broad, walking with a pronounced see-saw motion back and forth like he was riding a horse. Just as they got close to me, tall and gawky said, “Hey, do you think the choppers coming down soon?”

  I said, “Beats the hell out of me, but why don’t the two of you drop your weapons?” It wasn’t really a request.

  They both whirled on me, but I had my rifle leveled at their chests while their weapons lay slack in the hands.

  “You!” Tall and gawky said, and I recognized him from our ride over from the highway.

  To make the point that I was in control, I slammed my rifle barrel into his face where I felt something crunch. This was no time for subtle negotiations.